Shadow Prowler

11. A CITY OF GRAY DREAMS

I pressed myself back against a dirty wall covered with lichen on the Street of Men and groaned. The pain had appeared somewhere in my chest and now it was slowly receding, taking my terrible dream with it.

I still seemed to be there-on the snow-carpeted Street of the Sleepy Cat, beside the statue of Sagot. And I still could not believe that I was not lying dead in the snow on the street in old Avendooom.

“I am only Harold,” I whispered, “who is known in Avendoom as the Shadow, and not the archmagician Valder, who died centuries ago…”

The immersion in the ghastly web of the cloudy nightmare that had snared me had been instantaneous. It happened as I was walking quickly along the Street of Men and suddenly…

I remained myself, but in some strange way I was transformed into Valder at the same time. My consciousness was broken and fragmented like the delicate covering of the young November ice on the river. While still himself, Harold the thief slumped helplessly against a wall in the Forbidden Territory and lived a new life, or rather, a section of someone else’s life that was incredibly real.

With a trembling hand I wiped away the sweat that had sprung out on my forehead and shook my head in an attempt to force out of it the final leaden grains of my nightmare.

It was an unpleasant feeling, but at least now I knew what had actually happened on that terrible night in the old Tower of the Order and how the legendary curse of Avendoom, the Forbidden Territory, had come to be.

The blame for the appearance of this city of the dead lay with the Master, who had seduced Zemmel with promises of immortality and power.

Who was he? I had heard that title several times already during the last week. This individual was a mystery and a great riddle not only for me, but also for Artsivus, which meant for the Order, too. Although at least I now knew for certain that this Master and the Nameless One were completely different persons.

But right then I wasn’t really concerned with either of them. I had fallen behind schedule again, so I stopped pondering all sorts of unnecessary nonsense and set off on my way.

The Forbidden Territory was certainly strange enough, but nonetheless I must say that I was pleasantly disappointed. There were so many terrible rumors circulating about it in Avendoom, but everything here turned out to be quiet and peaceful. The plans of the old part of the city that had been made by the diligent dwarves and which I obtained in the library had proved to be ideally precise. On clambering over the wall, I had indeed found myself on the broad, twilit Street of Men, beside a low building with its door rotted away. Either a shop or a barber’s salon-it was hard to tell from the rusty, faded sign.

I gathered my courage and appealed to Sagot, just to be on the safe side, and set off, constantly checking with the map in my head.

The street was deserted, just as I had dreamed it. Deserted and it felt… absolutely unreal somehow.

Yes, in the faceless breaches of the windows there was a spring breeze snuffling gently in its sleep. Sometimes a sign that was almost rusted right through would squeak and sway on one of the half-ruined shops. There was a rotten winter sled standing in front of one of the houses. The streets were cluttered with heaps of rubbish-mostly from buildings and roofs, which had collapsed with the passage of time. But there were no human remains.

Not a soul, not even the scattered bones of the skeleton of a horse or a dog, let alone a human being. The dull gray light of the streets and the pale silver glow of the full moon created a picture of a dead world, abandoned long ago. And another strange thing was the absence of the mist to which I had become accustomed over the last three weeks.

I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that my magical vision completely stopped working as soon as I had walked about twenty yards along the Street of Men. The colors faded, the world blinked and collapsed into shadows and darkness.

No point in panicking before there was any real need.

I hoped that wouldn’t happen to me in Hrad Spein, or I was a dead man. The most terrible thing that could happen to anyone was to find himself lost in the impenetrable bleakness of those deep underground halls, although I wasn’t exactly delighted with this place, either.

I occasionally glanced round, turning cold inside as I expected to see someone or something following in my footsteps, but everything was calm and quiet. I tried not to make a sound and listened to the summer night with my hearing heightened to the maximum.

But the only noise was the wind. It would die away, like some little wild animal, and then, at the most unexpected moment, suddenly start playing in the black gaps of the dead houses, jumping out of gateways with a mysterious whistle, swaying shutters that had come off their hinges so that they banged against the walls of the houses, teasing the loose sheets of roofing metal and setting them rattling menacingly, then hiding again.

Only once did an incomprehensible and therefore frightening sound set icy shivers running up and down my spine.

As I stole past a once-wealthy house with faded green paint, I heard a faint child’s cry that broke off abruptly. Retreating in shock to the other side of the street, I merged into the shadow and listened in silent terror. The crying had come from the ground floor. The windows were boarded up, but that was definitely where the cry was from.

I waited. My heart was pounding rapidly, like some wild bird begging to be released from a cramped cage. Good old Harold was desperately afraid of hearing that sound again-the angry, desperate crying of a hungry infant abandoned by its mother.

But there was not another sound and, after waiting for a few seconds, I went on my way. I walked hurriedly, glancing round all the time, afraid to believe what I had heard. And the fear gradually released its grip.

