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 after 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…
‘What a lovely place!’ Semyon said in delight, gazing around. ‘Ooh … So this is where …’
He spotted the golem and stopped. Then he walked across and gave it a cautious kick. He shook his head.
‘Ooh … what a massive beast… Did you bring it down, Anton?’
‘I’m afraid it’s not that simple to bring down,’ I said, pointing to the Rune. Then, turning to Foma, I said, ‘Shall we move on, Mr Lermont?’
‘Can you manage it?’
‘I’ll give it a try.’
Lermont shook his head doubtfully. He glanced at his subordinate and said:
‘You can’t go any further. I brought you along because of this … ugly brute. But there’s no way you can go on. Wait for as long as you can and then go back.’
He heaved a deep sigh – and dissolved into thin air.
I took a step forward.
Nothing.
Another step. And another, and another.
‘It’s not working, then?’ Semyon asked sympathetically.
What was this? I’d broken through to the fifth level, and it was absolutely calm here, but I couldn’t get any lower!
A step. Another step. Where’s that shadow?
‘Anton …’ said Semyon, shaking me by the shoulder. ‘Anton, stop. You’re just wasting your strength.’
‘I’ll get through,’ I whispered. ‘I have to …’
‘You don’t have to do anything. Lermont’s got the experience. He’ll handle everything.’
I shook my head, trying to relax. I’d got to this level using my anger … maybe I could get to the next one if I was calm, peaceful? All I was facing was a kind of watershed. A thin film of surface tension between worlds, a borderline beyond which the vital Power began to increase. The first level was practically dead, dried out, sterile. The second was a little more alive. The third and fourth already began to resemble our world. The fifth … the fifth was almost fit to live in. There were already colours here and although it was cold it wasn’t so cold that you would freeze, grass grew here, there was rain, and strange violent storms. What would there be on the sixth level? I had to understand the place I was trying to break into. Was it a glacial world, a dying world? A place where it would be hard to breathe, difficult to walk or talk?
No. The sixth level wouldn’t be like that. It would be even more colourful than the fifth. Even more alive. Even closer to the real world.
I nodded to my thoughts.
And stepped from the fifth level to the sixth.
It was night there. Perhaps not a summer night, but it was still warm. I couldn’t see a single star in the sky above my head, but there was a moon. Not a strip of grey dust in the sky, like on the first level. Not the three tiny coloured moons that shone on the second level. An absolutely normal moon, perfectly familiar to the human eye.
But not a single star. The stars are not for Others.
Under the white spotlight of the moon the world seemed completely real. The trees were real, alive, with leaves that rustled in the wind. There was a smell of grass and burning … I suddenly realised that this was the first time I had ever smelled anything in the Twilight. No doubt, if I chewed on a grass stalk I would actually taste the bitter juice …
Burning?
I turned round, and saw Lermont. But I didn’t see him as a stout middle-aged gentleman. I saw him in his Twilight form.
Thomas the Rhymer had become a white-haired giant almost three metres tall. His skin radiated a murky white light. He was grabbing bunches of white and blue light out of the air, mixing them together in his gigantic hands as if he was making snowballs, and throwing them off into the far distance. I followed the trajectory – the hissing bundles of flame went flying over the flat plain, sweeping aside the rare trees in their path, and fizzled out in a dark cloud that was moving rapidly away. Burning trees marked the shots that had missed.
‘Foma!’ I shouted. ‘I’m here!’
The giant mixed up a truly immense sphere in his hands and grunted as he hurled it after the dark cloud. He turned round.
He had an amazing face. Kind and harsh, beautiful and frightening, all at the same time.
‘The young magician has passed the barriers,’ Thomas rumbled. ‘The young magician has hastened to come to our aid …’
He was little bit crazy just at that moment – like all Others who take on their deep Twilight forms in the heat of battle
Thomas covered the distance between us in just a few steps. It seemed to me that the very ground shook under his feet.
‘They didn’t manage it, my friend …’ The ancient bard lowered a hand as big as a shovel onto my shoulder. ‘They only got as far as the sixth level. Thomas drove them away, he did. Thomas drove them away, like cowardly little puppy dogs.’