No, I won’t die, Svetlana. Or rather, I will, but not right now. I am a Mirror. In trying to destroy me, you grow weaker, and I only grow stronger. I can already see what lies ahead of you – thirty or fifty years spent slowly restoring the power you’ve squandered so insanely. You’ll have to collect together what you’ve lost, piecemeal. For three, or maybe more, decades – long enough for the Dark, enough time to prepare for another attempt to disrupt the equilibrium by whichever side it happens to be. You have long years ahead of you to find happiness with Anton, or not to find it.
But in any case, throughout those years you will be equals.
Maybe you have lost your powers, but I’m giving you a chance … a chance that I don’t have.
The music stopped. The magical blow had been too much for the player – in general, technology reacts badly to powerful magic – and it shattered into shards of plastic. My cap went flying towards the door, and my jacket split in several places at once.
I was barely able to keep my feet, but I managed it.
‘A Mirror!’ Gesar exclaimed, his voice filled with an entire gamut of indescribable feelings and intonations. ‘The third time, and the third time for the Dark Ones!’
‘Well, we don’t set up global social experiments, my dear colleague!’ said Zabulon, making no effort to conceal his triumph.
Today he was one of the victors. And the Light Ones had suffered a defeat.
But just how many times had this already happened – or the exact opposite?
Svetlana, drained and shattered, had been crushed by grief only a moment earlier, but now she cried out, unable to conceal her joy:
‘Anton!’
He was standing by the door. Anton Gorodetsky Light Magician. Alive and unharmed. He had followed me up the stairs.
‘Thank you, Anton!’ Zabulon said to him in a tone of immense satisfaction. ‘You carried out my assignment perfectly. I hope you’re pleased with your reward?’
‘Assignment?’ Gesar exclaimed. ‘Anton?’
Zabulon laughed quietly as he stood up. The head of the Night Watch gave his triumphant enemy a swift glance and then looked back at Anton.
But Anton walked up to Svetlana, who was so happy she couldn’t see anything else, put his arms round her, whispered, ‘Just a moment’ and moved towards me.
For a few seconds we looked each other in the eye. Enemy to enemy. Other and non-Other. I don’t even know how to put it so that it sounds right. There are always at least two truths, after all.
‘Take this,’ said Anton.
And he handed me his minidisc player to replace the broken one.
‘Thank you,’ I whispered. I took the remains of mine off my belt, took out my disc without speaking and stuck it into the player he had given me, as if that was the most important thing of all now. And I thought: ‘Now the Inquisitor will get up and say that I can go’.
I was right, of course. Magicians of that level don’t make mistakes, even if they are non-Others.
‘In the name of the Treaty,’ Maxim declared as dryly and dispassionately as ever, ‘since it has been demonstrated beyond any doubt that Vitaly Rogoza is not an Other in the ordinary meaning of that word, the actions of the Night Watch relative to Vitaly Rogoza are not a matter for investigation by the Inquisition. Likewise, Vitaly Rogoza does not come under the terms of the Treaty. He is free to pursue his own destiny.’
As if I’d ever really had one! Me and the other Mirrors who had come before me, and the young boy Egor, whose time had not yet come.
‘The Inquisition has concluded its consideration of the cases before it,’ said Maxim, glancing round the magicians present. ‘Do the Watches have any comments or suggestions?’
I pressed ‘Play’ and walked away In my tattered jacket I looked like a cross between a street bum and a bizarre scarecrow. But who cared?
The minidisc player I’d been given was working in random mode. And yet again it picked just what was wanted. Kipelov and Mavrin. ‘Troubled Times’. All I had to do now was sing along.
Troubled times for the one who no longer has the right to call himself Vitaly Rogoza. For the one who rose, only to fall. For the fallen angel … the Dark angel. Troubled times for you and for the Others. The end of the millennium. The time when it’s impossible to tell the Light from the Dark, or the Dark from the Light. A time of deaths and battles. Troubled times.
I don’t know whose child I am either. I only know one thing: the troubled times usually punish those who have not committed any sins for the sins of others. Or if they have committed any sins, they’re not the ones they’re punished for. But I wasn’t allowed any choice. I wasn’t given destiny.
I am alive for now. And I’m singing. I’m singing, even though I know that Kipelov and Mavrin’s next song contains the following lines:
I’m only a spirit. I’m only a Mirror. A Mirror that has reflected everything it was made to reflect. But I can’t help asking and believing. I am leaving now, only to vanish, but I ask, I hope, I want to believe – take me with you! Take me!