I tried not to show myself in the sections of the street that were illuminated by the moon, but at the same time not to press too closely against the walls of the dead houses. They made me feel a kind of instinctive childish horror, with that mournful expression in all their silent, broken window-eyes. These imaginary glances gave me a really horrible feeling, and my overexcited imagination obligingly kept throwing up all sorts of pictures, for the most part quite unpleasant.

At those moments I really felt like sending the king, Hrad Spein, and the map to hell, and simply disappearing from the city. The only thing that stopped me was the fear of breaking a contract.

The fact that Graveyard Street ran just behind the houses, parallel to the Street of Men, did nothing to inspire me with optimism, either. Finally, I caught sight of the judge’s house. I don’t know if a judge actually lived there or the name came about for some incidental reason. But the judge’s house was what this gray, three-story stone block was called in the plans of the city.

Immediately behind the judge’s house, if the plans could be trusted, there was a narrow alley leading to the Street of the Sleepy Cat. Like Graveyard Street, it ran parallel to the Street of Men, but on my left-hand side. In principle I could carry on along the Street of Men and reach the Street of the Sleepy Cat from the broad Oat Avenue, but that was a long, long walk and the Forbidden Territory isn’t the kind of place that encourages long, relaxed nocturnal strolls. I swear to that on the Quiet Times! The sooner I could get out of there, the better. The narrow alleyway would cut down my dangerous journey by at least half, which would be most welcome.

“Well, may a h’san’kor devour me!” I swore in a low voice.

The house beside the judge’s house had collapsed and one of its walls had fallen into the alley, blocking my way to the Street of the Sleepy Cat. Unfortunately I wasn’t a mountain goat, to go scrambling over all that rubble. Even Vukhdjaaz, may his name not be mentioned at night, would break his leg here.

I’d have to go the long way round.

My gaze fell on the point where the walls of the somber houses melted into the night. How far was it to Oat Avenue? I realized that the street was quiet and there was absolutely nobody there, and yet… Somehow I wasn’t burning with desire to walk along the Street of Men. Slit my throat, but I wouldn’t, and that was an end to it. The same intuition that saved me the night I crept into the duke’s house had grabbed hold of me by the shoulders and wouldn’t let me go on. But then how was I going to get onto the Street of the Sleepy Cat? The only answer was to go through one of the sinister houses standing on my left. Maybe the one closest to me-the judge’s house.

Standing there in a shadow as thick as rich cream, I hesitated in torment, trying to decide which was the lesser of two evils-to walk along the Street of Men or to poke my nose into a dead house. I didn’t find either option much to my liking, but standing there doing nothing was just as dangerous as continuing my journey.

There was another quiet child’s cry from the house opposite the judge’s house, and I shuddered. The sound had come from the second floor.

The first time I heard the crying, I had put it down to my overexcited imagination, but this time there was no avoiding the fact that I really had heard it. And this discovery was far from filling my heart with peace and delight. Ghosts? The spirits of the dead? The curse of the Rainbow Horn?

I don’t know what it was or what it wanted from me, but I certainly wasn’t going to be fooled by a child’s cry and go running to save the innocent infant, like some idiotic knight in a fairy tale. There aren’t any children here, there haven’t been for two hundred years. At least, not any live ones.

I carefully unfastened my crossbow and loaded a fire bolt instead of one of the ordinary ones. It looked just like a battle bolt, except for the red notches on its tip that helped distinguish it from its nonmagical brothers. It was a serious weapon that could easily topple a knight clad in full armor.

A few moments passed, during which my heart sank and became entangled in my guts, then the terrible crying stopped as suddenly as it had started. A second’s silence… And then I heard quiet chuckling. Malicious laughter. The way a child can laugh when it’s torturing a cat and knows that it will never be punished by the grown-ups. The hair on my head began stirring and my back was suddenly streaming with cold sweat. For almost the first time in my life I wanted to yell out at the top of my voice in sheer animal terror. Nothing had ever frightened me so badly before.

It was time to clear out of there, and quickly-that laugh didn’t make me feel like having a polite, relaxed conversation with its mysterious owner. I no longer had any doubt that this unknown creature had set out to hunt poor Harold. Otherwise how could it have turned up two blocks away from where I’d first heard it?

When I heard the chuckling coming from the ground floor of the house, I abandoned all doubt and hesitation. I hurtled up the steps onto the porch of the judge’s house, pushed open the door, and plunged into the ancient darkness, on the way dragging out of my pocket a disposable magical trinket that gave out a dim light. I could see just well enough to avoid running into the nearest wall or the furniture and to find the old door, warped with age, that led into the inner chambers. There wasn’t even enough time to take out one of the bright magical light sources that I had bought from good old Honchel. I could already hear the laughter in the street, beside the porch.

