And if her mother were still alive? What if her father had not let her go, what if he had locked her up, locked the door and fastened it with an enchantment?
Father and daughter had lived together for many years, and in all that time she could not remember a single other woman with him. Not one.
The Tower of Lash launched into its mournful howl. Toria winced peevishly and in the same breath frowned, seeing how Egert’s face changed. It must be difficult to live in constant fear.
“It’s nothing,” she said briskly. “Don’t listen to it. Don’t listen. Only undertakers believe in this nonsense about the end of time: they’re hoping to make some money.” She smiled at her awkward joke, but Egert did not stop frowning. A painful-looking fold loomed between his eyebrows.
The sound came again, even more plaintive, with a hysterical sob at the end. Toria saw that Egert’s lips were starting to quiver; flinching, he hastily turned his back to her. Egert silently tried to compose himself, and Toria, who was also uncomfortable, had to witness this mute struggle.
For a long moment she considered if she should tactfully retire or if, on the contrary, it would be best to pretend that nothing was happening. The Tower finally fell silent, but Egert was overcome with the shakes and had to hold his twitching jaw with his hand to still it. Without saying a word, Toria went out into the corridor, filled an iron mug from the water fountain, and brought it to Egert.
He gulped it down and started choking. His pale face became engorged with blood; tears welled up in his eyes. Desiring to help, Toria clapped him on the back one or two times. His shirt was as damp as if it had just been pulled out of a laundry basin.
“Everything will be all right,” she mumbled, suddenly overcome with shyness. “Listen to me: There won’t be an ‘end of time.’ Don’t be afraid.”
Then he drew a deep breath and suddenly told her everything: he told her about Fagirra, about the Magister, about the ceremony in the Tower, about their promises and threats and about his secret errand. Toria heard him out without interjecting a single word, but when he got to the last encounter with the disguised acolyte, Egert fell silent.
“That’s all?” Toria looked him in the eyes.
“That’s all.” He averted his eyes.
A few moments passed in silence.
“You don’t trust me?” Toria asked softly.
He laughed: it was a strange question after all that had been said!
“Tell me, right to the end.” Toria drew her eyebrows down.
So he told her about the poisoned stiletto.
The ensuing silence lasted for about ten minutes.
Finally, Toria raised her head. “So, you didn’t tell him anything?”
“I don’t know anything,” Egert explained wearily. “But if I had known, I would have reported it all to that dear soul.”
“No!” said Toria as though she was shocked at the very possibility of such an idea. “No, you wouldn’t have told him.…” But at the end her voice lost its confidence.
“You yourself have seen what I’ve become,” uttered Egert peevishly. “I am no longer myself. I’m a wretched, cowardly animal.”
“But can’t you … try to overcome it?” asked Toria cautiously. “Try to keep yourself from being afraid?”
“Try to keep yourself from blinking,” Egert suggested, shrugging.
Toria tried. For some time she heartily looked out the window with wide-open eyes as if she were engaged in a staring contest, but then her eyelids twitched and, ignoring the command of her reason, fluttered.
“There you have it.” Egert’s gaze was fixed on the floor. “I am a slave. I’m a total slave to the curse. All I think about is what is first in my soul, and what is last, and who will question me five times, so that I might answer ‘yes’ five times.”
Toria rubbed her temple, exactly like her father. “I cannot believe it. What if you were forced to do something completely impossible? Wouldn’t you be able to resist?”
Egert smiled crookedly. “If I had a knife at my throat…”
“But really you … you’re not a bad man…,” she muttered without confidence.
He was silent. An enormous, impudent raven was strutting ceremoniously through the wet university courtyard like a judge.
Egert exhaled deeply, seeing a scaffold in his mind’s eye. Stuttering, he told her about the girl in the carriage and the highwaymen who had intercepted that carriage on the road.
Another long silence followed. Egert expected Toria to simply get to her feet and leave, but she did not.
“And if,” she asked finally, her voice unsteady, “if it had been … there … if that had been me?”
Egert buried his face in his hands.
For a long time Toria looked at the unkempt, disordered waves of his blond hair, at his shoulders, impressively wide but hunched and shaking like a child’s; then she rested her narrow palm on one of them.
Egert froze.
As persuasively as she could, Toria said, “You are not responsible for the deeds of others. You are simply ill and you need to find a cure. And we will find it.”
She spoke reluctantly, like a doctor assuring a patient who is near death and covered in sores of his imminent recovery. The tense shoulder shuddered under her hand as if it was relaxing slightly; the change was barely perceptible, but in the next moment she sensed all the confusion of Egert’s feelings: hope, gratitude, and the desire to believe. Then, still holding her hand against his warm shoulder, she wished with suddenly awakened compassion that her belabored words would prove to be true.
The door swung open with a crash. Holding a pair of dilapidated notebooks at his side, Fox, grinning widely, burst into the room.
His honey-colored eyes dwelled on Egert who sat, hanging his head, on the edge of the bed and on Toria whose hand was resting on his shoulder. For several moments nothing happened, and then in an instant Gaetan’s angular face was pierced with surprise: his eyes became as round as plums, his mouth swept open in a round hole, and muttering an indistinct apology, Fox leapt away without even trying to pick up his books, which had crashed to the floor.
Toria did not remove her hand. Waiting until the Gaetan’s clatter faded in the corridor, she said earnestly, “This is what I think. The curse will be broken if you fall into a hopeless situation and yet somehow overcome it. When the path has been reached its bitter end: don’t you think the Wanderer was speaking of this?”
Egert did not answer.
After a few days the rain changed into clear, fair weather. Squinting in the cool autumn sunlight, the townspeople were somewhat cheered. “Time is not even thinking of ending,” said neighbors to each other, stepping out onto their little porches in the morning, “On the contrary, time is on the loose.…”
The Tower of Lash loomed over the square like an admonitory finger: it even seemed that it had recently shriveled and dried up just like a geriatric digit. It was as if a bald spot had appeared in the square around the Tower: everyone tried to travel around the sinister building, all the more so since smoke rose from the windows ever thicker, the dismal sound rang out ever more often, and passersby who happened to be in the square late at night assured their acquaintances that they heard a dull, subterranean rumble rising up from its depths.