The two Dark Ones entered the Twilight one after the other – they had been standing with their backs to the grenade when it exploded. The older one was about to strike the window with something, but I caught hold of his arm.
‘What have you got there?’
He bared his long, crooked teeth in a grin. Well, well, an ordinary weak Dark Magician, but what a jaw he had sprouted now!
‘They’ll shit themselves. Just a little bit.’
‘Go ahead,’ I agreed. ‘Only not here. Cover your side!’
Timur entered the Twilight, followed by Alisher, who was dragging Murat after him. Only Nodir was still rubbing his eyes, unable to recover his senses: he had been blinded worst of all.
‘Alisher, let’s get Afandi!’ I shouted.
We walked over to the old man who was still sitting at the table, trying to suck on the mouth of a fresh bottle of cognac.
‘On the count of two,’ I said. ‘One, two …’
We leapt out of the Twilight, grabbed Afandi under the arms and lifted him off his chair. With my free hand I managed to grab the bag with all my bits and pieces and throw the strap across my shoulder. The bursts of automatic fire thundered in my ears and the bullets jangled as they ricocheted off the Shield. The crimson flames flickered outside the windows. With a deft movement, the old man managed to get one suck at the bottle – just at the moment when we dragged him into the Twilight.
‘Ai!’ he exclaimed in disappointment. The bottle had been left behind in the normal world, and Afandi’s hand closed on emptiness. ‘Ai, the drink’s disappearing!’
‘Grandad, we haven’t got any time for drink,’ Alisher told him with quite incredible patience. ‘Enemies have attacked us – we’re leaving!’
‘No surrender to the enemies!’ Afandi exclaimed gleefully. ‘Into battle!’
At long last Nodir too entered the Twilight. I looked round at my improvised army: four weak Light Ones, two weak Dark Ones, Alisher, who had been tested on the streets of Moscow, and Afandi as ballast. Well, if could have been worse. Even if those Higher Ones who had been in Scotland were hiding somewhere around here, we could give them a fight for their money.
‘Let’s leave!’ I commanded. ‘Alisher, you take Afandi! Valentina, Timur – you go first! Everybody erect the Magician’s Shield!’
We left straight through the wall. On the second level of the Twilight it wouldn’t have existed at all. On the first level it did exist, and it even seemed to slow down our movements. But if you took a run, it was possible to pass through almost any material object down here.
And we did pass through it. Only Afandi got one leg stuck, and he jerked it about in the wall for a long time before he broke free, leaving one trainer behind. It would stay hanging there on the first level of the Twilight, slowly fading away over a period of several months. A few particularly sensitive people would even notice it out of the corner of their eye – provided, of course, that the building survived.
On the side we broke out through, the cordon was thinner. Five men with sub-machine guns were staring at the blank wall, obviously puzzled about why they had been stationed there. But two of them turned out to be charmed and they saw us. I don’t know what we looked like – ordinary people who leapt out through the wall or spectral shadows. In any case, there was no goodwill evident in the soldiers’ faces, only fear and the readiness to shoot. Valentina did the right thing – her spell had no visible effect, but the foolproof Kalashnikov in one soldier’s hands refused to fire. And then Timur hurled a fireball through the Twilight and burned off the barrel of the other soldier’s automatic rifle.
That was a mistake!
Sure, those two couldn’t shoot any more. But their comrades, who couldn’t locate us themselves, saw the ball of flame come flying out of nowhere – and they started firing. Either out of sheer fright or because they had been trained to do it.
At first I thought Timur hadn’t put up a Shield. The burst of fire literally cut straight through him – I saw the bullets leave holes in his back, one after another. He fell over on to his back, and then I saw that he did have a Shield after all. A weak one, only at the front, but it was there.
The enchanted bullets had pierced straight through his magical armour. It was the very same technique as in Edinburgh!
‘Tim!’ Nodir shouted, bending down over his friend.
That was what saved him – several bursts of fire from the soldiers blazing away erratically with their automatic weapons went right over his head.
The next moment, before I could do anything to stop him, Murat struck back.
They didn’t have a very wide choice of spells. As provincial magicians unused to combat and not naturally very powerful, they were quite unprepared for this skirmish with human beings who could kill Others.
Murat used some version of the White Sword that I didn’t know. In theory this spell should only kill Dark Others and people who are totally given over to evil. In practice, you have to be a monk who spends his days in prayer and self-mortification for the remorseless blow not to cause you any harm. Any trace of aggression or fear makes a man vulnerable to the blade of pure Light.
Those young Uzbek lads in military uniform had any amount of fear and aggression in them.
The white blade cut straight through four soldiers like a sharp scythe mowing down wheat. It literally sliced them in half. With fountains of blood and other unmentionable sights. The fifth soldier dropped his automatic weapon and took to his heels, screaming wildly. Even seen from the Twilight he seemed to be moving fast, he put on such a burst of speed!
Murat was frozen to the spot. I walked round in front of him. The white blade was still fading away in his hand and he looked very calm, almost sleepy. I looked into his eyes and found the answer to my question.
It was over. He was already withdrawing.
I squatted down beside Nodir and shook him by the shoulder:
‘Let’s go.’
He turned his face towards me and said in a surprised voice:
‘They killed Timur. They shot him!’
‘I can see. Let’s go.’
Nodir started shaking his head.
‘No! We can’t leave him here …’
‘We can and we will! Our enemies won’t get their hands on the body; it will dissolve in the Twilight. We’ll all go that way sooner or later. Get up.’
He shook his head again.
‘Get up. The Light needs you.’
Nodir groaned, but he got up. And then his gaze fell on Murat. He shook his head again, as if he was trying to shake out the sudden overload of dark impressions. He dashed over to Murat and tried to grab hold of his arm.
His fingers clutched nothing but air. Murat was melting away, dissolving into the Twilight. Far more quickly than Timur’s dead body would disappear. A Light Magician has to have a lot of experience of life in order to convince himself that he has the right to kill four people. I could probably have held out. Murat couldn’t.
‘Let’s go!’ I ordered, giving Nodir a slap across the face. ‘Let’s go!’
Somehow he managed to pull himself together and plod along behind me – away from the office, which was still being stormed, away from two comrades, one dead and one dying. Valentina walked in front, with the Dark Ones beside her. Alisher was dragging along Afandi, who had sobered up and calmed down. Nodir and I brought up the rear of the procession.
They started firing after us again – the screams of the soldier who had survived had attracted attention. I raised another Wall of Flame and, unable to resist, flung a small fireball at the old Peugeot by the fence. The car flared up in a jolly blaze, adding a little French charm to the Central Asian landscape.