But, of course, there are exceptions to every rule. If an experienced magician has managed to foretell the future, no matter how – by skilful analysis of the lines of probability, or simply from his own experience – then a charged artefact is quite indispensable. Are you certain that your opponent is a werewolf, who cannot manipulate power directly and relies on physical strength and speed? One accelerating amulet, one pendant with a Shield that is activated at close quarters, one simple wand (many prefer to charm an ordinary pencil – wood and graphite make an excellent accumulator for Power) with a freezing spell. And there you are! You can quite confidently send a seventh-level magician off to hunt down a Higher Werewolf. The Shield will repulse the attack, the amulet will lend the magician’s movement quite incredible speed, and the Temporal Freeze will transform the enemy into a motionless bundle of fur and fury. Call for transport, and he’s ready for shipping to the Inquisition.
The artefacts in my bag were far more valuable than the money lying beside them. And they had been prepared by Geser in person … well, perhaps not prepared, but at least selected from the special stores in the armoury. I could be sure that they were powerful, and that they would be useful. I suddenly remembered an old Australian cartoon film that I had seen when I was a kid, Around the World in Eighty Days. In that cartoon, the cool-headed English gentleman Phileas Fogg, who was attempting to set a new speed record for travelling round the world, seemed like a cunning fortune-teller who always knew what he would need in the hours ahead. If he took a spanner, a stuffed opossum and a bunch of bananas with him in the morning, then by the time evening came the stuffed animal had plugged a leak in the side of a ship, the spanner had braced shut a door that his enemies were trying to break down, and the bananas had been given to a monkey in exchange for a ticket on a steamship. All in all, it was very much like a computer game in the same genre as Quest, where you have to find an effective use for every item that you collect.
Artefacts from Geser could be used for their designated purpose or in some entirely unexpected way. But whatever happened, some use was usually found for them.
I laid the twelve items out on the seat between myself and the snoring Afandi and studied them carefully. I should have done this earlier, but I hadn’t taken them out at home because I hadn’t wanted to attract Nadya’s attention. I hadn’t felt like fiddling with magical artefacts in the plane either, and after that there simply hadn’t been time. Wouldn’t it be annoying if I found one of the amulets was a weapon against golems!
Two portable battle wands, each no longer than ten centimetres. The first made out of ebony – fire. The second made out of a walrus tusk – ice. Well, they were both commonplace and useful. I’d managed without them so far, but anything could happen.
Four silver rings with protective spells. That was a very strange set! The standard magician’s Shield protected against everything: you just had to feed it with energy. An Other didn’t often need protective rings. And here I had specific protection against fire, ice, acid … and vacuum. At first I couldn’t believe what I’d seen through the Twilight. I studied the last ring carefully. No, I was right! If the pressure suddenly dropped, the ring started to work and held the air around the person wearing it.
That was strange. Of course, there were several battle spells that suffocated the enemy, some by removing the air from around him. The things that had been thought up in thousands of years of warfare! But nobody actually used these whimsical and slow spells in battle.
Four bracelets. At least it was quite clear what they were for! Four different spells that forced a man or an Other to tell the truth. If Rustam got really stubborn, all I had to do was say ‘Tell me the truth’ and the ancient magician would be struck with a blow of absolutely monstrous power. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
The last two amulets were rather less ordinary, both in appearance and content, and had quite clearly been prepared by Geser himself for this mission of ours. The first was a cellphone SIM card in a little plastic box. An ordinary card, but pumped full of magic. I studied it for a while, but I couldn’t figure it out. Then I decided to experiment – I took my own card out of my phone and put the one charged with magic in its place.
It didn’t make any sense! It was a copy of my own SIM card! But what for? So I wouldn’t have to waste money on calls to Moscow? What raving nonsense …
I thought for a while and then asked Alisher to call my number. Strangely enough, the phone still worked there.
My phone rang immediately. Everything was okay, it really was a copy of my SIM, but it had been treated with magic for some reason … I shrugged and decided to leave the card in my phone. Maybe it coded the calls in some cunning magical way? But I’d never heard of any magic like that before.
The final amulet was a small stone rolled smooth by the sea. It had a hole in it, so it was one of those so-called ‘chicken gods’ that human superstition believes bring good luck. A cunningly woven silver chain that looked like a thick twisted thread ran through the hole.
In itself, of course, a ‘chicken god’ doesn’t bring any good luck, but that doesn’t stop children searching enthusiastically for them on the seashore and then wearing them on a string round their necks. This stone, however, had been enchanted with a complex spell that partially resembled the Dominant. Was that for the conversation with Rustam too? I thought about it for a while and then hung the chain round my neck. It couldn’t do any harm …
All I still had to do was distribute the rings and the wands. I didn’t think about that for too long, either. I nudged Afandi awake and asked him to put on the rings. He exclaimed ‘Ah!’ in delight, put the rings on his left hand, admired them – and nodded off again.
I gave the wands to Alisher, and he put them in the breast pocket of his shirt without saying a word. They stuck out like Parker or Mont Blanc ballpoint pens, no less elegant and almost as deadly. Almost – because a single stroke of a boss’s pen could kill more people than those battle wands could.
‘I’ll get some sleep,’ I told Alisher.
He didn’t say anything for a while. The jeep was slowly making its way up the rocky track, which had been climbed by donkeys far more often than by anything on four wheels. The beams of the headlights swung from side to side, alternately picking out a steep rocky cliff and a sheer drop with a river roaring at the bottom.
‘Sleep,’ said Alisher. ‘But take a look at the probability lines first. This road’s really bad.’
‘I wouldn’t even call it a road,’ I said. I closed my eyes and looked into the Twilight. Into the immediate future, where the sinuous interwoven lines of probability led.
I didn’t like the picture that I saw. There were too many lines that broke off abruptly and ended at the bottom of the ravine.
‘Alisher, stop. You’re too exhausted to drive through the mountains in the dark. Let’s wait until morning.’
Alisher shook his head stubbornly.
‘No – I can sense that we have to hurry.’