“Then we walked straight past it with our eyes wide open? Actually, we couldn’t have passed it so quickly. You could walk all night from the Grand Theater and barely reach the northern end of Helos Boulevard. And the night’s not even over… Oh, right. It’s always night here.”
“This is no time to be wandering lost.”
Tahyang looked anxious too. Rosa reviewed everything that had happened so far. They had felt tense several times, but only once had they been startled enough to lose their concentration: when the dragon appeared. All four had looked up at it, their nerves on edge in case it attacked. What had happened then?
Hanbun, who was looking back the way they had come, spoke.
“I can see something strange over there.”
They all wheeled around at once. At the distant end of the road, a suspicious vapor was visible. It looked like a bank of clouds, slowly growing and spreading along the street. As it drew nearer, it swelled until it concealed the surrounding buildings up to their roofs. Luke looked at Rosa.
“Should we run?”
“I don’t think running will solve much.”
Nevertheless, they ran. They turned left into a broad street, where their footsteps rang out clearly in the quiet. All four were fairly good runners. Luke fell behind, thinking they would wake the sleepers, then remembered there were no sleepers here. As he tried to speed up, he suddenly realized their footsteps had grown quieter. He looked down.
“The ground is melting!”
“Into that alley!”
The alley they entered at Rosa’s direction had solid ground, but it soon began to soften. At first it yielded like cheese, then collapsed like sand. As the sand that had been a street streamed away to either side, the road beneath the four runners sank below the surrounding houses. At this rate, they would be buried inside it. Tahyang grabbed Rosa’s hand.
“Jump up to that road. One, two, three!”
A considerable ledge already separated them from the other road, but with an astonishing leap, Tahyang carried Rosa up. When he turned and reached down, Hanbun climbed up, almost carrying Luke in his arms. But whichever road they took, it brought only a brief reprieve. Every one collapsed in moments as they ran. Luke shouted,
“What about climbing onto the roofs?”
If every road was going to meet the same fate, that was not a bad idea. Using two walls set close together, they climbed up. The surface beneath them soon began to sway. Rosa spoke.
“That way!”
What followed was a succession of desperate feats. The four ran and jumped from one roof to another, then on to the next. But since no one besides Tahyang could leap across a street, their direction was limited. When they came up against the city wall, they had no choice but to run alongside it. Unable to change direction easily, they found the collapsing ground catching up to their heels. Luke was the first to tire, and lost his footing.
“Aagh!”
Tahyang swiftly reached out and caught him, but the house’s eaves collapsed, and Tahyang and Rosa fell to the ground with him. They landed in a narrow space enclosed by buildings. Before they could escape, the walls on every side began to close in. More precisely, they turned into sand and poured toward them. When they could no longer move, Luke began loudly spouting something that might have been a prayer.
“Anir! If you abandon your faithful worshipper like this, who will compose this year’s finest hymn in your honor? Unable to forget the promise of dawn you left me in my youth, I have come running even to this great place today. May the goddess’s eyes, deep with the stillness of night, discover a radiant jewel even in the lowliest…”
Even now he had no shortage of nonsense, Rosa thought as she concentrated. She had no choice left but to fight with magic. At first, she had restrained herself to avoid earning the mages’ hostility as a visitor, but it seemed they had earned it anyway.
“Iolram Tenel Lun Raid Minta!”
As soon as she finished the spell, a cold wind spread outward from where she stood. It quickly took the shape of ice, forming a wall around them. It looked as though a wave had spread from a single point and frozen solid. Unable to break through, the sand slid down its sides. Then Hanbun jumped down from the rooftop.
“I’ve had a quick look around. It’s turned back into a road over there. And I saw the library in that direction. It isn’t very far.”
“Once we reach the library, we’ll see Port Square. They were only two blocks apart. Incidentally, friend, how are you? You seem uncomfortable.”
Luke grimaced awkwardly.
“You noticed. I think I sprained my ankle when I fell. I can… walk.”
“No need. Get on my back.”
“No, that’s a bit…”
Luke tried to refuse, but Tahyang turned and took his hands, and in the end he found himself being carried. Rosa spoke.
“I don’t know why, but the streets seem to have stopped collapsing.”
“Let us go, then. It seems the goddess Anir heard our friend’s prayer.”
It was typical of Tahyang to consider Luke’s embarrassment at causing trouble. Rosa swept her hand down the wall of ice, melting part of it, and the four slipped through and hurried on. Hanbun, who knew the direction, led them. At last, the library began to rise into view. The familiar sight brought relief. Tahyang asked Rosa,
“Will you go into the library?”
“I don’t know how admissions work in Ayanad. If we see someone, I’ll ask.”
When they reached the entrance examination room, a middle-aged woman approached as though she had been waiting. The party tensed, but stopped, feeling they should at least be polite. The woman came up, looked them over, and abruptly asked Rosa,
“What are you doing here?”
Rosa answered.
“I’m looking for someone. May I ask you a question?”
“There are only mages here. And none will have any business with you. What do you think will happen if you dare disturb them?”
Despite the woman’s rudeness, Rosa neither grew angry nor became servile. She simply looked straight into her face. Then she asked,
“You were responsible for that just now, weren’t you?”
“You dare question me?”
“If it wasn’t something to be ashamed of, you wouldn’t need to react like that.”
Luke, now off Tahyang’s back, fidgeted with the desire to intervene, but Tahyang signaled him to wait, and he held himself back. The woman raised her eyes and glared at Rosa.
“None of you are welcome, not just you. Leave now if you don’t want to get hurt.”
She pointed at the door of the entrance examination room. It began to glow. According to Master Temena, they had to find the door by which they first entered in order to leave Ayanad. This woman seemed skilled enough to create a door anywhere she liked. Rosa answered,
“Don’t presume to judge other people’s important business. If you don’t mean to help, go on your way.”
Listening, Luke squeezed his eyes shut with a comical expression. Rosa’s way of speaking was aggressive and exceptionally good at angering people, but in a situation like this it seemed no help at all. When the woman took several steps back, Luke could not keep silent.
“Why provoke her when even coaxing her gently might not work?”
“She attacked us earlier as though she meant to kill us. That makes her our enemy already. Polite words won’t change anything.”
“Aren’t you being rather decisive about drawing lines? Come to think of it, you were before too. Is it because you’ve been on battlefields? Friend, at least you try to stop her.”
But Tahyang spoke too.
“I think Rosa is right.”
“So do I.”
When even Hanbun agreed, Luke shook his head.
“It’s hard being an ordinary man among such seasoned warriors. Still, who knows? A little tact might make her go easy on us.”
Just then, a glowing circle appeared around the four of them, and the ground began to sink beneath their feet. Rosa cast a spell in response. Their feet rose several handspans into the air and stopped. Luke opened his eyes wide.
“You could have done that earlier.”
But he soon realized he could not move his feet. Glaring at Rosa, the mage tried to recite another spell. An arrow flew from behind the four and struck her in the hand. It was Tahyang. He spoke.
“It seems they aren’t entirely ineffective here.”
Spitting a curse, the mage turned and shouted something. Black dogs appeared, barking, from the passage behind the examination room. There seemed to be about thirty of them, with bodies more like wolves than dogs. As they moved forward, the mage stepped upward as though climbing invisible stairs, then vanished. Luke muttered despairingly.
“Must I pray again?”
Discover more from Lilly Translations
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.