The answer had come sooner than Egert expected: the post was obviously in good working order. Egert received from home neither reproach nor consolation, nor even a single word on a scrap of paper, but he could now pay for his room and board, exchange his frayed clothing for new, and have his boots fixed. The designation of auditor did not give him the right to wear the pride of the other students: a tricornered hat with silver fringe.
However, he was not even the slightest bit occupied with caps and fringe. Staring at the wall of the damp little room, he saw his home with the family emblem on the gates: there, a rider is bringing a letter; there, his father holds a piece of creased paper in his hands; there, those hands are shaking; and there, standing on the threshold, is his mother, exhausted, graying, her shawl slipping from her shoulder.
It might have been that way, but then again, it might not have. Perhaps his father’s hands did not shake when he discovered the name of his son under the sealing wax. Perhaps he had merely twitched an eyebrow and then growled at a servant to send money to this abomination who had blackened the honor of the family.
The door opened behind Egert’s back. Shivering as usual, he sat up on his bed.
Egert’s roommate, the son of an apothecary in a neighboring village, grinned merrily.
His name was Gaetan, but the entire university and the entire city, both to his face and behind his back, called him Fox. The youth—he was four years younger than Egert—seemed very young for his years: he was short of stature with narrow shoulders and a childish, open face with high cheekbones. Fox’s perky, upturned nose was covered in a mass of freckles, and his small honey-colored eyes had the ability to instantly transform his face from its habitually impish expression into a visage of touching naïveté.
Fox was the only person in the entire university—not counting Dean Luayan, of course—with whom Egert Soll managed to speak more than two words in all the time he had been there. On the very first day, overcoming his awkwardness, Egert had asked his roommate if he had seen a girl here, a young girl with dark hair. It was difficult to ask the question, but Egert sensed that remaining in the dark would be even worse. At first he was sure that Fox would laugh and declare that in such a respectable educational institution there were no girls; and he did, in truth, laugh.
“What are you on about, brother? That bird flies so far above your reach! Her name’s Toria; she’s the dean’s daughter. Beautiful, eh?”
Fox kept talking, but Egert could hear only the sound of the blood in his ears. His first instinct was to run wherever his feet would take him, but with inconceivable effort he restrained himself, forcing himself to remember the conversation by the well.
The dean is her father. Cursed fate!
He had spent the entire night following this revelation without sleep, even though this was his first night in a long time in a clean bed. He pulled the blanket up over his head to avoid his fear of the darkness, full of whispers. Lying there, he rubbed his bloodshot eyes and thought feverishly. The thought came to him suddenly: What if all of this was an enchantment? What if both the city and the university were enchanted, and the dean had not found him by accident? He had been brought here in a snare, brought here and secured so they could have their revenge.
The next day he crossed the path of the dean in a narrow corridor. The dean asked him something unimportant, and under that tranquil, steadfast gaze, Egert understood: If this were indeed a trap, he was far too weak to escape it.
The other students observed him with curiosity. He had to answer arbitrary questions and repeat his name innumerable times, flinching away from any unexpected contact. His defensive rituals helped a little, but Egert was afraid that others would notice them and ridicule him.
Soon the students decided that Egert was simply an unusually reserved and sullen person, and thereafter they left him alone. Egert was extremely happy with this turn of events. Even attending lectures became a bit less onerous for him.
All the students were placed into four categories, according to the number of years they had spent studying: students of the first level were called Inquirers, in as much as they studied the first year and thrived more in their desire to learn than in any specific field of knowledge; the students of the second level were termed Reasoners; the third-level students were called Aspirants, in as much as they professed a certain amount of erudition; and finally, the fourth-level students were called the Dedicated. According to Fox, far from all the youths who were striving toward wisdom were honored with this last title: the majority of them failed the summer exams and so, half-educated, returned to their homes.
Gaetan himself studied in the second level and was called a Reasoner; it seemed to Egert that, more than anything else, Fox reasoned about the subtleties of merry revels and nocturnal adventures. The students of the various levels willingly rubbed shoulders with one another; every group gathered for lessons specific to their levels, but the general lectures held in the Grand Auditorium were attended by all. At these lectures, each student tried to extract anything that he was able to digest from the learned speech of the teacher, just as in a large peasant family, where the grandfather eats vegetables, the child eats cereal, and the patriarch eats a slab of meat, all extracted from a single dish placed in the center of the table.
