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.”
