I didn’t feel any particular pity for him. He was an ordinary bandit who had been used to distract our attention from the rocket attack. He’d known what he was getting into.
Where the arbour had stood there was a small crater, strewn with white scraps of wood. The playing cards were soaring and circling above our heads – a capricious chance had tossed them up into the air instead of incinerating them.
We found Semyon right beside the van. He was inside a transparent glowing sphere that looked as if it had been carved in crystal. The sphere was slowly rolling along and Semyon, with his arms and legs held out, was turning over and over with it. His pose was such a hilarious parody of the picture The Golden Section that I giggled stupidly. Squat and short-legged, Semyon looked nothing like the muscular athlete drawn by Leonardo da Vinci.
‘A very uncomfortable spell,’ Lermont said in relief. ‘But then, it is reliable.’
The crystal sphere cracked all over and disintegrated in a cloud of steam. Semyon, who was upside down at that moment, nimbly swung round and landed on his feet. He stuck a finger in his ear and asked:
‘Do they always do that round here on Saturdays, Mr Lermont? Or is it just in honour of our arrival?’
Lermont took no notice of this simple piece of wit. He inclined his head to one side, as if he were listening to someone’s voice, and frowned. And his frown became deeper and deeper.
Then, with just a couple of gestures, he created the glowing frame of a portal in front of himself, and said:
‘Follow me, gentlemen. I am afraid all this was merely a diversion.’
I didn’t get time to ask what he intended to do about the overturned van, the demolished arbour and the crawling bandit who was already out in the street, where the neighbours could see him. A second portal opened beside the first, and Others began jumping out of it, one after another.
They weren’t simply Light Ones from the Night Watch – they were dressed in police uniforms, with bulletproof vests and helmets, and they were holding their machine pistols at the ready!
Well now, Thomas the Rhymer, aren’t you a fine one for the blather! We have underestimated technology! I can see just how badly you underestimate it …
Lermont stepped into the first portal. I hung back for a moment, waiting for Semyon, but he suddenly stopped, with his stare fixed on a gaunt man with red hair.
‘Kevin! You old fogey!’
‘Simon, you old blockhead!’ the redhead shouted in delight. ‘Where are you going? Hang on!’
They put their arms round each other and started hammering each other on the back with all the enthusiasm of those crazy rabbits in the advert for electric batteries.
‘Later, we’ll catch up on everything later,’ Semyon muttered, freeing himself from Kevin’s embraces. ‘Look, the portal’s getting cold. I brought you some wine from Sebastopol – remember it? Sparkling muscat, here!’
I spat and shook my head. What sort of thing was that to say – ‘later, later …’ In the movies any character who said that to an old friend was irrevocably doomed to die soon.
I could only be glad that we weren’t characters in an action movie.
I stepped in through the frame of the portal.
A dense white glow all around. A feeling of lightness that could only be compared with what cosmonauts experience. Mysterious paths inaccessible to human beings.
What were those others in police uniforms going to do there? Wipe clean the memories of any chance witnesses, remove all traces of the explosion, interrogate the attackers if they survived? The basic day-to-day routine work of the Watches.
But who had dared to do it? Attacking a member of a Watch was already an act of insanity. But to attack the head of a Watch, plus two foreign magicians, was absolutely unheard-of. And to use human beings to do it …
I suddenly realised quite clearly that the Frenchman I had met in the Dungeons had also been a human being. Not a Higher Magician who had concealed his true nature from me. Just an ordinary man. But incredibly cunning and cool, a brilliant actor. Not the same sort of pawn as these bandits who had been sent to their death. Perhaps it was him who had fired the rocket at us?
And then the vampire. Was it really Kostya? Had he really survived after all?
And to top everything off there were the protective amulets on the bandits, which had won them time. Vampires weren’t capable of creating amulets. That was the work of a magician, an enchantress or a witch!
Just who were we up against here? Who was trying to break into the Twilight to get his hands on Merlin’s legacy?
And was he capable of going down to the seventh level?
As always, the portal came to an end suddenly. The white glow contracted into a frame, I stepped through it – and I was immediately grabbed by the shoulder and jerked sharply down to the left, onto the floor behind the cover of an improvised barricade consisting of several overturned tables.
Just in time. A bullet went whistling over my head.
I was in the Dungeons of Scotland. In one of the first rooms.
Lermont was beside me, sheltering behind the barricade, and I had been dragged to the floor by a dark-skinned Other. Judging from the number of spells that he had ‘teed-up’ on his fingers, he was a battle magician.
Another shot rang out. The shooting was coming from the open door leading into the next room.
‘Foma, what’s happened?’ I asked, looking at him in bewilderment. ‘Why are we lying on the floor? We should put up a Shield …’
Lermont didn’t stir a finger, but a barrier appeared at the door, sealing it off. Before I even had time to feel amazed at the Scottish magician’s stupidity and delighted with my own astuteness, there was another shot, and the bullet whistled by over our heads. The barrier hadn’t held it back.
‘I beg your pardon, I was a bit hasty there …’ I muttered. ‘How about going through the Twilight?
‘The same problem as with the rocket,’ Lermont explained. ‘The bullets are enchanted down to the second level.’
