‘No,’ said Rustam, shaking his head. ‘I cannot. Erase the difference between people and Others? Why, that is stupid. In that case you ought to erase all the inequality in the world. Between rich and poor, strong and weak, men and women. It would be simpler to kill everyone.’ He laughed and I was horrified to realise yet again that the Great Magician was not entirely sane.
But I replied politely:
‘You are right, Great Rustam. It is a stupid goal. One Other has already tried to attain it … with the help of the book Fuaran. Only by another means, by transforming all people into Others.’
‘A fine jest,’ Rustam replied without any particular interest. ‘But I agree, these are two roads that lead to the same goal. No, young magician! It is perhaps more complicated than that.’ He screwed up his eyes. ‘I think the Inquisitor found something in the archives. An answer to the question of what the Crown of All Things really is.’
‘And?’ I asked.
‘And it proved to be an answer that suited everybody. Dark Ones and Light Ones and the Inquisition that maintains equilibrium. It is remarkable that such a thing has been found in the world. It even makes me feel slightly curious. But I have told you everything that I know. Merlin’s spell annihilates the differences between the levels of the Twilight.’
‘You live in the Twilight yourself,’ I observed. ‘You could suggest something! After all, if the Twilight disappears you will die!’
‘Or I shall become an ordinary man and live out the remainder of a human life,’ Rustam said without any particular emotion.
‘Everyone who has withdrawn into the Twilight will die!’ I exclaimed. Alisher looked at me in amazement. Of course … he didn’t know that the path followed by Others ended on the seventh level of the Twilight …
‘People are mortal. How are we better than them?’
‘At least try to suggest something, Rustam!’ I implored him. ‘You are wiser than I am! What could it be? What could the Inquisitor have found?’
‘Ask him yourself,’ said Rustam, reaching out his hand. His lips moved and a stream of blinding white light flashed past me towards the Toyota.
I could probably have spotted Edgar myself – if only I had been expecting to see him on the plateau. Or perhaps even the most thorough check would have been useless. He had not concealed himself in the Twilight or by using the common spells available to all Others. Edgar was hidden from our eyes by a magical amulet on his head that reminded me of a skullcap. It was only its size that prevented me from calling it a hat of invisibility. I supposed it could be a skullcap of invisibility, since we were in Uzbekistan after all.
I automatically raised a Shield around myself and noticed that Alisher had done the same.
Only Rustan seemed entirely unconcerned about the Inquisitor’s presence. The light he had summoned had taken Edgar by surprise – he was sitting on the hood of the car with his legs dangling, calmly observing us. For a second it looked as if he couldn’t understand what had happened. Then the skullcap on his head started smoking and Edgar flung it to the ground, with a muffled curse. That was when he realised that we could see him.
‘Hi, Edgar,’ I said.
He hadn’t changed a bit since the last time we’d seen each other — in the train, when we were doing battle with Kostya Saushkin. Except that now he wasn’t dressed in his eternal suit and tie, but in a much freer and more comfortable style: grey linen trousers, a thin white cotton sweater and good leather shoes with thick soles … He looked like a svelte, fashionable European – and in the Central Asian wilderness, that made him seem like an amiable coloniser taking a brief respite from the white man’s burden, or an English spy from the time of Kipling and the Great Game that Russia and Britain played in this part of the world.
‘Hi, Anton,’ said Edgar, getting down off the hood. ‘Just look at that … now I’ve interrupted your conversation.’
Strangely enough, he seemed embarrassed. But then, who wouldn’t be embarrassed after calling down tectonic spells on our heads? Who wouldn’t be afraid to look us in the eye?’
‘What have you done, Edgar?’ I asked.
‘It was just the way things worked out,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘Anton, I won’t even try to make excuses! I feel really awkward!’
‘And did you feel awkward in Edinburgh too?’ I asked ‘When you cut the watchmen’s throats? When you hired the thugs?’
