by Allan Cole
Nerisa ran past him and shot up the fig tree like a bolt fired from a bow, disappearing into the thick foliage.
A moment later the fat stallkeep, trailed by several hard-looking men, lumbered into view. They slowed, panting heavily.
"Where is he? the stallkeep demanded when he'd reached them. Where'd he go?"
"Where did who go, sir? Katal asked, face a mask of surprised innocence.
"The thief, one of the rough men said.
"He's a big brute of a lad, the stallkeep broke in. A real animal, I tell you. I don't mind saying I was in fear for my life when I caught him stealing from me."
"We've seen no one matching that description, Safar said. Have we, Katal?"
Katal made a face of grave concern. We certainly haven't. And we've been sitting here for hours."
"Let's check around, one of the rough men said. Maybe these two good citizens were dipping in the wine too deeply to notice."
"I assure you no one looking like the one you described has come this way, Katal said. But feel free to look all you like."
Nerisa gently parted a branch to peer at the scene below. While the rough men searched, Safar and Katal engaged the stallkeep in casual conversation to soothe suspicion.
The young thief was not pleased with herself. She'd let her emotions spoil her timing and then she'd reacted in a panic when things went wrong. The execution, to the dismay of many of the heaviest gamblers, had gone off without a hitch. Tulaz's reputation was intact. The adulteresses head was not. And the plaza crowd had gotten a good show. The victim had been as beautiful as advertised. And she'd wailed most entertainingly when the jailers stripped her, trying pitifully to hide her nakedness with chained hands. Tulaz had played the showman to the hilt, pretending to hesitate several times over the lovely curls bent beneath his blade. Then he'd whacked off her head with such ease that not even a blind fool could doubt the minuscule size of his stony executioner's heart.
But just before he'd struck, the woman had let out a mournful groan that had echoed across the hushed plaza. It was a groan of such anguish, hauled up from the darkest well of human misery, that Nerisa had been wrenched from her emotional moorings. For the first time in her life she'd burst into tears. An uncontrollable urge to leave that place of horrors, and leave it quickly, had overwhelmed her.
Then Tulaz's blade severed the woman's head. The crowd thundered its approval. Nerisa leaped off the wagon, landing with her face to the stall. The object she'd come for gleamed at her from the trays and instinct took over. She scooped it up, heard the stallkeep's alarmed howl of discovery, and dived blindly into the crowd.
"Thief! the stallkeep had cried.
Despite the after-execution chaos the plaza guards had heard the stallkeep's cry and had come running. The blackest of fates must have made the crowd part before them. One of the men had even managed to get a grip on her arm, but she'd clawed him and he'd yelped and let go. Nerisa ran as hard as she'd ever run in her life. But the plaza guards were street-smart pursuers and so they knew all her tricks, blocked all her avenues of escape. And Nerisa, to her present immense shame, had taken the panicked route of least resistance and had led her pursuers directly to the Foolsmireher only place of refuge where anyone at all cared about a skinny little girl thief who had no memory of mother, father, or even the slightest touch of warmth.
She patted the small object hidden under her shirt. It was a gift for Safar. She peeped through the broad leaves of the fig tree and saw him shove coins forward to buy the stallkeep a jug of wine. She hoped Safar would like his present. Stolen or not, it had been purchased at a greater price than he could ever know. Nerisa saw the rough men return, shaking their heads and saying their quarry had escaped. Safar called for more wine. Katal obliged. And while the tumblers were poured and the first toasts drunk, Nerisa slipped off the branch onto the alley wall.
Then she shinnied up a drain pipe to the roof and then to an adjoining building and was gone.
CHAPTER NINE
GOOD MEN AND PIOUS
The Student Quarter was the oldest section of Walaria, an untidy sprawl between the rear of the many-domed temple and the western most wall. The western gate had been built many centuries before. It was so little used it had fallen into disrepair and the king had it permanently sealed to avoid the expense of fixing it. The Quarter itself was a warren of broken cobbled streets so narrow that front doors opened directly into traffic. The residences and shops were among the poorest in the city and were stacked atop one another with no particular plan, leaning crazily over the streets.
