x
When the chain finally lifted him to the floor of Sector 77, the second sun was already blazing, and Wolfie covered his eyes in surprise, caught in the barest glow of both luminaries. Feeling the heat warming his bones, he smiled and put on the sunglasses that had been dangling around his neck the whole time. The chain hurried higher, toward the winch, and below Galahad the observation deck was already crawling down. The Magister hesitated and, did not jump, but with quick and habitual movements climbed down the chain and descended to the scorched metal, tapping on it with wooden soles.
The platform surrounding the three-story small observatory building, with its telescope sticking out into the distance, was empty. It overlooked the entire City and served as a crossing point for the bridges that connected the tops of the middle tier buildings and the castles of the upper tier — they towered over the City like islands. Each was an architectural masterpiece of its own, belonging to one of the great houses that for centuries had competed with each other in elegance. They were of the finest art, and they fascinated those who had been at such heights, making them connoisseurs and devotees of true splendor. Here it was no longer a question of excessiveness as such. This richness of style went beyond the point where one wanted to worship, and it was hard to believe that it was all man-made. At least, that was true of the four castles that could be easily seen from the platform. To the north was Yath, a little closer was Amun, to the east was Bombarda, and farther south was Levaturgosta. In the center of the City rose the Usurper's Palace, which looked like a giant older brother against the backdrop of all these castles. A large stone bridge, built between the spires of the tallest buildings in the middle tier, led from the platform to Castle Amun, where among other things was the University and the Gilda Clock Tower, Magister Wolfie's destination.
The glow of both luminaries sparkled on the wind-polished hedge pattern that surrounded the perimeter of the site. The drawing told the classic chronicle of the City. Characters of antiquity flashed with cutting light in the eyes of a viewer rare in these parts, warning them not to fall into the vast sea of tiled and stone roofs, into the canyons of quarters that descended ever lower to the invisible earth — as if the slopes of mountains that separated the castles that had been their peaks. It was easy to stare and go blind from all this beauty, so the Magister did not immediately notice a lengthy man in a light coat and a tall leather hat, intensely looking something in the blue instrument of the city view.
"Master Perleglose. I didn't expect to find you here," Wolfie said, standing to the right of the watcher. His words made the Grand Master of the Magistrate Perleglose, head of House Trocchia, jump, and the cylinder on his head wobbled, so he had to grab it with both hands to keep it from falling.
"Oh! Oh, my Heart! Wolf! Wolf! You... Moon damn you, sneak up master!" trying to bring the cylinder back to its lost balance, the man grunted, turning to Wolfie with his white beard twitching in all directions.
"I beg your pardon, Grand Master," Galahad bowed his head.
"Watch it, you joker," Perleglose muttered, smoothing his beard. "What do you think you're bowing to me for? Have you seen what's happening to the second platform? It won't be long before this whole millennia-old monument, damn it, crumbles on your house under the weight of this insane Tygrad project."
He paced back and forth anxiously:
"Oh, moons! I don't understand who they listen to in the Palace now ("I wonder how old he is?" the inner voice inquired. "Probably younger..." suggested another. "But not by much," the third one replied. "How on earth did he survive the 'night'?" squealed their somber colleague) and better let the earth swallow them if the architectural firm grants permission for this suicidal nonsense!" finished the Grand Master and pointed to the Old Quarter.
Wolfie, quickly regaining his senses, looked in the direction to which the Master's finger and the observation device were pointing. In the distance, over the roofs of the Old Quarter, rising above the marketplace and his canal, Wolfie could see scaffolding and the Magistrate's ships carrying materials to barges parked near the scaffolding. But what disturbed him was the strange smoke that stretched in spiraling curls from the great market — on the square in front of the Colosseum there was a whipping post, and it was time for a public flogging before the feast.
"They're going to build a new neighborhood on this junk," the Grand Master snickered. "You know what he suggested, you know? Pour concrete all the way to the root! Ha! Ha!"
His beard, which he had just tidied up, exploded again.
"What a bunch of brainless, uneducated bastards!" Perleglose was indignant.
"It is difficult for me to evaluate the actions of the High Magistrate, it is dangerous to my health. I have you and your wisdom for that," Wolfie promptly responded, bowing his head again.