‘Very awkward,’ Edgar said, nodding. ‘Especially since we didn’t manage to break through to the seventh level in any case.’
Afandi-Rustam began laughing and slapping his sides. How much of it was Rustam and how much Afandi, I couldn’t tell.
‘He felt awkward!’ Rustam exclaimed. ‘They always feel awkward, but it never means anything.’
Obviously embarrassed by this reaction from Rustam, Edgar waited until the magician had laughed his fill. I took the chance to look the Inquisitor (perhaps I should have said ‘former Inquisitor’) up and down through the Twilight.
Yes, he was hung all over with amulets, like decorations on a New Year’s tree. But there was something else as well as the amulets. Charms. Combinations of the very simplest natural components, which didn’t require great effort to saturate them with magic, which acquired their magical properties from light, almost imperceptible touches of Power. In the same way that saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur, almost harmless in themselves, together become gunpowder, which explodes at the slightest spark.
It was no accident that Edgar was dressed completely in cotton, linen and leather. Natural materials have an affinity for magic. You can’t charm a nylon jacket.
And these charms that transformed his light clothing into magical armour bothered me. Charms are the weapon of enchantresses and witches. Magicians rarely make use of them. There was no way I could imagine Edgar carefully impregnating his own trousers with herbal infusions.
So was this the work of another member of their criminal gang? The Light Healer? Yes, healers knew how to work with charms, I knew that very well from Svetlana.
‘Edgar, you realise that I am obliged to arrest you?’
‘And what if you can’t?’ Edgar asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer. The fingers of his left hand began moving, weaving together a spell. I realised which one it was – and I hesitated for just an instant as I made up my mind whether to warn Rustam or not. Strangely enough, it was in my interest for Edgar to get what he wanted …
‘Rustam, he’s working the Confession!’ I shouted.
After all, this ancient magician with bats in the belfry was a Light One …
Edgar struck instantly with the spell, simultaneously shouting:
‘How can I take the Crown of All Things?’
There you go. I hadn’t needed to use my four bracelets that compelled an honest answer to any question!
We all gazed at Rustam in silence. He was slowly rubbing his chest where the spell had struck him. He raised his head, looked at Edgar with his cold blue eyes and said:
‘With your hands.’
Alisher started laughing. Edgar had been caught out by the ambivalence of his formulation. Even under a powerful spell Rustam had managed to give a perfectly precise and absolutely useless answer.
And then, with a slight movement of his lips, Rustam struck back. And he struck with something entirely unfamiliar to me. No fancy effects, but Edgar was shaken from side to side, and his cheeks swelled up in red botches from slaps delivered by an invisible hand.
‘Never try to put pressure on me again,’ Rustam warned him when the slapping session was over. ‘Do you understand, Inquisitor?’
Before Edgar could decide what to say, if anything, I threw up my hand, feeling absolutely delighted that I hadn’t used my set of bracelets against Rustam, and fired off all four tongue-loosening spells against Edgar. The amulets on the Inquisitor’s body blazed up brightly, but they couldn’t absorb the full force of the blow.
‘Who was the vampire with you in Edinburgh?’ I shouted.
/> Edgar’s face contorted as he struggled painfully to hold back the word that was rising to his tongue. He failed.
‘Saushkin!’ he shouted.
Rustam laughed again and said:
‘Bye-bye!’
Afandi was suddenly himself again. It was as if a rubber doll had been slightly deflated – he lost height, his shoulders narrowed, wrinkles appeared on his face, his eyes dimmed, the hairs of his beard fell out and scattered.
Edgar and I looked at each other with hatred in our eyes.
And then, without wasting any time on gathering Power or intoning spells, Edgar struck at us. A fiery rain poured down from the sky, seething and bubbling on the Shields that Alisher and I had erected. But there was no fire around Afandi, who was still confused and hadn’t yet recovered his wits – evidently one of the protective rings had been activated.
The minute that followed was full of attacks and counterattacks. Alisher wisely left me to conduct the battle, took a step backwards and fed Power to our Shields, only occasionally allowing himself a brief lunge of attacking magic.
