"Livin' high put you out o' thievin', Vincus?" Ultion drew back mockingly and asked with a faint, pleasant smile. "I hear of it happenin' when you got three square an' all. Nice clothes they give ya."
Pugio and Anguis murmured in assent. "A one-timer?" Pugio asked. "Just an old-times handle on the rug merchant over to the Marketplace?"
Vincus shook his head. The three drew nearer.
"No?" Pugio asked, his voice filling with a steely coldness. "Then you'll be givin' us your food, I'm certain. You don't starve an old friend, Vincus."
Suddenly chilled, Vincus looked into their eyes. They returned his gaze steadily, calmly, almost inno shy;cently, and then, when his guard descended slowly, when he thought that perhaps his suspicions had all been wrong, that they had been the good and loyal friends he remembered …
Anguis glanced over Vincus's shoulder, a quick, flickering movement to his narrow eyes. Vincus saw it, and spun about…
In time to catch the drunkard's club, as it descended with swift ferocity.
For a moment Vincus stared his attacker face-to-face, saw the man's eyes widen, smelled the stale wine…
Then, with a strength born of life and health, of steady sleep and three squares, he pushed the man aside and, spinning with a fierce, desperate lunge, brought his fist crashing into the face of Ultion.
Ultion fell back with a cry, but the others leapt greedily onto Vincus. Strong fingers probed his throat, and a blinding punch, hurtling out of nowhere, struck him firmly on the side of the head.
He turned toward Anguis, but the air itself seemed to resist him, and one man hit him, and then another. The silver collar snapped and dropped from his neck, and Vincus fell to his knees on the cobbled square, the drunkard stalking toward him, club raised.
Suddenly, his assailants scattered. Shouts fol shy;lowed them from an alley, a rushing column of torches.
The Istarian Guard, Vincus thought. I am safe.
He looked down at the collar, the heavy silver bro shy;ken in two neat crescents at his knees. If the Guard caught him here even Vaananen could not help him.
Vincus crouched on the roof of the building, peering down like a bruised gargoyle onto the milling soldiers.
He had snatched up the collar and run, only steps» ahead of the torches and shouting into the nearest alley. The window into the adjoining brewer's shop was boarded, but not well. In less than a minute, his strength doubled in the desire to escape, Vincus had pulled down the boards and scrambled into the darkened brewery. Dropping into a stack of empty barrels, he clattered and rolled into the warm, yeast-smelling darkness, lying still until the torches and shouting passed.
Then he ascended the stairs to the attic, and, stack shy;ing barrel on barrel, he clambered through cobweb and rafter to the trapdoor in the ceiling, firmly bolted from the inside against acrobatic trespassers. Vincus threw back the rusty bolt and climbed to the roof, where he could see by starlight the dark maze of streets beyond the receding torchlight of the guardsmen, as far as the Old Wall, the settlements on the shore of a great lake, and on into the black foothills of a distant mountain range.
He had never ventured outside the walls, not even in thought or imagination.
Gaping, marveling, still shaking, Vincus lay down upon the roof and looked into the wheeling constel shy;lations.
There was a place where the city ended. Vaananen had told him so, talked about the way past those far shy;away mountains and into the desert. In the towers, all you could see was the city, and Vincus had always believed that Istar extended to the end of sight, and that the end of sight was the end of the world.
The collar, now two slivers of silver moon, lay cold in his dark hand. The breaks were clean, like they had been cut. Right through the letters of his name.
Dabbing at the cut over his right eye, Vincus held the pieces up before the lightening sky, so that his name was whole again upon them. The metal was deeply notched but for a hair-thin edge at both breaks. Let alone, the collar would have dropped off by morning, long before he could have made his way to the gates. Now he understood the druid's parting words.
"The rules are broken. . You have served well, Vincus. Well done."
Vincus smiled slowly and looked through the sil shy;ver circle to the wide country beyond the city. Here was a freedom and a country greater than any of his imaginings.
He would see if Fordus was real, too.
Chapter 18
The Old Wall faded into the darkness behind him as the first of the lakeside camps came into view.
For a moment Vincus stopped in the shadows, baffled.
The camp looked like Bywall, or Westedge, or Pierside-one of the sprawling communities of pau shy;pers that dotted the shimmering marble of the inner city. The tents were there, and the lean-tos, the banked fires, and the barrels set on their sides to house the poorest of the huddled poor.
For a brief, disorienting second he imagined he had somehow turned himself about in the city, retracing his steps unknowingly.
But no. Behind him was the Old Wall. If he stepped back from the camp and looked carefully, he could see the outline of the ancient battlements, the crenels jagged and crumbling like the rotten teeth of an ancient animal.
Through the camp the ragged people moved, dodging in and out of the firelight. Perhaps what he had seen from the brewery roof was illusion.
Perhaps the world was all city, all Istar.
All of a sudden the country ahead of him, glimpsed only fleetingly from the starlit brewery roof, seemed like a murky maze again, its whorls and corridors leading nowhere. And yet the mem shy;ory of the lake, the dark waters and the vaulting horizon beyond rose foremost in Vincus's mind as he passed from camp's edge to camp's edge on his way toward the shore.
It is only an hour's journey, he told himself. I will reach the lake in an hour.
But it was longer than that.
Twice in the early morning, when the campfires behind had settled to ashes and the road before him lay at its darkest, he had slipped behind tents to con shy;ceal himself from a passing squadron of the Istarian Guard.
"Rebels," they muttered. "Fordus."
Once in the rumble of voices and rattle of armor, he thought he heard the druid's name. He leaned forward, wrapping himself in musty canvas, and lis shy;tened intently for more, but the name and the noise and the squadron passed on into the night, and scarcely three breaths later, Vincus leapt from behind the tent, running to keep himself awake and alert, his hands silently saying an ancient protective prayer.
It must have been prayer that protected him on the last occasion, scarcely an hour before dawn, when a company of Istarian cavalry rode by, their commander so lost in thought that he never looked above, to the branches of a blasted vallenwood, where Vincus perched like some huge, outrageous bird, newly flown from its cage.
Finally, in the purple dawn, the tents and ruins gave way to the cemeteries, the great funerary grounds that bordered the south of Istar. Now, beyond the scattered white monuments burnished by the rising sun, Vincus saw shimmering blue ris shy;ing out of the darkness and smelled the waters of Lake Istar-the lake of his rooftop vision.
It is true, he told himself, leaning against a marble stone. There is a lake out here, and there are moun shy;tains, beyond the buildings.
And Fordus is somewhere beyond the edge of sight. I am glad I kept believing.
And he rested, free from fear and Istar, for the first time in years.
At nightfall, Vincus found the coracle Vaananen had left tied to a willow by the lakeside. Slowly and clumsily, for it was his first time in a boat of any sort, he steered the craft into midlake, where he circled aimlessly, rowing ever more frantically as a distant bell tolled and the night turned.
He could not be found here in the morning. He had to get across the water.