All the whispers and giggles quieted when the dean appeared in the hall; encountering him in the vaulted corridors—Egert had seen it with his own eyes—even the headmaster himself hastened to show his consideration and respect, and the students simply froze as still as rabbits before a snake: they considered themselves lucky for every personal response they received when they greeted him and doubly lucky when they were deemed worthy of the dean’s smile.
Dean Luayan was a mage, and the students gossiped and whispered about this, but in his lectures he neither taught nor performed magic. He lectured on ancient times, on long-destroyed cities, and on wars that had once devastated entire countries. Egert listened as well as he could, but too often unknown names and dates were repeated, and Egert grew tired, unable to retain any of it. He would lose the thread of the lecture, and abandoned in a maze of facts, he despaired of ever understanding. One day, he decided to ask Fox if the dean ever taught the students magic. As an answer Egert received a sympathetic glance and an eloquent but not entirely decent gesture, both of which signified that Egert, to put it mildly, was not in his right mind.
None of the students carried arms, but even though Egert had always felt naked without the weight of steel on his belt, not one of these studious youths yearned to hold a lethal weapon. Full of spirit, the residents of the annex went out into the town almost every evening, and their boisterous return interrupted Egert’s light sleep sometimes at midnight, and sometimes in the small hours of the morning. Under the arches of the university they sang the school song, well known to all the students except Egert. Their individual lives shone with knowledge and energy, but it was all alien to Egert, because he was a stranger, an outsider, a foreigner, down to the last blond hair on his head.
Fox had perched with his thin backside on the table. He started to groan, as if he were reading an especially boring lecture, and then he peered at Egert. Egert smiled wanly in answer to the interrogative gaze of those mischievous, honey-colored eyes.
“Are you daydreaming?” asked Fox in a businesslike manner. “Daydreams are good for breakfast, but for dinner you need something richer, yes?”
Egert smiled again, painfully. He was a little bit afraid of Fox: the freckle-faced son of an apothecary was sarcastic and mocking, and as ruthless as a wasp. He entirely merited his nickname, and rumors of his pranks had reached the ears of even the reclusive Egert. Besides rumors, one of his escapades had recently unfolded right in front of Egert’s eyes.
Among the students there was a certain Gonza, an eternally acrimonious lad who was dissatisfied with everything, the son of an impoverished aristocrat from a sleepy province. Egert did not know at the time why Fox had chosen him specifically as a target, but one day, as he entered the lecture hall, Egert found the place full of a somewhat overwrought yet carefully concealed merriment. The students kept winking at one another and pursing their lips to keep from bursting out into laughter. Egert, as usual, slunk over into his corner, from where he could see that Fox, of course, was the focal point of the general excitement.
Gonza entered, and the normal, businesslike bustle was restored in the hall. Gonza’s bench mate greeted him and in the same breath recoiled in surprise. He said something in a low voice. Gonza stared at him in astonishment.
The essence of Fox’s plan was revealed to Egert later, but in the meantime Fox looked around just like everyone else, directed his gaze at Gonza, widened his eyes, and started to whisper loudly to his neighbor. Gonza fidgeted, winced, and for some reason grabbed his nose with his hand.
The plan was simple: All his fellow students—some with sympathy, some with malice, some solicitously, some in shock—questioned the stunned Gonza, asking him what had happened to his nose; how could it have grown by nearly a fourth of its size?
Gonza tried to put it off with a joke. He bared his teeth in the semblance of a grin, but his eyes darkened. The next day the trick repeated the same as before; meeting Gonza in the corridor, students frowned and averted their eyes.
Angry and bewildered, the poor lad finally turned to Egert. “Listen here, my dear man. If you would be so kind as to tell me: Is there something wrong with my nose?”
Egert shifted from foot to foot, looking into his questioning eyes, and finally spat out, “It’s kind of on the longish side.”
Gonza spit angrily and in the evening—as a laughing Fox later told Egert, who had become a sort of accomplice in the prank—in the evening the unhappy provincial lord managed to get his hands on a length of string. He carefully measured his wretched nose to its very tip. Unfortunately for him, he left his measuring string lying around in his room, right under his feather mattress where anyone could find it. Fox, of course, paid the room a visit in the absence of its owner and shortened the ill-fated measure by just a bit.
Heaven, what happened to Gonza when he took it into his head to carry out another measurement! Almost the entire university, crouching beneath the window of his room, heard the woeful, horrified shriek: The measuring string was too short; his unfortunate nose had grown a full half a fingernail’s width!
Egert flinched and ceased remembering. A long, drawn-out wail carried from the square. It sounded like the voice of an ancient monster, fettered by stone walls, a monster languishing and alone. Every time he heard the sound of this voice, Egert’s skin broke out in goose bumps even though Fox had long ago explained to him that it was nothing more than the ordinary ritual in the Tower of Lash: the gray hoods adored mystery and who knew what went on in those ceremonies of theirs. This howl broke out of the Tower sometimes once a day, sometimes twice, and occasionally there was silence from within for a whole week. The townsfolk were used to the strange sounds and paid them little attention, and it seemed to Egert that he alone wanted to put his hands over his ears every time he heard it.
And so now, having jerked involuntarily, he received a sneer from Fox. “My old dog was just the same, though it was whistles that she didn’t like. She’d hear them and start howling; it was like she immediately went out of her mind. Sort of like you, except you howl kind of shyly.”
The sound broke off. Egert took a breath. “You … you don’t know what they, I mean, what are they doing in that Tower?”
The acolytes of Lash were easy to recognize from afar: they were appareled in gray robes with hoods that fell over their faces. They filled the townsfolk with trepidation and awe, sentiments in which Egert partook fully.
Fox wrinkled his nose. He said pensively, “Well, I suppose they have quite a bit to do. For one, there must be an awful lot of laundry: those long robes sweep all over the pavement; they must get all kinds of shit stuck to them. It’s a dreadful business, getting rid of all those stains.”
Egert repressed a shudder. He asked dimly, “But the sound? That howl?”
Fox shoke theatrically. “That’s their laundress: whenever she finds a hole in a hood she immediately starts to wail. She curses, you know.”
“What do you know?” asked Egert, gritting his teeth.
“You’ve just got to go to lectures,” laughed Fox.
Egert sighed. For the last few days he had not gone to any lectures. He was tired, he’d given up, he’d had enough, but he did not have the strength or the ability to explain it to Fox.
Gaetan extracted an impossible quantity of green cucumbers from the pocket of his jacket. Critically examining the cucumbers, he nodded to Egert to see if he wanted one. Egert regarded the cucumbers with poorly concealed distrust.