by Allan Cole
Katal looked interested. "I’ve never heard of such a man," he said.
"I don’t think Asper was a man," Safar answered.
"What else could he be?"
"A demon," Safar said.
Katal was so startled he nearly came to his feet. "A demon?" he cried. "What madness is this? The demons have nothing to teach us but evil! I don’t care how wise this Asper was, he was most certainly wicked. All demons are. That’s why there’s a barrier between our species. The curse of the Forbidden Desert."
"Oh, that," Safar said. "It’s nothing."
"How can you call the greatest spell ever cast in history nothing?" Katal said, aghast. "The finest minds - and, yes, some were demon minds, - composed that spell. It’s unbreakable."
Safar shrugged. "Actually, I suspect it can be broken quite easily," he said. "I really wasn’t looking for the details, but I do know the curse is based on Asper’s work. He had many enemies, many rivals, and to protect his most powerful magic it’s said he created a spell of complexity. It made the most simple bit of sorcery appear so tangled and difficult that it would confound even the greatest wizard. If I wanted to break the curse I’d attack the spell of complexity, not the curse itself. I don’t think that would take much effort to solve. I’m sure I’d find the key if I could lay my hands on one of his books. Which is exactly what I was looking for when Umurhan surprised me?"
"Would you really do such a thing, Safar?" Katal asked, shocked. "Would you really try to lift the curse?"
"Of course not," Safar said, to Katal’s vast relief. "What purpose would that serve, except to endanger us all? I have no greater opinion of demons than you."
As he’d promised Coralean, Safar had never mentioned his own experience with demons to anyone, even Katal. So he didn’t add he had even more reason to fear the creatures than the old book seller could imagine. And it had occurred to him more than once that despite Coralean’s rationalizations, the demon raiders might have found a way to cross the Forbidden Desert. If so, it was his frequent prayer the knowledge had died with them in the avalanche.
He said nothing of this to Katal. Instead, he said, "I’m only interested in what Asper had to say about Hadin. I think it goes to the origins of our world. And all of us. Humans and demons alike."
"This is all very intriguing, Safar," Katal said. "But merely for intellectual discussion among, I might add, the most select few. For it’s dangerous talk. Please, for your sake and your family’s sake, let it go. Forget Asper. Forget Hadin. Study hard and pass the exam. Umurhan will relent, I’m sure of it. You are capable of great things, my young friend. Don’t stumble now. Look ahead to the future."
"I am, Katal," Safar said passionately. "Can’t you see it? In my vision..." he let the rest trail off. He’d been over this ground with Katal many times. "I never wanted to come to Walaria in the first place," he said. "My family insisted I take advantage of Coralean’s generous offer." Safar had told various vague tales of why the caravan master felt beholden to him. Katal, realizing it was a sensitive area, had always avoided pressing him for the details. "Old Gubadan wept when I first refused. It was as if I were robbing him of his pride."
"I can see that," Katal said. "You were his prize student, after all. Not many young people like yourself come before a teacher, Safar. It’s an experience to be treasured."
"Still, that’s not what shook me from my resolve," Safar said. "I love Kyrania. I never wanted to leave it. I loved my father’s work. And yet I haven’t touched a bit of wet clay in nearly three years. But I was haunted by the vision of Hadin. I couldn’t sleep. I could barely eat. The more I thought about it, the more ignorant I felt. And the only way to relieve that was to go to the university and study. So it was Hadin that drove me from my valley, Katal. And Hadin that drives me now."
Safar’s blue eyes were alight with the holy zeal of the very young. Katal sighed to himself, only dimly remembering his own days of such single-mindedness. It seemed likely to him, however, that Safar’s tale was much more complex than the one he told. There were other forces at work, here. A bitter experience. Perhaps even a tragedy. Could it be a woman? Unlikely. Safar was much too young.
He was forming the words for a new plea of caution when loud voices and the sound of running feet interrupted.
The both looked up to see a small figure in bare feet and raggedy clothes sprinting down the alley towards them.
