I had concluded it was expiation I tried to work out there, and maybe something less grandiose, as if by confronting disaster, I could inure myself to what would come. Truly, I was not inured. My numb state was torn bit by bit into compassion and horror. What I beheld made what I did there the antithesis of my spirit and my humanity. Once I had to go off to vomit, and imagined the plague already in me, foreseeing each paroxysm and calamity I would undergo in the vivid details of which I had by this time watched a hundred enactments. But it was not the plague, not then. Then even my revulsion passed, even my cringing apprehension, so I grew numbed again, as at the beginning.

  A day melted into a night, a night into a day. Somewhere I slept, somewhere drank water, somewhere refused the platter of food a priest brought me. These were interludes. The rest was death, and the ever-changing face of death, now a child’s, now a woman’s. A goldsmith, a rich man brought in

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  from the street, who had a fine house in the upper commercial district and mixie servants, took almost the two days to die. In the middle of his seizures, he recognized me, or what I had been, and clawing at my shoulders, babbled to me to save him. Till then none had identified me as the sorcerer. Goaded by his cries, I set my hands on him, aware it was useless. Finding this, too, his eyes lighted up with hate and he spit in my face.

  “May you suffer this tomorrow, you jackal! May you lie in your own filth and blood with these rats in your vitals!”

  I told him I expected that I should, but he was raving again and paid no heed.

  The sky, like an oven roof of blued heat, baked disease into the city. Everywhere the incense rose in columns; I smelled it in my sleep, over the fetor of the plague. Nearly all the brotherhood of the Water Temple were sick now. Three died by the magic well, pleading for its water, which did not heal them, which they could not even keep down. At length only I and one old priest remained. He drew me aside, and ordered me to leave the shrine and the city, and seek the hills. Many had done this, though, as it turned out, to small avail.

  I said I would not go. The priest remonstrated; I had stayed healthy this far and might well be spared, if I would listen to reason. I said I had been forewarned that I would die of the plague, and eventually he left me in peace. That is, in what fragments of peace I had.

  Toward the end of that second day we saw the red signature of the plague bonfires to the east and south. I was bemused by then, walking about like a part-resuscitated corpse myself. The pyres put me in mind of some ancient burning, not of BarIbithni, not even from my past among the tribes. It was another thing. I leaned on a pillar of the temple and shut my eyes, and had the vision of a mountain pouring out magenta flames onto a black sky, and a white figure running down a slope with the lava-serpents of this fire going after it.

  In the middle of that came a crashing on the courtyard gate. I drew myself together and went to open it, picking my way between the sick. Even outside, the paving was thick with them. Three jerdiers on white geldings stood like tall trees among a world of people on their backs.

  “By order of the Emperor’s council,” their captain said, “all dead are to be burned.” Anticipating the pious outrage that must generally have been forthcoming, he added, “The

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  fire of Masrimas cleanses the contagion of the fever, for Yellow Mantle has spread from the ruins of BitHessee.” Then he checked and stared at me. He was one of Bailgar’s officers, a Shield. “By Masrimas, Vazkorl What are you at here, sir?”

  Plainly it was ridiculous to dissemble, for we had spoken before.

  “I am some use here.”

  “But have you had no news?” he asked me.

  “What news? Only news of the plague.”

  “There have been men looking for you since morning.” He beckoned to me. “Will you step nearer? I’ve no mind to shout.”

  “I may be infected,” I said, “and probably am.”

  “Probably we all are for that matter.” He swung down from his saddle and came up to the gate. “Sorem’s dying.”

  It shocked me. To see one’s death in a mirror. This was what I had run from. Like a fool, I asked if it was plague.

  “Yes, plague. What else?”

  “When did he fall sick?”

  “Sunrise. He asks for you.”

  “I can’t heal him.”

  “It’s not for healing, sir.” The jerdier’s face was set. He looked away from me and said, “It’s little enough. It’s a hard death he’s having; worse with the strong ones, for it takes them longer. All the same, you had better hurry if you intend to go. The priests have spoken the last prayer for him.”

  I wanted to ask him if Malmiranet lived, but the words blocked my throat like the black flies. My fate had hunted me down. I should have to watch Sorem’s death. Maybe hers. I would have given everything to avoid it.

  “I’ve no means to get a mount.” Most of the horses had contracted the plague, the cattle, too; hour upon hour I would hear the mallets of the slaughterers over the temple wall, like a dull thunder.

  ”Take my horse,” the jerdier said. His eyes were bleak with the estimation he had made of me. “You remember the road to the Crimson Palace?”

  They let me in at the gate with no delay.

  There was not a breath of wind in the garden city. Black spears of shadow lengthened beneath the trees. The pink flamingos picked their way among the shallows of the lake in-

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  differently. No bird had the sickness, neither the smaller domestic animals.

