They were all going the same direction, anyway, and she didn’t want to go that way. She wanted to look at the shops on Dyer Street and see what pretty colors the cloth there had in this wonderful dream. They were lovely in real life, as she had seen when she and her mother went over there just two days ago, but her mother had refused to buy her any of the best fabrics for a new tunic.
And there was that jeweler around the corner, where her parents had refused to even set foot inside the door.
Her parents weren’t even in this dream, though, as far as Kirsha could tell, so she could do anything she pleased.
She would smash out the shop windows and take the things she liked best, she decided, and then fly away, like a big brightly colored bird. She would fly to the lesser moon and see why it was pink, and she would find a handsome prince from the Small Kingdoms or a Sardironese baron there, and...
She was getting ahead of herself, she decided. First she should see whether Dyer Street was even there in this dreamworld.
People below her were screaming, but she paid no attention. She swooped around the corner, laughing.
Someone was bellowing, and Kennan of the Crooked Smile woke up, annoyed at the interruption of his sleep.
The noise faded away quickly-whoever was bellowing was moving away very fast. Something about it bothered him though, so Kennan did not immediately go back to sleep.
And then he heard running footsteps in the corridor, and then his son’s wife Sanda shouting, and he climbed out of bed and grabbed a robe.
“What is it?” he demanded as he stumbled out into the dark hallway. “What’s happening?”
No one answered; he hurried to the door of his son’s bedroom and found it standing open. He stepped inside warily-he didn’t want to intrude. Aken and Sanda were sensitive about their privacy.
Aken was nowhere to be seen; instead, Sanda was standing at the open casement, leaning out and calling, “Come back! Bring him back!”
“What’s happening?” Kennan asked again.
Sanda turned, and even in the dim light from the open window Kennan could see the tears gleaming on her cheeks. “He’s gone,” she said. “They took him!”
“Who’sgone?” Kennan asked, confused.
“Aken,” Sanda said. “I was downstairs, closing the shutters, and I heard him shouting, so I ran up to see what was wrong, and I got here and the window was open-look at the latch!”
Kennan looked. The iron latch had been twisted into an unrecognizable lump.
Kennan still didn’t understand. He didn’t understand where Aken was or what had happened to the latch. It looked as if someone very, very strong had crushed it in his fist.
Aken was a strong young man, but he wasn’tthat strong.
“Where is he?” Kennan asked.
“Gone!” Sanda shrieked, pointing out the window. “I saw him flying away! Theytook him!”
“Whotook him?” Kennan was beginning to comprehend, though he didn’t want to. “What do you mean, flying?”
“Flying!Through the air! By magic! The magicians took him!”
“Sanda, that’s crazy-why would magicians take Aken? What magicians?”
“Those magicians, out in the street,” she said, pointing. “They’re flying around smashing things. And they took your son, I saw it.”
Kennan, not really wanting to look, tiptoed across the room and looked past Sanda, out the window.
It was as she had said-there were people flying through the streets and up above the rooftops, most of them heading north, toward the docks, and there were things flying with some of them-clothes and jewels and furniture. It was all madness.
And there was no sign of Aken.
Like so many others, Zarek the Homeless awoke from a nightmare, screaming-and was astonished to hear perhaps a dozen other scattered voices screaming as well. He sat up, still wrapped in his moth-eaten blanket, and looked out at his surroundings.
He lay in the middle of the Hundred-Foot Field, not far from where Sway Street met Wall Street, in the Westwark district of Ethshar of the Spices. Around him were the blankets, tents, and crude huts of scores of the city’s other destitute-and several of them were screaming, though the number of voices seemed to be declining rapidly. A lantern flared up nearby, and voices chattered excitedly inside little Pelirrin’s tent.
“Shut up and let me sleep!” someone called as the last two or three voices continued to scream.
One voice dropped to a low moan; another fell silent. Finally only one woman’s voice still screamed, a thin, breathy wailing that sounded almost like a night wind-but the air was still.
“Blasted magicians,” someone said.
“Is that what it was?” another voice asked.
“What else could it be? People waking up screaming all at once-if that’s not magic, I’m Azrad the Great.”
Zarek could hardly argue with that; he wondered idly whatkind of magic it was, and why it had affected him. It clearly hadn’t struck everyone, or there would have beenhundreds screaming, rather than a dozen or so, but it had struckhim, all right. His throat was sore from screaming-though his throat was often sore anyway, from bad water and worse food or the various contagions found in the Field.
He tried to rememberwhy he had been screaming, and could only remember a feeling of suffocation and entrapment.
He mused about the significance of this. It might be important, he supposed.
In the morning he would go make a few inquiries-talk to the guards at Westgate, maybe, or see if anyone in the Wizards’ Quarter would answer a few questions. Perhaps there was some way he could capitalize on being included in this misdirected magic-he thought he might get a decent meal out of it, anyway. Maybe some curious wizard would pay him for a report on what had happened.
In fact, he thought, maybe he shouldn’t wait until morning. That woman was still screaming, and he wasn’t going to get back to sleep right away, and if he waited someone else might collect whatever payment the magicians might be willing to make. He kicked aside his blanket and got to his feet.
A moment later the woman finally stopped screaming, but Zarek had already headed eastward into the city streets.
Throughout the city, dozens of others tried to figure out what had happened, or rolled over and went back to sleep, or panicked and ran or flew out into the streets. Hundreds walked or ran or flew northward.
And in Ethshar of the Sands, forty leagues to the west, the same scenes were repeated, on the same scale.
In Ethshar of the Rocks, far to the northwest, again the same events played out, though fewer people were affected there than in the more southerly cities.
In farms and villages beyond the walls of the cities, throughout the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, people awoke choking or screaming, and a few of those who had been awake all along felt the touch of a strange new power. In the Baronies of Sardiron, in the war-tornlandof Tintallion, in the many tiny nations of the Small Kingdoms, magic flashed across the World and drove unsuspecting people from their beds.
Everywhere, those touched by the magic and those who saw them wondered what had happened, what this unfamiliar magic was, what would happen next.
And nowhere were there immediate answers to any of these questions.
Chapter Five
Lord Hanner ducked down in the doorway of a potter’s shop, hands over his head, as a nightgowned woman flew past shrieking at the top of her lungs, surrounded by a cloud of kitchen knives, broken glass, and miscellaneous debris. When she had passed he straightened up and looked after her.