Safar lived in the near ruins of the one remaining gate tower on the western wall. He'd rented it from an old warder who considered himself the owner because in his view the king no longer had any use for it. He also offered boardone meal a day cooked by his wife. The gate tower consisted of two rooms, one without a roof, and strolling rights along the wall. It wasn't just the cheap price that had attracted Safar to his accommodations. He was a child of the mountains, the gate tower gave him an unimpeded view of the entire city on one side and the broad empty plains on the other. At night the tower also made a marvelous observatory where he could study the heavens and check them against his Dreamcatcher books.
It was also good for sunsets and on this particular day, some hours after he'd left the Foolsmire, Safar was sprawled across the broad stone windowsill, toasting the departing sun with the last of his wine. From the other side of the Quarter he was serenaded by a priest singing the last prayer of the day from the Temple's chanting tower. It was magically amplified so it resounded across the city. The song was a daily plea to the gods who guard the night:
We are men of Walaria, good men and pious. Blessed be, blessed be. Our women are chaste, our children respectful. Blessed be, blessed be. Devils and felons beware of our city. Blessed be, blessed be. You will find only the faithful here. Blessed be, blessed be…
When the song ended Safar laughed aloud. He was still a little drunk and found the song's sanctimonious lies amusing. The prayer was a creation of Umurhan's, coined in his youth when he was second in command of the temple. It was considered by manymeaning Umurhan's most fervent political supportersto be the mightiest spell against evil in the city's history. Umurhan had used the acclaim to help topple his wizardly superior. Once that had been accomplished he'd joined with Didima and Kalasariz, both ambitious young lords at the time, to make Didima king and Kalasariz the chief wazier. The three ruled Walaria to this day with brutal zeal.
To Safar the nightly spellsong had become an ugly jest, a riddle that would be a worthy creation of Harle, himself, that dark jester of the gods. Was the evil outside the walls of Walaria? Or within?
He'd heard the song the first time only a short two years before. The setting sun had been in his view that day, just as it was now…
****
It was a small caravan, a poor caravan, carrying castoffs from the stalls of distant markets. The finest animal was the camel Safar sat upon, a fly-blown, bad-tempered male he'd hired for the journey. He'd made the jump from Kyraniamore a wobble, actuallyin three stages. The first was a traveling party to the river towns at the foot of the Gods Divide. The second was with a group of drovers herding their cattle across the dry plains to new grazing grounds. He'd come across the caravan during that leg of the trip. It was heading directly for Walaria and so he'd joined it, saving many days and miles.
The sun was falling fast as he approached the city, rolling in his camel saddle like a fisherman in troubled waters. Walaria was backlit by a rosy hue casting the city's immense walls into shadow so they looked like a forbidding range of black mountains. Palace domes and towers of worship glittered above those walls, with high peaked buildings steepling the gaps in between. The night breeze brought the exotic sounds and scents of Walaria: the heavy buzz of crowded humanity, the crash and clang of busy workshops, the smell of smoke from cooking fires and garbage heapsgood garlic and bad meat. The atmosphere was sensuous and dangerous at the same t
imeas much was promised as was threatened.
Guarding the main gate was a squad of soldiers bearing Didima's royal standardgilded fig leaves, harking back hundreds of years to when Walaria was nothing more than a small oasis for nomads. The gate was menacinglooking like the cavernous opening of a giant's mouth. The gate's black teeth were raised iron bars thick as a man's waist and tapering to rough spear points. The caravan master, a vaporous little man with shifty eyes, bargained with the soldiers for entrance. But he couldn't, or wouldn't meet the bribe price and so the caravan was ordered to camp overnight outside the wallsjust beyond the enormous ditch encircling the city. The ditch was as much for waste disposal as it was a defense and it was filled with garbage and offal and the cast-off corpses of citizens too poor for a proper funeral. Smoke-blackened figures scurried along the ditch, tending the many fires kept burning to dispose of the waste. These were the city's licensed scavengers, so low in station it was considered a curse to stare at them overlong, much less suffer their touch.
