believe him?'
'Anton, ten years ago my father recognised Rustam. At the time I didn't think anything of it - the ancient Higher One was still alive, so what? Many of them have withdrawn from the active struggle and live unobtrusive lives among ordinary people?
'So?'
'My father knew Afandi. He must have known him for fifty years.'
I thought about that.
'But what exactly did your father say to you about Rustam?'
Alisher wrinkled up his forehead. Then, speaking very precisely, as if he was reading from the page of a book, he said:
'Today I saw a Great One, whom no one has met anywhere for seventy years. The Great Rustam, Geser's friend, and then his enemy. I walked past him. We recognised each other, but pretended that we hadn't seen anything. It is good that an Other as insignifi cant as I has never quarrelled with him.'
'But what of it?' I asked ?it was my turn to argue now. 'Your father could finally have recognised Rustam, disguised as Afandi. That's the point.'
Alisher thought about that and admitted that yes, it could have happened like that. But he still thought his father hadn't meant Afandi.
'But anyway, that doesn't get us anywhere,' I said, gesturing impatiently. 'You can see how obstinate he is. We'll have to go to the Plateau of the Demons with him ... By the way, what is that? Only don't tell me that in the East there are demons who live on some plateau!'
Alisher laughed.
'Demons are the Twilight forms of Dark Magicians whose human nature has been distorted by Power, the Twilight and the Dark. They teach us that in one of our very first lessons. No, the Plateau of the Demons is a human name. It's a mountainous area where there are boulders that have fantastic shapes - just like petrified demons. People don't like to go there. That is, only the tourists go ??'
'Tourists aren't people,' I agreed. 'So it's just common or garden superstition?'
'No, it's not all superstition,' Alisher said in a more serious voice. 'There was a battle there. A big battle between Dark Ones and Light Ones, almost two thousand years ago. There were more Dark Ones, they were winning... and then the Great White Magician Rustam used a terrible spell. Nobody has ever used the White Haze in battle again since then. The Dark Ones were turned to stone. And they didn't dissolve into the Twilight, but tumbled out into the ordinary world, just as they were ?stone demons. What people say is true, only they don't realise it.'
I felt my heart suddenly seared by a cold, clammy, repulsive memory. I was standing facing Kostya Saushkin. And from far away Geser's voice was whispering in my head.*
( * This story is told in the third part of the book The Twilight Watch)
The White Mist,' I said. 'The spell is called 'the White Mist'. Only Higher Magicians can work it: it requires total concentration and the bleeding of all Power from within a radius of three kilometres...'
It was as if Alisher's words had broken open some lock in my memory. And the door of a closet had creaked open to reveal an ancient skeleton, with its teeth bared in a bony grin ...
Geser had not simply given me bare knowledge. He had trans ferred an entire piece of his memory. A generous gift.
Part Two CHAPTER 5
... The stone burns your feet through the soft leather shoes, because the stone is red-hot, and even the spells applied to your clothes lose their effect. And up ahead someone's body is smoking, half sunk into the softened stone. Not all of our comrades' charms have withstood the Hammer of Fate.
'Geser!' a broad-shouldered man shouts in my ear. His short black beard has turned frizzy in the heat, his red-and-white clothes are dusted with black ash. Lacy black-and-grey flakes are falling on us from above, crumbling into dust as they fall. 'Geser, we have to decide!'
I say nothing. I look at the smoking body and try to recog nise who it is. But then his defence finally collapses, and the body . explodes into a column of greasy ashes that shoots up into the sky. The streams of dispersing Power waft the ashes about and for a moment they assume the spectral form of a human figure. I realise what it is that is falling on us, and a lump rises in my throat.
'Geser, they're trying to raise the Shade of the Rulers. 'The voice of the magician dressed in red