“Gaetan!” groaned Egert through his teeth.
Fox hugged the monkey tighter. “Don’t … You know, Farri died yesterday. Do you remember Farri?”
“Gaetan…”
“Go back. I’ll just take a little … stroll. Maybe I’ll make my way to the One-Eyed Fly. If the innkeep is still alive, he’ll give me a drink. On credit.” Fox laughed, arduously stretched out his hand and, barely reaching it, patted the monkey on his shiny wooden bottom.
Egert stood on the steps and watched him walk away. Fox staggered as he walked, sometimes falling, just as he had so many times when returning from a night out; his cap with the silver fringe lay like a parting gift at the feet of the wooden monkey. The sightless sky, full of dark clouds, brooded over the city, and the Tower of Lash, mute, sealed shut, mantled in smoke, brooded over the square.
For a whole long day and night they thrashed about like two fish at the bottom of Toria’s reddish black incandescent ocean.
Coming to her senses, Toria felt echoes of shame: never in her life would she have imagined that within herself she carried this covetous, insatiable, inexhaustible beast, ready to tear off not just clothing, but skin. Panicking, she tried not to look at Egert, who was lying next to her; she did not dare touch his skin, not even with her breath, but the ardent beast quickened and upended all her notions of dignity and decency, and afflicted by passion, she responded to the similarly grasping, indefatigable passion of Egert.
Heaven, it can’t really be like this for everyone, can it? Toria thought, because then life was completely foreign, completely different than she had ever thought it was, because there seemed to be powers that controlled her, forces that overrode all her preconceptions, and she could finally understand dark, shadowy forces that had beguiled her mother. Mother? But why dark and shadowy? Why beguiling? This is happiness; this is joy. Egert! Egert, I could have died a remote old crone, never knowing the world of truth! But could I be wrong? What if this is not truth, but obsession, delirium, deceit!
Swallowing, her throat husky from groans, her cheeks stained with tears that she did not bother to wipe away, she relaxed, abated, melted into Egert’s embracing arms as if burrowing into a warm, secure den. Closing her eyes, she lazily sorted through the fragmentary images that rushed through her brain, and from time to time plucked from the stream one that seemed to contain unmistakable truths.
It was a truth that if had she become the wife of Dinar, she would never have known of any other love besides friendly, brotherly love. It was a truth that the loss of Dinar had blessed her. Heaven, this is monstrous, this is impossible. Dinar, forgive me! Toria began to weep silently, without tears, and in his sleep Egert embraced her more tightly. She dozed off, and she saw Dinar nearby, sitting on the couch opposite the bed as he usually had when he came to her room. Serene and earnest, he looked at Toria without reproach, but also without indulgence, as though desiring to say that he was done, that he would never come back, but don’t cry, he loves you so …
Then the vision of Dinar faded away, disappeared in succession of others. Toria dreamed of her mother, frozen in a cold bank of snow, and of her father, forever weighed down by a sense of guilt. But where is the guilt of a woman, whose passions overwhelm her own identity, like a wave washing over the deck of a fragile ship? And if it was true that in her face she duplicated her mother, then did she not also inherit her passions?
However, right now it no longer mattered. Now they were all standing on the threshold of death, on the threshold beyond which Dinar had already stepped. She and Egert were a couple, even if they did not live to see their wedding, but her father was alone, alone in his study. If she feared, it was only for her father. Have I forsaken him for the sake of my own happiness? Could it be true that I have abandoned him? Could it be true?
Toria began to cry again. Egert kissed her glistening eyes and mumbled something tender; she could not make out a single word of what he said, and that was good: words were unnecessary.
Then she fell into a deep sleep and dreamed of a green mountain.
The mountain was covered with short, smooth grass. She hovered over it, occupying half the sky, and the second half was a deep blue. Toria recalled that the windows of their home were painted with this blue. The mountain was an emerald on blue. Toria inhaled, ascending even higher, and it was a good thing she did because there, on the summit of the mountain, stood her mother, wearing a dazzlingly white head scarf, laughing and stretching out her palms, which held a scarlet handful of strawberries, the first strawberries, and how long will it be until this winter is ended? There is still half a year until the next strawberries, there is still half a year, there is still time …
She awoke because Egert, groaning in his sleep, had firmly squeezed her shoulder.
They slept in the predawn hour; they both slept peacefully, deeply, without dreams, and therefore could not hear how, scraping softly, the door of the dean’s study opened, the door that had for many days been locked from the inside. In the recesses of the dark room the last flames of the candles were dying down, and the unbearably stuffy, smoky, thick air rushed to freedom. Books lay on the desk, on the floor, on all the shelves: laid bare, spread out, helpless as jellyfish driven to shore. The taxidermied rat shackled to its chain grinned evilly, the glass globe with the candle inside was covered with dust, but the steel wing spread out just as confidently and potently, and underneath it on the dean’s desk gleamed the faultless gold of the Amulet of the Prophet.
The dean stood for a long time in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb. Then he straightened up and firmly closed the door behind himself.
The corridors of the university were familiar to him down to the last crack in the arched ceilings. He walked and listened to the sound of his own footsteps, rushing through the empty passageways. He stopped in front of his daughter’s room, pressing his cheek to the heavy door.
For the time being they were happy. The dean did not need to open the door to see the hazy morning light pouring over two heads on one pillow; the entwined arms, hair, knees, and thighs; the entwined breath, dreams, and fate. It seemed that there, in that room, a single blissful, calm, weary creature, who knew nothing of death, slept sweetly.
The dean absentmindedly stroked the door. The ancient wood seemed warm, like the skin of a living organism. He stood there for a bit longer, not wanting to intrude on their bliss, and then Luayan walked on.
He could not count the number of times he had walked out onto the university steps and paused between the iron snake, the incarnation of wisdom, and the wooden monkey that symbolized the thirst for knowledge. Ravaged corpses now met the dawn on the formerly busy square, above them the abode of Lash towered, like a curse, grimy with smoke, and the university behind the dean held its peace, strangely defenseless before the gaze of the Tower.
The Plague would devastate the earth if it was not stopped. Luayan had been fourteen years old when Lart Legiar appeared in his deserted home. Lart was at the peak of his power; Luayan knew much about him, but there was only one thing he wanted to ask: Is it true that you stopped the pestilence?
Decades ago the Black Plague had devoured entire cities far from the coast, but the sea had overflowed its shores from all the corpses that congested it. Luayan had an indistinct memory of spurts of flame scurrying across the faces of motionless people; a palm covering his eyes; the weight of sackcloth, flung over his head and shoulders; and a distant howl, not of a wolf, but of a woman. The Plague had deprived Luayan of his home, of his parents, of his memories of the past. That Plague had spared him; breaking suddenly like rotten rope, it had spared him and, an orphan, he had set out on the road with a crowd of other orphans, and had wandered until either a merciful chance or cruel fate led him to the house of Orlan.