Safar, hoping to avoid an unpleasant night, shyly approached the sergeant in charge of the squad and presented him with Coralean's letter of introduction. It was written on fine linen and bound by thick gold thread and so impressed the sergeant that he waved Safar through the gate. Safar hesitated, peering into the huge tunnel bored through the walls. It was long and dark with a small circle of dim lightlooking like the size of a plateannouncing the exit on the other side.
It was then he first heard the spellsong, a wailing voice from far away, and seeming so close…
"We are men of Walaria, good men and pious. Blessed be, blessed be…
It filled him with such dread he tried to turn back. But the sergeant shoved him forward. Get your stumps movin lad, the sergeant said with rough humor. I've had a long day and there's a flagon of Walaria's best missin me down at the tavern."
Safar did as he was told, treading through the darkness to the gradually widening circle of light, the spellsong wailing in his ears:
… You will find only the faithful here. Blessed be, blessed be…
It was with immense relief that he exited the other side. The spellsong had faded, boosting his spirits. He looked about to see which way he should go, but the night had closed in and he was confronted with dark streets glooming in every direction. Here and there light leaked through heavily-shuttered windows. Only the hard cobbles beneath his feet hinted there was a path through that darkness.
Then torches flared and he saw the sign of a nearby inn. Beneath it the inn's crier extolled its virtues for all to hear: Soup and a sleep for six coppers. Soup and a sleep for six coppers…"
Safar hurried toward the crier, a wary hand on his knife hilt. Cheap as it was, the inn proved to be a cheery stopping place for travelers and he spent the night in comfort. The following day he presented himself at the house of Lord Muzine, letter of introduction clutched in his hand.
The Lord's major domo was not so impressed by the fine linen and gold thread as the sergeant. His face was stone as he took the letter, glanced boredly at Coralean's wax seal.
"Wait here, he said in imperious tones.
Safar waited and he waited longpacing a deep path in the dusty street outside Muzine's gated mansion. For a time he marveled at the passing crowds and traffic. Although he'd been to Walaria before, he'd been in his father's company and seen things through a child's eyes. Now he was an adult on his own for the first time. He eagerly searched the crowds for signs of the decadence Gubadan had warned him against. He wondered what he'd missed during the previous visits besides the evening spellsong. But if there was anything to tempt a young man in that neighborhood it was kept hidden behind the walls of the mansions lining the avenue. He became bored and hungry but he didn't dare leave his post and miss the major domo's return.
Finally, when the day was nearly done and the time approached for the nightly spellsong, the man emerged. He sniffed at Safar as if he smelled something bad.
"Here, he said, limply handing Safar a rolled up tube of paper bearing Muzine's seal, so recently dripped it was still soft to the touch. The linen was of poorer quality than Coralean's letter of introduction and there was only a black ribbon binding it instead of gold thread.
"The Master directs you to present yourself at the Grand Temple tomorrow. You will give this to one of Lord Umurhan's assistants."
The major domo brushed empty fingers together as if they'd previously held something offensive, then turned as if to go.
Safar was confused. Excuse me, friend, he said. The major domo froze in his tracks. He looked Safar up and down, wrinkling his nose in disgust. Safar ignored this, saying, I was hoping for an appointment with your master. I have gifts to give him from my father and mother who also send their wishes and prayers for his good health."
The major domo sneered. My Master has no need of such gifts. And as for an appointment… I will not insult my lord with such a request from someone of your station."
Safar felt his temper rise and quickly doused it. But he has agreed to sponsor me at the university, hasn't he? he asked, indicating the letter.
"My Master said that was his intent, the major domo answered. Funds will be deposited for your care. He has the Lord Coralean's promise of repayment for any necessary expenses. The major domo paused for emphasis, then said, But he said to warn you not to take advantage of his good nature and friendship with Lord Coralean. My Master's charity will only extend so far. So do not return here for more. Do I make myself clear?"
