“Yes!” I shouted, leaping to my feet. “Yes, I will! I’ll relieve you. Bring out your files, Mr. Foma Lermont!”

“I’ll bring them this very moment!” he said, also getting to his feet. “You choose, you choose!”

We stood there, glaring angrily at each other, and it was a while before we realized that both of us had tears running down our faces.

Chapter 6

I DON’T KNOW IF LERMONT REALLY WOULD HAVE BROUGHT THE FILES OR not. And I have even less idea of what I would have done if he had. I probably would have chosen a different candidate for the role of the Mirror Magician.

But we weren’t given a chance to do any of that.

First I noticed Lermont’s face change. He was looking away from me, in the direction of the road.

Then I heard the roar of an engine and I turned around.

A little white van hurtling along the road suddenly turned and easily broke through the symbolic gesture of a wooden fence that surrounded Lermont’s cottage. It braked to a halt with a wild squeal, throwing up earth and gravel from under its wheels.

The rear doors of the van had been removed. Two men jumped out of it and a third, left inside, opened fire from a machine gun mounted on a swivel.

The first to react was Foma. He had put up a Shield as soon as the van came flying into his garden. Or maybe he hadn’t put it up. Perhaps it was just a guard spell that had been installed a long time ago in order to deal with this kind of invasion.

The machine gun roared and rattled, the sound resonating in the back of the van and reaching us as if it had been amplified by a huge tin megaphone. The sound was accompanied by a stream of lead. But the bullets didn’t reach their target. They halted gently, hung in the air for a second, like some special effect in an action movie, and then fell to the ground.

The two who had jumped out, both masked in black hoods, dropped to the ground and opened fire with submachine guns. As yet, no one had gotten out of the front of the van.

Were they idiots, or what?

Semyon waved his hands a few times. I noticed he cast the benign Morpheus, which would give the attackers about ten seconds to carry on playing at soldiers, and the instantly acting Opium. But the spells didn’t work and the firing continued, with the bullets getting stuck in midair halfway between us. I looked closely…No, they weren’t Others. Just ordinary people. But each of them had the gentle glow of a protective amulet on his chest.

“Just don’t kill them!” Lermont cried out when I raised my hand.

I only had two Triple Blades ready and waiting for instant action-I hadn’t been expecting to wind up in a shootout like this. I flung both, aiming at the large machine gun. The first charge missed, but the second struck home, reducing the weapon to a heap of shredded metal. The racket quieted down a bit; now only the men with the submachine guns were firing, but rather uncertainly, as if they had just discovered the invisible barrier. That was good. Every defense has its limit of saturation; the machine-gun fire would have put it out of action fairly quickly.

We had been attacked by men! Ordinary men, equipped with protective amulets. An act that was not only absolutely unheard of, but also stupid. It’s one thing to shoot a magician from ambush, using a remote-controlled weapon. But like this, face-to-face, three gunmen against three magicians…what were they hoping to achieve?

Simply to distract our attention?

I swung around just in time to see the white smoke trail heading in our direction. The rocket had been launched from the roof of a high-rise building standing almost a kilometer away. But it was clearly remote-controlled, and it was coming straight for the arbor.

“Foma!” I shouted, throwing a Freeze in the direction of the rocket on the off chance it would be effective. But the temporal stasis spell either missed its target or the rocket had also been protected against magic. Nothing happened.

“Into the Twilight!” Lermont shouted.

Sometimes it’s better to do as you’re told rather than think up your own original moves. I stepped into the Twilight, sinking down to the second level almost immediately. Lermont was there beside me; he also considered the first level an insufficiently secure defense. But to my surprise, he didn’t stop on the second level. He waved his hand and went down deeper. Perplexed, I followed him down to the third level. What need was there for this? A powerful explosion in the real world might be felt on the first level, but it wouldn’t reach the second…and if Foma suspected the unthinkable, the most terrible thing possible, then a nuclear blast would scorch through the material of all levels of the Twilight…

The gray gloom was lit up by a white flame. The ground under our feet trembled slightly. Only slightly-but it trembled!

“Where’s Semyon?” I shouted.

Lermont merely shrugged. We waited a few more seconds for the splinters to stop flying, the flame to die away, and the smoking fragments of the arbor to stop falling in the real world.

And then we went back out.

Lermont’s neat and tidy cottage had lost all the glass in its windows and was covered with a fine sprinkling of debris. A hefty branch torn off the nearest tree by the explosion was protruding from a window on the second floor.

The small van was lying where it had been tossed onto its side. There were two motionless bodies beside it. A third man, the machine-gunner or perhaps the driver, who had prudently stayed put in his cabin, was slowly crawling away toward the fence, dragging his useless legs behind him.

I didn’t feel any particular pity for him. He was an ordinary bandit who had been used to distract our attention from the rocket attack. He’d known what he was getting into.

Where the arbor had stood there was a small crater, strewn with white scraps of wood. The playing cards were soaring and circling above our heads-a capricious chance had tossed them up into the air instead of incinerating them.

We found Semyon right beside the van. He was inside a transparent, glowing sphere that looked as if it had been carved in crystal. The sphere was slowly rolling along and Semyon, with his arms and legs held out, was turning over and over with it. His pose was such a hilarious parody of the drawing The Golden Section that I giggled stupidly. Squat and short-legged, Semyon looked nothing like the muscular athlete drawn by Leonardo da Vinci.

“A very uncomfortable spell,” Lermont said in relief. “But then, it is reliable.”

The crystal sphere cracked all over and disintegrated in a cloud of steam. Semyon, who was upside down at that moment, nimbly swung around and landed on his feet. He stuck a finger in his ear and asked, “Do they always do that around here on Saturdays, Mr. Lermont? Or is it just in honor of our arrival?”

Lermont took no notice of this simple piece of wit. He inclined his head to one side, as if he were listening to someone’s voice, and frowned. And his frown became deeper and deeper.

Then, with just a couple of gestures, he created the glowing frame of a portal in front of himself and said, “Follow me, gentlemen. I’m afraid all this was merely a diversion.”

I didn’t get the time to ask what he intended to do about the overturned van, the demolished arbor, and the crawling bandit who was already out in the street, where the neighbors could see him. A second portal opened beside the first, and Others began jumping out of it, one after another.

They weren’t simply Light Ones from the Night Watch-they were dressed in police uniforms, with bulletproof vests and helmets, and they were holding their machine pistols at the ready!

Well now, Thomas the Rhymer, aren’t you a fine one for the blather! ‘We have underestimated technology’! I can see just how badly you underestimate it…