‘Let’s go through the third.’
‘There’s a barrier on the third!’ Lermont reminded me. I felt ashamed and said no more.
The dark-skinned magician half-stood and hurled several spells into the corridor. I spotted Opium, Freeze and Bugaboo. The reply was another shot. With that same precise, mechanical rhythm …
‘It’s a machine!’ I said quickly. ‘Lermont, it’s the same kind of machine that fired at me!’
‘So what? It’s protected against minor spells. Do you suggest blazing away with fireballs, starting a fire and bringing the bridge down on top of us?’
No, Thomas the Rhymer wasn’t panicking or falling into despair. He was clearly trying to think of something. And he had to have some kind of plan. Only I didn’t want to hang about.
Semyon stepped out of the portal that was still hanging in midair. He immediately squatted down and scrambled towards the barrier. Yes: sometimes experience is more important than Power …
Somewhere far away, behind the walls and the doors, there was a scream that broke off on a high note.
… And sometimes fury is more important than experience.
I slipped into the Twilight.
First level. The decor seemed to have become real. The walls of plasterboard and plastic were now stone and there were dried stalks of some kind rustling under my feet. In the Twilight the interior of the building must have been constructed by human fantasy – too many people had passed this way who sincerely believed in the rules of the game and had made themselves believe in dungeons.
Dungeons and dragons.
There was a little dragon with bristling red scales standing in the stone archway and blocking my way. The beast came up to my shoulder: he was supporting himself on his back legs and a long tail that was twisted into a corkscrew. His webbed wings were flickering nervously behind his back. The glowing faceted eyes glared at me, and then the mouth opened and spat out a gobbet of flame.
So
that’s what you look like in the Twilight, Shooter I …
I jumped to one side, tossing a fireball at the little dragon. A very small fireball, so as not to cause any shocks in the real world.
Then I went down to the second level.
The dungeon hadn’t changed. But the dragon here was black and a little bit taller. His eyes were bigger, rounder and darker, and he had acquired pointed ears that stuck up. The scales had changed into either coarse fur or chitin spines that were pressed tight against his body. The jaws were extended forwards. The wings had been transformed into small, trembling legs.
The mouth opened wide and a bundle of blue sparks flew out in my direction.
I dodged and took a few more steps. And then, forgetting once again about the barrier, I stepped down onto the third level of the Twilight.
At first it felt as if I had run into a wall – a flexible, springy, but impenetrable wall. But that sensation only lasted for a second.
An instant later I found myself on the third level.
And I realised immediately that this was connected with that scream of a dying human being.
Someone had opened the barrier again. Opened it with someone’s living blood.
But there wasn’t any little dragon here.
I ran along the corridor without bothering to destroy the robot shooter. Lermont could handle that himself. The machine wasn’t going anywhere. It was more important for me to catch the killer. Whoever he might be – vampire, magician, sorcerer. A stranger or a former friend …
This was clearly the central section of the Dungeons. The focus of the Power, the centre of the vortex, the keyhole. The River of Blood – only here it looked like a ditch filled with bubbling black liquid as thick as pitch. A gleaming black table. And lying on it – a motionless body in a bloodstained white robe.
It looked as if this time the person who had lost his life was one of the hired human personnel who worked for the Edinburgh Night Watch. One of the pathologists who did jobs for Lermont.
Could Lermont really have left the Dungeons with no reliable guards? Without anyone to ambush raiders? Had he abandoned the people who trusted him to the whim of fate?
A single glance at the real world told me everything.
He had left guards. And had set up an ambush.
But he had underestimated the strength of his enemy.
I counted six bodies in the room. Three of the dead were raiders – in semi-military uniforms that didn’t belong to anyone’s army, with automatic weapons – and the magazines of the guns glittered with the spells applied to the bullets. One of the dead was a first-level Light Magician, almost torn in half by bursts of machine-gun fire at point-blank range. The magician’s unexpended Power was slowly oozing out of him in a cloudy white glow. The other two who had been shot were human – employees of the Night Watch. The protective amulets that had failed to save them sparkled brightly on their chests. They too had died with guns in their hands – they were still clutching pistols.
How many attackers had there been? And how many had gone on past the third level?
Before I had time to complete the thought, a grey shadow came flitting down through the Twilight from the first level to join me on the third. And Bruce appeared in front of me.
The Master of Vampires looked in pretty poor shape. His chest had been ripped to shreds by bullets. He was breathing heavily, and his fangs glittered in his mouth.
‘Aha!’ I exclaimed with such obvious delight that Bruce understood me straight away.
‘Stop, Light One!’ he howled. ‘I’m on your side! I came at Lermont’s request!’
‘And who shot you?’
‘The robot in the corridor!’
I screwed up my eyes, tracing the ‘vampire trail’. Yes, the traces of the undead feet passed through the corridor, from the entrance to the Dungeons. He wasn’t responsible for the bloodbath.
So this was who Lermont was counting on to defeat the automated gunman. It’s hard to kill someone who’s already dead, even with charmed bullets.
‘Who is he?’ I didn’t specify who I meant, but Bruce understood.
