When a Dark Magician drinks in someone’s pain, it only increases.
When a Light Magician takes someone’s joy, it decreases.
We can absorb power at any moment. But we very rarely allow ourselves to.
That day I decided that I was entitled.
I took a little bit from a couple locked in each other’s arms at the entrance to the metro. They were happy, very happy just then. But I could tell that the lovers were parting, and for a long time, and sadness would inevitably come to them anyway. I decided I had the right. Their joy was bright and rich, like a bouquet of scarlet roses, proud and delicate.
I touched a child as he ran past – he was happy, he didn’t feel the oppressive heat, he was running to buy an ice cream. He would soon restore his power. It was as simple and pure as wild flowers. A posy of daisies that I gathered without hesitation.
I saw an old woman in a window. The shadow of death was already hovering over her, she could probably sense it herself. But she was still smiling. Her grandson had called round to see her that day. Probably only to check if his grandmother was still alive, or if the valuable apartment in the centre of Moscow was free now. She understood that too, but she was still happy. I felt ashamed, unbearably ashamed, but I touched her and took a little power. A fading orange and yellow bunch of asters and autumn leaves …
I walked along just as I used to in my nightmares, when I handed out happiness to everyone on all sides, making sure no one went away without his share. But the trail I left behind me now was quite different. Slightly faded smiles, wrinkled foreheads, lips pressed together in doubt.
It was pretty easy to see where I’d been.
If I met a Day Watch patrol, they wouldn’t stop me.
And even if any Light Ones saw what was happening, they wouldn’t say anything.
I was doing what I thought was necessary. What I believed I had a right to do. Borrowing. Stealing. And the way I used the power I’d taken would seal my destiny.
Either I’d pay back all my debts in full.
Or the Twilight would open its arms to embrace me.
When a Light Magician starts drawing power from humans, he’s gambling everything on a single throw of the dice. And the usual balancing of accounts between the actions of the two Watches didn’t apply.
Not only did the amount of Good that was done have to exceed the amount of Evil I had caused, I would have to be certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’d paid everything back in full.
The lovers, the children, the old people. The group drinking beer by the statue. I’d been afraid their happiness might turn out to be a sham, but it was genuine, and I took their power.
Forgive me.
I could apologise to every one of them three times over. I could pay for what I’d taken. But I wouldn’t really mean it.
I was simply fighting for love. In the first place. And only after that for you, the humans for whom this new happiness was being prepared.
But what if I were really doing that as well?
What if, every time you fought for love, you were fighting for the whole world?
For the whole world – not against the whole world.
Power!
Power.
Power?
I gathered it in crumbs, sometimes gently, sometimes in crude haste, to prevent my hand from trembling and my eyes from looking away in shame, as I took almost all there was.
Maybe happiness was a rare experience anyway for this young man.
I didn’t know.
Power!
Maybe without this smile, this woman would lose someone’s love.
Power.
Maybe tomorrow this strong man with the ironic smile would die.
Power.
The amulets in my pockets wouldn’t be any use. There wasn’t going be a fight. The ‘top form’ the boss had mentioned wouldn’t help me either. That wouldn’t be enough. And the right to carry out a second-degree intervention that Zabulon had granted me so generously was a trap. There wasn’t any doubt about that. He’d framed his own girlfriend, drawn the lines of probability together so that we’d meet and then handed me his deadly gift with a mournful expression on his face. I couldn’t see far enough into the future to be sure the Good I did would never become Evil.
But if you have no weapon, accept one even from the hands of your enemy.
Power!
Power.
Power?
If I’d still been connected to Gesar by the narrow thread that maintains contact between a young magician and his mentor, he would long ago have sensed what was happening. Sensed the energy building up inside me, the massive energy I’d gathered for some unknown purpose.
What would he have done?
It made no sense to try to stop a magician who had started down this path.
I was walking in the direction of the Economic Exhibition metro. I knew where it was all going to happen. Coincidences aren’t coincidences when they’re controlled by higher magicians. The absurd ‘box on stilts’, the matchbox standing on its end – that was where Zabulon had lost the battle for Svetlana, that was where Gesar had unmasked the Light Magician he’d assigned to the Inquisition, teaching Svetlana a lesson in the process.
The focus of power for the whole complex manoeuvre.
For the third time.
I didn’t feel like eating or drinking, but I stopped once, bought a coffee and drank it. It was tasteless, as if all the caffeine had been filtered out of it. People started making way for me, even though I was walking in the ordinary world. The magical tension was rising.
There was no way I could conceal my approach.
But I didn’t want to creep up on them anyway.
A pregnant woman was walking cautiously along the pavement. I shuddered when I saw she was smiling. And I almost turned away when I realised her unborn child was smiling too in its own safe little world.
Their power was like pale pink peonies – a large blossom and a round bud that hadn’t unfolded yet.
I had to gather what I found along my way.
Without hesitation or pity.
There was something happening in the world around me too.
The heat seemed to have got stronger. In a single desperate surge.
The Dark and the Light Magicians must have had good reason to spend all those days trying to disperse the heat. Something was going to happen. I stopped and looked up at the sky through the Twilight.
Subtle, twisted coils of swirling air.
Sparks on the horizon.
Fading light in the south-east.
A glowing nimbus round the needle of the Ostankino TV Tower.
It was going to be a strange night.
I touched a little girl running by and took the naïve joy she felt because her father had come home sober. Like snapping off a briar branch, prickly and fragile.
Forgive me.
It was almost eleven o’clock when I reached the ‘box on stilts’.
The last person I touched was a drunken factory worker, slumped against the wall in the alley. The same alley where I’d killed a Dark One for the first time. He was barely even conscious. But happy.
I took his power too. A dusty trampled stem of coarse plantain, a crude, dirty-brown candle.
That was power too.
As I crossed the road, I realised I wasn’t alone. I summoned my shadow and withdrew into the Twilight.
The building was cordoned off.
It was the oddest cordon I’d ever seen. Dark Ones and Light Ones all together. I spotted Semyon and nodded to him. He gave me a calm, slightly reproachful look. Tiger Cub, Bear, Ilya, Ignat …
When had they summoned them all? While I was wandering round the city, gathering power? Sorry about that holiday, guys.