The Scar

by Sergey Dyachenko

  She put her eye very close to Egert’s face and suddenly sprang back, her blue eye almost pushing its way out of its socket. “By the frog that enlightens me, by the frog that directs me, by the frog that protects me: Get out, get out!”

  And with surprising strength she seized a stupefied Egert by the shoulders and pushed him away. “Out! Go, and don’t return! It is not for me to stand against him; I do not have the strength to tussle with him!”

  Before he could come to his senses, Egert was already at the gate. His back crashed into the fence.

  “Grandmother! Don’t chase me away! I—”

  “I’ll set my dog on you!” snapped the sorceress, and—Glorious Heaven!—the wooden beast slowly turned its tar-covered head.

  Egert shot out of the gate like a cork. He would have run away without looking back, but his weakened knees buckled and he sank down into the dust of the road like a sack.

  “What am I going to do?” he murmured wearily, turning his face toward a dead beetle lying by the wayside.

  The gate screeched again, opening slightly. “Search for a great wizard, an archmage. And never again come to this village, you won’t leave alive!”

  And the gate slammed shut with a crash.

  PART TWO

  Toria

  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.”