Witches…
‘I’m glad to see you, Anton,’ Arina said. ‘You’re looking good. Only a bit tired, somehow…’
I looked round. The witch was standing behind me and the cocoon on the ceiling had disappeared. Her face was calm and peaceful. She was wearing a smart business suit with trousers (I vaguely recalled that she had arrived here in different clothes).
‘How’s the Minoan Sphere?’ I asked. ‘I kept thinking about it, wondering if it would get you out of here.’
Arina ran her hand over her clothes and a little ball glinted in her hand.
‘That’s absurd,’ she said. ‘Very little Power flows in here. It would have taken another twenty or thirty years for the Sphere to charge.’
‘Is that why you went into hibernation?’
‘Yes. But, when you entered, a lot of Power burst in with you. The Sphere is charged now.’
‘Don’t be in any hurry to use it,’ I said. ‘Maybe we’ll leave here some other way.’
‘Well now,’ Arina said with a smile. ‘Tell me about it!’
‘We’ve got problems.’
Arina nodded. ‘So what’s new?’ she asked.
‘What do you know about the Sixth Watch and the Two-in-One?’ I asked.
Arina’s face suddenly went tense and her eyes glinted ferociously. ‘The Sixth Watch is dead! The Two-in-One no longer exists!’
‘The Watch is dead all right,’ I said. ‘But the Two-in-One has just tried to kill my daughter twice.’
Arina stood there, shifting from one foot to the other and staring daggers at me. Then she sighed and sank down onto the floor. ‘Sit down, Gorodetsky, there’s no point in standing. Let’s talk.’
‘Haven’t you done enough sitting?’ I asked in amazement. ‘Don’t you want to get out of here?’
‘Yes, I do. But I don’t know if I ought to,’ she replied. ‘Sit down, will you? An hour or two won’t make any difference, and I’ve spent years in here…’
I nodded and sat down facing her.
‘What’s happened? Tell me everything from the beginning,’ Arina demanded.
‘First a vampiress appeared. Gesar believes she’s one that I once laid to rest, who has been resurrected. She bit a series of people, and the initials of their names spelt out a message: “Anton Gorodetsky, be ready, he awaits, it’s your decision.”’
‘What nonsense,’ Arina muttered. ‘Like some Agatha Christie detective story. That’s not the Two-in-One. It’s not his style.’
‘I didn’t say it was. Whoever this vampiress may be, she’s turned out to be on our side. My daughter was attacked at school. Two Others who were guarding her, a Light One and Dark One, killed the third guard and an Inquisitor. It looked like they were possessed.’
‘How did they kill him? Fire and ice?’
I nodded in relief. Arina really did know about the Two-in-One!
‘Are they together?’ Arina asked.
‘They try to hold hands all the time,’ I said cautiously.
She nodded.
‘Svetlana and I couldn’t beat them,’ I went on. ‘But the vampiress showed up and drove them away. It was just like an ordinary fight, only very fast…’
‘Go on,’ Arina said.
‘A prophecy has been proclaimed. All the Prophets and all the Seers announced the same thing at the same time: “It was not spilt in vain, nor burnt to no purpose. The first time has come. The Two shall arise in the flesh and open the doors. Three victims, the fourth time. Five days are left to the Others. Six days are left to people. To those who stand in the way, nothing will be left. The Sixth Watch is dead, the Fifth Power has disappeared. The Fourth has not come in time. The Third Power does not believe, the Second Power is afraid, the First Power is exhausted…” After that we started searching for the Sixth Watch and its members.’
Arina nodded and closed her eyes.
‘Do you understand what it’s about?’ I asked.
‘How long ago was the prophecy proclaimed?’
‘Four days ago.’
‘So this is the last day,’ said Arina. ‘Yes… I understand everything. What’s happening in the world right now, Anton? What’s happening to the people?’
‘Everything’s the same as usual,’ I said. ‘War in the Middle East. War in Ukraine.’
‘That’s trivial,’ said Arina, shaking her head. ‘But then, the balance doesn’t have to be disrupted so obviously. The world can appear normal until the very last day.’
‘What balance?’
‘Between good and evil, of course.’
‘I wouldn’t say the Day Watch has got completely out of hand…’
‘Good and evil have got nothing to do with the Watches!’ she snapped. ‘You of all people should understand that. The Night Watch maintains a stance of altruism – or, more precisely, active altruism – by Others towards people. The Day Watch regards the welfare of people and their requirements as insignificant by comparison with the requirements of Others.’
‘But that still comes down to good and evil in the end. On the day-to-day level,’ I said.
‘Tell that to the people who die for the exalted ideas of the Night Watch,’ Arina said dismissively. ‘People and Others have rather different ideas about good and evil.’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘so the balance has shifted. I believe you. The world really does seem to have gone insane. But this is human business, even if people decide to start World War Three.’
‘What is the Twilight?’ Arina asked.
‘A certain rational force,’ I said. ‘A super-force.’
Arina carried on looking at me expectantly.
‘Generated by human thoughts, emotions, dreams…’
‘The Twilight doesn’t have a physical body,’ Arina said. ‘It doesn’t even have a mind in the human sense of the word, it’s something quite different. The consciousness of people who are alive now is the pattern of its will. The memory of people who have died is the pattern of the Twilight’s memory. If the world tends towards evil, the Twilight becomes harsher. If the world tends towards good, the Twilight becomes kinder. But the Twilight doesn’t like to change: homeostasis is fundamental to every living thing…’
‘You mean to say there’s more evil in the world now than, let’s say, during World War Two?’ I asked, shaking my head. ‘I don’t believe it!’
‘It’s not a matter of there being more. It’s a matter of the balance. World wars are a monstrous atrocity, a boundless ocean of pain and fear. But they also involve great hopes, self-sacrifice, acts of mercy! A war doesn’t alter the balance, it merely raises the stakes. But if the Two-in-One has come, it means the balance has shifted. It means there is evil everywhere. Quiet, calm, indifferent evil. In men and women, children and adults. When the balance changes, the Twilight starts feeling uncomfortable, it begins to resist the change. And it manifests an entity of some kind in the human world. In the simplest cases, it’s Mirror Magicians, who restore the balance at a local level. If it’s something more serious, then it’s Absolute Others, who can give the world a new truth and change people’s nature. If prophecies capable of disrupting the balance are proclaimed, the Tiger comes. But if the balance is disrupted fundamentally, then the Two-in-One appears.’
‘Who is he?’ I asked. ‘I had meetings with vampires, I know he’s an ancient vampire god…’
‘Ah, he’s not the vampires’ god,’ Arina said, frowning. ‘Those ancient toothy bloodsuckers are too ambitious… The Two-in-One is the great balancer, the eraser, the purger. If human civilisation goes off the rails, he comes and destroys it. He reduces life to the most basic, banal truths. Eating, drinking, killing, reproducing. That’s what the Two-in-One does: he simplifies.’