"What’s wrong, Nerisa?" Safar cried as she approached.
Then he heard voices just beyond the alley mouth shouting, "Stop thief! Stop thief!"
Nerisa ran past him and shot up the fig tree like a bolt fired from a bow, disappearing into the thick foliage.
A moment later the fat stallkeep, trailed by several hard-looking men, lumbered into view. They slowed, panting heavily.
"Where is he?" the stallkeep demanded when he’d reached them. "Where’d he go?"
"Where did who go, sir?" Katal asked, face a mask of surprised innocence.
"The thief," one of the rough men said.
"He’s a big brute of a lad," the stallkeep broke in. "A real animal, I tell you. I don’t mind saying I was in fear for my life when I caught him stealing from me."
"We’ve seen no one matching that description," Safar said. "Have we, Katal?"
Katal made a face of grave concern. "We certainly haven’t. And we’ve been sitting here for hours."
"Let’s check around," one of the rough men said. "Maybe these two good citizens were dipping in the wine too deeply to notice."
"I assure you no one looking like the one you described has come this way," Katal said. "But feel free to look all you like."
* * *
Nerisa gently parted a branch to peer at the scene below. While the rough men searched, Safar and Katal engaged the stallkeep in casual conversation to soothe suspicion.
The young thief was not pleased with herself. She’d let her emotions spoil her timing and then she’d reacted in a panic when things went wrong. The execution, to the dismay of many of the heaviest gamblers, had gone off without a hitch. Tulaz’s reputation was intact. The adulteresses’ head was not. And the plaza crowd had gotten a good show. The victim had been as beautiful as advertised. And she’d wailed most entertainingly when the jailers stripped her, trying pitifully to hide her nakedness with chained hands. Tulaz had played the showman to the hilt, pretending to hesitate several times over the lovely curls bent beneath his blade. Then he’d whacked off her head with such ease that not even a blind fool could doubt the minuscule size of his stony executioner’s heart.
But just before he’d struck, the woman had let out a mournful groan that had echoed across the hushed plaza. It was a groan of such anguish, hauled up from the darkest well of human misery, that Nerisa had been wrenched from her emotional moorings. For the first time in her life she’d burst into tears. An uncontrollable urge to leave that place of horrors, and leave it quickly, had overwhelmed her.
Then Tulaz’s blade severed the woman’s head. The crowd thundered its approval. Nerisa leaped off the wagon, landing with her face to the stall. The object she’d come for gleamed at her from the trays and instinct took over. She scooped it up, heard the stallkeep’s alarmed howl of discovery, and dived blindly into the crowd.
"Thief!" the stallkeep had cried.
Despite the after-execution chaos the plaza guards had heard the stallkeep’s cry and had come running. The blackest of fates must have made the crowd part before them. One of the men had even managed to get a grip on her arm, but she’d clawed him and he’d yelped and let go. Nerisa ran as hard as she’d ever run in her life. But the plaza guards were street-smart pursuers and so they knew all her tricks, blocked all her avenues of escape. And Nerisa, to her present immense shame, had taken the panicked route of least resistance and had led her pursuers directly to the Foolsmire - her only place of refuge where anyone at all cared about a skinny little girl thief who had no memory of mother, father, or even the slightest touch of warmth.
She patted the small object hidden under her shirt. It was a gift for Safar. She peeped through the broad leaves of the fig tree and saw him shove coins forward to buy the stallkeep a jug of wine. She hoped Safar would like his present. Stolen or not, it had been purchased at a greater price than he could ever know.
Nerisa saw the rough men return, shaking their heads and saying their quarry had escaped. Safar called for more wine. Katal obliged. And while the tumblers were poured and the first toasts drunk, Nerisa slipped off the branch onto the alley wall.
Then she shinnied up a drain pipe to the roof and then to an adjoining building and was gone.
