‘What about the millennium?’ Anton almost shouted. ‘You understand? Magicians might intend to do one thing, but human dreams and fears shape reality in their own way. So the figures who appear will possess all the required qualities. Let’s go!’
‘Where?’
‘To get some vodka. In the restaurant.’
Anton sighed and glanced at the bottle. Yes, it really was empty.
‘Why don’t we just call and order some?’
‘Oh no, I feel like a walk.’
Anton stood up and put the amulet in his pocket. He nodded.
‘Okay let’s go.’
There was no one at the lifts, but they had to wait for a long time. Igor leaned against the wall and declaimed:
‘Look, this is how Zabulon can do it. Fáfnir’s Talon is taken from the vault.’
‘How?’
‘What does it matter how? If they’ve stolen it once, they’ll manage it somehow. Then they carry out the magical operation, plus staging all the myths of the Apocalypse. The locusts, the star Wormwood, the four horses …’
‘I can just see Zabulon leading four horses by the reins …’
‘He doesn’t need any horses!’ Igor said with a frown. ‘You know as well as I do what the magic of appearances can do. For instance, let’s take four people, or better still – four Dark Others. One from Asia – he can be the red horse; one black – he can be the black horse; the third a European – he can be the white horse; and one, let’s say, Scandinavian – the pale horse. We put them on wooden toy horses …’
The door of the lift opened and Anton froze.
Staring out in fright at the Light Ones from within the mirror-lined box were the Regin Brothers. The adopted children of the sect: the African, the Chinese and the Ukrainian. Of course, where else would they be but in this hotel? They’d come for the Inquisition Tribunal too … Anton thought in a slow, leisurely way that the fourth fighter commando had been a Scandinavian.
It was a good thing he wasn’t around any longer.
Igor seemed to have had the same thought. He muttered:
‘Three of them.’
In the deathly silence the doors of the lift began to close. But Yukha Mustaioki suddenly stepped forward and stuck his foot between them, just where the sensor was. The doors reluctantly parted again.
‘I’d like to thank the Night Watch of Moscow,’ he said unexpectedly. He was obviously agitated, but trying to maintain his dignity. ‘It was very humane.’
‘What was?’ asked Anton.
‘To spare Pasi Ollikainen. We … we appreciate the fact that he’s still alive.’
‘Where is he?’ exclaimed Anton.
‘Downstairs … in the bar,’ said Yukha, gaping in surprise at the two Light Magicians.
‘Four horses,’ Igor said in a hollow voice. ‘Four horses! Four horses!’
Mustaioki staggered back rapidly and exchanged puzzled glances with his comrades.
The Light Magicians were left alone.
‘It all fits!’ said Igor, turning to Anton. ‘You see? Everything!’
‘Hang on …’
Anton concentrated, remembering the movements. He raised his right hand, made a pass in front of Igor’s face, then pulled his hand sharply downwards and back up again, curving his fingers and cupping his hand.
‘Damn you,’ Igor groaned in a choking voice and raced back to his room. Anton followed him slowly. He looked at Igor’s hunched-over back through the open door of the toilet and reached out to him through the Twilight. Igor began groaning.
The sobering-up spell isn’t very complicated, but it’s not pleasant for the person it’s cast on.
Two minutes later Igor came out of the bathroom. With his hair wet, his eyes sunk into his head, looking as pale as death.
‘A pale horse,’ Anton muttered. ‘Okay … Now you do it to me.’
Igor eagerly made the passes, and then Anton leaned down over the toilet bowl. A few minutes later, after he’d washed his face and drunk some foul-tasting water from the tap (the thirst had hit him immediately), he walked back into the room. Igor was already clearing away the remains of their drinking session. He looked at Anton and said mockingly:
‘A black horse.’
Anton went over to the fridge, took out several bottles of mineral water, pulled the top off one with his fingers and collapsed into a chair. Igor took a second bottle from him. They drank water for a while in blissful silence. Then Igor admitted guiltily:
‘Yes … we got plastered.’
‘Toy horses,’ said Anton. He smashed his fist down on the table and swore. ‘It’s embarrassing, all that nonsense we came up with.’
‘It all seemed very logical somehow,’ Igor said in a humbled voice. ‘Those bloody Brothers … so the fourth one’s alive too.’
‘He must be,’ Anton said with a shrug. ‘All I knew was that Gesar went after him in the Twilight and caught up with him.’
‘Well, of course … why would he want to kill a suspect? He handed him over to the Inquisition. Probably right there in the Twilight. Anton, maybe we were right after all?’
‘Are you still a bit tipsy?’ Anton asked.
‘No, I’m entirely sober now. Damn, I can’t even get drunk properly! Yes, it’s all nonsense. Zabulon wouldn’t try to drag some ancient magician back out of the Twilight. What good would that do him? And as for staging the end of the world, creating an Antichrist …’
‘And anyway, Fáfnir wouldn’t do,’ Anton said. ‘He’s not up to it. Wouldn’t even come close.’
‘So everything we came up with is nonsense?’
Anton looked at the sheet of paper, with its grease spots from the salami and wet rings from their glasses. At what point had they lost the plot? He thought they’d been very careful.
‘I’m afraid the bit about Svetlana isn’t nonsense. But as for all the rest … Why did we get so excited over the number eighty-eight? What’s so mystical about that?’
‘It’s kind of smooth and rounded, it reads the same both ways.’ Igor waved his hand through the air and burst into laughter. ‘Yes, you’re right. It was all drunken nonsense.’
Anton picked up a marker that had fallen on the floor and crossed out the circle with ‘Regin Brothers’ written inside it. He said:
‘They’re not in the game. It looks like they completed their mission by charging the Mirror with power. This is what we should be interested in, Igor.’
Igor looked at the circle with his own name in it. He sighed.
‘I’d be glad to believe in my own special mission. To think I’d done something to really upset Zabulon and the Day Watch. But …’
He spread his hands helplessly.
‘Igor, you’re the key,’ said Anton. ‘Do you understand? If we can understand why Zabulon is trying to get rid of you in order to fight Svetlana, then we’ll win. If we can’t, then the game’s his.’
‘There’s Gesar too. And from what I hear, he’s coming this morning.’
‘We’d better try to manage without him,’ said Anton, sensing the note of irritation in his own voice. ‘His decisions are too … too global.’
Edgar poured himself some flat champagne left over from the day before, took a swallow, grimaced and thought wryly: ‘Only aristocrats and degenerates drink champagne in the morning. And you, my dear fellow, don’t look much like an aristocrat.’
The old Watchman’s habit of thinking all the time, in any situation, had not abandoned Edgar even during his nocturnal amusements. Last night Edgar had continued to wonder what the leaders of the Moscow Watches were planning for this Christmas … but that hadn’t prevented him from enjoying what he himself was doing.