"Cracking wise, Wolf?" Trocchia squinted his eyes. "Bowing to me again. Your sneering and your formal language make me sick to my stomach. The only one! The only worthy man jokes off and hides behind his official language ("The only worthy man," the voice repeated softly). Wait till I promote you to senior, or even to sector master, hmm? What are you going to do then? It will be your head," the Grand Master squinted at him, "I know. You revenging me for keeping you in this swamp."
"("Yes!" angrily muttered the inner voice) You know that I..." Wolfie began, but Perleglose interrupted him:
"I know what you're going to say. And you'll be right. I'll do what I can. I promise you'll be relocated. Besides, soon there won't be any need to do anything if these crazy kids get the final green light in the Senate. The Migration Period will happen all by itself."
"Thank you," Wolfie bowed once more ("Or more like they burn everyone," the acerbic voice snickered in his head).
"Don't, don't do that," the Grand Master rolled his eyes. "I don't need your bows. Bow to the cultists. Do you know what's still stopping them? Only that there's the old temple library of those fanatics, with their chants that are still part of the Wonder Set," Perleglose rolled his eyes again. "What about the fact that this whole neighborhood is a monument of architecture? And the fact that it's as decrepit as my legs? ("And the fact that I seem to have my head burnt in," the voice murmured.) Doesn't that stop them? Or don't they care about a story that doesn't benefit them? I understand that they want to tear down everything that once bore the name 'Parliament' in this City. They're not fools, they can see the shade..." Perleglose was already breathing heavily and grabbed his side with one hand ("Liver," the voice in Galahad's head stated) and leaned on the hot bar with the other, but pulled it away at once.
"Whew. Okay. Red moon down their throats. Are you going to fix Amun?" Trocchia asked, catching his breath and shaking his hand.
"Oh my... it's been a long time since I've climbed it," Magister Wolfie raised his head at the castle.
"Wonderful construction," sighed the Grand Master, "It would be a pity to lose them."
"Well, they'll last a long time with my help," Wolfie said.
The Grand Master's beard, meanwhile, was blowing in the wind, and he was catching it and tucking parts of it behind his belt.
"Well, you have calmed me down."
"I am glad, Your Grace."
"Yeah... yeah... Well, good luck, good luck. You're our hope, Wolf."
"Thank you, Your Grace!" the Magister bowed again.
"Oh, Heart! Here we go again! Go, go already," Perleglose muttered, clapped Wolfie on the shoulder, turned to the observation device, and continued to look at the construction.
Wolfie bowed to the Grand Master's back and stepped onto the broad back of the bridge, covered with the scaly masonry that sprouted in an intricate pattern from the small observatory to Castle Amun. Between the spans, the statues basked in the sunshine, so frozen overnight that their shadows still held the morning chill. The bridge seemed to grow in cross vaults from the tops of the buildings on the second tier, and the statues, like crown prongs, crowned their tops. The twin shadows from its sides, which had traveled all the way to the middle of the bridge, formed a pattern that extended into another dimension so that the Magister's eyes suddenly lost their bearings and it seemed to him that the bridge was disappearing from under his feet. "Damn this age," he hissed through his teeth and shook his head, but the extra dimension only spilled over from the shadows to the rest of the bridge. Galahad was walking down a tunnel repeating itself, where around the corner of each shape was the same tunnel, and the tops of the corners of that shape contained the entire shape. "It's hot," the voice stated. Wolfie frowned and moved into the shadows. He felt dizzy and heavy in the head that the morning shower had so successfully banished. He had to stop and remove his backpack, where a wooden snuffbox lay behind the doll at the very bottom. He pulled it out into the light and, running his finger over the carved letter A, opened it. There were some herbs in it. He lifted the top layer, pulled out the one with the blue hue, smelled it, put it in his mouth, and began chewing. It smelled fresh and occasionally got stuck in his dentures, causing him to have to correct it with his tongue. As he chewed, he packed the snuffbox and slung the backpack over his shoulders. The bridge had regained some of its old shapes, and the Magister, trying to keep in the shadow of the statues, wandered toward the Castle, peering into the towers of the University. "You are alive and he is not. What's the use? You are a living nothing, and he is a dead legend."
