A single glance back at the real world told me everything.

He had left guards. And 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. The magazines of the guns glittered with the spells applied to the bullets. One of the others 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 had also 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 gray 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 the Edinburgh 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 straightaway.

“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 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 anymore,” 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 person 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 favor. “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 ram into 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, gray and colored 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, 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 forever.

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 upward 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 conjurer 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 Power.

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 facedown 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. But when my eyes had adjusted and I looked more closely, it was obvious that the colors around me lacked real vitality. The grass was green, but pale. The clouds were more dove-gray 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 golem was a medieval robot that they sometimes put to work, but more often they were 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 detail, the magicians’ sense of humor usually plumbed the depths).

But the golem in front of me was a snake. Something like a clay anaconda ten meters long, as thick as the torso of a grown man, with two rapaciously grinning heads-one at each end of its body. Its skin was reddish-gray, 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, gray stone, covered with half-effaced Celtic writing.

Yes, a strange golem: The Rune didn’t bring it to life, it killed it.

Or rather, it rendered the snake motionless-if the baleful glint in its eyes was anything to go by.

I looked around 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 materialized out of the blue-Lermont, Semyon, and a black man I didn’t know. Lermont was literally dragging Semyon and the black man after him, holding them by the arms. Oh, he was powerful, all right!