Anyone else in my place would have fired at this unknown mysterious jolly weeper, but I’m more careful than that-it’s the way For trained me. What if I didn’t kill the weird beast, but only ended up making it even more furious?

I kicked open a door of I’ilya willow, which everyone knows is impervious to the ravages of time, and burst into a dark hall with its walls lost in pitch-darkness. Almost stumbling over the broken furniture lying scattered about in disorder, I dashed on, and the sound of my steps could probably be heard a league away.

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a skeleton stretched out on the floor in rotted clothes. Another door-and the next hall. And another. And another. I dashed through the abandoned rooms, diluting the darkness with the light radiating from my magic trinket. The blood was pounding in my temples. There were cold icicles of fear stuck in my stomach, refusing to melt. I prayed to Sagot that I wouldn’t stumble and break my leg.

Walls flitting past with huge shadows on them, a flickering sequence of light and darkness, a pale circle of trembling light. Another door loomed up ahead. I opened it, pulled the glove off my left hand and flung it into the darkness, then went dashing back in the opposite direction. I turned left, avoiding a table by a miracle, and slipped into a barely visible cubbyhole for servants. I slammed the door and pressed my back against the wall, trying to restrain my frantic breathing, and hid the magical light inside my jacket so that its radiance wouldn’t seep under the door and betray my presence. The world was plunged into darkness and I merged completely into the wall, trying to breathe as quietly as possible.

Centuries passed before my ears heard the quiet steps. They sounded most of all like the light steps of a child walking barefoot. As they approached, my finger tightened on the trigger of my crossbow. The steps halted in front of the door. And again I heard the quiet laugh of delight that sent shivers running across my skin. Had I really been found?

It cost me an immense effort not to run for it, but to freeze in the same way as a frightened hare freezes in a moment of danger, hoping that the predator won’t notice him in the snow. The door swung open sharply, almost flattening me against the wall, but I didn’t move a single muscle, just prayed silently to all the gods of Siala.

The jolly weeper froze in the doorway. I could hear snuffling. The creature seemed to be trying to locate me by smell. Another chuckle sent frosty tremors running through my stomach. The creature didn’t go away, realizing that I was somewhere nearby, but it didn’t come into the little room, because the other door, through which I had thrown my glove, was open, and it was quite likely that I could be there, waiting for the moment to run.

The grains of sand fell slowly in the hourglass of time. I had time enough to curse my stupid idea of hiding in the house. I ought to have run along the street-perhaps then I might have managed to get away. But now I felt like a goblin locked in the orcs’ maze.

Eventually I heard another quiet chuckle and a second later the receding patter of little bare feet. Taking my orientation from the receding sound, I drew the following picture in my mind: the creature had gone through the hall, entered the next room, and stopped… Another triumphant chuckle-evidently it had found my glove-and hasty steps moving away until they were swallowed up by the silence.

I slowly slid down the wall onto the floor. There was no way I could stay where I was-the appalling creature could come back at any moment. Should I go back to the Street of Men or take the risk of going on through the darkness and out into the street on the opposite side?

I had been in buildings with similar floor plans a couple of times, so I could easily find my bearings. I had just skipped into the servants’ wing, and if I went straight on and then turned left after two doors, I would come out into the rear half of the ground floor of the house. There ought to be a door into the kitchen there, and getting out of the kitchen into the Street of the Sleepy Cat would be only quick work. I took the magical trinket out again and set off through the dark house, expecting to hear that familiar laugh at any moment.

Stepping over a fallen cupboard with broken panes of glass, I pushed open the door that I needed, went through, and closed it behind me. The dim light picked out a table and a purple vase by Nizin masters, with a bouquet of dried-out flowers: the petals had fallen off long ago and covered the top of the table in a thin brown layer. A chair with a carved back stylized to look like a cobweb-it had to be the work of dwarves, although they don’t much like working with wood. A small set of shelves with rows of dusty books.

I must have entered the steward’s office. He himself was lying there on the floor, facedown. An old skeleton draped with cobwebs and covered with dust. I cautiously moved closer and leaned down over him. The bones of the legs were crushed or, rather, gnawed apart, as if someone had tried to reach the marrow.

Gkhols?

“It doesn’t look like it. The tooth marks are wrong. And there’s a slight trace of magic, too.”

I shook my head in amazement. What trace? What tooth marks? What was I talking about? It was as if someone else had thought it and pronounced the words out loud. Someone very familiar with the habits of these creatures. Someone who knew about magic. For instance, the person I had recently been in the dream that had engulfed me.

The archmagician Valder.

Sagot, what nonsense is this? My head is my head, and there can’t be any dead magician’s words inside it!

I hastily moved away from the dead man and looked out of the window.

I swore. There was no end to the strange things that happened in the Forbidden Territory.

