Maxim had been happy to accept the wooden dagger. But for some reason he’d never used it in the game again. He’d kept it at home and tried to forget about it, as if he felt ashamed of the unexpected gift and his own sentimentality. But he’d never forgotten it. Even when he grew up and got married and his own first child was growing up, he’d never forgotten it. The toy weapon always lay in the drawer with the photo albums of the children, the envelopes with locks of hair and all that sentimental nonsense. Until the day Maxim first felt the presence of the Dark in the world.
It was as if the wooden dagger had summoned him. And it had proved to be a genuine weapon, pitiless, merciless, invincible.
But Petka was gone now. They’d grown apart when they were still young: a year is a big age difference for children, but for teenagers it’s a huge gulf And then life had separated them. They’d still smiled at each other whenever they met and shaken hands, had even enjoyed a drink together a few times and reminisced about their childhoods. Then Maxim had got married and moved away and they’d almost completely lost contact. But this winter he’d had news of Petka, purely by chance, from his mother – he phoned her regularly, just like a good son should. ‘Do you remember Petka? You were such good friends when you were children, quite inseparable.’
He’d remembered. And he’d realised immediately where this was leading.
Maxim’s mother told him that he’d fallen to his death from the roof of some high-rise, though God only knew what he’d been doing up there in the middle of the night. Maybe he’d committed suicide, or maybe he’d been drunk – but the doctors had said he was sober. Or maybe he’d been murdered. He had a job in some commercial organisation that paid well, he used to help his parents and drive around in a good car.
‘He was probably high on drugs,’ Maxim had said sternly. So sternly his mother hadn’t even tried to argue. ‘I suppose so, he always was strange.’
His heart hadn’t contracted in sudden pain. But for some reason that evening he’d got drunk and killed a woman he’d been trying to track down for two weeks, a woman whose Dark power forced men to leave the women they loved and go back to their wives, an old witch who forced people together and forced them apart.
Petka was gone. The boy he’d been friends with had already been gone for many years, and now Pyotr Nesterov, the man he’d seen once a year or even less often, had been gone for three months. But Maxim still had the dagger Petka had given him.
There must have been some special reason for it, that awkward childhood friendship of theirs.
Maxim toyed with the wooden dagger, rolling it from one hand to the other. Why was he so alone? Why didn’t he have a friend beside him to lift at least part of the burden from his shoulders? There was so much Dark all around, and so little Light.
For some reason Maxim recalled the last thing Elena had shouted at him as he was leaving: ‘I wish you’d love us, not just take care of us.’
But isn’t that the same thing? thought Maxim, mentally parrying the thrust.
No, it probably wasn’t. But what was a man to do when his love was a battle fought against Evil, rather than for Good?
Against the Dark, not for the Light.
Not for the Light but against the Dark.
‘I’m the guardian,’ Maxim said to himself in a low voice, as if he was too fearful to say it out loud. Only schizos talked to themselves. And he wasn’t a schizo, he was normal. He was better than normal, he could see the ancient Evil creeping and crawling into the world.
But was it creeping in, or had it already made its home here a long, long time ago?
No, this was madness. He mustn’t, he absolutely mustn’t allow himself to doubt. If he lost even a part of his faith, allowed himself to relax or start searching for non-existent allies, then he was finished. The wooden dagger would no longer be a luminous blade driving out the Dark. The next magician would reduce it to ashes with magic fire, a witch would cast a spell on it, a werewolf would tear it to pieces.
The guardian and the judge!
He mustn’t hesitate.
The patch of Dark moving about on the ninth floor suddenly started moving downward. His heart started beating faster: the Dark Magician was coming, to keep his appointment with destiny. Maxim climbed out of the car and glanced rapidly around him. As usual, some secret thing inside him had driven everyone away from the scene and cleared the battlefield.
Was it a battlefield? Or a scaffold?
Guardian and judge?
Or executioner?
What difference did it make?
The familiar power flooded into his body. Holding his hand inside his jacket, Maxim walked towards the building’s entrance, towards the Dark Magician who was coming down in the lift.
Quickly, it had to be done quickly. It still wasn’t quite night yet. Someone might see. And no one would ever believe him, the best he could hope for would be the madhouse.
Call out. Give his name. Take out his weapon.
Misericord. Mercy. He was the guardian and the judge. The warrior against evil. And not an executioner!
This courtyard was a battlefield, not a scaffold.
Maxim stopped outside the entrance to the building. He heard footsteps. The lock clicked.
He felt so wronged, he could have howled in horror and screamed curses at the heavens for his destiny and his gift.
The Dark Magician was a child.
A skinny, dark-haired little boy who looked quite ordinary – except for the quivering halo of Dark that only Maxim could see.
But why? Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Maxim had killed women and men, young and old, but he’d never come across any children who’d sold their souls to the Dark. He’d never even thought about it, maybe because he hadn’t wanted to accept that it was possible, or maybe because he’d been avoiding making any decisions in advance. He might have stayed at home if he’d known his next victim would be only twelve years old.
The boy stood in the doorway, looking at him with a puzzled expression. Just for a moment Maxim thought the kid was going to turn round and dash back in, slamming the heavy, code-locked door behind him. Run, then, run!
The boy took a step forward, holding the door so that it wouldn’t slam too hard. He looked into Maxim’s eyes, frowning slightly, but without any sign of fear. Maxim couldn’t understand this. The boy hadn’t taken him for a chance passer-by, he’d realised the man was waiting for him. And he’d come to meet him. Because he wasn’t afraid? Because he had faith in his Dark power?
‘You’re a Light One, I can see that,’ the boy said quietly but confidently.
‘Yes.’ He had trouble getting the word out, he had to force it out of his throat. Cursing himself for his weakness, Maxim took hold of the boy’s shoulder and said: ‘I am the judge.’
The boy still wasn’t frightened.
‘I saw Anton today.’
Who? Maxim didn’t say anything, but the bewilderment showed in his eyes.
‘Have you come to see me because of him?’
‘No. Because of you.’
‘What for?’
The boy was behaving almost aggressively, as if he’d had a long argument with Maxim, as if Maxim had done something wrong and he ought to admit it.
‘I am the judge,’ Maxim repeated. He felt like turning round and running away. This was all wrong, it wasn’t supposed to happen like this! A child couldn’t be a Dark One, not a child the same age as his own daughter! A Dark Magician should defend himself, attack, run away, but not just stand there with an offended look on his face, as if he was expecting an apology.