Gesar must have involved the finest diviners in the Watch in the preparation of our equipment. After the fire came ice. A blizzard started howling through the air: tiny snowflakes with edges as sharp as razors tested the strength of our Shields and melted impotently as they approached Afandi. Before the storm of ice had even died away, Edgar struck with the Kiss of the Viper and the rocks under our feet were covered with drops of acid. Afandi was protected yet again. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that the old man wasn’t just doing nothing, he was weaving some weak, but very cunning and unusual spell. I didn’t really expect him to be successful, but at least he was busy and not getting under our feet.
The fourth spell that Edgar used was a vacuum. I was already expecting exactly that – and when the air pressure around me started falling rapidly I calmly carried on lashing Edgar alternately with Opium and Thanatos. Behind me Alisher was striking out with fireballs and lumps of super-cooled water from the wands. The combination of fireballs and icy shrapnel exploding into viscous blue drops was remarkably effective – I could see the Inquisitor’s amulets, confused by the contrast, starting to lose their Power.
But there was more to all this than just the amulets. Edgar, a first-level magician was holding out against both of us and still managing to counter-attack! Either he was pumped right up to the hilt with Power, or he had surpassed the first level. I didn’t have the time to make a thorough check on his aura.
The failure of the vacuum seemed to dent Edgar’s fervour. It was such a rare spell that our readiness for it bewildered the Inquisitor. He began to back away slowly, circling round the charred Toyota that was smoking from acid and covered in hoar frost. He got snagged on an icicle that had smashed through the car’s door and almost fell: as he waved his arms about to keep his balance he almost let my Opium through.
‘Edgar, surrender!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t make us kill you!’
Those words stung the Inquisitor to fury. He paused for a second, and then took a strange pendant off his belt – a bundle of small grey feathers tied together with string, like a small twig broom. He tossed it into the air.
The feathers turned into a flock of birds like overgrown sparrows, but with beaks that glittered like bronze. There were twenty or thirty of them – and they came dashing straight for me, manoeuvring like super-modern re-entry vehicles, the pride and joy of the generals in the rocket forces.
The ‘chicken god’ hanging round my neck broke and fell off its chain. And the flock of birds began fluttering about aimlessly in the air. They didn’t try to approach Edgar, but they couldn’t attack me – and they carried on fluttering about like that until Edgar swore and waved his hand to make them disappear.
Afandi too cast his spell and seemed to break through Edgar’s defences. But there was no visible effect on the Dark Magician. He carried on backing away, occasionally counter-attacking. There was a glow on his chest that kept getting brighter and brighter all the time – an amulet hidden under his clothes had been activated and was preparing to respond. For an instant I even thought that Edgar had equipped himself with a suicide spell, Shahid or Gastello, which would take us to the grave along with him.
‘More Power to the Shields!’ I ordered, and Alisher gave it everything he had, powering up the Shields around us and one around Afandi.
But Edgar was clearly not in the mood for a dramatic suicide. He launched one more brief attack and then pressed his hands to his chest, where the amulet was glowing. The blue lines of a portal sprang up around him – the magician took a rapid step forward and disappeared.
‘He’s hopped it,’ Alisher said. He sat down on the rocks and immediately swore and jumped back to his feet, his trousers smoking. The Kiss of the Viper was still working.
I stood there, feeling completely drained. Afandi stood beside me, laughing.
‘What did you throw at him?’ I asked.
‘The next seventy-seven times he lies down with a woman he will suffer shameful failure!’ Afandi explained triumphantly. ‘And no one will be able to remove the spell.’
‘Very witty,’ I said. ‘Very eastern.’
With a few brief spells I cleared away the traces of magic from the ground under our feet. The drops of acid had raised bubbles in the stone, like rising dough.
Saushkin!
So it was Saushkin!
EPILOGUE
GESAR DIDN’T ANSWER straight away. In fact, to be quite honest, it was more than two minutes before he answered.