Outside it was a winter’s night. The roofs of the houses and the road were covered with snow. In some places quite large snowdrifts had built up.

More insane ravings? Ten minutes ago it was summer outside, but now it was genuine winter! Two little boys ran along the street with joyful cries, almost knocking over a fat man in old-fashioned clothes, wrapped up warmly in a fur coat. How many people there were out there! There were lights blazing in the houses opposite, and the buildings themselves looked brand-new.

“The last evening,” the familiar voice of Archmagician Valder whispered inside my head. “I died that night.”

I jumped in surprise and went flying out of the room, almost breaking down the door on the way.

A table in the middle of the room. A vase with a dried bunch of twigs that had once been flowers, pictures, books, a chair, a skeleton on the floor. A window. Winter. I was back in the room with a view of the winter street.

What kind of nonsense was this?

I walked through the strange door again, and this time I didn’t close it behind me.

A table, a vase, flowers, a dead man, a window, winter.

I glanced back into the room where I had just been.

A table, a vase, flowers, books, a skeleton with gnawed, shredded bones, and white snow falling slowly in the street outside. A closed circle.

I was caught.

I tried repeating the passage to and fro through the door about another twenty times, but with unfailing regularity, I found myself back in the very same room. Wouldn’t it be amusing if the jolly weeper found its way in here after me? I couldn’t hide from it for very long in here.

“Dashing through the same room, reflected a thousand times in reality.” Again that quiet, weary voice.

“Who are you?” I whispered in fright, listening closely to what was inside me and already guessing what the answer would be.

“I don’t know…” I heard after a while. “I am I. And I am alive, thanks to you. But not all of me, only a part of my consciousness.”

“You’re inside my head!” I shouted.

“Don’t be afraid, I’ll go as soon as you leave this place cursed by magic. Allow me to live. Just for a little…,” the voice implored, and for a moment I hesitated, but then immediately felt scared.

“No! Get out of my head!”

“You know me. You were me when all this happened. You must know that I won’t do you any harm. On the contrary, I will help you.”

I couldn’t give a damn for his help. He had installed himself in my head without my permission! What I wanted was to scrape the voice of that accursed archmagician out of my ears altogether.

“I will help you to get out of here and complete your job.” He spoke in a low voice; I had to listen closely to make out the words.

“You were me, and I became you. You knew my life, and now I know yours. All your concerns, all your goals. We are one whole.”

“We are not one whole!” I angrily kicked the dead man’s skull and it went rolling across to the wall. “This is my body.”

“Let it be so.” Valder had no intention of arguing. “Simply allow me to fall asleep when all this is over, and I will help you to get out of here.”

“Fall asleep? What do you mean, fall asleep? Inside my head?”

“Yes… I want peace. I have waited for you too long. To fulfill my promise.”

“Waited? A promise? To whom?”

No reply.

“No, a thousand times no, may a h’san’kor devour me! This is my head, only mine. Get out of it!”

“Very well,” Valder replied after a long silence. “I’ll help you in any case, and then go away. You have wandered into a time mirror. Go out through the window. Just jump and do not think about anything.”

Should I do as he said and end up in the winter world? What would I do if I suddenly found myself two hundred years in the past? Would I be able to get back, or would I have to spend the rest of my life in a place that was completely strange to me?

The archmagician said nothing, and basically there was nothing else I could do except follow his advice and climb out of that accursed room through that equally accursed window. Time was passing imperceptibly-another two or three hours and dawn would begin. I had to get out of that lousy place before the first rays of sunlight broke over the line of the horizon.

I walked up to the broken window and looked outside. A light, frosty breeze chilled my face. What was that the archmagician had said? Assuming, of course, that he had said it, and it wasn’t my insane imagination.

“Just jump and do not think about anything.”

Easily said! Take a run up and leap, like a circus tiger jumping through a hoop of fire. Only here, instead of flames, there were sharp shards of broken glass round the frame. But then it wouldn’t be the first time. I had left several rich men’s houses in the same way after visiting them.

I put the magical trinket away-there was more than enough moonlight. After a moment’s thought I picked up the vase and flung it out into the street. It spun through the air and disappeared, without hitting the ground.

“May the demon of the abyss gnaw on my liver!” I exclaimed, and spat, then took a run and jumped into the unknown.

A glimpse of the room, a white roadway, the moon slowly drifting across the sky, snowflakes falling. I landed on my feet, couldn’t keep my balance and started falling sideways, so I rolled over across my right shoulder.

The illusion disappeared. It evaporated, borne away by the wind of time. No snow, no new houses with windows lit in bright invitation, no people hurrying about their business. Just the dead Street of the Sleepy Cat. Dead houses with dead windows. And summer. So I was where I needed to be.

