Edgar instantly struck with the spell, simultaneously shouting, “How can I take the Crown of All Things?”

There you go. I hadn’t needed to use my four bracelets that compelled an honest answer to any question!

We all gazed at Rustam in silence. He was slowly rubbing his chest where the spell had struck him. He raised his head, looked at Edgar with his cold blue eyes, and said, “With your hands.”

Alisher started laughing. Edgar had been caught out by the ambivalence of his presentation of the question. Even under a powerful spell Rustam had managed to give a perfectly precise and absolutely useless answer.

And then, with a slight movement of his lips, Rustam struck back. And he struck with something entirely unfamiliar to me. No fancy effects, but Edgar was shaken from side to side, and his cheeks swelled up in red blotches from slaps delivered by an invisible hand.

“Never try to put pressure on me again,” Rustam warned him when the slapping session was over. “Do you understand, Inquisitor?”

Before Edgar could decide what to say, if anything, I threw up my hand, feeling absolutely delighted that I hadn’t used my set of bracelets against Rustam, and fired off all four tongue-loosening spells against Edgar instead. The amulets on the Inquisitor’s body blazed up brightly, but they couldn’t absorb the full force of the blow.

“Who was the vampire with you in Edinburgh?” I shouted.

Edgar’s face contorted as he struggled painfully to hold back the word that was rising to his tongue. He failed.

“Saushkin!” he shouted.

Rustam laughed again and said, “Bye-bye!”

Afandi was suddenly himself again. It was as if a rubber doll had been partly deflated! He lost height, his shoulders narrowed, wrinkles appeared on his face, his eyes dimmed, and the hairs of his beard fell out and scattered.

Edgar and I looked at each other with hatred in our eyes.

And then, without wasting any time on gathering Power or intoning spells, Edgar struck at us. A fiery rain poured down from the sky, seething and bubbling on the Shields that Alisher and I had erected. But there was no fire around Afandi, who was still confused and hadn’t yet recovered his wits-evidently one of the protective rings had been activated.

The minute that followed was full of attacks and counterattacks. Alisher wisely left me to conduct the battle, took a step backward, and fed Power to our Shields, only occasionally allowing himself a brief lunge of attacking magic.

Gesar must have involved the finest diviners in the Watch in the preparation of our equipment. After the fire came ice. A blizzard started howling through the air, tiny snowflakes with edges as sharp as razors tested the strength of our Shields and melted impotently as they approached Afandi. Before the storm of ice had even died away, Edgar struck with the Kiss of the Viper and the rocks beneath our feet were suddenly covered with drops of acid. Afandi was protected yet again. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that the old man wasn’t just doing nothing, he was weaving some weak but very intricate and unusual spell. I didn’t really expect him to be successful, but at least he was busy and not getting under our feet.

The fourth spell that Edgar used was a vacuum. I was already expecting exactly that-and when the air pressure around me started falling rapidly, I calmly carried on lashing Edgar alternately with Opium and Thanatos. Behind me Alisher was striking out with Fireballs and lumps of supercooled water from the wands. The combination of Fireballs and icy shrapnel exploding into viscous blue drops was remarkably effective: I could see the Inquisitor’s amulets, confused by the contrast, starting to lose their Power.

But there was more to all this than just the amulets. Edgar, a first-level magician, was holding out against both of us and still managing to counterattack! Either he was pumped to the maximum with Power or he had surpassed the first level. I didn’t have the time to make a thorough check of his aura.

The failure of the vacuum seemed to dent Edgar’s fervor. It was such a rare spell that our readiness for it bewildered the Inquisitor. He began slowly backing away, circling around the charred Toyota that was now smoking from acid and covered in hoarfrost. He got snagged on an icicle that had smashed through the car’s door and almost fell. As he waved his arms about to keep his balance, he almost let my Opium through.

“Edgar, surrender!” I shouted. “Don’t make us kill you!”

Those words stung the Inquisitor, inciting his fury. He paused for a second, then took a strange pendant off his belt-a bundle of small gray feathers tied together with string, like a small twig broom. He tossed it into the air.

The feathers turned into a flock of birds like overgrown sparrows, but with beaks that glittered like bronze. There were twenty or thirty of them, and they came dashing straight for me, maneuvering like supermodern reentry vehicles, the pride and joy of the generals in the space program.

The “chicken god” hanging around my neck broke and fell off its chain. And the flock of birds began fluttering about aimlessly in the air. They didn’t try to approach Edgar, but they couldn’t attack me-and they carried on fluttering about like that until finally Edgar swore and waved his hand to make them disappear.

Afandi also flung his spell and seemed to break through Edgar’s defenses. But there was no visible effect on the Dark Magician. He carried on backing away, occasionally counterattacking. There was a glow on his chest that kept getting brighter and brighter all the time-an amulet hidden under his clothes had been activated and was preparing to respond. For an instant I even thought that Edgar had equipped himself with a suicide spell, Shahid or Gastello, which would take us to the grave along with him.

“More Power to the Shields!” I ordered, and Alisher gave it everything he had, powering up the Shields around us as well as one around Afandi.

But Edgar was clearly not in the mood for a dramatic suicide. He launched one more brief attack and then pressed his hands to his chest, where the amulet was glowing. The blue lines of a portal sprang up around him. The magician took a rapid step forward and disappeared.

“He’s hopped it,” Alisher said. He sat down on the rocks and immediately swore and jumped back to his feet with his trousers smoking. The Kiss of the Viper was still in effect.

I stood there, feeling completely drained. Afandi stood beside me, laughing.

“What did you throw at him?” I asked.

“The next seventy-seven times he lies down with a woman, he will suffer shameful failure!” Afandi explained triumphantly. “And no one will be able to remove the spell.”

“Very witty,” I said. “Very Eastern.”

With a few brief spells I cleared away the traces of magic from the ground under our feet. The drops of acid had raised bubbles in the stone like rising dough.

Saushkin!

So it was Saushkin!