and white is full of panic and horror. 'Geser!'
'I'm ready, Rustam,' I say. I reach out my hand to him. Magicians do not often work spells in pairs, but we have been through a lot together. And it's easier for two to do it. Easier to take the decision. Because there are hundreds of Dark Ones and tens of thousands of men in front of us.
And behind us there are only a hundred people who have put their trust in us and about ten apprentice magicians.
It's not easy to convince yourself that a hundred and ten are worth more than a hundred and ten thousand.
But I look at the black-and-grey ash, and suddenly I feel better. I tell myself what powerful and benign individuals will always tell themselves in a situation like this, in a hundred, a thousand, or two thousand years.
These are not people facing me!
These are raging beasts!
The Power flows through me, the Power floods my veins with an effervescent broth, emerging onto my skin as bloody perspir ation. There is so much Power all around: flowing out of the dead Others; dissipating from the spells that have been pronounced; flooding out of the men running into the attack. The Dark Ones knew what they were doing when they brought an entire army with them. Others do not fear the weapons of men, but the arms waving swords, the screaming mouths set in fierce grins and the eyes craving death belong to living wineskins filled with Power.
And the more this filthy human rabble - driven together under the banner of the Dark by cruel rulers or the thirst for gain -hates and fears, the stronger are the Dark Magicians walking amongst them.
But we have one spell in reserve, a spell that has never yet been uttered beneath this sun. It was brought back by Rustam from an island far away in the north, where it was invented by a cunning Light One called Merlin: but even he, who stood so dangerously close to the Dark, had been horrified by it...
The White Mist.
Rustam pronounces strange, coarse-sounding words. I repeat them after him, without even trying to understand their meaning. The words are important, but they are only the hand of the potter, giving shape to the clay, shaping the clay mould into which the molten metal will be poured, creating bronze manacles that allow no freedom to the hands. There are words at the beginning and end, words provide the form and the direction, but it is Power that decides everything.
Power and Will.
I can no longer hold back the force that is pulsing within me, ready to tear my pitiful human body apart with every beat of my heart. I open my mouth at the same time as Rustam. I shout, but I shout without words.
The time for words is over.
The White Mist surges out of our mouths in a murky, billowing wave - and it rolls on towards the advancing army and the circle of Dark Magicians, who are weaving the cobweb of their spell... no less terrifying, but slower... just a little bit slower. The grey shadows that are just beginning to rise out of the stone are swept aside by the White Mist.
And then the White Mist reaches the Others and the human warriors.
The world in front of us loses its colours, but not in the same way that this happens in the Twilight. The world turns white, but it is the whiteness of death, not life, a displacement of colours that is as sterile as their absence. The Twilight shudders and collapses, layer upon layer adhering to each other, pulling the men screaming in pain and the Others struck dumb by fear in between its icy millstones.
And the world congeals.
The white gloom disperses. The ash falling from the sky is still there. The red-hot ground beneath our feet is still there. And there too are the petrified figures of the Others ?freakish and bizarre, often entirely unlike human forms. They have been turned to granite and sandstone, coarsened and warped. A shape-shifter who was transforming into a tiger, a vampire who had fallen to the ground, magicians with their hands raised in a vain attempt to protect themselves...
There is not a trace left of the humans. The Twilight has swal lowed them, digested them and reduced them to nothing.
Rustam and I are shaking. We have torn and bloodied each others skin with our nails. Well, we had been thinking for a long time of becoming