"Shut up!"
But the voice wouldn't let up: "Why should I shut up? Would it make you feel better if I shut up?" Then the Magister pinched his thigh, and it hurt so much that he cried out, causing a pair of little birds, blue owlies, to fly up in fright and rush deep into his multidimensional maze and disappear into the darkness, which came out of nowhere in the re-reflections. The Magister shuddered, the familiar chill running down Galahad's back.
The darkness began to take shape, and soon Wolfie could see a patrol approaching. Four armor-clad riders with raised pikes on mechanical horses in pitch-black armor, and equally black hounds with them, moved toward the Magister, leaving a plume of dark smoke streaming behind the procession. The creaking springs and rotating pressure compensators gave a halo of infernality to these creatures. And what heat it was when they came closer! Wolfie felt himself sweat from head to toe. He was dizzier than ever, but the Magister mustered all his willpower and didn't let himself get completely lost in the darkness that had overtaken him. As the nearer horseman approached the Magister, he stopped, letting out a cascade of steam and smoke. The Magister coughed. The others continued on their way as if he didn't exist. Wolfie humbly bowed his head, reached into his cloak pocket, and with a shaky hand pulled out a paper with the Magistrate's seal on it.
Time stands still.
While sweat accumulated on the tip of his nose in a large drop, Wolfie stared at the stone surface of the bridge and listened to the distant creaking and grinding of the procession. The horseman, on the other hand, did not move. The Magister felt his teeth bouncing treacherously as if his dentures were a wind-up toy, and someone began cranking the key. The drop fell. But then someone else's hand rested on his outstretched arm and gently lowered it:
"He's with me! To Amun. Mind your own business."
Suddenly, in this tension, Perleglose's voice was as if it were playing on some string that had been strung in Wolfie's body. And the sound of that string sent a pleasant, much-anticipated relaxation through his body, which even made him fall to one knee. Something rattled in the horse's chest, and the horseman trotted off briskly, rumbling to catch up with his fuming brethren.
"My God, Wolf, you're wet as a mouse. Come on, that's enough, let's go. There are new sentries at the entrance to Amun. I'm afraid you'll be in trouble again without me. There's a great deal of reinforcement all over the City today," Trocchia said half-turned, already walking toward the castle. Wolfie looked after the black rider, who had already caught up with the procession.
"Of course, it's easy for you not to be humiliated," the somber voice in Galahad's head rumbled. The Magister rolled up the paper and began to shove it into the inner pocket of his cloak, but he realized that Perleglose was right, and the cloak was dreadfully soaked. So he took off the backpack again and, folding the paper in triplicate, packed it behind the doll. Tightening the ropes on the backpack, he looked around once more. The extra dimension in the objects was gone, the path was clear, and he hurried after the Grand Master.
At the checkpoint at the end of the bridge, Trocchia spoke his magic words again, and they were allowed to pass without inspection. However, the two guards of House Amun, wearing gold cuirasses and helmets with green feathers, did not strike Wolfie as intimidating as the knights from the Palace. He even thought the guards were asleep when, out of breath, he caught up with Perleglose, who had stopped in front of them in a waiting pose. A slanted zebra-painted barrier opened by itself, and they were in a cobblestone square by a jade stone gate covered with a fine web of lozenges, gilded and peeling in places. The huge castle loomed over them, surrounded by a high wall, swollen here and there with towers stretching into the sky. A covered gondola awaited takeoff in the square, and students crowded nearby.
"Freshman excursion," Perleglose explained as he and Wolfie walked past the gondola.
Trying to keep up with Perleglose, the Magister barely had time to see the children in purple cloaks with white collars and their teacher in the same cloak, but yellow with an intricate wig in the shape of the Castle Amun.
As they approached the small door in the gate, Perleglose yanked the bell. While they waited, the gondola captain tried to start the engine, but something went wrong and it only whistled and the boat rocked to the edge of the square. There was a scream from inside.
"Poor people. Look, Wolf, how sad our situation is," Perleglose shook his head.