Safar wanted to throw the letter into the man's sneering face. But he'd made promises he couldn't break and so he swallowed his pride and turned away without comment. The next day, after a night of angry teeth-grinding, he made his way to the Grand Temple of Walaria.
The route took him through the heart of the great crossroads city and the sights and scents and sounds were enthralling. The crowds were thick, barely making room for cursing wagon drovers ladened with market goods. Except for irritated grunts when he bumped into them, the people ignored himkeeping their heads low so as not to meet another's eyes. The traffic flow carried him past beggars crying alms, alms for the sake of the gods, and open windows framing scantily clad women who called for the blushing boy to come tarry in their arms. There were shops with luxurious carpets and rich jewelry mixed with coffee houses and opium stalls. Thieves of all ages and sexes darted in and out of the crowd, snatching at opportunity.
And all the while cart pushers sang out their wares and with the drums and bells and whistles of the street entertainers it made a thrilling song: Pea-Nuts! Pea-Nuts, Salted And Hot! Or, Rose Pud-Ding! Rose Pud-Ding. Sweet As The Bud! And, Sher-Bet Iced So Nice! Sher-Bet Iced So Nice!"
The Grand Temple and University was so vast it made a walled city of its own. It had a wide gateless archway for an entrance with fearsome monsters carved in the stone. There were no guards and men dressed in priestly togas or rough student robes poured in and out with the single-minded purpose of bees tending a forest hive. Safar asked directions and soon was making his way through the confusion of temple buildings to the busy office of the High Clerk. There he presented his sponsor's letter and was again commanded to wait.
This time he was ready. He'd brought food and drink and an old stargazer's book to while away the hours. His supplies as well as the day were gone and he'd memorized the book by the time a skinny priest with prunish lips and a rushed manner returned with an answer.
"Come with me, come with me, he said. And he turned and raced away without waiting to see if Safar was following.
Safar had to hurry to catch him. Have I been accepted, Master? he asked.
"Don't call me master. Don't call me master, the priest chided. Holy one will do. Holy one will…"
"Pardon my ignorance, Holy One, Safar broke in. Have I been accepted to the school?"
"Yes, yes. This way, now. This way now."
Safar was led to a large empty dining hall with stone, food-encrusted floors.
The priest s
aid, Scrub it down. Scrub it down. He pointed at a wooden bucket of greasy water with a brush floating on top.
Safar looked and by the time he raised his head the priest had darted off. Wait, Holy One! he shouted after him. But the little priest had already gone out the door, slamming it behind him.
Safar fetched the bucket and brush and got on his knees and scrubbed. As a village lad he saw no shame in necessary labor, no matter how mean the task. He scrubbed for hours, making little headway because the water was as filthy as the floor. At spellsong an older acolyte came to take him to a huge dormitory, crammed with first-year students. He was given a blanket, a place to stretch out on the bare floor and a rusty metal pail containing a cold baked potato, a hard wheat roll and a boiled egg.
While he wolfed the food down the acolyte gave him a quick summery of his duties, most of which seemed to involve scrubbing dirty floors.
"When do my studies begin? Safar asked.
The acolyte laughed. They've already started, he said. And he left without further explanation.
Safar had learned long ago from Gubadan that teachers liked to make obscure points. Very well, he thought, if floor scrubbing is my first lesson, so be it. He scrubbed for a month, lingering as he toted buckets of water past foul-smelling workshops and lecture halls that echoed with the wise orations of master priests.
Then Umurhan summoned him and he never had to scrub another floor again.
****
Safar drifted out of his reverie. He rubbed his eyes, noting the view through the window had been replaced by glistening stars. He saw a comet tail just near the House of the Jester and became absorbed in the astral meaning of the occurrence. Then he heard a sounda scratching at his door. Through a fog of concentration it came to him that he'd heard this sound only a moment before. And he thought, Oh, yes… I was thinking about Umurhan and something interrupted me. And that something was a noise at my door.