* * *
Chapter Nine
Good Men And Pious
The Student Quarter was the oldest section of Walaria, an untidy sprawl between the rear of the many-domed temple and the western most wall. The western gate had been built many centuries before. It was so little used it had fallen into disrepair and the king had it permanently sealed to avoid the expense of fixing it. The Quarter itself was a warren of broken cobbled streets so narrow that front doors opened directly into traffic. The residences and shops were among the poorest in the city and were stacked atop one another with no particular plan, leaning crazily over the streets.
Safar lived in the near ruins of the one remaining gate tower on the western wall. He’d rented it from an old warder who considered himself the owner because in his view the king no longer had any use for it. He also offered board - one meal a day cooked by his wife. The gate tower consisted of two rooms, one without a roof, and strolling rights along the wall. It wasn’t just the cheap price that had attracted Safar to his accommodations. He was a child of the mountains, the gate tower gave him an unimpeded view of the entire city on one side and the broad empty plains on the other. At night the tower also made a marvelous observatory where he could study the heavens and check them against his Dreamcatcher books.
It was also good for sunsets and on this particular day, some hours after he’d left the Foolsmire, Safar was sprawled across the broad stone windowsill, toasting the departing sun with the last of his wine. From the other side of the Quarter he was serenaded by a priest singing the last prayer of the day from the Temple’s chanting tower. It was magically amplified so it resounded across the city. The song was a daily plea to the gods who guard the night:
We are men of Walaria, good men and pious.
Blessed be, blessed be.
Our women are chaste, our children respectful.
Blessed be, blessed be.
Devils and felons beware of our city.
Blessed be, blessed be.
You will find only the faithful here.
Blessed be, blessed be...
When the song ended Safar laughed aloud. He was still a little drunk and found the song’s sanctimonious lies amusing. The prayer was a creation of Umurhan’s, coined in his youth when he was second in command of the temple. It was considered by many - meaning Umurhan’s most fervent political supporters - to be the mightiest spell against evil in the city’s history. Umurhan had used the acclaim to help topple his wizardly superior. Once that had been accomplished he’d joined with Didima and Kalasariz, both ambitious young lords at the time, to make Didima king and Kalasariz the chief wazier. The three ruled Walaria to this day with brutal zeal.
To Safar the nightly spellsong had become an ugly jest, a riddle that would be a worthy creation of Harle, himself, that dark jester of the gods. Was the evil outside the walls of Walaria? Or within?
He’d heard the song the first time only a short two years before. The setting sun had been in his view that day, just as it was now...
* * *
It was a small caravan, a poor caravan, carrying castoffs from the stalls of distant markets. The finest animal was the camel Safar sat upon, a fly-blown, bad-tempered male he’d hired for the journey. He’d made the jump from Kyrania - more a wobble, actually - in three stages. The first was a traveling party to the river towns at the foot of the Gods’ Divide. The second was with a group of drovers herding their cattle across the dry plains to new grazing grounds. He’d come across the caravan during that leg of the trip. It was heading directly for Walaria and so he’d joined it, saving many days and miles.
The sun was falling fast as he approached the city, rolling in his camel saddle like a fisherman in troubled waters. Walaria was backlit by a rosy hue casting the city’s immense walls into shadow so they looked like a forbidding range of black mountains. Palace domes and towers of worship glittered above those walls, with high peaked buildings steepling the gaps in between. The night breeze brought the exotic sounds and scents of Walaria: the heavy buzz of crowded humanity, the crash and clang of busy workshops, the smell of smoke from cooking fires and garbage heaps - good garlic and bad meat. The atmosphere was sensuous and dangerous at the same time - as much was promised as was threatened.
