“Interesting,” he wheezed, retreating two steps. “I’d like to know to whom you sold your soul … for this…”
“Are you afraid?” asked the stranger. These were his first words since the beginning of the fight.
Egert studied this indifferent old man endowed with unprecedented strength; he studied his rugged, lined face and enormous, cold, lashless eyes. The stranger was not even breathing hard: his breath, just like his voice and his gaze, remained even.
“Are you afraid?”
“No,” Egert responded contemptuously, and as Glorious Heaven was his witness, it was the purest truth. Even in the face of inevitable death, Egert did not experience trepidation.
The stranger understood this; his lips elongated the way they had in the tavern. “Well…”
Ringing, their blades crossed. The stranger performed a subtle circular motion with his blade, and Egert shrieked in pain as his wrist bent backwards. His fingers opened of their own accord, and his hereditary sword flew through the steel gray sky in an arc, thudded into a pile of last year’s leaves, and sank from sight.
Clutching his injured wrist, Egert retreated, not meeting his opponent’s eyes. He was mortified that the feeble old man could have quickly disarmed him in the very first minute of the battle by this maneuver, and that the battle they had just had was nothing more than a farce, a game, like suicide chess.
The stranger looked at him calmly, without speaking.
“Are you just going to stand there?” asked Egert, outraged but not frightened. “What comes next?”
The stranger remained silent, and Egert realized that his own bravery and scorn of death were a weapon he could use to debase his conqueror.
“Well, go ahead and kill me,” he laughed. “What else can you do to me? I’m not some abject student who trembles in the face of death. You want to see the truth of it? Strike me!”
Something changed in the stranger’s face. He stepped forward, and Egert was shocked to realize that the other man really did want to strike him down.
Killing an unarmed man was, to Egert’s eyes, the greatest possible infamy. He smirked as scornfully as he could. The vanquisher lifted his blade. Not turning his eyes away, Egert gazed intrepidly at the naked edge near his face.
“Well?”
The stranger struck.
Egert saw how the steel edge of the sword swept through the air like the shining blade of a fan. He awaited the blow and death, but instead he felt a sharp pain on his cheek.
Not understanding what had happened, he raised his hand to his face. Warm liquid flowed down his chin. The cuff of his shirt was immediately stained with blood. In passing, Egert gave thanks that he had taken off his coat and thus saved it from being ruined.
He raised his eyes toward the stranger, and saw his back. He was sheathing his sword in its scabbard as he walked leisurely away.
“Hey!” shouted Egert, scrambling to his feet like a fool. “Don’t you have anything else to say, you long-toothed louse?”
But the grizzled boarder of the Noble Sword did not look back. And so he left, without turning around a single time.
Pressing a kerchief to his cheek, he picked up his family sword and tossed his coat over his shoulder. Egert was wholeheartedly grateful that he had come to the duel without Karver. A whipping was a whipping, even if the hoary stranger had been as skilled with a blade as Khars, Protector of Warriors. All the same, he was not Khars. The Protector of Warriors valued tradition; there was no way that he would have ended a duel in such a strange and absurd way.
Dragging himself to the shore of the river, Egert got on all fours and peered into the dark, perpetually rippling mirror of the water. A long, deep gash, reflected in the water, loomed on the cheek of Egert Soll. It ran from his cheekbone to his chin. At the sight of it, the reflection pursed its lips incredulously. A few warm, red drops fell and dissolved into the cold water.
2
When he returned to town, Egert really did not want to meet any of his acquaintances, which is probably exactly why he found Karver, who was extremely overwrought, at the first intersection.
“That graybeard returned to the inn as whole as a full moon. I was wondering … What’s that on your face?”
“A cat scratched me,” Egert spat through his teeth.
“Ah,” drawled Karver ruefully. “I was thinking about going down to the bridge.”
“What, to consign my cold, dead body to the ground?” Egert tried to stifle his irritation. The deep gash on his cheek had stopped bleeding, but it burned as if it were a red-hot rod resting against his face.
“Well,” drawled Karver equivocally and in the same breath added, lowering his voice. “The old man; he left right away. He already had his horse saddled.”
