The Scar

4

Two slanting rays of sunlight fell from the stained glass windows, bathing the stone floor in a cheerful, dappled glow, causing the austere, somber world of the library to be transformed. The sound of voices wafted smoothly from beyond the thick walls; the headmaster’s lecture was just about to begin in the Grand Auditorium. The third window—the one that opened onto the square—had both its shutters flung wide open for the first time since the beginning of winter, and from the square beyond could be heard a noise that was not quite as decorous, but more exuberant: songs and shouts, the patter of hooves and wheels, laughter, the tinkle of bells, and the neighs of horses.

The work was close to finished: the long list was riddled with check marks, and the book cart sagged dolefully under the unbelievable weight of the tomes collected from the shelves. Toria stepped onto the ladder, but instead of going up she suddenly closed her eyes and pressed her face against the warm wood, worn smooth by many centuries of palms.

It was once again spring. Once again, the window cracked open onto the square, and the tart smell of ancient books, so beloved by her, mingled with the scents of dust, grass, and black earth, all warmed by the sun. Soon the river would warm up and strawberries would begin to flower. It was strange and astonishing, but she had the desire to loll about in the grass, to lie there, feeling the trampled stalks with her cheek and gazing about thoughtlessly, like a bee crawling around the velvety interior of a flower; to follow the ants with her eyes as they blazed a path along a stem.…

But Dinar was no more. He had been in the ground for a year already. The ants wandering in the grass now wandered over Dinar. Here the books were piled high, the sun shone beyond the window, boatmen shouted to each other by the river, but Dinar was not anywhere because that deep, black hole in the ground, which she remembered through a fog of horror and disbelief, that pit into which foreign people had lowered a wooden box—was that really Dinar? No, she would never again go to his grave; he was not there, that man, whom they buried. It was not him.

Toria took a faltering breath and opened her eyes. The mottled spots of sunlight had moved closer to the wall; in the corner of one of them sat a white cat, shining with the radiance of the light, mottled and patched like a jester. This cat was the guardian of the library; he protected it from rats and mice. Two round, yellow eyes gazed at Toria with reproach.

Despite herself, she smiled. She tested whether the stepladder was stable, picked up the hem of her dark skirt, and confidently climbed up the rungs, as she had already done a thousand times before.

Her left knee suffered from a blunt, weak ache. A week ago Toria had stumbled on the ladder and fallen, grazing her leg and ripping open her stocking. The elderly serving woman, who came twice a week to clean the annex, had darned the stocking. Whenever she was left alone with Toria, this good woman immediately began to sigh and lift her hands in dismay. “How can it be, you sweet young thing, such a beauty! And already for a year now wearing only one and the same dress! We’ll just have to find some money for a pair of silk stockings … and for a bonnet, and slippers.… A beauty without new clothes, that’s like a jewel without a setting!”

Toria smirked and licked her lips. A solid scar protruded from her lower lip. Then, a year ago, she had bitten it until she bled.

The hum of voices from beyond the wall quieted: undoubtedly the headmaster had mounted the rostrum. Today he would be teaching the students about the remarkable events that occurred, according to scholars, at the edge of the world, at the very Doors of Creation.

Toria grinned again. It was not given to any man to know what really happened at the Doors. As her father said, “Whoever has stood at the threshold can no longer speak to us.”

Well, that’s the last shelf. A thread of dust-laden cobweb waved laboriously over Toria’s head. Spiders were permitted to live under the ceiling; her father joked that after he died, he would become a spider, and he too would guard the library.

Toria looked down intrepidly. She was not at all afraid of heights, so she felt neither agitation nor excitement. She stretched out her hand toward a row of gilded spines, but she changed her mind and turned away from the shelf.

Here, right under the ceiling, was a small, circular window that allowed one to look out from the library into the Auditorium. Toria used to perch here so that, amidst the sea of inclined heads, she might find one: a dark, disheveled, touchingly serious head. It was a game. Dinar was supposed to feel her gaze and raise his eyes to her.

Toria realized that the thought of Dinar no longer summoned an attack of sharp, bitter despair. She remembered him with sorrow, but no longer with that pain, which had for so long filled her days, her nights, and again her days.

Her father had told her that it would be this way. She had not believed him; she could not believe him, but her father had, once again, been right. As always.

Recalling her father, she turned back to the books.

There it was: a massive tome in a simple black binding. The spine seemed warm, and the embossed silver letters gleamed faintly. On Prophecies.

Goose bumps jumped up all over Toria’s skin: only one copy of this book existed. Many centuries ago, an archmage had dedicated his entire life to this book. Now Toria would take it and bring it to her father; he would write a new chapter in his work, and after several centuries someone else might similarly, reverently take her father’s book from a shelf and learn what the life of Dean Luayan had been dedicated to.

Carefully descending, Toria put the last check on her list; the history of prophecy was set down on the book cart.

So, for today the work was finished. A fresh wind broke in through the window, disturbing the dust of the books and forcing three small sneezes from the guard cat. Toria absentmindedly tucked away a lock of hair that had swept across her forehead and gazed out at the square.

The hot sunlight dazzled her, and the many-voiced hum deafened her. The square spun about like a carousel bedecked in ribbons. The merchants, carrying trays, were calling out their wares; the many-colored parasols of the promenading ladies were weaving through the crowd; and a patrol was passing by, the lead officer of which, in his red uniform with white stripes, deliberately and harshly contracted his brow, shaven according to custom, but at the same time did not stop himself from looking back at any especially lovely flower girl. Street urchins prowled under the feet of the walkers, the buyers and all those rushing people going about their own business, and above the crowd, as majestically as sailing vessels, magnificent sedans borne by lackeys drifted by.

The courthouse, squat and ill favored, seemed like an old toad in the sun’s rays: a withered toad that had crawled out into the light and was warming its wrinkled sides in the sun. Toria, as usual, stole a glance at the round pedestal in front of the iron doors of the court. Two menacing words were emblazoned on the doors, DREAD JUSTICE! and on the pedestal there was a small gallows with a stuffed manikin hanging from a noose.

A tower with grated windows soared up next to the courthouse; some guards drowsed by the entrance to the tower, and a bit farther on three men in gray hooded robes were having a dignified conversation: these were the acolytes of the Sacred Spirit Lash. The sky hung above the square like an enormous blue banner.

Toria breathed blissfully; the sun lay on her face like a warm hand. The cat hopped onto the windowsill and sat next to her. Toria rested her hand on the back of its neck, and suddenly felt an unparalleled sense of her own kinship with this square, with this city, with the books, with the cat, with the university. And then she smiled happily, for perhaps the very first time in this last, black year.

The crowd clamored, the crowd bubbled like a motley stew boiling in a cauldron, and Toria’s gaze nonchalantly slid over the hats and the parasols, over the uniforms, the bouquets, the trays of pies, over the dirty faces and the well-groomed ones, over the pomaded hair, the lace, the patches, the spurs until, amidst this hectic mass of humanity, one exceedingly strange man caught her attention.

Toria narrowed her eyes. The man was hidden from her gaze now and again by the crush of people, but this did not stop her from noticing, however far away she was, a certain incongruity in his bearing. It seemed like he was not walking through a populated square, but cautiously moving from hillock to hillock in a bog full of quicksand.

Astonished, Toria watched him even more attentively. The man was moving through a complicated, predetermined route: having made his way to a lamppost, he caught hold of it with his hands and stood against it for a moment, lowering his head as if he were taking a nap. Then, having determined the next leg of his arduous path, he moved on slowly, as if forcing himself.

He was completely uninterested in what was going on around him, even though, judging from his appearance, he was definitely not a sophisticated city-dweller. If anything, he was a vagrant who had worn out the majority of his clothes walking along the country roads. Catching sight of the red-and-white patrol with their swords and spurs caused him to jump so forcefully that he bumped into a seller of baked apples and nearly knocked him to the ground. Toria could hear shouts and abuse coming from the apple seller as the strange tramp jumped yet again, trying to get out of the way.

However complex, unnatural, and winding the man’s path was, his goal appeared to be the university. Slowly but surely, the stranger came ever closer and closer, until she was finally able to make out his face.

Her heart beat painfully, violently; it stopped, and then it leapt wildly as if it were a hammer muffled in rags, beating against a wooden anvil. Toria did not yet understand what was happening, but the warm, spring day suddenly felt bleakly cold.

She recognized the face of the strange man, or so it seemed to her in that first second. In the next moment, chewing the scar on her lower lip, she was already telling herself silently, It’s not him.

It was not him. He did not have a scar on his cheek, but more important: his eyes could never contain such grief, or such a hunted look. It could not be him: this man was dirty, scruffy, and atrophied, while he shone with self-satisfaction and good fortune; he fairly burst with the sense of his own attractiveness and irresistibility and was, indeed, handsome—Toria twisted her lips in disgust—he was handsome, while this one …

The tramp came even closer. The spring wind tousled his disheveled blond hair. He stood irresolute and tense in front of the university building as if he could not decide whether or not to approach the doors.

It is not him, said Toria to herself. Not him, she repeated fiercely, but her heart was beating ever faster and wilder. That shrunken, sallow face with that horrible scar running along the entire cheek, that uncertainty in every movement, those foul rags …

Toria leaned forward, peering at the stranger intensely, as though desiring to encompass him with just a single look. The stranger sensed her gaze. He shuddered and raised his head.

Egert Soll was standing under the window: in the blink of an eye, no doubt whatsoever remained in Toria. Her fingers gripped the windowsill, driving a splinter under one of her fingernails, but she did not feel the pain. The man standing below the window blanched deathly pale beneath his layer of dust and his sunburn.

It seemed as though nothing could appear more terrible to his eyes than the sight of this young woman in a high window; it was so terrible that it compelled him to shake, as if an abyss had suddenly opened right in front of him, and from that abyss the jaws, dripping with bile, of the mother of all monsters had reached out for him. For several seconds he stood as if frozen in place, and then he suddenly turned and dashed off. Disturbed flower girls yelled after him in the crowd. An instant, and he was no longer even in the square, which continued to spin festively like a carousel.

Toria stood by the window for a long time, thoughtlessly sucking on her wounded finger. Then, abandoning the cart laden with books, she turned around and slowly walked out of the library.

Egert had entered the city at dawn, just as the city gates were being raised. His defensive rituals, invented by him in droves, somehow helped him cope with his terror: gripping a button that had escaped from his shirt in his sweaty fist, he planned out his route in advance, moving from landmark to landmark, from beacon to beacon; by this method, of course, his route was significantly lengthened, but it also secured a hope in his soul that he would manage to avoid any danger.

Kavarren—massive, splendid Kavarren—was, in truth, a tiny, quiet little provincial town: Egert understood this now as he wandered through the noisy streets, dense with people and carts. Egert had been living in solitude for so long that the mass of people caused his head to spin; he kept having to lean against walls and lampposts so that he could rest a bit, squeezing shut his bloodshot eyes.

The hermit showed him the best way to the city, and gave him cheese and griddle cakes for his journey. The road to the city had been long and full of apprehension and fear. The cakes had been finished the day before yesterday, and Egert was now suffering from hunger as well as fear.

The goal of his agonizing pilgrimage was the university: Egert had been told that he could find a genuine archmage there. Unfortunately, Egert had not been able to discover either his name or his title. The kindhearted passersby, whom Egert finally resolved to question, unanimously directed him to the main square: there, they said, was the university and also other curiosities that might appeal to a traveler. Squeezing his button and scurrying from landmark to landmark, Egert moved on.

The main square was like a seething cauldron; trying as hard as he could to fight his dizziness, Egert weaved his way through the crowd. Details detached themselves from the throng and penetrated his eyes: an enormous mouth smeared with cream, a lost horseshoe, the wide-open eyes of a mule, a stunted scrub of grass in the crack between cobblestones … Then he stumbled into a round black pedestal, raised his head, and to his horror discovered that he was standing beneath a miniature gallows, where an executed dummy with glassy eyes was gazing down at him apathetically.

Recoiling, he nearly ran into a man in a gray hood. The man turned around in surprise, but Egert could not make out his face, hidden by the hood. He struggled through the crowd once again, and this time the crooked path from marker to marker deposited Egert in the middle of a patrol: five well-armed men in red-and-white uniforms, disagreeable and menacing, who were just waiting for the chance to seize a helpless tramp. Egert darted away, his mind full of a vision of prison, the whip, and hard labor.

Five or six men in gray hooded robes were standing in a huddled circle, conversing about something. Egert noticed that the crowd split around them, like a seething river breaks away from a rocky island. The faces of the robed men were lost in the shadows of their hoods, and this gave the gray figures a very sinister appearance. Egert was far more terrified of them than of the guards and adjusted his path so that he stayed at least ten feet away from the group.

There, finally, was the university building. Egert stopped to catch his breath. By the entrance to this sanctuary of learning, frozen in majestic poses, were an iron snake and a wooden monkey. Egert marveled at the sight; he did not know that these images symbolized wisdom and the pursuit of knowledge.

He simply had to ascend the steps and take hold of the brightly finished copper door handle, but Egert stood, unable to take even a step. The building oppressed him with its grandeur: there, beyond the door, secrets were hidden; there, the “archmage” awaited Egert, and who knew what the forthcoming meeting might have in store for this miserable vagabond. The gossip that all students were castrated for the glory of knowledge suddenly came to mind; it seemed to the dazed Egert that the iron snake was looking at him keenly and wickedly, and that the monkey was grinning obscenely.

Covered in clammy sweat, Egert was still standing in the same place when a new, even more disquieting feeling compelled him to shiver and raise his head.

A pale, dark-haired woman was steadily and intently staring down at Egert from a high, wide window.

“What is this?”

The fat-cheeked student turned even more pale: “This … I brought it for you. That’s what you … requested.”

“I requested the books, my friend.”

It was dark in the room, and only one bright spot—a ray of sunlight from the sole narrow window—was on the table. A heap of paper wrapped by a ribbon lay on the table under the sun’s ray, and dust specks were flying above the yellow pages.

“Mr. Fagirra,” mumbled the student, “there was no way to carry the books out. Even the smallest … magic book cannot be taken out.”

“Brother Fagirra.”

“What? But … Excuse me, Brother Fagirra, I … honestly, I have done everything. The dean is suspicious, Mr.… Brother Fagirra. I brought … here is what I managed to get. Here are the notes.”

“Well.”

“One of the students made notes … made notes of what was in the books in the library that you wanted me to get.”

“This is not enough, my friend.”

“This all that I could get, Brother Fagirra.”

“I fear that the End of Time will bring much sorrow to you.”

The cheeks of the young fellow, recently so round, became sunken: “No. Please. Just give me another chance!”

The man with the tattoo on his wrist only raised the corners of his lips: “It is good. From this day, you will report to me about everything that happens at the university.”

Egert dashed through the crowd, deaf to the curses of the upset hawkers, insensible to the fingers snatching at his tattered shirt or the irritated pokes he received while running past. He ran away from the square, from the university with its wide window where the face of Toria remained, still white as a ghost: Toria, the fiancée of the student he had killed. Flee! This was an evil, unlucky portent; he should never have come to this city. He had to get to the gates as quickly as possible; he had to escape from the net of these narrow, winding, overcrowded streets.

But the world of this enormous city, indifferent, satisfied, and lazily festive, had already possessed Egert as if he were its own rightful victim. It seemed to Egert that the city was gradually digesting him like a massive stomach, desiring to dissolve, destroy, and absorb him into itself.

“You, tramp, step aside!”

Huge wheels roared along the cobbled pavement; an arrogant face in the velvet semidarkness of a carriage sailed over Egert’s head, and lowering his eyes, he saw an opalescent beetle flattened into a disk in the furrow left by the wheels.

“You, vagrant, get out of the road! Out of the road!”

Housewives joyfully called out to one another from windows, and from time to time a cascade of slops descended onto the pavement: then the exchanges turned into bickering.

The merchants were slaving away.

“Here, I’ve got combs, bone combs, turtle shell combs! And look at this miraculous potion: Smear it on your head and your hair will grow; dab it on your armpits and the hair will fall out!”

“Barbers! Jars, leeches, bloodletting! Razors! We’ll shave you!”

A mob of street urchins were taunting a modest young lad who was dressed as neat as a pin. Beggars were huddled along walls covered with bas-relief sculptures; the wind played with the tattered ends of their rags, and their motionless, outstretched palms seemed like the dark leaves of an outlandish shrub. Penetrating calls of “Alms, alms…” hovered over the street, although the parched lips of the beggars hardly moved at all; only their eyes, dreary and yet at the same time covetous, caught the glances of the passersby: “Alms, alms…”

Away, away, off to the gate! Egert swerved onto a street that seemed familiar to him, but it betrayed him; it deposited him at a stone-dressed canal that ran straight away to either side. An odor of fungus and mold rose up from the green water. A wide bridge bulged over the canal. Egert had no memory of this place; he had never been here; he had definitely gone astray.

He decided to ask the way to the city gates. The first person to whom he dared to turn was a dignified, amiable housewife in a starched cap; with delight and in detail, she described the route to the city gates to him. Following her instructions, he passed through two or three alleyways, diligently walked through a populated intersection, turned where he had been ordered and suddenly came out near the very same humpbacked bridge that ran over the very same canal. Water striders were gliding along the surface of the stale water.

Remembering the misleading words of the woman in the starched cap, Egert again gathered his courage and asked a lean, poorly dressed young maidservant for help. She blushed, and by the furtive pleasure in her modestly lowered little eyes, Egert suddenly realized that for this pitiful creature he was not at all a filthy beggar, but a presentable young man, even a handsome man, potentially a lover. For some reason this realization brought Egert not pleasure, but pain; the girl, in the interim, had seriously and painstakingly explained to him how to get to the gates, and her explanation was completely contrary to the instructions of the housewife in the cap.

Hurriedly thanking the somewhat disappointed serving girl, Egert once again set out on his way. Looking around intently, he walked past a chandler and a pub, past an apothecary with live leeches in jars and bottled tonics, and past a button manufacturer with a shop window that dazzled the eye: hundreds of silver, mother-of-pearl, and bone circles ogled him from the display. He walked through a gloomy alleyway, sided by the looming, blank walls of houses. It turned out to be the territory of a procuress: in the semidarkness, first one then another sweet-eyed face approached Egert and, unerringly identifying him as a bum and not a prospective client, indifferently turned away.

The alleyway led Egert onto a circus; in its center was a statue on a low pedestal. The head of the statue was covered by a stone hood. Recalling the people in gray, who had terrified him in the main square, Egert hesitated to walk closer to the statue and read the inscription carved in the stone:

The Sacred Spirit Lash

He had heard about the Sacred Spirit when he was a child, but he had imagined him to be more majestic than this. Regardless, he did not have any time for reflection at the moment. Drawing a deep breath, he once again asked for directions, this time from a young, mild-mannered lemonade vendor. According to the lad, the city gates were but a stone’s throw away. Inspired, Egert walked on along a wide but not very busy street. He passed by the house of a bonesetter, which had a pair of crutches of considerable size pegged to the door; past the house of a horse doctor, which had a sign decorated with three horsetails; and past a bakery. Finally, bewildered, he walked out at the very same arched bridge over the musty canal.

It seemed as if some unknown force was grimly determined to keep Egert going around in circles. Overcome, he leaned against the wide stone railing; somewhere over his head a shutter smacked loudly against a wall and a window swept open. Egert looked up.

A girl stood in the small, dark window. Egert’s vision darkened as he saw cheeks, pale as if carved from marble, dark hair, a constellation of beauty marks on her neck. He winced, and then in the next instant he realized that this was not Toria, that the face, gazing indifferently out the window, was round and pockmarked, and that the hair was the color of rotten straw.

He turned and laboriously walked away. At an intersection he asked directions in turn of two passersby: affable and wishing him well, they each pointed him in exactly opposite directions.

Gritting his teeth, he started walking, deciding to rely only on instinct and luck. Having passed by a few blocks, he suddenly noticed a pair of street urchins who were obviously following him, though still at a safe distance.

He looked back with increasing frequency. The grubby, determined faces of the urchins flickered in the crowd, all the time getting closer and closer. Cowering inwardly, Egert swerved once, and then again and again, but the urchins kept pace with him, walking ever faster, their hungry mouths widely and insolently grinning. By now an entire horde was merrily following Egert.

Egert kept increasing his pace. The usual terror had already blossomed within him: it squeezed his throat with cold jaws; it stuffed his rebellious legs with cotton padding. Egert was keenly aware that he was a victim, and it was as if this awareness had been imparted to his juvenile pursuers. It impelled them to chase him.

The hunt had begun.

Egert was not at all surprised when the first stone hit him in the shoulder blade. Quite the contrary: he was relieved that he no longer had to wait for that blow because it was already inflicted. But the first stone was followed by a second and a third.

“Yoo-hoo!” They merrily mocked as they jogged along the street. The passersby looked around, displeased, and then went about their business.

“Yoo-hoo! Hey, Uncle, give us a bit of smoke, just a pinch. Hey, Uncle, over here!”

Egert was almost running. Only a small remnant of his pride prevented him from simply taking to his heels.

“Hey, Uncle! You, with the hole in your pants. Look over here!”

A few small pebbles accurately pecked at his legs, his back, and the back of his head. A minute passed and his pursuers had caught up to him; one of their dirty hands grabbed his sleeve, and the shabby threads holding it together ripped.

“Hey, you! What, you don’t want to talk to us?”

Egert stopped. They surrounded him. Most of the boys were around eight years old, but there were a few who were a bit older and two or three who might have been as old as fourteen. Grinning expansively, showing black pits in the place where some of their teeth should have been, wiping snotty noses on their sleeves, staring with hostile, narrowed eyes, the gang of hunters took pleasure in Egert’s bewilderment, which was all the more sweet since the eldest of these hunters barely stood as tall as their prey’s armpit.

“Uncle, buy us a loaf. Give us some money, eh?”

Something sharp pricked him from behind, either a pin or a needle. Egert jerked, and the horde broke out into merry laughter.

“See that? See how he jumped?”

They pricked him again. Tears of pain welled up in Egert’s eyes.

A strong man, an adult, was standing in a circle of urchins who were young and weak but reveling in the sense of their ability to act with impunity. Who knows how, but these little beasts had unerringly exposed Egert as a coward, as a victim, as prey, and they were inspired to carry out the unwritten law by which every victim is tried and found guilty.

“Do it again! Make him hop! Silly uncle! Hey, where are you going?”

The last prick of the needle had been intolerable. Egert plunged straight though the gang, knocking one of them from his feet. As he ran away, stones, clumps of mud, and taunts flew after him.

“Oi-oi-oi-oi! Get him! Go on, get him!”

The long-legged Egert could run faster than even the most brazen urchin in the city, but the street wound about, turning into blind alleys that teemed with closed gates. The hunters dashed in front of Egert, cutting across his path from the routes known only to them, flinging stones and mud, screaming incessantly, chirruping and hallooing. At some point it began to seem to Egert that all of this was not really happening to him, that he was watching someone else’s abominable nightmare through thick, cloudy glass, but then a stone struck him painfully in the knee, and a different, bitter, overwhelming emotion surged through him, replacing his detachment: This is how it is now, this is his life, his fate, his being.

Finally, he somehow pried himself away from his pursuers.

He found himself in a blighted slum, where a wizened, toothless old crone, holding an enormous snuffbox under her nose, pointed her crooked finger farther into the labyrinth of muddy alleyways. As he traversed them he felt a blunt, apathetic weariness that also dulled his fear, and then he felt fleeting joy at the sight of a square and the city gates.

The gates were closing.

The doors were slowly crawling toward each other. At the bottom of each door he could plainly see three guards, flushed from the strain of pushing them closed. A small shred of sky and the ribbon of the road were visible through the swiftly contracting opening.

What is going on? Egert thought.

With his last strength he ran across the square, but the gap was still narrowing, and then the gates closed with a crash. A chain clinked, threaded through the steel rings of the doors, and as solemnly as a flag, an enormous black lock was raised up onto the chain.

Egert stood in front of the magnificent steel gates decorated with figures of dragons and snakes. Their raised snouts were turned toward him; they watched him morosely and vacantly. Only now did Egert fully comprehend that the doors had been pushed shut, that night was approaching, and that the gates usually remained closed until morning.

“You, there!” The stern bark compelled him to cringe. “What do you want?”

“I must go out,” he mumbled inaudibly.

“What?”

“I need to go through, out of the city.”

The guard—a sweaty, round-cheeked man who did not seem malicious—smirked. “In the morning, my friend. You were late; that’s the way it is. And really, when you really think about it, why would you want to go out there at night? You never know what might happen. So, my boy, you’ll just have to wait. We’ll open the gates at dawn.”

Without saying another word, Egert walked away. It no longer mattered to him.

In the morning the gates would get stuck, or the sun would not rise, or something else would happen. If the unknown and hostile force, the force that had been toying with him all day from the time of his fateful meeting with Toria, if that force did not want Egert to leave the city, then he was not going to be able to leave of his own free will: he would die a beggarly death here, the death of a coward.

The square in front of the gates had emptied. Egert urgently wanted to lie down; it did not matter where, just so long as he could lie down, close his eyes, and not think about anything.

Barely moving his legs, he shuffled away from the gates.

A noisy cavalcade of five or six young horsemen on well-groomed steeds flew toward him from a wide side street. With a practiced eye, Egert absently identified the breed of each horse and noticed how splendidly each of the riders kept his seat. He stood still, waiting for them to pass by, but one of the youths, who was riding a tall, raven-colored stallion, broke away from the company and rode straight toward Egert.

This happened in the blink of an eye—and for all eternity. Egert lost the ability to move.

His legs grew into the pavement of the square, became numb, put down roots: thus must a tree feel, watching the approach of a lumberjack. The horse cantered easily, beautifully, as if on air, but the ground shook loudly from its strong, murderous hooves. Egert saw the black muzzle of the stallion, its wild eyes, the string of saliva hanging from its lower lip, and its chest, as wide as the sky and as heavy as a hammer, was ready to crush him with one blow.

He felt the steam of hot breath in his face, and slowly, so slowly, as if underwater, the stallion rose up on his hind legs.

Egert stared as the glossy muzzle froze right in front of his face. The hooves were thrown up, and the round heads of nails gleamed on newly shod, well-made horseshoes. Then the horseshoes flew up over his head, and the horse’s belly opened up before Egert’s eyes: the belly of a well-cared-for stallion, with a shaggy crest running down the middle. The horseshoes above his head were kneading the sky, preparing to descend from the heights and splatter the contents of a human head across the cobblestones.

Egert’s mind collapsed; he was aware of nothing for the space of five seconds.

As before, Egert was standing in the middle of the square. The patter of hooves and trills of laughter were fading away down an alleyway, and a fine trickle of warm urine was leaking down Egert’s leg.

Death would be better than this.

The guards were snorting with laughter behind him, and their laughter reverberated inside Egert’s head. All the will of Egert Soll, all his remaining respect for himself, all his mutilated yet still living pride, and all his being screamed, slowly writhing in the inferno of this inconceivable, incredible degradation.

The vacant sky above his head and the empty square beneath his feet both whirled like grindstones, and these two black stones scraped against each other as if wishing to grind to dust the bones of this man who had dared to come between them.

Egert, said his will and his pride. This is the end, Egert. Remember the slimy filth on your face, remember the girl in the coach.… Remember your true self, Egert Soll, remember and answer this: Why do you, a man, consent to live in this repulsive, perpetually fearful manner? You have come to the edge: another step, and all your life, all your bright reminiscences, all the memories of your mother and father will curse you, will disown you for eternity. While you still recall what a man should be, put a stop to this despicable monstrosity that has possessed you!

The guards had long ago settled down and forgotten about Egert. Night had already set in: gloomy, moonless, lit only by a few streetlamps. Under one of these streetlamps loomed a wide, squat bit of masonry; it was a well, from which travelers who had just arrived in town usually watered their exhausted horses. Now it was completely lifeless.

Egert walked over to it. A waft of frigid air arose from the well, but Egert forced himself to gaze down into its humid depths. The circular, mirrorlike surface of the water reflected the dim streetlamp, the black sky, and the human silhouette that looked like it was cut out of a soot-black sheet of tin.

He worked quickly. He found a fragment of cobblestone nearby, as cold and heavy as a tombstone. He needed to tie the stone to his neck somehow, but he did not have any rope and his belt kept slipping off it. Fussing and sniveling from terror, Egert finally unbuttoned his shirt and stuffed the cobblestone into the cavity. The feel of the cold stone against his bare chest caused him to squirm.

Holding the stone to his chest with both his arms, he once again walked over to the well. He stood next to it for about two minutes, panting. The city was sleeping; somewhere in the dark heights an unseen weathervane screeched in the nighttime wind, and from afar could be heard the cry of the night watch, “Rest in peace, honest townsfolk!”

May you rest in peace, said Egert to himself. Clutching the stone to his chest like a beloved kitten, he swung a leg, stiff as a board, over the side of the well.

He sat on the stone masonry at the top; he exerted himself again, and his other leg, rebellious and numb, hung over the water. Egert swung around so that his stomach was on the edge of the well; his legs dangled inside without any purchase. Now all he had to do was brace himself and push off from the wall of the well with his hands and knees; then his body would fall over backwards, splash into the water, and the stone secreted in his bosom would immediately drag him to the bottom. The water would wash away all Egert’s fear and degradation, all he had to do was …

His muscles seized up. Desperately attempting to suppress his terror, he tried to unclench his blue fingers, but they clawed at the masonry with a death grip. If only there were someone there who could crack a whip at his hands! But Egert had no one to help him, and the stone in his shirt pressed against the wall of the well; it prevented him from reaching out to his fingers with his teeth and biting them to force them to unclench. Just a bit more strength, just a bit …

But then his terror of death finally tore through the barrier he had momentarily erected in his mind.

Egert clung to the wall of the well with his entire body—his elbows, the soles of his feet, his knees—unable to recall or command himself. He surged upward, gasping for air, willing himself to tear out of his own skin and flee, flee, save himself! Stifled by fear, he tumbled out of the well onto the ground. The cobblestone skidded out of his shirt and Egert, still frantic, crawled away, trembling and weeping.

A guard glanced out of the striped kiosk by the gate and, not seeing anyone or anything, calmly ducked back inside. “Rest in peace, honest townsfolk,” resounded from the watch.

Leaning against a lamppost, Egert finally managed to pull himself together. Only now did he acknowledge the profundity of the trap he was captured in.

