But my hand was seared by an icy chill…

The ranks of Others shuddered. Slowly, involuntarily, they began moving toward me. There was hunger and envy in their eyes-in all of their eyes, even Tiger Cub’s, even Igor’s. Even Murat’s…

“Stop!” Merlin shouted. He darted forward and stood between me and the withdrawn Others, raising his hands high in the air. I noticed that he carefully skirted around me to avoid touching me.

“Stop, you mad fools! A few minutes of life…that is not what we want, not what we have been waiting for!”

They stopped and looked at one another with embarrassment. Then they moved back. But the hungry fire was still blazing in their eyes.

“Leave now, Anton,” Merlin said. “You understand everything and you know what you have to do. Go!”

“I can’t get through. The Last Watch is up there,” I said. “Unless your golem has stopped them…”

Merlin looked straight through me at something. Then he sighed. “The golem is dead. Both golems are dead. A pity, I used to go up to the fifth level sometimes and play with the snake. But it was sad and lonely too.”

“Can you take me through?” I asked.

Merlin shook his head. “Not many of us are capable of going up to the fifth level. Only a very few can reach the first level, and even so we are powerless there.”

“I won’t be able to get past them,” I said. “And I can’t go straight forward to the seventh level either.”

We smiled at each other.

“You will be helped,” Merlin said. “Only, do everything right, I beg of you.”

I nodded.

I didn’t know if it would work. All I could do was try.

The next moment the air around me started to vibrate as if something seething with a huge excess of Power had broken through the Twilight. What levels, what distances? What did these mean in the face of this Power resonating in awareness of its own self?

Little Nadya stepped down onto the grass. She waved her arms about but couldn’t keep her balance and plopped down onto her bottom, looking up at me.

“Get up,” I said strictly. “It’s damp!”

Nadya jumped to her feet, dusted off her velvet jumpsuit, and jabbered, “Mommy taught me how to walk into the shadow! That’s one! And there was a monkey and a snake fighting, and they both beat each other. That’s two! Two men and a woman were watching the snake and saying very bad words. That’s three! And Mommy told me to bring you straight back home for supper! That’s four!”

She gulped when she saw the huge crowd around her, then lowered her eyes in embarrassment and said in a polite little girl’s voice, “Hello…”

“Hello,” said Merlin, squatting down in front of her. “Are you Nadezhda?”

“Yes,” Nadya said proudly.

“I’m glad I’ve seen you,” said Merlin. “Take your daddy home. Only not straight home. First go back to the sleeping people. And then home.”

“Backward means forward?” Nadya asked.

“That’s right.”

“You look like a wizard from a cartoon,” Nadya said suspiciously. Just to be on the safe side, she took hold of my hand, and that clearly made her feel more confident.

“I used to be a wizard,” Merlin confessed.

“A good one or a bad one?”

“All kinds,” he said with a sad smile. “Go now, Nadezhda.”

Nadya cast a wary look at Merlin and asked me, “Shall we go, Daddy?”

“Yes, let’s go,” I said.

I turned around and nodded to Merlin, who was watching us silently, in sad anticipation. The first to raise her hand and wave good-bye was Tiger Cub. Then Alisa. And then they were all waving to us…waving good-bye forever.

And when my daughter, the newly initiated Absolute Enchantress, took a step forward, I stepped after her, holding her hand in order not to lose my way in the swirling vortex of Power that had completed its circle and was returning us to our world.

Because the Twilight, of course, has no end, just as no ring or circle has an end.

Because the warmth of human love and the cold of human hate, the running of beasts and the singing of birds, the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings and the sprouting of a grain through the earth do not pass away, leaving no trace. Because the universal stream of living Power out of which parasites like the blue moss and the Others greedily snatch their crumbs does not disappear without a trace-it returns to the world that is awaiting rebirth.

Because we all live on the seventh level of the Twilight.

Epilogue

“HOW! LOVELY! IT IS! HERE!” NADYA EXCLAIMED.

I picked her up in my arms. We were standing on a cobbled street in Edinburgh, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of sleeping people. The sirens were drawing closer and closer as the time of the Others was coming to an end.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Everything here is real.”

“Only, everyone’s sleeping,” Nadya observed sadly. “Like in the fairy story about the sleeping princess. Can I wake them up?”

She could… She could do anything at all now-if she was taught.

“But aren’t you tired?” I asked. My legs were buckling under me and I was feeling a bit dizzy.

“What from?” Nadya asked in surprise.

“In a little while,” I said. “Just a little while, we’ll wake everyone up…all those we can. Daddy just has to do one thing that’s very important first. Will you help me?”

“How?”

“Just hold my hand,” I said. I closed my eyes and flung out my arms. I held my breath.

I had to feel this city. The stones and the walls that remembered Merlin and Arthur. People might have forgotten, but the stones remembered. The ancient fortress, set above the city like a crown, remembered too, and it was waiting.

Why were we so stupid sometimes? Why did we expect magic to be hidden in something we could hold in our hands when it could be everywhere all around us?

Of course, Merlin hadn’t hidden his most important creation in the Twilight. He hadn’t put his trust in the strength of the golem, but he hadn’t put it in the strength of oak chests, either. This ancient fortress had stood on the cliff for fifteen hundred years. It had been defended and captured, it had been destroyed and rebuilt, the proud kings of Scotland had kept their treasures in it-and the stones covered with runes that Merlin had laid in the deepest foundations had been waiting for their time to come.

I only had to reach out to them. Touch them. Feel them…

“Light One!” someone roared behind me. I looked around, emerging from my trance.

Edgar and Arina were standing there, just looking at me-and I was astonished to discover that their eyes were full of fear. Gennady was running toward me. Running and shouting. Surely he didn’t think that the strength of magic depended on how loud you shouted? He came rushing toward me, taking immense bounds, transforming as he advanced, looking less and less like a human being. His fangs were growing, his skin was turning the color of death, the hair on his head was falling out in tangled gray skeins.

I raised my hand, gathering Power for the Gray Prayer.

But just then Nadya stepped forward and shrieked in the vampire’s face, “Don’t shout at my daddy!”

Gennady staggered. What had struck him was more powerful than his hate. But he couldn’t stop; he kept moving forward as if he was running against a hurricane. And he collapsed at our feet. Nadya squealed and hid behind me.

I squatted down and looked into Gennady Saushkin’s eyes. He looked at me and asked, “Can’t they come?”

“No, they can’t come. And they would never have been able to. But I will do what they asked me to. Go, while there is still time.”

“Help me, Anton,” he said in an almost normal voice.

“Nadya, look the other way!” I ordered.

“I’m not looking, I’m not!” my daughter mumbled, turning away and putting her hands over her eyes to make quite sure.

I raised my hand, with Gennady watching my movements as if he was already spellbound. And the Gray Prayer dispatched the vampire to the sixth level of the Twilight.