Valder had showed me the right way out after all. Overcome by curiosity, I looked round at the judge’s house. I went back and looked in through the window at the room where I had just been. A table, flower stems thrown out of a vase, a skeleton. A door. And beyond it a dark, narrow corridor, leading off somewhere into the gloomy interior of the dark building.

“I’m getting away from here!” I muttered, swinging the crossbow behind my shoulder.

The Street of the Sleepy Cat was no different from the Street of Men. The same desolation, the same thousands of imaginary eyes observing me from the ragged wounds of the windows. Except that here the street was a bit narrower and darker, and the buildings were poorer.

I was making rapid progress, but that didn’t prevent me from sticking to the shadows and the semidarkness, as well as listening cautiously to the silence of the night and the dreary song of the wind. Once or twice it brought me the sound of a child’s cry, distorted by distance, but it was so far away that I tried not to take any notice.

There was a huge gaping hole in one of the houses on my right, and I hastily crossed over to the other side of the street-there was no point in tempting fate. After all, I knew what kind of ugly creature could be lurking in there on this fine night.

A strange white blob took shape in the air ahead of me. I crept up close and studied it curiously. My way past a well-ruined wooden inn with a fancy sign in the form of a fat cat was blocked by a cloud of semitransparent, silvery white mist.

Round and fluffy, looking like a harmless little sheep, it was hanging right in the middle of the street, with its edges not touching the surrounding houses.

I don’t know why, but I got the distinct feeling that some gigantic, fat spider had abandoned a half-finished web. The edges of the substance swayed and trembled, creating an impression of sluggish life. This mist was nothing at all like the June mist of Avendoom, which was yellow and too thick to see through, but this…

It was strange, somehow.

I halted about ten yards from this unexpected obstacle, trying to decide what to do next. For had advised me to go across the roofs, but who knew if they would support the weight of a man after all these years? Should I try to slip through? Under the cover of the shadow, pressing close against the wall?

Beyond the silver haze of this strange substance I could see the outline of a human figure. From the height of him, he had to be a giant. His head was level with the roofs of the single-story houses.

As far as I could tell, what I could see up ahead had to be the statue of Sagot.

I had already lifted one foot in order to go over to the wall and slip past the little cloud when I was stopped by that sharp voice ringing out in my head again:

“Stop! Don’t move, if you value your life!”

Harold is an obedient lad, and I froze as still as a scarecrow in a village vegetable garden. It was only a few agonized heartbeats later that I realized the archmagician had come back again and it was his voice. I was about to tell Valder exactly what I thought of him, but before I could, he barked: “Quiet! Not a sound! That rabid beast is blind, but there’s nothing wrong with its hearing! Speak in thoughts, I can hear you perfectly well.”

“You promised to leave me alone!”

“Then where would you have been? In the jaws of the irilla?”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s what you’re looking at.”

I stared hard at the cloud.

“I read about this creature spawned by the Kronk-a-Mor in the ancient tomes when…”-the voice hesitated-“… when I was still alive. Irillas are blind, they like deserted places.”

“How do they hunt?” I asked doubtfully. “A blind hunter-that’s something new.”

“I already told you. They have excellent hearing.”

“I think it would have grabbed me ages ago, if everything you say is true,” I thought.

“Don’t deceive yourself. The irilla heard you two hundred yards away. It’s still waiting for you to approach it.”

“It’ll have a long wait. What kind of fool does it take me for? I’ll have to find another way round.”

“As soon as you take a step back, it will attack. You have to deceive it.”

“I wonder how?” I snorted, keeping my eyes fixed on the calmly quivering clump of mist. “And what do you care if it eats me?”

Valder was silent for a long time. “I have been given life again after a long wait in oblivion. Life, and not a gray nothingness from which it is impossible to move into either the darkness or the light. Although I exist in another’s body, where I am regarded as an uninvited guest, that is still better than nothing. Let me fall asleep, I will not hinder you, and perhaps sometimes I will be able to help. Do not drive me out…”

“Okay, it’s a deal. You can stay for the time being.” I had come to the conclusion that the archmagician’s help could come in useful after all. “But only until I leave the Forbidden Territory. Agreed?”

“Yes! Thank you.”

“So how do I deceive this blind beast with big ears?”

“Try to pick up a stone and throw it as far away from yourself as you can. And then run.”

Remarkable, a brilliant plan. And I was foolish enough to think I would get really useful advice. Although I supposed I could try it. If I ran fast, I could end up beside the statue of Sagot, and For told me it was absolutely safe there, no evil beast would dare to touch me.

I picked up a small round stone and threw it into the window closest to the mist. The stone flew into the darkness and bounced off the wall, and then the mousetrap snapped shut. The cloud hurtled toward the sudden sound as fast as an arrow fired from an elfin bow and disappeared into the house, and I darted past the dangerous spot as fast as I could run. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that my trick hadn’t been a complete success. The white bundle of mist, looking more like a worm now, was rapidly pouring back out into the street.

