Despite his pounding head and ringing ears, today of all days seemed touched with magic, a day that offered amazing, even miraculous possibilities. He was at a loss to explain it, not even certain whether these new sensations were symptoms of further mental deterioration or of returning sanity. Indeed, the question had perplexed him for many years, whether he had been mad all of this time, or if it was the world around him that limped and hobbled along utterly disjointed and disconnected.
But as the morning was already well advanced, he shrugged off these speculations as fruitless, shoved some small items into the capacious pockets of his tattered robe, and left the room. First locking the door behind him, he descended, by way of a rickety staircase, six long flights to the street below. On every landing, armies of cockroaches scattered at the sound of his footsteps. Once outside, he set off at his usual ambling pace for the marketplace, where he spent the better part of each day juggling balls, performing minor tricks of conjuring, and (when circumstances favored him) scribbling the occasional horoscope on scraps of paper.
The neighborhood where Maelor lived was all dirty, narrow streets coiling uphill and downhill like angry snakes, and even more squalid alleys that wriggled and squirmed between rows of aging houses. Bits of ragged laundry hung drying from upper-story windows. Cats of all colors prowled in the refuse below.
Half wild and half domesticated, most of these cats were more bone than fur—but lean and feral or sick and lethargic, the one thing they all had in common was hunger.
As the old man walked, the air trembled and objects shifted. Sometimes he thought he could see right through the eroding stonework and into another, fairer Apharos, a city gracious with gardens and filled with birdsong. In that city there were many cats, too, but so sleek and well fed it was unlikely they ever bothered the fat grey mourning doves strutting on the roofs. And everywhere he looked there were statues: glorious winged figures in marble and alabaster, poised as if ready to leave their weight of stone behind, spring into the air, and take flight.
He had not walked much farther when the vision faded, leaving him stranded in the Apharos he already knew, the city of dingy houses, crumbling stone, and parched earth. Another man might have wept at the change. Maelor simply ambled on.
After about another quarter of a mile the street began to skirt the edges of another district, known as the Thieves’ Market or Under-City—though in point of altitude it was no lower than most parts of Apharos, and more elevated than some. It had earned that name by virtue of its shady commerce and unsavory dealings, its business mostly conducted in a complicated warren of cellars, tunnels, and caves, under the ruins of what had once been villas of the high nobility and the ancient Temple of the Seven Fates. Only a few broken walls, the foundation, and the cellars of that imposing edifice remained, and it was said that Ouriána’s malice had hastened the process of dissolution; there were many still living who could remember when the temple and the houses were still in use. The present inhabitants were thieves, smugglers, pirates, and rogue magicians, whose occupation of the ruins the Empress appeared to tolerate, if not actively encourage. Yet none of those violent and predatory men had ever accosted Maelor, and today they allowed him to pass, as they always did, unmolested. His reputation preceeded him: everyone knew that he never carried anything worth the effort of stealing, extorting, or swindling.
At intervals, his visions continued. Some of them were terrifying, like the imps and hobgoblins he saw dancing on the roofs or gnawing with sharp teeth at the foundations of buildings. Other things were clearly hallucinatory, as when sounds became solids and all the colors sang, or the sky turned to glass and a single enormous eye peered through.
But most of what he saw and experienced that day struck him with all the force and poignancy of memory. So far as he knew, he had lived in the city for only ten years. There was, however, a large portion of his life about which he knew nothing at all. Had some part of that life been spent in Apharos?
Should he know some of these people he saw drifting by him, as insubstantial as ghosts? Those redheaded twin princesses, who looked hardly old enough to sit in the saddle, riding along together on identical fat white ponies caparisoned like chargers? That dignified old lady on a grey palfrey who stopped at nearly every corner to distribute alms? If he did remember them, those memories were incomplete, devoid of names and a common history.
From the Thieves’ Market the old man came into a more prosperous part of the city. In that neighborhood the buildings were considerably newer, but no more pleasing: all flint, granite, and limestone, all hard angles and pointed roofs, no softness, no comfort, no grace anywhere; it was all just as hard as Ouriána’s heart. The only touches of beauty were in the dozens of statues and fountains bearing her likeness.
Indeed, it was a setting deliberately fashioned for the Empress to rest in like a rare jewel. Her architects, masons, and stonecarvers created nothing beautiful that was not in her image, while every icon of the older religion that preceded her cult had been decapitated, mutilated, or hammered into dust.
Maelor paused where two streets crossed while a procession passed. Although they were only a straggling line of limping, dazed-looking worshippers, just now coming home from the early-morning ritual, the magic that was on the day transformed them: they became acrobats and maskers of an old-style samhrad celebration, clattering through the streets with all the noise and good-natured merriment that bells and pennons, streamers and tambourines, could possibly provide. The old man watched them, his head swimming and his heart thumping like a drum, until they were out of sight. He waited until his mind grew quieter and the dizziness passed, then staggered on his way.
Where several lanes ran together like the spokes of a wheel, something loomed up: a statue in white marble, a magnificent winged woman with a swan’s great pinions and a crown of light, rising in splendor to scatter blessings over the city. For one heart-stirring moment, she was the reality, everything else illusion. Maelor’s pulse pounded so hard, it seemed that his veins must burst—but then he blinked and the figure changed. After all, it was only another statue of Ouriána, this time in the guise of a siren, with the leathery wings of a bat and a slippery mermaid’s tail.
And so, in his slow and meandering fashion, the old man came at last into the great market square down by the docks. On any other day, odors of fish, salt water, and rotting garbage mingled with scents of oranges and lemons, spices, boiled sweets, and sizzling meats served straight from the skewer; today, however, was a day of fasting from sunrise to sunset, and the food stalls were deserted.
Yet the square appeared no less crowded and busy. On the contrary, carpenters hammered at temporary stages; merchants of the cloth guilds erected tents; and everywhere Maelor looked, extra stalls were being squeezed in between the more permanent booths already there. All this in preparation for the more riotous festivities that would begin at nightfall and continue on through the following day.
The old man hunkered down in his accustomed spot and sat dreamily watching the activity around him, at first too engrossed to set out his conjurer’s props and astrologer’s tools. He took everything in with equal delight, from the knife grinder pushing his wheeled grindstone across the square, to the card readers and crystal-gazers in a blue silk pavilion directly opposite him, for he was as curious as a child and just as easily amused. Leatherworkers, potters, and glassmakers were already hawking their wares. A cohort of temple guards marched by in their sinister dark armor, and palace officials moved from booth to booth and tent to tent, collecting fees. Over by a dry fountain, a group of penitents in coarse black homespun was preparing to walk barefoot over burning rocks.