  Between the pillars of the incense and the plague fires, the city stretched like one great public tomb. Bodies were tumbled in the streets, since there were few still healthy who would risk carrying them away, though occasionally the death carts trundled by. Here and there a priest or beggar hurried between the shuttered, silent houses and the barricaded shops. In an alley a blind man was tapping with his staff and calling for alms, nervously darting his head to catch tha stillness. Perhaps no one had told him that BarIbithni was dying, invisibly, about him. On the steps of a porphyry fountain a little starving dog, some woman’s pet, had chewed greedily at a thing from which I turned my eyes.

  Sorem’s bed faced west across the large frescoed chamber, to where the windows stared into the overcast sky. It had a copper skin, that sky, and a yellow sheen revealed where the sun was lowering itself; no air came through the open casements, only the reflection of the sinking day spilled on the floor. The beautiful room stank, but it was a stink so familiar to me now that I hardly noted it. I could see the bruise still on his cheek where the horse had kicked at him, no other color there but one. He lay on the crimson pillows, which seemed to have drained the blood from him into themselves. Yellow Mantle, yes, it was cleverly named.

  I went up to him. He was very near to death; I had barely been in time.

  As sometimes happened at the end, the fever and the delirium had abated, leaving him clear. Though he spoke with almost no voice, scarcely audible, yet his words were formed and precise.

  “I’m sorry to greet you in this disgusting state. It was good of you to come.”

  His gray bitch hound was stretched near the bed. Hearing him speak, it raised its head eagerly and beat with its tail an instant, then sank down again like a stone. Sorem was so weak, he could not order his expressions to show me pain, sadness, pleasure-anything. I sat where the physician had put his wooden stool before he went away.

  “I was in the Commercial City,” I said. “One of Bailgar’s Shields found me and told me how it was with you.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing now,” he said. “It’s almost done.” He yawned, as a man does who has lost too much blood, and murmured, “Even the healing of Vazkor could not defeat this

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  thing. But you will live, my sorcerer.” He seemed to have forgotten his accusations, what he had said to me in the tower, and before her. His hand was moving on the covers, dry and yellow. “I regret we never went hunting,” he said. “The white puma and the lion. It’s strange,” he said, “I never thought of death before. Even that night of Basnurmon’s assassins, not even then. I held a leopard on my spear, in the hills once. Any mistake, and he would have killed me, yet I was too busy fighting him to think of it. But this leopard is different.”

  There was no one close. The court functionaries, what portion was left of them, and the priests, had been and gone. Only the physician was at his table across the room, and a sentry at the door. Sorem set his hand over mine. In the gray parchment flesh of his lids, his eyes had grown more blue, younger by contrast.

  “You will not always think poorly of me, will you, Vazkor? It is hard to find yourself, as I did, like some stranger in a dark grove. Harder to find yourself alone there.”

  I took his hand. I could do nothing else. His grip was feeble. He shut his eyes, and said, “Malmiranet lives. They told her you were in the Palace, and she went away so we might talk privately. I believe she knew me before ever I knew myself. Leave me, and seek her. I’ll do well enough for a while.”

  But I could see he had not far to go. I kept where I was, and said, “Presently, Sorem.”

  He lifted up his lids, and said quite strongly, “My thanks. It won’t be for long. Don’t call anyone. I would rather my mother didn’t see me die. She has seen plenty already.”

  So I sat there by him, his hand in mine. A minute passed. The heat was fading, the room growing dank and chill, yet the walls were drowned in the last hot copper-yellow rays of the afternoon, which altered even the motionless dog to a beast of brass, as if the air itself had caught our sickness. Sorem looked toward the windows and his eyes widened, as though he could make out his death rising on the metallic sky.

  “The sun is almost down. I shall go with Masrimas then.” I said, for I could summon nothing else, “I envy you your god.”

  But he shut his eyes again, and his mouth twisted and his hand clenched strengthlessly in mine.

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  “I spoke merely for custom. There is only the dark before me, and it is too easy to reach it. I have often wondered-“

  He did not finish, and stupidly I leaned to hear the rest. But he was dead.

  I got to my feet slowly. The physician, employed in mixing some balm Sorem would not longer require, did not turn. Malmiranet stood just within the door. I could not properly see her face in the darkening of the light, but she seemed all pity rather than grief. I suppose she had dreamed him dead a thousand times through the years of intrigue they had weathered here. The reality could not appal her. Only its wickedness.

  I was shivering, but, having looked too long for it, could no longer distinguish the demon. As Malmiranet moved across the chamber, the darkness appeared to billow and fold about her. Then I saw that the grieving pity in her face also included me. I tried to say her name and could not say it and sank to my knees without properly knowing how I came there.

  Her fingers touched my neck and forehead like wands of ice, and then there was no more.

  I was nine years of age and a snake had bitten me. It was in Eshkorek Arnor that this had happened, and the doctors had laid me in a bath of ice to cool my fever. Yet I shouted to them that I was cold, the cold was killing me, and they paid no heed. Eventually my father came.

  He was lean and dark, his crow’s wing of hair framing his shoulders and his face as he bent to me.