‘I don’t know! Not one of us! A stranger! He had about twenty people with him, but they’re all dead. And Lermont’s guards are dead!’
‘Let’s go after them,’ I ordered.
Bruce hesitated. He glanced at the body oozing blood – unlike all the others, this man had died very recently, and his body existed on all levels of the Twilight at once. Death is very strong magic …
‘Don’t even think about it,’ I warned him.
‘He doesn’t need it any more,’ Bruce muttered. ‘He doesn’t need it, but who knows who I still have to fight?’
It was disgusting, and it was also true. But to hand a dead employee over to a vampire to feed on …
‘If you drink the blood, the barrier will appear again,’ I said, finally finding an argument in my favour. ‘Let’s go. You can hold out.’
Bruce pulled a face, but he didn’t object. He hung his head low, as if he was about to butt against some barrier, and went to the fourth level.
I slipped down after him.
Bruce was standing there, holding his chest. He was shaking and there was naked fear in his eyes. There was no one there apart from Bruce. Nobody and nothing – the dungeons had disappeared. Just sand, grey and coloured at the same time, just black boulders scattered about here and there … And a pink and white sky with no sun.
‘Anton – I can’t go any deeper.’
‘Have you been on the fifth level?’
‘No!’
‘Neither have I. Let’s go!’
‘I can’t!’ the vampire howled. ‘Damn it, can’t you see that I’m dying!’
‘You’ve been dead for a long time!’
Bruce shook his head so furiously that it seemed as if he wanted to screw it off his neck.
If I’d had even the slightest suspicion that he was faking, I would have forced him to go down. Or finished him off for ever.
But going to the fourth level had clearly exhausted his final reserves of strength.
‘Go and get Lermont!’ I ordered him.
Clearly relieved, Bruce went dashing back the way he had come. The way a diver who is choking for breath hurtles upwards out of the fatal depths.
And I started looking for my shadow on the sand.
It had to be there. I had to cast a shadow. I was going to find it.
Otherwise something terrible was going to happen.
For instance – Merlin would rise from the dead. And a Mirror Magician would come to the assistance of the Edinburgh Night Watch, which had already suffered heavy losses. And he would maintain the equilibrium come what may.
The conjuror Egor.
And that would be his blinding moment of glory – before he self-destructed, dissolved into the Twilight and was cast into emptiness by the remorseless will of the primordial Powers.
We had used plenty of people before, surely?
I growled, taking a step forward. I shouldn’t be looking for this shadow on the sand. This shadow was inside me.
I was lashed by an icy wind – and I fell through to the fifth level of the Twilight.
And landed face down in green grass.
There was a cold, fitful wind blowing. The sunlight filtered through the purple clouds, as heavy as snow clouds, that were drifting across the sky. The rolling plain, covered with tall, prickly grass, extended all the way to the horizon. Somewhere in the distance there was thunder rumbling and lightning flashing – flashing the wrong way, from the earth up into the sky, up into those purple clouds.
I stood up and swallowed hard – my ears were blocked. The usual oppressive sensation of the Twilight, the creeping weariness, the desire to get back out into the real world as quickly as possible, had disappeared. The fifth layer turned out to be energetically balanced. When my eyes had adjusted and I looked more closely, it was obvious that the colours around me were not entirely alive aft
er all. The grass was green, but pale. The clouds were more dove-grey than purple. Even the flashes of lightning were strangely subdued: they didn’t sear the retinas of my eyes.
But even so … It looked as if it was possible to live here.
I looked around me. And I saw the Guard in the flattened grass.
It was a golem – a creature made of clay and brought to life by magic. A rare sort of thing: nobody has made them for a long, long time. A medieval robot that they sometimes tried to put to work, but more often created to guard things.
Only the classic golem looked like a clay man and he was brought to life by means of Runes inserted in a special opening. (When it came to this the magicians’ sense of humour usually plumbed the depths.)
But this golem was a snake. Something like a clay anaconda ten metres long, as thick as the torso of a grown man, and with two rapaciously grinning heads – one at each end of its body. Its skin was reddish-grey, like a badly fired brick. The golem’s eyes were open – and it was the eyes that frightened me most of all. They were absolutely human.
But then, why shouldn’t they be, if the golem had been made by Merlin?
Exactly halfway along the snake’s trunk there was a slim section with a small hollow in it, about the size of an open hand. And lying in that hollow was a square grey stone, covered with half-effaced Celtic writing.
Yes, a strange golem. The Rune hadn’t brought it to life, it had killed it.
Or rather, it had rendered it motionless – if the baleful glint in its eyes was anything to go by.
I looked round again. There was no one there apart from me and the motionless golem. The grave-robber had already gone deeper.
Right, then!
I summoned the battle spells up out of my memory, all the most powerful things that I had learned and had sufficient Power for, and teed them up for rapid use. I had to be ready to go into battle at any moment. Provided, of course, that I managed to get any deeper …
‘Wait, Anton!’
Three figures materialised out of the air: Lermont, Semyon, and a black man I didn’t know. Lermont had literally dragged Semyon and the black man after him, holding them by the arms. Oh, he was powerful, all right …
The Last Watch: Page 13