He had no mastery over himself. Terror made his life unbearable and his death unattainable. He could not escape. All his mortal years, all his long life until old age he would be afraid, afraid, and he would grovel and betray himself, and he would suffer shame and hate himself, and he would rot alive until he lost his mind.

“No!” Egert’s soul screamed. “No.”

His shirt had already lost all its buttons. Egert cradled the cobblestone to his chest like a mother holding her beloved child, dashed toward the well, and leapt for the edge.

He stopped short with a fraction of a second to spare. Catching a glimpse of the dark water below, the fear of death broke his will as easily as a child breaks a match. It allowed him to come to his senses only when he was already on the ground, shaking and squirming like a newborn rat.

He wept and gnawed at his fingers. He called out to the heavens for help, but the heavens remained dark, as is sometimes the case at night. He wanted to die: he tried to force his heart to stop by strength of will, but his heart paid him no heed and beat as before, albeit irregularly and painfully.

Then he felt a gaze on him.

Never before had he so keenly, so markedly felt his skin crawl with another’s gaze; he cowered, trying not to move, but the gaze, despite his hope, did not disappear. The gaze slid over his shoulders like a heavy palm. Egert clenched his teeth and slowly raised his head.

About five steps away from him stood a gray-haired man doused in the glow of the streetlamp. His face was elderly, beardless, and covered in a network of wrinkles; it seemed impenetrable, like a mask. The man stood motionless and examined Egert with an inscrutable expression in his tranquil, narrowed eyes.

Egert caught his breath: it was instantly clear to him that this stranger would not insult him or beat him, but at the same time in the depths of his soul rumbled a completely different anxiety, not at all like his usual terror. He wanted this witness of his shame and desperation to disappear as quickly as possible into the night. Trying to convey the fact that the presence of this other man was unwelcome, Egert turned his back on him.

Another minute passed. The intent gaze did not leave Egert in peace for a second.

Egert felt tormented, like he was on a burning stove. Finally, his patience dried up and he decided to speak. “I…”

He fell silent, unable to find the words. The strange man apparently had no thought to help him get the words out.

“You…” Egert spoke again, and in that moment he had an idea, a simple and brilliant idea. “You,” he said more firmly. “You might be able to help me.”

The stranger blinked. He politely asked, “Help?”

Getting up with great difficulty, Egert walked over to the well and once again took the cobblestone in his hand. “You could push me. Just a little push. There. Into the water.”

The nighttime passerby did not answer, so Egert added quickly, “This is happening, you know? I really need to—I really need you to help me, please.”

The stranger transferred his intent gaze from the cobblestone to Egert’s face, then to the well, and once again to Egert.

“I really need help,” pleaded Egert. “It’s necessary. I can’t do anything else. But I can’t do it myself. Please.”

“I really don’t think I can help you,” uttered the stranger slowly.

Hope, which had flared up in Egert’s soul, extinguished. “Then…,” he said quietly. “Then please leave. I have to try again.”

The stranger shook his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think that you’ll succeed in this, Egert.”

Egert dropped the cobblestone. Scarcely able to swallow his sticky saliva, he stared at the stranger in horror.

“You are indeed Egert Soll; I’m not mistaken, am I?” asked the strange man as if nothing was the matter.

Egert could have sworn that he had never met this man before.

As if reading his mind, the stranger smiled briefly. “My name is Luayan. I am Dean Luayan from the university.”

Egert was silent; before his eyes flashed an image of the imposing building and the girl in a high window.

The dean, meanwhile, leisurely walked over to the well and settled himself on its edge as informally as a child. “Well then, let’s have a talk, Egert.”

“How do you know my name?” Egert forced the words out. In the light of the streetlamp the white teeth of the dean flashed; he smiled and shook his head, as if shocked at the naïveté of the question. And then, shivering at his sudden guess, Egert asked through numbed lips, “Are you a wizard?”

“I am a mage,” corrected the dean, “a mage and a teacher. And you, Egert, who are you?”

Without blinking, Egert stared at the tranquil, inscrutable face. He had come to this city to meet this mage, and he had hoped for and feared this meeting. But the appearance of Toria, high up in that window, had muddled and changed everything. He had surrendered hope; he had forgotten all about it, and now here he was, speechless, standing in front of a graying man in dark, strangely cut clothes, standing in front of the witness, whether intentional or accidental, of his pitiful attempts at suicide, and his tongue was stuck on the roof of his mouth: How could he possibly find an answer to the dean’s remorseless question?

The dean sighed. “Well, Egert? I know something about who you were. But now?”

“Now.” Egert could not hear himself and so began anew. “Now I want to die.”

The dean smiled somewhat scornfully, it seemed to Egert. “There is no way, Egert. The man who marked you with that scar does not leave loopholes.”

Egert’s shaking hand touched the scar on his cheek.

The dean gently rose up: he was only a hairsbreadth shorter than Egert, who was quite tall. “Do you know what that scar signifies, Egert?”

He came close, so close in fact that Egert recoiled; the dean screwed up his face peevishly.

“Don’t be afraid.”

Firm fingers carefully grasped Egert by his chin and turned his head so that his scarred cheek was exposed to the light from the streetlamp. The silence lasted for a few lingering seconds; finally the dean let go of Egert’s chin, sighed as if preoccupied, returned to the well, and once again sat down on the stonework.

Egert stood there, more dead than alive. His interlocutor rubbed his temples, looked to the side, and said, “A curse has been laid upon you, Egert, a serious, frightful curse. The scar is but the imprint of it, the mark, the symbol. Only one man can leave such a reminder of himself, but as I know very well, he very rarely condescends to interfere in the business of others. You must have seriously annoyed him, eh, Egert?”

“Who?” whispered Egert, not understanding even half of what the dean had just said.

The dean sighed again: wearily, patiently. “Do you remember the man who wounded you?”

Egert stood, staring at the ground; finally he shivered and raised his head. “A curse?”

The dean twitched the corner of his mouth. “You really didn’t guess?”

Egert remembered the old hermit and the village wise woman, who had been so horrified when she examined Egert’s scar more closely.

“I guessed,” he murmured, lowering his eyes yet again.

The lamplight flickered in a gust of wind.

“I guessed,” repeated Egert. “He was old, or so he seemed. He fought like … Now I understand. Was he a wizard? I mean, was he also a mage?”

“Just how did you annoy him, Egert?” asked the dean, knitting his brows together.

Egert soundlessly moved his lips: that final duel, that fight with the grizzled boarder of the Noble Sword flashed before his eyes.

“No,” he said finally. “I—there’s no way. I didn’t want to duel, he himself…”

The dean leaned forward. “Understand this, Egert: This man does not bother himself with trifles. You did something that, in his opinion, was worthy of a grave punishment. I am now asking you, what was it?”

Egert could not speak. Memories invaded him all at once, without distinction, descending upon him, deafening him with the ring of steel, the laugh of Karver, the din of the crowd, the voice of Toria screaming “Dinar!”

The grizzled stranger had been there. Oh yes, he had been there, and as he was leaving he had graced Egert with a long look.

Later, at the tavern by the gates, what was it that strange man said? Egert broke out into sweat; he remembered the words of the stranger quite distinctly, as if they had just been spoken: I drink to Lieutenant Soll, the embodiment of cowardice, hiding behind a mask of valor.

“Who is he?” Egert asked desolately. The dean remained silent; Egert raised his head and understood that he was waiting for an answer to the question he had already asked twice.

“I killed a man, in a duel,” said Egert with just as much desolation in his voice. “The duel was fought according to the rules.”

“Is that all?” asked the dean dryly.

Egert winced painfully. “It was all so haphazard and stupid. That lad, he didn’t even carry a sword. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want it to happen that way.”

He glanced desperately at the dean’s eyes and saw that the flecks of light from the streetlamp on his severe face had faded. The black sky over the square had become gray, and the even silhouettes of the houses were beginning to appear from the receding shadows.

“So you paid the price,” said the dean just as dryly, “for your thoughtless savagery. The man who put that curse on you has doomed you to eternal cowardice. It is possible that he wasn’t even thinking about punishment but simply decided to neutralize you, to protect those who aren’t like you, those who live differently, who cannot or will not arm themselves.”

Dawn broke out over the city. The dean stood up, this time heavily, as if Egert’s tale had fatigued him beyond measure.

“Dean Luayan!” exclaimed Egert, shrouded in despair at the thought that the dean might simply turn and walk away. “Dean Luayan, you are indeed an archmage. I—I have been through so much. I’ve been seeking. I wanted to seek help from you. I beg you; tell me what I must do. I swear I’ll do anything, just please take this, this scar from me!”

The streetlamp sputtered and went out. The sleepy guard emerged from the striped kiosk by the gates and glanced with amusement at the tramp who was conversing with a gentleman of such decorous appearance in the middle of the square. Shutters swung open here and there with crashes, the dairywoman cried out resonantly, and the square suddenly came to life, filling up with various people yawning tiredly while they waited: soon the gates would open.

The dean shook his head in defeat. “Egert, you just don’t understand; you don’t understand who it is fate has brought you into contact with. A curse that is laid upon a person by the Wanderer can only be removed by the Wanderer.”

The lock of the gates solemnly slithered down, and people started surging forward. The steel chain rattled in the rings; the guard—a new one had only just arrived to relieve the old—set about making himself comfortable. The gates emitted a majestic groan and smoothly, almost gracefully, proceeded to open.

“Then what should I do now?” asked Egert in a whisper. “Should I search for him, this Wanderer? Who is he? Where can I find him?”

The rooftops were bathed in sunlight. Yellow and white specks of light danced on tin and copper weathervanes.

“Who he is, no one really knows,” said the dean, almost smiling. “As for looking for him: What makes you so sure that he would even talk to you?”

Egert’s head jerked up. “But, that’s just, just … He’s treated me so badly! What he did to me, and he wouldn’t even talk to me?” Egert shook, he was almost in a rage. “All because of a student? Yes, I killed him! But it was a duel, and with the Wanderer, there was also a duel: he should have killed me! I stood before him defenseless. Death for death. But what he did is worse than death and now I envy the student! He died with a sword in his hand, respecting himself. He had a future and he was loved.”

Egert stopped short. It seemed to him that a shadow had flitted across the dean’s face. Cold sparks blazed in the depths of his narrow eyes, and under his glare Egert’s short burst of anger faded away, just as unexpectedly as it had flared up.

“I must find the Wanderer,” said Egert vaguely. “I’ll take myself away, find him or … or, perhaps, I’ll die along the way.”

Hope rang out in these final words, but the dean shook his head with a smile. “‘Anything is possible,’ said the fish to the frying pan.”

Then he turned and started walking away. Egert stared helplessly at his back.

A new day was dawning; by the gates, a trumpet piped up thinly. The city broke open its jaws, forged from steel, so that the dust of the road could sink into the paved streets, so that any family man could set out for the far distances.

The departing dean suddenly stopped. Turning his face over his shoulder, he rubbed his temple as if he could not find the right words. He smiled at his own discomfort. Egert watched him with wide-open eyes.

The dean returned unhurriedly, as if in a reverie. “In any event, it is entirely unnecessary to search for the Wanderer.” He coughed and staggered a bit, and then said slowly, as if weighing each word, “Every year, on the eve of the Day of Jubilation, he appears in the city.”

Egert was stunned. He licked his dry lips and asked in a whisper, “And I will meet him?”

“Not necessarily.” The dean smiled. “But it is possible.”

Egert felt his heart pounding ferociously. “And the Day of Jubilation, when is that?”

“In the autumn.”

Egert felt his heart pound one more time and then freeze. “That’s so long,” he whispered, nearly crying. “So long.”

The dean again rubbed his temple pensively and smiled with just the corner of his mouth. Then, as if he had reached a decision, he took Egert by the elbow. “How about this, Egert: I’ll give you a place as an auditor at the university, but you’ll get room and board like a full-time student. Half a year remains until this possible meeting with your friend, the Wanderer. It would be good for you to spend this time sensibly so that, should he, in the end, indeed deign to give you an audience … I’m not promising you anything; I simply want to help you. Do you understand?”

Egert did not say anything. The dean’s offer seemed to come out of nowhere, and it stunned him a bit. The image of a pale woman in a window drifted through the depths of his consciousness.

“And of course,” added the dean, seeing his perplexity, “of course, no one and nothing at the university will harm you. Do you hear me, Egert?”

Wagons were driving through the open gates; peasants from the surrounding villages were swinging their heads back and forth, struggling through the mass of impudent street urchins, whose eyes unerringly saw and whose hands unerringly grasped anything from the carts that lay in temptation’s way. Egert recalled yesterday’s little adventure with these same urchins and scowled.

“What are you pondering for so long?” The dean seemed mildly surprised that his offer had not been snatched up immediately.

“Huh?” Egert jumped, caught in his thoughts. “Well, really, I … But didn’t I say? I agree.”

5

Two beds with high backs and an old table beneath the little window were all that would fit in the tiny, damp room with the narrow arched ceiling. The small window looked out onto the interior courtyard of the university. Right now it was empty except for the indefatigable old woman who came to clean twice a week; she was pacing back and forth with a duster and a broom.

Egert climbed down from the windowsill and returned to his bed. At the moment, he had more than enough time to lie on his back, stare at the gray arches of the ceiling, and think.

Spring would soon be over, summer would pass by, and then fall would set in. Yet again, Egert counted the remaining months on his fingers. The Day of Jubilation would arrive and a man would come to the city; a man with perfectly clear eyes lacking eyelashes, with fidgety nostrils on his long nose, with a biting sword in his scabbard; a man invested with an unknown but entirely relentless power.

Egert sighed and turned his face to the wall. A small spider was running across the dark stone, throwing its thin, articulated legs up high.

The university was full of students from all walks of life: the poorer among them had their room and board in this wing. The young men who were a bit richer—and there were many of them—rented rooms in the city. Egert avoided both rich and poor. He had written to his father a few days after his installation in the university; without explaining anything, Egert had informed his father that he was alive and well, and had asked for money to be sent.

The answer had come sooner than Egert expected: the post was obviously in good working order. Egert received from home neither reproach nor consolation, nor even a single word on a scrap of paper, but he could now pay for his room and board, exchange his frayed clothing for new, and have his boots fixed. The designation of auditor did not give him the right to wear the pride of the other students: a tricornered hat with silver fringe.

However, he was not even the slightest bit occupied with caps and fringe. Staring at the wall of the damp little room, he saw his home with the family emblem on the gates: there, a rider is bringing a letter; there, his father holds a piece of creased paper in his hands; there, those hands are shaking; and there, standing on the threshold, is his mother, exhausted, graying, her shawl slipping from her shoulder.

It might have been that way, but then again, it might not have. Perhaps his father’s hands did not shake when he discovered the name of his son under the sealing wax. Perhaps he had merely twitched an eyebrow and then growled at a servant to send money to this abomination who had blackened the honor of the family.

The door opened behind Egert’s back. Shivering as usual, he sat up on his bed.

Egert’s roommate, the son of an apothecary in a neighboring village, grinned merrily.

His name was Gaetan, but the entire university and the entire city, both to his face and behind his back, called him Fox. The youth—he was four years younger than Egert—seemed very young for his years: he was short of stature with narrow shoulders and a childish, open face with high cheekbones. Fox’s perky, upturned nose was covered in a mass of freckles, and his small honey-colored eyes had the ability to instantly transform his face from its habitually impish expression into a visage of touching naïveté.

Fox was the only person in the entire university—not counting Dean Luayan, of course—with whom Egert Soll managed to speak more than two words in all the time he had been there. On the very first day, overcoming his awkwardness, Egert had asked his roommate if he had seen a girl here, a young girl with dark hair. It was difficult to ask the question, but Egert sensed that remaining in the dark would be even worse. At first he was sure that Fox would laugh and declare that in such a respectable educational institution there were no girls; and he did, in truth, laugh.

“What are you on about, brother? That bird flies so far above your reach! Her name’s Toria; she’s the dean’s daughter. Beautiful, eh?”

Fox kept talking, but Egert could hear only the sound of the blood in his ears. His first instinct was to run wherever his feet would take him, but with inconceivable effort he restrained himself, forcing himself to remember the conversation by the well.

The dean is her father. Cursed fate!

He had spent the entire night following this revelation without sleep, even though this was his first night in a long time in a clean bed. He pulled the blanket up over his head to avoid his fear of the darkness, full of whispers. Lying there, he rubbed his bloodshot eyes and thought feverishly. The thought came to him suddenly: What if all of this was an enchantment? What if both the city and the university were enchanted, and the dean had not found him by accident? He had been brought here in a snare, brought here and secured so they could have their revenge.

The next day he crossed the path of the dean in a narrow corridor. The dean asked him something unimportant, and under that tranquil, steadfast gaze, Egert understood: If this were indeed a trap, he was far too weak to escape it.

The other students observed him with curiosity. He had to answer arbitrary questions and repeat his name innumerable times, flinching away from any unexpected contact. His defensive rituals helped a little, but Egert was afraid that others would notice them and ridicule him.

Soon the students decided that Egert was simply an unusually reserved and sullen person, and thereafter they left him alone. Egert was extremely happy with this turn of events. Even attending lectures became a bit less onerous for him.

All the students were placed into four categories, according to the number of years they had spent studying: students of the first level were called Inquirers, in as much as they studied the first year and thrived more in their desire to learn than in any specific field of knowledge; the students of the second level were termed Reasoners; the third-level students were called Aspirants, in as much as they professed a certain amount of erudition; and finally, the fourth-level students were called the Dedicated. According to Fox, far from all the youths who were striving toward wisdom were honored with this last title: the majority of them failed the summer exams and so, half-educated, returned to their homes.

Gaetan himself studied in the second level and was called a Reasoner; it seemed to Egert that, more than anything else, Fox reasoned about the subtleties of merry revels and nocturnal adventures. The students of the various levels willingly rubbed shoulders with one another; every group gathered for lessons specific to their levels, but the general lectures held in the Grand Auditorium were attended by all. At these lectures, each student tried to extract anything that he was able to digest from the learned speech of the teacher, just as in a large peasant family, where the grandfather eats vegetables, the child eats cereal, and the patriarch eats a slab of meat, all extracted from a single dish placed in the center of the table.

Every time he stepped through the door to the lecture hall, Egert set his teeth, wove his fingers into complex patterns inside his pockets, and overcame his fear. The enormous room seemed ominous to him; vapid stone faces watched from the vaulted ceiling, and in their white, blind eyes Egert sensed menace, if not wicked laughter. Cowering in a corner—the bench was uncomfortable, and it quickly caused his legs and back to go numb—Egert gazed dully at the high, intricately carved rostrum. Usually, the meaning of what the lecturer was saying was entirely lost on him only a few minutes after the traditional greeting.

The headmaster possessed a strident voice and an authoritative manner of pontificating; he talked of matters that were so complicated and abstract that Egert, despairing, ceased all attempts at understanding. Having given up, he fidgeted on the bench, listened to some distant whisperings, murmurs, and giggles, watched the dance of dust motes in a column of sunlight, examined the lines on his own hand, sighed, and waited for the end of the lecture. Never knowing why, he would sometimes raise his eyes to the small round window at the very top of the ceiling: the little window that for some reason looked out of the hall into the library.

The corpulent body and stentorian voice of the professor of natural sciences belonged more to a butcher than a scholar; from his speech Egert understood only the introductory phrases, such as, besides, as we see here, and from this it is to be expected that. From time to time the professor would engage in the most outlandish behavior: he combined liquids in glass cylinders or ignited sparks over a narrow-mouthed burner. He seemed nothing more nor less than an illusionist at a country fair. Sometimes live frogs were brought into the hall and the professor would slaughter them: Egert, who at one time had intrepidly visited a slaughterhouse, closed his eyes and turned away from the sight.

The brotherhood of students followed the speech from the rostrum with variable attention, some in silence, some fidgeting and whispering strenuously. Among the scholars there were both daydreamers and idiots; however, even the least of them understood the proceedings far better than Egert.

Dean Luayan’s lectures were by far the most interesting. His person called forth a multitude of strong and conflicting emotions in Egert: fear and hope and curiosity, the desire to ask for help, and terror at a single glance. Furthermore, no matter how consumed with himself he was, Egert could not help but notice the special reverence with which the dean was surrounded in the university.

All the whispers and giggles quieted when the dean appeared in the hall; encountering him in the vaulted corridors—Egert had seen it with his own eyes—even the headmaster himself hastened to show his consideration and respect, and the students simply froze as still as rabbits before a snake: they considered themselves lucky for every personal response they received when they greeted him and doubly lucky when they were deemed worthy of the dean’s smile.

Dean Luayan was a mage, and the students gossiped and whispered about this, but in his lectures he neither taught nor performed magic. He lectured on ancient times, on long-destroyed cities, and on wars that had once devastated entire countries. Egert listened as well as he could, but too often unknown names and dates were repeated, and Egert grew tired, unable to retain any of it. He would lose the thread of the lecture, and abandoned in a maze of facts, he despaired of ever understanding. One day, he decided to ask Fox if the dean ever taught the students magic. As an answer Egert received a sympathetic glance and an eloquent but not entirely decent gesture, both of which signified that Egert, to put it mildly, was not in his right mind.

None of the students carried arms, but even though Egert had always felt naked without the weight of steel on his belt, not one of these studious youths yearned to hold a lethal weapon. Full of spirit, the residents of the annex went out into the town almost every evening, and their boisterous return interrupted Egert’s light sleep sometimes at midnight, and sometimes in the small hours of the morning. Under the arches of the university they sang the school song, well known to all the students except Egert. Their individual lives shone with knowledge and energy, but it was all alien to Egert, because he was a stranger, an outsider, a foreigner, down to the last blond hair on his head.

Fox had perched with his thin backside on the table. He started to groan, as if he were reading an especially boring lecture, and then he peered at Egert. Egert smiled wanly in answer to the interrogative gaze of those mischievous, honey-colored eyes.

“Are you daydreaming?” asked Fox in a businesslike manner. “Daydreams are good for breakfast, but for dinner you need something richer, yes?”

Egert smiled again, painfully. He was a little bit afraid of Fox: the freckle-faced son of an apothecary was sarcastic and mocking, and as ruthless as a wasp. He entirely merited his nickname, and rumors of his pranks had reached the ears of even the reclusive Egert. Besides rumors, one of his escapades had recently unfolded right in front of Egert’s eyes.

Among the students there was a certain Gonza, an eternally acrimonious lad who was dissatisfied with everything, the son of an impoverished aristocrat from a sleepy province. Egert did not know at the time why Fox had chosen him specifically as a target, but one day, as he entered the lecture hall, Egert found the place full of a somewhat overwrought yet carefully concealed merriment. The students kept winking at one another and pursing their lips to keep from bursting out into laughter. Egert, as usual, slunk over into his corner, from where he could see that Fox, of course, was the focal point of the general excitement.

Gonza entered, and the normal, businesslike bustle was restored in the hall. Gonza’s bench mate greeted him and in the same breath recoiled in surprise. He said something in a low voice. Gonza stared at him in astonishment.

The essence of Fox’s plan was revealed to Egert later, but in the meantime Fox looked around just like everyone else, directed his gaze at Gonza, widened his eyes, and started to whisper loudly to his neighbor. Gonza fidgeted, winced, and for some reason grabbed his nose with his hand.

The plan was simple: All his fellow students—some with sympathy, some with malice, some solicitously, some in shock—questioned the stunned Gonza, asking him what had happened to his nose; how could it have grown by nearly a fourth of its size?

Gonza tried to put it off with a joke. He bared his teeth in the semblance of a grin, but his eyes darkened. The next day the trick repeated the same as before; meeting Gonza in the corridor, students frowned and averted their eyes.

Angry and bewildered, the poor lad finally turned to Egert. “Listen here, my dear man. If you would be so kind as to tell me: Is there something wrong with my nose?”

Egert shifted from foot to foot, looking into his questioning eyes, and finally spat out, “It’s kind of on the longish side.”

Gonza spit angrily and in the evening—as a laughing Fox later told Egert, who had become a sort of accomplice in the prank—in the evening the unhappy provincial lord managed to get his hands on a length of string. He carefully measured his wretched nose to its very tip. Unfortunately for him, he left his measuring string lying around in his room, right under his feather mattress where anyone could find it. Fox, of course, paid the room a visit in the absence of its owner and shortened the ill-fated measure by just a bit.

Heaven, what happened to Gonza when he took it into his head to carry out another measurement! Almost the entire university, crouching beneath the window of his room, heard the woeful, horrified shriek: The measuring string was too short; his unfortunate nose had grown a full half a fingernail’s width!

Egert flinched and ceased remembering. A long, drawn-out wail carried from the square. It sounded like the voice of an ancient monster, fettered by stone walls, a monster languishing and alone. Every time he heard the sound of this voice, Egert’s skin broke out in goose bumps even though Fox had long ago explained to him that it was nothing more than the ordinary ritual in the Tower of Lash: the gray hoods adored mystery and who knew what went on in those ceremonies of theirs. This howl broke out of the Tower sometimes once a day, sometimes twice, and occasionally there was silence from within for a whole week. The townsfolk were used to the strange sounds and paid them little attention, and it seemed to Egert that he alone wanted to put his hands over his ears every time he heard it.

And so now, having jerked involuntarily, he received a sneer from Fox. “My old dog was just the same, though it was whistles that she didn’t like. She’d hear them and start howling; it was like she immediately went out of her mind. Sort of like you, except you howl kind of shyly.”

The sound broke off. Egert took a breath. “You … you don’t know what they, I mean, what are they doing in that Tower?”

The acolytes of Lash were easy to recognize from afar: they were appareled in gray robes with hoods that fell over their faces. They filled the townsfolk with trepidation and awe, sentiments in which Egert partook fully.

Fox wrinkled his nose. He said pensively, “Well, I suppose they have quite a bit to do. For one, there must be an awful lot of laundry: those long robes sweep all over the pavement; they must get all kinds of shit stuck to them. It’s a dreadful business, getting rid of all those stains.”

Egert repressed a shudder. He asked dimly, “But the sound? That howl?”

Fox shoke theatrically. “That’s their laundress: whenever she finds a hole in a hood she immediately starts to wail. She curses, you know.”

“What do you know?” asked Egert, gritting his teeth.

“You’ve just got to go to lectures,” laughed Fox.

Egert sighed. For the last few days he had not gone to any lectures. He was tired, he’d given up, he’d had enough, but he did not have the strength or the ability to explain it to Fox.

Gaetan extracted an impossible quantity of green cucumbers from the pocket of his jacket. Critically examining the cucumbers, he nodded to Egert to see if he wanted one. Egert regarded the cucumbers with poorly concealed distrust.

Fox grinned with his entire sharp-toothed mouth, and his eyes flared with the expectation of mischief. Rapidly loosening his belt, Fox slipped a cucumber into his trousers. Huffing, he adjusted the vegetable so it fit naturally.

“Oh! Tonight we’ll dance with my love, Farri!”

Embracing an imaginary partner, he danced a few steps with his face set in a romantic expression; the hidden cucumber shook in time to his steps as, apparently, he had intended it to.

“It’ll work,” remarked Fox, “just so long as I hold her firmly. Let’s just hope it doesn’t fall out. Well, I’m off.”

Stuffing the cucumbers in his pocket, he drew his patched cloak closed. As he walked out the door, he tossed over his shoulder, “By the way, Dean Luayan asked about you. Have a good evening.”

Egert sat and listened as Fox’s loud steps withdrew down the vaulted corridor. Both Gaetan with his ridiculous cucumbers and the Tower of Lash with its strange yowl instantly fled from his thoughts.

Dean Luayan asked about you.

The dean seemed to relate to Egert exactly the same as he did to all the others; it was as if he had never brought him to the university at dawn, as if they had never had that difficult conversation by the well. Egert was simply an auditor, but one who lived in the annex like a student, and since no one brought up the subject of tuition, he too avoided talking about it with the elderly bursar. The dean, his benefactor, nodded affably to Egert whenever they met, but meanwhile Toria was his daughter, and the slain Dinar was meant to be his son-in-law.

From the time of his arrival at the university, the dean had shown no interest in him, so why was he doing so now? Did he notice that Egert was not going to lectures? Or was it about that encounter, that memorable encounter in the corridor?

It happened four days ago.

Egert arrived at the lecture later than usual. The booming voice of the headmaster wafted through the closed doors. Egert realized that he was too late, but he felt neither chagrin nor regret at this fact, only tired relief. He was turning to walk away when he heard wooden wheels rolling across the stone floor.

The low sound startled him. From around the corner appeared a trolley: a small table on wheels. The table was sagging under a weight of books. As if bewitched, Egert could not tear his eyes away from the glimmering gold spines of the books. On the very top lay a small volume, sealed with a silver clasp and a small, lusterless lock; for some time Egert stared at it, dazed, and then he twitched as if he had been shocked and raised his eyes.

Toria was standing directly in front of him. He could see every small line on her face, though it was as beautiful as before. The high collar of her black dress covered her neck, her hair was collected in a simple, one might even say careless, upsweep, and only one wayward tress, which had somehow managed to escape, fell on her pure, ivory forehead.

Egert wished the flagstones of the floor would open up and swallow him, hide him from her aloof, only slightly strained gaze. The first time he had met Toria, in Kavarren, she had looked calm and perhaps a bit detached; their second encounter, which had resulted in his duel with the student, had twisted her about in a whirlwind of despair, grief, and loss. The third time they had met—Egert flinched at the memory—she had cast her eyes at him, and he had read there only loathing and cold disgust devoid of malice.

Glorious Heaven! He was the very embodiment of cowardice: the thing he was most frightened of on this earth was to once again meet with her face-to-face!

Toria did not lower her eyes, and no matter how much he wanted to, he could not turn away. He watched as the tense aloofness in her eyes changed into cold amazement, and two vertical lines appeared on her forehead; then Toria nudged the trolley forward a bit and looked at Egert questioningly. He stood as still as a pillar, unable to tear himself from the spot where he was standing. She sighed, and the corner of her mouth twitched in exactly the same way as the dean’s did: it was as if she was slightly annoyed by Egert’s lack of comprehension. Only then did he realize that he had blocked the path of the trolley. He leapt to the side, pressing his back up against the wall. The nape of his neck squeezed against cold stone as he pressed his entire sweaty, shaking body against it. Toria simply walked by, and as she did, he smelled her scent, the intense scent of freshly cut grass.

The sound of the trolley had long since disappeared in the depths of the corridors, but he still stood there, pressing his back against the wall and staring in the direction it had gone.

