‘You mean the young illusionist?’ Lermont asked, with a sigh. ‘I decided to take out an insurance policy. If there’s a serious conflict, then the first to suffer will be our Night Watch. I don’t have that many battle magicians. A Mirror is the best thing that can be used to oppose—’
‘Oppose whom?’ I asked, when Lermont broke off in mid-phrase
The distant forefather of the Russian poet Lermontov gave me a look of annoyance so intense that I felt the full force of the same hot temper that brought a premature end to the Russian poet’s life.
‘Merlin! Now are you satisfied?’
‘You believe that he …’
‘The one thing that Merlin always valued above all others was himself. And he could have given the name of the Crown of All Things to the means for bringing him back from oblivion. It would be his kind of joke.’
‘Nothing of the sort has ever happened,’ said Semyon, shaking his head.
‘No, it hasn’t. But there have never been any other magicians like Merlin. His essence—his soul, if you like—could be slumbering somewhere down there, on the seventh level… until a sufficiently powerful magician can reach it. To put it crudely, until a stupid body arrives to provide Merlin’s black soul with a new receptacle! Would you be glad to see the Great Merlin back in the world? I certainly wouldn’t! And that’s the reason I need a potential Mirror Magician close at hand. Perhaps that might do the trick. He might possibly become a Mirror and destroy Merlin. What don’t you like about that, Gorodetsky?’
‘But you can’t do that!’ I exclaimed with a feeling of anguish that surprised even me. Everything was muddled together in my head – Kostya, whom I had killed and who might still be alive; the Dark Magician Merlin, thirsting for resurrection, the totally unsuspecting Egor … ‘Ever since he was a child we’ve exploited him for our operations! And now are we going to throw him into hell, use the lad to protect ourselves against Merlin? He’s nothing but a boy!’
‘All right!’ said Lermont, also raising his voice. ‘You’ve advanced a convincing argument! Now let me lay out in front of you the personal files of all the potential Mirror Magicians. Will you point the finger? Choose a different candidate? There’s a girl of nine, a boy of fifteen, a young husband and father, a pregnant woman … they never live to old age in an indeterminate state, sooner or later they choose the Light or the Dark! They’re all young, all of them almost children! Will you take the choice on yourself and relieve me of this appalling responsibility?’
‘Yes!’ I shouted, leaping to my feet. ‘Yes, I will! I’ll relieve you. Bring out your files, Mr Foma Lermont!’
‘I’ll bring them this very moment!’ he said, also getting to his feet. ‘You choose, you choose!’
We stood there, glaring angrily at each other, and it was a while before we realised that both of us had tears running down our faces.
CHAPTER 6
I DON’T KNOW if Lermont really would have brought the files or not. And I have even less idea what I would have done if he had. Probably I would have chosen a different candidate for the role of the Mirror Magician.
But we weren’t given a chance to do any of that.
First I noticed Lermontov’s face change. He was looking away from me, in the direction of the road.
Then I heard the roar of an engine and turned round.
A little white van hurtling along the road suddenly turned and broke easily though the symbolic wooden fence surrounding Lermont’s cottage. It braked to a halt with a wild squeal, throwing up earth and gravel from under its wheels.
The rear doors of the van had been removed earlier. Two men jumped out of it and a third, left inside, opened fire from a machine gun mounted on a swivel.
The first to react was Foma. He had put up a shield as soon as the van came flying into his garden. Or maybe he hadn’t put it up? Perhaps it was just a guard spell that had been installed a long time ago in order to deal with this kind of invasion?
The machine gun roared and rattled, the sound resonating in the back of the van and reaching us as if it had been amplified by a huge tin megaphone. The sound was accompanied by a stream of lead. But the bullets didn’t reach their target. They halted gently, hung in the air for a second like some special effect in an action movie, and then fell to the ground.
The two who had jumped out, both masked in black hoods, dropped to the ground and opened fire with sub-machine guns. As yet, no one had got out of the front of the van.
Were they idiots, or what?
Semyon waved his hands a few times. I noticed the harmless Morpheus, which would give the attackers about ten seconds to carry on playing at soldiers, and the instantly acting Opium. But the spells didn’t work and the firing continued, with the bullets getting stuck in mid-air halfway between us. I looked closely – no, they weren’t Others. Just ordinary people. But each of them had the gentle glow of a protective amulet on his chest.
‘Just don’t kill them!’ Lermont cried out when I raised my hand.
I only had two Triple Blades ready and waiting for instant action – I hadn’t been expecting to wind up in a shoot-out like this. I flung both, aiming at the large machine gun. The first charge missed, but the second struck home, reducing the weapon to a heap of shredded metal. The racket quietened down a bit – now only the men with sub-machine guns were firing, but rather uncertainly, as if they had just discovered the invisible barrier. That was good. Every defence has its limit of saturation and the machine-gun fire would have put it out of action fairly quickly.
We had been attacked by men! Ordinary men, equipped with protective amulets. An act that was not only absolutely unheard of but also stupid. It’s one thing to shoot a magician from ambush, using a remote-controlled weapon. But like this, face-to-face, three gunmen against three magicians … what were they hoping to achieve?
Simply to distract our attention!
I swung round just in time to see the white smoke trail heading in our direction. The rocket had been launched from the roof of a high-rise building standing almost a kilometre away. But it was clearly controllable, and it was coming straight for the arbour.
‘Foma!’ I shouted, throwing a Freeze in the direction of the rocket on the off chance. But the temporal stasis spell either missed its target, or the rocket had also been protected against magic – nothing happened.
‘Into the Twilight!’ Lermont shouted.
Sometimes it’s better to do as you’re told than to think up your own original moves. I stepped into the Twilight, sinking down to the second level almost immediately. Lermont was there beside me – he too considered the first level an insufficiently secure defence. But to my surprise, he didn’t stop on the second level – he waved his hand and went down deeper. Perplexed, I followed him down to the third level. What need was there for this? A powerful explosion in the real world might be felt on the first level, but it wouldn’t reach the second … and if Foma suspected the unthinkable, the most terrible thing possible, then a nuclear blast scorched through the material of all levels of the Twilight…
The grey gloom was lit up by a white flame. The ground under our feet trembled slightly. Only slightly – but it trembled!
‘Where’s Semyon?’ I shouted.
Lermont merely shrugged. We waited a few more seconds for the splinters to stop flying, the flame to die away and the smoking fragments of the arbour to stop falling in the real world.
And then we went back out.
Lermont’s neat and tidy cottage had lost all the glass in its windows and was covered with a fine sprinkling of debris. A hefty branch torn off the nearest tree by the explosion was protruding from a window on the second floor.