Having caught fire, the dry logs crackled. The dean forced himself to reenter the conversation.
“It’s all my fault,” said Toria in a penitential voice. “Curse my tongue!”
The dean cast a sidelong, censorious glance at her. “Be wary of curses.” Then, having contemplated his next action for a moment, he walked up to one of the tall cabinets and unlocked the door.
“Father…” Toria’s voice faltered.
The dean extracted the jade casket from the safe, flicked open the lid, and took from the black satin pillow an object that quietly jingled on a yellow chain. “Here it is, Egert. Take a look; it’s all right.”
A gold disk with ornate fissures in the center lay on his palm: a medallion on a chain.
“This is the Amulet of the Prophet, an inconceivably valuable object, hidden in secret.”
“You can’t let me leave this room,” said Egert in horror. “I could tell them everything.”
The dean caught the compassionate glance that Toria directed at Egert, thought for a moment, and then shook his head. “It is within my power to make you forget what you have seen. Just as your friend Gaetan forgot about a certain event, to which he was a chance witness. It’s possible, but I will not do it, Egert. You must walk your path until the bitter end. Fight for your liberty.” The dean leaned toward the medallion with these last words, as if invoking it.
“But what if the Order finds out about it?” Toria’s voice was high.
“I do not fear Lash,” replied the dean vaguely.
The flames in the fireplace blazed up even more vigorously, and the medallion in Luayan’s palm cast spots of light onto the ceiling.
“It is completely faultless,” said the dean in an undertone. Both Egert and Toria looked at him in wonder.
“What?”
“It’s clean,” explained the dean. “The gold does not have a spot of rust. Not a speck. If we really were on the eve of great ordeal, then … It senses danger threatening the world, and it rusts as an indicator. So it was half a century ago when the Third Power stood at the Doors. I was a young boy then, but I remember that forebodings tormented me, and the medallion, so they say, was completely covered in rust. Now it is clean, as though there were no threat. But somehow I know that this is not so!” Swallowing a bitter taste that burst forth in his mouth, the dean returned the medallion to the safe in utter silence.
“Do you think Lash is the threat?” Toria asked in a whisper.
The dean tossed another log into the fireplace. Egert jumped back to avoid the scattering sparks.
“I don’t know,” the dean confessed unwillingly. “The Order of Lash undoubtedly has some sort of connection to it, but the thing that threatens us the most, that is something else entirely. Or someone else entirely.”
* * *
Winter arrived in the space of a single night.
Upon awaking in the early morning, Egert saw that the gray, damp ceiling of the cramped room had turned as white and frosted as the hem of a wedding gown. Neither the wind, nor footsteps, nor the clamor of wheels could be heard from the square: snow was drifting down to earth in solemn silence.
According to tradition, all lectures were canceled on the day of the first snow. When he learned of this custom, Egert rejoiced far more than he would have otherwise.
Merriment was soon in full swing in the university courtyard. Under the leadership of Fox, the peaceful student body suddenly transformed into a horde of soldiers. A dazzlingly white snow fort was hastily constructed and soon snow battles were raging. Egert entered into the melee with pleasure.
Before long, however, the battle somehow devolved into a fight of the one against the many, with Egert taking the role of lone defender against the horde of students, like some hero of antiquity; it seemed he did not have two hands, but ten, and every snowball he threw hit its mark, dusting an opponent’s flushed face with crumbs of snow. Attacked from all sides, he dived under hostile missiles and they collided over his head, sprinkling his fair hair with snow. Despairing of striking a moving target, especially one that moved the way Egert did, his opponents were about to engage in hand-to-hand combat, planning to tumble their invincible adversary into a snowbank, when Egert suddenly noticed that Toria was observing the skirmish.
Fox and his comrades immediately faded into the background; Toria leisurely bent down, scooped up some snow, and rolled it into a ball. Then, swinging her arm back, she threw it and hit Egert in the forehead.
