experiments had only made him more and more human . . .

It sounded rather convincing. I scratched the back of my head. So . . . it turned out that I was far less gifted for magic than the hopeless alcoholic Kolya? And only thanks to that lack of ability was I able to make use of the Twilight? Well, try to figure that out.

And Svetlana, it turned out, had an even lower level of 'affinity'?

And theoretically Nadiushka had no gift for magic at all? And that was why the power simply flooded into her the way it did – here, take it and use it?

Oh, those witches, they were really smart!

The next chapter discussed whether it was possible to raise the level of Power in nature, so that a larger number of people would become Others. The conclusion was disappointing – it wasn't possible. After all, Power was not only used by Others, who in principle could refrain from magical actions temporarily. Power was also gleefully consumed by blue moss, the only plant known to live at the first level of the Twilight. If there was more Power, the twilight moss would grow more abundantly . . . And there might be other consumers of Power at the deeper levels of the Twilight . . . So the level of Power was a constant – I laughed out loud at finding that word in the archaic book.

All this was followed by the actual story of the book Fuaran. The title was derived from the name of an ancient eastern witch who wanted desperately to turn her daughter into an Other. The witch experimented for a long time – first she went down the same path as Gilles de Retz, then she realised her mistake and began trying to increase the level of Power in nature. In fact, she followed every false trail, and eventually realised that she needed to 'reduce her daughter's affinity for sorcery'. According to the rumours, her attempts to do this were recorded in Fuaran. The situation was complicated by the fact that in those times the nature of the 'affinity' was unknown – but then it wasn't known at the time this book was written either, and the situation still hadn't changed today. Nonetheless, through a process of trial and error, the witch succeeded in turning her daughter into an Other!

Unfortunately for the witch, a great discovery like that attracted the interest of every single Other. Back then there was no Treaty, no Watches and no Inquisition, and so everyone who heard rumours of the miracle made a dash to get their hands on the formula. For a while Fuaran and her daughter managed to beat off the attacks – apparently the already mighty witch had not only turned her daughter into a powerful Other, but also increased her own grade of power. The aggrieved Others banded together into an army of magicians, with no division between Dark Ones and Light Ones, struck all together and wiped out the family of witches in a terrible battle. In her final hour Fuaran fought desperately for her life – she even transformed her human servants into Others . . . but although they acquired power, they were too disoriented and unskilled. One of the servants turned out to be cleverer than the others, and didn't hang around, but just grabbed the book and ran. By the time the victorious magicians realised that the witch's 'laboratory notes' had disappeared (essentially that was all Fuaran was, lab notes), the fugitive's tracks were already cold. The fruitless search for the book went on for a long time. Occasionally someone would claim that he had met the runaway servant, who had become a rather powerful Other, and that they had seen the book and looked through it. Counterfeit books also appeared, some of them produced by crazy followers of the witch, some by Other swindlers. All the cases were thoroughly analysed and documented in the book.

The final chapter contained a discussion of the theme 'What did Fuaran invent?' The authors had no doubt that she really had succeeded, but they believed the book had been lost forever. The reluctant conclusion was that her discovery was so fortuitous and original that its essential nature was impossible to guess.

But what surprised me most of all was the brief résumé – if the book Fuaran still existed, it was the duty of every Other to destroy it immediately, 'for reasons clear to everyone, despite