At that moment the door opened and the Grand Master stepped inside. Wolfie followed him in. As the door slammed shut, there was another whistling, shouting, and then a thud in the center of the gate. A vibration went through the walls, and from the observation wall above them, a statue of some ancient mythical creature fell into the courtyard of the castle, shattering so that the shards reached the Grand Master and Magister Wolfie's feet. Trocchia covered his eyes with his hand. Across the courtyard, a plump-looking young man in the Magistrate's cloak was running toward them. The cloak was a little longer than necessary for the young man, and he lifted the hem of it as he ran. He looked up apprehensively, apparently afraid of the next fall of antiquity. His face changed every second, but more often than not it expressed genuine shame.
"Your Grace, your Grace! I'll fix it, Your Grace!" he shouted, running past Wolfie and Perleglose, who caught him by the scruff of the neck and set him before him. It seemed that the fat magister was about to faint.
"I forbid it, you hear me? I forbid you to take the kids anywhere in this thing. Until you've done... twenty, no, fifty test flights on it yourself. And if I ever, ever find out or hear... Oh, someday you will pay with your life for your foolishness..." the Grand Master began to reprimand the young man in a booming voice, but he stammered:
"Of course! Absolutely not! I undertake not to!"
"Now stop them quickly! Do you hear me? Immediately!" Trocchia shouted, grabbed the magister, and pushed him toward the door. He hesitated with the lock, but finally opened it and disappeared into the square with shouts.
When the door closed, the Grand Master exhaled heavily and seemed to grow old all at once. Turning to Wolfie with sad eyes, he said:
"It's no use, Wolf. They're idiots."
Galahad looked confused into Perleglose's desperate eyes.
"I don't even remember anymore, my uncle's great-nephew... You'll go, I'll go. There are a few other smart people, but... Okay. What's the use? You go do your thing and I'll go do mine."
Wolfie bowed.
"If you do that again, I'll put you down as an idiot," the Grand Master said over his shoulder as he moved away.
"And I am, Your Grace," the voice in Galahad's head said sadly.
Wolfie watched as Trocchia disappeared through the small door behind the colonnade surrounding the grand staircase leading to the University and searched the clock tower with his eyes.
As the Magister began to figure out where he should climb, the voice of the same young man came from behind him:
"Magister Junior Technician! How good of you to finally make time for us!"
Wolfie turned around.
"Good morning, Magister Senior Technician. I'm sorry I didn't have time to greet you right away. I came to you as soon as I finished my work on the Twelfth."
The fat man, wiping sweat and smiling, walked over to Wolfie:
"Not at all, not at all, when their highnesses are angry, there is no time for formalities. How's your health? You're up early, I see."
"Thank you, I feel fine. I hope you are well, too."
"Oh, of course I am. So much to do. You have no idea," he said, chuckling foolishly, but then he switched to a new line, "Do you want me to escort you to the tower? You've come to fix our clocks, haven't you?"
"That's right. Let's go," and the fat man pointed toward the staircase in the castle wall, which spiraled around the courtyard, and led Wolfie to it, continuing, "We've been stopped for four thirds of the moon now. And Duchess Key managed to notice that, being on the veranda, she had to send a messenger to clarify the time, and wall clocks, much less pocket ones, you know yourself, not even highnesses can find them now."
"I feel you, Magister Astolok," Wolfie said to the soft back of the man who climbed the steps in front of him.
"Take my grandfather, for instance, he was a real clockmaker too, he was very much like you, busy all the time. Slender and sinewy. Never got tired and never got sick. You don't get sick either?"
At that moment, a crowd of children of all ages ran out of the University building onto the stairs. Immediately, noise and shuffling filled the well of the courtyard. Their cloaks rustled with many hues, a kaleidoscope of sound and color. "I wonder what they are being taught now?" pondered the voice in Wolfie's head.
"You don't get sick, do you?" a noise sounded next to his face.
Magister Astolok turned and stopped so that Wolfie almost crashed into his fat back as he pondered.
"No... No, Magister Senior Technician, I don't, thank you."
Astolok smiled at some thought of his own, bowed, and moved on.