He walked over to her, wiping slush from his face. Toria looked at his wet face seriously, without the slightest shadow of a smile.
“Today is the first snow. I want to show you something.” Without saying another word, she turned around and walked away. Egert moved off after her, as if he were tethered to her with a leash.
Snow lay everywhere. It covered the university steps, and it had settled on the heads of the iron snake and wooden monkey, creating two large, wintery snowcaps.
“Is it in the city?” Egert asked worriedly. “I wouldn’t want to run into Fagirra.”
“Do you really think he’d come anywhere near you when I’m around?” Toria smiled.
The city was submerged in silence; instead of the thunder of carts, sleighs crept noiselessly through the streets, and the wide tracks left by their runners seemed as brittle as porcelain. Snow tumbled and fell, covering the shoulders of pedestrians, speckling astonished black dogs with white, concealing all refuse and dirt from the eyes.
“The first snow,” said Egert. “It’s a pity that it will melt.”
“Not at all,” replied Toria. “Every thaw is like a short spring. It’d best thaw, or else…”
She wanted to say that the smooth surface of the snow reminded her of the pure, white shrouds used to cover the dead, but she did not. She did not want Egert to think that she was always so gloomy. Winter really was beautiful: it was not to blame for the fact that it was possible to freeze to death in a snowbank, just like her mother.
Red-breasted robins with white snowflakes on their backs were sitting on girders attached to walls, looking like the guards in their bright uniforms; and presently the guards themselves strolled by, with their tall pikes and their red-and-white uniforms, shivering just like the robins.
“Are you cold?” asked Egert.
She tucked her hands deeper into her old muff. “No. Are you?”
He was not wearing a hat. The snow fell right on his hair and did not melt. “I never get cold. My father raised me as a soldier, and soldiers must be able to endure anything, not least of all cold.” Egert grinned.
They passed through the city gates; the wet snow formed grinning jaws on the serpents and dragons that were welded there. Sleds were sweeping along the road. Toria turned confidently and led Egert to the very shore of the river.
Just like frosted glass, the surface of the water was covered in a skin of ice, thick and dull by the shores, thin and latticed toward the center. A narrow stream remained free in the middle; it ran dark and smooth, and on the very edge of the ice stood an unkindness of black ravens, strutting about and displaying their magnificence.
“We’ll walk along the riverbank,” said Toria. “Look around; there should be a footpath.”
The footpath was buried under the snow. Egert walked in front and Toria tried to place her light shoes in the deep tracks of his boots. Thus they walked for quite a long time. The snow finally stopped falling, and the sun began to peek through jagged holes in the clouds.
Toria squinted, blinded: how white, how sparkling the world suddenly seemed! Egert turned his face back to her. Snowflakes gleamed brightly in his hair.
“Is it much farther?”
She smiled, almost not understanding the question. At that moment words seemed to her like an unnecessary addition to the snowy, sun-drenched splendor of this extraordinary day.
Egert understood, and hesitantly, as if asking for permission, he smiled in answer.
They walked on side by side: the footpath
had emerged onto a hill where the snow was no longer so deep. Toria held one hand in the warm depths of her muff, and the other leaned on the arm of her companion. Egert pressed his elbow firmly to his side so that her hand, sheltered in the folds of his sleeve, would not freeze.
They paused for a short while, looking back at the river and the city. Wisps of smoke stood over the city walls in dove-colored columns.
“I’ve never been here,” admitted Egert in wonder. “It’s so beautiful.”
Toria smiled briefly. “It is a memorable place. There is an old graveyard here. After the Black Plague, they buried everyone who had died here, in one pit. It is said that the hill became three times taller from all the dead bodies. Since then this place has been considered special: some say it is blessed; some say it is cursed. Children sometimes leave a lock of their hair on the summit so that a wish will come true. Sorcerers from the villages come here in pilgrimage. But in general…” Toria faltered. “Father does not like this place. He says … But what have we to be afraid of? It’s such beautiful white day.”