“What do I care? One less madman in town,” Egert hissed.
“I told you that right away.” Karver shook his head soberly. “A lunatic, you know? You could see it in his eyes. There was something completely deranged in those eyes, did you notice?”
It was obvious that Karver was not at all averse to discussing lunatics in general and the stranger in particular. Of course, he wanted to be privy to the details of the duel, and the next words out of his mouth would almost certainly have been an invitation to the tavern, but for the present, bitter disappointment awaited Karver. Without appeasing his curiosity even the slightest bit, Egert hurriedly, and somewhat dryly, said his good-byes.
* * *
The Soll family emblem that graced the iron-bound gates had been created to evoke pride in the family’s friends and terror in their enemies. The belligerent animal that was depicted there did not have a name, but it was furnished with a forked tongue, steel jaws, and two swords held in razor-sharp talons.
Dragging his feet with difficulty, Egert walked up to the high entrance, where a servant stood ready to accept the cloak and sword of the young gentleman, but on that unhappy morning Egert had one but not the other; therefore, the young gentleman simply nodded in answer to the deep, deferential bow of the servant.
Egert’s room, like nearly all the rooms in the Soll family manor, was decorated with tapestries that depicted various species of fighting boars. A few sentimental novels, interspersed with textbooks on hunting, languished on the small bookcase; Egert had never opened either the novels or the textbooks. A portrait hung on the wall between two narrow windows. The portrait was of Egert’s mother when she was young and beautiful; she was holding a curly-haired blond child snuggled in her lap. The artist, who had painted the picture fifteen years ago at the behest of the elder Soll, was nothing more than a fawning toady: Egert’s mother was excessively beautiful, with a beauty that was not her own, and the child was simply the embodiment of all that was good and wholesome. The eyes were too blue, the little cheeks were too sweetly chubby, and the little dimple on the chin was too cutely appealing. It seemed that at any moment this wondrous child might take flight and dissolve into the ether.
Egert approached the mirror that stood on the bureau next to his bed. His eyes were no longer blue; they were gray, like an overcast sky. Egert stretched his lips reluctantly: the dimple was gone as if it had never been, but the wound snaked across his cheek, long, stinging, and bloody.
At his summons the old first maid, who had long ago been entrusted with all the workings of the house, appeared. She groaned, chewed her lips, brought out a jar of ointment, and applied it to the wound. The pain subsided. With the help of another servant, Egert got his boots off, divested himself of his coat, and overcome, fell into his couch. He was exhausted.
It came time for dinner, but Egert did not descend to the dining room; instead, he informed his mother that he had already eaten at the tavern. Truthfully, he did want to go to the tavern; he already regretted the fact that he had not stayed and had a few drinks with Karver. He even stood up, planning to go out, but then he paused and sat down again.
Very soon his head started to spin. Then the blond boy in the portrait, that delightful boy with the clean cheeks, unstained by a sword, nodded his head and smiled meaningfully.
Evening was drawing close; the hour had arrived when the day was not yet dead but the night was not yet born. Beyond the window the sky faded. Shadows crept out of the corners, and the room transformed. Studying the muzzles of the boars on the tapestries, still visible in the twilight, Egert felt a faint, vague uneasiness.
He cautiously paid heed to this awkward, uncomfortable, tenacious feeling. It was as if there was an expectation, an expectation of something that had neither form nor name, something shadowy but inescapable. The boars bared their teeth at him; the fair-haired boy, snuggled in the lap of his mother, smiled; the edge of the valance over the bed quivered sluggishly; and Egert suddenly felt cold in his warm couch.
He stood up, trying to free himself from the unpleasant, uncertain anxiety. He wanted to call for someone, but then he thought better of the idea. He sat down again, agonizingly trying to identify the cause of his anxiety and to determine where the threat was coming from. He sprang up again to go into his drawing room and there, to his joy, was a servant bringing in lighted candles. An ancient, many-armed candelabrum was standing on the table, the room was brightly lit, the twilight had already given way to night, and Egert immediately forgot about the strange sensation that had swept over him at the juncture between day and night.