She entered her father’s study, silently closing the door behind her. The dean was sitting behind his enormous writing desk; three candles in a tall candelabrum woefully dropped globules of wax onto the dark, pitted surface of the desk. His goose quill scratched softly. Dozens of bookmarks, lovingly prepared by Toria, hung their colored tassels out of the multitude of books.

Toria stood silently behind him as he wrote.

This not entirely decorous habit had been preserved in Toria from her earliest years: to sneak up on her father while he was absorbed in his work and, peering over his shoulder, to watch in fascination as the black tip of his quill danced across a clean sheet of paper. Her mother had scolded her for this habit: snooping was unladylike, and more important, she was disturbing her father’s work. Her father, on the other hand, only chuckled at her when he caught her behind him. It was how she had learned to read, peering over his shoulder.

At the moment, the dean was working on his labor of love: annotation to the latest chapter from his history of mages. Toria understood that he was writing an annotation because she saw two slanting crosses at the head of the page, but the meaning of what he was writing was not immediately clear to her. For a while she merely watched with a certain amount of detached admiration as his pen danced its way across the page; finally, however, the black lines of the letters formed themselves into words for her to read:

… idle speculation. It appears, however, that the less power a mage is allotted, the more avidly he strives to supplement this lack with superficial effects. The author of these lines was once acquainted with an old witch who levied a strange tax upon an entire village: they were required to gather the hearts of all the rats in the village, without exception, and give them to her. Undoubtedly, the old woman would say she had complicated and mysterious reasons for this incredibly strange requirement. It appears to this author, however, that the slaughtered rats served only one true purpose: to cause the hearts of the peasants to tremble with fear at the very mention of the sorceress who ruled over them. History is full of examples like this, some far more serious, and it is not only uneducated peasants who have been mystified by various kinds of cheap tricks, such as the one just mentioned. Recall what Balthazar Est wrote in his Meager Notations, which, by the way, were far from meager: “If black, evil-looking clouds hover over the dwelling of a mage day and night; if the windows of his laboratory glow with a bloodred light; if one meets a chained dragon, uncared for and thus all the more malodorous, in his antechamber instead of servants; and if finally the one who comes to meet you has glowing eyes and carries a ponderous staff in his hand, then you can be quite sure that standing before you is an insignificant dabbler who is ashamed of his own weakness. The most worthless of all the mages I have known never crawled out from under his robe, which was covered in runes. I believe he even slept in it. The most powerful and terrible of my brethren, whose name I am even reluctant to write, preferred to wear spacious, well-worn shirts—”

The dean paused and let his quill drop.

“You’re quoting him from memory?” marveled Toria.

The dean grinned with a certain amount of complacency.

“I saw him,” said Toria quietly.

The dean understood that she was definitely not talking about the archmage, Balthazar Est.

One of the candles started to splutter; Toria drew herself up, took a small pair of scissors from the table, and precisely trimmed the wick. She asked in a soft voice, “By the way, who is this powerful and terrible mage who, according to Master Est, liked old castoffs?”

The dean grinned again. “That was Est’s teacher. He died about a hundred years ago.”

He fell silent and eyed his daughter questioningly. Toria seemed distracted, but the dean saw that all her thoughts were spinning, like a dog on a lead, around one vitally important subject. And in the end her thoughts about this subject found form in words that seemed to escape from her lips, “Egert Soll.”

Toria faltered. Her father benevolently waited for the continuation. She removed a heavy folio from the trolley and put it on a cleared corner of the desk then perched next to it, her feet off the ground.

“The impression I get about the scar and all the rest of it is … You can’t even imagine how much he has changed. You didn’t see him before…” She fell silent, swaying her foot in its little slipper. “Soll was a magnificent, puffed-up blowhard. Now there’s nothing left of that, just an empty shell, a vile skin. Really, Father, why would y—?” cutting off the word half-spoken, she eloquently, with exaggerated bewilderment, shrugged her shoulders.

“I understand.” The dean smiled again, but this time sadly. “You’ll never be able to forgive him, of course.”

Toria tossed her head. “That’s beside the point. It’s not a matter of forgiving or not forgiving. What if a tree had fallen on Dinar or a rock from a cliff? Could I really hate a stone?”

The dean whistled under his breath. “So in your opinion, Egert Soll is not responsible for his conduct, like an animal? Or like a tree or a stone, as you said?”

Toria stood up, apparently dissatisfied with her inability to express herself. She crossly ripped off a thread that was dangling from her sleeve. “That’s not what I meant to say. He’s not worthy of my hatred. I neither wish to forgive him nor not to forgive him. He is a void, you understand? He is of absolutely no interest. I have observed him, and not just once or twice.”

Toria bit her lip; she truly had often found it necessary to climb up to the top of the heavy stepladder so that she could peer through the small round window between the library and the Grand Auditorium. Egert always sat in exactly the same place, in a dark corner far from the rostrum. His vain attempts to extract some meaning out of the lectures, his subsequent desperation, and the apathetic indifference that always succeeded it had been quite evident to the observer. Pursing her lips, Toria had tried to suppress the hatred within herself and to observe Egert Soll with the dispassionate gaze of a researcher; sometimes she had even experienced a sort of queasy pity for him. But there were also times when her anger broke through, and then, who knows why, Soll would suddenly raise his head and look at the window, not seeing Toria behind it, even though he seemed to be staring straight into her eyes.

“If you had seen him there, by the well,” said the dean softly. “If you had seen how the curse worked its will upon him. Believe me, this man suffers deeply.”

Toria clutched the lock of hair that had fallen across her forehead and jerked it painfully. Memories flickered before her eyes, eclipsing one another: memories of things it would be best to forget.

Egert had laughed that day: all too well did Toria remember that laughter and the regard of his narrowed, condescending eyes; all too well did she remember that painfully long, fatal game he had played with Dinar; all too well did she remember the black tip of the blade that stuck out of the back of her beloved, and the pool of blood on the wet sand.

The dean waited patiently while his daughter gathered her thoughts.

“I understand,” said Toria finally, “that he intrigues you as an exhibit or an artifact, as a man who has been marked by the Wanderer and as the bearer of his curse. But for me, he is nothing more than an executioner whose hand has been cut off. And so, the fact that he now lives there, in the annex, and walks along the same corridors as Dinar once did, that, on top of everything else—” She winced, screwing up her face as if she tasted something rotten. She fell silent. She twirled a lock of hair in her fingers then absently pushed it back into the rest of her hair. The lock immediately broke free again.

“It is unpleasant for you, I know,” said her father softly. “It is offensive and painful. But please believe me, it has to be so. Believe me, trust me, and endure it, please.”

Toria tugged pensively at the disobedient curl; then, stretching out her hand, she took a knife from the table and, just as pensively, cut off the annoying lock of hair.

She was used to trusting her father completely and in everything. People and animals trusted her father; even snakes trusted her father: she had first witnessed this trust as a young girl, when her father had induced an adder to come out of a haystack where the village boys had been playing. The adder itself was quite terrified; Luayan, who at that time was not yet a dean, sharply scolded the peasant who, horror-stricken, wished to kill the adder; then he tucked the snake into one of his large pockets and thus carried it away into the forest. Toria walked alongside him and was not the slightest bit afraid: to her it was clearer than clear that everything her father did was correct and that he could never house danger within himself. Setting the snake down in a swath of grass, her father took a long time roughly explaining something to it: young Toria thought he was probably teaching it that it should not bite people. The snake did not dare to slither away without having received the express permission of her father. When Toria excitedly told her mother about all of this, her mother simply frowned and pursed her lips: her mother, unlike everyone else, did not trust her father completely.

Toria had trouble remembering the vague arguments that occasionally bedeviled the small family. It is possible that her father, looking ahead, tried to ensure that his daughter remembered only what was good about her mother; nevertheless, Toria recalled every detail of the disastrous winter evening that had taken her mother away from her.

It was only much later that she began to understand what was meant by that single word—he—that was uttered by her father first derisively, then furiously, and finally desolately; in the mouth of her mother, that word always sounded the same, like a challenge. That evening, having argued with her husband, Toria’s mother was planning to go to him, but then, for the first time after a long period of dismissive sufferance of his wife’s indiscretion, Luayan rebelled.

That is to say that it appeared that he rebelled: in truth, he felt or simply knew what would happen next. He implored, then threatened, and then locked his wife in a room, but she raged at him and threw such words into his face that Toria, trembling with dread in her bed behind the curtains, was steeped in tears of terror and distress. At some point Luayan’s forbearance broke down, and he allowed his wife to leave; he simply allowed her to leave. The slamming door almost came off its hinges, so powerful was that parting blow.

“I couldn’t bear listening to her,” the dean bitterly said to his grown daughter many years later. “I couldn’t bear…”

Toria, aware of the pain and guilt her father felt, firmly pressed her face to his chest.

Luayan did not sleep that entire night: young Toria, awakening from time to time, saw the lamp burning on the table and her father pacing around the room. Toward morning, without saying a word, he dressed and rushed outside as if he was hurrying to help someone, but it was too late. Even mages cannot quicken the dead, and Toria’s mother was already dead when her husband freed her from a high snowdrift on the forest road.

“I couldn’t bear listening to her. I was blinded by pride and resentment, but what was the use of taking offense at that woman?”

“You are not responsible,” insisted Toria.

But her father averted his face. “I am responsible.”

Fox returned after midnight.

At first muted giggles and unintelligible chatter could be heard below the window; then someone began to sing a mournful song, which was almost immediately cut short by a gasp, as if the singer had received a friendly punch on the back.

A brief silence followed, which was then exchanged for rustles in the corridor; the door squeaked open, and Fox stumbled into the room in complete darkness.

The wooden bed groaned under the weight of his gaunt body. Fabric rustled, and first one boot and then the other fell onto the floor. Fox stretched and yawned contentedly, recalling, apparently, tonight’s adventure and the complete success of his gigantic cucumber. Already drifting off into sleep, he suddenly heard Egert say softly, “Gaetan.”

Fox’s bed squeaked. Surprised, he turned over onto his side. “And why is it that you’re not sleeping, eh?” The diffuse good-natured quality of his voice betrayed just how much wine he had drunk.

“Gaetan,” Egert repeated with a sigh. “Tell me what you know about the dean.”

The room became quiet, very quiet; somewhere in the distance a cricket chirped. A shutter banged, and once again there was silence.

“You’re such an idiot, Egert,” said Fox, his voice already different, more sober. “You’ve found a wonderful topic for the early hours of the morning.” He paused, sniffed angrily, and then added testily, “And anyway, you’d know better. After all, it seems you know each other.”

“So it seems,” whispered Egert.

“Well, there you go. Now sleep.” The bed under Fox fairly screamed, so adamantly did he turn his face to the wall.

A moth was fluttering against the glass; the drumming of its tiny wings broke off and then came to life with renewed vigor. It did not matter if he closed his eyes or kept them wide open: the pervasive dark was as thick as wax, and it seemed to crawl over his eyes. Egert quieted, but as always in the dark, he felt very ill at ease.

Gaetan’s bed came alive again, but the squeak was cut short as it reached its highest pitch. “And what are you to the dean, anyway?” Fox asked the darkness in a hissing whisper. “What does he have to do with you? And what do you have to do with him? Well?”

Egert pulled his blanket up to his chin. Addressing himself to the invisible ceiling, he said, “He promised to help me. And I … I don’t know. I’m afraid of him. And then, she still…”

“She? Who’s she?” promptly asked the darkness.

“She is Toria.” Egert’s lips unwillingly formed the name.

“Toria?” asked Fox apprehensively and yet at the same time wistfully. He sighed loudly and sorrowfully said, “Forget about it.”

The night watchmen called to one another far away in the city.

“Does he teach her sorcery?” Egert asked, his heart fluttering.

Fox once again crossly turned over in bed. “You were born a fool, and you’ll die a fool. He doesn’t teach magic to anyone! It’s not arithmetic or shoe-making.”

The silence settled in once again, broken only by the rustle of the moth and the angry huffing of Fox.

“But he is a mage, right?” asked Egert, overcoming his involuntary timidity. “He’s an archmage, right? That’s why I…”

He wanted to say that that was why he came to the city, to meet the archmage, about whom he had heard on the roads and in the inns along the way; he wanted to say this, but he faltered, afraid to betray himself more than he should. Fortunately, Fox did not notice. His bed gave yet another squeak.

“I—,” began Egert again, but Fox unexpectedly interrupted him.

The voice of the freckled boy sounded unusually serious, even a bit emotional. “This is my second year in the university. And all I can tell you is that Dean Luayan, he’s … it’s possible that he’s not entirely human.” He took a breath. “But he’s never worked evil on anyone. No one in the world knows history better than he does, that’s for sure. Only, you’re right to fear him, Egert. One day—you can’t go gossiping about this to anyone—I saw it myself, Egert! An old crone with a drum came to the square. She was a beggar; she drummed and asked for alms. People talked about her, said it was better to keep your distance. But I decided to go take a look at her. I was curious. I was near her when I saw the dean coming. He caught up to the crone, and she suddenly turned around and glared. I was standing to the side, I tell you, but that glare nearly killed me. But the crone stopped drumming; it just spluttered out. She whispered something, and even though I couldn’t make out the exact words, they scraped like nails against a chalkboard. Well, then the dean also said something to her.… It was such a word.… It resounded in my ears for three days. Then he dragged her away, not with his hands, but as if with an invisible rope. And I, a fool, dragged myself after him, although my knees were shaking. They turned into a breezeway and the crone … There, where the crone had stood, I swear, was a viper, a heavy, slimy viper, coiled, its jaws open wide toward the dean, and then he raised his hand and from that hand…”

Strangely, Fox stopped short and fell silent.

Egert lay still, trying, without much success, to keep himself from shaking nervously. “Well?” he forced out finally.

Fox moved. He stood. He groped for the tinderbox on the table with his hands.

“Well!” moaned Egert.

“Well,” Fox echoed dully, striking a spark. “The dean asked: ‘What is it that you need?’ And the snake hissed, ‘The auditor Egert Soll at my mercy.’”

A single candle flared up. Egert, covered in sweat, spit in disgust and at the same time breathed a sigh of relief: he was lying, the cursed joker that he was, he was lying. Probably.

Fox was standing in the middle of the room with the candle, and the black shadows on the walls were quivering: Gaetan’s hand was shaking slightly.

Both of them pretended to be sleeping until the dawn broke. In the morning, after spending a few long minutes inspecting the slanting scar on his cheek through the bristles of his beard, Egert forced himself to set out for the lecture.

Dean Luayan descended from his study a bit earlier than usual that day. Seeing him at the end of the corridor, Egert cringed into a dark, dank recess in the wall. Without noticing Egert, or perhaps just giving the impression that he did not notice him, the dean walked by. Just at the moment when he was passing Egert, Fox caught up to him.

Egert could not see him; he could only hear the unusually timid, confused voice of Gaetan: it seemed that he was asking forgiveness for something. “My cursed tongue…” came to Egert’s ears. “I myself don’t know how! I swear to Heaven, from now on I’ll be as silent as a fish!”

The dean said something soft and soothing in answer. Fox’s voice became more cheerful; as he walked away, his heels clicked on the floor.

The dean stood for a moment in thought; then he turned, and pausing in front of the alcove, he looked to the side and called out quietly, “Egert.”

The dean’s study was enormous, only a bit smaller than the Grand Auditorium. The sunlight sank down into the shadowy corners of the room: velvet curtains covered the windows like heavy eyelids over inflamed, sleepless eyes, immersing the room in twilight.

“Take a look around, Egert. You’re probably curious, so take a look.”

In the middle of the study was a writing desk with a three-armed, bronze candelabrum on top; next to the desk, two armchairs with tall, carved backs stood facing each other; and beyond the desk, on a smooth, stark wall, the extended wing of a bird, forged from steel, gleamed wanly.

“That is a memento of my teacher. He was called Orlan. I’ll tell you about him later.”

Treading carefully, Egert moved along the walls. His pale face, deformed by the scar, was reflected in a slightly frosted glass globe with a sputtering candle inside it. Next to the odd lamp, a crowd of silver figurines stood on a rickety circular table: figurines of people, animals, and huge, dreadful insects. Made with uncommon skill, all the figurines seemed to be staring at the same exact spot. Egert followed the gazes of the silver creatures, which were fixed on the spike of a fabric needle, protruding from a shapeless mass of pine resin.

“You may look, but you may not touch, yes?”

Heaven above, Egert would sooner bite off his fingers than risk letting them touch the stuffed carcasses of giant rats fettered with real chains. The exposed teeth of these long dead rodents seemed still moist with sticky saliva.

Two massive cabinets, as austere and forbidding as guards, were fastened with two pendulous locks. Shelves stretched out along the walls; undoubtedly these held special books, books of magic. Egert shuddered. Dense, black, silky fur grew on the spine of one of these tomes.

Egert no longer desired to look around. Backing away, he awkwardly looked at the dean.

The dean unhurriedly pulled back the edge of one of the curtains, bathing the study in daylight. He sat down in one of the wooden armchairs. “Well, Egert. The time has come for us to have a little chat.”

Obeying the dean’s extended hand, Egert walked over on shaky legs and crouched on the edge of the other armchair. He could see an azure patch of sky in the corner of the window freed from the curtain.

“Some time ago,” the dean began leisurely, “not all that long ago if one judges by the immensity of history, but not at all recently if one judges by the length of a human life, a certain man lived. He was young and prosperous, and he was a mage by the grace of Heaven. As the years went by, he would have become a mage of unprecedented power, had not an unexpected and oppressive rupture occurred in his fate.”

The dean paused, as if offering Egert the chance to discern some latent meaning in his words. Egert clutched the wooden armrests with his fingers.

“Thus it happened,” continued the dean, “that in his overconfidence and hubris he transgressed the line that separates a trifle from treachery, and he grievously outraged his friends. For his transgression he suffered what might be considered an excessively harsh punishment: he was deprived of the appearance of a man for three years and parted from his gift of magic for all time. But that gift had been a part of his soul, his consciousness, his individuality. And so, abased and renounced, bereft of everything he held dear, he set out on the path of experience.”

The dean fell silent, as though he were waiting for Egert to take up the tale and finish it for him, but Egert said nothing, trying to understand what connection the dean’s story had to his own destiny.

The dean gave a small, ironic smile. “Yes, Egert, the path of experience. That was his path, and he walked it to its end. You also stand on a similar path, Soll, but your route is different, and no one knows what awaits you at its end. But you must realize that the man I just told you about never killed anyone.”

It felt as if a hot iron pierced Egert and swept through his body; however, there was not a shadow of blame or reproach in the dean’s tranquil voice. The azure sky in the gleaming gap of the window turned black for a second, and a thought slipped through the abyss of his consciousness: That’s it, the most important thing; everything else pales in comparison to that … killing. Perhaps the time had come to settle accounts; after all, Toria was the dean’s daughter and Dinar would have been his son-in-law.

“But,” he spat out, “I really didn’t want to. It was an honorable duel. I didn’t mean to kill him, Dean Luayan. Before all this…”

He faltered, thinking better of what he’d been about to say, but the mage glanced at him, the question in his eyes, and Egert found it necessary to continue.

“I’ve killed before in duels. Twice, both times fairly. All the people, who died by my sword, they all had kinsmen and friends, but even their kin agreed that death during a duel is not a disgrace and that those who survive aren’t murderers.”

The dean said nothing. He stood up as if thinking, and walked along the shelves of books, all the while tracing his fingers along their frayed spines. Drawing his head down into his shoulders, Egert watched him, waiting for whatever might happen next: lightning from the dean’s outstretched hand or an incantation that would turn him into a frog.

The mage finally turned round. He asked severely, “Imagine that you do finally meet the Wanderer, Soll. What will you say to him? The very same words that I just heard?”

Egert lowered his head even more. He admitted sincerely, “I don’t know what I would say to him. I had hoped that you might teach me. But…”

He ceased talking because any words he might say would devolve into despicable, inane blather. He would have liked to say that he knew very well that the dean had reason to despise the killer of the student named Dinar, and that it was conceivable that the mercy he had shown to Egert was only a respite before the inevitable punishment. He would have liked to explain that he was sensible to the fact that the father of Toria was in no way obliged to help him in his dealings with the Wanderer; quite the opposite: the dean had a right to regard the curse of cowardice as appropriate. It was only just that Egert should carry the scar on his face until the end of his days. And, finally, Egert would have liked to confess how intensely, albeit hopelessly, he nonetheless reckoned on the dean’s help.

He would have liked to say all of this, but his tongue lay in his mouth, sluggish and lacking the will to speak, like a lifeless fish.

The dean walked over to the desk and threw open the lid of a massive writing set. Egert glimpsed a grotesquely shaped inkwell, a sand box with a bronze bead on the lid, a pile of many-colored quills, and a pair of penknives.

The dean smiled ironically. “It was not mere chance that caused me to talk about the mage who was deprived of his gift. It is possible, Egert, that knowledge of his fate may help you in some way. But it is also possible that it may not.” The dean took an especially long quill out of the pile, inspected it lovingly, and started sharpening it with one of the penknives. “Half a century ago, Egert, I was a young boy, living in the foothills. My mother, my father, and all my kin perished during the Black Plague, and my teacher, Orlan, became the most important man in my life. His small house clung to the side of a cliff like a bird’s nest, and I was a chick in that nest. But then one day my teacher looked into the Mirror of Waters. You see, Egert, a mage who has attained a certain level of power can gather the water from five different springs and perform a conjuration over it, creating the Mirror of Waters, in which he may see that which is hidden from mere sight. My teacher looked into the Mirror, and then he died: his heart burst. I have never been able to discover what or who he saw then. I found myself alone, just thirteen years old. Having buried Orlan according to custom, I did not rush to seek a new teacher, regardless of how young I was. And after some time had passed, I too took it upon myself to create the Mirror of Waters. The Mirror remained dark for a long time, and I was ready to despair, when the surface of the water brightened and I saw—” The dean laid the sharpened quill to the side and took up a new one. “—I saw a man, unknown to me, who stood in front of the immense, wrought iron Doors. The vision lasted only a few moments, but I had time to discern that the rusty bar was partially removed. Egert, have you ever heard of the Doors of Creation?”

The dean paused and looked at Egert inquiringly. Fidgeting in the armchair, Egert felt even more foolish than usual. Shrugging his shoulders, the dean smiled.

“You don’t know why I am telling you all of this. It is possible, Egert, that it may be in vain; it is possible that there is no point. But if you wish to speak to the Wanderer … Do you really still wish to speak with him?”

The outer door creaked slightly, but to Egert this sound seemed as deafening as a barrage of cannon fire. Toria walked into the study.

Egert cowered in his armchair, but the girl, who had merely paused at the sight of her father’s visitor, approached the desk as if it were of no concern and placed a small tray with a slice of bread and a glass of milk on it. Then, exchanging glances with her father, she slowly sat on the edge of the desk, dangling her narrow-tipped slippers over the floor.

“I think I’ve managed to completely confuse Master Soll with my stories,” the dean informed his daughter. Toria smiled sourly.

The dean once again found his tongue, still addressing himself to Egert, who could no longer take in a single word. All he could do was await that blessed moment when it would finally be possible for him to stand up and leave. He never even looked at Toria, but all the same his skin crawled from the indifferent glances that she bestowed upon him from time to time.

Several minutes passed before Egert was able to once again understand what it was the dean had been saying in the interim.

“This is the labor of my life, Soll, the primary text. While it is simply titled A History of Mages, it is arguable that before me there has never been another who had the unique ability to link together all that we know about the archmages of the past. Many of them exist only in legend, some lived not all that long ago, and some are still alive. I was the student of Orlan—a large chapter is devoted to him—and I knew Lart Legiar personally. These names may mean nothing to you, Soll, but any mage, even the most mediocre, is filled with reverence at the very mention of them.”

Egert’s head felt as though it were gradually being filled with lead. The room slowly started spinning around him as if around an axis. Only the pale face of Toria, like an elegant alabaster mask, remained stationary.

“I understand that this is difficult for you, Soll.” The dean had once again sat in the wooden armchair, and meeting his eyes, Egert’s head cleared instantly, as if he had been plunged into icy water. The dean was staring at Egert, as if he could pin him down with his eyes. “I understand. But the path of experience is not easy, Soll. No one can know how your path will end, but I will help you as long as I can manage. Toria—” He turned smoothly toward his daughter. “—that book, the history of curses, is it here or in the library?”

Without saying a word, Toria drew a small leather-bound booklet, the corners of which were reinforced with bronze plates, from a shelf.

“On Curses?” she asked in a prosaic tone. “Here it is.”

The dean took the book carefully, brushed dust from it with his palm, opened it, and blew on the pages, expelling any remaining motes of dust.

“Here you are, Soll. I am lending you this book in the hope that it will help you to understand more profoundly, to perceive what exactly it was that happened to you. Take your time. You can have it for as long as you need.”

“Thank you,” said Egert in a voice that was wooden and somehow not his own.

There once lived a man, and he was harsh and greedy. One day, during a severe frost, a woman with a child at her breast knocked at the door of his house. He thought, “Why is this beggar-woman at my hearth?” He did not let her in. There was a snowstorm, and as she froze in a snowdrift with her dead child in her arms, the woman said one word, terrible to human ears. And that man was cursed: nevermore was he able to light a fire. Whether it was the tiniest spark or a conflagration, a bonfire or a flame to light his pipe, every flame smoked and expired as soon as he came near it. He became cold and faded, like a flame in a downpour, and he could not warm himself. He could not warm himself, and, dying, he whispered, “So cold…”

Egert cringed as if from a chill, breathed a sigh, and turned the page.

In a certain village there was a pestilence, and many people died. Having heard of the misfortune, a shaman came to the village; he was young, but experienced and skillful. Treating people with herbs, he went from house to house, and the illness should have afflicted him as well, but fortunately it did not touch him. The people were cured. Then they asked themselves, “Whence came this power, bestowed upon the young healer? Whence came this strange vigor in his hands and in his herbs? Why did the pestilence spare him?” The people were afraid of the unknown power and they destroyed the herbalist, hoping to destroy his power with him. However, it happened that after this crime, a reckoning followed: after only a short amount of time the village was deserted, and not a soul knew where the people had mislaid themselves. The sages say that they were cursed, that they were all cursed, both the graybeards and the babes, and that they drudge in unknown abysses until the man appears and removes the curse.

The book was old and every yellowed page contained tales of matters that were obscure and ghastly. It was difficult for Egert to restrain the nervous chill that ran through him as he read, but all the same he kept reading, as if his eyes were riveted to the letters, black as the back of a beetle.

It happened once that three men stopped a traveler on the road. But he was poor, and the three did not receive any spoils. Then, overcome by spite, they beat him mercilessly. On the brink of death, he said to them, “I was meek and good, and I caused you no evil. Why have you served me thus? I curse and anathematize you: May the earth never again bear you up!”

The traveler died, and as soon as his eyes closed the earth went out from under the feet of the brigands.

Terror-stricken, they tried to run, but with each step the once firm earth below them yawned ever wider and grasped at their feet, and when they were already up to their knees in earth they cried out for mercy. But the curse had been spoken and the lips of he who had cursed them would remain cold and silent forevermore. The earth would not support the highwaymen. It no longer wished to carry them, and they disappeared up to their waists, and then up to their chests, and then the grass cut short their screaming mouths forever, and only black pits remaining in the ground, and indeed they …

Egert did not read to the end: a dreary sound carried in from the unseen square, the voice of the Tower of the Order of Lash. Egert took a shuddering breath and turned the page.

A wizard, a decrepit and malicious old man, was passing by a village. It happened that he tripped over a rock lying in the road. He fell and broke his old bones. The sorcerer cried out and cursed the rock: “Henceforth, no people shall settle in this place!” The rock groaned grievously, as if it was in excruciating pain, and daredevils who chose to come close to the place saw black blood trickling from a crevice in drops.

Egert removed his eyes from the book. A procession of strange and aggrieving stories had been passing before his eyes for the past several days, and any sane man would consider most of these stories to be fairy tales; any sane man, but not the man who wore a slanting scar on his cheek.

There once was a man who married a beautiful girl and loved her with his entire soul. But his young wife was far too pretty, and an image of her betrayal appeared to the man in a dream. Then, fraught with fear and wrath, he spoke words that turned into a curse, “Let any other man be ruined, upon whom her affectionate, favorable gaze falls even once, and let him die a painful death!”

But his young wife remained faithful to him with all her heart and soul, and not a single time did she gaze with tenderness at another man. The years went by, and the couple lived in prosperity and happiness, and their children grew. And so their eldest son matured; he turned from a boy into a youth. And one day, inflamed by his first love, he danced home at dawn. His mother, standing by the porch, gazed at her son and saw his sparkling eyes and his wide shoulders; she saw the lithesome strength and youthful fervor of her son, and her gaze became full of pride, favor, and affection.

And the old curse broke free and, without discernment and without mercy, descended upon the youth, regardless of the tears his mother wept. She lost her wits and tore out her eyes, the eyes that had killed her son with a mere glance.

The grass in the university’s interior court was shining under the sun, concealing within its velvety green a horde of vociferous grasshoppers. The invisible insects were in a state of bliss, singing hymns to life. It was just past the lazy midday hour, and a warm wind carried the smells of earth and flowers, but the book, indifferent as a bystander, still lay before Egert on the battered old table.

A rich and eminent lady had a beautiful daughter who fell in love with an itinerant troubadour. The daughter wanted to run away from home and elope with the vagrant. But their plans went amiss; having discovered the purpose of the enamored couple, the old mother was angered beyond all measure, and being experienced in magic, she spoke a curse, “The man who deflowers my daughter will not know happiness, he will never see the light again, and he will not even remember his own name!”

The girl wept bitterly for a long time. The minstrel left for the far reaches of the earth, and there was no longer anyone who dared to covet the hand of the beautiful and wealthy bride. But then one day an arrogant, albeit impoverished, lord announced his intention to take her as his wife. The wedding was performed in a hurry, and on their wedding night the young husband brought to his wife a coarse, lascivious young hostler.

And so it happened that the very next day the hostler was struck blind and thus could no longer see the light. He also went mad and forgot his own name, and he shriveled up and thus nevermore did he know happiness. And the young husband began to live with his wife, and he received an abundant dowry. However, his matrimony did not last long because …

A bumblebee, a striped, fluffy ball, flew into the room. It buzzed under the gray arch of the ceiling, bumped into a beam, and fell onto a page that was yellowed with time; then it buzzed aggrievedly and flew back out the window. Egert rubbed his bloodshot eyes with his fists.

