‘Svetlana, you are a Great Enchantress. They’re only born every few centuries. Potentially, you’re more powerful than Olga … probably. But your value to the Light Ones – and I don’t mean just our Watch, but Light Ones in general – is that you could become the mother of the messiah.’
‘After Olga rewrote my Book of Destiny,’ Svetlana said.
‘No. Not after that. It’s not possible to rewrite the destiny of an Other as easily as the destiny of a human being. It was predetermined from the very beginning. We only corrected a few details. Minor ones. That don’t affect you or the future … the prospective child.’
‘What details?’ The anger could suddenly be heard in Svetlana’s voice, the anger she’d restrained for so long. And now it was Anton who wanted to shout out as her fingers dug into the palm of his hand.
‘Only the date.’ Gesar had no intention of giving way to pressure from Svetlana. ‘Nothing but the date. Two thousand years after the birth of Christ is the peak of human belief in the coming of the messiah.’
‘Thank you very much,’ said Svetlana in a voice trembling with fury. ‘So you decided when I would have him and who his father would be?’
‘In the first place, why “him?”’ Gesar asked.
Anton had been on the point of putting in a few words, mostly to clarify what Svetlana had said about the father, but he choked on this swift rejoinder. Svetlana’s hand went limp too.
‘For some the father and mother decide, for some it’s the drunken obstetrician, for others it’s an extra glass of vodka,’ Gesar said in a melancholy voice. There was no need for him to say ‘in the second place’. ‘Svetlana, my child! It’s dangerous to play with such powers, with such predetermination! Even I’m not trying to do that. It is predetermined that you can give birth to a daughter who will become the greatest figure in the war between the Light and the Dark. Her word will change the entire world, her word will make sinners repent, at a glance from her the greatest magicians of the Dark will go down on their knees.’
‘It’s only a probability,’ Svetlana whispered.
‘Of course. There is no fate – which is both unfortunate and fortunate. But you must believe that an old, weary magician is doing everything he can to make it a reality.’
‘I should have stayed a human being,’ Svetlana whispered. ‘I should have …’
‘Have you looked at any icons recently?’ Gesar asked. ‘Look into Mary’s eyes and think why they’re always so sad.’
The room was very quiet.
‘I’ve already told you more than I have any right to.’ Gesar spread his arms in a guilty shrug and for the first time ever it seemed to Anton that he wasn’t acting at all. ‘But I have told you, I’ve put one foot over the line of what is permissible. It’s up to you to decide. To think who is a piece on a chessboard, and who is a rational individual, capable of seeing past imaginary offences.’
‘Imaginary?’ Svetlana asked bitterly.
‘When they told you that you had to wash your hands after playing in the sandpit or made you tie the ribbon on your plait in a bow – that was interference in your destiny too,’ said Gesar. ‘And I think it was justified.’
‘You’re not my father, Boris Ignatievich,’ said Svetlana.
‘No, of course not. But to me, you’re all my children,’ Gesar sighed. ‘I’ll wait for you in the hall … that is, Alisher and I will wait. Join us if you want to.’
He went out, and the devona followed him like a shadow.
Igor was the first to say anything:
‘What hurts most is that he’s right about some things.’
‘If you’d been told that you have to give birth to a messiah, then I’d talk to you about what’s right or wrong!’ Svetlana replied abruptly.
‘That would be rather, well … difficult for me,’ Igor admitted in an embarrassed voice.
Anton was the first to smile. He looked at Svetlana and said:
‘Listen, I remember how indignant you were about the injustice of destiny – that, generally speaking, Others only have children who are ordinary people.’
‘That was just an abstract indignation,’ said Svetlana, throwing her hands up. ‘Boys, I think someone’s already been smoking in here, so …’
Igor handed her a cigarette without speaking.
‘Why do everything like that, behind our backs?’ Svetlana complained as she lit her cigarette. ‘And what sort of mother would I make … for a messiah? And a female one at that.’
‘Well, messiah is just the appropriate term, that’s all,’ said Igor. ‘Relax.’
‘I’m no virgin,’ Svetlana declared gloomily. ‘And in general, I don’t think of myself as a paragon of virtue.’
‘Don’t draw irrelevant parallels.’
Oddly enough, Igor seemed to have calmed down. For real. He was sharp and focused.
‘Anton, why don’t you say something!’ Svetlana burst out. ‘Doesn’t this concern you at all?’
‘I very much hope that it concerns me directly,’ replied Anton. ‘And I think we ought to go out now and join Gesar. It’s tough on him sitting out there and waiting.’
‘He already knows everything in advance,’ Svetlana said and turned away.
‘No. He doesn’t. If we’re really not pawns, he doesn’t know.’
There was the soft sound of a guitar. Igor was leaning against the wall, playing. He began singing so softly that Svetlana and Anton both had to stop talking.
Igor held the guitar out and gently lowered it into an armchair, the way people put their instrument down when they’re sure they’ll be back soon.
‘Shall we go then?’
Edgar was the first of the Dark Ones to enter the Tribunal’s meeting hall. That was the procedure. He entered through one door just as Anton came in through the door opposite. They bowed their heads to each other in polite greeting. Edgar did not feel any particular resentment towards the Light One and he expected the feeling to be mutual to some extent.
Compared to the small, neglected room in Moscow University, this hall was certainly impressive. This was Europe, after all.
Stone vaulting – heavy and oppressive, but at the same giving a sense of security and calm. A simple metal chandelier, but with about two hundred candles, and Edgar could have sworn the candles had been burning for more than a century already. They said the Berne department of the Inquisition was located in an ultra-modern building, but the Prague department was in a truly ancient one.
Edgar liked the old style better.
The round hall was divided into two parts: one was faced with light marble, the other with dark. There was something at once naïve and exalted in this simple visual representation of the two powers. The little desks for the prosecutors stood at the centre, beside a circular metal grille covering a dark hole in the floor.
A wedge of grey marble reached almost to the very centre of the hall. That was the Inquisitors’ area, and they, of course, were already in their seats. Seven of them. In principle the Inquisition was not regarded as a power equal to the two Watches, but Edgar knew that those seven included two Great Ones – one Dark and one Light. If it wished, the European Office could probably fight Gesar and Zabulon on equal terms.