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beside her, playfully stoking her thigh . . .
I can look into the future too, but not nearly as well as Svetlana. It's not my specialty. It would have taken me a
lot longer to do it, and my forecast would have been unreliable . . .
Svetlana opened her eyes and looked at me.
"Well?" I asked impatiently.
"Don't stop, keep stroking," she said with a smile. "You're in the clear. I don't see any danger at all."
"The witch is evidently weary of her evildoing," I chuckled. "All right, then. I'll issue her a verbal warning for not
being registered."
"It's her library that bothers me," Svetlana confessed. "Why would she hide away in the middle of nowhere, with
books like that?"
"Maybe she just doesn't like the city," I suggested. "She needs the forest, fresh air ..."
"Then why just outside Moscow? She should go away to Siberia, where the environment's less polluted and the
rarest herbs grow. Or to the Far East."
"She's local," I laughed. "A patriot of her own little homeland."
"Something's not right," Svetlana said peevishly. "I still can't get over that business with Gesar . . . and then
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suddenly this witch."
"What's so strange about the Gesar business?" I asked with a shrug. "He wanted to make his son into a Light
One. And I for one don't blame him. Imagine how guilty he must feel about his son ... he thought the child had
died ..."
Svetlana smiled ironically. "At this moment Nadiushka's sitting on a stool, dangling her legs and saying she
wants the skin taken off her milk."
"Well, and .. ?" I asked, puzzled.
"I can sense where she is and what's happening to her," Svetlana explained. "Because she's my daughter. And
I'm not as powerful as Gesar or Olga ..."
"They thought the boy had died ..." I muttered.
"That could never happen." Svetlana said firmly. "Gesar's not a block of stone-he's got feelings. He would have
sensed that the boy was alive. Do you understand? And Olga certainly would. He's her flesh and blood . .. she
couldn't have believed that her child had died. And if they knew he was alive, the rest was straightforward enough.
Gesar has the power, and he had it fifty years ago, to turn the entire country upside down in order to find his
son."
"You mean they deliberately didn't look for him?" I asked, but Svetlana didn't answer. "Or . . ."
"Or," Svetlana agreed. "Or the boy really was an ordinary human being. In that case everything fits. In that case
they could have believed he was dead and found him entirely by chance."
"Fuaran," I said. "Maybe this witch is somehow connected with what happened at the Assol complex?"
Svetlana shrugged and sighed. "Anton, I want desperately to go into the forest with you, find this kind botanist
lady, and subject her to intensive interrogation ..."
"But you're not going to," I said.
"No, I'm not. I swore I wouldn't get involved in Night Watch operations."
I understood everything. I shared the resentment Svetlana felt for Gesar. And in any case I preferred not to take
Svetlana with me ... it wasn't her job to go trailing through the forest looking for witches.
But how much simpler and easier it would have been to work together.
I sighed and stood up.
"Right then, I won't put it off any longer. The heat's eased, so I'll take a stroll in the forest."
"It's almost evening," Svetlana remarked.
"I won't be far away. The kids said the hut was really close."
Svetlana nodded. "All right. Just hang on a minute and I'll make you some sandwiches. And fill a thermos with
compote."
While I was waiting for Svetlana, I took a cautious peep into the barn. I almost flipped. Not only had Uncle Kolya
taken half the diesel engine apart and laid the pieces out on the floor, he had another local alcoholic, Andryukha
or Seryoga, rummaging furiously in the engine beside him. And they were so absorbed in their confrontation with
German technology that the "little bottle" softhearted Svetlana had brought for them was still standing there
unopened. Kolya was crooning an old folk ditty to himself:
My very best friend and I Worked on a diesel engine . . .
I tiptoed away from the shed. To hell with the car anyway . . .
Svetlana outfitted me as if I weren't just going for a walk along the edge of the forest, but about to be parachuted
into the middle of the taiga.
Sandwiches in a plastic bag, a thermos of compote, a sturdy penknife, matches, a box of salt, two apples, and a
little flashlight.
And she also checked that my cell phone was charged. Bearing in mind the forest's minuscule dimensions, that
wasn't a bad idea. In an emergency I could always climb a tree-then the signal would be bound to reach the
network.
But it was my idea to take the disk player. And as I strolled toward the forest, I listened to Hibernation of the
Beasts:
The medieval city sleeps, the worn-out granite trembles, The night maintains its silence out of fear of death. The
medieval city sleeps, the dull and washed-out colors Speak to you like some distant echo-but don't trust it. In
libraries books sleep, storehouses are bloated with barrels, And geniuses lose their minds on the night watch,
And darkness averages, levels everything: bridges, canals and houses, Capitols and prisons, all in a single
pattern . . .
I wasn't really expecting to meet the witch that evening. I really ought to have gone in the morning, and with a
team. But I wanted really badly to locate the suspect myself.
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And to take a look at that book, Fuaran.
I stood at the edge of the forest for a while, looking at the world through the Twilight. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Not the slightest trace of magic. Except that in the distance, above our house, there was a bright white glow. A
first-level enchantress can be seen from a long way off...
Okay, let's go in deeper.
I raised my shadow from the ground and stepped into the Twilight.
The forest was transformed into an eddying haze, a phantom. Only the very largest of the trees had twins in the
Twilight world.
Now, where had the kids come out of the forest?
I found their tracks fairly quickly. A couple of days later the faint line of footprints would already have faded away,
but now it was still visible. Children leave clear tracks-they have a lot of power in them. Only pregnant women
leave tracks that are clearer.
There were no tracks from the "female botanist." Well, they could have faded already, but it was more likely this
witch had been careful not to leave any tracks for a long time.
But she hadn't erased the children's tracks. Why not? An oversight? That traditional Russian sloppiness? Or was
it deliberate?
Well, I wasn't going to guess.
I recorded the children's footprints in my memory and left the Twilight. I couldn't see the tracks anymore, but I
could sense which way they were leading. Now I could set off.
But first I disguised myself thoroughly. Of course, the disguise was no match for the shell that Gesar had
encased me in. But a magician less powerful than me would take me for a human being. Maybe we were
overestimating the witch's abilities?
I spent the first half hour vigilantly surveying the area, inspecting every suspicious bush through the Twilight,
sometimes pronouncing simple search spells. In general working by the book, like a disciplined Other conducting
a search.
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