Later, he found out that the Plague never departs on its own. That time it had been stopped by an archmage called Lart Legiar.
Luayan raised his face to the gray, impenetrable sky. For his entire long life he had fallen short of greatness.
He looked back over his shoulder at the university, then at the Tower. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his habitual gesture. Heaven, how strong he had seemed to himself at the age of fourteen, and how weak he had been in actual fact. His world had been so hot then, in the foothills, the sun had beat down so brightly, the stones had been so incandescent, and the weather-beaten face of Orlan had been so obscure.
Wet snow, fine as milled grain, started to fall.
The city had gone dumb with horror. It had been stunned. Those who were still living cowered in deep shelters, and only the dead no longer feared anything. Luayan walked by them without averting his eyes. A looted shop slammed its door, which was hanging from one hinge; its owner, long dead and therefore indifferent to the ruin, lay huddled in the doorway. He squinted up at the mage with a single, withered eye: a mass of maggots swarmed in place of the other. Luayan kept walking. In a wide entryway an urchin was swinging on a swing; two sections of thick rope were attached to an overhead gantry. The boy held on to them with his hands, pumping his legs with abandon, accompanying himself with indistinct muttering, first flying into the darkness of the deserted house then flying out, passing over a dead woman in a black dress who was staring up at the sky. A rabbit hutch stood nearby and a rabbit, alive and starving, followed Luayan with its gaze. The boy did not even so much as glance at Luayan as he walked by.
The closer he came to the city gates, the more often he came across burnt-out and half-burnt-out houses. Black as if they were dressed in mourning, they gazed at Luayan with the rectangles of their windows, and on one sill he saw a sooty flowerpot with dead twigs hunkered over.
The stench of smoke and decay pulled at him from every side. He walked, stepping over bodies, swerving around capsized carriages, bundles of collected belongings, piles of purses, and the corpses of animals. The water of a narrow canal had acquired a thin film of ice overnight, and through the ice a yellow, lipless face stared up at Luayan from the bottom.
Sometimes darting, living eyes peered out of dark recesses at the sound of his footsteps and then immediately disappeared. Luayan never managed to meet these gazes. But the dead did not shield their eyes, and he honorably looked back at them, not once averting his eyes, as if he knew neither fear nor revulsion.
Lart Legiar was an archmage. Orlan was an archmage. But he, Luayan, was nothing more than a scholar; he was weak, heavens, how weak he was.
He took the wrong road, got lost on familiar streets, and twice he returned to the same place. On a tin beard—the sign of a barber’s shop—swayed a lynched looter. A weathervane that had wrenched free of its socket screeched like a hacking cough.
Lart had invited him to study under his tutelage. The boy should have leapt toward that fate, but now he was gray, and he was old, irredeemably old.
A wing of the gate was swaying back and forth, shrieking stridently. Someone moved near the gates. Luayan stopped, looked, approached.
A man was dying on his back in a cold puddle; once he had been young and strong, but now he was frightful, like a half-rotten corpse. Twisting, he tried to drink some of the icy water; he sipped at it, coughed, squinted at Luayan, and tried again. His parched lips sought after every muddy drop that cost him such backbreaking labor.
Not knowing why, Luayan bent over him, but he recoiled immediately; for the first time in his present journey, he recoiled.
The Plague showed itself to him, opening its eyes, gaining a face and a form. The dying man was being smothered, ensnared, fondled by loathsome fingers; they petted, rubbed, and stroked, and they moved in that same elaborate pattern with which the numerous legs of a spider trap a fly.
The dean stumbled backwards, retreating. The yards and streets, every house was filled with the Plague, with black clots and twitching growths; pale eyes watched from every crevice, full of heaving, pus-filled hatred, indifferent yet at the same time ravenous, gluttonous. Black fingers caressed the dead, palpating distorted faces, slipping into half-open mouths, shamelessly examining the prone bodies of men and women. It seemed to Luayan that he could hear the rustle of parting clothing and slit skin, that the air around him coagulated, filled with an overwhelming desire for death and the yearning to kill.
Staggering as if drunk, he made his way to the city gates. The dead here lay in a heap, and the fingers of the Plague waved over them like grass in a wind.
The gates, the heavy city gates, were smashed in, swept from their hinges. Beyond them he could see the road and a field, flat and bleak, where shapeless piles of rags stirred in the wind.
Luayan turned his face back to the city.
Glorious Heaven! Orlan, my teacher, help me. Lart Legiar, you were once successful, I preserved your medallion, help me. Wanderer, wherever you may be, whoever you may be, if you can, help me. You have seen for yourself how weak I am.
He closed his eyes. Then he jerked up his head, lifted up his hands, and stared at the city, at the new dwelling place of the Black Plague.
… Why is it so hot? Well, it is noon, the sun is at its zenith, and the stones are as white as sugar. Coolness rises from the well, and there in its humid, dusky depths yet another boy lives, a boy reflected in the round surface of the water. Oh, how his teeth ache from the first swallow, but the bucket is already splashing back into the water with all its tin flesh, and the sound intensifies the boy’s thirst.…
By whatever power is given to me, I order and invoke, I draw from the living, I draw from the dead, from their gaping mouths, from the emptiness of their eyes, from their nostrils, from their veins, from their flesh and blood, from their bone and hair. I draw as roots are drawn from the earth with a hoe, as an arrow, nestled in flesh, is drawn. By whatever power is given me, I command …
… The bucket plunges down, sinking ever deeper. Its slightly corroded interior floods with water, and now it can be pulled up, but the pulley is stuck, it is so difficult, as never before. His hands grow numb, his teeth clench, but the bucket scarcely pries itself away from the water, and drops, shed from its edge, echoes down into the water.…
I command and exhort, I expel you from the streets, I expel you from the water, I expel you from the wind, from the hearths, from the holes and crevices. Let it be done. By whatever power is given me, I bind you.
… And now the bucket comes ever higher, but he does not know if he will have enough strength. The sun scorches and so wants to drink the well dry. The bucket swings heavily, and the echo of falling drops becomes ever more subtle.…
Pale eyes, glossy fingers caress the dead. Dark coils and clots stir. The hill, the disinterred hill.
… to drink, I want to drink. Heaven, do not allow my hands to let go of the pulley, do not let the bucket spill over, I am so tired …
I drive you back from whence you came; I drive you deep down into the earth, into the upended depths, where neither spade nor another’s strange purpose may reach you. I drive you back, I exhort you, I seal you in. You have no place on the surface of the earth; you have no power over the living. I myself lock you away and will remain here, as a sentinel. Forever.