And it was clearly intending to play tag with my own humble and frightened personage. I concentrated all my energy into a wild gallop.

“Faster!” Valder advised me, entirely unnecessarily.

I collapsed beside the granite pedestal and watched as the worm that was pursuing me, as crazed with hunger as a starving gkhol, gave out a melodic crystalline note and shattered into a thousand tiny shreds that burned up in the air with a crimson flame.

Well now, my teacher For was right, as always. Sagot’s statue really is a safe spot.

I got up off the ground, brushed the dust and small pieces of rubbish off my jacket and trousers, and turned round to see the face of my god at long last.

I gasped in amazement.

The ancient artist had done a really good job in depicting the patron god of thieves. Sagot was sitting on a granite pedestal with his legs crossed, wearing boots on his feet. He looked very slightly tired, like a traveler who has finally completed a long journey. He had elegant hands with slim fingers-they looked too young for a forty-year-old man.

The pointed nose, high forehead, slight stubble on the cheeks, cunning eyes and smile were equally suitable for an old man made wise by experience, or a mischievous boy.

I had seen this man before. And even paid a gold coin for his absurd advice.

Sitting before me was the beggar from the empty pedestal at the cathedral.

I had heard several legends from the brothers of the night about Sagot supposedly liking to wander the earth occasionally and talk to those who appealed to him at difficult moments: to help them, advise them, punish them, or play jokes on them. But I’d never thought that anything like that would ever happen to me.

“You see, I am carrying out the Commission,” I said, addressing the statue. “But I still don’t understand your advice about Selena. Keep laughing-you bamboozled me out of a whole gold piece.”

But the god said nothing and merely continued to look down mockingly. Why should he bother to reply to the cheeky comments of some little insect by the name of Harold? I sighed. Sagot had protected me from the irilla, but it was time to be moving on.

“Good-bye, Sagot.” I controlled my insolence and bowed. “I’ll try to get that Horn.”

I turned round and walked toward the Street of the Sleepy Cat, sunk deep in the darkness of night, and left the statue of the god behind me. After spending just a little while beside it, I had a confident, calm feeling. I was going to complete this Commission.

I felt as if I had just been granted the god’s approval, although he hadn’t said a single word to me.

The street was as endless as the hatred between elves and orcs. I had already been walking along it for twenty minutes. I wanted to get the job over and done with and get out of this place.

But clearly that was not to be just yet.

First I caught that smell that cannot possibly be confused with anything else. That stench can drive a hungry gkhol insane-the stink of decomposing corpses. I started breathing through my mouth, trying to ignore the unbearable aroma.

A couple of moments later I heard the crackling and chomping-sounds very familiar to those who engage in robbing ancient graves. They were what always gave the vile creatures away.

Dead men, brought back to life by the shamanism left behind by the ogres, which had still not disappeared from the world of Siala after thousands of years. That was who it was.

The magic that brings corpses back to life hinders the process of decay, and the dead men can quite easily exist for several decades before time takes pity on them and kills their flesh. Like many other creatures of the darkness, they cannot bear sunlight. It makes their bodies evaporate, like a lump of sugar in hot tea. And so these zombies mostly live in abandoned caves, mine shafts, earthworks, the basements of old buildings, and, of course, burial chambers. They only come out of their refuges at night, in search of prey.

In principle, a good swordsman can deal with any ordinary returnee from the grave. “Fresh meat” is agile and nimble, while the half-rotten remains can barely move about, owing to the absence of most of the muscles and tendons, or even the bones. The most important thing is not to end up in the grappling-hook embrace of their arms, or things will go badly for you. These guys sink their teeth into their prey as securely as any imperial dogs.

The one thing I couldn’t understand was how the zombies happened to be there. It was quite a long way to Graveyard Street. What kind of dead men could hold out for two hundred years? In that time any decent corpse who had come back to life ought to have fallen to pieces, whether he wanted to or not.

I held the meat that I had brought in my left hand and my knife in my right. If necessary, the silver border on the blade would give me temporary protection.

No, silver doesn’t kill zombies, it just makes them clumsier and very lazy. Sometimes one of the creatures that has received a silver arrow in the chest won’t even take any notice of a person walking by.

I could hear wheezing coming from round the corner of the next brick building. The windows of this building were closed off with massive steel shutters, and the heavy steel door would have withstood a direct hit by a ball from one of the gnomes’ cannon. Written in huge letters on the façade was the following:

HIRGZ… N & S… NS B… NK.

Even to a Doralissian it would have been obvious what was meant: “Hirgzan and Sons Bank.” A very well-known and rich gnome family.

So this was the gnomes’ bank. For had got as far as this point, but had failed to get inside and turned back. I cautiously peeped round the corner, trying not to make any noise. My nose was assailed by the overwhelming stench of rotting flesh and my gaze encountered a dead man peeping round the corner in exactly the same way from the other side.

