Even so, thought Edgar, I’m on the right road. I’m flying to Prague. The capital of European necromancy. And in time for the Christmas just before the arrival of the millennium. At a time when countless prophets and soothsayers are frightening the world with all sorts of horrors, up to and including the end of the world itself.
Yes! That was it! Maybe Zabulon was planning to resurrect one of the disembodied magicians of the past? Prague, at a time like this! Dark upon Dark! As always, Zabulon had skilfully and unobtrusively hidden what was lying in open view.
Edgar breathed out heavily, crumpled the napkin and stuffed it in his pocket.
And so, in the city of necromancers, at a time of incredible energy instability, Zabulon could easily try to pluck someone out of non-existence. But who?
Think, Edgar. The answer should be lying on the surface too.
All right then, what have we got? Prague, the Tribunal, the case of the duel between Teplov and Donnikova, Gorodetsky and Edgar seconded to the trial. Possibly Alita too. Who else? The Regin Brothers.
Stop. That’s it!
The Regin Brothers. The servants of Fáfnir. ‘I’ll find a use for them, Edgar,’ Zabulon had said. ‘I have some plans that involve them.’
Fáfnir.
Trying to maintain an appearance of calm, Edgar folded away his tray table and settled more comfortably into his seat.
Fáfnir. There was someone who would be very very useful indeed to the Dark Ones. The mighty Fáfnir, the Great Magician, the Dragon of the Twilight.
The faint echo of his power, absorbed by the Mirror Rogoza, had allowed him to drain an enchantress like Svetlana with ease.
‘And if Zabulon really is going to attempt to resurrect Fáfnir, he couldn’t have chosen a better place and time during the last hundred years – or over the hundred years to come,’ Edgar thought as his eyes wandered idly across the panelling of the Boeing. ‘That’s for certain, he couldn’t have.’
The stewardess glanced at him, and Edgar fastened his seat belt. The plane was making its approach for landing.
Hello, Prague.
Edgar’s ears felt like they were stuffed with cotton-wool, but that didn’t stop him thinking.
So it was a resurrection. That was something the Dark Ones hadn’t tried for at least fifty years – not since Stalin’s time. There hadn’t been any opportunity, because the level of energy turbulence hadn’t been high enough at any time since 1933 and 1947.
Why hadn’t Zabulon told Edgar? Was it too soon? But then what was he to make of Yury’s cautious warning? And then, what had this to do with what had happened at the Artek camp that summer? Because it had to be connected somehow, it had to be. A pawn had been sacrificed, and now maybe a more weighty piece’s turn had come. A knight or a bishop – which of those would Edgar be? The two rooks, of course, were Yury and Nikolai, the queen was Zabulon himself, and the king, defenceless but crucial – that was the cause of the Dark.
And so one of the rooks had hinted to Edgar that there was a chance the Crimean Gambit might be used again, this time with a rook. Somehow Edgar didn’t feel like being a knight. Let that vicious old hag Anna Tikhonovna play the horse, that would be just about right for her.
The plane shuddered as the wheels touched down on the runway. Once, twice – and their flight became a rapidly decelerating dash over the concrete.
But surely Zabulon hadn’t set up another exchange of pieces while he furtively pushed forward a few pawns, the Regin Brothers, in the hope that another black queen would appear on the board or, at the very least, a bishop?
It was insulting to be a sacrificial piece.
‘And what if it’s a test at the same time?’ Edgar wondered. ‘A trial of endurance? Alisa let herself be squandered – Zabulon doesn’t need pieces like that in his game. But if Edgar can manage to survive, and without disrupting the boss’s plans … Yes, that’s the result we need!’
But how could it be achieved?
The other half of the exchange was Anton Gorodetsky Zabulon’s favourite. There was no doubt about that. The boss of the Day Watch couldn’t carry on using him for ever, and he understood that very well. It wasn’t even really true that he could use him. Zabulon was always ready to put a good face on a poor result and make it look as if he’d tricked the Light Magician.
The passengers began moving towards the exit and the concertina bridge that was so unfamiliar to the inhabitants of the former USSR. Edgar took his raincoat out and put it on, left his magazine in the pocket on the seat in front, picked up his briefcase and followed the rest.
The feeling of being in Europe rather than Russia was instantaneous and strangely comprehensive. It was hard to grasp exactly what triggered it – the expressions on people’s faces, their clothes, the cleanliness of the airport, the way it was laid out? Thousands of minor details. The announcements in Czech and English without a Ryazan accent. The far greater number of smiles. The fact that there weren’t any of those private cabs that he detested on the square in front of the terminal building.
And there was a line of attractive yellow Opels at the taxi rank.
His taxi driver gabbled away equally freely in Russian and English and, of course, in his native Czech. Where to? A hotel. The Hilton, I suppose. Well, well. Russians don’t often go straight to the Hilton. And the ones who do look different: lots of gold, bigwigs with bodyguards, in expensive limousines … I’m not Russian, I’m Estonian. Yes, that’s not the same thing any longer … It wasn’t the same thing before either. Well, even a Czech was almost the same as a Russian before … That’s debatable. Yes, maybe it is.
The driver’s chatter was diverting and Edgar decided to take a break from all his thinking. He wouldn’t get any real work done the day he arrived in any case. He could actually relax – with a glass or two of beer, naturally. Who in his right mind wouldn’t take a mug of real Czech beer, provided his stomach was in good shape (or even if it wasn’t)?
Only a dead man.
Just as in any Hilton, a free room could be found without any great problem, even when Prague was crowded with tourists just before Christmas. But just as in any country that had not yet cast off the shackles of its recent socialism, it would cost crazy money for a non-Other. Edgar was an Other, and so he paid up straight away without even a frown, although they were obviously expecting one. He was Russian, after all, and he didn’t look like a nouveau riche bandit. A hundred years earlier Edgar wouldn’t have been able to resist sticking his Argentinian passport under the receptionist’s nose. But he was a hundred years more mature now, and he made do with his Russian passport.
The person at the registration desk – the one that not everybody went to – was a Dark One. A very rare type, too – a beskud. He glanced at Edgar, licked his thin lips and opened his slit pupils wide. And then, at last, he smiled – his teeth were small and sharp, all the same triangular shape.
‘Greetings! Here for the Tribunal.’
‘Uhuh.’
‘Here you go.’
He threw a small bundle of blue fire at Edgar – it was his temporary registration. The fire passed easily through Edgar’s clothes and landed on his chest in the form of an oval seal that glowed in the Twilight.
‘Thanks.’
‘You give them a roasting at the Tribunal,’ the beskud told him. ‘A real roasting. It’s our turn now.’
‘I’ll try,’ Edgar promised with a sigh.
He went up to his room, just to have a wash and leave his briefcase there.