“I assume that Arina’s waiting for you in Edinburgh?” I asked.

“You just drive,” Edgar ordered. “And in the meantime I’ll explain why you’re going to help us.”

“Very interesting,” I said. There was a cold sensation spreading through my chest, but there was no way I was going to show any fear. But what difference did that make? Vampires can sense fear instinctively. It’s hard to shield yourself from their perceptions, even with magic.

“You’re going to do your best for your daughter’s sake, of course,” said Edgar. “For your daughter’s and your wife’s. That wouldn’t work with a Dark One, but it’s just the trick for Light Ones.”

“You’d never get to my family.”

“Perhaps I wouldn’t-on my own. Gesar and Zabulon would fight with everything they’ve got. I counted six bodyguards. How many do you know about? The two young fools on the staircase?”

I didn’t answer.

“I expect there are at least eight, or even twelve,” Edgar said thoughtfully. “There’s no point in guessing: Both the old farts have decided to play it safe. But if there was an explosion beside your house…not an ordinary explosion, but a nuclear one…Then even any Higher Magicians there would be killed. Hiroshima demonstrated that quite clearly.”

“You wouldn’t go that far, Edgar,” I said. “You’re a Dark One, but you’re not a psychopath. An atomic bomb in the center of Moscow? Just to kill my wife and daughter? How many people would be killed? And what if somebody panics and decides it’s a nuclear attack, and it starts a world war?”

“Right! That’s the most important point.” Edgar laughed. “Even if Gesar senses that something’s wrong and moves your family far away from Moscow, to some secure vault in Ufa, for example, that won’t fundamentally change the situation. Your actions will still decide the fate of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. Not bad incentive for a Light One, is it?”

“Edgar,” I asked. “What’s happened to you?”

“Nothing,” said Edgar with a nervous, unnatural laugh. “I’m just fine!”

“Have you lost someone, Edgar?”

The question was a shot in the dark. But when Edgar didn’t answer, I knew I’d hit the target. I’d finally begun to understand something about what was going on.

“My wife,” he said eventually. “Annabel.”

“You said you were in Crete with her,” I recalled.

“I was. Exactly a year ago. We were walking to the beach from the hotel…There was a truck driving past us. The driver lost control and ran into her at eighty kilometers an hour. There was no time for me to do anything.”

“You loved her,” I said, amazed.

“Yes,” Edgar said, nodding. “I loved her. I’m not Zabulon, I can love. Or I could.”

“I’m very sorry,” I said.

“Thank you, Anton,” Edgar replied in a perfectly normal voice. “I know you really mean that. But it still doesn’t change anything…in the way things are between us.”

“Why did you turn against everyone? Why did you involve people?”

“People? What difference does it make how we use them, Anton? We live off their energy. Why shouldn’t we use them as cannon fodder too? And as for why I went against everyone…that’s the wrong way of putting the question. I’m not against them, I’m for them. For all Others, if you like. Dark Ones and Light Ones. When we achieve our goal, you’ll understand. Even you’ll understand.”

“That’s not what we agreed,” said Gennady.

“I remember what we agreed,” Edgar snapped. “We do what we planned. And then you challenge Anton to fight. That’s right, isn’t it? You wanted an honest duel?”

“Yes,” Gennady said rather doubtfully.

“Well, if you’re so certain that I’ll understand,” I said as I turned onto the ring road, struggling with the temptation to swing the steering wheel hard and throw the car off the over-pass, “then you could tell me what it is you’ve planned. And then maybe I’ll help you voluntarily.”

“I thought about that,” Edgar said with a nod. “From the very beginning, I thought that of all the Light Ones I know, you were the sanest. But I happened to find myself working with Gennady here. And he was absolutely against it. He doesn’t like you. And you know why: You killed his son. His wife laid herself to rest because of you. So how could we take you into the Last Watch?”

“A very romantic name, by the way.”

“That’s Gennady, he’s a great romantic.” Edgar laughed. “No, we weren’t going to touch you. Revenge is a fine thing, but only if you’ve got nothing else left… Then Gesar had to go and send you to Edinburgh!”

“Did you kill Victor because he recognized Gennady?”

“Yes,” said Edgar, nodding. “It was an improvised move. Gennady got nervous. He thought Kostya’s old school friend couldn’t have turned up by accident, that we were being followed. It was a mistake, of course. But we did discover how to open the barrier on the third level. We didn’t have precise information about that before then.”

“But you knew about the golem on the fifth level?”

“Oh yes!” said Edgar, laughing again. “After Annabel was killed I was transferred to work in the secure archive. You know…to settle down and get over my pain in a quiet job…If only you knew, Light One, what they have hidden away in the strong rooms at the Inquisition! I had never even suspected that things like that could be created. I tell you honestly, in the last hundred years, the quality of magic has actually deteriorated. We’ve been spoiled by using human things. But we used to have things that were like telephones and cars and airplanes…they weren’t just like them, they were better. We could have founded a civilization based entirely on magic!”

“Except that we produce less Power than we consume,” I said. “We can’t live without people.”

“I thought about that, too,” said Edgar, brightening up. “We could have-Hey, don’t slow down! Take the left lane, it’s free now…So, I’ve thought about that subject. I picture the ideal society as something close to the medieval model. People living a simple, healthy, uncomplicated life, working in the open air, pursuing the arts and crafts. No centralized states would be needed-a feudal system with barons and nominal kings would be quite good enough. And we Others would live partly separately and partly among the people. Without hiding from them! And everyone would know about us. Of course, under this arrangement even people could challenge a magician or a vampire. Let them! There has to be an effective mechanism of natural selection to weed out the weak and excessively cruel Others. A world like that would be far more pleasant than the one we have now-for Others and people. Have you never read any fantasy?”

“What?”

“Haven’t you read any of those books? Lord of the Rings? Conan? A Wizard of Earthsea? Harry Potter?”

“I’ve read a few,” I said. “Some are a bit naive, but some are interesting. Quite passable as escapist literature, even for us.”

“And it’s far more popular with people than science fiction,” Edgar said confidently. “That’s the paradox, people aren’t interested in reading about settling on Mars or flying to the stars-all the things that people really can achieve, but Others can’t. But they dream about becoming magicians, rushing into battle with a big sharp sword… If only they knew what the wounds from a real sword look like!…What does all this mean? That a medieval world in which magic exists is the one most attractive to people!”

“Well, yes,” I said. “Of course. Because no one thinks about how delightful it is to relieve yourself into a cesspit when it’s twenty degrees below freezing, or the stench those pits give out when it’s ninety degrees in the shade. Because the heroes in the books don’t get head colds, indigestion, appendicitis, or malaria, and if they do, there’s a Light Healer right there on hand. Because everyone sees himself sitting on the throne, wearing a magician’s cloak, or, at the very least, in the retinue of a brave and jolly baron. Not out in a parched field with a wooden hoe in his hands, watching the baron’s retinue ride off after they’ve just trampled his pitiful harvest, half of which belongs to the brave and jolly baron anyway.”