She expected him to go pale again or lower his eyes or even run away, but he only nodded wearily, agreeing with her. “That’s true, but what’s to be done about it? Anyway, there is no book that can tell me how to find the Wanderer, how to talk to him … so that he understands.”
Toria pondered this for a bit and then said carelessly, playing with the knife, “And are you really sure that you need to find him? Are you convinced that without the scar you will become better?”
Only now did Egert lower his head; instead of his face, she saw a pile of disordered blond hair. For a long time there was no answer. When he did speak, he directed his words at the floor. “Believe me, I very much need to find him. There is no getting around it: I must either be freed from the curse or I must die. Do you understand?”
Quiet set in and lasted for so long that the fresh bunch of parsley, sitting in a patch of sun on the table, began to wither. Toria shifted her gaze from Egert’s lowered face to the sunny day beyond the window, and it was clear to her, as clear as the day, that the man standing in front of her was not lying, not being overly dramatic, not acting: he really would prefer to die if the curse of the scar were not broken.
“The Wanderer,” she began softly, “appears on the Day of Jubilation. No one knows his paths or his roads; it is said that he can cover inconceivable distances in the space of a day. But on the Day of Jubilation he comes here. As to why, well, fifteen years ago on the same day in the square—from this window you can’t see it—but there, in the square, in front of the courthouse, a scaffold was erected. The town magistrate had decided that, as a prelude to the merrymaking, an execution would be performed and that it would forever be associated with the beginning of the festival. They sentenced some stranger, a vagrant, for the unlawful misappropriation of the rank and title of mage.”
“What?” asked Egert reluctantly.
“He claimed to be a mage, but he was not a mage. The law forbidding that is ancient and obscure. He was sentenced to be beheaded. People gathered, thick on the ground, excited by the prospect of fireworks, carnival, a man sentenced to the block.… The executioner lifted his ax, but the condemned man surged up and disappeared right in front of the whole city. It was as if he never even existed. No one knows precisely how this happened. Perhaps he was a mage after all. It was not the Spirit Lash that saved him, as some people say.”
Egert winced at the mention of Lash, but Toria did not notice.
“From that time until now the Day of Jubilation has begun with an execution, but one of the condemned men is pardoned by lottery. They draw lots right there on the scaffold, and one is released while the others, well, they get the usual fate of the condemned. Then, Egert, there is a citywide celebration, and everyone rejoices.”
She realized that, carried away by her tale, she had called him by his first name. She frowned.
“What can you do? Heathen customs die hard. You would probably be interested in seeing an execution, yes?”
Egert averted his eyes. With barely noticeable reproof he said, “Hardly. Especially if my ability returned, as I imagine it would. So, I think not.”
Toria lowered her eyes, a bit disconcerted. She muttered through her teeth, “I don’t know why I am telling you all this. Father is of the opinion that the Wanderer has a connection to the man who so abruptly disappeared right out from under the ax. He believes that both before this and after, the man experienced considerable ordeals, and a change came over him. All this is, of course, extremely vague, but in my opinion my father thinks that he and the Wanderer are one and the same man.”
Again a long pause followed. Toria pensively scored the surface of the table with the tip of the knife.
“So every year,” slowly continued Egert, “he comes here. On that very same day?”
Toria shrugged her shoulders. “No one knows what interests the Wanderer, Soll.” She cast a glance at her companion and suddenly added with uncanny boldness, “But I think that you would interest him very little.”
With a habitual gesture, Egert touched his scar. “Well, that just means that I have to find a way to interest him.”
On the evening of that same day, Dean Luayan dropped in on Egert.
Twilight reigned in the small room. Egert was sitting by the window, the book on curses lay open beside him on the windowsill, but Egert was not reading. Staring at the courtyard with unresponsive, wide-open eyes, he saw in his mind’s eye first the square, where a scaffold was swelling upward like an island in the midst of a sea of humanity; then the thoughtful eyes of Toria; then the kitchen knife, cleaving through a stalk of parsley; then finally the ax, cleaving through a man’s neck. A recollection of the dean’s ambiguous story about the mage deprived of his magical gift came to his mind; then his thoughts turned to the Order of Lash, and the Sacred Spirit broke in upon his thoughts, resembling its own sculpted image the way two drops of water resemble each other: shrouded in its robe, it descended onto the scaffold and saved the doomed man from the block.
At that moment a knock came at the door. Egert shivered and tried to convince himself that in fact there had been no knock, but the rusty hinges screeched and the dean was standing on the threshold.
In the gathering darkness Egert could not have traced the pattern of lines on his own palm, but the face of the dean, which was several steps away, was plainly visible: that face, as usual, was a paragon of passionless detachment.
Egert leapt up as if the mouth of a volcano were under him instead of just a rickety chair. The appearance of the dean here, in this wretched little room, which Egert had grown accustomed to thinking of as his home, seemed an occurrence equally as unthinkable as a visit from the moon to the nest of a wagtail.
The dean looked at Egert inquiringly, as if Egert had come to see him and was about to tell him something. Egert was silent, having been deprived of the gift of speech as soon as the dean entered.
“I beg your pardon,” the dean said somewhat sarcastically, and Egert thought in passing that Toria was strikingly similar to her father, not so much in appearance as in habits. “I beg your pardon for barging in on you, Soll. At our last meeting you said that you were ready to quit the university and that you were motivated to do so in part because of your, hmm, uselessness … that is, your ignorance. Did you say this seriously or was it just a pretty turn of phrase?”
The darkened, arched ceiling came down and crushed Egert’s shoulders. He was being turned out, and they had every right to turn him out. “Yes,” he said dully. “I am ready to leave. I understand.”
For a short time they were both silent, the dean dispassionately, Egert anxiously; finally, unable to endure the silence any longer, Egert muttered, “I truly am useless, Dean Luayan. Studying for me is like an ant taking on the heavens. Maybe it would be best to give my place to another?”
He suddenly broke into a sweat. He was horrified at his own words: his place already belonged to another. It was Dinar’s place.
The dean rubbed his temple, and his wide sleeve swayed. “Well, Soll. There is nothing wrong with your reason: you usually speak sensibly. Your academic work does, however, leave something to be desired. Even though you are an auditor, you should not neglect your studies. And so, I’ve brought you this.” Luayan took a medium-sized tome in a leather binding and a smallish pamphlet bound in pasteboard from the folds of his dark garment.