Allan COLE - Wizard of the winds

Despite the after-execution chaos the plaza guards had heard the stallkeep's cry and had come running. The blackest of fates must have made the crowd part before them. One of the men had even managed to get a grip on her arm, but she'd clawed him and he'd yelped and let go. Nerisa ran as hard as she'd ever run in her life. But the plaza guards were street-smart pursuers and so they knew all her tricks, blocked all her avenues of escape. And Nerisa, to her present immense shame, had taken the panicked route of least resistance and had led her pursuers directly to the Foolsmireher only place of refuge where anyone at all cared about a skinny little girl thief who had no memory of mother, father, or even the slightest touch of warmth.

She patted the small object hidden under her shirt. It was a gift for Safar. She peeped through the broad leaves of the fig tree and saw him shove coins forward to buy the stallkeep a jug of wine. She hoped Safar would like his present. Stolen or not, it had been purchased at a greater price than he could ever know. Nerisa saw the rough men return, shaking their heads and saying their quarry had escaped. Safar called for more wine. Katal obliged. And while the tumblers were poured and the first toasts drunk, Nerisa slipped off the branch onto the alley wall.

Then she shinnied up a drain pipe to the roof and then to an adjoining building and was gone.

The Student Quarter was the oldest section of Walaria, an untidy sprawl between the rear of the many-domed temple and the western most wall. The western gate had been built many centuries before. It was so little used it had fallen into disrepair and the king had it permanently sealed to avoid the expense of fixing it. The Quarter itself was a warren of broken cobbled streets so narrow that front doors opened directly into traffic. The residences and shops were among the poorest in the city and were stacked atop one another with no particular plan, leaning crazily over the streets.

Safar lived in the near ruins of the one remaining gate tower on the western wall. He'd rented it from an old warder who considered himself the owner because in his view the king no longer had any use for it. He also offered boardone meal a day cooked by his wife. The gate tower consisted of two rooms, one without a roof, and strolling rights along the wall. It wasn't just the cheap price that had attracted Safar to his accommodations. He was a child of the mountains, the gate tower gave him an unimpeded view of the entire city on one side and the broad empty plains on the other. At night the tower also made a marvelous observatory where he could study the heavens and check them against his Dreamcatcher books.

It was also good for sunsets and on this particular day, some hours after he'd left the Foolsmire, Safar was sprawled across the broad stone windowsill, toasting the departing sun with the last of his wine. From the other side of the Quarter he was serenaded by a priest singing the last prayer of the day from the Temple's chanting tower. It was magically amplified so it resounded across the city. The song was a daily plea to the gods who guard the night:

We are men of Walaria, good men and pious. Blessed be, blessed be. Our women are chaste, our children respectful. Blessed be, blessed be. Devils and felons beware of our city. Blessed be, blessed be. You will find only the faithful here. Blessed be, blessed be…

When the song ended Safar laughed aloud. He was still a little drunk and found the song's sanctimonious lies amusing. The prayer was a creation of Umurhan's, coined in his youth when he was second in command of the temple. It was considered by manymeaning Umurhan's most fervent political supportersto be the mightiest spell against evil in the city's history. Umurhan had used the acclaim to help topple his wizardly superior. Once that had been accomplished he'd joined with Didima and Kalasariz, both ambitious young lords at the time, to make Didima king and Kalasariz the chief wazier. The three ruled Walaria to this day with brutal zeal.

To Safar the nightly spellsong had become an ugly jest, a riddle that would be a worthy creation of Harle, himself, that dark jester of the gods. Was the evil outside the walls of Walaria? Or within?

He'd heard the song the first time only a short two years before. The setting sun had been in his view that day, just as it was now…

It was a small caravan, a poor caravan, carrying castoffs from the stalls of distant markets. The finest animal was the camel Safar sat upon, a fly-blown, bad-tempered male he'd hired for the journey. He'd made the jump from Kyraniamore a wobble, actuallyin three stages. The first was a traveling party to the river towns at the foot of the Gods Divide. The second was with a group of drovers herding their cattle across the dry plains to new grazing grounds. He'd come across the caravan during that leg of the trip. It was heading directly for Walaria and so he'd joined it, saving many days and miles.

The sun was falling fast as he approached the city, rolling in his camel saddle like a fisherman in troubled waters. Walaria was backlit by a rosy hue casting the city's immense walls into shadow so they looked like a forbidding range of black mountains. Palace domes and towers of worship glittered above those walls, with high peaked buildings steepling the gaps in between. The night breeze brought the exotic sounds and scents of Walaria: the heavy buzz of crowded humanity, the crash and clang of busy workshops, the smell of smoke from cooking fires and garbage heapsgood garlic and bad meat. The atmosphere was sensuous and dangerous at the same timeas much was promised as was threatened.

Guarding the main gate was a squad of soldiers bearing Didima's royal standardgilded fig leaves, harking back hundreds of years to when Walaria was nothing more than a small oasis for nomads. The gate was menacinglooking like the cavernous opening of a giant's mouth. The gate's black teeth were raised iron bars thick as a man's waist and tapering to rough spear points. The caravan master, a vaporous little man with shifty eyes, bargained with the soldiers for entrance. But he couldn't, or wouldn't meet the bribe price and so the caravan was ordered to camp overnight outside the wallsjust beyond the enormous ditch encircling the city. The ditch was as much for waste disposal as it was a defense and it was filled with garbage and offal and the cast-off corpses of citizens too poor for a proper funeral. Smoke-blackened figures scurried along the ditch, tending the many fires kept burning to dispose of the waste. These were the city's licensed scavengers, so low in station it was considered a curse to stare at them overlong, much less suffer their touch.

Safar, hoping to avoid an unpleasant night, shyly approached the sergeant in charge of the squad and presented him with Coralean's letter of introduction. It was written on fine linen and bound by thick gold thread and so impressed the sergeant that he waved Safar through the gate. Safar hesitated, peering into the huge tunnel bored through the walls. It was long and dark with a small circle of dim lightlooking like the size of a plateannouncing the exit on the other side.

It was then he first heard the spellsong, a wailing voice from far away, and seeming so close…

"We are men of Walaria, good men and pious. Blessed be, blessed be…

It filled him with such dread he tried to turn back. But the sergeant shoved him forward. Get your stumps movin lad, the sergeant said with rough humor. I've had a long day and there's a flagon of Walaria's best missin me down at the tavern."

Safar did as he was told, treading through the darkness to the gradually widening circle of light, the spellsong wailing in his ears: