“Yes, yes, yes,” Eric said more brightly. “Edgar. Of course. No, we haven’t sent him to Samarkand.”

“Then who have you sent?”

“I don’t know if you are aware of the fact, Anton,” Eric said with undisguised irony, “but the European Bureau deals with Europe. And also with Russia, owing to its ambivalent geographic location. We don’t have either the resources or the desire to take on events in Asia, where the country of Uzbekistan is located. You need to contact the Asian Bureau, which at the moment is located in Beijing. Shall I give you the number?”

“No, thank you,” I replied. “And where is Edgar now?”

“On leave. For”-there was a brief pause-“for a month already. Is there anything else?”

“A word of advice,” I said, unable to restrain myself. “Check where Inquisitor Edgar was during the events in Edinburgh that you already know about.”

“Just a moment, Anton,” said Eric, finally losing his cool. “Are you trying to tell me-”

“That’s all I have to say,” I blurted into the phone.

Gesar who, of course, had listened to every single word of the conversation, immediately cut Eric off and said, “Congratulations, Anton. We’ve figured out who one of the three is. You’ve figured it out.”

“Thanks for the SIM card,” I replied. “If it hadn’t distorted my location signal, I’d already be dead.”

“It’s actually intended to make your voice sound convincing when you talk to people on the phone,” said Gesar. “The location malfunction is a side effect. I just can’t seem to get rid of it. All right, carry on the good work! We’ll get straight on to Edgar.”

I looked at the phone pensively, then cut the connection and put it in my pocket. Had Gesar been joking about making my voice sound convincing, or was it the truth?

“Edgar,” Alisher said in a satisfied voice. “So it was Edgar! I knew Dark Ones couldn’t be trusted. Not even Inquisitors.”

Chapter 6

WE DROVE ONTO THE PLATEAU OF THE DEMONS AT HALF PAST THREE IN the morning. On the way we passed an aul, a tiny settlement in the mountains-fewer than ten small clay-walled houses set back a little way from the road. There was a bonfire on the only small street, with people crowding around it-ten or twenty of them, no more than that. The earthquake had evidently frightened the inhabitants of the aul and they were afraid to spend the night in their houses.

Alisher was still driving. I was alternately dozing on the backseat and thinking about Edgar.

What had made him go against the Watches and the Inquisition? Why had he broken every possible taboo and involved human beings in his machinations?

I couldn’t understand it. Edgar was a careerist, like all Dark Ones, of course he was. He could kill if necessary. He could do absolutely anything at all, Dark Ones had no moral prohibitions. But to do something that set him in opposition to all Others-that could only be explained by insanity or a thirst for Power. And then, Edgar had so much Baltic restraint and reserve. Spending decades crawling up the career ladder was easy. But staking everything on a single throw of the dice?

What had he found out about the Crown of All Things? What information had he dug up in the archives of the Inquisition? Who else had he managed to involve? The Dark vampire and the Light Healer-who were they? Where were they from? Why had they conspired with an Inquisitor? What goals could a Dark One, a Light One, and an Inquisitor have in common?

But then, the goal wasn’t too hard to figure out. The goal was always one and the same: Power. Power in all its forms. You could say that we Light Ones were different. That we didn’t need Power for Power’s sake, but only in order to help people. And that was probably true. But we still needed Power. Every Other is familiar with that sweet temptation, that delicious sensation of his own strength: the vampire, sucking on a young girl’s throat; the healer, saving a dying child with a wave of his hand. What difference did it make what it was for? Every Other would find a way to apply the might that he acquired.

I was far more concerned about another point. Edgar had been involved in the business with the Fuaran. He had been in contact with Kostya Saushkin.

And that brought me back to that unfortunate youth, Victor Prokhorov. The boy Vitya, who had been friends with the boy Kostya…

Again and again everything pointed to Kostya Saushkin. What if he had managed to survive somehow? If he’d used his final scraps of Power to erect some kind of vampire Shield around himself and lived long enough to set up a portal and disappear from his burning space suit? And then he’d gotten in touch with Edgar?

No, it was impossible, of course. The Inquisition had checked the matter very carefully. But what if Edgar had already been playing a double game, even then? And he had falsified the results of the investigation?

But even so, it still didn’t add up. Why would he save a vampire he had just been hunting? Save him and then conspire with him? What could Kostya do for him? Without the Fuaran-nothing! And the book had been destroyed, that was absolutely certain. It had been observed just as carefully as Kostya. And its destruction had been confirmed by magical means. The discharge of energy when such a powerful and ancient artifact is destroyed is quite impossible to confuse with anything else.

Basically, there was no way that Edgar could have saved Kostya-that was the first conclusion. And he didn’t have any need to save him-that was the second.

But even so, even so…

Alisher stopped the jeep and switched off the engine. The silence that fell was deafening.

“I think we’re here,” he said. He stroked the steering wheel and added: “A good little car. I didn’t think we’d make it.”

I turned back toward Afandi, but he was no longer asleep. He was looking at the freakish stone figures scattered about in front of us, with his lips tightly pressed together.

“Still standing there,” I said.

Afandi glanced at me in genuine fright.

“I know about it,” I explained.

“It was a bad business,” Afandi said with a sigh. “Ugly. Not worthy of a Light One.”

“Afandi, are you Rustam?”

Afandi shook his head. “No, Anton. I’m not Rustam. I’m his pupil.”

He opened the door and climbed out of the car. After pausing for a second, he murmured, “I am not Rustam, but I will be Rustam…”

Alisher and I glanced at each other and got out of the car too.

It was quiet and cool-it’s always cool in the mountains at night, even in summer. And it was just starting to get light. The plateau that I knew from Gesar’s memories had hardly changed at all. Except perhaps that the outlines of the stone figures had been softened by the wind and the rare showers of rain: They were less clearly defined, but were still recognizable. A group of magicians with their hands raised in invocatory spells, a werewolf, a magician running…

I started to shiver.

“What is this…,” Alisher whispered. “What happened here?”

He reached into his pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

“Give me one too,” I said.

We lit up. The air around us was so pure that the sharp smell of tobacco seemed like a memory of home, a reminder of the smog of the city.

“These…were they people?” Alisher asked, pointing to the blocks of stone.

“Others,” I told him.

“And they…”

“They didn’t die. They turned to stone. Lost all their external senses. But their reason remained, attached to the lumps of rock.” I looked at Afandi, but he was still standing there, pensively examining the field of the ancient battle, or watching the eastern horizon, where the sky had turned slightly pink.

Then I looked at the plateau through the Twilight.

The sight was genuinely bloodcurdling.