‘Hell’s bells,’ Shagron hissed angrily. ‘We could get stuck in this.’
‘Let’s open a portal,’ I said with a shrug.
Shagron gave me a strange look.
‘Vitaly! We’re on our way to a session of the Tribunal under the patronage of the Inquisition! Your portal would collapse two kilometres away from where we’re going!’
‘Ah, yes,’ I said lightly ‘That’s right. I forgot.’
Actually, I could easily have guessed that for myself. Magical interventions and any use of magic were forbidden while the Tribunal was at work. The alter ego inside me helpfully informed me that there been violations in the past, but only during times of violent upheaval that was the direct cause of the violations themselves.
But then, this was a time of change too. The end of the millennium. A turning point. I remembered how terrified people had been in the summer, as they waited for the eclipse, how badly the earthquake in Turkey had frightened them. But everything had turned out okay, we’d survived.
Only, of course, in surviving we’d become slightly different. All of us, Others and people, especially people.
‘Shi-it!’ Shagron yelled, jolting me out of my reverie.
I didn’t even have time to glance through the windscreen. There was a deafening crash and in the same instant I was thrown forward and my ribs were squeezed together painfully as the safety belt bit into my chest; with a repulsive, shrill squeak, a fat, round cushion sprouted from the driving wheel, and Shagron’s face and chest slid up round it until he crashed into where the windscreen met the roof. There was an unpleasant jangling sound outside the car and a fine shower of crumbs of glass shot up in the air, falling silently on the snow, but drumming an irregular tattoo against the bodywork of the cars around us.
Then, to add insult to injury, we were rammed from behind. Someone had run straight into our boot.
For two or three seconds it felt like the launch of a space shuttle, and then I was no longer twisted and tossed about. The blissful moment of dynamic equilibrium.
Shagron slid back down off the steering wheel into his seat, leaving a trail of blood on the balloon. I thought his arm was broken too. The idiot hadn’t fastened his belt. How long would he be regenerating now?
All around us there were car horns blaring.
With mixed feelings, I unclasped my belt, pushed the door open and got out onto the road covered in compressed snow and sprinkled with broken glass.
The front of our car had been rammed at a slight angle by a red Niva. The boot had been crumpled so badly it looked as if someone had taken a bite out of it: the front end of a well-cared-for Japanese ‘jeep’ was stuck into it. Well it had been well-cared-for. In fact, the jeep hadn’t suffered all that badly: one headlight on the impact bar was broken, and the bar itself was slightly bent. He’d obviously had enough time to brake.
‘You stupid or something, you prick?’ someone from the jeep yelled as he charged at me: he seemed to consist of dark glasses, a shaved head, a barrel-like torso squeezed into something crimson and black, and stylish shoes that were size forty-something plus.
His eyes were as pale as the aura of a young infant … or of that kid Egor in the metro.
Couldn’t he see the Niva that had rammed us?
And then this human barrel’s crimson outfit suddenly flared up in a dull-bluish flame, and he squealed like a hog under the knife.
I recognised a transatlantic spell popularly known as ‘spider flame’. And then, before I could recover my wits from the attack by the man-in-crimson, someone took me by the collar and swung me round.
If there was one person I hadn’t expected to see, it was him. The Light Magician and music-lover, Anton Gorodetsky.
‘Who are you?’ he whispered furiously. ‘Who are you, may the Dark take you? Only don’t lie!’
His eyes were even paler than the eyes of the individual from the jeep, who was now furiously dancing a strange kind of jig.
Something seemed to click inside my head. And my lips whispered the words of their own accord:
‘The mirror of the world …’
‘The mirror …’ the Light One echoed. ‘Damn you! Damn everything!’
I felt like replying that curses were the province of the Dark Ones, but I restrained myself. And I was right. Anton’s aura was a blaze of crimson and purple. I was certainly more powerful than Gorodetsky … but just then he seemed to be supported by some incomprehensible force that was neither Light nor Dark, but no less powerful. And if there had been a duel, I couldn’t have told which way it would go.
Anton let go of my jacket collar, swung round and wandered off blindly, squeezing his way between the cars, ignoring the horns and the curses hurled at him through the wound-down windows. Traffic police sirens began howling somewhere quite close. The traffic jam had completely blocked Ostozhenka Street, except for a narrow channel in the oncoming stream of traffic, through which a few lucky drivers were squeezing their cars one by one, swearing and beeping their horns.
I looked at my watch. I had fifteen – no, now it was fourteen minutes left to get to the university. And I knew for sure that I couldn’t use any transport magic.
But first things first – how was Shagron?
I walked round the Niva, its door hanging open, and approached the BMW from the driver’s side. Shagron was unconscious, but in the first instant of danger his immediate reflex response had been to set up a protective membrane and slip into the Twilight. And now he was regenerating, like a pupa, and the greedy Twilight could do nothing to him.
He would survive. He’d recover, and fairly quickly too. Most likely in the ambulance, if it could get here through the traffic jam. Shagron was too powerful a magician to be seriously hurt by something as minor as a traffic accident.
All right then, till we meet again, Shagron. I don’t think the Inquisition will charge you with anything. It was force majeure, after all.
And just then I saw my salvation. A young guy deftly manoeuvring his way along the very edge of the road on a weedy little orange moped. There was someone who didn’t have to worry about traffic jams …
Of course, it was hardly the season for that kind of transport. But even so.
I slipped into the Twilight.
In the Twilight the moped looked rather like the little hump-backed horse in the fairytale. A small animal with handlebars for horns and one big headlight-eye.
‘Get off,’ I told the young guy.
He obediently dismounted and stood there.
Leaping over the bonnet of a beige Opel, I took hold of the handlebars. The moped’s engine was idling and snorting devotedly.
Okay then, on we go. The young guy was standing there frozen like a dummy on the pavement, clutching the dollars I’d stuffed in his hand. I twisted the accelerator grip towards me and just avoided scraping the polished side of the nearest car as I set off, squeezing my way through the traffic towards the edge of the jam. Towards the Garden Ring Road. It was fairly simple to get the hang of the tiny Honda, even though it was meant for the warm tarmac of Japan and not the icy roads of Moscow. And I managed to manoeuvre between the cars pretty smartly too. But the moped couldn’t give me any real speed – thirty kilometres an hour at most. I realised I still wouldn’t get there in time. Even if I abandoned the labouring Honda and dived into the nearest metro station – it was still a long way from the University metro to the spire of the central building of the university itself. Of course, I could take over any driver’s mind on the way, but what guarantee was there that we’d escape the morning traffic jams? I remembered vaguely that around the university the main roads were immensely wide, but I still wasn’t certain. If I rode the Honda further, I would be mobile almost all the way to my destination. But on the other hand, I only had a very general idea of the route. I was no Muscovite, unfortunately Maybe I should just rely on my inner helper, who had never let me down so far. I could, of course. But what if this was the very moment he chose to let me down? The most critical moment of all? That was the way things usually happened.