“Edgar!” Gennady said in a chilly voice. “There are limits to everything!”

“I swear on the Light and the Dark and the equilibrium between them,” Edgar said in a steady voice, “that if you help us to obtain the Crown of All Things, I will remove Schrodinger’s Cat from your neck, will not give orders for the bomb in Moscow to be detonated, and will allow you to fight Gennady one against one. If you win, I shall cause no further hindrance to you and your family, provided that I am not attacked by you. If you lose, I vow not to undertake any measures against Svetlana and Nadya. Again provided that they do not attack me themselves. I do so swear!”

A small sphere appeared in the palm of his hand. One half of it glowed brightly and the other half was black, as if it was sucking the light into itself. The sphere revolved slowly, with light flowing into darkness and darkness flowing into light.

“One clarification,” I said. “What does ‘if I help you to obtain’ mean? When’s that?”

“When we have the Crown in our hands.”

“I don’t agree,” I said, shaking my head. “There’s a serious chance that you’ll be killed trying to obtain the Crown. But the Cat can only be removed by the person who put it on. I don’t fancy the prospect of spending the rest of my life with no magic and this piece of garbage around my neck.”

Edgar thought about it. Or, more likely, he pretended to think about it. He had probably decided long ago just how much he was willing to compromise.

“Let me clarify,” he said, looking at the sphere of Light and Dark spinning on his palm. “I shall order the bomb in Moscow not to be detonated just as soon as we all believe that what you tell us is the truth. I will remove the Cat before we set out to obtain the Crown. But you will be with us, bound by an oath not to obstruct us. That is as far as I can go.”

Now it was my turn to demonstrate the workings of my thoughts. Was I or wasn’t I prepared to accept such conditions? If I was going to tell the actual truth, then I probably ought to do a bit more haggling…

“Another clarification,” I said. “You will not only remove the Cat, you will also allow me to withdraw to a safe distance. I do not wish to be obliged to join battle on your side against my own will!”

“ Battle?” Edgar repeated curiously. “You probably don’t mean against the members of Lermont’s Watch.”

“No, I don’t,” I said with a smile. “You’ll have enough problems without them, believe me.”

“All right,” said Edgar. “I will allow you to withdraw to a safe distance before we set out to obtain the Crown. But afterward you will be obliged to come back and do battle with Gennady. He…wants that very much.”

“Agreed.” I held out my hand and said, “I swear on the Light.”

A sphere of fire appeared on my hand and immediately disappeared again. The Cat around my neck tightened in annoyance-and relaxed again. It wasn’t my magic; the Primordial Power itself decided whether to affirm a magician’s words.

“Gennady, do you confirm Edgar’s commitments?” I asked.

“Yes.” He didn’t swear on the Dark. The Primordial Power only rarely descends to vampires. But I believed him. After all, the most important thing for Gennady was to get his son and wife back. Revenge was secondary now.

Suddenly realizing that the Sphere of Silence would not prevent passengers from observing the strange lights, I glanced around.

No, everything was in order. The passenger on the other side of the aisle was sleeping. His neighbor by the window was working on his laptop. What fine fellows these businessmen were…

“It is not possible to get through to the seventh level,” I said. “There is no way. Only a zero-point magician can do it…or an Other who has dematerialized and withdrawn into the Twilight.”

Gennady tensed up. Edgar asked in an icy voice, “And is that your advice?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Merlin explained everything quite marvelously. You simply got hung up on your own idea about the seventh level of the Twilight! Well, not only you,” I added self-critically. “Merlin didn’t simply give instructions on how to obtain the Crown. He was writing about the problem in general! About how it was possible to meet one who had withdrawn.”

Edgar and Gennady exchanged glances.

Yes, that had been meant to hook them. And it had.

“Proceed, if you are as strong as I,” I declaimed. “What’s that about? It’s about traveling to the seventh level, where those who have withdrawn live! But if you don’t happen to be a zero-point magician, what then? Then you need the artifact created by Merlin. The Crown of All Things. And where do you get it? The inscription on the sixth level reads Go back, if you are as wise as I. And what do we have on the fifth level?”

“The Guard. A golem in the form of a double-headed snake,” said Edgar, screwing up his eyes.

“Head and tail, all is fused in one!” I exclaimed triumphantly. “It’s not just a guard, you idiots! It’s the artifact’s wrapping, its protection. Did you read fairy stories when you were children? It’s like the old fable: The death of Koshchei is in the egg, the egg is in the duck, the duck is in the trunk…It’s the same principle. And by the way,” I added in a sudden fit of inspiration, “I wouldn’t be surprised if, when you rip the golem in half, some other vile beast crawls out of it. Or even flies out of it. It will probably try to get away, so be prepared to take down a fast-moving flying target!”

“Thus are life and death inseparable,” Edgar said, and started thinking.

“The death of the golem is a new life for the withdrawn,” Gennady whispered. “Edgar, could this be true?”

Edgar thought. He was trying to remember something.

“By the way,” I added, “the Crown is probably the golem’s activator. Merlin inclined toward simple and elegant solutions.”

“There have been two cases in history when a golem-guard also served as the casing for what it was guarding,” Edgar said. “And the first to use this artful trick was one of Merlin’s pupils.”

In my own mind I gave thanks to this unknown magician for so aptly confirming what I had said. But outwardly all I did was nod pensively.

“There, you see. Merlin probably told him about his own idea. Or perhaps he helped his teacher to make the snake-golem.”

Edgar nodded and said, “If only we had the Rune…It was the simplest thing in the world to neutralize the golem with it.”

He believed me.

“It’s your own fault,” I said. “Instead of organizing secret societies, you should have opened up your ideas for general discussion. All Others have lost someone at some time…”

“You have no idea how strong the bureaucracy is,” Edgar said in disgust. “The discussion would have gone on for a hundred years. And in the end they would have decided not to do anything.”

“That can’t be true,” I protested.

“You’re simply too young…and too remote from the administrative structures. Gesar and Zabulon would agree with me.”

I shrugged. Perhaps they would.

I wondered if Gesar had anyone to grieve for. He loved Olga, and now she was with him. He had even managed to make his son an Other. But surely over hundreds of years the Great Gesar must have lost loved ones, friends, children. And some of them must have been Others, not ordinary people. Others who had withdrawn into the Twilight.

And Zabulon? Of course, as he now was, Zabulon didn’t love anyone. But could that always have been the case? He had been a child once, the same as all other children, except that he was a potential Other. He happened to have taken the path of Darkness. But it wasn’t possible that he had never loved anyone! Even Dark Ones can love…

An interesting little situation. In principle, the activities of the Last Watch worked to Gesar’s and Zabulon’s advantage! Any Other of any serious age had to be delighted by the idea of bringing back the withdrawn.