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'In principle, I'm ready,' I said.
'So what? Who are you going to ask,Anton Gorodetsky?'Afandi laughed. 'Rustam's not here. We'll go to see him,
and then you can ask your question.'
'Rustam's not here?' I asked, struck almost dumb.
'No,' Afandi replied firmly. 'I'm sorry if anything I said might have misled you. But we'll have to go to the Plateau of
the Demons.'
I thought I was beginning to understand how Geser could have quarrelled with Rustam. And I thought that Merlin,
for all his evil deeds, must have been a very kind soul and an extremely patient Other. Because Afandi was
Rustam. No crystal ball was needed to see that!
'I'll just be a moment. . .'Afandi got up and went towards a small door in the corner of the chaikhana that had the
outline of a male figure stencilled on it. It was interesting that there wasn't any door with a female silhouette.
Apparently the women of Samarkand were not in the habit of spending time in chaikhanas.
'Well, this Rustam's a real character,' I muttered while he was gone. 'As stubborn as a mule.'
'Anton, Afandi's not Rustam,' Alisher said.
'You mean you believe him?'
'Anton, ten years ago my father recognised Rustam. At the time I didn't think anything of it - the ancient Higher
One was still alive, so what? Many of them have withdrawn from the active struggle and live unobtrusive lives
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among ordinary people'
'So?'
'My father knew Afandi. He must have known him for fifty years.'
I thought about that.
'But what exactly did your father say to you about Rustam?'
Alisher wrinkled up his forehead. Then, speaking very precisely, as if he was reading from the page of a book, he
said:
'Today I saw a Great One, whom no one has met anywhere for seventy years. The Great Rustam, Geser's friend,
and then his enemy. I walked past him. We recognised each other, but pretended that we hadn't seen anything. It
is good that an Other as insignificant as I has never quarrelled with him.'
'But what of it?' I asked - it was my turn to argue now. 'Your father could finally have recognised Rustam,
disguised as Afandi. That's the point.'
Alisher thought about that and admitted that yes, it could have happened like that. But he still thought his father
hadn't meant Afandi.
'But anyway, that doesn't get us anywhere,' I said, gesturing impatiently. 'You can see how obstinate he is. We'll
have to go to the Plateau of the Demons with him ... By the way, what is that? Only don't tell me that in the East
there are demons who live on some plateau!'
Alisher laughed.
'Demons are the Twilight forms of Dark Magicians whose human nature has been distorted by Power, the Twilight
and the Dark. They teach us that in one of our very first lessons. No, the Plateau of the Demons is a human
name. It's a mountainous area where there are boulders that have fantastic shapes - just like petrified demons.
People don't like to go there. That is, only the tourists go o o '
'Tourists aren't people,' I agreed. 'So it's just common or garden superstition?'
'No, it's not all superstition,' Alisher said in a more serious voice. 'There was a battle there. A big battle between
Dark Ones and Light Ones, almost two thousand years ago. There were more Dark Ones, they were winning . . .
and then the Great White Magician Rustam used a terrible spell. Nobody has ever used the White Haze in battle
again since then. The Dark Ones were turned to stone. And they didn't dissolve into the Twilight, but tumbled out
into the ordinary world, just as they were - stone demons. What people say is true, only they don't realise it.'
I felt my heart suddenly seared by a cold, clammy, repulsive memory. I was standing facing Kostya Saushkin.
And from far away Geser's voice was whispering in my head.*
(* This story is told in the third part of the book The Twilight Watch)
The White Mist,' I said. 'The spell is called 'the White Mist'. Only Higher Magicians can work it: it requires total
concentration and the bleeding of all Power from within a radius of three kilometres . . .'
It was as if Alisher's words had broken open some lock in my memory. And the door of a closet had creaked
open to reveal an ancient skeleton, with its teeth bared in a bony grin ...
Geser had not simply given me bare knowledge. He had transferred an entire piece of his memory. A generous
gift.
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