Why did Dean Luayan think it was necessary that he read all of this?

In all the centuries sometimes incorrigible evildoers suffered from curses, but at other times they befell people who were not guilty of anything. Egert felt a particular sympathy toward the latter. He too was a victim of a curse; all these people were entwined with him in a common misfortune. The Wanderer happened upon his path, and in passing, with a single slash of his sword, he unrecognizably mutilated Egert’s life.

Egert had never before had to sit for so long behind a book. His back was aching, and his tired eyes were watering and smarting from the unfamiliar employment. Pushing aside the thought of rest, Egert sighed and once again pulled the open book toward him.

A fugitive tramp had taken refuge in the home of a lonely widow. The guards, who served the prince of that realm, were persecuting him, but the woman took pity on him and concealed him in her basement. But when the pursuers, ferocious and well armed, turned up at her house, the widow was frightened. She fainted and thus betrayed the whereabouts of the fugitive. The guards hanged him immediately, but with the noose already around his neck he said to the woman, “What have you done? You are false: let no one trust you until the day of your death!”

The tramp died, and the guards buried him right under the widow’s window. Ever after, people shunned the miserable woman, for they did not trust her: they did not trust her words, or her eyes, or her voice, or her actions. They did not trust in her kindness and honesty, and she gained a reputation as a wicked, malicious witch throughout the district.

But as chance would have it, one day an old man, white-haired as the moon, road through the village on a horse. He visited the house of the despondent woman and told her, “I know why this misfortune has seized you. I know that you have already atoned for your unwitting guilt. Listen to me, and I will tell you how to remove the curse!”

She listened well, and waiting until midnight, she went out to the grave under her window, which was overgrown with nettles and thistles. In one hand she carried a jug of water, and in the other she carried a sharp dagger, left behind by the old man. She stood before the grave, raised her face to the moon, and said to the dead man in the ground, “Here is water, and here is sharp steel. Let your thirst be quenched! Take your sorcery from me!”

With these words she planted the dagger right in the grave mound; she thrust it deep, right up to its hilt. Then she poured the water out of the jug over the ground and went back into her house. The next morning she looked outside, and saw that a tree was growing on the grave, a young alder. And then the woman understood that the curse was broken, and she rejoiced, and from then onward she began to live peacefully and happily, and she cared for the tree on the grave as for a son.

With difficulty, Egert tore his eyes away from the even, disinterested lines. The curse was broken, the curse was broken repeated over and over in the rustle of the wind, in the warbles of an unseen bird, in someone’s distant steps along the echoing corridor of the annex. The curse was broken.

Glorious Heaven! It was worth all the days and nights he had spent stooped over this dreadful book to so fortuitously come upon a story with a happy ending. Wise, a hundred times wise, was Dean Luayan. The curse was broken. The curse could be broken.

With an inane smile plastered to his face, he looked out the window. He watched as a shaggy, homeless mutt trampled the grass, scampered after a butterfly. In front of him lay cold nights under bridges and the malicious kicks of a thousand feet, but right now he was frolicking like a puppy, forgetful of everything else under the sun. He was happy.

Happy, thought Egert. Lurching as if he were drunk, he stood up from the table and climbed up onto the windowsill.

Evening was drawing near, a warm, spring evening; a square of dark blue, predusk sky hung over the interior courtyard of the university, and doves were slowly whirling through it, as if showing off. Suffused with oblique rays of the setting sun, the white birds seemed rose colored, like candied fruit. Egert wanted to weep and shout at the top of his lungs: he felt as if the weight of the curse had already been lifted and the shameful scar had already been scoured from his face, like a crust of sticky mud. Not daring to sing, he restricted himself to grinning expansively and joyfully at the homeless mutt on the grass.

“Hey, Egert!” He heard the astonishment behind him.

Still smiling, Egert turned toward the door. On the threshold stood Fox, his eyes round, amazed, and then he too grinned from ear to ear.

“This gold locket is known as the Amulet of the Prophet. It possesses tremendous magical power; this is none other than the door between the worlds.…”

A white hand with clean nails and a tattoo on the wrist turned the page over. On the yellow sheet there was a rough sketch of the locket on the chain. The hand of the artist must have been shaking when it was drawn—the amulet resembled a deformed flower or an exotic fruit.

“It may well be that the Doors of Creation are just a shadow of this amulet.… No one knows. For the inexperienced person it is mortally dangerous.…”

Fagirra sighed. Magicians always surrounded their craft with dark secrets. Secrets and fear: people must fear magicians and must feel inferior to them. The Order of Lash used the same methods. Why, why did the old mage refuse to collaborate? Everything would be simpler.

He sighed again and looked up—the sunlight was glowing from the only window.

It is known that our world is an island of life among the black spaces of death. It is known that there is a monster, called the Third Power, outside. It comes and stops on the threshold, and it cannot enter, until someone unlocks the door for it.… Then the end will come to our world: it will burn, it will rot, it will be turned inside out … inside out. Only the Doorkeeper—the one who admits the Third Power to us—will acquire authority, might, and the delicious happiness of vengeance.… It is known that when the Third Power is on the threshold, the amulet rusts.

These words, rewritten in rough handwriting, gave him a strange feeling. The university was a strange place: even the most thoroughly kept secret sooner or later ended up in someone’s notes.…

Fagirra reclined in the armchair and smiled.

It was not possible to conceal the special attention that Dean Luayan paid to Egert Soll from the son of the apothecary. It declared itself in the generous permission to avail himself of one of the dean’s private books. Fox had already been dying of curiosity for several days, but he was accustomed to regarding the dean with respect and caution, so he refrained from peeking inside the book without permission or from asking Egert a direct question about it. Watching as Egert spent night and day over the yellowed pages, surely replete with magic, Fox was pierced by a certain respect for Egert; therefore, and moreover because he was simply a nice boy, Gaetan rejoiced at the change in Egert’s mood and his consent, finally, to go out into the city.

Fox paused at the grand entrance to the university, unable to deny himself the pleasure of patting the wooden monkey on its rump. Buffed smooth by hundreds of hands, the monkey’s bottom gleamed as though it were varnished. Egert plucked up his courage and followed Gaetan’s example.

This unceremonious gesture gave Egert a bit more self-assurance. The night was warm, soft, and full of smells and sounds: not sharp, like during the day, but muted, diffused in the velvety-smooth haze of the approaching darkness. The sky had faded, but the arrival of night was still far away. Egert walked with his head thrown back, feeling the wind in his hair and the unfamiliar, almost completely forgotten sensation of joyful calm running through his entire body.

Meeting a loud group of students, Egert saw some familiar faces; Fox wasted nearly half an hour shaking their hands. They went on together. Egert tried to keep close to Fox while carefully observing his protective rituals. He squeezed his right hand into a fist, and in his left he clutched a button.

For starters they went to a tavern: a tiny place with a single, high table in the center, and with a cage hung from the ceiling that housed a fleshy, phlegmatic rabbit. For some reason the establishment was called At the Rabbit Hole, and the merry students drained their glasses of wine: a sour wine, in the opinion of the former gourmand Lord Soll, but the swill brought Egert greater pleasure than all the elegant wines he had previously drunk.

They streamed out into the street in a cheerful group. Slightly the worse for drink, Egert relaxed so much that he forgot about his defensive rituals. Fox paraded in front as leader and guide. Two nimble wenches were fished out of some alley, and the group continued on its way, accompanied by their constant yelps and rowdy giggles.

The next tavern on their journey was simply called Quench, and they stayed there even longer than at the last. Egert’s wine slopped out of his glass, dripping all over his collar, and the two girls, unerringly homing in on the tallest and most handsome lad in the crowd of students, swam around Egert like a pair of nimble fingerlings around a worm skewered on a hook.

Irrepressible, the mass of students set out for another establishment. Noticing a light in the first-story window of a house, Fox grabbed the nearest girl with unexpected strength for his puny body and dexterously lifted her up; piling her full skirt onto her back, he pressed her exposed backside to the glass of the window. The wild scream that was immediately emitted from the other side of the window caused the students to laugh so hard that their eyes were watering and they were clutching their stomachs. Gathering the girl up under his arm, Fox led his company onward, not waiting for the enraged inhabitant of the insulted house to leap out into the street.

They were all pleased with the joke. Seizing in turns first one girl then the other, Fox repeated it again and again with the help of his comrades. One time they had to flee for safety because the owner took it into his head to set his dogs loose. Those minutes of running were especially unpleasant for Egert: the usual terror called forth a coldness in his belly and a weakness in his legs, but the pursuit soon fell off, and Fox so hilariously mimicked the impotent rage of the townsman that Egert ceased being afraid.

The tavern Sweet Fancy was not honored with a visit: it seemed to Egert that the gray figures that were sitting in a corner, wallowing in their hooded robes, disconcerted the happy company. In all there were only two or three of the acolytes of Lash, but the students, without discussing it amongst themselves, left the tavern as soon as they saw them. Egert hurried after everyone, a bit regretful, but he had no real cause for regret because the next tavern, the One-Eyed Fly, proved to be above all praise.

This establishment served as a meeting place for all four generations of students. As if in imitation of the Grand Auditorium, benches and long tables covered the entire room, and in a corner there was a stand that bore a certain resemblance to the rostrum. Squeezing in, as usual, at the end of a bench, Egert listened attentively to the endless stanzas of indecent songs: Fox, and all the others, knew many of them. First blushing like a girl and then roaring with laughter, Egert finally managed to sing along with the chorus, “Oh, oh, oh! Do not speak, my dear, don’t say a word! Oh, my soul is fire, but the door is squeaking: it hasn’t been oiled!”

They returned home in deep darkness. Egert held Fox’s sleeve so as not to lose his way. They were both respectably drunk; stumbling into their room, first of all Fox demanded that the flame be lit; then he let the clasp of his cloak fall to the floor, sat on his bed, and wearily announced that his life was as dry and rough as a dog’s tongue. Sympathizing with his friend and desiring to do him a service, Egert went down on all fours to search for the missing clasp. Clenching a candle in his teeth and peering under his own bed, he noticed a dusty object looming right by the wall.

“Hey,” Fox asked drunkenly, “did you decide to sleep under the bed?”

Egert straightened up, holding a book in his hands.

“Well, that’s good,” Fox acceded weakly, untying his shoe. “That’s probably the lad’s, the one who lived here before. Did you find the clasp?”

Egert placed the candle on the table, put his discovery next to it, wiped a coat of dust off it with his palm, and opened it, trying to spread out the pages, some of which were stuck together.

The book was a history of battles and the commanders who fought them. Turning a few pages, Egert came across a firm paper square. One side of it was empty, with only a single ink spot in the corner, but the other side …

Egert stared at the drawing for a few seconds, suddenly feeling sober, as if he had been tossed into an ice-cold lake. Toria gazed up at him from the drawing.

It was a striking likeness; the artist, slightly awkward and inexperienced, but certainly talented, had captured the most important thing: He had managed to impart the expression of her eyes, that tranquil, slightly detached amiability with which Toria had looked at Egert the first time they met. The beauty marks on her neck were drawn with impeccable accuracy, as was the daring curve of her eyelashes. Her soft lips seemed just about to break into a smile.

Fox hiccuped and dropped his other shoe on the floor. “What’s that?”

Tearing his gaze away with effort, Egert turned the drawing over, covering it with his palm so that it would be his secret, so that Fox would not know. A disturbing thought came to him, and he turned back to the book. He opened the first page, searching for a sign of the owner.

There were only two letters: D.D.

Egert felt suddenly feverish. “Gaetan,” he asked in a whisper, trying to speak calmly, “who lived here before me, Gaetan?”

Fox was silent for a second. He leisurely stretched himself out on his bed. “As far as I know, only one boy lived here before you. He was a good lad; Dinar was his name. In truth, though, I never really got the chance to know him: he went away somewhere and was killed.”

“Who killed him?” asked Egert in spite of himself.

“How would I know?” snorted Fox. “Some asshole killed him, but I don’t know where or how. Listen; don’t stand there like a pillar, put out the light, yeah?”

Egert blew out the candle and stood motionless in the dark for a few moments.

“I tell you,” sleepily muttered Fox, “he must have been a really solid fellow, otherwise Toria—you know, Toria, the dean’s daughter—she wouldn’t have decided to marry him, if he wasn’t. They say she was about to; the wedding was even set. But then—”

“He lived here?” whispered Egert through unruly lips. “Here, in this room? And he slept in this bed?”

Fox shifted, trying to make himself more comfortable. “Oh, don’t get all scared. His spirit isn’t going to appear. He wasn’t the kind of man who would terrorize his fellow students at night. I tell you, he was a good guy. Go to sleep.” Fox mumbled something else, but the words were indecipherable, and soon his muttering gave way to measured breathing.

Egert had to force himself to get undressed and climb into bed, where, as usual, he pulled the blanket up over his head. Thus he spent the whole night, clenching his eyes shut against the dark, and stopping his ears against the utter silence.

Every morning upon waking up, Dinar Darran had looked up and seen this arched ceiling with the two cracks that met in the corner. The pattern made by the cracks looked like a wide-open eye, and every morning this comparison occurred to Egert. But perhaps Dinar saw something else?

Every morning, Dinar had taken his cloak from the hook that was nailed into the wall over his bed, and perhaps he had glanced out the window. His gaze would have taken in the same exact scene that had diverted Egert so many times: the interior courtyard with the verdant flower bed in the center, the blank wall to the right, a row of narrow windows to the left, and the majestic stone back of the main building with its two circular balconies across the way. Right now on one of these balconies, a self-important servant was shaking the dust out of a geographical chart made of velvet and embroidered with silk; the dust spun around the entire courtyard.

The man who had been killed by Egert had lived in this small room, he had gone to lectures every day, he had read books about the history of battles and commanders, but he himself had not carried weapons and had not felt it was necessary. Toria, then still calm and happy, and not morose and alienated like now, had seen him every day. Carried away by discussions, for which they must have had a multitude of topics, they spent their free hours in the library, or the hall, or in one of spare teaching rooms; sometimes, Dinar would invite Toria to his room and then she, as was her wont, would perch on the edge of the table, and swing her feet, clad in narrow-toed slippers.

And then they had planned their wedding. Dinar had probably trembled when he presented himself to the dean to ask for Toria’s hand. The dean had probably been well disposed toward Dinar, and then, happy, the future bride and groom had set out on a journey: on a betrothal trip? On a research expedition? What had they been searching for, some kind of manuscript, was it not? Whatever the cause, the goal of the travelers was Kavarren, where Egert Soll was sitting in a tavern with a group of his acquaintances.

Dean Luayan’s purpose was inscrutable, but it was definitely not an accident that Dinar’s killer now rested in his deserted cot. But what about that book with the portrait? How many days had it been lying there in the dark corner under the bed, waiting for Egert to take it in his hands?

In the morning, when Fox’s departing footsteps had faded into the vigorous stomping of the other students’ hurrying to the lecture hall, Egert finally threw the blanket from his head and stood up.

His bones ached from the sleepless night. The book rested there, under his pillow, and in the light of day Egert once again ventured to look at the portrait.

Never had the flesh-and-blood Toria looked at Egert the way she now looked out of the drawing. Perhaps she looked only at Dinar this way, and he, generous like all lovers, had decided to capture this look on paper, to share his joy with the world. But then again, perhaps not. Perhaps the drawing was not meant for others’ eyes at all, and Egert was committing a grave offense, scrutinizing it minute after minute.

Scarcely able to avert his eyes, he turned them to look at the dented edge of the table. The painful feeling that had been born in him last night was gaining strength; soon it would develop into a full-blown melancholy.

He could hardly even remember Dinar’s face, but then again, he had never really looked him in the face. All that remained in his memory was the simple, dark clothing, the challenging voice, and the feckless swordplay of an inexperienced man using someone else’s sword. If someone were to ask Egert what color Dinar’s eyes were, or his hair, he would not be able to say. He could not remember.

What had this unknown youth been thinking of when he touched the tip of his pencil to this paper? Did he draw from memory, or had Toria sat in front of him, teasing him and then laughing at the sudden onset of a certain tension? Why had these two needed to come to Kavarren? What evil fate directed their path, and why had that evil fate fallen on Egert’s hand? He really had not meant to …

I did not mean to do it, said Egert to himself, but the oppressive feeling did not leave him; it felt as if iron claws, corroded with age, were ripping through his soul. Flogging his memory for the face of Dinar, he suddenly, and far too clearly, envisioned him sitting at the table in this very room, and he became afraid to turn around, lest he have to meet his eyes.

I did not mean to! said Egert to the imaginary Dinar. I did not intend to kill you; you impaled yourself on my sword. I can’t really be a murderer, can I?

Dinar was silent. The rusty claws clutched at Egert.

He shuddered. He turned a page of the book, hiding the portrait of Toria beneath it, and his gaze fell on a black band of lines. Mechanically running his eyes over the same fragment a few times, he suddenly became aware of its meaning.

It is believed that the protector of warriors, Khars, was once a real person, and furthermore that in the depths of unrecorded time he distinguished himself by his ferocity and brutality. It is said that he killed the wounded, those whose case was hopeless as well as those who might be healed, and that he did this, of course, not out of charity, but for purely practical reasons: the wounded were useless, a burden to all, and it was easier to bury them than …

Dinar was buried beneath a smooth slab with no ornamentation. The sword had run through him, and the last thing he had seen in life was the face of his murderer. Did he have enough time to think of Toria? How long had the seconds of dying dragged out for him?

The cemetery by the city walls of Kavarren. The weary birds on the headstones. And that inscription on someone’s grave:

I shall take wing once more.

The rusty claws clenched into a fist, and the realization that what he had done to Dinar was beyond recall descended upon Egert with an unbearable heaviness. Never before had he been so keenly aware that he lived in a world that was filled with death, a world that was divided by the boundary between all that could be amended and all that was irreversible: no matter how much grief it caused, there was no turning back.

Recovering his senses with difficulty, Egert saw that he was clutching the portrait in his hands: the slip of paper with the drawing was crushed. Egert spent a long time smoothing it out against the table, biting his lips and trying to think of what he should do now. Did Toria know about the drawing? Maybe she had searched for it and grieved at its loss; maybe she had forgotten about it, oppressed by the misfortune that had befallen her. Or perhaps she had never even seen the portrait: maybe Dinar had drawn it in a burst of inspiration and then lost it.

He put the drawing back inside the book; then he gave way once more and took it out again to have another look: for the last time because, whether he wanted to or not, he had to give the book to the dean. It is possible that this was a trap, and it would be best to put his discovery back where he found it, but might it not be important to Toria? The drawing should belong to her. Egert would hand it over to the dean, and he could decide when and how to show it to Toria.

He made the decision and immediately felt better. Holding the book in his hands, he walked toward the door, intending to go to the dean’s study right away, but then he turned back. He sat at the table for a minute, then buried the dark book under his arm, clenched his teeth, and went out into the corridor.

His journey turned out to be long and arduous. As soon as he set out, Egert perceived the complete madness of his plan. He would show up at the dean’s study, give him the book, and in so doing, he would confess that he had seen the drawing. And whose was it? Oh, just the deceased fiancé of Toria, the victim of his own cruelty.

He turned back two times, meeting shocked students along the way who looked askance at him. Clutching the book in numbed fingers, Egert finally stood at the doors to the dean’s study, but he felt that he could not continue; he felt that if he carried out his plan it would be tantamount to an acknowledgment of his own infamy.

With his whole heart, he wished that the dean would be anywhere at that moment except in his study, and his heart fell when the familiar voice called out to him in greeting. “Egert? Please, come in.”

The steel wing gleamed dimly. The cabinets and shelves beheld the guest in severe silence. The dean put his work aside and stood to greet Egert.

Egert could not hold his gaze and lowered his eyes. “I came to … give you…”

“You already finished it?” the dean marveled.

Egert took a faltering breath before speaking again. “This is … not that book. This is one I … I found…” And, unable to squeeze out another word, he held out the ill-fated volume to the dean.

Either Egert’s hand was shaking or Luayan hesitated while taking the book, but, quaking as if it were alive, its pages flew open, and it almost fell to the floor. Breaking free as if by its own will, a single white slip of paper described a spiral in the air and then settled at Egert’s feet; as before, the drawing of Toria seemed just about to smile.

A second passed. The dean did not move. Slowly, like a wind-up toy, Egert bent over and picked up the portrait; without looking up, he held it out to the dean, but another hand pulled at it with such force that the paper tore into two pieces.

Egert raised his eyes: right in front of him, pale, shaking with fury, stood Toria. Egert recoiled, burned to ashes by the hatred filling her narrowed eyes.

Perhaps she wished to say that Egert had committed a sacrilege, that Dinar’s drawing was now defiled by the hands of his murderer, that in touching an object that had once belonged to her fiancé, Egert had transgressed all possible bounds of shamelessness: it is possible that she wanted to say these things, but the instantaneous flush of rage had robbed her of the ability to speak. All her pain and all her indignation, which had been restrained until this moment, now rushed forth; this man, tainted with Dinar’s blood, desecrated not only the hallowed halls of her university, but also the very memory of her deceased beloved.

Without taking her annihilating glare from Egert, Toria extended her hand and took—no, snatched—Dinar’s book from her father. She took a breath into her lungs, as if she was about to say something, but instead she suddenly walloped Egert in the face with the book.

Egert’s head rang.

Having expressed her strangled fury in the blow, Toria regained the ability to speak, and the words were accompanied by another blow. “Scum! Don’t you dare!”

It is scarcely possible that Toria herself knew at that moment just what it was that Egert should not dare to do. Having fully lost the power to control herself, she lashed out at the scarred face in a frenzy.

“Don’t you dare! Scoundrel! Wretch! Get out of my sight!” Desperate, spiteful tears flew from her eyes in all directions.

“Toria!” Dean Luayan seized his daughter by the hand. She struggled with him briefly; then she convulsed into hysterical weeping, and falling on her knees to the floor, she gasped through fitful sobs, “I detest him. I … de … test … him.…”

Egert stood still, unable to take even a step. Blood flowed down his lips and chin from his broken nose.

He sat at the edge of the canal, where he could watch the arched bridge from below: the mossy stones flecked with water; the solid brickwork; the underside of the railing; the clattering wheels; the tromping feet; the boots, shoes, and bare soles, gray from dust; and again wheels, hooves, shoes.…

From time to time he lowered a bedraggled handkerchief into the water and applied it to his nose. The flow of blood had calmed, but at times it began to flow once more. The sight of it caused Egert to shudder involuntarily.

He watched the smooth surface of the stagnant water and remembered Toria crying.

He had never seen her tears before. Not even when Dinar died; not even at the burial. Though, truth be told, Egert had not actually been at the burial; he knew about it solely through the words of others.

She was not one to cry in front of witnesses. It was evident that her pain was quite unbearable, and it was equally evident that this pain had been inflicted by Egert, who was born into this world only to cause Toria suffering. Heaven, he would happily rid the world of his presence; he just did not know how. The Wanderer had left him no way out.

Egert flung the handkerchief, by this time only a filthy rag, into the canal. He had to return to the university. He absolutely had to find the onetime lodger of the Noble Sword. He must convince the strange and dreadful man; he must implore him: he would beg on his knees, if need be. Just, dear Heaven, let him remove the curse; otherwise Egert would go out of his mind.

Struggling to stand up, he elbowed his way onto the bridge. He started back from a passing cart; then he slowly went along a street that was already long familiar, trying not to walk out into the middle of it and constantly peering about to see if there was any danger. The marks of Toria’s blows still blazed on his face.

Passing through the square where the stone Spirit of Lash gleamed on a pedestal, Egert diligently avoided a small group of silent people attired in the same kind of robes as the Spirit wore. Intent gazes from under those brooding hoods seemed to alight upon him for a second, but in the same instant the gray figures turned and walked away.

A massive cloth rose, the emblem of a guild, swayed over the entrance to a perfume shop; the bloom of this noble flower, which was actually more reminiscent of a head of cabbage, hung listlessly from a thorny, copper stem. Jars and phials were frozen in the wide windows like soldiers lined up by rank. Egert’s head spun from the thick, sweet smell that wafted from the wide-open doors. He hurried past the shop, and suddenly froze. A strange, unfamiliar sensation imperiously commanded him to stop.

In the shop, somewhere in its fragrant depths, a heavy object fell with a crash, breaking into pieces; directly after this a child’s voice cried out thinly and the sound of swearing could be heard. Then a lanky gentleman with a fastidious expression on his face paraded out the door, wiping off his soiled sleeve: apparently an irate customer. Then the owner of the shop—Egert recognized him by that compulsory rose, tattooed on the back of his hand—pulled a boy out the exit by his ear. The boy was about twelve years old and obviously an apprentice.

Such scenes were hardly a curiosity in businesses, but especially so in artisans’ quarters. Easily ten times a day, a person was thrashed here, and the passersby did not pay any special attention to the bawls of those who were being disciplined: they were content to allow the educational process to take its own course. The young apprentice had committed an offense, apparently a serious one, and the owner was moved to anger in earnest. Frozen in place five steps away, Egert saw how the hand that held the whip clenched nervously, and the rose petals on the tattoo stirred slightly from this barely perceptible movement.

The boy was firmly wedged between the powerful knees of the owner. Egert saw a small purple ear beneath a tuft of flaxen hair, round, frightened eyes, and the pink expanse between his lowered trousers and his lifted shirt. The boy submissively awaited his punishment, but Egert suddenly felt low, melancholy, and queasy.

The owner struck, and Egert was immersed in a wave of pain.

He stood five steps away, yet in some mysterious fashion the pain of an unknown boy descended upon him with such force, it was as if he were suddenly without skin, peeled like a carcass under a butcher’s knife. Another feeling was added to the sensation of pain, a feeling that was not a whit better than the pain: Egert suddenly realized that the owner took pleasure in whipping his apprentice, that he was venting all his accumulated frustration on the boy, that it did not matter at all to him now who he was beating, just so long as it was strenuous, just so long as it went on for a long time, just so long as it could soothe his ravenous soul. Egert had no time to ponder how this agonizing new sense had appeared in him, nor did he have time to wonder at it: he vomited all over the pavement. Someone nearby swore, the blows continued to rain down, and Egert realized that he was about to faint.

He fled in whatever direction his feet would go, then he walked, and then he plodded along, barely able to shuffle his feet. From every window, from every entrance to a courtyard, from every side street he felt pain; it ran high, like water from an overflowing well.

These were only echoes: intense or weak, keen or sluggish. Someone was crying, someone was accepting blows, someone was inflicting them, and someone was suffering from the desire to hit someone without knowing who. A stench fell from one of the windows onto Egert: a man, skulking in a darkened room, was thinking about rape, and his desire was so avid that Egert, however hard it may have been to drag his feet, ran away. In another window, despair had taken up residence: impenetrable despair, which would soon lead to a noose. Egert groaned and quickened his pace. In a tavern people were brawling; a chill tugged at Egert’s skin from the alien vehemence, the obscure, insensate passion of heavy fists.

The city loomed over Egert like a fetid chunk of porous cheese, mottled with the pits of windows and alleys. Violence emanated from all sides in waves. Egert could sense it with his skin, and it sometimes seemed to him that he could see ragged clots of it quivering like aspic. The violence was entwined with pain, and pain required violence; at times Egert’s blighted senses blurred and refused to serve any longer.

Some intuition or miracle finally led Egert to the university. Someone hailed him as he neared the entrance, but Egert could not answer. Fox caught up to him, looking stunned.

“Hey, Egert! What in Heaven happened to your face? It looks like it’s been crushed!”

Mischievous eyes the color of honey twinkled sympathetically: Fox had also received such injuries more than once. Gazing at his round, childlike face, Egert suddenly realized that Fox really was sympathizing with him, and that in this sympathy there was not the slightest hint of pretense.

“Don’t worry about it, brother.” Gaetan grinned widely. “Your face isn’t some expensive piece of pottery. Smashing it up now and then can only make it stronger!”

The university building seemed like an island of inviolable tranquillity in a sea of wickedness. Egert leaned against its wall and smiled wanly.

Porcelain beads, which had slipped off the thread of a broken necklace, bounced across the dean’s desk. The bulk of them were lost amongst the papers, but a few of the colored beads fell off the edge of the desk and came to rest in the cracks of the stone floor. Slowly, unreflectively, yet with a precision worthy of a better cause, the dean gathered them up and placed them one by one in his palm. A second after each bead hit his palm, a June bug awkwardly buzzed up out of his hand.

The heavy bugs crawled on the ceiling, flew out the open window, and returned. Toria had been sitting in a corner for a long time, her disheveled hair hiding her face.

“Contrition is beneficial,” noted the dean with a sigh, letting the next insect up onto the ceiling, “but only to a certain degree. Even the deepest lake must have a bottom. Otherwise, where would the crabs go to mate?”

Toria remained silent.

“When you were ten years old”—the dean scratched the tip of his nose—“you got into a fight with the village boys. The mother of one of them then came to me to complain: You had knocked out two of his teeth. Or was it three? Do you recall?”

Toria did not even lift up her head.

“And then”—the dean raised an instructive finger—“he ran to our house every day, asking you to go first on a fishing trip, then to the forest, then wherever. Do you remember?”

His daughter whispered through the curtain of her hair, “It is very easy for you to talk, but Dinar…” She fell silent to keep herself from crying again. The old book and the forgotten drawing had aroused her dulled grief, and now Toria was once again revisiting her loss.

A massive June bug crashed into a shelf, fell to the floor, lay there senseless for a second, and then took the air once more with a methodical buzz.

“You know very well, my dear, how much regard I had for Dinar,” said the dean quietly. “I had become accustomed to considering him my son, and in many ways he was. I bitterly regret the life you will not have with him, the books he will not write, the children you two will not have. He was a wonderful boy, kind and talented, and his death was an absurd injustice. But now imagine Soll, if you will. I know that even the name is unpleasant to you, but just think: Soll could have concealed that book. He could have thrown it out or given it to the scullery maid for kindling. He could have sold it, after all. But he decided to return it to me, and through me, to you. Do you understand what kind of courage this decision of his required?”

“Courage?” Toria’s voice was no longer shaking from tears, but from contempt. “That is ridiculous, like…”

“Like the dancing of a jellyfish on a drum,” coldly completed the dean.

Toria fell silent, perplexed.

The dean pensively followed the reeling of the insects along the ceiling with his eyes, muttering the words to an old children’s song under his breath.