Every time he stepped through the door to the lecture hall, Egert set his teeth, wove his fingers into complex patterns inside his pockets, and overcame his fear. The enormous room seemed ominous to him; vapid stone faces watched from the vaulted ceiling, and in their white, blind eyes Egert sensed menace, if not wicked laughter. Cowering in a corner—the bench was uncomfortable, and it quickly caused his legs and back to go numb—Egert gazed dully at the high, intricately carved rostrum. Usually, the meaning of what the lecturer was saying was entirely lost on him only a few minutes after the traditional greeting.
The headmaster possessed a strident voice and an authoritative manner of pontificating; he talked of matters that were so complicated and abstract that Egert, despairing, ceased all attempts at understanding. Having given up, he fidgeted on the bench, listened to some distant whisperings, murmurs, and giggles, watched the dance of dust motes in a column of sunlight, examined the lines on his own hand, sighed, and waited for the end of the lecture. Never knowing why, he would sometimes raise his eyes to the small round window at the very top of the ceiling: the little window that for some reason looked out of the hall into the library.
The corpulent body and stentorian voice of the professor of natural sciences belonged more to a butcher than a scholar; from his speech Egert understood only the introductory phrases, such as, besides, as we see here, and from this it is to be expected that. From time to time the professor would engage in the most outlandish behavior: he combined liquids in glass cylinders or ignited sparks over a narrow-mouthed burner. He seemed nothing more nor less than an illusionist at a country fair. Sometimes live frogs were brought into the hall and the professor would slaughter them: Egert, who at one time had intrepidly visited a slaughterhouse, closed his eyes and turned away from the sight.
The brotherhood of students followed the speech from the rostrum with variable attention, some in silence, some fidgeting and whispering strenuously. Among the scholars there were both daydreamers and idiots; however, even the least of them understood the proceedings far better than Egert.
Dean Luayan’s lectures were by far the most interesting. His person called forth a multitude of strong and conflicting emotions in Egert: fear and hope and curiosity, the desire to ask for help, and terror at a single glance. Furthermore, no matter how consumed with himself he was, Egert could not help but notice the special reverence with which the dean was surrounded in the university.
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.
Fox grinned with his entire sharp-toothed mouth, and his eyes flared with the expectation of mischief. Rapidly loosening his belt, Fox slipped a cucumber into his trousers. Huffing, he adjusted the vegetable so it fit naturally.
“Oh! Tonight we’ll dance with my love, Farri!”
Embracing an imaginary partner, he danced a few steps with his face set in a romantic expression; the hidden cucumber shook in time to his steps as, apparently, he had intended it to.
“It’ll work,” remarked Fox, “just so long as I hold her firmly. Let’s just hope it doesn’t fall out. Well, I’m off.”
Stuffing the cucumbers in his pocket, he drew his patched cloak closed. As he walked out the door, he tossed over his shoulder, “By the way, Dean Luayan asked about you. Have a good evening.”
Egert
sat and listened as Fox’s loud steps withdrew down the vaulted corridor. Both Gaetan with his ridiculous cucumbers and the Tower of Lash with its strange yowl instantly fled from his thoughts.
Dean Luayan asked about you.
The dean seemed to relate to Egert exactly the same as he did to all the others; it was as if he had never brought him to the university at dawn, as if they had never had that difficult conversation by the well. Egert was simply an auditor, but one who lived in the annex like a student, and since no one brought up the subject of tuition, he too avoided talking about it with the elderly bursar. The dean, his benefactor, nodded affably to Egert whenever they met, but meanwhile Toria was his daughter, and the slain Dinar was meant to be his son-in-law.
From the time of his arrival at the university, the dean had shown no interest in him, so why was he doing so now? Did he notice that Egert was not going to lectures? Or was it about that encounter, that memorable encounter in the corridor?
* * *
It happened four days ago.
Egert arrived at the lecture later than usual. The booming voice of the headmaster wafted through the closed doors. Egert realized that he was too late, but he felt neither chagrin nor regret at this fact, only tired relief. He was turning to walk away when he heard wooden wheels rolling across the stone floor.
The low sound startled him. From around the corner appeared a trolley: a small table on wheels. The table was sagging under a weight of books. As if bewitched, Egert could not tear his eyes away from the glimmering gold spines of the books. On the very top lay a small volume, sealed with a silver clasp and a small, lusterless lock; for some time Egert stared at it, dazed, and then he twitched as if he had been shocked and raised his eyes.
Toria was standing directly in front of him. He could see every small line on her face, though it was as beautiful as before. The high collar of her black dress covered her neck, her hair was collected in a simple, one might even say careless, upsweep, and only one wayward tress, which had somehow managed to escape, fell on her pure, ivory forehead.