They stood on the summit of the hill for almost an hour and Toria, pointing with her frozen hand first at the river, then at a snow-covered ribbon of road, then at the close gray horizon, spoke of the centuries that had passed over the earth; of the belligerent hordes that had descended on the city all at once from three sides; of the deep moat, of which now only a small furrow, invisible under the snow, remained; of the unassailable defenses, erected at the cost of many lives. The hill, upon which Egert and Toria were now standing, was a remainder of a fortification that had been worn away by time. Egert, listening attentively, suggested that the enemy hordes were all cavalry, and furthermore that they were extremely numerous.
“How do you know that?” wondered Toria. “Did you read it?”
Egert, ducking his head, confessed his complete and utter ignorance: no, he had not read it, but from the placement of the defenses, as Toria had described them, it should be clear to anyone that they were not built to defend against foot soldiers, but against a vast quantity of mounted enemies.
For some time Toria was silent, wondering. Egert stood next to her, also silent, and their long blue shadows merged on the lustrous mantle of snow.
“If you watch the horizon for a while,” Toria suddenly said quietly, “if you do not take your eyes from it for a very long time, then you begin to imagine that the sea is beneath us. The blue sea surges beneath us, and we are standing on the shore, on a cliff.…”
Egert started. “Have you seen the sea?”
Toria began to laugh merrily. “Oh, yes. I was quite young, but I remember it well. I was—” She suddenly became sad and lowered her eyes. “—I was eight years old. My father and I traveled all over the world so as not to grieve too hard over Mama.”
The wind swept over the snow, picked up a handful of scintillating white powder, and played with it, strewing it about before letting it drop and moving on to pick up another handful. Egert did not know if his distressing ability to sense others’ pain had returned or not, but the instantaneous desire to protect and comfort Toria deprived him of both his reason and his reticence: Toria’s shoulders drooped, and then for the first time his hands dared to sink down onto them.
She was a head shorter than him. Next to him she seemed like an adolescent, almost a child; through her warm shawl and thin coat he felt how her narrow shoulders flinched under his touch and then froze. Then, desiring for all he was worth to console her and yet mortally afraid of offending her, he cautiously drew Toria toward himself.
Their blue shadows paused on the snow, merged into one; both were afraid to move, lest they startle the other. The city beyond the walls remained impassive, and the frozen river gleamed coldly. Only the wind showed any sign of impatience; it hovered like a dog around their legs, foundered in the hem of Toria’s skirt, and sprinkled Egert’s boots with sprays of snow.
“You will see the sea,” said Toria in a whisper.
Egert was silent. He had known scores of different women in his brief life so far, but he suddenly felt himself inexperienced, a clueless boy, a silly puppy: thus does the apprentice of a jeweler tout his own skill while polishing glass, and thus does he sweat from fear the first time he receives in his hand a precious stone of unheard-of rarity.
“On the shore of the southern sea there is never any snow. There is warm sand there, and white surf.…” Toria spoke as if in a dream.
Glorious Heaven, he was afraid to let go of her; he was afraid that all this was an illusion; he was so afraid to lose her. And truly, he had no right to her. Can you really lose that which does not belong to you? And did not the shadow of Dinar stand between them?
Toria shivered, as if sensing his thought, but she did not move away.
Over their heads the cloud patterns changed, twisted, their sides burned by the sun like loaves in an oven. Hearing how Egert’s distraught heart beat under his jacket, Toria, with almost superstitious horror, suddenly realized that she was happy. She very rarely managed to catch herself in this feeling; her nostrils flared, breathing in the smell of the snow, the fresh wind, and Egert’s skin, and they wanted to raise her up on her toes so that they could reach Egert’s face.
She had never caught the scent of Dinar. It was unthinkable, but she had no memory of how his heart beat. Embracing him, she had experienced a companionable tenderness, but what was that childish fondness compared to this delightful stupor, when the very thought of moving was terrible, when she hardly dared to breathe?
