“Anton?”

There was a clear note of curiosity in Lermont’s voice.

“How does that third line go? You translated it as ‘You shall receive all and nothing, when you are able to take it,’ remember? What’s the point here: ‘You shall receive everything and lose everything’ or ‘You shall receive everything, but you don’t need it’?”

Thomas grunted and recited the line in Old English. “‘With it thou shalt acquire all-and nothing shalt thou get…’”

Well, thanks a bunch for not saying it in Welsh…

“That means?” I asked, determined to get it clear.

“It means that if you get it, you will receive something that you personally don’t need, although it is very important-global, universal.”

“Thank you, Foma!”

“Brainstorming?” Lermont inquired. “Good luck. We’re not wasting our time here either, we’re working-”

I cut the connection. I wondered if Edgar and Gennady had heard our conversation and was suddenly surprised to realize that I was enthralled by the task. Despite the noose on my neck. Despite the blackmail. Despite the vampire and the crazed Inquisitor sitting there with me. I wanted to understand. I wanted to solve Merlin’s riddle. I could never be as powerful as him, but maybe I could at least rival him intellectually.

I wanted to believe I could.

Proceed, if you are as strong as I;

Or go back, if you are as wise as I.

Right. We’d come back to that phrase. The meaning was more or less clear. The strong could proceed and attain the goal following Merlin’s route. The wise would go back and choose the other way around.

Beginning and end, head and tail, all is fused in one.

That was probably just flowery speech. Alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. Head and tail? Maybe that was a hint at the golem on the fifth level of the Twilight.

Maybe this line had to be thought about seriously after all.

In the Crown of All Things. Thus are life and death inseparable.

This bit probably referred to the application of the spell. Life and death are inseparable. The Others who have withdrawn into the Twilight will come to life again, return to our world… I wondered if that was what they wanted? I’d almost had to drag Thomas the Rhymer out of there, he’d wanted to stay so much, to taste the joys of the magical heaven.

I imagined the resurrected Kostya yelling at his father, “Did I ask you to resurrect me?” Was that a possibility?

I didn’t know. I couldn’t understand a thing. Oh, but Thomas could hardly be right. He was caught in the trap of his own dream, just as Edgar and Gennady were blinded by theirs. That inhabitant of the Twilight who had managed to reach the first level, and had even saved me, you could say, by showing me the way to the Dark Ones’ headquarters such a long time ago, hadn’t looked very happy with things. I wondered who he was and why he had helped me. How had he ever found out about what was happening from down there in the spectral Twilight depths of creation?

Questions, questions, and no answers to them!

Beginning and end, head and tail, all is fused in one.

There seemed to be something in this, though. Head and tail-that was the bit that I couldn’t get out of my mind. Whose head was fused with his tail down there? That is, if I didn’t take the golem-monster with teeth in both tails seriously as a candidate.

But why not take it almost seriously?

Not for me, of course. For our own dear Last Watch.

So, let’s suppose the Crown of All Things was concealed in the body of this miserable two-headed beast. Somewhere in the middle, where one part ended and the other began. Where head and tail were indistinguishable…Go back-that is, to the fifth level, and you’ll find it there!

Well, that sounded very convincing. If I could say it with a straight face. They didn’t have the Rune, and Edgar wasn’t likely to be able to get it. Just let them try to destroy a golem created by Merlin!

Of course, if the Crown of All Things really was found in the belly of that creeping horror, then that would be…that would be very annoying.

But I doubted that would be the outcome.

“You’re smiling,” said Gennady. “What have you come up with?”

“Quiet,” I said. “I’m soaring on the wings of inspiration. Better give me some cognac.”

Gennady pursed his lips and said nothing.

Absorbed in my thoughts and surrounded by a cocoon of total silence, I completely missed the moment of take-off. When I looked out the window, we were already high up above the first layer of clouds, the first level. Aagh, now I was seeing levels that had to be broken through everywhere!

Yes, there was definitely something about that line that stuck in my mind. Head and tail, right? I’d heard about that somewhere. In magic? No, more likely in folklore. In some beliefs or other…yes, of course! Egyptian myths and, later, European ones. Alchemical treatises. Buddhism, in the form of the wheel of Samsara, rebirth…

Ouroboros. The snake devouring its own tail.

I felt goose pimples rising on my skin. It was no accident that Merlin had set a two-headed snake to guard the fifth level…The Crown wasn’t in it, of course.

But it was a hint, and a very clear one!

The beginning and the end. It gives birth to itself, fertilizes itself, and kills itself. An eternal and unchanging force that is dissolved in space and then restored again, the eternal circle of time, a defense against Chaos and Darkness, safeguarding the universe, enclosing and supporting the world, bringing life into death and death into life, simultaneously motionless and moving…

Death and resurrection.

An eternal stream of Power, dying and being reborn…

I understood.

I understood everything.

My fingers started trembling and I grabbed tight hold of the armrests. I caught Gennady’s suspicious glance and said, “I’m afraid of flying. Get me some cognac, OK? Be a real man, even if not for very long.”

Gennady got up without saying a word and beckoned to the flight attendant.

Ouroboros.

The beginning and the end. Life and death. The circle of Power maintaining the universe.

I understood it all. I was the first since Merlin. Now I had something to be proud of, if only I could manage to stay alive!

“You’ve thought of something,” said Edgar. Half-standing, he leaned forward over the back of my seat and looked into my eyes curiously. “Ah, Anton! I was right. You do have an idea.”

“I do,” I said, not trying to deny anything, “Edgar, I want to ask you one more time-are you sure that it’s safe to bring out those who have withdrawn? You know what the Shade of the Rulers is, don’t you?”

“I know,” said Edgar, and his face darkened. “It summons magicians who have withdrawn back from the sixth level, where they can exist for a fairly long time. Torn out of their natural surroundings, pumped full of Power, absolutely insane…destroying everything around them with appalling ferocity. Anton, don’t confuse the forcible extraction and exploitation of the withdrawn with their resurrection. You know, if someone woke you up in the middle of the night, hit you on the head, poured shit all over you, and started yelling in your ear, you’d go on the rampage too.”

“So you’ve definitely made up your mind…,” I said and paused. I ought not to seem to surrender straightaway. Edgar couldn’t read my thoughts, I was a Higher One after all, but he’d be able to sense a lie in my intonation or the expression on my face. And so could Gennady. “Edgar, what guarantees do I have?”

“What guarantees do you mean?” he asked in amazement.

“Guarantees that when I explain everything to you, you won’t give orders for the bomb in Moscow to be detonated. And that you’ll take Schrodinger’s Cat off my neck.”

Edgar laughed. “Anything else you’d like?”

“I’m giving you a lot,” I answered.

“Will the Oath of the Light and the Dark satisfy you?”