“But…it’s…” he protested sadly.

“Here!” I opened my bag, took out four wads of dollars, and thrust them into his hand. “Now, the keys, please, if you don’t mind. I’m really in a hurry!”

“It…it’s worth more than that…,” the man said in a wretched voice.

“But I’m taking it secondhand!” I explained. “Right?”

“That’s right,” he admitted, speaking slowly.

“Uncle Farhad!” one of the young men exclaimed in bewilderment.

Farhad gave him a strict glance, and the youth fell silent.

“Don’t interrupt when your elders are talking, don’t shame me in front of the son of my old friend!” Farhad barked. “What will the son of my old friend think?”

The young guys were in a panic, but they kept quiet.

I took the keys out of the man’s hands and got into the driver’s seat. I breathed in the fresh smell of the leather upholstery and glanced at the dashboard. Yes, the car was definitely secondhand. According to the odometer, it had traveled three hundred kilometers.

I waved to the three men who had been left with forty thousand dollars instead of their means of transport. Then I drove out onto the road and said, “Everybody leave the Twilight!”

Alisher and Afandi appeared on the empty backseat.

“I would have given him a little more happiness,” said Alisher. “So he wouldn’t suffer too much afterward. He looks pretty spiteful, not a very good man, but even so…”

“More spells only make a screwup all the more likely,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s all right. I paid him fair and square. He’ll survive.”

“Are we going to wait for Edgar?” Alisher asked. “Or look for the Light Ones?”

I’d already thought about these choices and rejected them.

“No, there’s no point. Let’s make straight for the hills. The farther we are from people, the quieter it’ll be.”

Alisher took my place at the wheel when it started getting dark. We had been driving south from Samarkand, toward the Afghan border, for three hours. Just as twilight fell, the asphalt road had given way to an appallingly bad dirt track. I moved to the backseat, where Afandi was snoring peacefully, and decided to follow the old man’s example. But before I dozed off, I took several battle amulets out of my bag.

Novices are often fond of all sorts of magical wands, crystals, and knives, either made by their own hand or charged by a more powerful magician. Even a weak and inexperienced magician can achieve a quite astounding effect if he prepares an artifact with loving care and pumps it full of Power. The problem is that this effect-powerful, prolonged, and precise-is a one-off. You can’t attach two different spells to the same object. A magic wand intended to belch out flame will cope magnificently with its task, even in the hands of a weak Other. But if his opponent guesses what is happening and raises a defense against fire, the wand and its miraculous flames are useless. It can’t freeze, dry, or stand someone on his head. You can either use the fire that’s available, or hammer away with the wand as if it were a club. It’s no accident that weak magicians who have dealings with people (and it’s precisely the weak magicians who interfere in human affairs or involve people in their own) have always used a magical staff-a hybrid of the usual wand and a long club. Some of them, to be honest, have been far more skillful with the club than at using magic. I remember how all of us in the Watch went to the Pushkin movie theater for the premiere of Lord of the Rings. Everything was fine until the Light Gandalf and the Dark Saruman started fighting each other with their magic staffs. The two rows filled with Others broke into genuinely Homeric laughter. Especially the trainees, who had it drilled into them every day that a magician who relied on artifacts was simply an idle show-off, more interested in appearances than efficiency. A magician’s power lies in his skill in using the Twilight and spells.

But of course there are exceptions to every rule. If an experienced magician has managed to foretell the future, no matter how-by skillful analysis of the lines of probability, or simply from his own experience-then a charged artifact 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 artifacts in my bag were far more valuable than the money lying beside them. And they had been prepared by Gesar in person…well, perhaps not prepared, but at least selected from the special stores in the armory. 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 coolheaded English gentleman Phileas Fogg, who was attempting to set a new record for traveling around the world, seemed like a cunning fortune-teller who always knew what he would need in the hours ahead. If he took a wrench, 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 wrench 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 “quest” genre, where you find you have an effective use for every item.

Artifacts from Gesar 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 me and the snoring Afandi, and I studied them carefully. I should have done this earlier, but I hadn’t taken them out at home because I didn’t want to attract Nadya’s attention. I hadn’t felt like fiddling with magical artifacts on the plane, either, and after that there simply hadn’t been time. Wouldn’t it be annoying if I discovered one of the amulets was a weapon against golems!

Two portable battle wands, each no longer than ten centimeters. The first was made out of ebony-fire. The second was 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 as far as I knew, 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.