“That is bad,” Rustam declared imperturbably. “I would advise you to cease these attempts.”

“We’re not the ones,” I said. “It’s someone quite different. An Inquisitor, a Light One, and a Dark One who have joined forces.”

“Interesting,” Rustam said. “It is not often that a single goal brings enemies together.”

“Can you help us to stop them?”

“No.”

“But you say yourself that it is bad!”

“There is very much in the world that is bad. But usually the attempt to defeat evil engenders more evil. I advise you to do good; that is the only way to win the victory!”

Alisher snorted indignantly and even I winced at this well-meant but totally useless conclusion. I thought what a victory evil would have won if Rustam and Gesar had not used the White Mist! Perhaps I did feel pity for the incarcerated Dark Ones, but I had no doubt at all that if they had destroyed the two Light Ones standing in their way, an agonizing death would have awaited the Others and the people whom Gesar and Rustam were defending. Yes, perhaps you couldn’t defeat evil with evil. But you couldn’t increase the amount of good by using nothing but good.

“Can you at least suggest what they are trying to achieve?” I asked.

“No,” said Rustam, shaking his head. “I cannot. Erase the difference between people and Others? Why, that is stupid. In that case you ought to erase all the inequality in the world. Between rich and poor, strong and weak, men and women. It would be simpler to kill everyone.” He laughed, and I was horrified to realize yet again that the Great Magician was not entirely sane.

But I replied politely, “You are right, Great Rustam. It is a stupid goal. One Other has already tried to attain it…with the help of the book Fuaran. Only, by another means-by transforming all people into Others.”

“A fine jest,” Rustam replied without any particular interest. “But I agree, these are two roads that lead to the same goal. No, young magician! It is perhaps more complicated than that.” He screwed up his eyes. “I think the Inquisitor found something in the archives. An answer to the question of what the Crown of All Things really is.”

“And?” I asked.

“And it proved to be an answer that suited everybody. Dark Ones and Light Ones and the Inquisition that maintains equilibrium. It is remarkable that such a thing has been found in the world. It even makes me feel slightly curious. But I have told you everything that I know. Merlin’s spell annihilates the differences between the levels of the Twilight.”

“You live in the Twilight yourself,” I observed. “You could suggest something! After all, if the Twilight disappears, you will die!”

“Or I shall become an ordinary man and live out the remainder of a human life,” Rustam said without any particular emotion.

“Everyone who has withdrawn into the Twilight will die!” I exclaimed. Alisher looked at me in amazement. Of course: He didn’t know that the path followed by Others ended on the seventh level of the Twilight…

“People are mortal. How are we better than them?”

“At least try to suggest something, Rustam!” I implored him. “You are wiser than I am! What could it be? What could the Inquisitor have found?”

“Ask him yourself,” said Rustam, reaching out his hand. His lips moved and a stream of blinding white light flashed past me toward the Toyota.

I could probably have spotted Edgar myself, if only I had been expecting to see him on the plateau. Or perhaps even the most thorough check would have been useless. He had not concealed himself in the Twilight or by using the common spells available to all Others. Edgar was hidden from our eyes by a magical amulet on his head that reminded me of a skullcap. It was only its size that prevented me from calling it a Hat of Invisibility. I supposed it could be a Skullcap of Invisibility, since we were in Uzbekistan after all.

I automatically raised a Shield around myself and noticed that Alisher had done the same.

Only Rustam seemed entirely unconcerned with the Inquisitor’s presence. The light he had summoned had taken Edgar by surprise-he had been sitting on the hood of the car with his legs dangling, calmly observing us. For a second it looked as if he couldn’t understand what had happened. Then the skullcap on his head started smoking and Edgar flung it to the ground with a muffled curse. That was when he realized that we could see him.

“Hi, Edgar,” I said.

He hadn’t changed a bit since the last time we’d seen each other-on the train, when we were doing battle with Kostya Saushkin. Except that now he wasn’t dressed in his signature suit and tie, but in a much freer and more comfortable style: gray linen trousers, a thin white cotton sweater, and good leather shoes with thick soles. He looked like a svelte, fashionable European. And in the Central Asian wilderness, that made him seem like either an amiable colonizer taking a brief respite from the white man’s burden, or an English spy from the time of Kipling and the Great Game that Russia and Britain had played in this part of the world.

“Hi, Anton,” said Edgar, getting down off the hood. “Just look at that…now I’ve interrupted your conversation.”

Strangely enough, he seemed embarrassed. But then, who wouldn’t be embarrassed after calling down tectonic spells on our heads? Who wouldn’t be afraid to look us in the eye?

“What have you done, Edgar?” I asked.

“It was just the way things worked out,” he said with a sigh. “Anton, I won’t even try to make excuses! I feel really awkward!”

“And did you feel awkward in Edinburgh, too,” I asked, “when you cut the watchmen’s throats? When you hired the thugs?”

“Very awkward,” Edgar said with a nod. “Especially since we didn’t manage to break through to the seventh level in any case.”

Afandi/Rustam began laughing and slapping his sides. How much of it was Rustam and how much Afandi, I couldn’t tell.

“He felt awkward!” Rustam exclaimed. “They always feel awkward, but it never means anything.”

Obviously embarrassed by this reaction from Rustam, Edgar waited until the magician had laughed his fill. I took the chance to look the Inquisitor (or perhaps I should say “former Inquisitor”?) up and down through the Twilight.

Yes, he was hung all over with amulets, like decorations on a Christmas tree. But there was something else besides the amulets. Charms: combinations of the very simplest natural components that don’t require much effort to become saturated with magic and that acquire their magical properties from light, almost imperceptible touches of Power, in the same way that saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur-almost harmless in themselves-together become gunpowder, which explodes at the slightest spark.

It was no accident that Edgar was dressed completely in cotton, linen, and leather. Natural materials have an affinity for magic. You can’t charm a nylon jacket.

And these charms that transformed his clothing into magical armor bothered me. Charms are the weapons of enchantresses and witches. Magicians rarely make use of them. There was no way I could imagine Edgar carefully impregnating his own trousers with herbal infusions.

So was this the work of another member of their criminal gang? The Light Healer? Yes, healers knew how to work with charms; I knew that very well from Svetlana.

“Edgar, you realize that I am obliged to arrest you?”

“And what if you can’t?” Edgar asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer. The fingers of his left hand began moving, weaving together a spell. I realized which one it was-and I hesitated for just an instant as I made up my mind whether to warn Rustam. Strangely enough, it was in my interest for Edgar to get what he wanted.

“Rustam, he’s working the Confession!” I shouted.

I warned him because, after all, this ancient magician with bats in the belfry was a Light One…