What is this? she thought, panicking. Betrayal? Betrayal of the memory of Dinar?
Their dark blue shadow slowly crawled across the snow like the hand of an enormous clock. A snowflake, round and flat as a grindstone, settled on Egert’s shoulder right in front of Toria’s nose. The sun hid behind a cloud, and the shadow on the snow faded.
“We should go,” whispered Toria. “We need to—I promised to show you.”
They descended the slope in silence. The river here was twisting, skirting around a small spit of land that resembled a peninsula. The earth here apparently found tall pine trees entirely to its liking: they grew in great, massed circles, and their boughs, weighed down with snow, looked like old, sagging mustaches.
They walked, wending their way through tree trunks, now and again brushing the snow from a branch: then the magnificent boughs, liberated, would rush upward, violating the consistency of the winter landscape. Finally Toria stopped and glanced back at Egert as if inviting him to look.
Right in front of them towered a stone structure, like the remnant of an ancient foundation, covered with snow. Yellow, porous stone intertwined with gray, smooth stone: Egert had never before seen anything like it. Most extraordinary was the stunted, thin-trunked tree, which was clinging to the stonework by its roots as if growing right out of the stone. Even though it was the middle of winter, the tree remained green; not a single snowflake fell on the narrow leaves, and here and there between them, round petals glowed a pale red, seeming unreal, as if they had been cut from cloth. But they were real: Egert assured himself of this when he touched one and it left a small amount of black pollen on the tip of his finger.
“This is a tomb,” said Toria, trying to conceal the storm raging in her soul behind a businesslike tone. “It’s several thousand years old. An ancient mage rests here, perhaps the First Prophet himself. But then again, perhaps not. This tree blossoms year-round, but never bears even a single fruit. It is rumored that it too is several millennia old. It’s miraculous, isn’t it?”
The magical tree was not more miraculous than the strange connection that was now invisibly growing between Toria and Egert. He wanted to ask her about it, but he did not. They both stood, gazing at the ancient sepulcher, which in turn was a witness to their silence. The snow-covered pine trees also remained silent: austerely, but without condemnation.
Dusk was falling as they returned home. The cold had intensified and near the city gates they found it necessary to
stop for a while to warm their hands over a fire. The guard, with a face that was copper from the flames and shining with sweat, threw more firewood and kindling, collected that day from peasants entering the city, onto the blaze: in winter it was the custom to collect the toll in kind.
Watching the flames dance in Toria’s motionless pupils, Egert found within himself the courage to bend toward her ear. “I will break the curse. I will recover my courage. I will do it for the sake of … you know. I swear.”
She slowly lowered her eyelids, cloaking the sparks that danced in her eyes.
* * *
The first snow melted, covering the streets, porches, and intersections with shining filth; a cold wind howled through the days, and worry crawled back into the hearts of the townsfolk who had been slightly calmed by the snow. The Tower of Lash ominously elevated its fragrant smoke up to the sky: “Soon!” A few more students disappeared from the university, and the rowdy evenings at the One-Eyed Fly ended of their own accord. Dean Luayan became the focal point of a universal gravitation, as it were: people sidled up to him, hoping to gain some measure of composure. Complete strangers from the city came to see him. They stood for hours on the grand porch of the university, hoping to see the archmage, seeking his help and reassurance. Luayan avoided long conversations, but he never rewarded the petitioners with anger or annoyance. His conscience would not allow him to appease them, and his reason would not let him frighten them, so he regaled his visitors with monotonous, philosophical parables that did not relate in any way to the reason they had come.
The frightened people still came and went, regardless of the dean’s efforts to put them off. Egert was not the least bit surprised to see a worn-out old man with an extremely straight back and spurs on his boots standing one morning on the steps between the serpent and the monkey. Nodding his head in welcome, he was about to walk by, but the old man smiled painfully and stepped forward to intercept him.
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