The candle in the glass sphere burned down and extinguished. The room became darker.
“What should I say to him?” asked Egert.
The dean shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever you like. You’ve altered enough that you can decide for yourself. Don’t try to move him to pity: it will do no good. Don’t abase yourself with pleading, but don’t even think of being rude. That could only make it worse. And the most important thing, Egert, and you should think well on this, is that you will be under his power yet again should you find him. He may decide to award your persistence with something else, with something that would make the previous curse seem like a joke.”
The dean searchingly inclined his head to his shoulder. Barely audibly, Egert whispered, “I’m afraid, of course. But, after all, I’ve already met him once. Maybe I’ll find the words. Maybe I’ll find…”
Egert was listening to the headmaster’s lecture while a note, flitting through the rows like a butterfly, passed along from hand to hand, making its way through the hall. Egert was not paying attention to this, and thus a hissing whisper caused him to spring up nearly out of his seat.
“Hey! Egert!”
The note was concealed within a tube, and the inscription on it left no doubt that this missive was addressed specifically to Egert. Unfolding the rough paper, Egert read the short sentence in the middle of the clean sheet: He is in the city.
The rasping voice of the headmaster burst into his ears like shattered glass; then it receded, muted, and melded with the buzzing of a fly that was toiling against the glass of the round window.
Three days remained until the holiday. Red-cheeked serving girls wore themselves out hauling overcrowded baskets of food here and there. Butchers gathered from the surrounding villages, and right on the street they sold bloody animal carcasses, the heads of both pigs and cows, rabbit haunches and braces of dead quail. Egert was troubled when his gaze accidentally fell on an insensate, eyeless head, skewered on a pole for sale.
The human sea bore him farther and farther through the streets. Feverishly peering at all the faces turned toward him, several times he flinched, broke out in a sweat, and flung himself forward, but every time he found he was mistaken, and so he halted to catch his breath and calm his wildly beating heart.
In the aristocratic quarters it was a bit calmer. Laughing and calling out to one another, chambermaids were stringing garlands from window to window, hanging ribbons and flags in the wind, displaying songbirds in cages on the windowsills, and scrubbing the pavement until it glistened. Catching sight of a gray hooded robe at the end of the street, Egert dived into an alley and pressed himself up against a wall.
In the middle of the day the fine weather broke; rain set in, autumn rain. Soaked to the bone, hungry and tired, Egert decided he was attacking the problem incorrectly: he would not find the Wanderer by simply roaming the streets. He needed to collect his thoughts and try to imagine where the man, who had appeared in the city the day before, would most likely be.
He hit upon the idea of visiting hotels and inns. At some he was merely looked at askance, and at others he was chased off immediately. Fearful, he took coins out of his pocket and forced himself to ask servants and lodgers about a tall middle-aged guest with intensely clear eyes and no eyelashes.
His purse was soon empty. In two or three hotels he was even shown the room in which, according to the parlor maids and servants, the tall old man he was looking for was staying. Each time feeling as though he was going to faint, Egert knocked on the hotels doors and received an invitation to enter and, entering, instantly apologized, admitted he had made a mistake and took his leave.
Hardly able to drag his feet, constantly running the risk of bumping into Fagirra or some other acolyte of Lash, Egert returned to the main square. There axes and saws were rattling away with all their might: opposite the city courthouse with its own executed manikin by the entrance, a vast scaffold was being raised.
Egert squirmed, recalling Toria’s words about the compulsory executions that opened the Day of Jubilation. The gang of professional carpenters was surrounded by street urchins: they were insanely curious. Vying with each other, they rushed to the aid of the carpenters, and when one of them was entrusted with holding a hammer, the pride of the fortunate boy was boundless.
Clenching his teeth, Egert assured himself that by the time of the executions he would already be free from the curse and thus he would be brave and unflappable. Dusk was setting in, and the rain, which had lightened for a while, returned again, and Egert, whose strength suddenly and completely ran dry, dragged himself toward the university.
The next morning he went out onto the streets at the crack of dawn and almost immediately saw a tall elderly man in a jacket that had seen better times, wearing a sword at his waist. Having settled accounts with a merchant who sold him a buckle for his baldric, the tall man slowly walked down the street, and Egert, afraid of being mistaken, afraid of losing the old man from sight, afraid of delaying and being too late, dashed after him.
Despite the early hour, the streets were teeming with people. Egert was pushed, scolded, and shouldered aside but, trying not to lose the wide-brimmed hat of the tall man from his sight, he tore after him with the perseverance of a maniac.
The tall man swerved onto a side street where there were fewer people. Having almost caught up with him, with his last strength Egert gasped, “Sir!”
The stranger did not turn around; panting, Egert ran closer to him and wanted to grab the sleeve of his leather jacket, but he did not dare. Instead he wheezed beseechingly, “Sir…”
The stranger looked back in surprise and took a small step backwards, seeing at his side a strong young man with a pale, drawn face.
Egert also stepped back: the passerby only resembled the Wanderer from afar. This was an ordinary, decent townsman who certainly wore a sword only out of respect for generations of distinguished forefathers.
“Excuse me,” whispered Egert, retreating. “I mistook you for someone else.”
The stranger shrugged his shoulders.
Melancholy at his failure, Egert meandered through populated areas, peering into back streets and slums. Ravenous old crones darted toward him as if he were a tasty morsel, and Egert barely broke free from their grasping, pleading hands.
Egert visited taverns as well. Looking around the rooms from the doorway and ascertaining that the Wanderer was not there, he overcame the desire to sit down and have a meal—he did not have any money left—and instead hastened on his way. In a small tavern called the Steel Raven, he happened upon a group of the acolytes of Lash, drinking and conversing.
Egert did not know if it just seemed to him that their attentive gazes focused on him from under the three lowered hoods, but when he came to his senses he was already on the street, and he vowed to himself that from now on he would be more careful.
The second day of searching yielded no results. Despairing, Egert appealed to the dean, asking him if there was any way he could accurately determine the whereabouts of the Wanderer.
The dean sighed. “Soll, if this were any other man, I could arrange an interview with him. But I have absolutely no power over the Wanderer; I cannot find him unless he himself wants to be found. He is still in the city; this at least, I can say accurately, and he will be here for the entire day of the holiday, but probably not longer. Hurry, Soll, hurry. I cannot help you.”
On the eve of the Day of Jubilation the city was buzzing like a beehive. Dragging his feet like a sick, old man, Egert plodded along from house to house, searching the faces of the passersby. Toward evening, the first drunks were already sprawled against the walls in blissful poses, and beggars draped in rags sidled up to them furtively, like jackals to carrion, wishing to extract from the pockets of the drunkards their last remaining money.