WAS THIS SPOT STILL MARKED ON THE MAPS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR? Maybe it was a battlefield well known to historians and celebrated in all the books, a place where two armies had once clashed in a bloody, murderous conflict¡ªand the juggernaut of the blitzkrieg had shuddered to a halt and been rolled back?
Or maybe it was one of our obscure, unknown fields of infamy, where the crack German units had trampled into the mud the untrained and poorly armed volunteers thrown against them? A place only remembered in the archives of the Ministry of Defense?
I didn't know my history very well, but it was probably the latter. This place was too deserted, too bleak and dead. An abandoned patch of dirt that not even the collective farms had coveted.
In our country they don't like to erect monuments on battlefields where we were defeated.
Maybe that's because our victories weren't all that slick either?
I stood on the bank of the little river and looked at the expanse of dead ground. It wasn't all that big: a strip of land between the forest and the river, about a half mile long, 6 miles wide. And not so very many people had been killed here. More likely hundreds than thousands.
But then, how could you really say that wasn't many?
The field was absolutely deserted. I couldn't see anybody with my normal vision, and a glance through the Twilight hadn't revealed anything either.
Then I picked up my shadow¡ªthe setting sun was shining from behind me¡ªand entered the Twilight.
At the first level the ground was overgrown with blue moss, but not very thickly. The usual scraggy clumps, clutching greedily at the faint echoes of human emotion.
But there was one thing that put me on my guard. The moss seemed to run in rings around one particular spot. I knew the moss could move, creeping along slowly but stubbornly moving toward its food.
And in this place there was only one possible reason for it to form into circles.
I set off through the thick gray haze. The human world was visible through it all around me, like a faded, poorly exposed black and white photograph. It was cold and cheerless¡ªI was losing energy with every second I spent here. But there was a positive side to that. Not even Arina could stay in the Twilight constantly. She could glance into the first level from the ordinary world, but even that required Power.
And right now she was in no position to be reckless and wasteful with what she had stored up over the years.
At the first level the terrain is almost unchanged. Here too I had earth under my feet, ruts and humps. But I discovered something else. I could see, or rather, sense the old weapons in the ground. Not every one, of course, only those that had actually killed. Half-decayed submachine guns, slightly better preserved rifles... There were more rifles.
About a hundred yards from Arina I hunkered down and started running in a squat. The spell Svetlana had put on me was still working, or I would soon have been out of breath. About fifty meters away, I lay down and started to crawl. The ground was damp, and I was instantly coated with mud. At least I knew that when I left the Twilight the mud would simply drop off. The blue moss began stirring, uncertain what to do¡ªmove closer to
me or crawl away from any possible danger. That was bad. Arina might realize what was agitating the moss.
And then, very close to me, only about five meters away, a head with long black hair began rising slowly into the air from the densely overgrown ground. The trench was so narrow, it looked as if Arina was emerging straight from the earth.
I froze.
But Arina wasn't looking in my direction. She rose up very slowly until she was standing erect¡ªshe seemed to be sitting on the bottom of the old trench. Then she raised her hand theatrically to shade her eyes, as if she were saluting. I realized she was looking through the Twilight.
Fortunately, not at me.
My recruits were getting close.
How beautifully they ran! Even from the Twilight their movement looked fast¡ªthey just hung in the air too long when they leapt. The wise old wolf was leading the way, with the cubs behind him.
A human being would have been frightened.
Arina laughed. She put her hands on her hips, I swear like a young peasant woman from Ukraine watching her good-for-nothing husband approach with his drinking companions. She spoke, and low, rumbling sounds began drifting through the air. She was in no hurry to enter the Twilight.
I moved back into the human world.
"... stupid loudmouths!" I heard. "Wasn't what you got last time enough for you?"
The wolves slowed to a walk and stopped about twenty yards away.
The leader stepped forward and barked, "Witch!... Talk... We have to talk."
"Talk away, gray wolf," Arina said amiably.
Igor couldn't distract the witch for long, I realized that. Any moment now she would plunge into the Twilight and take a proper look around her.
But where was Nadiushka?
"Give us... the little girl..." the wolf half-shouted, half-howled. "The Light One... is on the rampage... give us the girl... or it will... be worse for you..."
"Do you really think you can threaten me?" Arina asked in surprise. "Have you completely lost your wits. Who would give a child to wolves? Clear out while you still can!"
Strange¡ªshe seemed to be dragging things out.
"Is the child... alive?" the wolf asked in a slightly clearer voice.
