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?
