“The Temple of Eternal Skip… The temple, over which neither Light nor Gloom has any authority… The Temple is so ancient that all the civilizations of Earth are only sand at its feet,” dreamily repeated Yagge. “Indeed, indeed, I was there. Frightfully long ago. Then there wasn’t even a trace of Tibidox, and Buyan only just stuck its top out of the ocean… Middle Earth, somewhere between Eden and Hades! A foolish moronoid taking it into his head to find them on the globe would only spoil his eyesight, and meanwhile Middle Earth is much more real than all their continents. Imagine an enormous plain – sand bleached by the sun, greyish islets of soil with dozens of stunted trees, and rocks jutting from the ground at unthinkable angles. The rocks stand tight together, precisely forming a corridor. You go between them like in a spiral – there is no flight magic there – and suddenly your sight stumbles upon columns. And you understand that before you is something more ancient than magic, more ancient and wiser than even Light and Dark. Something such that no one among the living now has any authority over.”
“How about Egyptian pyramids?” Nightingale O. Robber asked. Although he played dragonball excellently, he travelled little, and in the previous years even stayed put completely in his native Mordovia, catching passers-by in the forests.
Yagge sneered, “Egyptian pyramids in comparison with the Temple of Eternal Skip – it’s such a sick fantasy along the theme of a vertical coffin… You go along for a few hours, and no time does the Temple get any nearer, or it approaches so gradually that you don’t notice it. Then suddenly – no less surprisingly – you find yourself beside it. The doors of the Temple are always open. You can approach very near and see the floor – black and white marble squares. Another door is visible in the distance, slightly opened but not so that it would be possible to see what’s behind it. But the temptation is great. Certainty it strikes you that there, on the other side, lies something awfully important, some such thing that all present and lost artefacts pale before it… Some such thing, for which those who lived before Gloom and Light, those for whom magic was as natural as breathing, even built this colossal Temple.”
“Can’t you simply approach and have a look? Or use remote sight?” Medusa asked.
The knitting needles in Yagge’s hands traced a reproachful semicircle. “Medusa, dear, although this happened awfully long ago, I was already far from a naive girl and knew enough magic. What variations didn’t I try! Teleportation, flight, all forms of sight, remote intuition… Useless.”
“You vere unable to but Mezodius Buslaeff vill know how?” inflating his cheeks, Professor Stinktopp asked.
Sardanapal compassionately looked at his rat waistcoat. “It’s possible, Ziggy… Everything is possible. Methodius Buslaev, who will become aware of his dark gift. Who, after receiving a cloak, will go to the labyrinth of marble slabs on his thirteenth birthday, will go through the slightly opened door and, after taking what the ancients had left there, will give this to the guards of Gloom. The relative equilibrium between Light and Gloom will be disrupted. Gloom at once will cut its way through all cracks like water oozing through the bottom of a rotted ship. Thousands of eide, which Light is protecting now, will be stolen by Gloom. Everything depends on whether Methodius Buslaev will be able to control this darkness that is primordially placed in him.”
The fire in the fireplace blazed and went out. In complete calm, the heavy velvet curtains puffed up like the sails of a ship. Two ancient black magic books began to rush about in the cage and, having suddenly turned into ashes, crumbled through the bars onto the carpet.
Yagge raised her eyes from the knitting needles. “Well now, I knew it! The loop was torn. And indeed I’m almost finished,” she said with regret.
“Methodius Buslaev! He hasn’t yet been born and Gloom is already in premonition of his birth!” Medusa said.
“Methodius Buslaev… We’ll try to influence him somehow? To get into contact with him? To bring him, eventually, into Tibidox?” the Great Tooth asked huskily.
Sardanapal’s beard did a wavy movement. “What’s with you, Deni? This boy – into Tibidox? With his gift? No, the road to Tibidox is forever denied him. We won’t even be able to interfere, since the matters of Light and Gloom are not subject to us, elementary magicians. We’ll observe the boy from a distance – no more. In such matters there’ll be a little bit of caution… And remember: no one in Tibidox, besides us, must know anything about Methodius! NOT ONE STUDENT! In the next twelve years in any case! I demand, I insist, I, finally, order everyone to take an oath!”
“Sardanapal, what precisely is the boy’s gift? I know what a dark gift is, but how will it appear this time?” Tararakh asked. “We know that its forms are infinite!”
The head of Tibidox stared back at the pithecanthropus’ ardent Asia Minor gaze. “I don’t know exactly, Tararakh! I can only surmise. And if it’s what I think, then it’s terrible. So terrible that I prefer to be silent. And now swear! Well! I want you all to utter May lightening strike me down!”
Several sparks blazed – red and green. Slander, Medusa, Yagge, the Great Tooth, Professor Stinktopp… Sardanapal, attentively following so that everyone without exception would make a vow, let out the last spark. Tararakh, not having a ring, did it without a spark, limiting it to a simple utterance of the oath. The gold sphinx on the office door tucked its paws under and became like a wet unhappy kitten. So many May lightening strike me down in one office in something like a minute – this was a lot even for a sphinx that had seen sights.
Chapter 1
The Lunar Reflection
Edward Khavron thoroughly squeezed out the blackhead on his cheek and, after stepping back, admired his own muscles. He was standing naked to the waist in front of the mirror, and inspecting himself like a doctor from the military registration and enlistment office would inspect a draftee. “Well, am I really not an athlete? Really not a handsome man? I would simply fall in love with myself, but I must go to work!” he said complacently.
“Eddy, don’t pull in your stomach!” Zozo Buslaeva shouted from the room. Even through two doors, she knew all her brother’s tricks.
“What’s with the stomach here? It’s just that I have such bulging solar plexus. But generally you can’t see it under a coat,” Eddy was insulted; however, his mood was destroyed. Oh, indeed these sisters of one’s own! It is necessary to put up with such things from them that one would drown any outsider as Gerasim did to Mumu.
Having thoroughly cleaned his twenty-eight teeth – according to statistics, thirty-two teeth exist only in a third of humanity and in the imagination of writers, who adore indiscriminately endowing their heroes with superfluous wisdom – Edward Khavron made his way to the only room of their apartment. The apartment was misplaced so far in the outskirts of Moscow that now and then it seemed as if Moscow did not exist at all. But the Moscow Ring Highway with its endless cars was visible from the window like on one’s palm. Not without reason they were living on the topmost, sixteenth floor.
The room was partitioned off into two unequal parts by a dresser standing sideways like a screen. In one part – the larger – dwelled Zozo Buslaeva (Khavron before her married life) with her son Methodius. In the other – the rather fine Eddy with his family of suits, twelve pairs of shoes polished to a lustre, and a bar, on which two twenty-kilogram weights tingled despondently at night.
When Eddy Khavron entered