“Jellyfish dances for us on a drum, but Mole gets shellfish for dinner.…” His hand came down sharply on the desktop, as if he were swatting a fly. “Yes, you are correct; it is absurd. But we are now remembering Dinar, and I for one do not think that he would revel in his hatred so, were he in a similar situation. I just can’t imagine it. Can you?”

Toria nearly leapt at him. “That’s a dirty trick, Father!”

The dean sighed again and shook his head, as if wishing to say to his daughter: And how else can I convince you? Toria sprang up, tossed her hair behind her back, and met the tranquil eyes of the dean with her own tearstained eyes.

“A dirty trick! Dinar is dead, laid out in the ground. And no one, except for me, has the right to judge if he would have behaved one way or another. Dinar is mine, and the memory of him is also mine. And this … Soll … he dared … He is a murderer. How you can allow him to … I cannot see him. I cannot think about him. I do not wish to know anything about him. How could he dare to touch Dinar’s things? How dare he even look at them? But you…” Toria sobbed and fell silent.

The June bugs circled the ceiling in a strict order; the dean sighed and wearily raised himself from behind the desk.

Toria seemed too small in his arms, trembling and soaked like a lost kitten. He hugged her hesitantly, wary of offending her: after all, she had not been a child for a long time. Toria froze for a second and then burst into tears, shedding her tears directly into the dean’s black chlamys.

A few minutes passed by; having cried herself out, Toria quieted and began to feel a bit ashamed. Backing away, she spoke to the floor. “You are a good man, Father, and it is obvious to me that you pity Soll, and that you are interested in his situation. But he was a courageous villain, and now he is a cowardly villain. That is in no way better: it is worse, Father. He does not belong here. He’d be far better off among the acolytes of Lash!”

The dean winced. Just yesterday the rector expelled some unlucky boy, the son of a copyist, who’d spied on the university and had even fallen to theft. They said he went right to Lash’s tower. The dean pitied the boy, but he could not forgive him.

He tenderly traced his finger along the book spines, scratching at one that was covered in fur. He asked in a low voice, not turning around, “All the same, I think … Why did the Wanderer treat him so? What for? Why should he care if there is one more vagrant and one less bully?”

Toria drew a faltering breath. “You know very well that there is no way for us to determine why the Wanderer behaved one way and not another, but I think he acted justly. If I were to meet him, I would clasp his hand and bow to him.”

“By all means”—the dean nodded—“you can clasp his hand for whatever reason. Just don’t argue with him.”

Toria smiled sourly.

“Yes, well,” continued the dean without much pause. “At one point I greatly desired to meet the Wanderer, but I am now happy that meeting never occurred. Who knows what might have happened, had he decided to receive me.”

Slumping her shoulders, Toria walked wearily to the door. At the threshold she turned slightly, as if she wanted to say something, but she remained silent.

Luayan raised his eyes in pensive thought. The June bugs collapsed from the ceiling as beads and bounced across the stone floor.

Several days passed, and Egert could not for a minute free his mind from strained, complicated thoughts. Fox had gone home to visit his parents for a little while, and Egert became the sole proprietor of the room. At times he delighted in his solitude, and at others he suffered from it.

The new sense that had opened up within him, the agonizing ability to feel violence with his skin, had dulled for the time being; it had gone into hiding like a stinger retracts into a bee’s abdomen. Egert was thankful for the respite, but he was quite sure that the onerous ability had not left him and would show itself once more.

The hours devoted to thoughts of Toria were especially painful. Egert tried to chase them away, but the thoughts returned, as sticky as wet clay, and just as shapeless. Wearied by the struggle, he took the book of curses in his hand and sat by the window.

… and that well was cursed, and the water in it became rank. It is said that a brave man can distinguish groans and laments in the screech of its pulley.…

… and a curse fell on the castle, and from that time forward the steps of its precipitous stairways opened onto an abyss, and a monster settled on its towers. And should a man look out from its walls, all he will see, for miles around, is stinking swamp. And should a man walk its halls, nevermore will he find his way out into the world of men.…

One day Egert’s solitude was so unbearable that it overwhelmed his terror. Not having the strength to see the dean and not wishing to keep company with his fellow students, bedeviled by his thoughts and persecuted by grief, Egert decided to walk around the city.

He shuffled along, his head retracted into his shoulders, warily hearkening to his senses. Minute after minute passed, and the city leisurely traded, worked, and played, but the waves of its passions rarely wafted to Egert, and when they did they were vague. It is possible that these distant echoes were the fruit of Egert’s imagination; whether or not that was the case, he calmed down slightly, bought himself a cream pastry on a stick, and ate it with voracious appetite.

Mechanically licking the long empty stick, Egert stood on the curved bridge, leaning against the railing. From his earliest childhood he had loved looking at water; now, following the progress of a slowly sinking rag with his eyes, he remembered the bridge beyond the city gates of Kavarren, the turbulent vernal Kava, and the stranger with light, perfectly clear eyes who had undoubtedly already resolved upon Egert’s doom well before they ever fought.

He tossed his head, trying to get rid of the recollection. Reluctantly, he stepped away from the railing and started off back toward the university.

A beggar sat in a small, deserted alley. The ground around him was obscured by the folds of his ample yet almost completely decayed cloak, and his extended palm, dry and black as a dead tree limb, motionlessly grew out of his wide, tattered sleeve. The beggar sat without moving, like a deformed statue, and only the wind tousled the gray hair that entirely covered his face.

It was not quite clear from whom or when the beggar thought he would receive alms: there was not a soul about, the blank walls were devoid of windows, and the upturned palm was extended toward nothing but a pair of homeless dogs, shamelessly abandoning themselves to coition in the very middle of the alley. The beggar’s efforts were no doubt in vain from the very start, but he sat there all the same, without moving, as if he were hewn from stone.

Egert had passed by beggars a thousand times without looking or delaying in the slightest; however, the old man, forgotten in the empty street with his hand stretched out into space, somehow touched his heart: perhaps because of his humble patience or perhaps because of Egert’s own weary resignation. Egert’s hands reached into his purse. All he had to his name were two gold pieces, ten silvers, and ten coppers. Egert took out a coin and, overcoming his timidity, stepped toward the old man, intending to lower the money into his blackened, wizened palm.

The beggar shifted. His eyes flared up in the thicket of his silver gray hair, and the unexpectedly loud, piercing cry that burst from his mouth spread along the street. “Many thanks!” In that instant, the withered hand seized Egert by the wrist with such strength that he involuntarily shrieked.

A beefy young ruffian emerged from one of the recessed alleys like a phantom: a young man with the red, businesslike face of a butcher. The beggar ran his free hand through Egert’s clothing with uncommon dexterity, caught hold of his purse, and ripped it from his belt. It seemed the old man was not that old after all. The purse flew through the air to his accomplice and fell with a clink, and only then did Egert, struck dumb from fear, try to escape.

“Shhh…” A broad, rusty knife appeared in the hand of the young rogue. “Quiet, now. Shhh…”

Egert could not even scream. His throat dried up instantly, and his chest, compressed by a spasm, could not take in air. The ruffian adroitly flung a lariat around his neck, almost simultaneously tying his hands behind him: obviously, it was far better in this city to choke the robbed, rather than risk the chance that they might identify their robber. Egert struggled, but feebly, far too feebly, for he was paralyzed by fear.

The rope around his neck gave a jerk. From somewhere beyond came the tramp of feet and a sharp “Stop!” Egert’s head was bent toward the ground, but then all at once he sensed his freedom: he lunged away, straightening himself up as he escaped his captor. The beggar, his frayed cloak whipping out behind him, and his collaborator fled down the alleyway, and the stomp of their steel boots echoed against the blank walls. They disappeared around a corner, and the stomp became fainter until it finally quieted altogether.

The rope and Egert’s paltry purse had tumbled two steps away onto the pavement. Egert stood, unable to take even a step.

A hand picked up the purse from the stones and held it out to its owner. “This is yours, is it not?”

A fairly young man of medium height, wearing a gray hooded cloak, stood in front of Egert, who flinched involuntarily, immediately recognizing the habit of the Brotherhood of Lash. Smiling slightly, the acolyte of the Sacred Spirit flicked the hood back off his forehead.

Now that the face of the stranger was completely revealed, nothing ominous or frightening remained in his appearance. He was simply a passerby, and his eyes, gray blue like Egert’s, beheld him compassionately.

“That was very dangerous. You should not wander into deserted alleyways with a full purse. You young people are so incautious.”

The stranger said “you young people,” even though he himself was older than Egert by no more than a few years.

“They … Did they leave?” asked Egert, as if he could not trust his own eyes.

The stranger grinned. “I frightened them off. The city’s robbers are a cunning and cowardly lot, and I, as you can see—” He touched his hood. “—possess a certain amount of authority.”

Having lived in the city for a few months, Egert knew quite well that the sight of a gray habit really was capable of routing a pair of robbers, if not an entire gang. He nodded hastily, unable to find the words to express his thanks. With an encouraging smile, the acolyte of Lash again held out his clanking purse.

“That really is all I have. Thank you,” mumbled Egert, as if trying to excuse himself.

The stranger nodded, accepting the gratitude. “Money is not the most important thing. You could have been killed.”

“Thank you,” Egert repeated fervently, not knowing what he should do or say beyond this. “You saved me. I truly don’t know how to thank you.”

The acolyte of Lash broke into infectious laughter. “Please don’t mention it again. Honest people should help each other, or else the swindlers and villains will wipe us from the face of earth. My name is Fagirra, Brother Fagirra. And you, are you a townsman?”

Following the customs of politeness, Egert introduced himself.

Hearing mention of the university, Fagirra gave voice to his satisfaction. “Oh yes, a worthy place for honorable young men. Which subjects do you prefer?”

Egert felt ashamed that he was not a better student, but he finally spat out that he was most interested in history.

Fagirra nodded in understanding. “History is, I suppose, the most interesting of all subjects. Ancient tales, books full of wars, heroes, rulers, mages … Speaking of mages, the thought occurs to me that it was the venerable Dean Luayan who inculcated you with a love for his own subject matter, yes?”

Egert brightened: what, did Master Fagirra know the dean?

The acolyte of Lash gently corrected Egert: First of all, he should be called Brother Fagirra, and secondly, he himself did not have the honor of being acquainted with the dean. However, whispers of Master Luayan’s wisdom had long ago passed beyond the walls of the university.

They had been conversing amiably for some time now, strolling through the side streets. It seemed strange to Egert that he was talking with a man in a gray robe so informally. Up until now the Host of Lash had seemed like a horrifyingly mysterious assemblage beyond the comprehension of lesser mortals; hesitating at first, he finally confessed this perception to his new friend, which aroused yet another assault of Fagirra’s mirth.

Chortling, the acolyte of Lash clapped Egert on the shoulder. “Egert, Egert. I won’t deny it: The name and deeds of our brotherhood are enshrouded in a secret, to which not all people can dedicate themselves. A secret and a sacrament are similar words, and we are the acolytes of Lash, the acolytes of the Sacrament.”

“I asked,” Egert mumbled timidly, “I asked many people and no one could explain to me what exactly the Brotherhood of Lash is.”

Fagirra became more serious. “Much that is gossiped about us is superfluous and untrue. There are always many wild conjectures surrounding the Brotherhood of Lash, as there are around anything unknown. But you, Egert, would you really like to learn more?”

Egert was not entirely sure he wanted to know more, but he did not dare confess his own indecision. “Yes. Of course.”

Fagirra nodded thoughtfully. “The thing is, Egert, the Host of Lash does not place its confidence in just anyone, but your face seemed to me, from the very first glance, the face of a worthy man. Tomorrow, friend Egert, you will have a rare chance to visit the Tower of the Host of Lash. Would you really like to come?”

Egert inwardly cringed away from the steady gaze coming from beneath the hood, and tormented by fear, he did not have the courage to refuse. “Oh yes.”

Fagirra nodded encouragingly. “You’re a bit scared; I understand. But, believe me, only carefully selected people are favored with such an honor. I will await you at seven o’clock in the evening on the corner of Violet Street. Do you know where that is?”

Then, having already taken his leave, Fagirra suddenly turned back.

“Oh yes, that reminds me: I must ask you to keep this in the strictest confidence. Lash is a secret, a sacrament. Are we agreed? Now if you’ll excuse me.”

Egert nodded and then watched for a long time as the man in the spacious gray robe walked away.

Fox was still visiting his relatives, so there was no one to ask Egert why he was so irritable. Egert mastered the desire to go to the dean for advice; both his sleepless night and his long, lingering day were full of hesitations.

Friendly students, meeting Egert at the exit, wished him a good night out and a successful rendezvous. Egert answered them vaguely, not understanding their meaning.

On the way to the place where he would meet Fagirra, he managed to convince himself that a visit to the Tower of Lash was an entirely ordinary, even trivial occurrence for a townsman, then he comforted himself with the thought that this inconceivable event offered the prospect of a beneficial change in his fortune, and he finally assured himself that the visit to the Tower would not take place at all, because Fagirra would fail to appear at the designated place.

Fagirra, however, was waiting; Egert flinched when the silent figure, his face hidden by the hood, appeared out of the shadows as if from nowhere.

The route they took through winding alleyways was so tortuous that there was no way Egert could have remembered it, even if he had wished to. The hem of Fagirra’s gray habit slid along the pavement before him, and two uniformly strong emotions battled in his soul: fear of going to the Tower and fear of refusing the invitation. Contrary to Egert’s expectations, Fagirra did not lead him through the main gates. The alley gave way to a small courtyard, which was so dark that Egert could hardly make out the man who appeared from out of the gloom with a bunch of rattling keys and a blindfold.

Bewildered, blind, led and nudged along the way, languishing from the fear that was as familiar as a chronic toothache, Egert was finally ordered to stop. The blindfold was whipped away from his eyes, and Egert saw that he was standing in front of a wall of heavy black velvet, which exuded a faint, bitter aroma unknown to him.

“You have been permitted to be present.” Fagirra’s robe rustled next to Egert’s, and the rough edge of his hood touched Egert’s cheek. “To be present and to keep silent. You are not to move from this spot. You are not to turn your head.”

Egert swallowed the sticky saliva that suddenly overwhelmed his mouth; Fagirra was obviously awaiting his answer, so Egert forced himself to nod.

A delicate, sweetish, slightly smoky fragrance was soon added to the bitter smell of the velvet. As he gazed at the black partition in front of him, Egert’s hearing became unusually acute. He heard a variety of sounds: far and near, subdued and susurrant, as if a horde of dragonflies were creeping about the inside of a glass jar, brushing their wings against the transparent walls.

The multitude of whispers was suddenly replaced by a desolate, muffled hush, which lasted long enough for Egert to slowly count to five. Then the black velvet partition shivered and the long, drawn-out sound, like nothing else on earth, instantly caused Egert to break out into a sweat: it was the dreary bellow of the ancient monster. That distant echo, which was heard by people out in the square and which had for so long disturbed the imagination of Egert, was nothing but a feeble shadow in comparison to this.

The velvet shifted again and then suddenly crashed down to the floor, dissolving in Egert’s vision from a blank wall into a black expanse, for there before his astounded eyes was revealed a hall of unimaginably large proportions.

It was inconceivable how such a colossal room could fit inside the Tower; for the first minute, Egert could make no sense of it, but upon closer inspection he saw that a line of tall mirrors encircled the hall. A long-nosed dwarf in a habit so fiery red that it scorched the eyes entered the velvety black space, encased in remote folds of fabric. His image was repeated many times in the mirrors’ luminous depths. He hoisted a vast trumpet to his mouth, using both hands to steady it, and with that instrument he produced that very same lingering sound that so boggled the imagination. Clouds of dense, dark blue smoke wafted from the mouth of the trumpet, which was turned upward while he blew on it.

There was an echoing rustle as many hundreds of hoods were lowered. The fiery red stain of the dwarf’s habit disappeared in the sea of gray robes, and a rustling whisper struck Egert in both ears, “Lash … ash … ashsha…” At first it seemed very far away, regardless of how keenly it penetrated Egert’s ears, but as it gathered strength, it became a piercing chant, echoing off the walls of the chamber. The chant entranced Egert, ushering a peculiar torpor into his body, and once again the long note of the vast trumpet resounded, filling the space above the lowered gray hoods with a shadowy figure, molded from swirls of smoke.

Egert’s heart thudded in his chest. The smoke had an unusually strong, pleasant, yet at the same time repulsive smell. “Lashhh … asha … shash…” The chant now came close, now receded, and Egert seemed to see surf rhythmically breaking against the shore of a gray sea composed of hoods.

The figures, shrouded in robes, were moving, some smoothly and regularly, some suddenly shuddering in sync as if from an unexpected convulsion. The space in the center of the hall gradually cleared, and an old man appeared, stretched out on the black, velvet floor. His silver mane spread out around his small, wizened face, which seemed to be framed by whiteness, like the moon is framed by shafts of light. The gray robes once again converged, and Egert saw the resplendently silver gray head rise up like a wisp of foam above the sea of gray hoods.

The ceremony, fascinating yet incomprehensible, beautiful yet monotonous, continued perhaps for a minute or perhaps for a full hour: Egert had lost all sense of time. When finally a wave of fresh evening air hit him in the face, he realized that he was standing by a grilled window, clutching the thick bars and staring at the main square, which was very familiar to him even though he was seeing it from this vantage point for the first time.

Then the ever-present Fagirra, laying his hand on Egert’s shoulder, whispered right in his ear. “I know a good dozen of the wealthiest and most eminent people of this city who would give their right arm for the singular good fortune of being present in the Tower during the sacramental.”

Turning toward the square, Fagirra exposed his face to the wind. The wide sleeves of his robe slipped up, revealing his wrists. Egert caught a glimpse of a green tattoo, the official mark of a licensed guild: the guild of swordmasters.

Fagirra smiled, having noticed Egert’s glance. “The paths that lead people into the shade of Lash are intricate and often inscrutable. Let’s go, Egert. The honor that has been conferred upon you is boundless. The Magister awaits you.”

The Magister’s hair seemed even whiter up close: like snow sparkling in the sun, like bright clouds at noon, like the finest quality linen. Inhaling a new scent—the smoke of various harsh fragrances wafted densely through the Magister’s study—Egert, feeling more dead than alive, answered questions. Yes, he was an auditor at the university. Yes, Dean Luayan was, without a doubt, an archmage and a man of immense worth. No, Egert was not yet succeeding at his studies but he hoped that, with time …

Egert’s blundering recital of these hopes was smoothly interrupted by the soft voice of the Magister. “You are unhappy, aren’t you, Egert?”

Egert stopped short and fell silent. He could not tear his eyes away from the shaggy crimson carpet that covered the floor of the study from wall to wall.

“Do not hide your head. Any man with even the slightest bit of perception can see this at first glance. You have survived some misfortune, haven’t you?”

Meeting the wise, all-knowing gaze of the decrepit Magister, Egert experienced an overwhelming desire to recount everything he knew about the curse and the Wanderer. He had already gathered breath in his lungs, but in the end he said nothing, for no other reason than the very first word pronounced by him turned out to be quite discordant and pitiful.

“I … a…” Ashamed at his weakness, Egert wilted.

After waiting a minute, the Magister smiled gently. “A man, unfortunately, quite often finds himself unhappy. At times he may also find that he is weak, irresolute, and vulnerable. Isn’t that so, Egert?”

It seemed to Egert that hope itself was watching him from the eyes of the silver-haired elder. He leaned forward and nodded emphatically. “It is so.”

“A man is vulnerable only when he is isolated,” the Magister continued pensively. “Cowardice is the lot of the solitary man. Do you think that’s true, Egert?”

Egert swallowed. He did not quite understand where the Magister was going with this line of questioning, but to be on the safe side he agreed once again. “Yes.”

The Magister stood up. His silver mane swayed majestically. “Egert, you have a difficult path in front of you, but at the end of it you will find power. It is not customary to tell neophytes of the more profound mysteries of Lash, but know this: The Sacred Spirit attends to every word I say. So, while I cannot immediately reveal to you the secrets toward which your soul undoubtedly strives, I invite you to enter our order under the authority of Brother Fagirra. You will become a soldier of Lash, and there is no more honorable service on this earth. Many mysteries will be revealed to you as the years go by, but even now the Sacred Spirit and legions of his acolytes stand behind you. Any insult that is heaped upon you will become an insult to the order: even a wry glance cast at your back will be swiftly and inescapably punished. All your actions will be righteous, even if they are seen by others as bloody crimes. We will gather you unto ourselves, for anything you do for the will of Lash is just. You have seen how lesser mortals fear and respect the brothers of the Order of Lash: a single glimpse of a man in a gray robe summons forth solemn awe in ordinary men, and soon—” The Magister raised his hand. “—soon that awe will grow into veneration. Power and might instead of solitude and eternal terror. Do you understand, Egert?”

Egert stood as if thunderstruck. The Magister’s offer had caught him unawares and now, terrified, he tried to gather the fragments of his scattered thoughts.

The Magister held his peace; his eyes, his wise, tired eyes, seemed to look straight into Egert’s soul.

Egert coughed and forced himself to speak through his confusion and fear. “And what would you require of me?”

The Magister took a step toward him. “I have faith. I have faith in you, Egert, just as Brother Fagirra immediately, from the very first glance, had faith in you. For the time being, all you have to do is stay silent: that is the first trial, the trial of secrecy. Remain silent about the fact that you met Brother Fagirra, that you were in the Tower, and that you were present at one of the Sacraments. Also, tell no one of this conversation; when we are sure that you are able to keep silent, as silent as a stone, then you will be told of our other requirements, Egert. You can rest assured that they will be within your power. As we part today, I offer you the promise of another interview. The gray hood will give you faith and security; it will raise you up above the crowd. Good-bye for now, Egert.”

In utter silence, Fagirra led Egert from the premises of the Tower by a secret path, but a different one from that by which Egert first found his way into the tabernacle of Lash.

6

Egert did not tell anyone about his visit to the Tower. Several weeks went by, but the Brotherhood of Lash did not exhibit any more signs of interest in the auditor Soll, so his nerves began to settle: it seemed that he could put off making any decision for an indefinite period of time.

More than once he donned the gray robe in his mind’s eye. Hearing the long, melancholy sound that occasionally resounded from the Tower, he recalled the bitter smell of the thick velvet, the slow dance of shadowy faces, concealed by hoods, and the face of the Magister, white as the moon. The pledge of security and, in time, power was a great temptation for Egert, but every time he thought about the hooded mantles of the acolytes, he experienced a strange spiritual unease. Something hindered him; something disturbed him and clawed at his soul. He put it down to his usual diffidence, but he soon learned to shun both thoughts of the Order of Lash and chance encounters with his acolytes on the street.

In the meanwhile, a heat wave had descended on the city, a true summer heat wave. At noon the rutted back streets were drenched in sun from wall to wall, and the flecks of sunlight dancing on the canals were painful to look at. The shore of the river just outside the city served as a meeting place for the endless stream of picnickers who came and went; the townsmen, bathed in sweat, plunged into the water using ferns as screens, and the townswomen perched in close-knit groups to bathe in the reeds, where they often fell prey to Fox, who had taken to swimming underwater with a reed in his mouth. He never let the chance slip to sneak up on some hapless female bather and pinch her on whatever part of her body was most conspicuous at the time he passed.

Egert was one of the dense group of students who oversaw Fox’s adventures and who each in their own turn had to contrive diversions appropriate to studious young men. The shore was full of splashing, shrieks, and giggles. Having found a set fishing line under the water, divers would treat their comrades to greasy fish soup. For the most part Egert sat on the shore and would go into the water only up to his waist; his timidity was noticed, but beyond a few good-hearted jests, the matter was left to rest.

Soon, however, the exams, which would elevate the students to the next level, approached: the Inquirers wished to become Reasoners, the Reasoners desired to become Aspirants, and these, in their turn, wanted to become Dedicated. The university seemed as if it were burning with fever: bloodshot eyes, red rimmed and salty from sitting behind books night and day, peered out of every corner. Egert watched as the learned youths entered the headmaster’s study one by one, some with deliberate buoyancy, some with overt terror. Many of them, it turned out, believed in omens: in their various devices and tricks—spitting, prayers, and complicated signs formed with their fingers—Egert was shocked to recognize some of his own protective rituals.

Egert never had the chance to see what went on beyond the austere doors of the headmaster’s study. The other students told him that the headmaster, Dean Luayan, and all the teachers who had ascended the rostrum in the course of the year sat behind the long table in the headmaster’s study, facing the examinee. They said that all the examiners were extremely strict, but Dean Luayan was especially so. Not every student succeeded in passing the exam; moreover, a full half of the unfortunates who fell short owed their failure to the severe mage.

On the eve of the exams, Fox fell into a panic. He excoriated himself in every way possible: the blandest of the oaths that he heaped upon his own person were “idiotic, half-witted fool” and “brainless chicken shit.” Gaetan stared at the book he was studying, then threw his gaze at the ceiling in despair, then flopped down on his bed and declared to Egert that he, of course, would fail, that it was impossible to remain a Reasoner forever, that his father would not give him any more money and that he would force his son to be the clerk of a stinking apothecary in perpetuity, where even the flies withered and died from the smell of castor oil. When Egert timidly suggested that perhaps it might be a good idea to turn to the dean for help, Fox started brandishing his arms at him and drubbing his feet on the floor; he called Egert a lunatic, an idiotic joker, and explained that there was only one thing left for him to do: he had to leave the university once and for all.

On the day of the exam, Fox was not at all himself. Egert could not drag a single word out of him all morning. At the door to the headmaster’s study the young men, stuffed full of knowledge, gathered in a tense, excited knot, hissing and cursing at each other. Many of the faces had frozen into the intense expression of a tightrope walker, inching his way along a rope with a lit candle clenched in his teeth. As each exited the study, they immediately poured out their souls to their comrades, some joyful, some despairing. Egert, who as an auditor was not subject to compulsory examination, shuddered at the very thought of being required, like Fox, to appear before the eyes of the strict, academic judiciary.

Regardless of his paranoid expectations, Gaetan passed the exam; immeasurably happy, he immediately invited Egert to come visit the house of his father in a nearby town. Egert was stunned yet grateful, but in the end he had to say no.

The students, who received two months of vacation, enthusiastically discussed their plans for the summer. A large portion of them decided to spend their break in their family homes, whether those were grand estates or tiny hovels; a smaller portion of the students, mainly the poorest, decided to find work on a farm somewhere: they too invited Egert to join them. He recalled his unpleasant experience with rural labor under the guidance of the hermit and refused them as well.

Upon the departure of Fox, Egert again found himself alone.

The corridors of the university emptied, as did the annex; in the evenings, light gleamed out of only the occasional window. An old servant, equipped with a torch and a cudgel, made nightly tours of the university buildings and grounds. An old washwoman, having tidied the annex, brought dinner to the dean and his daughter, and to the few employees and servants who remained for the summer. Egert would also have been relegated to this group, but he unexpectedly received another missive from home and was able to make a new payment for his keep.

This time a note accompanied the money. Egert’s heart crashed against his rib cage when he recognized the handwriting of his father. The elder Soll did not ask a single question; he only coolly informed his son that he had been deprived of his lieutenancy and expelled from the regiment, and that the epaulets had been publicly shorn from his disgraced and mud-splattered uniform. The vacant lieutenancy had been filled by a young man by the name of Karver Ott; by the way, he had inquired as to Egert’s current location.

Reading and rereading this letter, Egert at first relived his shame; then that feeling was exchanged for nostalgia for Kavarren.

He imagined his home with the militant emblem on the gates an infinite number of times, and the most desperate, inconceivable plans crept into his head. In his dreams he saw himself secretly arriving in town and climbing up his own front steps, also secretly because no one had forgiven his desertion. But then witnesses of his former degradation appeared who tracked him down specifically so that they could spit in his scarred face. And would he really have to talk to his father? And how could he look his mother in the eyes? No, while the curse remained upon him, he could not return to Kavarren.

Then his thoughts turned in a different direction: Time was passing and every long day brought him closer to his meeting with the Wanderer. This meeting became a constant thought for Egert, a fixed, obsessive idea; the Wanderer began to appear in his dreams. The curse would be broken and Egert would return to Kavarren with every right to do so. He would not hide from anyone: he would walk through the main street with his head held high, and when the people shrank back at the appearance of the guards, then, in front of them all, he would challenge Karver to a duel.

Sitting in the damp, half-lit room, Egert trembled with fervor and agitation. It would be a beautiful, gallant challenge. The crowd would hush, Karver would blanch and try to squirm his way out of it, Egert would deride him for his cowardice in front of everyone, he would draw his sword and cross blades with the contemptible coward, and he would kill him: he would kill his former friend, who had become a mortal enemy, because villainy deserves to be punished, because …

Egert winced and shivered. His dream broke off like the chirruping of a grasshopper when a hand is cupped over it.

He had killed three men. The first was called Tolber: he was a guard, a rooster who was guileless to the point of idiocy. Egert did not even properly remember what caused the argument; perhaps it was over a woman, but it may have merely been the result of drunken boldness. The duel was brief yet ferocious. Tolber charged at Egert like a rabid boar, but Egert met his attack with a brilliant, unrelenting counterattack. Then Egert Soll’s sword struck his opponent in the stomach and Egert, whose veins were boiling at that moment not with blood, but with hot, violently burning oil, understood only that he was victorious.

Egert could not even remember the name of the second man who died by his hand. He was not a guard, but simply an arrogant landowner who came to town with the intention of having a proper binge. He went on that binge, and, drunk as a swine, he cuffed Egert on the ear and called him a snot-nosed brat; and indeed, the man was about twenty years older than Egert. He left behind a wife and three daughters. Egert was told about them after the burial.

Glorious Heaven, what else could he have done! He could not really bear all insults alike and not punish the offenders, could he? True, he increased the number of widows and orphans in the world, but the landowner got what he deserved, and so did that first one. It was really only Dinar who had suffered innocently.

Three girls, the oldest about twelve. A bewildered, mourning woman. Who informed her of her husband’s death? Heaven, if only I could remember the name of that man … But memory resolutely refused to extract from the distant past a word that had long ago been forgotten because it no longer mattered.

Far in the distance, somewhere in the recesses of the darkened corridors, a cricket chirped softly. It was very late in the night. Shuddering against his will, Egert immediately lit five candles. It was an inconceivable waste, but the room was lit up as though it were day, and in the muddled depths of the iron looking glass that hung on the wall by the door, Egert saw his scarred face.

And at that very second, the ability to feel pain and violence as it crawled across his skin returned to him with such force that he staggered.