"Nadenka, are you alive?" Arina asked, looking down somewhere at the ground. She stooped down, lifted my little girl out of the trench and set her on the surface.
I caught my breath. Nadenka didn't look frightened or tired at all. She seemed to be enjoying what was happening¡ªa lot more than her walks with her grandma.
But she was close to the witch, too close!
"Wolfie!" said Nadya, looking at the werewolf. She reached her little hand out to him and laughed happily.
The werewolf started wagging his tail.
It only lasted a few seconds, then Igor tensed up, his fur bristled, and once again we were watching a wild beast, not a tame dog. But even so, that moment had happened¡ªa werewolf had fawned on a little two-year-old girl, an uninitiated Other!
"Wolfie," Arina agreed. "Nadenka, look to see who else is here. Close your eyes and look. The way I taught you."
Nadiushka happily put her hands over her eyes. And began turning in my direction.
The witch was initiating her!
If Nadiushka really had learned to look through the Twilight...
My daughter turned toward me. She smiled.
"Daddy..."
The next moment I realized two things.
First¡ªArina knew perfectly well that I was nearby! The witch had been toying with me.
Second¡ªNadiushka wasn't looking through the Twilight! She had parted her fingers and looked through them.
I immediately withdrew into the Twilight. I was in such a nervous state that I plunged straight through to the second level¡ªinto that desolate cotton-wool silence and those pale-gray shadows.
Arina's aura was blazing orange and turquoise. Nadiushka's head was surrounded by a glowing, pure white halo¡ªlike a beacon beaming light into space: a potential Other! A Light One! With immense Power!
And the werewolves, who had started to run now, were bundles of red and crimson, fury and spite, hunger and fear...
"Svetlana," I shouted, leaping up. Into the gray space, into the soft silence. "Come!"
I marked the spot for the portal very simply¡ªby flinging pure Power into the Twilight, like stretching out a string of fire, a landing corridor. From me to Arina.
And at the same time I started to run, so that Nadiushka wouldn't shield Arina from me, scattering from my fingers spells that I had learned a long time ago.
Freeze¡ªa localized halt in time.
Opium¡ªsleep.
Triple Blade¡ªthe crudest and simplest of all the combat spells.
Thanatos¡ªdeath.
I had no hope any of them would work. These things could only be effective when you were facing a very weak opponent. An Other with superior powers would parry the blows, whether he was in the Twilight or the human world.
All I wanted to do was distract the witch and slow her down. Overload her defenses, which had to be based on amulets and talismans. All these fireworks were only calculated to identify a breach in those defenses.
My Freeze seemed to disappear into nowhere.
The Sleep spell ricocheted off and shot up into the sky. I hoped there weren't any airplanes overhead.
The Triple Blade struck home and the glittering blades sliced into the witch. But to her the Triple Blade was a mere scratch.
Worst of all was the summons to death. I had good reason to be fond of this piece of magic, so dangerously close to the spells of the Dark Ones. But even in the ordinary world, Arina still had time to hold out her hand, and the little bundle of gray mist that paralyzed the will and stopped the heart landed obediently on her open palm.
Arina looked at me through the Twilight, smiling. Her hand was hovering over Nadiushka's head, and the gray bundle was slowly oozing between her fingers.
I leapt toward them¡ªif I couldn't turn the blow aside, at least I could take it myself...
But Arina was already on the second level of the Twilight now, moving fast. She looked blindingly beautiful. A movement of her fingers crumpled my spell, and she casually tossed it at the wolves.
"Don't be in such a hurry..." the witch chanted in a singsong voice. In the silence of the second level her words were like thunder, and my legs betrayed me. I slumped down onto my knees only one step away from Arina and Nadiushka.
"Don't touch her!" I shouted.
"Didn't I ask you..." the witch said in a quiet voice. "Why not just help me get away... what's one old witch more or less to you?"
"I don't trust you!"
Arina nodded wearily and bitterly. "You're right not to trust me... And now what am I to do, sorcerer?"
Her hand slid across her skirt and tore a sprig of dried berries off her belt. She tossed them into the blazing white lights, black smoke billowed up¡ªand the marker for the portal disappeared.
Svetlana was too late!
"You leave me no choice, Light One..." Arina said with a grim expression. "Do you understand? I'll have to kill you, and then your daughter's no use to me anymore. What were you thinking of, with your second-level?"
At that instant a glittering white sword-blade struck Arina from behind, protruded for an instant from her chest, then drew back in obedience to some invisible hand.
"A-a-a-agh..." the witch groaned, slumping forward.
