Gennady got up without saying a word and beckoned to the flight attendant.
Ouroboros.
The beginning and the end. Life and death. The circle of Power maintaining the universe.
I understood it all. I was the first since Merlin. Now I had something to be proud of, if only I could manage to stay alive!
“You’ve thought of something,” said Edgar. Half-standing, he leaned forward over the back of my seat and looked into my eyes curiously. “Ah, Anton! I was right. You do have an idea.”
“I do,” I said, not trying to deny anything, “Edgar, I want to ask you one more time-are you sure that it’s safe to bring out those who have withdrawn? You know what the Shade of the Rulers is, don’t you?”
“I know,” said Edgar, and his face darkened. “It summons magicians who have withdrawn back from the sixth level, where they can exist for a fairly long time. Torn out of their natural surroundings, pumped full of Power, absolutely insane…destroying everything around them with appalling ferocity. Anton, don’t confuse the forcible extraction and exploitation of the withdrawn with their resurrection. You know, if someone woke you up in the middle of the night, hit you on the head, poured shit all over you, and started yelling in your ear, you’d go on the rampage too.”
“So you’ve definitely made up your mind…,” I said and paused. I ought not to seem to surrender straightaway. Edgar couldn’t read my thoughts, I was a Higher One after all, but he’d be able to sense a lie in my intonation or the expression on my face. And so could Gennady. “Edgar, what guarantees do I have?”
“What guarantees do you mean?” he asked in amazement.
“Guarantees that when I explain everything to you, you won’t give orders for the bomb in Moscow to be detonated. And that you’ll take Schrodinger’s Cat off my neck.”
Edgar laughed. “Anything else you’d like?”
“I’m giving you a lot,” I answered.
“Will the Oath of the Light and the Dark satisfy you?”
“Edgar!” Gennady said in a chilly voice. “There are limits to everything!”
“I swear on the Light and the Dark and the equilibrium between them,” Edgar said in a steady voice, “that if you help us to obtain the Crown of All Things, I will remove Schrodinger’s Cat from your neck, will not give orders for the bomb in Moscow to be detonated, and will allow you to fight Gennady one against one. If you win, I shall cause no further hindrance to you and your family, provided that I am not attacked by you. If you lose, I vow not to undertake any measures against Svetlana and Nadya. Again provided that they do not attack me themselves. I do so swear!”
A small sphere appeared in the palm of his hand. One half of it glowed brightly and the other half was black, as if it was sucking the light into itself. The sphere revolved slowly, with light flowing into darkness and darkness flowing into light.
“One clarification,” I said. “What does ‘if I help you to obtain’ mean? When’s that?”
“When we have the Crown in our hands.”
“I don’t agree,” I said, shaking my head. “There’s a serious chance that you’ll be killed trying to obtain the Crown. But the Cat can only be removed by the person who put it on. I don’t fancy the prospect of spending the rest of my life with no magic and this piece of garbage around my neck.”
Edgar thought about it. Or, more likely, he pretended to think about it. He had probably decided long ago just how much he was willing to compromise.
“Let me clarify,” he said, looking at the sphere of Light and Dark spinning on his palm. “I shall order the bomb in Moscow not to be detonated just as soon as we all believe that what you tell us is the truth. I will remove the Cat before we set out to obtain the Crown. But you will be with us, bound by an oath not to obstruct us. That is as far as I can go.”
Now it was my turn to demonstrate the workings of my thoughts. Was I or wasn’t I prepared to accept such conditions? If I was going to tell the actual truth, then I probably ought to do a bit more haggling…
“Another clarification,” I said. “You will not only remove the Cat, you will also allow me to withdraw to a safe distance. I do not wish to be obliged to join battle on your side against my own will!”
“ Battle?” Edgar repeated curiously. “You probably don’t mean against the members of Lermont’s Watch.”
“No, I don’t,” I said with a smile. “You’ll have enough problems without them, believe me.”
“All right,” said Edgar. “I will allow you to withdraw to a safe distance before we set out to obtain the Crown. But afterward you will be obliged to come back and do battle with Gennady. He…wants that very much.”
“Agreed.” I held out my hand and said, “I swear on the Light.”
A sphere of fire appeared on my hand and immediately disappeared again. The Cat around my neck tightened in annoyance-and relaxed again. It wasn’t my magic; the Primordial Power itself decided whether to affirm a magician’s words.
“Gennady, do you confirm Edgar’s commitments?” I asked.
“Yes.” He didn’t swear on the Dark. The Primordial Power only rarely descends to vampires. But I believed him. After all, the most important thing for Gennady was to get his son and wife back. Revenge was secondary now.
Suddenly realizing that the Sphere of Silence would not prevent passengers from observing the strange lights, I glanced around.
No, everything was in order. The passenger on the other side of the aisle was sleeping. His neighbor by the window was working on his laptop. What fine fellows these businessmen were…
“It is not possible to get through to the seventh level,” I said. “There is no way. Only a zero-point magician can do it…or an Other who has dematerialized and withdrawn into the Twilight.”
Gennady tensed up. Edgar asked in an icy voice, “And is that your advice?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Merlin explained everything quite marvelously. You simply got hung up on your own idea about the seventh level of the Twilight! Well, not only you,” I added self-critically. “Merlin didn’t simply give instructions on how to obtain the Crown. He was writing about the problem in general! About how it was possible to meet one who had withdrawn.”
Edgar and Gennady exchanged glances.
Yes, that had been meant to hook them. And it had.
“Proceed, if you are as strong as I,” I declaimed. “What’s that about? It’s about traveling to the seventh level, where those who have withdrawn live! But if you don’t happen to be a zero-point magician, what then? Then you need the artifact created by Merlin. The Crown of All Things. And where do you get it? The inscription on the sixth level reads Go back, if you are as wise as I. And what do we have on the fifth level?”
“The Guard. A golem in the form of a double-headed snake,” said Edgar, screwing up his eyes.
“Head and tail, all is fused in one!” I exclaimed triumphantly. “It’s not just a guard, you idiots! It’s the artifact’s wrapping, its protection. Did you read fairy stories when you were children? It’s like the old fable: The death of Koshchei is in the egg, the egg is in the duck, the duck is in the trunk…It’s the same principle. And by the way,” I added in a sudden fit of inspiration, “I wouldn’t be surprised if, when you rip the golem in half, some other vile beast crawls out of it. Or even flies out of it. It will probably try to get away, so be prepared to take down a fast-moving flying target!”
“Thus are life and death inseparable,” Edgar said, and started thinking.
“The death of the golem is a new life for the withdrawn,” Gennady whispered. “Edgar, could this be true?”
Edgar thought. He was trying to remember something.
“By the way,” I added, “the Crown is probably the golem’s activator. Merlin inclined toward simple and elegant solutions.”