His daughter whispered through the curtain of her hair, “It is very easy for you to talk, but Dinar…” She fell silent to keep herself from crying again. The old book and the forgotten drawing had aroused her dulled grief, and now Toria was once again revisiting her loss.
A massive June bug crashed into a shelf, fell to the floor, lay there senseless for a second, and then took the air once more with a methodical buzz.
“You know very well, my dear, how much regard I had for Dinar,” said the dean quietly. “I had become accustomed to considering him my son, and in many ways he was. I bitterly regret the life you will not have with him, the books he will not write, the children you two will not have. He was a wonderful boy, kind and talented, and his death was an absurd injustice. But now imagine Soll, if you will. I know that even the name is unpleasant to you, but just think: Soll could have concealed that book. He could have thrown it out or given it to the scullery maid for kindling. He could have sold it, after all. But he decided to return it to me, and through me, to you. Do you understand what kind of courage this decision of his required?”
“Courage?” Toria’s voice was no longer shaking from tears, but from contempt. “That is ridiculous, like…”
“Like the dancing of a jellyfish on a drum,” coldly completed the dean.
Toria fell silent, perplexed.
The dean pensively followed the reeling of the insects along the ceiling with his eyes, muttering the words to an old children’s song under his breath.
“Jellyfish dances for us on a drum, but Mole gets shellfish for dinner.…” His hand came down sharply on the desktop, as if he were swatting a fly. “Yes, you are correct; it is absurd. But we are now remembering Dinar, and I for one do not think that he would revel in his hatred so, were he in a similar situation. I just can’t imagine it. Can you?”
Toria nearly leapt at him. “That’s a dirty trick, Father!”
The dean sighed again and shook his head, as if wishing to say to his daughter: And how else can I convince you? Toria sprang up, tossed her hair behind her back, and met the tranquil eyes of the dean with her own tearstained eyes.
“A dirty trick! Dinar is dead, laid out in the ground. And no one, except for me, has the right to judge if he would have behaved one way or another. Dinar is mine, and the memory of him is also mine. And this … Soll … he dared … He is a murderer. How you can allow him to … I cannot see him. I cannot think about him. I do not wish to know anything about him. How could he dare to touch Dinar’s things? How dare he even look at them? But you…” Toria sobbed and fell silent.
The June bugs circled the ceiling in a strict order; the dean sighed and wearily raised himself from behind the desk.
Toria seemed too small in his arms, trembling and soaked like a lost kitten. He hugged her hesitantly, wary of offending her: after all, she had not been a child for a long time. Toria froze for a second and then burst into tears, shedding her tears directly into the dean’s black chlamys.
A few minutes passed by; having cried herself out, Toria quieted and began to feel a bit ashamed. Backing away, she spoke to the floor. “You are a good man, Father, and it is obvious to me that you pity Soll, and that you are interested in his situation. But he was a courageous villain, and now he is a cowardly villain. That is in no way better: it is worse, Father. He does not belong here. He’d be far better off among the acolytes of Lash!”
The dean winced. Just yesterday the rector expelled some unlucky boy, the son of a copyist, who’d spied on the university and had even fallen to theft. They said he went right to Lash’s tower. The dean pitied the boy, but he could not forgive him.
He tenderly traced his finger along the book spines, scratching at one that was covered in fur. He asked in a low voice, not turning around, “All the same, I think … Why did the Wanderer treat him so? What for? Why should he care if there is one more vagrant and one less bully?”
Toria drew a faltering breath. “You know very well that there is no way for us to determine why the Wanderer behaved one way and not another, but I think he acted justly. If I were to meet him, I would clasp his hand and bow to him.”
“By all means”—the dean nodded—“you can clasp his hand for whatever reason. Just don’t argue with him.”
Toria smiled sourly.
“Yes, well,” continued the dean without much pause. “At one point I greatly desired to meet the Wanderer, but I am now happy that meeting never occurred. Who knows what might have happened, had he decided to receive me.”
Slumping her shoulders, Toria walked wearily to the door. At the threshold she turned slightly, as if she wanted to say something, but she remained silent.
Luayan raised his eyes in pensive thought. The June bugs collapsed from the ceiling as beads and bounced across the stone floor.
Several days passed, and Egert could not for a minute free his mind from strained, complicated thoughts. Fox had gone home to visit his parents for a little while, and Egert became the sole proprietor of the room. At times he delighted in his solitude, and at others he suffered from it.
The new sense that had opened up within him, the agonizing ability to feel violence with his skin, had dulled for the time being; it had gone into hiding like a stinger retracts into a bee’s abdomen. Egert was thankful for the respite, but he was quite sure that the onerous ability had not left him and would show itself once more.
The hours devoted to thoughts of Toria were especially painful. Egert tried to chase them away, but the thoughts returned, as sticky as wet clay, and just as shapeless. Wearied by the struggle, he took the book of curses in his hand and sat by the window.
… and that well was cursed, and the water in it became rank. It is said that a brave man can distinguish groans and laments in the screech of its pulley.…
… and a curse fell on the castle, and from that time forward the steps of its precipitous stairways opened onto an abyss, and a monster settled on its towers. And should a man look out from its walls, all he will see, for miles around, is stinking swamp. And should a man walk its halls, nevermore will he find his way out into the world of men.…
One day Egert’s solitude was so unbearable that it overwhelmed his terror. Not having the strength to see the dean and not wishing to keep company with his fellow students, bedeviled by his thoughts and persecuted by grief, Egert decided to walk around the city.
He shuffled along, his head retracted into his shoulders, warily hearkening to his senses. Minute after minute passed, and the city leisurely traded, worked, and played, but the waves of its passions rarely wafted to Egert, and when they did they were vague. It is possible that these distant echoes were the fruit of Egert’s imagination; whether or not that was the case, he calmed down slightly, bought himself a cream pastry on a stick, and ate it with voracious appetite.
Mechanically licking the long empty stick, Egert stood on the curved bridge, leaning against the railing. From his earliest childhood he had loved looking at water; now, following the progress of a slowly sinking rag with his eyes, he remembered the bridge beyond the city gates of Kavarren, the turbulent vernal Kava, and the stranger with light, perfectly clear eyes who had undoubtedly already resolved upon Egert’s doom well before they ever fought.
He tossed his head, trying to get rid of the recollection. Reluctantly, he stepped away from the railing and started off back toward the university.
A beggar sat in a small, deserted alley. The ground around him was obscured by the folds of his ample yet almost completely decayed cloak, and his extended palm, dry and black as a dead tree limb, motionlessly grew out of his wide, tattered sleeve. The beggar sat without moving, like a deformed statue, and only the wind tousled the gray hair that entirely covered his face.