‘What always amazes me about shape-shifters,’ said Svetlana, ‘is how obsessed they are with secrecy. Not only does she hide behind a mirage, she has a fence too.’
‘Tiger Cub’s not a shape-shifter!’ Yulia objected. ‘She’s a transformer magician.’
‘That’s the same thing,’ Sveta said gently.
Yulia looked at Semyon, clearly expecting him to back her up.
‘Essentially Sveta’s right. Highly specialised combat magicians are like any other shape-shifters. But with a plus sign instead of a minus. If Tiger Cub had been in a slightly different mood when she first entered the Twilight, she’d have turned into a Dark shape-shifter. There are very few people whose path is completely determined in advance. There’s usually a struggle during the preparation for initiation.’
‘And how was it with me?’ asked Yulia.
‘I’ve told you before,’ Semyon growled. ‘It was pretty easy.’
‘A mild remoralisation of your teachers and parents,’ Ilya said with a laugh as he stopped the car in front of the gates. ‘And the little girl was immediately filled with love and kindness for the whole world.’
‘Ilya!’ Semyon said sharply. He was Yulia’s mentor, a rather lazy mentor who almost never interfered in the young sorceress’s development, but he obviously didn’t appreciate Ilya’s unnecessary wisecracks.
Yulia was a talented girl, and the Watch had high hopes for her. But not so high that she had to be driven through the tortuous labyrinth of moral logic at the same rate as Svetlana, a future Great Sorceress.
Sveta and I must have had the same thought at the same time – we looked at each other. And after we looked, we turned our eyes away.
We could feel a pressure on us, forcing us apart. I’d be a third-grade magician for ever. Any moment now Sveta would outgrow me and in a short time – a very short time, because the Watch’s management thought it was necessary – she would become a sorceress beyond classification.
And then all we’d have left would be friendly handshakes when we met and an exchange of cards on birthdays and Christmas.
‘Are they asleep in there, or what?’ Ilya asked indignantly His mind wasn’t distracted by our problems. He stuck his head out the window, and the car immediately filled with up with hot air, though at least it was clean. He waved his hand, looking into the camera at the gate, and sounded his horn.
The gates started opening slowly.
‘That’s better,’ the magician snorted as he drove through.
It was a large plot of land, thickly planted with trees. The striking thing was how they’d managed to build the house without damaging the huge pines and firs. Apart from a small flowerbed beside a little fountain that wasn’t working, there were no other signs of cultivation. There were already five cars on the concrete drive in front of the house. I recognised the old Niva that Danila drove out of stubborn patriotism, and Olga’s sports car – how had she managed to drive over the dirt road in that? Standing between them was the battered station wagon belonging to Tolik and two other cars I’d seen at the office, but I didn’t know whose they were.
‘They didn’t bother to wait for us,’ Ilya said crossly. ‘They’re already partying, while the best people in the Watch are still bouncing along the country roads.’
He switched off the engine and Yulia immediately screeched in delight:
‘Tiger Cub!’
She scrambled right over me, opened the door and jumped out of the car.
Semyon swore and followed her, moving incredibly fast. Just in time.
I don’t know where those dogs had been hiding. In any case, they were still camouflaged until the moment Yulia got out of the car. But as soon as her feet touched the ground, the light-brown shadows closed in on her from all sides.
Yulia shrieked. She was more than powerful enough to deal with a pack of wolves, never mind five or six dogs, but she’d never actually been in a genuine fight, and she lost her head. To be quite honest, even I hadn’t been expecting an attack – not here. And especially not this kind. Dogs never attack Others. They’re afraid of Dark Ones. They like Light Ones. You have to train an animal really long and hard in order to suppress its natural fear of a walking source of magic.
Svetlana, Ilya and I scrambled out of the car. But Semyon beat us all to it. He grabbed hold of Yulia with one hand and made a pass in the air with the other. I thought he would use fright magic, or withdraw into the Twilight, or reduce the dogs to dust on the spot. A reflex response usually relies on the simplest spells.
But Semyon used the temporal freeze. He caught two of the dogs in the air: their bodies were left hanging there, enveloped in a blue glow, with their narrow, snarling muzzles reaching out. Saliva dripped from their fangs like gleaming blue hail.
The three dogs who’d been frozen on the ground weren’t quite so impressive.
Tiger Cub came running over to us. Her face was white, her eyes wide. She looked at Yulia for a moment, who was still whimpering, but she was getting quieter.
‘Everyone okay?’ Tiger Cub asked eventually.
‘Fortunately,’ mumbled Ilya, lowering his wand. ‘What kind of animals are you keeping here?’
‘They wouldn’t have done anything,’ Tiger Cub said ruefully.
‘Oh yeah?’ Semyon took Yulia out from under his arm and set her down on the ground. He pensively ran one finger over the bared fang of a dog hanging in mid-air. The film of the time freeze was springy and elastic under his hand.
‘I swear!’ said Tiger Cub, pressing her hand to her heart. ‘Guys, Sveta, Yulia, I’m sorry. I didn’t have a chance to stop them. The dogs are trained to knock strangers down and restrain them.’
‘Even Others?’
‘Yes.’
‘Even Light Ones?’ There was a note of uncertain respect in Semyon’s voice.
Tiger Cub dropped her eyes and nodded.
Yulia went over, moved up close to her, and said more or less calmly:
‘I wasn’t frightened. Just taken by surprise, that’s all.’
‘It’s a good thing I was slow to react too,’ Ilya commented, putting away his wand. ‘Roast dog’s too exotic a dish for me. But your dogs know me, Tiger Cub!’
‘They wouldn’t have touched you.’
The tension slowly eased. Of course, nothing too serious would have happened, we know how to heal each other, but it would have been the end of the picnic.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tiger Cub repeated. She looked at us all imploringly.
‘But listen, why do you need all this?’ asked Sveta, with a glance at the dogs. ‘Can you explain that to me? Your powers are strong enough to beat off a platoon of Green Berets, what do you need Rottweilers for?’
‘They’re not Rottweilers, they’re Staffordshire bull terriers.’
‘What difference does that make?’
‘They caught a burglar once. I’m only here two days a week, I can’t go back and forth to town all the time.’
The explanation wasn’t all that convincing. A simple frightening spell would have kept any ordinary people from coming anywhere near the place. But no one got a chance to say it – Tiger Cub got in first:
‘It’s just the way I am, okay?’
‘How long are the dogs going to stay hanging there like that?’ asked Yulia. ‘I want to make friends with them. Otherwise I’ll be left with a latent psychological complex that’s bound to affect my personality and my sexual preferences.’
Semyon snorted. Yulia’s comment had finally defused the tension – but it was anybody’s guess how spontaneous or calculated it had been.