"That's good, that's good. But I get sick a lot. My stomach, you know, my feet creak from these eternal stairs, and it's hot and cold. Oh, moons! You should know how tired I am of this heat. And the water supply's been acting up. I used to bathe almost four times a day, but now God willing I wash in the morning, pardon the details," chuckled the senior technician.
Wolfie stopped listening to him again and stared at the girl in the scarlet cloak; she tripped over a piece of statue and fell on the tiled drawing of the knight. His heart ached; he recognized the emblem of his faculty. At that moment, the stairs ended, and Wolfie and Magister Astolok were on the wall together.
The senior technician walked to the edge and, with his hand over his eyes, looked out over the Palace.
"Can you imagine, falling in love with a commoner! Hah! I can even hear the Duchess going wild. What a news story! I can't wait to get her portrait in the Evening Wind. A friend of mine from the journalism faculty promised to bring the issue," he turned to Wolfie. "You'll be staying with us long, won't you? Would you like me to bring it in?"
Wolfie, who had again lost the thread of the conversation, was quick to agree:
"Sure, bring it in."
"Let's go that way," Astolok pointed to the nearest tower and, smiling merrily, hurried toward it.
Wolfie followed, frowning at the serenity of the senior technician.
The younger star was approaching its zenith, illuminating the rising moons that glittered in the sky like a path of light on water. From here, from the wall, it looked as if they were lined up as an extension of the stairs that Wolfie and Astolok had climbed, and they could be climbed up like steps. Up here, the problems were so distant that neither the disturbing chill in his chest, nor the black knights, nor the huge rusty pipe and its shadow simply did not exist. Even the voices in his head fell silent. Children laughed, a few owlies sang their thin voices, and the rooftops, like waves, rolled over each other, swaying gently in the sunny haze.
Astolok stopped at the inconspicuous door leading to the clock tower. It was hidden behind a sculpture of people fighting a giant hovering octopus. One could sense that the sculptor had tried to portray the octopus as particularly intimidating, but it came out rather sad, while the men dressed as city guards, on the contrary, looked bloodthirsty and frightening. As he pulled the bunch of keys from his belt to his face, Astolok was already visibly sweating, trying to find the right one. Sweat trickled down his wrinkled forehead, with its bushy eyebrows raised, and into his wide, childlike eyes, so the magister had to stop and wipe it off with his sleeve.
"Here, I found it!"
He jangled the bundle and pulled his belly to the keyhole. After a moment's hesitation, he unlocked the door, and the magisters smelled cool and damp.
"I don't think anyone's been in here in a long time," Wolfie said as he stepped inside.
"Since the Cult had the locks changed, I think. You see, this has been a favorite place for solitude," Astolok said, coming in next, embarrassed by the echo of his own voice. "There were copies of the keys wandering around the faculties, so we had to have an operation, so to speak."
He laughed, and his cheeks puffed up in a smile.
"What a pity," Wolfie said thoughtfully, looking around the room for a light switch.
"Yes, it's a pity, because now the poor birds have nowhere else to go, and listening to those dumbasses lecture all day is no fun at all!" Astolok chuckled louder, his voice ringing in the tower. "And if you're looking for a light switch, I'd better go get a torch, because the wiring was damaged last year."
The senior technician immediately disappeared into the doorway, giving Wolfie no time for questions. "What a mess," the voice remarked.
"It's not a mess, it's a shambles," Wolfie said aloud, peering and sniffing at the darkness.
He reached out and fumbled for the glass bottle on the dilapidated shelf. The Magister grabbed it and, tinkling, drew it out of the crowded row of its brethren, then, listening, wiggled it in the air, grasped the cork with his thumb and forefinger, and pulled it. It took a long time for the cork to pop, but then suddenly, with a popping sound, it opened, and Wolfie held it up to his nose.
"Ugh, vinegar," he muttered frustratedly. "What do they need vinegar for?"
The voice, in turn, prompted: "Once upon a time it was something else."