Then the gray gloom parted to let Svetlana through.
The witch seemed to have recovered from the blow already. She retreated, jigging backward and keeping her eyes fixed on Svetlana. The slit that had been burned through her dress was smoking, but she wasn't bleeding. And the look on her face seemed more like admiration than hatred.
"My, my... Great One..." Arina cackled. "Did I miscalculate then?"
Svetlana didn't answer. I could never have imagined such intense hatred in her face¡ªany man would have died if he just looked in her eyes. She was clutching a white sword in her right hand, and the fingers of her left were working the air¡ªas if she were assembling an invisible Rubik's cube.
The Twilight turned a little darker. A rainbow sphere sprang up around Nadiushka. Svetlana's next pass was for me¡ªmy body recovered the power of movement. I jumped up and started moving behind the witch. I was only a bit player in this war.
"Which level did you come from, you fidget?" the witch asked almost amiably. "Could it really be the fourth? I was keeping an eye on the third..."
I sensed that the answer was very, very important to her.
"From the fifth," Svetlana replied.
"That's really bad..." the witch muttered. "That's a mother's fury for you..." she squinted at me out of the corner of her eye, then fixed her gaze on Svetlana again. "Don't you go gossiping about what you saw down there..."
"You don't need to tell me," Svetlana said with a nod.
The witch nodded and then began working her hands very rapidly, tearing out her hair. I didn't know if Svetlana was expecting this, but I decided it would be a good idea to jump back. It was a good thing I did¡ªa black blizzard sprang up and began swirling around the witch, as if every hair had been transformed into a slim, sharp blade of black steel. Arina began advancing on Svetlana, who tossed her white sword at the witch¡ªthe blades sliced it to pieces and extinguished it, but then a transparent shield appeared, floating in the air in front of Svetlana.
I thought it must be Luzhin's Shield.
The blades shattered against the shield almost instantly, without a sound.
"Oh, Lordy..." Arina wailed. It was strange, but I didn't have the slightest doubt that she was sincere. And yet at the same time she was playing to her audience.
In other words¡ªto me.
"Surrender, you wretch," said Svetlana. "While I'll still let you¡ªsurrender!"
"But how about... how about this?" Arina declared. "Eh?"
This time she didn't reach for her amulets. She just started crooning her clumsy doggerel:
Dust to dust collect and bind, Arms and legs with power filling, Be my trusty servants willing. Or you'll be scattered to the wind.
I'd been expecting anything at all from Arina. Except this. Genuine necromancers are very rare, even among the Dark Ones.
The dead were slowly rising out of the earth!
The German soldiers of the Second World War were going back into battle!
Four skeletons dressed in tatters¡ªall their flesh had gone a long time ago and there was earth packed between their bones¡ª stood in a ring around Arina. Another came staggering blindly toward me, clumsily waving its fingerless hands¡ªthe bones had rotted clean away. The ludicrous zombie shed pieces of itself at every step. Three equally wretched monsters started toward Svetlana. One of them was even holding a black submachine gun that had lost its magazine.
"Think you can raise the Red Army?" Arina taunted Svetlana.
She shouldn't have done that¡ªSvetlana seemed to turn to stone. And then she hissed through her teeth:
"My grandfather fought in the war. Was this supposed to frighten me?..."
I didn't understand what it was she did. I would have used the Gray Prayer, but she used something from the higher levels of magic beyond my reach. The zombies crumbled into dust.
Svetlana and Arina were left staring at each other in silence.
The joking was over.
The enchantress and the witch clashed in a straightforward dual of Power.
I took advantage of the brief pause to gather my own strength. If Svetlana faltered, then I would strike...
But it was Arina who faltered.
First of all, her dress was torn off. That might possibly have had a demoralizing effect¡ªon a man.
Then the witch began aging rapidly. Her luxuriant black hair shrank to a pitiful gray tuft. Her breasts drooped and stretched, her arms and legs withered. She was like Gingema from the children's story or Gagula from the story for adults.
And there were no special effects here.
"Your name!" Svetlana shouted.
Arina didn't hesitate for long.
Her toothless mouth quivered and she mumbled, "Arina... I am in your power, sorceress..."
It was only then that Svetlana relaxed¡ªand suddenly seemed to wilt. I walked around the subdued Arina and took hold of my wife's arm.
"It's all right... I'm okay," Svetlana said with a smile. "We did it."
The old crone¡ªit was impossible to think of her as Arina¡ª gazed at us sadly.
"Will you allow her to assume her former shape?" I asked.