The dumb scene that followed was worthy of the very finest dramatic production on Market Square. Finding myself nose-to-nose with a living corpse, I behaved like a small, defenseless animal when it runs into a predator in the forest-I froze on the spot.

The creature was not exactly fresh. One arm was completely absent, the ribs on the right were exposed and gleamed a dull white in the misty moonlight. The skin was a dirty gray-green color and one eyeball was missing. The lips had rotted off long ago and the sparse teeth, coated in fresh blood, were exposed in the vacant grin of a village idiot. There was another horrible brute standing there with its back to me.

I had an excellent view of his decayed body and the white spots of his vertebrae protruding through the black flesh. The zombie farther away from me had not yet finished dining and was wheezing loudly as he enthusiastically stuffed lumps of flesh into his mouth after tearing them off the human body stretched out in the alleyway.

There was absolutely no doubt that only that morning this flesh had still been alive.

Brrr! To be eaten alive by creatures like that… Not a pleasant way to go!

In any good theatrical production, the silences should not be overdone. The creature that had seen me swung back his half-rotted arm and struck at the spot where I had just been standing. Naturally, I was long gone. I had already skipped out into the middle of the Street of the Sleepy Cat, feverishly unwrapping the drokr to take out the meat.

The corpse moved in my direction quite nimbly, holding out his one arm and hissing menacingly. The other one left his dessert and hurried to his brother’s assistance, still stuffing flesh into his jaws as he came.

Dead men aren’t jolly weepers-when dealing with them, you need to remain calm, keep a cool head, and use just a little bit of dexterity. And then you have every chance of surviving the encounter.

“We’ll think of this as a brief training session for Hrad Spein,” I mumbled.

The creatures came closer, and I ran another ten yards away, luring them out of the dark alley. I waited for the right moment and threw the meat into the face of the one-armed zombie. For a while the creature lost all interest in me and started ripping furiously at this prize that had come his way completely out of the blue.

Everybody knows that the risen dead are insatiable, and the fact that the creature had dined just recently did nothing to blunt his appetite. I pulled the magical elfin cobweb-rope out from under my belt. By using that I could overcome almost any obstacle. It didn’t require any three-pointed grappling iron on its free end and naturally adhered to any surface so tightly that you couldn’t pull it off. And its magical ability to pull its owner up of its own accord only served to make it even more popular among those who were fond of overcoming unexpected obstacles. People like me, for instance.

Of course, this item was expensive. It’s no easy thing to get hold of the rope that’s used by the dark elves’ spies.

I swung the cobweb and the free end went flying off toward the roof of the gnomes’ bank, as if there were a heavy weight tied to it. Holding the other end in my hand, I waited for the miracle of elfin magic to attach itself somewhere up above and lift me well away from the ravenous creatures. The first zombie was already finishing the meat, and I regretted that I had taken so little with me. The second had drawn level with the first, but he didn’t stop to join in the feast, he continued stubbornly moving in my direction. He walked like a drunk in the Port City -as if he was about to fall over at any moment. But the dead man didn’t fall, he kept coming toward me with the persistence of a gnome delving into the body of the earth.

I felt a sharp jerk, and the magic rope began pulling me upward.

Breathing heavily, I threw one leg over the granite cornice that ran the full length of the bank just below the roof and pulled myself up onto it with an abrupt movement. I turned over onto my back to examine the night sky. There were just over two hours left until dawn, and the stars had already paled in anticipation of the morning that had not yet awoken but was very close.

The Archer was already sinking behind the horizon, the Stone had lost its magical brilliance, Svinopas had moved close to the moon. There were still constellations in the night sky, but they were gradually growing dimmer, advising me to make haste.

I stood up and detached the rope, which had taken a grip on the roof like a hungry leech from the Crystal Dream River. Then I rolled the rope into a tight coil and attached it to my belt. I put away the knife, which had not been needed, and looked around.

The moon was flooding the entire world with its magical silvery light. The roofs of the houses lay exposed to my gaze. There was nothing up here to cast any shadows, and a silver glow enveloped everything around me, transforming the roofs into a fairy-tale plain of tiles, rusty chimneys, and broken weather vanes. The houses were set very close to each other; the distance between them was so tiny that even a cripple could probably have jumped from one to another without falling and breaking his bones.

I was about to move on, when I spotted a really large hole in the roof, about twelve yards from the spot where I was standing.

So time had done what all the thieves of Avendoom had been unable to do. It had created a breach in the bank’s reliable defenses. And I was immediately tempted to go down into the bank and discover if the Hirgzan clan was as rich as the rumors claimed it was.