Glorious Heaven! The city beyond the thick walls of the university felt like a solid, aching wound. The university itself was almost empty, and the annex was completely empty except for Egert, but Egert sensed suffering not that far away: a habitual suffering, like a permanent migraine.

His knees buckled slightly at the thought that he would have to walk through the darkened corridors and stairs. Clutching candles in his sweaty palms—three in his right and two in his left—Egert nudged open the door with his shoulder.

Niches yawned blackly; columns threw out malformed, creeping shadows. The faces of great scholars, which adorned the walls in bas-relief, loomed over Egert with contemptuous grimaces. In order to bolster his confidence, Egert proceeded to sing in a trembling voice: “Oh, oh, oh! Do not speak, my dear, don’t say a word! Oh, my soul is fire, but the door is squeaking: it hasn’t been oiled!”

Hot wax dripped on his hands, but he did not feel it. The source of the pain was in front of him, located in the library.

A light shone up from under the massive doors. Egert wanted to knock, but both his hands were occupied so he softly scraped the toe of his boot against the door. The sound of the dean’s surprised “Yes?” carried from beyond.

Egert tried to grab the brass handle without letting go of his burning candles. It is possible that his efforts might have been crowned with success, but then the door opened in front of him, and in its opening stood Dean Luayan. He was not the source of the pain: it was coming from someone in the twilight of the book-filled hall.

“It is I,” said Egert, although the dean surely recognized him and would not confuse him with anyone else. “It is I…” He faltered, not knowing what else to say.

The dean stepped back slowly, inviting Egert to enter.

Toria, as usual, was sitting on the edge of a table, and her empty book cart was leaning against her knee like a frightened dog. Egert had not seen Toria since the day he brought the dean Dinar’s book and was smacked by the heavy tome in the face. Now her eyes were shadowed in darkness. Egert could not see if her gaze was fastened on him, but the sensation emanating from the girl, the sensation of blunt suffering, became stronger, as if the very sight of Egert aroused in her a new episode of pain.

“Yes, Soll?” asked the dean dryly.

Egert suddenly realized that they had been talking about him, though he did not know where such certainty came from. “I came to ask,” he said dully, “about broken curses, about curses that have been lifted. Does it depend … does the possibility of deliverance depend on … does it depend on the extent to which the person is guilty?”

Toria slowly turned toward her father, but she did not get up from the table and she did not say a word.

Having exchanged glances with his daughter, the dean frowned. “What is it you don’t understand?”

Toria—her left temple began to ache even more, so much so that Egert wanted to press his hand to his own head—said blandly and levelly into the darkness, “Undoubtedly, Master Soll wishes to find out if he, as an innocent sufferer, has any advantage.”

Egert’s heart collapsed like a baited dog. Barely moving his lips he whispered, also into space, “No, I…”

There were no words; Toria sat as still as a statue, not betraying her aching pain the slightest bit.

“I’ll leave now,” said Egert softly, “and you’ll get better. I only … Forgive me.”

He turned and walked toward the door. Behind him, Toria let out a faltering breath and at that moment a spasm of pain seized her, such a spasm that Egert stumbled.

The dean also felt that something was wrong. Quickly glancing at his daughter, he shifted his glance, cool and distrustful, to Egert. “What is wrong with you, Egert?”

Egert leaned his shoulder against the doorpost. “Nothing’s wrong with me. Can’t you see? She’s in pain. How can you not feel it? How can you tolerate it, that she—” He took a breath. Father and daughter were staring at him without blinking; the jaws of the spasm unclenched incrementally, and Egert felt a wave of relief flow over Toria.

“You should put, I mean, it might help if you put a cold cloth on your forehead,” he whispered. “I’m already leaving. I know that I am guilty; I know that I am a murderer. What was done to me, it was only what I deserve. Perhaps—” He shivered. “—perhaps the Wanderer will not take pity on me, will not remove the scar. Would that … would that make it easier on you?”

Even in the half dark of the gloomy library it was apparent how large and dark her eyes had become.

“Soll?” asked the dean briskly.

Toria finally did what Egert had long wanted to do: she pressed her palm to her temple.

“I am leaving the university,” Egert said, barely audibly. “I am useless here and seeing me hurts her. I do understand.” He stepped through the door and walked away down the corridor. Only then did he notice that the candles, convulsively clutched in his fists, had dripped wax all over his clothes and shoes, and had burned the palms of his hands.

“Soll!” the dean called out behind him.

He did not want to turn around, but the dean grabbed him by the shoulder and twisted it back, peering into Egert’s exhausted face. There was such intensity and aggression in his gaze that Egert became terrified.

“Oh, just let him go,” Toria requested softly. She was standing in the doorway and her soul seemed somewhat easier: perhaps because her headache had abated.

Gripping Egert by his elbow, the dean marched him back to the library and forcefully sat him down in a creaking chair. Only then did he turn to Toria. “Why didn’t you take a cure immediately?”

“I thought I could manage,” she answered distantly.

“And now?”

“Now, it’s better.”

The dean looked searchingly at Egert. “Well, Soll? Is it better? Is it true?”

“It’s true,” he answered, barely moving his lips. His candles had extinguished; prying his fingers apart with difficulty, he let the stubs fall to the floor. Velvety moths pivoted around the ceiling lamps with soft rustles, and the far-off cry of the night watch echoed through the dark window facing the square.

“How long has this been going on?” asked the dean casually, as if he did not care about the answer.

“It’s not constant,” explained Egert, gazing at the moths. “It happened once before, and today … today was the second time. I have no control over it. Can I go now?”

“Toria,” asked the dean with a sigh. “Do you have any questions for Master Soll?”

She remained silent. As he left, Egert twisted his head around to look at her and caught her gaze, filled with blank astonishment, following him.

Summer in the city choked on hot dust, and in the course of one long, hot day, the lemonade hawkers earned more than they usually did in a week. People on the streets sizzled in the heat, and even the Tower of Lash emitted its ritual howl less frequently than usual. Hawkers erected flaxen awnings with long silk tassels over their heads: it seemed like enormous, many-colored jellyfish were oozing across the square. In the university’s great building dust whirled, content to settle everywhere without the constant disturbance of clopping feet; it gleamed in shafts of sunlight and covered the rostrum in a thin layer; it enveloped the benches, the windowsills, the statues of scholars, and the mosaic floors. Life glimmered only in servants’ quarters; in the dean’s study, where he was working hard on the biographies of archmages; in the room of his daughter; and in the annex, where the auditor Egert Soll lived in complete solitude.

The old washerwoman, who had abandoned her cleaning for the time being, now prepared only dinner; Toria took it upon herself to cook breakfast and supper for herself and her father. Knowing full well that the dean, absorbed in his work, might eat nothing more in the course of a day than a few sunflower seeds, Toria went out into the city every day to purchase food. She brought the food to his study and paid close attention so that every last crumb was, in the end, eaten.

Egert almost never left his room. Sitting by the window, he often saw Toria crossing the university courtyard with a basket on her arm. After thunderstorms, which then once again gave way to severe heat, a broad puddle lingered for a while on the path through the courtyard. One day, as she made her way home from the bazaar, Toria came across a sparrow that was bathing in this puddle.

But perhaps it was not a sparrow: its sodden wings were puffed up and Egert could have easily taken the gray, insolent fellow for some far more noble bird. Apparently, the bather was receiving indescribable pleasure from its warm bath, and it did not notice Toria as she approached.

Toria slowed her pace and then stopped. Her proud, chiseled profile, like the mint of an empress on a coin, was turned toward Egert. He expected that she would step over the puddle and go on her way, but she did not move forward. The bird splashed in its bath with abandon while the girl, holding a heavy basket in her hands, waited patiently.

Finally the sparrow—or whatever kind of bird it was—finished his bath and, without paying any attention to the considerate Toria, flitted up to one of the exterior rafters to dry off. Toria shifted the basket from one hand to the other, calmly and amiably nodded to the wet bird, and continued on her way.

Returning from the market the next day, Toria only just avoided running straight into Egert by the grand entrance.

The basket was in considerable danger and would surely have suffered harm, had Egert not swept it up with both hands. They were both startled by the unexpected meeting and simply stared at each other for a time.

Toria would not admit to herself that Egert had surprised her yet again. Apparently, some alteration had occurred within him: his scarred face was still as exhausted and mirthless as before, but that hunted expression had disappeared from his eyes. It was the expression of a dog cowering before his master’s stick; Toria had become accustomed to seeing it in his eyes and had learned to despise it. Now they were simply tired, human eyes.

Recently, Toria caught herself thinking about Egert Soll far too often. She believed that thinking about him was unseemly, but avoiding the thoughts turned out to be impossible: he had greatly confounded her that night in the library. He had stunned her not so much by his ability to sense pain as by his admission of his own guilt, an admission that was inconceivable, in her estimation, from the mouth of a murderer. Without being completely aware of it, she now wanted to see him again and examine him more attentively: Did he really grasp his own baseness? Or was it nothing more than a trick, a pathetic attempt to arouse sympathy and obtain a reduction of his sentence?

“Return the basket, please,” she said coolly. There were no other words that would come to her tongue at that moment.

Egert obediently handed her goods back to her. The green tips of a magnificent bunch of scallions swayed, hanging over the edge of the basket; the neck of a wine bottle and a hard, round piece of golden yellow cheese peeked out from under the thicket of scallions.

Grasping the basket by its rounded handle, Toria walked farther along the corridor. The load pulled down her shoulder, and in order to keep her balance she had to compensate by throwing her free arm out to the side.

She had just made it to the corner when behind her she heard a hoarse, uncertain voice. “May I … help?”

She slowed to a stop. Over her shoulder, without turning, she said, “What?”

Egert repeated himself dispiritedly, already anticipating her refusal. “May I help? That’s got to be heavy.”

Toria stood for a second in confusion; her usual asperity sprang to the tip of her tongue, but she did not let it loose. She suddenly recalled that heavy book, smashing away at the pale, drawn face, at the scarred cheek, at the bloodstained lips. Then her heart, as well as her arm, began to ache, as if she had kicked a homeless dog for no reason at all.

“You may help me,” she said with ostentatious indifference.

Egert did not immediately understand, and understanding, he did not immediately approach her: it was as if he was afraid that she would strike him again. Toria frowned peevishly and looked away.

The basket again changed hands. In silent procession they both walked on, Toria in front and Egert behind. Without a single word they traveled through the courtyard to the household annex. In the deserted kitchen Toria took the basket with a regal gesture and set it on the table.

It was high time for Egert to turn around and leave, but he tarried. Was he waiting, perhaps, for her to thank him?

“Thank you.” Toria let the words tumble out of her mouth. Egert sighed and she, without planning it, suddenly asked, “Before, you didn’t ever feel others’ pain, did you?”

Egert said nothing.

“And it is true,” Toria explained to herself, “that if you had felt it, then you could not have thrust your sword into another living man, yes?”

She immediately regretted her words, but Egert only nodded wearily. He affirmed impassively, “I could not have.”

An onion, a bunch of carrots, and a bunch of parsley were extracted from the basket. Egert watched as though spellbound while a poppy seed muffin; sweet, yellow butter; and a pot of cream followed these items into the light of the world.

“And now,” Toria continued relentlessly, “right now, this very second, are you able to feel it?”

“No,” Egert responded dully. “If it happened constantly, I would go out of my mind, and I wouldn’t have to wait for my meeting with the Wanderer.”

“Only a crazy person could want to meet the Wanderer,” snapped Toria, and once again she regretted what she said because Egert suddenly blanched.

“Why?”

Toria was not happy with such a turn in the conversation, and so the fresh cheese, folded in a napkin, was thrown onto the table with a certain amount of temper. “Why? Don’t you know anything about him at all?”

Egert slowly traced his finger along his scar. “This is all I know. Will this knowledge suffice?”

Toria paused, unable to find an answer. Egert looked at her for the first time since encountering her by the entrance: he looked at her without averting his eyes, sorrowfully and a little guiltily, and his gaze bewildered Toria. To hide her confusion, she bit off a piece of the muffin without thinking.

Egert swallowed and averted his gaze. Then, cheered that she could smother her own discomfort, she plucked a white crumb from her lip and asked, “Do you want something to eat?”

She had suddenly remembered that, because he lived in the annex, he was fed only once a day when the good woman, hired to carry dinner, delivered his meal to him. Somewhat disconcerted by this revelation, she hesitated slightly and then handed him a piece of the poppy seed muffin.

“Take it. Eat.”

He shook his head. Looking to the side, he asked, “But you, what do you know about the Wanderer?”

“Take the muffin,” she said adamantly.

For a few seconds he just looked at the rich morsel, dripping heavy crumbs, then he stretched out his hand to take it, and, very briefly, he brushed Toria’s fingers.

They both experienced a momentary awkwardness. With deliberate efficiency, Toria continued to unpack her purchases, and Egert thrust his white teeth into the muffin as soon as he came to his senses.

Toria watched as he ate; demolishing in a second both the inside and the poppy seed-strewn top, he nodded gratefully.

“Thank you. You are … very kind.”

She twitched her lip mockingly: My, what a polite young man.

Egert again looked her right in the eyes. “So you really don’t know anything about the Wanderer?”

Drawing a long kitchen knife from a drawer, she focused on testing it with her finger to see if the edge had dulled. Casually, she asked, “Didn’t you already talk about this with my father? If anyone in the world knows something about your acquaintance, it would be my father, true?”

Egert shrugged his shoulders drearily. “Yes. It’s just that I understand very little of what Dean Luayan says.”

Toria marveled at his candor. She ran the blade of the knife across an ancient, worn grindstone a few times; then, galled at her own complacency, she said, “That’s hardly surprising. You probably wasted all your time in swordplay. I doubt you’ve ever even read a book in its entirety besides a primer.”

She expected him to go pale again or lower his eyes or even run away, but he only nodded wearily, agreeing with her. “That’s true, but what’s to be done about it? Anyway, there is no book that can tell me how to find the Wanderer, how to talk to him … so that he understands.”

Toria pondered this for a bit and then said carelessly, playing with the knife, “And are you really sure that you need to find him? Are you convinced that without the scar you will become better?”

Only now did Egert lower his head; instead of his face, she saw a pile of disordered blond hair. For a long time there was no answer. When he did speak, he directed his words at the floor. “Believe me, I very much need to find him. There is no getting around it: I must either be freed from the curse or I must die. Do you understand?”

Quiet set in and lasted for so long that the fresh bunch of parsley, sitting in a patch of sun on the table, began to wither. Toria shifted her gaze from Egert’s lowered face to the sunny day beyond the window, and it was clear to her, as clear as the day, that the man standing in front of her was not lying, not being overly dramatic, not acting: he really would prefer to die if the curse of the scar were not broken.

“The Wanderer,” she began softly, “appears on the Day of Jubilation. No one knows his paths or his roads; it is said that he can cover inconceivable distances in the space of a day. But on the Day of Jubilation he comes here. As to why, well, fifteen years ago on the same day in the square—from this window you can’t see it—but there, in the square, in front of the courthouse, a scaffold was erected. The town magistrate had decided that, as a prelude to the merrymaking, an execution would be performed and that it would forever be associated with the beginning of the festival. They sentenced some stranger, a vagrant, for the unlawful misappropriation of the rank and title of mage.”

“What?” asked Egert reluctantly.

“He claimed to be a mage, but he was not a mage. The law forbidding that is ancient and obscure. He was sentenced to be beheaded. People gathered, thick on the ground, excited by the prospect of fireworks, carnival, a man sentenced to the block.… The executioner lifted his ax, but the condemned man surged up and disappeared right in front of the whole city. It was as if he never even existed. No one knows precisely how this happened. Perhaps he was a mage after all. It was not the Spirit Lash that saved him, as some people say.”

Egert winced at the mention of Lash, but Toria did not notice.

“From that time until now the Day of Jubilation has begun with an execution, but one of the condemned men is pardoned by lottery. They draw lots right there on the scaffold, and one is released while the others, well, they get the usual fate of the condemned. Then, Egert, there is a citywide celebration, and everyone rejoices.”

She realized that, carried away by her tale, she had called him by his first name. She frowned.

“What can you do? Heathen customs die hard. You would probably be interested in seeing an execution, yes?”

Egert averted his eyes. With barely noticeable reproof he said, “Hardly. Especially if my ability returned, as I imagine it would. So, I think not.”

Toria lowered her eyes, a bit disconcerted. She muttered through her teeth, “I don’t know why I am telling you all this. Father is of the opinion that the Wanderer has a connection to the man who so abruptly disappeared right out from under the ax. He believes that both before this and after, the man experienced considerable ordeals, and a change came over him. All this is, of course, extremely vague, but in my opinion my father thinks that he and the Wanderer are one and the same man.”

Again a long pause followed. Toria pensively scored the surface of the table with the tip of the knife.

“So every year,” slowly continued Egert, “he comes here. On that very same day?”

Toria shrugged her shoulders. “No one knows what interests the Wanderer, Soll.” She cast a glance at her companion and suddenly added with uncanny boldness, “But I think that you would interest him very little.”

With a habitual gesture, Egert touched his scar. “Well, that just means that I have to find a way to interest him.”

On the evening of that same day, Dean Luayan dropped in on Egert.

Twilight reigned in the small room. Egert was sitting by the window, the book on curses lay open beside him on the windowsill, but Egert was not reading. Staring at the courtyard with unresponsive, wide-open eyes, he saw in his mind’s eye first the square, where a scaffold was swelling upward like an island in the midst of a sea of humanity; then the thoughtful eyes of Toria; then the kitchen knife, cleaving through a stalk of parsley; then finally the ax, cleaving through a man’s neck. A recollection of the dean’s ambiguous story about the mage deprived of his magical gift came to his mind; then his thoughts turned to the Order of Lash, and the Sacred Spirit broke in upon his thoughts, resembling its own sculpted image the way two drops of water resemble each other: shrouded in its robe, it descended onto the scaffold and saved the doomed man from the block.

At that moment a knock came at the door. Egert shivered and tried to convince himself that in fact there had been no knock, but the rusty hinges screeched and the dean was standing on the threshold.

In the gathering darkness Egert could not have traced the pattern of lines on his own palm, but the face of the dean, which was several steps away, was plainly visible: that face, as usual, was a paragon of passionless detachment.

Egert leapt up as if the mouth of a volcano were under him instead of just a rickety chair. The appearance of the dean here, in this wretched little room, which Egert had grown accustomed to thinking of as his home, seemed an occurrence equally as unthinkable as a visit from the moon to the nest of a wagtail.

The dean looked at Egert inquiringly, as if Egert had come to see him and was about to tell him something. Egert was silent, having been deprived of the gift of speech as soon as the dean entered.

“I beg your pardon,” the dean said somewhat sarcastically, and Egert thought in passing that Toria was strikingly similar to her father, not so much in appearance as in habits. “I beg your pardon for barging in on you, Soll. At our last meeting you said that you were ready to quit the university and that you were motivated to do so in part because of your, hmm, uselessness … that is, your ignorance. Did you say this seriously or was it just a pretty turn of phrase?”

The darkened, arched ceiling came down and crushed Egert’s shoulders. He was being turned out, and they had every right to turn him out. “Yes,” he said dully. “I am ready to leave. I understand.”

For a short time they were both silent, the dean dispassionately, Egert anxiously; finally, unable to endure the silence any longer, Egert muttered, “I truly am useless, Dean Luayan. Studying for me is like an ant taking on the heavens. Maybe it would be best to give my place to another?”

He suddenly broke into a sweat. He was horrified at his own words: his place already belonged to another. It was Dinar’s place.

The dean rubbed his temple, and his wide sleeve swayed. “Well, Soll. There is nothing wrong with your reason: you usually speak sensibly. Your academic work does, however, leave something to be desired. Even though you are an auditor, you should not neglect your studies. And so, I’ve brought you this.” Luayan took a medium-sized tome in a leather binding and a smallish pamphlet bound in pasteboard from the folds of his dark garment.

“I asked Toria to select something relatively straightforward for the beginning. Fortunately, you do know how to read. When you have got through this one, turn to the other. And don’t be shy about speaking up if something is too difficult for you. Perhaps Toria might take a shot at tutoring you … though perhaps not. Sometimes it seems to me that she has no patience at all.”

The dean nodded, bade him farewell, and when he was already in the corridor, suddenly said in a dreamy tone, “You know who had a native gift for teaching? Dinar. He had a distinctive gift: he never imposed ideas; rather, he compelled his students to think. Beyond that, for him it was a game, a passion, a pleasure.… No, Soll, there is no need to go pale: I am not saying this to rebuke you. But I have, you understand, neither the time nor the inclination to teach you myself, and so I was just thinking aloud: it would have done you good to study with Dinar.… However, there’s nothing to be done about that: you’ll have to venture it alone.”

With that the dean left. Only then did Egert fully realize that all around him there was a darkness so deep that it should have been impossible to distinguish a human face or clothing or books. Covered in goose bumps, Egert thrust his arm out toward the table. The books were there, but the leather binding felt cold, and the pasteboard felt as rough as sackcloth.

The books were titled The Structure of Creation and Conversations with Young People. The author of the first book was a boring, stern old man who set forth his thoughts concisely and clearly, but required constant effort on the part of the reader. The writer of the second book adored long digressions, which continued on in the notes. He addressed the reader as “my dear child,” and Egert envisioned him as an amiable, somewhat sentimental, rosy-cheeked, and corpulent fellow.

The pages of the pasteboard-bound book bored Egert, and he scrambled through the chapters of the leather-bound tome as if they were prickly thickets. His eyes finally became accustomed to daily reading and no longer teared up. In order to stretch his tired back Egert got into the habit of walking into the city every morning. He issued forth leisurely, with ambling steps and the look of a man who had not yet decided where he should direct his feet; nevertheless, every day his feet brought him by diverse paths to the bazaar that was situated not far from the university. There he wandered among the stalls, successively tasting bacon and cream, fruit and smoked fish, while amongst the flickering hats and headscarves he searched for the black-haired head of Toria.

She noticed Egert immediately, but she pretended that she was fully engrossed in her shopping and that she had no wish to turn her eyes to the side, not for any reason. Passing from stall to stall, pointing and bargaining, she gradually filled her basket with food, while Egert strolled nearby, never losing sight of Toria, but also never appearing directly in her line of sight.

Having finished her shopping, Toria would set out on the return trip. Every time, Egert had to overcome his awkwardness when, having run in an arc to get ahead of her, he happened upon her path home as if by chance.

Toria always received him coolly and without surprise; taking the curved handle of the basket from her arm, Egert was always covered in goose bumps.

They always returned to the university in silence. Casually glancing to the side, Toria would see next to her a round shoulder and an arm with a rolled-up sleeve. On this arm the basket seemed as light as a feather, and the muscles under the white skin, untouched by sunburn, played only slightly under its weight. Toria would avert her eyes and they would pass through the courtyard to the household annex, and just as silently, they would part ways in the kitchen, after Egert had received in reward for his labor sometimes a roll with butter, sometimes a dripping fragment of honeycomb, sometimes a glass of milk. Carrying away his loot, Egert would return to his room and, with a light heart, sink into a book with the hard-earned delicacy sitting ready at hand in anticipation of the moment when it would finally be eaten.

At the dean’s request, Toria did try to tutor Egert two or three times. These attempts, unfortunately, were a decided failure: both tutor and student went their separate ways annoyed and exhausted. The joint lessons were discontinued after one memorable episode when Toria, beginning to enjoy the philosophical discussions about creation and mortality, exclaimed, leafing through the pages, “But that isn’t so, Dinar, it’s—”

Stopping short, she met Egert’s terrified gaze and immediately said her good-byes. That evening the two of them, in different parts of the massive, dark building, abandoned themselves to the same oppressive thoughts.

In all other respects, a tepid neutrality now held sway between Egert and Toria. Toria taught herself to nod when she ran into him, and Egert learned not to blanch when he heard the light tapping of her heels at the end of the corridor.

In the meantime, melons, pumpkins, gourds, and squash appeared in the stalls in the city, the heat of the day gave way to the chill of the night, and the studious youths, sunburned and plump from home cooking, gradually began to return to the university.

The annex was revivified. The dust was chased from the corridors, halls, and auditoriums. The cook returned and commenced her work, so there was no longer any reason for Toria to walk to the bazaar every day. A cleaning woman fluffed pillows and feather mattresses, and down flew about in clouds, as if a horde of geese and ducks had gathered in the university courtyard for a fateful battle. In the mornings two or three youths with bundles over their shoulders usually gathered in front of the grand staircase: these were prospective students who had traveled to the university from far-off cities and townships.

Mouths agape, the newcomers gazed upon the iron snake and the wooden monkey, became embarrassed whenever someone asked them a question, and hesitantly followed Dean Luayan, who invited them to join him in his study for an interview. After the interviews, a portion of the prospective students, despondent, set out on the return trip home; Egert suffered and felt despicable as he watched those who were turned away: any one of them was far more worthy of the standing of a student than Egert.

It must be said, however, that the summer days spent behind books had yielded their own modest fruits; in the domain of academia, Egert felt himself to be somewhat more confident, although he was certainly not going to set the heavens aflame with his brilliance. In exchange for Conversations with Young People, he received from the dean a book of monumental proportions and extravagant title: The Philosophy of Stars, Stones, Herbs, Fire, and Water, as Well as Their Incontrovertible Relationship to the Features of the Human Body, and in addition to this weighty tome, he received Anatomy, which was full of graphic and colorful illustrations.

These illustrations shocked and horrified him, and at the same time they aroused an unprecedented interest in him. Egert marveled at the intricate network of veins, the extraordinary arrangement of bones, and how the liver, seemingly enormous and quite brown, resembled those he had seen at market. In his innocent simplicity, Egert had always thought that the human heart looked exactly like those little hearts that were drawn in the corners of love letters, and he was shocked when he saw on the page that complicated knot, resembling bagpipes, with all its chambers and blood vessels. The dreadful skeleton, which only lacked a scythe in its hand to be truly terrifying, lost all its horror as soon as Egert delved into the study of the minute explanatory inscriptions that accompanied it: detailed and meticulous, these commentaries completely dispelled all thoughts of death, evoking instead reasonable and practical questions.

While Egert was studying Anatomy, Fox returned to the university.

Their reunion was heartfelt and boisterous; Fox’s copper hair had grown down to his shoulders, his nose was burned by the sun and peeling like a boiled potato, but neither solemnity nor gravity had been added to his habits. From his knapsack appeared an entire smoked goose with dried plums, a string of black blood sausages, home-baked scones, and a variety of vegetables, prepared in diverse ways. At the very bottom of Fox’s sack was nestled an enormous bottle of wine, thick as blood. The food, which Gaetan’s loving mother had collected for her son, intending them to last at least a week, was demolished within a few hours. Fox was, without a doubt, a slacker and a trickster, but in no way was he a miser.

The very first sip of wine turned Egert’s head. Grinning inanely, he watched as the room filled with familiar students. Soon there was no room left, not on the beds, or at the table, or on the windowsill. They were all laughing, clamoring, and recounting tales, licking greasy fingers and proclaiming toasts, gulping wine straight from the bottle. Having laid waste to Fox’s knapsack, the students, as ravenous as young locusts, decided to go out into the city; Egert no longer had any money, but all the same he decided to go out with the rest of them.

They visited At the Rabbit Hole and then dropped by Quench; at the latter tavern a dashing company of guards was drinking, apparently just off duty. Egert was rattled by their close proximity, but the city guards hailed the students complacently and without any distaste whatsoever, and the intoxication that had earlier spun Egert’s head around accepted their company and even dulled his habitual fear.

The two groups swapped bottles, toasts, and amiable taunts; then the troop of guards took up that ancient pastime of all armed men: they started throwing daggers at a target that was painted on the wall. The students quieted down, watching; the most skilled with a knife of all the guards was a broad-shouldered young man with a predatory look, whose hair was tied back with a leather cord. A short sword hung on his belt. Egert examined the sword with interest. No one bore such a weapon in Kavarren.

Knives and daggers whacked into the wooden wall, some closer than others to the center of the target, painted by some dabbler in the shape of a crooked apple. The guards became excited and began to play for money. The broad-shouldered young man, the owner of the short sword, was well on his way toward lightening the purses of his comrades, when one of the guards voiced the thought that it would be a good idea to challenge the tipsy students to a competition.

After a bit of embarrassment on the part of the students, some of them decided to stand up and defend the honor of the university. Fox scurried about, handing out advice and trying to nudge the next knife thrower as close as possible to the target, at which the guards were rightly outraged and pushed him back to his former position, which was marked out by a chalk line. Unfortunately, the knives thrown by the students’ arms resolutely refused to stick into the wall: slamming into the target sideways, they disgracefully flopped to the floor accompanied by the laughs and jests of the guards. However, the taunts fell short of offense and a full-blown quarrel.

The students lost three bottles of wine, a pile of silver coins, and Fox’s dress hat: being a gambler by nature, so little did he want to admit the defeat of his group that in the end he was throwing knives himself. Every toss was preceded by a hot-tempered bet and soon Fox was deprived of all his money and his well-made leather belt.

Not the slightest bit disconcerted, Fox would probably have bet his father’s apothecary, had not his eyes at that very moment fallen upon the languid form of Egert, who was blissfully enjoying the general merriment and sitting complacently on the edge of a bench.

“Hey, Egert!” Instead of his belt, Fox had tied up his trousers with a cord. “Is there some reason you aren’t playing for your own people? Perhaps you’d like to give it a toss, or is their money too good for you?”

Smiling self-consciously, Egert stood up. At that moment the despondent students, whose defeat was apparently shattering and complete, really did seem to be his own people, almost his family; furthermore, he suddenly begrudged the loss of Gaetan’s belt.

The broad-shouldered guard with the cord in his hair smirked, handing Egert a dagger. Egert measured the distance to the target with his eyes, squinting, and at that moment it was as if he switched on a long-forgotten but still faultless ability.

His hand weighed the dagger, determining its center of gravity; the blade came alive, twisting in Egert’s palm like a small, nimble animal. The tip flashed in a searing arc and with a crunch embedded itself in the very center of the painted apple.

The tavern hushed from astonishment; a stunned cook peered out of the kitchen.

Egert smiled as if apologizing; the guards exchanged wondering glances, as if they did not believe their eyes and had to check if their companions had seen the same thing: maybe they’d all gotten really drunk? The students were simply frozen, their faces stretched long in shock; Fox broke through the general bewilderment.

“But how did you do that?” he asked in a deliberately drunken voice.

