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 perspiration. 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 wine-skins filled with Power. And the more that this filthy human rabble-driven together under the banner of the Dark by cruel rulers or the thirst for gain-feels hate and fear, the stronger are the Dark Magicians walking among 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 by the name of 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 mold 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 that 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 toward 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 gray 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 colors, 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 colors 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 are also 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 swallowed them, digested them, and reduced them to nothing.

Rustam and I are shaking. We have torn and bloodied each other’s skin with our nails. Well, we had been thinking for a long time of becoming blood brothers.

“Merlin said that Others would be cast out on the final level of the Twilight, the seventh…,” Rustam says in a quiet voice. “He was wrong. But this is not a bad result either…This battle will live down through the ages… It is a glorious battle.”

“Look,” I say to him. “Look, my brother.”

Rustam looks-not with his eyes, but in the way that we Others know how to look. And he turns pale.

This battle will not live down through the ages. We shall never glory in it.

To kill the enemy is valorous. To condemn him to torment is infamous. To condemn him to eternal torment is eternal infamy.

They are still alive. Turned to stone. Deprived of movement and Power, touch, vision, hearing, and all the senses granted to men and Others.

But they are alive and they will remain alive-until the stone is reduced to sand, and perhaps even longer than that.

We can see their auras quivering with life. We can see their amazement, fear, fury.

We shall not glory in this battle.

We shall not talk about it.

And we shall never again pronounce the prickly, alien words that summon up the White Mist…

Why was I looking up at Alisher? And what was the ceiling doing there behind his head?

“Are you back with us, Anton?”

I lifted myself up on my elbows and looked around.

The East is subtle. The East can be sensitive. Everyone in the chaikhana had pretended that they hadn’t seen me faint. They had left Alisher to get on with bringing me around.

“The White Mist,” I said.

“All right, all right,” said Alisher, nodding. He was seriously alarmed. “I made a mistake, not haze but mist. I’m sorry. But what reason is there to faint?”

“Rustam and Gesar used the White Mist,” I said. “And three years ago…anyway, Gesar taught me that spell. He taught me it very thoroughly. Shared his memories. Anyway…now I can remember how it all was.”

“Is it really so very grim?” Alisher asked.

“Yes, very. I don’t want to go to that place.”

“But it was all a long time ago,” Alisher said reassuringly. “It’s all over now, it’s been forgotten for ages…”

“If only…,” I said, but I didn’t try to explain. If Alisher was unlucky enough, he would see it and understand for himself. Because we would have to go to the Plateau of the Demons in any case. The Rustam in my borrowed memories was nothing at all like Afandi.

Just at that moment Afandi came back from the toilet. He sat down on his cushion, looked at me, and asked, “Decided to take a rest, did you? It’s too soon for resting, we’ll have a rest after the pilaf.”

“I’m not so sure,” I muttered as I sat down.

“Ah, what a fine thing civilization is!” Afandi went on, as if he hadn’t heard me. “You’re both young, you don’t know what blessings civilization has brought to the world.”

“Was the lightbulb in there actually working, then?” I murmured. “Alisher, ask that waiter to get a move on with the pilaf, will you?”

Alisher frowned. “You’re in a hurry…”

He got up, but just at that moment a young man appeared with a large dish. Naturally, one plate for everyone, just as it should be…reddish, crumbly rice, orange carrots, a generous amount of meat, a whole head of garlic on the top.

“I told you the food here was good,” Alisher said delightedly.

But I looked at the man who had brought the pilaf and wondered where the young boy had gone. And why this waiter was acting so nervous.

I took a handful of rice and raised it to my face. Then I looked at the waiter. He started nodding and smiling eagerly.

“Mutton in garlic sauce,” I said.

“What sauce?” Alisher asked in amazement.

“I was just remembering the wise Holmes and the naive Watson,” I replied, no longer concerned that my Russian might seem out of place. “The garlic is to cover the smell of the arsenic. You told me yourself-in the East you have to trust your nose, not your eyes. My dear fellow, have a little pilaf with us!”

The waiter shook his head and slowly backed away. Out of curiosity I took a look at him through the Twilight. The predominant colors in his aura were yellow and green. Fear. He was no professional killer. And he had brought the poisoned pilaf himself, instead of his younger brother, because he was afraid for him. It’s amazing what abominable things people will do out of love for their nearest and dearest.

Basically, it was all pure improvisation. Some filthy substance with arsenic had been found in the chaikhana, some kind of rat poison. And someone had given the order to feed us poisoned pilaf. It’s not possible to kill a powerful Other that way, but they could easily have weakened and distracted us.