magic...
'Don't even think about it,' I warned him.
'He doesn't need it any more,' Bruce muttered. 'He doesn't need it, but who knows who I still have to fight?'
It was disgusting, and it was also true. But to hand a dead employee over to a vampire to feed on ...
'If you drink the blood, the barrier will appear again,' I said, finally finding an argument in my favour. 'Let's go. You can hold out.'
Bruce pulled a face, but he didn't object. He hung his head low, as if he was about to butt against some barrier, and went to the fourth level.
I slipped down after him.
Bruce was standing there, holding his chest. He was shaking and there was naked fear in his eyes. There was no one there apart from Bruce. Nobody and nothing ?the dungeons had disappeared. Just sand, grey and coloured at the same time, just black boulders scattered about here and there... And a pink and white sky with no sun.
'Anton ?I can't go any deeper.'
'Have you been on the fifth level?'
'No!'
'Neither have I. Let's go!'
'I can't!' the vampire howled. 'Damn it, can't you see that I'm dying!'
'You've been dead for a long time!'
Bruce shook his head so furiously that it seemed as if he wanted to screw it off his neck.
If I'd had even the slightest suspicion that he was faking, I would have forced him to go down. Or finished him off for ever.
But going to the fourth level had clearly exhausted his final reserves of strength.
'Go and get Lermont!' I ordered him.
Clearly relieved, Bruce went dashing back the way he had come. The way a diver who is choking for breath hurtles upwards out of the fatal depths.
And I started looking for my shadow on the sand.
It had to be there. I had to cast a shadow. I was going to find it.
Otherwise something terrible was going to happen.
For instance - Merlin would rise from the dead. And a Mirror Magician would come to the assistance of the Edinburgh Night Watch, which had already suffered heavy losses. And he would maintain the equilibrium come what may.
The conjuror Egor.
And that would be his blinding moment of glory ?before he self-destructed, dissolved into the Twilight and was cast into empti ness by the remorseless will of the primordial Powers.
We had used plenty of people before, surely?
I growled, taking a step forward. I shouldn't be looking for this shadow on the sand. This shadow was inside me.
I was lashed by an icy wind - and I fell through to the fifth level of the Twilight.
And landed face down in green grass.
There was a cold, fitful wind blowing. The sunlight filtered through the purple clouds, as heavy as snow clouds, that were drifting across the sky. The rolling plain, covered with tall, prickly grass, extended all the way to the horizon. Somewhere in the distance there was thunder rumbling and lightning flashing ?flashing the wrong way, from the earth up into the sky, up into those purple clouds.
I stood up and swallowed hard ?my ears were blocked. The usual oppressive sensation of the Twilight, the creeping weariness, the desire to get back out into the real world as quickly as possible, had disappeared. The fifth layer turned out to be energetically balanced. When my eyes had adjusted and I looked more closely, it was obvious that the colours around me were not entirely alive after all. The grass was green, but pale. The clouds were more dove-grey than purple. Even the flashes of lightning were strangely subdued: they didn't sear the retinas of my eyes.
But even so ... It looked as if it was possible to live here.
I looked around me. And I saw the Guard in the flattened grass.
It was a golem ?a creature made of clay and brought to life by magic. A rare sort of thing: nobody has made them for a long, long time. A medieval robot that they sometimes tried to put to work, but more often created to guard things.
Only the classic golem looked like a clay man and he was brought to life by means of Runes inserted in a special opening. (When it came to this the magicians' sense of humour usually plumbed the depths.)
But this golem was a snake. Something like a clay anaconda ten metres long, as thick as the torso of a grown man, and with two rapaciously grinning heads - one at each end of its body. Its skin was reddish-grey, like a badly fired brick. The