Guarding the main gate was a squad of soldiers bearing Didima’s royal standard - gilded fig leaves, harking back hundreds of years to when Walaria was nothing more than a small oasis for nomads. The gate was menacing - looking like the cavernous opening of a giant’s mouth. The gate’s black teeth were raised iron bars thick as a man’s waist and tapering to rough spear points. The caravan master, a vaporous little man with shifty eyes, bargained with the soldiers for entrance. But he couldn’t, or wouldn’t meet the bribe price and so the caravan was ordered to camp overnight outside the walls - just beyond the enormous ditch encircling the city. The ditch was as much for waste disposal as it was a defense and it was filled with garbage and offal and the cast-off corpses of citizens too poor for a proper funeral. Smoke-blackened figures scurried along the ditch, tending the many fires kept burning to dispose of the waste. These were the city’s licensed scavengers, so low in station it was considered a curse to stare at them overlong, much less suffer their touch.
Safar, hoping to avoid an unpleasant night, shyly approached the sergeant in charge of the squad and presented him with Coralean’s letter of introduction. It was written on fine linen and bound by thick gold thread and so impressed the sergeant that he waved Safar through the gate. Safar hesitated, peering into the huge tunnel bored through the walls. It was long and dark with a small circle of dim light - looking like the size of a plate - announcing the exit on the other side.
It was then he first heard the spellsong, a wailing voice from far away, and seeming so close...
"We are men of Walaria, good men and pious.
Blessed be, blessed be..."
It filled him with such dread he tried to turn back. But the sergeant shoved him forward. "Get your stumps movin’ lad," the sergeant said with rough humor. "I’ve had a long day and there’s a flagon of Walaria’s best missin’ me down at the tavern."
Safar did as he was told, treading through the darkness to the gradually widening circle of light, the spellsong wailing in his ears:
"... You will find only the faithful here.
Blessed be, blessed be..."
It was with immense relief that he exited the other side. The spellsong had faded, boosting his spirits. He looked about to see which way he should go, but the night had closed in and he was confronted with dark streets glooming in every direction. Here and there light leaked through heavily-shuttered windows. Only the hard cobbles beneath his feet hinted there was a path through that darkness.
Then torches flared and he saw the sign of a nearby inn. Beneath it the inn’s crier extolled its virtues for all to hear: "Soup and a sleep for six coppers. Soup and a sleep for six coppers..."
Safar hurried toward the crier, a wary hand on his knife hilt. Cheap as it was, the inn proved to be a cheery stopping place for travelers and he spent the night in comfort. The following day he presented himself at the house of Lord Muzine, letter of introduction clutched in his hand.
The Lord’s major domo was not so impressed by the fine linen and gold thread as the sergeant. His face was stone as he took the letter, glanced boredly at Co
ralean’s wax seal.
"Wait here," he said in imperious tones.
Safar waited and he waited long - pacing a deep path in the dusty street outside Muzine’s gated mansion. For a time he marveled at the passing crowds and traffic. Although he’d been to Walaria before, he’d been in his father’s company and seen things through a child’s eyes. Now he was an adult on his own for the first time. He eagerly searched the crowds for signs of the decadence Gubadan had warned him against. He wondered what he’d missed during the previous visits besides the evening spellsong. But if there was anything to tempt a young man in that neighborhood it was kept hidden behind the walls of the mansions lining the avenue. He became bored and hungry but he didn’t dare leave his post and miss the major domo’s return.
Finally, when the day was nearly done and the time approached for the nightly spellsong, the man emerged. He sniffed at Safar as if he smelled something bad.
"Here," he said, limply handing Safar a rolled up tube of paper bearing Muzine’s seal, so recently dripped it was still soft to the touch. The linen was of poorer quality than Coralean’s letter of introduction and there was only a black ribbon binding it instead of gold thread.
"The Master directs you to present yourself at the Grand Temple tomorrow. You will give this to one of Lord Umurhan’s assistants."
The major domo brushed empty fingers together as if they’d previously held something offensive, then turned as if to go.
Safar was confused. "Excuse me, friend," he said. The major domo froze in his tracks. He looked Safar up and down, wrinkling his nose in disgust. Safar ignored this, saying, "I was hoping for an appointment with your master. I have gifts to give him from my father and mother who also send their wishes and prayers for his good health."
The major domo sneered. "My Master has no need of such gifts. And as for an appointment... I will not insult my lord with such a request from someone of your station."
