“I’ve listened long enough. You’re not studying the art now. The seven aren’t here. But you’re here, and I’m here, and all this going on about your oaths is meaningless. I know you love me—want me. Unless you’ve changed completely since the Wastes of Bleer. I remember a certain night there. If we’d had a little more time, the oath wouldn’t have mattered then!”
“You know I haven’t changed. But we thought we were going to die then.”
“I know. And we could die tomorrow. Which makes this oath business even more stupid. Well, Jinian, love, I’m not going to go on like this ... “ He had the look of a man who had spent a restless night of frustrated desire and was determined it should be the last.
What I might have said was stopped by Queynt’s voice.
“Time to move,” accompanied by a bugling cry from the krylobos.
“I’m not going to go on, Jinian,” Peter repeated in a thick, passionate voice, pulling the veil up over his mouth so all I could see was the determination in his eyes. “If we’re to travel together, we’re going to have to be together. I can’t take much more of this.” He strode off, not waiting for me.
Chance was already on the wagon seat. Queynt was mounted. “So far as Fangel is concerned,” Queynt said, “I am a mere Merchant’s man. You three black-cloaked Zinterites are the owners of this strange equipage. We travel in proximity, but not together. Isn’t that so?” We started off, Peter riding close beside the wagon, Queynt slightly after. Others from the campsite creaked into motion as well, a fragmentary snake crawling toward Fangel.
The city lifted its roofs before us. Its towers bore long black pennants, like great tattery bats flitting silently above the hill. There was no sound from Fangel, not the creak of wagons nor the sounds of commerce, no vendors’ shouts, no children’s laughter.
A silent city, it poised above with expectant gates like open mouths.
It had no smell, Fangel, no woodsmoke, cookery, market goods, people-cum-animal smell. If there had ever been a kindly stench of people there, the jungle wind had blown it away. Now was only the graveyard odor of stone and dust.
Outside the open gates a troop of guardsmen stood, each arrayed with the Dream Merchant’s insignia, looking us over with long, calculating stares.
“Business?” asked one, leaning on the wagon step.
“On our way to Luxuri,” said Chance. “No real business in Fangel.”
“Turn aside to Dungcart Road, to your left outside the walls.”
“We heard there was a procession. Thought we’d go in to see that.”
“Procession this afternoon. In that case you can park the wagon off the avenue in the park. Leave before dark. No fires in Fangel. No rooms, either, and no food served after dusk, so don’t think of staying. We’ve plenty of room in the prison for vagrants who remain after dark.”
Chance clicked to the birds and they moved through the gate. “Friendly,” he remarked. “A real friendly place.”
Behind us we heard the guard saying to Queynt, “Business?” and Queynt’s reply. “Merchant’s man from Bloome, summoned for the reception.” We dawdled, letting Queynt pass us. High walls enclosed the street, blank walls marked again and again with the linked letters of the Dream Merchants. Above the featureless walls jutted ornamented facades of great houses or blank sides of long unwindowed buildings.
“Factories?” I wondered. “Warehouses? Is this a manufacturing town, then? At this height?” The streets were empty. No person walked there; no curious head protruded from a convenient window. Our scanty caravan wove through the city to a central park, a place of mown grass, trees, and wide basins of polished stone in which water lay quiet.
Even here there was no smell, as though the trees had been made of some inorganic material, the water poured from some sterile vat. Across a wide avenue a twisted metal fence made a barrier between the park and the much embellished walls of the residence. As we watched, the doors of this ornate building swung wide to emit a voluminous, almost architectural robe. A square head protruded from the neck of it, close-clipped no-color hair, a promontory of nose overhanging a clifflike upper lip beneath which the mouth writhed wave-like around fallen stones of teeth. “Thtrike,” said the mouth in a sibilant shout as the robe gestured with practiced drama.
“Gods,” mumbled Chance, looking at the gong they were about to strike. “Look’t the size of that thing. Hold your ears!” The warning came barely in time. An earth-shaking “Bong!” set up a trembling reverberation throughout the city, the very ground shivering beneath us, the sound seeming to gain strength as it continued, permeating the buildings with an inexorable message.
“Bong!” again, and yet again. Then a slow falling into momentary silence, broken at once by other sounds.
Doors opening, people speaking, carts moving out of warehouses and onto the streets, a child screaming laughter, fountains suddenly splashing. Somewhere a band started to play.
It had been like a stage set on which the curtain had suddenly gone up. It was unreal. I did not believe it. Queynt sat on his horse only a little way from us.
“The man in the robe was the Dream Merchant,” he remarked. “Brom described him to me. The gong could be a kind of curfew, to keep everyone off the streets at night.” He did not sound convinced of this.
Across the avenue the guardsmen opened the iron gates and propped them wide as the Dream Merchant retreated into the residence. Waiting beside the convoluted fence was a bulbous, beak-nosed man displaying a seal of office much like the one Queynt wore. He raised his hand to Queynt, beckoning.
“Merchant’s man? New at it? From Bloome? Ah. I’m here from Woeful. We can check in with the Dream Merchant now if you like. I’ll show you the way.” Queynt dismounted, tied the horse to a convenient tree, and walked through the gates with the other