‘Anton, do you think you could …’
‘No, I couldn’t,’ I said.
The sky above me was gradually growing brighter. The strangely large southern stars were fading. I took another swig of cola out of my bottle and added:
‘Thanks for the amulets. They were all spot on. But now pull us out of here. If one more psychopath comes along …’
‘Anton.’ Gesar’s voice sounded a bit softer now. ‘What happened?’
‘I had a heated conversation with Edgar.’
Gesar paused and asked:
‘Is he still alive?’
‘He is. He left via a portal. But first he spent a long time trying to finish us all off.’
‘Has our friend the Inquisitor completely lost his mind?’
‘Possibly.’
Gesar hummed something into the phone and I suddenly realised the boss was trying to think of the best way to use this information when he talked to Zabulon. Of how he could most humiliate Zabulon with this story about his former colleague.
‘Gesar, we’re very tired.’
‘A helicopter will come to get you,’ Gesar said. ‘Putting up a portal would be very difficult. Wait for a while, I’ll get in touch with Tashkent. Are you … at Rustam’s place?’
‘We’re on the plateau where you used the White Mist against the Dark Ones.’
It’s not often that I manage to embarrass Gesar – I couldn’t afford to let the chance slip.
‘The helicopter will be there soon,’ Gesar said after a pause. ‘Did you talk to Rustam?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did he answer?’
‘Yes. But not all the questions.’
Gesar gave a sigh of relief.
‘Well, at least he told you something … You didn’t have to – er – prevail upon him?’
‘No. I discharged all four bracelets into Edgar.’
‘You did?’ asked Gesar, growing more cheerful with every word I said. ‘And what did you find out?’
‘The name of the vampire who’s working with Edgar.’
‘Well?’ Gesar said after a moment’s pause. ‘Who is it?’
‘Saushkin.’
‘That’s impossible!’ Gesar barked. ‘Absolute nonsense!’
‘Then the spells failed.’
‘My spells couldn’t have failed. But you could have missed,’ Gesar said in a slightly softer voice. ‘Anton, we’ll have to do without … u
nnecessary delicacy. When you get here, I’ll show you something that I didn’t want to show you.’
‘I’m all agog,’ I snorted.
‘I’m talking about the remains of Konstantin Saushkin. We keep them here, at the Watch.’
Now it was my turn to pause. But Gesar said:
‘I really don’t want to distress you once again. Charred bones are not a very pretty sight. Konstantin Saushkin is dead. There can be no doubt about it. Not even Higher Vampires can live without a skull. That’s all. Now relax and wait for the helicopter.’
I cut off the call and looked at Alisher – he was lying close by, munching on a chocolate bar. I said:
‘Gesar told me that we have Saushkin’s remains.’
‘Yes,’ Alisher replied calmly. ‘I’ve seen them. A skull with the glass from the spacesuit melted into it. Your Saushkin’s dead.’
‘Don’t be upset,’ Afandi put in. ‘Sometimes with an effort it’s possible to lie under any spell.’
‘He couldn’t have been lying …’ I whispered, recalling Edgar’s face. ‘No, he couldn’t have …’
I lifted the cellphone up in front of my face, went into the MP3 menu and switched something on at random. When I heard a woman’s voice singing to a quiet guitar, I put the phone down beside me. The tiny speaker strained as hard as it could.
We used to rise with the dawn
And live for a thousand years.
Then someone went and stole
The fire – the flickering light.
And then some of us started praying
And others sharpened their fangs,
But we all drank from the Blue River.
But then time slipped through our fingers,
And by winter the river was shallow.
And those who had always lived here
Blamed those who had come from afar.
Some had daughters growing,
And others had sons,
But we all drank from the same stream …
‘Afandi!’ I called. ‘Do you know that my daughter told me about you? Back in Moscow.’
‘Yes?’ Afandi asked in surprise. ‘Is your daughter an enchantress, then?’