The storm had faded at sea. Now and then, seen between trees and stones, lightning fluttered noiselessly far off. The city itself was mostly in deep shadow at last, slipping in her sleep toward the expected sunrise.
Zastis had set. A spangling of lamps along the waterfront and docks gave their usual tokens. An isolated window or two, torches on the Zarduk temple roof, were yellowed pearls shaken out on the dark. At the old capital, Saardos, the beacon fires had burned each and every night, to warn shipping on the western ocean to put in for port before Aarl sucked it away. But Aarl was a legend now, or a condition of the soul.
The night had retained its peculiar stifled stillness. Some dogs were yowling down the hill, starting off others elsewhere. But their voices were oddly muffled, and the chorus did not continue. The night choked it out.
The Shalian priests carried brands, and rang bells softly. In their midst they bore the long-litter, curtains drawn. The torches barely smoked. There was no wind. The Guardian’s soldiers, redundant, resentful, but prepared, trudged after, for mounted men were not allowed on this thoroughfare. They had demonstrated some disapproval of followers, or mourners, especially that one should be the Lydian. But nevertheless he and the Corhl walked to the rear, side by side, unspeaking.
The sarcophagi of the entertainers lay at the topmost stretch of the Street. They had their own quarter, as did all the senseless dwellers in the necropolis. The painted death-palaces of famous hetairas with carved roses on their doors, the pavilions of champions, chained chariot wheels and split shields. The challenging epitaphs caught torchlight under the trees: “You live arid I am gone, but when I lived my life was better.” “I kissed the sun. It was enough,” Or, too, the dulcet, among the blossomy leaves, a dancer’s body in bronze and garlanded with gold, the tablet under her foot: “I was loved.”
Panduv’s tomb, far up the incline, and ringed by flowering aloes, had no inscription. The stone was black. It was a domed shape reminiscent, to any who had seen it, of the beehive city in the cliff, Hanassor.
The door of the tomb, thick stone on a grooved runner, stood open. The priests with the litter paced inside, the fires and bells.
Over the paved boulevard of the dead, a quietness seemed to descend now like a lid.
For miles, not a sound.
“Trouble, sir.”
One of the soldiers spoke abruptly.
Another added, “Yes, someone after us, and mounted up, from the noise of it.”
They listened. Out of the night, some distance away along Tomb Street, a suspicion of hiddraxi, even horses, galloping. And some other resonance, as if a heavy thing were being dragged between them.
“Two or three miles, I’d say,” said the captain.
His cohort waited, hand to sword, mollified by a chance of action. This was work they knew.
Then, sudden as it had begun, the hoofbeats and the dragging ended. The whole band seemed to have been swallowed into nothingness.
Presently, one of the soldiers swore. He looked at the Lydian, who had won bets for him. “Ghosts, eh?”
They paused there, in limbo. Ten guards, a captain, a prince of Corhl, a hero of the stadium of Saardsinmen—while from the tomb a muted light stole and the notes of alien prayers.
Then the lawless riders were on the Street of Tombs once more. Pelting headlong toward them all. In three seconds more each man there ascertained some crucial difference. If hoofs, if wagons or chariots, they had come out from the roots of the earth—
And then the ground rolled.
Because he was in low spirits, Katemval had been glad to go on a drinking party with old friends. They were men who had made themselves, as he had, through luck and knack, traders and adventurers, in their youth. With the Saardsin grain merchant, he had once hunted wolves. While to the Kandian trapper, Katemval had once stood witness in two legal, savage duels, during which the man won his dead father’s goods from five brothers. Only one of the brothers had required killing. He was a plotter who would not have taken to defeat.
Talking of which, and other former days, the outing, litters spurned, roved through a decent inn or two, ate its supper, and drank its fill. The Star, and the hot sparks of remembered youngness, sent them all at last into a house of women, and here they finished off the night.
They had also, at an earlier juncture, gone to the harbor wall to look at the ocean. Many people were out to do the same, some picnicking even on the beach. But mostly there were long faces. Imbued with the wisdom of travelers who have gazed on many marvels, and calmed by wine, the drinking party found the sight of wet fire interesting but no cause for alarm. They reassured the timorous on the streets. Some freak current or outpost of the storm had sent in the fire unusually close. Oh, yes. As for the flame-balls, that was something one beheld at sea. Though there were sailors who swore such things were demons, many tabbed these random emissions of lightning. With similar facts, they regaled the uneasy at the emporium of joy.
A while before morning, youth having evaporated, and the threat of un-well-being upon him, Katemval hired a boy with a torch, and started for home.
The sea was still giving up to heaven an eerie blur of light, plainly visible between the tall southern roofs and garden walls.
Perhaps the gods had been roistering, too. They lived forever, and must get bored with it. For men, boredom was normally offset by notions of brevity. Katemval was not yet to his seventy-sixth year, an upper path for a Vis. His father had gone to one hundred and fifteen, but not pleasantly, riddled with ailments. Well, my dear, thought Katemval, following the bright blot of the torch, a few more such nights, and seventy-six should see you out.
But he did not credit that. Sleep and a posset would put him right. And there was this breach with Rehger somehow to be sorted. The witch was dead—so that at least was seen to.
They had reached Jewel Steps, and were climbing them, the torch-boy springing ahead, when there came a sudden tremendous bang, from the waterfront behind.
It rocked the night, a horrible echoing thud, that drove the air deep into the ears.
“Was that the harbor?” exclaimed Katemval. “Some ship’s oil-casks have gone up—”
The boy looked frightened, staring back toward the sea that house sides hid from them, the torch dropped to the stair. Katemval had turned also. Below, light was being kindled in a score of windows.
Katemval thought, No, I wont go to gawp. It’s my bed I need—
Then he was falling.
He could not tell why. He struck the steps, and hit his head, and thought stupidly. It was aching anyway. Where’s justice—But then some rhythm in the stone jounced him on, and he fell farther, and the next blow stunned him, so everything was mazed, a mad misty universe where walls were jumping into the sky, and there was a ghastly mad noise going on, grinding and cracking and splintering, with the strains of bells and screams mixed in.
Since the crane had stayed unrepaired, the column-tree had remained upon the top-walk of the stage. It had been the axis of this evening’s discord at the theater, along with the leopards for Yasmat’s dance, which were fractious and unbiddable. Panduv herself had unfalteringly performed her routines, her body obedient to her as a black rope. . . . When the rehearsal perished, the night had run nearly into a day. But Panduv’s lover among the actors persuaded her to combine with him, again, inside the column-drum. “You never make a sound above a sigh,” he complained when they were done. “Don’t you like what I do?” Well-mannered to intimates, she was casting about for a reply that would suit his peacock soul, when such things ceased to matter.
“Tits of Death!” the peacock cried, between anger and fear. “Some pig’s winching us on that cracked-up crane—trying to kill me—that Epos, he thinks hell take my place—Epos! Damn you into Aarl, you bloody dog!”
The drum flung to and fro. The lovers were tossed into each others’ arms, and away against the cushioning. All at once, the column reeled. Sickeningly, beyond any command of theirs, they felt it toppling. As in the other thing, he made more noise than she. The crash was bruising but not fatal—now they rolled. They were deafened and buffeted by the tumbling drum. The actor roared and flailed. “Keep still, brainless,” Panduv spat at him. “Hit me again, I’ll tear out your eyes.”