But just at that moment money would only have been a hindrance to me, and I didn’t really feel like climbing into the black mouth of that hole, especially as the roof beside it was probably no thicker than a moth’s wings and could collapse under me at any moment, dispatching unfortunate Harold into dark oblivion.

“Well then, the next brave soul who decides to pay a visit to the bank will be very lucky,” I muttered, and continued on my way.

Time was the most precious thing I had now.

I took a run and leapt onto the next building. Took a run and leapt. Took a run and leapt again. After two blocks I was breathing like an excited wild boar.

Once some poorly secured tiles slipped out from under my feet, but by some miracle I managed to grab hold of the cornice and hang there with my hands. Sagot be praised, I managed to scramble up.

Another time the sloping roof of one of the houses began crumbling under my very feet. I put on a burst of speed as I felt everything shifting and heard the rumble of the roof collapsing behind me. I pushed off hard and jumped across onto the next building, my boots knocking out several longish, bright tiles that had not darkened with age.

I made it.

I watched rather gloomily as the ancient dust rose up from the site of the house I had just been standing on. Swirling feebly in the moonlight, it began taking on the form of a gigantic skull, and I decided not to wait to see how all this would end, but hurried on to the Street of the Magicians, which was already close at hand now.

On my travels I caught a few more glimpses of zombies strolling lethargically along the Street of the Sleepy Cat. Fortunately the vile creatures didn’t raise their heads to admire the full moon, and so they didn’t see me.

I thanked Sagot once again that I had decided to cover the rest of the distance over the roofs and not along the street-if I’d run into that many of the walking dead, I would have been hard put to get away from them.

One final high leap, and I was on the roof of a building with a façade overlooking the Street of the Magicians. The goal of my nocturnal expedition was already close at hand. But the problem now was that there were no more houses anywhere nearby. It was as if some gigantic tongue had licked them clean out of this world. Empty black squares where there ought to have been buildings.

And that was all.

I leaned against an old chimney that had turned dark with age. I had two options for making further progress. The first was to go down and risk my skin by running the rest of the way to the Tower of the Order. The second was to risk my neck by trying to jump to the building standing on the opposite side of the street.

Despite the risk involved, I found the second option more to my liking. I was already certain that it was much safer to stay up high-running through those dark streets was like dancing the djanga on thin ice.

To reassure myself, I tugged on the cobweb rope several times to check its strength. Now all I had to do was commit one of those acts of insanity that were already a habit with me. To be precise, jump off a building, go flying through the air, and end up on the house opposite. I had done something of the kind a couple of times in my life, but that had been when I was a lot more stupid.

A step off into the void… The surface of the street came leaping up toward me, and then I was flying above it, holding on tight with both hands to the rope, which suddenly seemed too thin and insecure.

The wall of the building with the dark holes in it was approaching with catastrophic speed, threatening to flatten me into a pancake. I instinctively put my feet out in an attempt to soften the blow, but the cobweb thread stiffened and was suddenly, incomprehensibly transformed from a flexible, pliable rope into something completely opposite.

The straight, stiff rod hung there in the air with me holding on to it, and then began slowly swinging toward the building. But the moment my feet touched the gray wall, the rope’s stiffness disappeared; it became its usual self again and pulled me gently upward.

“That’s over, then,” I said, examining the palms of my hands.

The one without a glove had come off worse-there was a ragged red line running across it. Okay. It’s nothing. I’ll survive.

The houses on the Street of the Magicians had been built more recently. Or at least the coverings of the roofs didn’t groan under my weight in weary old age, threatening to collapse suddenly at any moment. I moved on, making haste-morning was very close now.

Winding and weaving like a drunken snake, the Street of the Magicians was nothing like the ideally straight Street of the Sleepy Cat, Street of Men, and Graveyard Street, which the dwarves might have laid out with a ruler.

And although this wasn’t the most prestigious area of town, the little houses looked far richer. There were elegant weather vanes in the form of various magical creatures standing on every second roof. On a couple of façades I even spotted statues decorating the walls. But of course, I didn’t look too closely at them; all my attention was focused on not falling off the sloping roof I happened to be on at the time.

Up. Down. Leap. Land. Up. Down. Leap. Land. I moved along like I was controlled by one of the dwarves’ mechanisms-precisely, accurately, expending no excess energy. I jumped in the absolute certainty that nothing untoward was going to happen now.

That certainty was my undoing. As I landed one more time, I stopped to catch my breath and look up at the stars. I’m running out of time!

And then there was a mournful creaking sound under my feet. The kind of creak old doors make in abandoned houses. The roof started to shift under me, I flung my arms out, trying to keep my balance and not go tumbling down from the third floor onto the stone surface of the street, and at the same time I tried to jump away from the collapsing section of roof.

But I was too late.

The support fell away from under my feet, and I went flying down after it. There were glimpses of walls, dust rising from the collapsing roof, the starry sky.

And then there was darkness.