  “You must lie quiet,” he said. “She has ordered it. I can do nothing. She will punish you till she grows bored with the punishment. Then it will stop.”

  He showed me, pointing with his long jeweled finger, where my mother stood. Her robes were white and her breasts were bare, the breasts of a maiden, firm and high. Her face Was hidden hi a cat-mask of gold, and golden spiders spun in her long pale hair. It was from the deck of a ship she Watched me, a ship with great blue sails, and from the yard depended a hanged man, and the gulls snapped and clapped their hunger in his vitals.

  That was the first dream.

  There were only two. In the second, Uastis had shut me in a burning tower, and I roasted there, screaming, for several centuries.

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  I became aware gradually that the ice had melted in the fire and put it out.

  A wonderful stillness filled my body and my mind.

  Something shone and gleamed. I puzzled what it could be, but a changing position of her head showed me it was lamplight on the fair hair of a girl. I did not remember for a second. Then everything was with me.

  “Isep,” I whispered. At that the bronze hair swung about like tufted grasses, and a face appeared between. “Isep, how well or ill am I?”

  She looked me over with a boy’s disparaging candor, and said, “Very ill, lord. But better. They predict you shall be well.”

  It was a small chamber, and our talk had roused the physician. He came puttering up, felt my head and peered in my eyes and laid his hand on my heart.

  “Yes, it is remarkable,” he said, “a night and a day of the ague, but no purging of blood, and now the fever’s broken. Your constitution is unusually strong, my lord, and the god has smiled upon you. You will recover, I swear to that, but you must be patient. They call you a magician, do they not? Ah, yes. Now I acknowledge it.”

  I felt I could spring from the couch and fly. Why not? I was the sorcerer again. I had survived the curse of death. No god had smiled on me but the gods of my ancestry. I could have laughed aloud, then fear sank through me, and I grasped his arm.

  “Where is the Empress?”

  It was Isep who answered haughtily, “She has kept by you the entire night, and this whole day, till she was dead herself. Be content, man.”

  “But is she sick?”

  “Sick of you, no doubt, and of your maniac shouting. Otherwise she is herself. They say Yellow Mantle is taking his leave.”

  “Yes, it’s true, my lord,” the physician said, bringing a sticky ointment and wanting to plaster my body with it like a joint for basting. “The plague is less. Countless thousands lost, of course, and Sorem, our lord, borne away with them. But fewer deaths this day at least, and no fresh outbreaks, not even among the slums of the commercial area.”

  I pushed him off me, and told him to spare me his medicinal muck, but he brought another thing in a shallow dish and put it in my mouth. This swallowed, I slipped back into a

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  shadowy sleep where I seemed to swim along the bright shoals of Isep’s hair.

  When I woke again, it was about an hour past midnight, and my purpose lay intact and absolute before me, as if I had planned it in my sleep.

  Isep was nodding at her post, and started alert when I called her, angry as some young soldier caught sleeping on watch.

  “What is it, lord?”

  “This: Find me some water and some clothing, my own or another’s.”

  “Clothing? By my right hand, you shan’t stir.”

  “Leave off your warrior’s oaths, girl. In this room the man says what is to be done.”

  She turned to run for the physician, and for all I knew, for meatier help, and I was not certain yet if I had my Power again or not. I got her wrist and held her and said, “If you had an enemy who worked against you, and slew those near to you, and would have your life, too, if he could, what would you do?”

  “Kill him,” she said, and truly I believed her.

  “Thus,” I said. “That is what I go to do. And since I may have some extra trouble if I am naked, I prefer to travel with my breeches on.”

  “No,” she said, but she was wavering. Finally she asked, “Your enemy is from Hessek?”

  “Older than that, but Hessek is in it, too.”

  She frowned. I knew by her frowning she would do what I asked.

  One moment I had reckoned that Uastis ruled them from the swamp itself. I had reckoned her, another time, far off. My indecision, I thought, was perhaps some part of the web in which she trapped me. Not till Gyest warned me had I understood for sure. But then I had been tranced, the net too tight around me for my struggles to break it. But now … now I had fathomed her abode; my dream had showed me. Now, better than any portent, I had outlived her sending. This would be the last meeting. If my Power had deserted me, or was not yet strong enough, I would use my hands as any copper-cash murderer knew how. That was all it took.

  I was feverish still, but no disaster in that. It only buoyed me up.

  I had crept about in her shade, in a terror, paralyzed. But I

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  lived; the ordeal was past. She had committed her worst, and it was ashes.

  There were different foul things to be seen about the streets by night, glimpsed in blackness or smoky red glare. What lights burned did so surreptitiously behind blinds, everything muffled, masked. Four fifths of the Palm Quarter, where formerly it had been day by night, had fled to the hills taking their lamps with them. But the plague fires blazed on, and the carts went stealthily up and down to them, loaded with their speechless multitudes. A watchman, drunk on a tower roof, drew back in fear at my galloping horse. Its hooves rang on the paving and the echoes struck ten streets away, as if twenty beasts went racing.