"That's true," Wolfie muttered back, peering into the rows of bottles. His eyes were already accustomed to the half-light, and a large glass bottle caught his eye on the floor. Applying all the strength he had left in him, he pulled out the hardened cork and, lowering his nose to the bottle, exclaimed joyously: "Ah-ha!" and nearly dropped some vials from the table, climbing out of a row of similar bottles unnoticed by him in the darkness. Then he found a board, broke it lengthwise, wrapped the first cloth he could find around it, and returned to the bottle. Carefully tilting it, he moistened the coiled rag and, taking out a flint lighter engraved with the letter A, lit his improvised torch.
The space was transformed at once. The shafts of the clock hovered over the Magister, rising beyond the dancing shadows. Bristling with gears and wheels, gleaming with a huge pendulum, the mechanism of the clock, forgotten and abandoned, stared at Wolfie with the reproach of its rusty chains and rotted ropes.
"Yes, yes, my dear, I'm here," Wolfie said bitterly. "I've wronged you. I'm guilty. Moons know, I didn't mean it, baby."
He walked around, shaking off the dust with his sleeve on the electronic control levers that occupied the entire first floor and, whispering: "There, there, I'll get it done. Be patient," Galahad found a torch mount on the wall, but he had to do some work with a blunt ax he found on the floor. He threw his cloak and backpack right on the floor, so as not to burn them, and was wearing only his work overalls, scorching only the gray hair on his arm. Soon the torch was on the wall. Then Wolfie retrieved the doll from his backpack and placed it carefully on the floor. Hovering over it, he cleared his throat and said: "Get up!" The doll didn't move, but something in it clicked, and a moment later the activation mechanism inside started working. A leg twitched, then an arm, and the doll rose on its arms, looking up at the Magister with eyes painted over its visor. Wolfie raised his eyebrows:
"Shall we do some work?"
The doll nodded obediently.
"Do you see the torch?"
The doll turned its head toward the source of light.
"There's an oil by the desk. There's plenty of rags and boards, I need light everywhere, but don't burn anything, so either take all the wood out of here or stack it so the fire can't get to it."
The doll nodded, pulled her legs up, stood up abruptly, staggered, but quickly caught the balance. And Wolfie was already reaching into his backpack for the ammeter.
He chipped the neck of an empty bottle with the ax, poured oil into it, and lit it. With this improvised candle in metal tongs, which he found in a pile of junk stucked near the table, he scrambled all over the first floor before he noticed that it was light everywhere and that the wiggling silhouette of the doll was flickering somewhere at the top of a moonlit dial.
"Amazing," he muttered to himself. "It wouldn't be surprising if you had your brother's brains..." another voice frustrated. But he was immediately distracted by thoughts of wiring. Apparently, everything was fine in the tower; Galahad couldn't detect any problems, which made the task more difficult. Wiping his hands, he walked along with the appliances and saw a rusty barrel in the junk piled by the doll near the door. Unscrewing the lid, Wolfie raised his eyebrows:
"Gasoline! I should get my generator in here."
The doll went down the spiral staircase and approached him.
"Where did you get this?" Wolfie asked, pointing to the barrel.
The doll pointed its hand upward.
"Yeah... ahem. Tell you what, find the winch and see if it works."
The doll nodded and walked away.
Wolfie took his notebook out of the folded backpack on the table and followed the doll up the spiral staircase to one of the four moon dials. The doll turned onto one of the tiers near the striking work, and Galahad climbed to the very top and pounced on the door handle in the murky glass of the large dial. The door budged easily, but immediately the hot wind and light came crashing down on him, and the door slammed shut in front of him, rattling and jingling the glass all over the well of the huge tower. The Magister shrieked in surprise and, gently pressing the knob, looked out. The wind howled through the crack of the door and came in from the opposite direction. The Magister barely squeezed through, struggling against the elements, and stepped out onto a tiny metal balcony that swayed in the wind like a rag.
The suns were blindingly bright, and Wolfie put back on the sunglasses that hung around his neck. With a remarkable effort, he opened the door and fastened it to the outside of the dial with a chain. The wind, howling long and blowing out the torches that met along the way, blew into the tower. Dirt hung in wisps on the dial, and on the metal moon rings rested a nest of a large brood of owlies, which squealed merrily, delighted by the gusts of wind. Wolfie took a step on the balcony, which sagged treacherously under his weight.
"The red moon," he said.
ns 15.158.61.5da2