The broad-shouldered guard stepped forward resolutely, shaking a purse. “I’ll put up the money. Best of five, what do you say?”

Egert again smiled guiltily.

After that, everything happened quickly. In a silence that was broken only by the subdued gasps of the audience and the dull thuds of blades hitting wood, Egert won back Fox’s belt and hat, all the money lost by the students, and even the money that the broad-shouldered youth had won off his comrades. Egert’s eyes and hands acted almost independently, executing a long-familiar and pleasant task; daggers danced in Egert’s hands, spun round into a glinting fans, flew up into the air and then fell into his palm as if they were glued there. He threw them almost without looking, like clockwork, and they all rushed toward the exact same point: soon a hole, studded with wooden splinters, appeared in the center of the lopsided apple.

The broad-shouldered guard with the cord wound in his hair turned respectfully to Egert. “I swear to Khars, this lad has not spent his whole life wiping books on his trousers, oh no!”

Finally, Egert’s excitement ran dry: unintentionally glancing at the dagger in his hand, he suddenly saw it as a murder weapon and winced at the thought of lacerated flesh. However, no one noticed his distress, because the company of students had long ago recovered from their shock and exchanged it for exuberant high spirits.

They surrounded Egert, shaking his hand and patting him on the back; one by one the guards approached and gravely attested to their heartfelt esteem. To drink away their newly earned money, the triumphant students headed off to the One-Eyed Fly. A pair of girls trailed along after them, apparently lured by the beauty and prowess of the “fair-haired Egert.”

They continued to celebrate Egert’s skill almost until midnight. They stopped by the students’ pub, where Egert finally met Fox’s longtime girlfriend: a good-looking, perpetually laughing woman by the name of Farri. She had missed her sweetheart over the summer, and so at first she pouted her lips aggrievedly, then she threw her arms around Gaetan’s neck, and then she proceeded to flirt recklessly with one and all, trying to call forth Fox’s jealousy. The situation ended when, begging leave of Egert and the whole company, Fox expertly scooped Farri up under his arm and hauled her away. From that moment on, Egert lost interest in the party; scarcely able to escape from the two girls who were besieging him, he wormed his way out onto the dark street. Just as he was about to turn the corner, he ran into a man in a spacious robe. The face of the robed man was hidden by a hood.

“Good evening, Egert,” said a voice out of the darkness.

The voice was affable: without a doubt, it belonged to Fagirra. Egert stepped back. In the months that had passed since his visit to the Tower, Egert had managed to convince himself that the brotherhood had lost all interest in him and no longer wanted him in their ranks. The appearance of Fagirra was like thunder in a clear sky.

“Are you surprised to see me, Egert?” Fagirra smiled under his hood. “I’m happy to inform you that you’ve successfully endured the first trial, the trial of secrecy. We should talk. Wouldn’t it be better if we moved away from that noisy tavern?”

Laughter and shouts alternating with drunken songs were wafting from the One-Eyed Fly. At that moment the raucous sounds of the students’ revelry seemed dear to Egert, like a lullaby remembered from childhood.

“Yes,” he muttered indistinctly, “of course.”

Taking Egert by the hand, Fagirra dragged him into an alley. Egert was afraid that they would find a secret passageway that led into the Tower of Lash.

Fagirra stopped. His white teeth flashed in the dark. “Egert, I’m glad to see that you are in good health. We have little time. Soon, by the will of Lash, we will become comrades-in-arms, brothers, but in the meantime you must know that the world is changing, that the world has already changed. People have drifted too far away from Lash: woe unto them. Have you not noticed, Egert? Fools, all fools. The city magistrate heeds the advice of the Magister, but the magistrate is ill and who knows how his successor will conduct himself? Even now voices can be heard that contravene the will of Lash. Woe unto them, Egert, woe unto them all!”

Egert listened, not understanding or even trying to understand, only feverishly wondering what Fagirra would demand of him.

“Great ordeals are approaching, ordeals that all living things must endure, but what those ordeals are, you will learn only once you have passed through the rites of initiation. You must hurry, Egert. You must find the time to cleave to Lash before that which must happen, happens. You will meet it with us, and you will find salvation, whereas others will cry out in horror.”

The acolyte talked ever more rapidly and ardently, his eyes glinting in the darkness. With each word, Egert became more terrified, as if he suddenly saw wings of shadow stretched out over his ordinary, familiar life.

“Soon, Egert. But there is still time. You must pass through the second trial. By the will of Lash it will be the last, and then the Tower will shelter you, consecrated against that … against what will happen here, below the sun. Are you ready to listen?”

Egert’s tongue answered of its own accord. “Yes.”

Fagirra brought his cowl close to Egert’s face. “Then listen. These are the conditions of the final trial: First, keep silent as before; second, and this is the most important, Egert, you must watch and listen. It is for this that you have been given eyes and ears, Egert: to watch and listen. The Magister himself will receive your reports. In the university you will encounter both those who are our friends and those who are our enemies. We must determine who is who. The Magister is especially interested in the venerable dean and his lovely young daughter. Watch and listen. You are no doubt privy to the plans of the dean concerning the book he is writing, yes?”

Egert stood there, feeling as though he had been doused in boiling water. He immediately forgot his fear of the impending ordeals. His cheeks and ears were burning; luckily, Fagirra could not see this in the darkness. Heaven, the former Soll, that long-forgotten Kavarrenian bully: he would put an end to such a conversation with one good punch to the face! But the former Soll was dead, and this latter-day Egert, marked by the scar, only whispered in a wavering voice, “Unfortunately, you exaggerate my acquaintance with Dean Luayan. I don’t know anything about his plans.”

Fagirra amiably placed his hand on Egert’s shoulder. “Egert, this trial, it is not an easy one. I won’t lie. It is possible that finding out about this will be difficult, but after all, it is possible, Egert, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” whispered Egert. “I really … I’m not sure.”

“Egert,” drawled Fagirra reproachfully, “my friend. You’ve already taken the first step: You were present at the secret ceremony. You were shown great trust, weren’t you? Do you really think it is unnecessary to justify that trust? Right now you find yourself under the influence of a momentary hesitation, but the penalty for such hesitation may be too onerous: it may be nothing short of inhuman. Don’t let cowardice get the better of you. It will only be worse. Believe me, I am telling you this as your future brother. Would it be easier for you to submit reports directly to the Magister or to me?”

Egert could hardly keep himself from shaking violently. Fagirra’s hands, as before, were resting on his shoulders: the acolyte would be able to feel it quite well. “To you,” whispered Egert, wishing only to finish all this as soon as possible.

Fagirra was silent for a moment, and then he said softly, “Splendid. I will find you. Your business is to watch and listen. And to question, to question as inquisitively as possible but without intrusiveness: the dean is quite clever.”

Fagirra started to walk away, but then he suddenly turned around again.

“You needn’t feel so ill about all this, Egert. You’ll understand soon. You’ve been offered a helping hand; you’ve been granted a unique chance. You will realize this later, but for now you just need to believe. All right?”

Egert could not find the strength to answer.

The anecdote about the daggers went the rounds of the university, and even completely unfamiliar students walked up to Egert in the corridors so that they could shake hands with him and ask him something insignificant. The academic year began, and Egert did not miss a single lecture, even though his soul was heavy.

After his encounter with Fagirra he vowed to himself that he would no longer show his face in town, but who knew whether or not even the university walls could protect from the Order of Lash? Egert knew full well that base fear would betray him at the very first opportunity, and his interrogator, whoever he might be, would be able to extract from him anything he desired to hear. The Order of Lash either knew or had guessed at his cowardice, and that meant that he was a prisoner of the Order, a spy and an inquisitor, and no pride or honor would be able to save Egert when his legs began to shake from fear and his parched tongue clove to the back of his throat, unable to prevent him from pronouncing words of betrayal.

The lengthy howl sounding from the Tower now rendered him horror-stricken.

One day, plucking up his courage, he took himself to the dean’s study to confess everything, but on the way to the study Fagirra’s face rose up before his eyes and his fitful voice whispered in his ears, warning of impending disasters. He had scarcely crossed the threshold when he blurted out an unintelligible question: What will happen … or will nothing happen … in the near future?

The dean showed surprise, but with touching gravity he supposed that in the near future something surely would happen, and in the recent past something, alas, had already happened. Egert panicked, asked the dean’s pardon, and fled, leaving the dean somewhat bewildered.

Sometimes Egert calmed himself with the thought that Fagirra and the hoary Magister seemed like men who were worthy of trust. Possibly he really did know too little; possibly the mission that had been entrusted to him was not a betrayal, but really a service to the university. After all, Fagirra had said, “You will realize this later, but for now you just need to believe. All right?”

All right, whispered Egert to himself, and he felt better; he even began to consider in earnest how he could best accomplish the task that had been imposed on him, but then the abrupt realization of his own baseness drove him to despair. Cringing on the windowsill, he would not answer Fox’s worried questions or look into those honest honey-colored eyes.

Fox now regarded Egert with greater respect, not only for Egert’s rare ability in tossing knives, but also for the books he was reading, Anatomy and The Philosophy, which had been borrowed, according to Egert, from the dean himself. Gaetan trained himself to leave Egert in peace when he saw that his roommate desired solitude, but one evening, having blown out the candle, Fox ventured to ask his odd roommate a question.

“Listen, Egert. Who are you, actually?”

Egert, who had been drowsily recollecting his home and his parents, woke up fully. “What are you talking about?”

Fox’s bed creaked. “Well … You’re all quiet and shy, only I think I need to hide any knives from you or else who knows what might happen.”

“Have no fear,” Egert sneered bitterly.

Fox continued sullenly, “Of course. But if I had such a handsome face as you do, all the girls in the city would be spoiled. They run after you like they’re on a leash, but you never so much as glance at them. You know you could, with them, I mean … Never mind.”

Egert sneered again.

Fox came up with a new question. “Who was it that slashed your face?”

Egert sighed. He asked in a whisper, “Listen, the Day of Jubilation, is that soon?”

Fox wondered at this question in the darkness. After a pause, he answered, “Another month. Why?”

A month. A month remained until the designated time. Egert firmly believed that he would not become a scoundrel and informer if he could just hold out until the meeting with the Wanderer. Now he was a slave to the curse, but the real, free Egert would not be horrified either by direct threats or by promises of impending doom. The Order of Lash would lose all power over him, and it would be so pleasant to say to Fagirra’s face: Get lost, look for your spies elsewhere! And Karver. And returning to Kavarren, seeing his father. And then—Egert was almost decided on this—then he would come back to the university and ask the dean to admit him … possibly … But that would be later. First, the Wanderer, and the meeting that would take place in a month.

Egert simply barred from his mind the thought of what would happen if the meeting did not take place or if the Wanderer refused to deliver him from the curse.

For several nights in a row, Toria dreamed unusually vivid, wondrous dreams.

Once she dreamed that she was standing on the deck of a galleon. She had often seen such ships in engravings but never once in real life. All around lay the clean, blue surface of the sea, the spherical vault of the sky curved over her head, her father stood next to her, and in his hand, for some reason, was a birdcage. A small bird, smaller than a sparrow, hovered in the cage. Toria’s soul felt strangely light and she laughed in her sleep. But a mass of clouds, black as an ashtray, was gathering on the distant horizon, and the captain, for there was a captain on the ship, said with a grin, “There will be a storm, but we need not fear it.”

And Toria was not afraid. Nevertheless, the clouds drew near far faster than they should, and the captain sensed that something was wrong only when it was too late: in the sky over the ship hung an owl of vast proportions, and it was simultaneously a bird and a cloud, only such a cloud as has never existed. Its eyes, two round saucers, glowed with a white, turbulent fire, and its wings, when extended, shut out the sky. The captain and the crew cried out in horror, and then Toria’s father, Dean Luayan, flung open the door of the birdcage he held in his hand.

The bird, light, smaller than a sparrow, flitted free from the cage; it soared up impetuously and began to grow and grow and turn black and roll around within the cloud. When it equaled the owl hovering in the sky, there was a battle not for life, but for death—only, who won this battle, Toria was not allowed to learn, for she awoke.

Speculating on what it might mean, Toria walked into the city: the evening before, her father had asked her to stop by the apothecary. Returning, she came upon two girls who were standing by the front entrance, wearing compelling bonnets adorned with rose-red and jade-green flowers. The girls, blushing and nudging each other, turned to her with a question: Does there live here … that is, study here … a very tall boy, blond, with a scar?

Toria was taken aback. The girls, becoming more agitated, explained: They met a little while ago at a certain place and agreed to meet again but, although the students came into the city fairly often—This boy, he’s so blond. Do you know him?—he hasn’t shown his face in town for a few weeks now.… Perhaps he’s ill?

At first Toria wanted to laugh, then she changed her mind and decided to be livid; then, recollecting herself, she wondered why she should have such a reaction. What business did she have with Soll’s intimate affections?

After dryly explaining to the girls that the “blond with the scar” was well and would certainly soon appear “at a certain place,” Toria continued on her way; from behind her rushed the words: Perhaps she could tell this boy that Ora and Rosalind were looking for him?

Toria would have been quite shocked if, the evening before, someone had told her that she would recall this unlooked-for encounter often, but she did recall it, feeling annoyed and astonished at her own idiocy. Likely, she was irritated by Egert Soll’s choice: such vulgar, trashy girls! However, the students always were somewhat indiscriminate. But, Soll! Glorious Heaven, why was Soll supposed to be any better or worse than the others?

Running into him the next day, Toria could not restrain herself from pricking him. “By the way, your lady friends were looking for you. It seems you completely forgot about them, Soll.”

For a long moment he looked at her, uncomprehending; she had time to see that his eyelids were red and his eyes were tired, as happens after a long night of reading. “Who?” he finally asked.

Toria searched her memory. “Ora and Rosalind. What taste you have, Soll!”

“I don’t know who they are,” he said indifferently. “Are you sure that they asked for me specifically?”

Toria again could not restrain herself. “And who else do we have here who is ‘tall, blond, with a scar’?”

Egert smiled bitterly, touching his cheek with his hand as was his wont; for some reason Toria became embarrassed. Muttering something indistinct, she rushed off.

A little while later she saw him in a group of students, led by the redheaded Gaetan; Egert Soll stood head and shoulders above all his companions. The group was, of course, heading out into the city; the students were making a joyful racket. Soll was silent, holding himself aloof, but the regard that the other students showed toward him was not concealed from Toria’s eyes. Next to Soll they all seemed a bit gawky, a bit rustic, a bit simple, while Soll, in whose every movement danced an instinctual, martial grace, seemed like a pedigreed horse lost in a herd of pleasant, merrily stomping mules.

With displeasure, Toria caught herself feeling something akin to interest. Of course Ora and Rosalind were inspired by him, and indeed how many more young fillies were champing at the bit, desiring to get their hands on such a pretty man?

A few days later, Egert unexpectedly received a package from Kavarren. The wheezing messenger brought a voluminous parcel, covered in wax seals, and a small, crumpled letter addressed to Egert into the university chancellery. The messenger would not leave until he received a silver coin for his troubles. The sack was full of home-cooked food and the letter, written on yellowing stationery, smelled of heartfelt, bitter tears.

Egert did not recognize the handwriting. His mother wrote rarely and unwillingly, and never had a single one of her missives been intended for her son, but he recognized the smell immediately, and his agitation threw him into a fit of shakes.

The letter was strange: the lines curved downward and the thoughts broke off again and again. There was not a single word in it about Egert’s flight or current life in Kavarren. The entire letter was dedicated to fragmentary recollections of Egert as a child and as an adolescent, except that he himself could remember almost nothing of them. His mother had held in her memory the color of the tablecloth in which her young son had tied up a bowl of hot soup for himself, and the beetle, whose severed leg he cheerfully and persistently tried to glue back on, and some impudence for which his father wanted to punish him, but she intervened, inventing an excuse for her son. Egert could hardly read to the end of the letter: he was overwhelmed by an incomprehensible, pinching, sickly sensation.

Hoping to stifle it, Egert bade Fox to invite anyone and everyone who could possibly fit into their tiny, arched room to a feast. The students, companionable and always ravenous, did not make him wait long; soon the beds were groaning under the weight of the feasters, and the windowsill was threatening to collapse, and the table, intended to serve as a base of academic inquiries and not as a throne for robust young backsides, was rattling indignantly. The parcel full of food, which would have been enough to last Egert an entire month, was demolished, as is proper, within a few hours. Everyone was heartily satisfied, including Egert, who in the noise and intoxication of the revelry was able to smother both bitterness and grief, as well as his fears for the future.

The Day of Jubilation was just around the corner. First Egert wanted it to arrive as quickly as possible, then to extend the time by any means he could. More and more frequently, Fox anxiously asked him if everything was all right: at times Egert lapsed into a causeless, overwrought mirth and at other times into a deep, depressed trance, sitting for hours by the window, senselessly leafing through the pages of the book on curses and eating almost nothing. At other times he was agitated and sleepless, and he kept getting up in the middle of the night to drink from the iron cistern in the corridor; the clamor of the iron chains on which this drinking fountain hung woke his neighbors and they complained.

A week remained until that fateful day, when Dean Luayan asked Egert to visit his study.

Egert expected to see Toria there, sitting as usual on the edge of the desk and swinging her feet, but it was only the strict, focused dean and his fidgety, nervous guest who met face-to-face in the heavily curtained study.

Having installed Egert in a tall armchair, the dean remained silent for a long time. A candle burned away inside the glass sphere with the outline of continents etched on it, and in its light the steel wing hovering over the table seemed alive and ready to take flight.

“In a day or two he’ll be in the city,” the dean said quietly.

Egert’s palms, which were gripping the wooden armrests, instantly became as clammy as frogs’ feet.

“Listen to me,” said the dean just as quietly, but the sound of his voice caused goose bumps to creep along Egert’s skin. “I know that you have lived for the sake of this encounter. Now I ask you a final time: Do you really want to speak with the Wanderer? Are you sure that this is the only path you can take?”

Egert thought of Fagirra and of the girl in the carriage who had been made into a plaything for a gang of robbers, and only then did he think of Karver. “I am sure,” he responded dully.

For a long moment the dean pierced him with his eyes. Egert did not move a muscle and managed to outlast that gaze. “Good,” rejoined Luayan finally. “Then I will tell you everything that I know. But what I know is, unfortunately, not very much.”

He walked over to the window, pulled back the edge of the curtain and thus, with his back to Egert, he began.

“I already told you about the man who was deprived of the gift of magic and who had to travel the path of experience. I talked to you about the Doors, seen by me in the Mirror of Waters: I was then a youth, my teacher had died, and I was alone.… A man stood before the Doors in my vision, and the bolt was halfway removed. You did not understand then why I recalled all of this, but now you should understand: listen well. The Wanderer walks the earth. No one calls him by his name and no one knows exactly why the abyss cast him out; he bears a power that no one, whether a mage or not, can penetrate. Not once, no matter how hard I tried, have I been able to see him in the Mirror of Waters, and I am quite skilled, Egert: any man who possesses the gift of magic is reflected in my Mirror sooner or later, but the Wanderer is inaccessible to my gaze. Moreover, every time I have tried to find him, it was as if I ran up against a blank wall. The inexplicable frightens me, Egert. The Wanderer frightens me, and I am no little boy. I cannot be sure; he may be an embodiment of evil, he may not, but who on this earth truly knows what is good and what is evil?”

The dean fell silent and Egert, pressing his palm against his scarred cheek, surprised himself by saying, “The curse is evil.”

“And murder?” The dean turned his head around in wonder.

“Murder is also evil,” replied Egert dully.

“And what about killing a murderer?”

The candle inside the glass sphere guttered.

“Let’s move on,” sighed the dean. “I’ll tell you more. Half a century ago the world stood on the brink of a precipice. The majority of the living did not realize this. Something tried to enter the world from the outside. Manuscripts call it the Third Power. It desired to come into the world and rule over it. In order to pass through the Doors of Creation, the Third Power needed a Doorkeeper. That very same man, deprived of his gift, abused by the people he knew, blinded by his pride, decided to become the Doorkeeper. He would have received unprecedented power for opening the Doors, but the bolt was not removed. For some reason he decided at the final moment to abandon his task. It is unknown what happened next, but the man who dared to refuse the Third Power returned to the world of the living. He had been seared by the Power, but from that trial he received not damnation, as one would expect, but an inheritance of sorts.… It is said that ever since, he has roamed the world he saved, known from that time forward as the Wanderer. Does this seem like truth?”

Egert was silent.

“I too do not know.” The dean smiled slightly. “Perhaps it was an entirely different man, and the nature of the Wanderer’s power is altogether stranger.… Before, I desired to meet him, but now … now I do not wish it. Who knows … He is alien, he flees from encounters, and only from time to time do I hear chance tales of him.”

“And I’m a thread,” said Egert.

The dean stared at him. “What?”

“A thread, connecting you to the Wanderer. That is why I interest you, isn’t it?”

The dean frowned. “Yes … You have accurately calculated that there is a certain pragmatism in my treatment of you. You are a thread to the Wanderer, Soll, and you are also the murderer of my favorite student, the fiancé of my daughter. You are the victim of a grim curse. And you are a man who is on the path of experience. You are all these things.” The dean once again turned back to the window.

The candle in the glass sphere burned down and extinguished. The room became darker.

“What should I say to him?” asked Egert.

The dean shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever you like. You’ve altered enough that you can decide for yourself. Don’t try to move him to pity: it will do no good. Don’t abase yourself with pleading, but don’t even think of being rude. That could only make it worse. And the most important thing, Egert, and you should think well on this, is that you will be under his power yet again should you find him. He may decide to award your persistence with something else, with something that would make the previous curse seem like a joke.”

The dean searchingly inclined his head to his shoulder. Barely audibly, Egert whispered, “I’m afraid, of course. But, after all, I’ve already met him once. Maybe I’ll find the words. Maybe I’ll find…”

Egert was listening to the headmaster’s lecture while a note, flitting through the rows like a butterfly, passed along from hand to hand, making its way through the hall. Egert was not paying attention to this, and thus a hissing whisper caused him to spring up nearly out of his seat.

“Hey! Egert!”

The note was concealed within a tube, and the inscription on it left no doubt that this missive was addressed specifically to Egert. Unfolding the rough paper, Egert read the short sentence in the middle of the clean sheet: He is in the city.

The rasping voice of the headmaster burst into his ears like shattered glass; then it receded, muted, and melded with the buzzing of a fly that was toiling against the glass of the round window.

Three days remained until the holiday. Red-cheeked serving girls wore themselves out hauling overcrowded baskets of food here and there. Butchers gathered from the surrounding villages, and right on the street they sold bloody animal carcasses, the heads of both pigs and cows, rabbit haunches and braces of dead quail. Egert was troubled when his gaze accidentally fell on an insensate, eyeless head, skewered on a pole for sale.

The human sea bore him farther and farther through the streets. Feverishly peering at all the faces turned toward him, several times he flinched, broke out in a sweat, and flung himself forward, but every time he found he was mistaken, and so he halted to catch his breath and calm his wildly beating heart.

In the aristocratic quarters it was a bit calmer. Laughing and calling out to one another, chambermaids were stringing garlands from window to window, hanging ribbons and flags in the wind, displaying songbirds in cages on the windowsills, and scrubbing the pavement until it glistened. Catching sight of a gray hooded robe at the end of the street, Egert dived into an alley and pressed himself up against a wall.

In the middle of the day the fine weather broke; rain set in, autumn rain. Soaked to the bone, hungry and tired, Egert decided he was attacking the problem incorrectly: he would not find the Wanderer by simply roaming the streets. He needed to collect his thoughts and try to imagine where the man, who had appeared in the city the day before, would most likely be.

He hit upon the idea of visiting hotels and inns. At some he was merely looked at askance, and at others he was chased off immediately. Fearful, he took coins out of his pocket and forced himself to ask servants and lodgers about a tall middle-aged guest with intensely clear eyes and no eyelashes.

His purse was soon empty. In two or three hotels he was even shown the room in which, according to the parlor maids and servants, the tall old man he was looking for was staying. Each time feeling as though he was going to faint, Egert knocked on the hotels doors and received an invitation to enter and, entering, instantly apologized, admitted he had made a mistake and took his leave.

Hardly able to drag his feet, constantly running the risk of bumping into Fagirra or some other acolyte of Lash, Egert returned to the main square. There axes and saws were rattling away with all their might: opposite the city courthouse with its own executed manikin by the entrance, a vast scaffold was being raised.

Egert squirmed, recalling Toria’s words about the compulsory executions that opened the Day of Jubilation. The gang of professional carpenters was surrounded by street urchins: they were insanely curious. Vying with each other, they rushed to the aid of the carpenters, and when one of them was entrusted with holding a hammer, the pride of the fortunate boy was boundless.

Clenching his teeth, Egert assured himself that by the time of the executions he would already be free from the curse and thus he would be brave and unflappable. Dusk was setting in, and the rain, which had lightened for a while, returned again, and Egert, whose strength suddenly and completely ran dry, dragged himself toward the university.

The next morning he went out onto the streets at the crack of dawn and almost immediately saw a tall elderly man in a jacket that had seen better times, wearing a sword at his waist. Having settled accounts with a merchant who sold him a buckle for his baldric, the tall man slowly walked down the street, and Egert, afraid of being mistaken, afraid of losing the old man from sight, afraid of delaying and being too late, dashed after him.

Despite the early hour, the streets were teeming with people. Egert was pushed, scolded, and shouldered aside but, trying not to lose the wide-brimmed hat of the tall man from his sight, he tore after him with the perseverance of a maniac.

The tall man swerved onto a side street where there were fewer people. Having almost caught up with him, with his last strength Egert gasped, “Sir!”

The stranger did not turn around; panting, Egert ran closer to him and wanted to grab the sleeve of his leather jacket, but he did not dare. Instead he wheezed beseechingly, “Sir…”

The stranger looked back in surprise and took a small step backwards, seeing at his side a strong young man with a pale, drawn face.

Egert also stepped back: the passerby only resembled the Wanderer from afar. This was an ordinary, decent townsman who certainly wore a sword only out of respect for generations of distinguished forefathers.

“Excuse me,” whispered Egert, retreating. “I mistook you for someone else.”

The stranger shrugged his shoulders.

Melancholy at his failure, Egert meandered through populated areas, peering into back streets and slums. Ravenous old crones darted toward him as if he were a tasty morsel, and Egert barely broke free from their grasping, pleading hands.

Egert visited taverns as well. Looking around the rooms from the doorway and ascertaining that the Wanderer was not there, he overcame the desire to sit down and have a meal—he did not have any money left—and instead hastened on his way. In a small tavern called the Steel Raven, he happened upon a group of the acolytes of Lash, drinking and conversing.

Egert did not know if it just seemed to him that their attentive gazes focused on him from under the three lowered hoods, but when he came to his senses he was already on the street, and he vowed to himself that from now on he would be more careful.

The second day of searching yielded no results. Despairing, Egert appealed to the dean, asking him if there was any way he could accurately determine the whereabouts of the Wanderer.

The dean sighed. “Soll, if this were any other man, I could arrange an interview with him. But I have absolutely no power over the Wanderer; I cannot find him unless he himself wants to be found. He is still in the city; this at least, I can say accurately, and he will be here for the entire day of the holiday, but probably not longer. Hurry, Soll, hurry. I cannot help you.”

On the eve of the Day of Jubilation the city was buzzing like a beehive. Dragging his feet like a sick, old man, Egert plodded along from house to house, searching the faces of the passersby. Toward evening, the first drunks were already sprawled against the walls in blissful poses, and beggars draped in rags sidled up to them furtively, like jackals to carrion, wishing to extract from the pockets of the drunkards their last remaining money.

It had not yet grown dark. Egert stood, leaning against a wall, and dully watched a street urchin who was pensively winding a ribbon around the tail of a dead rat. The rat was obviously being decorated with the dark blue ribbon in honor of the holiday.

Someone walked by, almost brushed Egert’s shoulder and stopped, looking back; no longer having the strength to be afraid, Egert turned his head.

The Wanderer stood on the footpath directly in front of him. Egert saw his face down to the tiniest detail: the vertical wrinkles that cut his cheeks in two; his prominent, too clear eyes, cold and inquisitive; his leathery eyelids, devoid of lashes; his narrow mouth with the corners drawn down. Standing thus for a fraction of a second, the Wanderer slowly turned and walked away.

Egert gasped for air. He wanted to scream, but he had no voice. Darting forward, he rushed in pursuit but, as in a dream, his wobbly legs buckled and would not move. The Wanderer walked away without hurrying, but somehow very quickly. Egert stumbled after him, and then a viselike grip seized him by the collar.

Egert tried to wriggle free. The Wanderer was getting farther away, but the hand that was restraining Egert would not come loose. He heard laughter next to his ear.

Only then did Egert turn round. Three men had beset him, but he did not immediately recognize the man who was grasping his collar.

“Hello, Egert!” he exclaimed merrily. “And just where do you think you’re going?”

The voice was Karver’s. His fresh uniform sparkled with cords and buttons, and it seemed like the braid of his lieutenancy occupied half his chest. His companions were also guards: one was Bonifor, but the other was unknown to Egert, a young man with a tiny mustache.

Egert gazed after the Wanderer. He turned around a corner. “Let go,” he said quickly. “I need to…”

“You need to? A little or a lot?” Karver asked sympathetically.

“Let me go!” Egert tried to jerk away, but feebly, because Karver, sneering, had raised his heavy, gloved fist to Egert’s face.

“There’s no need to rush off. We’ve been looking for you for a long time in this festering hellhole of a city. We’re not going to let you go just when we’ve found you.”

All three were regarding Egert with overt curiosity, as if he were a monkey at a village fair. Bonifor drawled wonderingly, “Look at you.… You look just like a student! You don’t even have a sword!”

“Oh, Egert, where is your blade?” inquired Karver with deliberate sorrow.

Bonifor drew his sword from its sheath. Egert grew faint. His fear crippled him; it paralyzed him down to his last nerve. Bonifor grinned and ran his finger along the edge of his sword, and then Karver clapped Egert on the shoulder.

“Don’t be afraid. As you, my little friend, were deprived of both military rank and nobility, deprived publicly before the regiment no less, no one will use his sword against you. We might slap you in the face, or even beat you: that’s still allowed. It’s unpleasant, of course, but generally very educational, don’t you think?”

“What do you want?” asked Egert, scarcely able to move his parched tongue.

Karver smiled. “I wish you well. You are, after all, my friend. So much has passed between us.” He smirked, and Egert was more afraid of that smirk than of the naked sword.

Karver continued leisurely, “We’re going home. You have here the Day of Jubilation, but you will have no occasion to rejoice.… You are a deserter, Egert Soll: you shamefully ran away from your duty; you brought disgrace to the uniform. We’ve been ordered to find you, catch you, and present you before the regiment, and then who knows what will happen.”

He released Egert’s collar, and his two assistants firmly gripped Egert by his elbows, though in truth there was no need for this because fear had bound Egert more tightly than steel chains.

The Wanderer had long ago disappeared. He had dissolved into the busy streets, and with every second, the likelihood of meeting him again diminished, dissolved like sugar candy in water.

“Listen, Karver,” said Egert, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “Let’s come to an agreement, huh? You tell me where I need to go later, and I will go there, upon my honor.… But right now I really need to…” Egert was disgusted at how plaintive and beseeching these words sounded.

Karver bloomed like a bouquet under the window of a man’s intended. “Well, if you really need to … Perhaps we’ll let you go, eh?”

The young man with the tiny mustache gaped; Bonifor had to wink at him twice before he understood that Karver’s words were no more than a lark.

“I need to find someone,” Egert repeated fecklessly.

“Beg,” Karver suggested gravely. “Beg well. Get on your knees. Do you know how?”

Egert looked at Karver’s boots. They retained traces of recent polishing and less recent grime from puddles; several pieces of rotten straw were stuck to the sole of the right boot.

“What are you thinking about?” wondered Karver. “A rendezvous is serious business. Is she beautiful, Egert? Or simply a slut?”

“What did I do to you?” Egert had to wrench the words out.

The evening street came alive, filling up with laughing, dancing, kissing groups of revelers.

Karver brought his face close to Egert’s eyes. He delighted in the tears that were welling up out of them and shook his head. “You are a coward, Egert. You are such a coward.…” Then he added, smiling sweetly, “Gentlemen, you don’t need to hold him. He won’t run away.”

Bonifor and the other guard reluctantly released Egert’s elbows.

Karver’s smile widened. “Don’t cry. You get on your knees and we’ll let you go to your tryst, that’s all. Well?”

Half an old rusty horseshoe lay on the pavement near their feet. Perhaps this is the final degradation, thought Egert. It couldn’t really get worse, could it?

“He won’t do it,” said the young guard. “The pavement is filthy; it’ll soil his trousers.”

“He’ll do it.” Bonifor guffawed. “And he’s already soiled his trousers: he’s no stranger to that.”

This is the last time, Egert told himself. The very last time … The Wanderer could not have managed to go far.… One last indignity …

“Well?” Karver sounded impatient. “You want to wait longer?”

The doors of a nearby tavern burst open, and a dashing, drunken, irrepressible group poured out onto the street like champagne from an uncorked bottle. Someone seized Egert by the ears, intending to kiss him passionately. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that a young girl was hanging on to both Karver and Bonifor at the same time, and then a frantic circle dance erupted, wrenching Egert aside, sweeping him away. The disappointed face of the young guard flashed by him in the crowd, but Egert was already running, as if on air, weaving in and out of drunken revelers with impossible agility, obsessed by a single thought, The Wanderer! Maybe he is still here.…

It was late in the night when Egert returned to the annex. Fox became fearful when he saw his friend’s face, disfigured by despair. The encounter had not happened, and Egert now had only one day left: the Day of Jubilation.

The scaffold in front of the courthouse was ready at the very last minute. The carpenters were finishing the final touches, and the block had been lovingly sheathed in black cloth, which was draped with countless garlands of fresh flowers. It was a holiday, after all; when the cloth was swept back, the wooden block was revealed to be varnished and painted to look like a drum.

Egert had roamed the streets since early morning, and the unrelenting, strained searching of faces had caused his senses to dull, so he did not immediately recognize where the festive crowd was bringing him. Not wanting to go into the square, he managed to swerve down a side street, where he was once again swept up in a human flood, excited, smelling of sweat, wine, and leather, a flood that was straining to reach the courthouse, the scaffold.

He had never swum against a strong current in a tumultuous river, or else he would certainly have recognized the terror and hopelessness of a swimmer being mercilessly carried toward a waterfall. The crowd carried him away like a flood carries away trees, and the movement only slackened when the people, anticipating a spectacle, streamed out into the wide square with the monstrous structure in its center. People glanced at Egert enviously: such a beanpole would not need to stand on tiptoes!

He looked around helplessly: heads, heads, heads, an entire sea of advancing heads; they reminded him of chickens, stuffed into a coop. All faces were turned toward the scaffold; all conversations revolved around the forthcoming execution: the gossip was that the convicts numbered just two, both forest highwaymen and both guilty in equal measure, but one, as tradition demanded, would be pardoned. Fate would decide which man would be that fortunate soul; fate would decide: it would decide right now in view of all, ah, look, look, they’re already coming!

Drums started pounding. A procession headed by the city magistrate climbed up to the platform. Not yet old, but thin and sickly, he was obviously being slowly eviscerated by some illness, and his lackluster eyes were almost lost amidst the folds of numerous wrinkles, but his gait and bearing remained majestic and full of pride.

The magistrate was accompanied by a scribe and the executioner, who looked like twins, only the scribe was wearing a plain, colorless robe, while the executioner delighted the eye with his cape, as crimson as a summer sunset. The former was armed with a scroll covered in seals, and the latter held an ax in his lowered hand; he held it humbly, innocently, and rustically, just as peasants who have gathered together in the morning to chop firewood hold their tools.

Surrounded by guards, the convicts ascended the scaffold, and there really were just two. Egert looked at them, and could barely keep to his feet. The uncanny ability, which had appeared twice before this, returned to him suddenly and mercilessly.

The convicted men were holding on with their last strength: in the soul of each hope fought with despair; each wished life for himself and death for the other. The crowd was a congealed mass of indecipherable feelings, among which were rapture and pity, but curiosity predominated, the avid curiosity of a child who wishes to see what is inside a bug.

Egert tried to elbow his way out of the crowd, but his efforts were similar to those of a fly trapped in honey. The sentence echoed across the square.

“On behalf of the city … For revolting … impudent … robberies … assaults … murders … retribution and punishment … through decapitation and commitment to oblivion…”

These highwaymen were just like those scoundrels who had stopped the coach in the forest. Rapists and murderers, insisted Egert to himself, but he felt even worse.

Unwillingly, he again glanced at the scaffold: the magistrate held two wooden balls, exactly the same size, in his hands. The white ball signified life, while the black ball would bring certain death by decapitation to one of the two. The scribe spread open an ordinary linen pouch, the balls were tossed into it one after the other, and the scribe carefully shook this instrument of the lottery for a long moment. Inside the linen sack, death knocked against life with dull, wooden rattles. The hopes of both convicts reached their peak, their horror of death achieved maximum intensity, and the crowd hushed, tormented by curiosity; at a sign from the magistrate, both the condemned men simultaneously thrust their hands into the pouch.

A silent battle ensued. The faces of the contestants were sweating, and their hands compulsively ferreted about in the linen darkness, each trying to possess the ball that was already gripped by his rival. The strain of their hope and despair snatched a groan from Egert; those standing next to him in the crowd began looking askance at him.

Finally, both the condemned selected their fate and, breathing heavily, exchanged long glances.

“Withdraw!” ordered the magistrate. The crowd froze in anticipation.

They delayed for a second longer then simultaneously jerked their hands from the pouch. Each eyed the ball that was gripped in the hand of the other.

The public in the square exploded into a roar: in front of the numerous spectators, the possessor of the white ball collapsed onto his knees, stretching his hand toward the sky and soundlessly opening and closing his wide, round mouth; the man who squeezed the black ball stood motionless and, as if he could not believe his eyes, shifted his gaze from the empty pouch to his own doom, clutched in his fist.

The magistrate gave a sign: the one who was dazed with happiness was led away from the scaffold, while at the same time his comrade’s hands were jerked behind his back. The black ball crashed to the boards, and a piercing scream rattled around Egert’s head: No!

The unfortunate wretch had not made a sound, but his entire essence shrieked shrilly at the mistake, the injustice, the dreadful misunderstanding: How! Why? Why him of all people! Is this really conceivable; is this really possible?

The soundless scream that arose from the block forced Egert to double over in pain. The crowd oppressed him with two incongruous emotions, powerful as organ chords: passionate joy for the pardoned and intemperate desire to witness the execution of the other, the one who was now doomed.

Cast upon the block, the entire man exuded supplication, terror, and despair. Egert pressed his hands to his ears and squeezed his eyes shut, but the keen No! penetrated his awareness without the assistance of sight or hearing. The ax soared up into the sky—Egert felt goose bumps thrilling over the skin of hundreds of onlookers at that moment—and on a high, sobbing note the soundless plea broke off; it broke off in a convulsion and died, but was immediately followed by a whirling, troubled wave of loathsome excitement, of satisfaction at the rare spectacle, of pleasure at thrilled nerves.…

Egert howled.

Unable to restrain the horror and pain, he screamed, tearing at his throat. People in the crowd cringed away from him, but no longer seeing or hearing anything, he raved and yowled as he rushed through the gelatinous human wall, until the moment finally came when his consciousness mercifully left him in peace.

The rumble of the crowd outside hardly reached into the room filled with incense. Two men sat at a table made of polished wood, listening to a distant drum roar.

“We cannot wait anymore,” said an old man with a mane of silver hair.

“I will obtain it sooner or later.”

“Later does not suit us!” burst out the old man. “Later will not satisfy Lash! We will do it the way I wanted in the first place. And Lash will help us.”

Fagirra lowered his head. His hood covered half his face, and the Magister did not notice the contempt in his cold squinted eyes.

Toria could feel herself fretting over the appearance of the Wanderer in the city.

“Does Soll have a chance?” she inquired breezily that first day, following Egert with her eyes as he set out into the city to search.

The dean, to whom this question was addressed, merely shrugged his shoulders.

Pre-holiday concerns distracted her attention, but on the next day she was still interested. “He hasn’t found him yet?”

The dean shook his head. “Who knows? The Wanderer could be a needle in a haystack, or he could be a burning coal in a pocket. Who knows?”

On the morning of the third day Toria did not ask about the search, but the dean morosely said to her in a low voice, “I doubt there is a way out for him. The Wanderer is not one to reconsider a judgment. You might not believe me, but I feel pity for Soll, simple, human pity.”

Toria raised her eyebrows but did not reply.

Least of all did she desire to witness the execution that was in preparation in the square. Even though she fastened her window tightly, she could still hear both the roar of the agitated crowd and the booming of the drums, as if through cotton padding. She greatly desired to know where Egert Soll was at this moment and tried hard to suppress the urge to visit the annex.

Several minutes passed. Toria, tormented by a presentiment, paced around her room; then, biting her lip, she flung the windows open.

The square was covered with people, like a living, moving carpet, and Toria no longer doubted that Soll had disappeared somewhere in that swarm. Cringing, she looked at the scaffold at the very moment when the glinting blade crashed down.

The crowd gasped with one voice, and then drew breath in its vast chest, about to break out into a cheer, but the crowd was anticipated by a single, solitary human voice, a heartrending voice full of pain. This voice was distorted beyond recognition, but Toria recognized it. She recognized it and flinched.

How long has this been going on?

I have no control over it.

The steps of the spiral staircase were already streaking past her eyes. Not knowing why, she ran to the exit, and the weary words repeated over and over again in her ears: I have no control over it … no control … no control …

Fireworks shot up over the square. The official celebration of the Day of Jubilation had begun.

Daylight was fading, but the streets were lit as if it were day. Torches burned in every hand, and clusters of lanterns and lamps transformed the city into one large, rejoicing tavern. Fireworks raged over the square, and under their short bursts traveling jugglers and acrobats performed tirelessly: the largest and most prosperous troop had laid claim to the empty scaffold, and their competitors could only sigh enviously as the fool’s cap that continuously circled the crowd grew ever plumper and clanked more resonantly with each pass.

Barrels of wine stood at each crossroads, and drunken dogs, who lapped at the rose-colored streams that trickled along the pavement, crept, lurching, into courtyard entrances. Dissonant, shrill, yet lively music flooded over the city: people in the crowd played on whatever came to hand; herds of reed pipes, wine bottles, wooden rasps, and children’s rattles squawked and clamored shrilly, and the haunting sound of a stray violin from time to time rose up over this tuneless noise. Strings of people, joined by the hands, skipping and laughing, weaved in chains from alley to alley, and there were times when the heads of these impossibly long human chains swerved into a street from which the tail was just disappearing.

Toria understood the folly of her plan right away: to search for a single man in this dancing city, however distinctive he might be, was a pointless exercise worthy of an imbecile. Soll had either been trampled right there in the square or he had long been drinking and dancing together with the rest. But if something bad had really happened to him and he needed help, why did she not immediately turn to her father? What was the good of flinging herself headlong into this drunken, festive cauldron?

Having thoroughly berated herself, Toria reluctantly turned back, but at that very moment a dancing chain leapt out onto the street in front of her. Toria halted and watched as all the faces turned into one laughing face in the light of the torches and lanterns, a laughing face that flew by her from alley to alley, grasping the hands of strangers and dragging them into the rabid dance. Last in line was a young, happy boy in a white shirt, and his clinging hand seized Toria by the wrist.

“With us, little sister! Let’s dance, hey!”

The street rushed up to meet her.

Barely managing to run, stumbling and trying to break free, Toria flew at the tail of the dancing chain. Someone latched on behind, squeezing her palm with sweaty fingers; afraid of falling and being trampled, Toria matched the movements of her partners, skipping through sharp turns and trying not to fly into walls. At one point the chain snapped, and those dancing behind almost fell on Toria, but she adroitly wrenched herself free and, abandoning the laughing, human press, darted away.

Her heart was beating furiously, her breast was rising rapidly, but all the same she could not catch her breath; her hair had fallen down and her slim-toed slippers were as drenched in filth as the pavement. Supporting herself against a wall with her hand, Toria shivered, catching sight of a man lying motionless beneath that same wall. Overcoming her fear, she walked up and peered into his face. The drunkard was sleeping peacefully; he was a brunet with a magnificent mustache, and the black, luxuriant hairs now retracted inward, now puffed outward to the beat of his valiant snoring.

Toria staggered back and ran away. Some youngling tried to slip a caramel, held in his teeth, into her mouth: Toria gave him such a look that the poor fellow felt compelled to swallow the candy himself. Horsemen were rushing back and forth across the wide street, and with weary indignation Toria speculated on murderous horse hooves and drunken pedestrians who had lost all sense of caution.

One of them had collapsed right in the middle of the street. Toria’s blood ran cold as the boisterous riders came back.

“Get out of the way!” someone cried commandingly as hooves struck the stones right near the head of the man passed out in the road, but the noble animals, clearly surpassing in wisdom the people who had saddled them, did not tread on the drunkard, and the cavalcade galloped on.

The man on the pavement did not move. Toria overcame her fear and revulsion and walked up to him.

The prone man was unusually tall and wide of shoulder. His fair hair was matted at the back of his head with dried, black brown blood: it was obvious that this fall had not been his first.

Feeling how hard her heart was beating, Toria crouched down next to him on her haunches and peered into the face that pressed against the pavement. “Egert…”

He did not answer. His face was a gray, dusty mask, notched by the furrows of tears.

“Egert,” she said, dismayed, “you can’t stay here! You’ll be trampled, do you hear me?”

Another dancing chain dashed by. A foot, shod in a heavy boot, stumbled and kicked the recumbent Egert on the back. He did not flinch.

Toria seized him by the shoulders. “Egert! Wake up! Come on, wake up! Quickly!”

Hooves were beating at the end of the street. It would be impossible to drag Egert: he was too heavy and tall. Gritting her teeth, she turned him over onto his back, then onto his stomach, and again onto his back. She rolled him like a woodcutter rolls a log; his head with the fair, clotted hair flopped limply.

The riders galloped through the place where Egert had just been, and the hooves struck bright sparks from the stones. Toria felt a gust of wind, smelling of wine and smoke. She pushed Egert up against a wall; his eyes were open, but his vacant gaze went right through the girl who was bending over him. It frightened Toria: never before had she seen such a strange gaze on a person.

“Egert,” she said in despair. “Please, can you hear me?”

Not even a shadow of a thought glimmered in his cloudy, motionless eyes.

Grappling with her fear, Toria tried to get angry. “Oh, you! Tell me, why should I have to bother with such a drunken brute?”

She leaned over his face, trying and wishing to catch the thick smell of wine. But the smell was not there, and Toria was not so naïve as to not understand that Egert was indeed sober.

Then she lost courage. It seemed most natural to run to her father for help, and she had already taken a few steps away to do so, but then she returned. Somehow she knew without a doubt that leaving Egert now would mean his death. Her father would not make it here before the turmoil of the holiday devoured the lifeless Egert, and the city guards would haul his mutilated body to the university in the morning.

Gritting her teeth with a vengeance, she pressed her fingers to Egert’s temples. The skin was hot and his veins twitched in time with the beating of his heart: at least he was alive. Toria took a deep breath and methodically, just as her father had taught her, began to knead and massage Egert’s neck and the back of his head.

“Egert, come back. Wake up, please.… What am I going to do if you don’t wake up?”

Her fingers grew numb and refused to keep working, but Egert’s eyes remained as lifeless as before. Her ever-increasing certainty that Egert was lost in his mind caused Toria to be covered in chills.

“No,” she muttered, “this is too … Don’t do this, Egert, don’t you do this!”

Dozens of tramping, staggering feet were whirling all around, and someone was bawling out an indecent song that rose up even louder than the universal din.

Toria was ready to start crying when the wide gray eyes finally flickered. The eyelids fell down on them and instantly flew up again. Now Egert was looking, dense and dazed, at Toria.

“Egert,” she said promptly, “we need to go home. Do you understand me?”

His lips moved soundlessly; then they moved again. The words barely carried to the girl. “Who are you?”

She broke out into a sweat: could he really have lost his mind from the shock he experienced on the square? “I’m Toria,” she whispered in dismay. “Don’t you recognize me?”

Egert’s swollen eyelids fell once more, screening his eyes. “There are such stars in the sky,” he said quietly.

“No,” she took him by the shoulders again. “That’s wrong.… No sky, no stars. I’m Toria, and my father is the dean. Remember, Egert!”

The last word turned, broke into a sob, and Egert raised his eyes. His gaze turned strangely warm. “I … I’m not crazy. You … don’t be afraid, Toria. Stars … constellations, like the beauty marks … on your neck.”

Toria involuntarily put her hand to her neck.

Egert moved his lips again. “They’re singing.…”

A discordant, drunken song rang out somewhere nearby. A squeaking could be heard from the nearest roof: a reveler, who had somehow managed to get up there, was resolutely unscrewing a weathervane.

“Is it night?” asked Egert.

Toria took a breath. “Yes. Today was the Day of Jubilation.”

Egert’s eyes dimmed. “I did not find … didn’t find … Now I won’t find … Never…”

“The Wanderer?” Toria asked in a whisper.

Egert moved with difficulty and sat up, supporting himself against the wall. He nodded slowly.

“But he’ll come again next year,” she said as casually as possible.

Egert shook his head. “A whole year. I won’t live through it.” In his words there was not a drop of theatrics, only a calm conviction.

Toria suddenly came to her senses. “Egert, we need to leave. Get up! Let’s go.”

Without moving from his spot, he gravely shook his head. “I can’t … I’ll stay here.… You … go.”

“You mustn’t,” she tried to speak as convincingly and gently as possible. “You mustn’t, Egert. You’ll be trampled underfoot here, let’s go.”

“But I really can’t,” he explained, amazed, and he continued without transition, as if pondering the problem. “A beetle without wings. He was without wings.… Going back … impossible. Stay inside, Mama.… Why did it go wrong? The dead … probably … don’t walk. Impossible to go back…”

His eyes once again clouded over. Panicking, Toria began to shake his limp shoulders with all her strength. “You are alive! Alive! Egert! Get up, now!”

“Toria,” he whispered distantly, “Tor-i-a … What a name! I’m alive. No, not that. Toria…” He stretched out his palms, folded together. “This could be a butterfly.… It settled on my hand … like a gift … once in my life … And I killed it, Toria … then, in Kavarren. I killed … him. And I killed myself because…” He separated his fingers, as if letting unseen sand flow through them. “… because I lost … Toria.” He slumped backwards weakly.

She stared at him, not knowing what to say.

“Is it really you?” he asked in a whisper. “Or is all just … Will they meet me there?”

Frightened, Toria said, “No. It’s me.”

He tentatively stretched out his hand and carefully touched her cheek. “I never had anything so … Poor Egert. The sky is empty, not a single star … Nothing … real … only Toria alone … nothing else. The road is hot, sun … I am alone … I don’t need to live. I’m … there. Thank you … that I saw you,” His hand fell. “Thank you, sweet Toria.…”

“Egert,” she whispered in fear.

“So bitter,” he said, lowering his eyelids. “A necklace of stars … I wronged you so. Never in my life … Forgive…”

He flinched. He opened his eyes.

“Toria. A square of murderers. Murderers on the block, murderers in the square, and I’m a murderer … Heads, eyes, teeth, mouths … Why does no one want to finish me!” He suddenly jerked, almost stood up, and then once again fell down, subsided, went limp.

“Egert,” she said desolately, “you must not think about that right now. If you don’t get up right this second I don’t know what I’ll do.” And, in truth, she did not know.

“Leave,” he replied, without opening his eyes. “All kinds of people … on the streets. Holiday … night. They will want … If they want to hurt you, I won’t be able to save you, Toria. I will stand by and watch … And I won’t be able to help … Leave.” He raised his eyelids and Toria met his hopeless, gentle, pain-filled gaze.

“Oh, don’t you worry about me!” she rapped out, trying to speak past the strange feeling that suddenly squeezed her by the throat. “I’ll take care of myself. Now, get up!”

Whether her voice had gained an especially imperative intensity or whether Egert had somehow finally recovered his senses, he tried to do as she commanded, but only with their combined efforts could they stand Egert’s heavy, clumsy body on his feet. Toria offered her neck. Egert’s arm now lay across her shoulders, and even through the coarse fabric of her dress, the girl could feel how his arm stiffened, wary of causing her pain.

“Yes, be brave,” she whispered, trying to stand more steadily. “Hold on, Egert. It’s nothing. Let’s go.”

Walking turned out to be more difficult that she had thought. Egert’s legs did not work very well. Despairing, she finally gasped, “No, this will not do! I am going to run to the university. I’ll get help.”

Egert immediately sagged down onto the pavement, and Toria could hardly keep her balance. Experiencing a strange unease, she repeated as confidently as she could, “I’ll be quick. It’s really not all that far. You’ll wait for me, yes?”

He lifted up his head.

Toria caught sight of his eyes and sank down next to him. “Egert, I’m not abandoning you. I’ll get people, my father will help. Egert, I am not abandoning you, I swear.”

Egert was silent, lowering his head. The words dropped from his mouth quietly, “Of course. Go.”

She sat next to him for a while then said briskly, “No. We’ll get home ourselves. We’ll rest for a while, and it will be easier. Okay?”

Without looking at her, Egert took her hand. She flinched but did not pull away.

For a long time he smoothed her palm with his fingers. Then he squeezed it, not painfully, but Toria could feel the beating of his pulse in his hand. “Thank you … Surely I … don’t deserve it.”

They walked for the rest of the night, stopping now and then to rest as they made their way through the intoxicated revelers. A foggy dawn rose up. The city, worn-out and enfolded in silence, seemed like a vast, disarrayed feast table, welcoming the morning after a cheerful and bounteous wedding. The smoke of torches, fireworks, and crackers dispersed. The morning wind played in piles of discarded rubbish; chased bottle corks, tattered ribbons, and curls of streamers along the pavement flooded with wine; tore the damp fog crouching in the breezeways to pieces; and chilled the two haggard wayfarers to the bone.

Toria and Egert walked toward the arched bridge over the canal. A paper cap with a tassel, lost by someone, was floating on the surface of the water, which was as rough as a rasp. The empty streets and blind windows seemed abandoned, uninhabited; there was not a single soul around except for a tall man who stood motionless in the very center of the bridge, gazing at the water.

“We’re close,” wheezed Toria, arranging Egert’s arm around her shoulders more comfortably. “We’re almost there.”

With his free hand, Egert caught hold of the railing. He suddenly stood stock-still, as if he had sunk up to his knees in the stone.

The man on the bridge turned his head. Toria caught sight of an elderly face, cut through with vertical wrinkles, with large, clear eyes. The face seemed familiar to her; only after several seconds did she remember that the man standing before her had once stayed in the tragically memorable Kavarrenian inn, the Noble Sword.

The Wanderer stood motionless, not taking his eyes off Egert and Toria. His gaze expressed nothing, or at least it seemed so to her.

“Egert,” she said through suddenly parched lips. “It’s fate.”

Egert took a step forward, clawing along the railing with his hand, and then he stopped, unable to make a single sound.

The Wanderer turned his face away. He held a bunch of tiny sparklers in his right hand: one of them dropped into the canal, leaving a wide, spreading ring on the water.

Egert remained silent. Minute dragged after minute and one after the other the sparklers fell into the water.

“Egert,” whispered Toria, “Come on! Take a shot. Try! Now.”

Having depleted his entire stock of sparklers, the Wanderer cast a farewell glance at the two stricken travelers and, the bottom of his cape fluttering in the wind, began to walk off the bridge away from them.

A dry hissing sound became audible: Egert was forcing air into his parched mouth, which was as wide open as a black pit.

Flinging away his arm, Toria darted forward so quickly that the hem of her dark dress blew out in the wind like a sail. “Sir! Stop a moment.… Sir!”

The Wanderer slowly came to a stop. He turned his head round, curious. “Yes?”

Toria ended up so close to him that if she had wished it, she could have stretched out her hand and touched the intricate hilt of the sword at his waist. Hardly able to withstand his unwavering stare, she blurted out right into his wrinkled face, “Here is a man. He wants … He needs to talk to you. It is a matter of life and death; I implore you, hear him out!”

The long, thin mouth twitched slightly. “Is he mute?”

Toria was at a loss. “What?”

The Wanderer sighed loudly. He was smiling now, he was definitely smiling, but this smile did not comfort Toria at all. “Perhaps your man is mute? Why are you speaking for him?”

Toria helplessly looked back at Egert. He was standing on the bridge, his hand gripping the railing, as silent as if he had forever more lost the gift of speech. The wind tousled his matted blond hair.

“Egert!” Toria yelled at him. “Pull yourself together! Speak! You wanted to speak, so speak!”

Egert watched just as a fox cub caught in a trap watches the hunter, and he remained silent.

The Wanderer bowed slightly to Toria and stalked off.

Struck by the absurdity and improbability of what had happened, she rushed after him like a vulgar panhandler chases after the prospect of change. “Sir! Please…”

It seems that she had even grabbed him by the sleeve; she was just about ready to fall to her knees when the Wanderer turned again, now surprised. “What?”

“Don’t leave,” she whispered, gasping. “He’ll speak now.… He will speak.”

The Wanderer measured her with an intent, scrutinizing gaze; she began to tremble, feeling like she was transparent, that he could see right through her. The thin lips yet again twitched in a slight smile. “Well … Perhaps you are right. Perhaps.” The Wanderer unhurriedly returned to the bridge.

Egert was standing in exactly the same place.

The Wanderer walked up close to him, almost touching, and his eyes were on a level with the eyes of the tall Egert. “Well?”

Egert swallowed the lump in his throat. He stuttered under his breath, “Kavarren…”

“I remember.” The Wanderer smiled patiently. “A fine town…” Then he suddenly asked, apropos of nothing, “What do you think? That lottery before the execution, was it a mercy or a cruelty?”

Egert flinched. He forced himself to whisper, “Both the one and the other. There is hope in the night before the execution, but there are also doubts, torments, a passage from despair to faith and back again.… Afterwards, the betrayal of hope, and the man is not ready … to die with dignity.…”

“Not everyone manages to die with dignity,” remarked the Wanderer. “Still, how do you know? There has never been a night before an execution for you, so how would you know of such despair and such hope?”

“It seems to me,” breathed Egert, “that I do know a little, just a little. I have … learned. But to you, of course, it is clear: you know, what the night before an execution is like.…”

Toria, standing nearby, went cold.

The Wanderer, it seemed, was surprised. “Indeed? Well, that much is familiar to me, that is true. My, but you are a diligent student, aren’t you, Egert Soll?”

Egert shuddered at the sound of his own name. He pressed his hand to his cheek. “Can you remove this?”

“I cannot,” uttered the Wanderer, gazing into the water. “One can’t reattach a decapitated head. Only a complete child would torture a fly by trying to glue back the wing that he himself had ripped off. And some curses also possess an inverse power. You’ll have to come to resign yourself to it.”

It became quiet. The paper hat, which had all this time been roaming from shore to shore, finally became soaked through, became unglued, and gradually began to sink.

“I thought as much,” said Egert desolately. There was something in his voice that made the hairs on the back of Toria’s neck stand up.

“Egert.” She stepped toward him and caught hold of his hand. “Egert, everything will be … everything will be all right. Things will work out. Don’t … Let’s go home. Everything will … You’ll see, Egert—” But at that moment her will betrayed her, and she burst into bitter tears.

Egert, frozen in place from shock, steadily offered her his arm, and she took hold of his elbow. Slowly and silently they walked away. From behind they suddenly heard, “Wait a minute.”

Flinching, they both turned around.

The Wanderer stood, leaning against the railing, and pensively examined the toe of his own boot. He raised his head and squinted against the rising sun. “The curse does not have inverse power, and it may be cast off … in exceptional circumstances. This moment will occur just once in your life, and if you let it slip away, all hope will be forever lost. The circumstances of this moment are these.”

Lightly casting his cloak behind his back, he descended toward them, and it seemed to Egert in that instant that the Wanderer was the same age as he.

“Hear me and remember, Egert:

“When that which is foremost in your soul becomes last.

“When the path has reached its bitter end.

“When five questions are asked and you answer yes.”

The Wanderer fell silent for a moment. He added softly, “The curse will fall away of its own accord. Do not falter. It is quite easy to err, and a mistake will cost you much. Farewell, to the both of you. Don’t repeat your mistakes.…”

With narrowed eyes the acolyte watched in astonishment as the auditor Egert and the daughter of the dean, Toria, walked up the front steps of the university. Both were as pale as the dead, and they looked ready to collapse, but each was using the other’s arm for support.