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
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.