That night he slept without dreams.
* * *
Far from Kavarren, in a room filled with harsh incense, two people talked, their hands resting on a tabletop of polished wood. One set of hands was senile, with long nervous fingers, and the other young, white and strong, with a tattoo on the wrist:
“The mage refused, Your Lordship.”
“I am disappointed, my brother. You failed to persuade him.”
“This mage is a proud man. Money is not important to him—perhaps he is well-to-do. He does not need power, and he did not want to be introduced to our Secret. He did not believe us.”
“You failed me, my brother.”
“We tried … we did everything we could … but … but we failed, Your Lordship,” the younger man replied, and his voice audibly cracked. “But we will find another way. We will manage without the mage.”
The old man kept silent for a long while. The gray mane of his hair hid his face; clever, sharp eyes looked from under the white eyebrows.
“I rely on you, my brother,” he said finally, and his thin fingers were bound into the locks of his hair. “We cannot be delayed any longer. The world gets older; people become impudent. Our brotherhood is losing influence.”
“Fragile peace will be changed by a new one,” the young man said confidently.
“Fragile peace will be changed by a new one,” echoed the old man. “You have to hurry, Fagirra. The End of Time is on the threshold.”
After leaving the room, the man with the tattoo walked along the rock terrace and stood for some time, inhaling the smoky air the city. Then he pulled the gray hood onto his head, nodded to the guards at the gate, and found his way to a bustling street via a dark lane. Two women with baskets, returning from the market, bowed stiffly to him and hurried to the other side of the street.
He walked, wrapped in his hooded robe with his face covered. When he stared at someone’s back the person would shudder, look back, bow, or dive into the crowd. But people seemed to bow with less respect than before, and some people did not bow at all—they looked at him sullenly, and the young ones—some of them even glared at him with naked challenge. The lesson will have to be severe, he thought with a sigh. Cruelty will be necessary. He walked on.
He came to a small river shining in the sun under the humpbacked bridge in a deserted section of the city. A poor man, still as a statue, sat close by. His dry hand projected like a dead branch, vainly expecting alms.
The man in the hooded robe slowed his steps, almost completely hidden in the shade.
A passerby emerged at the opposite end of the lane. How could this village fellow have strayed there—perhaps he was lost, perhaps someone gave him bad directions? He looked every inch a young merchant from the suburbs who had sold off his goods and was so happy with life that he glanced kindly at the poor man.
“Take a coin, drink to my luck.…”
“Thank you,” answered the poor man slowly.
Suddenly the beggar’s hand gripped the wrist of the merchant with surprising force. A broad-shouldered, red-faced confederate emerged from an alleyway and caught the purse, which was snatched from the passerby’s waist seconds earlier by the poor man. The merchant tried to shout, but the bulky fellow threw a rope around his neck.
Everything ended very rapidly. The body of the unlucky merchant, “relieved” of purse, tobacco pouch, and thin neckkerchief, was packed into a bag—not to be distinguished from hundreds of other bags, which were in abundance in the commercial streets. The bulky fellow and beggar, breathing heavily, finished their job when a shadow appeared on the road.
Both raised their eyes and started back in horror.
The gray-robed man smiled from under the hood. In his hand—with the tattoo on the wrist—coins tinkled.
“Tail, Nutty, be moderately greedy,” said the man in a soft voice that made the killers tremble. “I require your assistance.”
* * *
A week went by, and the city thankfully forgot about the tragic incident associated with the name of Egert Soll. Grass began to grow on the student’s grave, it was announced that a new arena for the boar fights would be erected on the shore of the Kava river, and the captain of the guards, the husband of the beautiful Dilia, proclaimed that there would be a parade before the guards set out into the countryside for their upcoming drills, which were pompously termed military field maneuvers.
The maneuvers took place every year. They were implemented to remind the gentlemen of the guards that they were not simply a riotous assembly of carousers and duelists, but a military unit. Egert loved these drills because they naturally afforded him the chance to boast of his prowess, and he always looked forward to their approach.