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.
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 d
raw 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.
… What hot stones, what turbulent grass, and in my ears rings the sound of the cicada, but the water proves sweet, sweet and thick, like honey, and it flows down my chin, down my chest, down my legs, spilling onto the parched earth. And the sun is at its zenith … The sun.
* * *
That evening, when all those living in the city timidly began to move about, peering from their shelters and asking themselves if this indulgence would last; when the sick began to feel so much better that their loving attendants with haggard eyes finally let loose their tears; when dogs appeared from out of nowhere; when ravens beat their wings over the streets, belatedly gathering to their feast; then Egert and Toria found the dean.
Luayan lay on the summit of the unearthed burial mound, as if covering it with his body. Egert looked once at his face, and would not let Toria even glance at it.
9
But on the next day the cold returned, and it was necessary to hurry before the earth froze over.
Egert and Toria buried Luayan on a hill not far from the tomb of the First Prophet. Egert wanted to put the gold medallion in with him, but Toria, who had in the course of one day forgotten how to cry, stopped him: leaving the Amulet in his grave would afflict that grave. The two of them performed all the necessary rites over the body, and no one interfered with them, even though the mayor, who turned up out of the blue, had strictly ordered that all the victims of the Plague be buried in the same place, in the unearthed burial mound.
Toria, who did not have the strength to credit her loss, could not enter her father’s study. Egert went in. Among the open books and burnt-out candles only the dean’s manuscript appeared to be in full order: his heavy, voluminous, unfinished manuscript, to which had been appended a legible catalog of prepared sections, fragments, and drafts, and a detailed plan of the as-yet-unwritten chapters. There were no letters, no notes, only the manuscript, as if it was his last will and testament, and the Amulet of the Prophet, as if it was a bequest.
Hearing Egert enumerate the contents of his study, Toria tried to smile. “He did become an archmage, didn’t he? In this manuscript, there should now be a chapter on him. Don’t you think? We must finish it.”
And immediately, without transition, she said, “Egert, promise me you’ll never die.”
* * *
The city did not believe its good fortune right away. Grave-digging teams hastily committed the dead to the earth, while the afflicted started to recover. The casualties were enormous, but it turned out that a great many had been spared as well. Still sheltering in their recesses, they anxiously repeated variations of a single question to one another: What about time, had it ended or not?
A day passed without any new victims, then another day, then another; people who were fatally ill began to get to their feet, and for an entire week not one person died in the city. Mountains of earth, brought to the disturbed hill, separated the living from the dead, and on that day it became taller, full of hundreds of bodies. The streets, freed from corpses, remained desolate and frightening, but the surviving townspeople already assumed that the Plague had finally passed.
Not yet had all of the deceased been transported from deserted houses and alleyways into the trench intended for them, when the city broke out into explosions of fireworks.
Not one of those who then spilled out onto the streets and squares had ever seen a festival like it. Strangers embraced and cried on each other’s shoulders; they cried from the joy of suddenly granted life, such sweet life, to which many of them had already said their good-byes. Yesterday they were the dead, but today they were drunk on the awareness that tomorrow would bring a new day, and beyond that there would be another one, and spring would come, and children would be born. Laughing women in bedraggled clothing joyfully bestowed their favors on those whom they loved, and they loved everyone, even the cripples and the beggars and the tramps, and the guards, youths, and elders. Fourteen-year-old boys became men right on the street, but then lost their happy ladies as they disappeared into the crowd, shrieking with laughter. The frantic, insane festival of people driven mad with joy led to a few fatalities—someone drowned in a canal, someone was trampled by the crowd—but the deaths passed unheeded because on that day in the streets of the city, the people believed in eternal life.
The Tower of Lash indifferently beheld the frantic dancing of the survivors. As before, its doors and walls were sealed tight, and not a single wisp of smoke rose over the gabled roof. The hysterical merrymaking gradually abated, and then whispers began to crawl throughout the city.
The End of Time: Would it happen or had it already been prevented? Where had the Plague come from? Why had it come? Why had it left? What did the sealed walls of the abode of Lash withhold? Why did the robe-wearers not partake in the common doom, skulking behind their walls, and what would happen now? People whispered to one another, looking at the Tower, some warily, some balefully; sometimes voices would rise up, asserting that it was the acolytes of Lash who had invited this disaster with all their talk of the End of Time. It was even whispered that they had loosed the Plague on the city and then sheltered behind strong walls; it was said that the archmage, the former dean of the university, had disappeared to parts unknown on the very day the Plague ended, and that now his daughter accused the robe-wearers of all the deaths. The townsfolk were agitated; they exchanged glances with one another, not wanting to believe. The Tower did not rush to contradict the rumors that were stirring up the city, and the glances that were cast toward it became ever more sullen. Contrary to the remonstrances of the mayor, an assault with crowbars and pickaxes was already planned when the stone works that barred the doors crashed down, broken through from the inside.
Egert, who at that moment was in the library, flinched, feeling a solid thud that shook the earth. From the window he could see quite clearly how the crowd besieging the Tower fell back as if repelled by a gust of wind.
In the black breach stood a hunched gray figure with disheveled hair as white as the moon.
Less than half the soldiers of Lash remained among the living. The bodies of the deceased robe-wearers lay in front of the Tower; they lay in long rows, and wide hoods concealed the dead faces to their chins. The living acolytes stood just as motionless as their dead comrades, and their hoods fell over their faces just as low, and the wind pulled at the clothing of both the li
ving and the dead with the same sluggishness.
Egert did not hear the Magister’s speech; fear kept him from approaching. The crowd listened in silence. In the flood of the Magister’s voice, in the most passionate section of his speech, Egert did hear a brief “Lash!” The people shuddered, involuntarily lowering their heads. Then the Magister fell silent, and the crowd slowly dispersed, docile and hushed, as if lost in solving the riddle presented by the Magister.
* * *
Several weeks passed. The surviving students rejoiced when they met one another on the steps of the university, but after boisterous embraces and greetings an uneasy silence usually followed: inquiring about the fate of their friends, far too often they received the most grievous of all possible news. However that may be, the university soon came back to life. The news of the dean’s death was transmitted in a whisper, and many shuddered at hearing it, but many also grieved, and therefore reached out to Toria, wishing to share her grief.
The headmaster expressed his condolences to Toria. She accepted them with reserved dignity. Her father’s study became her own, and she spent many hours under the steel wing, reviewing Luayan’s papers, especially his manuscript. The Amulet of the Prophet, at the request of Egert, was hidden in a place known only to her: Egert did not want to know the secret, and Toria, biting her lips, respected his wish.
Meeting Toria in the corridors, the students greeted her with almost the same respect with which they had previously greeted the dean. Egert always trailed behind her, and everyone already knew that immediately after the period of mourning he would become her husband. No one took it into his head to be astonished at her choice; they all silently recognized that Egert had the right to this distinction.
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