Ethshar - Night Of Madness Part 3

She waved that idea away. "It's justyou" she said. "At least, in here. There are others out there." She pointed at the window.

"There are?" Varrin glanced at the window.

"Yes," Annis said. "I saw them."

"Maybe I had better go talk to them," Varrin said. "They might know what's happening."

"Yes," she said, stepping backward, away from him. "You do that."

"Annis, don't be frightened," he said as the firelight from outside spilled across her face and let him see her eyes. "Especially don't be frightened ofme."

"But I'm not sure itis you!" she wailed. "What if you're some demon that took my husband's form?"

"Annis, I'm me. I'm Varrin." He stepped toward her. "We've been married for thirty-one years-you know me!"

She squealed and backed away again. "Go away!" she said. "If you're really Varrin, go find out what happened to you!" He stopped, baffled.

"All right," he said at last. "I'll go see what I can find out." He turned away.

A moment later he was out on the street, looking around in confusion.

Something in him wanted to go north, but that was absurd; he lived and worked just three blocks from the beaches along the eastern shoals and four blocks from the city's eastern wall. Almost the entirety of the city ofEthshar lay south and west of Seacorner.

He could hear voices shouting to the south; he turned and headed toward them, and found his feet leaving the ground. At first he fought it, but then he turned up a palm, lifted his feet, and flew.

At the same time as the others, Kirsha the Younger dreamed of fire and falling and then entombment somewhere deep beneath the earth, dreamed she was fighting her way upward through unyielding soil, and then awoke to find herself floating a foot or so above her bed. She stared up at the too-close canopy of her bed in astonishment, awash in unreasoning panic.

Then the panic popped like a soap bubble, and she smiled as understanding dawned.

"I'm still dreaming," she said.

She rolled over in mid air and pushed herself toward the bedroom window.

It worked, just like in so many other dreams-she could fly, swim through the air like a fish through water.

She didn't even have to wriggle like a fish; thought alone was enough to propel her.

Kirsha felt the cool night air on her bare skin as her bedsheet slipped free and fell away, could hear voices in the street outside- and some of them were screaming.

She wondered why, but then dismissed the question. This was adream; it didn't need to make sense.

It was the oddest flying dream she had ever had, though, starting with a vague nightmare like that and then turning so intensely real. Still, she was enjoying it.

She reached the window and fumbled with the latch, then opened the shutters-or rather she made the shutters fling themselves open, she didn't use her hands. She looked out at the night.

People were flying, dozens of them. Kirsha smiled happily at the thought of sharing her newfound talent.

She swung open the cas.e.m.e.nt, planning to fly out into the street.

Then she realized she was still naked.

It probably didn't matter in a dream, but still, she hated dreams where she went outside naked and could feel people staring at her. She flew quickly across the room to a chest of drawers and found a tunic and skirt. A moment later she was soaring above the streets, watching people running below and flying above. She didn't see anyone she knew, and did not want to talk to strangers, even in a dream-at least, not yet-so she did not rise up to join the other flyers.

They were all going the same direction, anyway, and she didn't want to go that way. She wanted to look at the shops onDyer Street and see what pretty colors the cloth there had in this wonderful dream. They were lovely in real life, as she had seen when she and her mother went over there just two days ago, but her mother had refused to buy her any of the best fabrics for a new tunic.

And there was that jeweler around the corner, where her parents had refused to even set foot inside the door.

Her parents weren't even in this dream, though, as far as Kirsha could tell, so she could do anything she pleased.

She would smash out the shop windows and take the things she liked best, she decided, and then fly away, like a big brightly colored bird. She would fly to the lesser moon and see why it was pink, and she would find a handsome prince from theSmallKingdoms or a Sardironese baron there, and . . .

She was getting ahead of herself, she decided. First she should see whetherDyer Street was even there in this dreamworld.

People below her were screaming, but she paid no attention. She swooped around the corner, laughing.

Someone was bellowing, and Kennan of the Crooked Smile woke up, annoyed at the interruption of his sleep.

The noise faded away quickly-whoever was bellowing was moving away very fast. Something about it bothered him though, so Kennan did not immediately go back to sleep.

And then he heard running footsteps in the corridor, and then his son's wife Sanda shouting, and he climbed out of bed and grabbed a robe.

"What is it?" he demanded as he stumbled out into the dark hallway. "What's happening?"

No one answered; he hurried to the door of his son's bedroom and found it standing open. He stepped inside warily-he didn't want to intrude. Aken and Sanda were sensitive about their privacy.

Aken was nowhere to be seen; instead, Sanda was standing at the open cas.e.m.e.nt, leaning out and calling, "Come back! Bring him back!"

"What's happening?" Kennan asked again.

Sanda turned, and even in the dim light from the open window Kennan could see the tears gleaming on her cheeks. "He's gone," she said. "They took him!"

"Who'sgone?" Kennan asked, confused.

"Aken," Sanda said. "I was downstairs, closing the shutters, and I heard him shouting, so I ran up to see what was wrong, and I got here and the window was open-look at the latch!"

Kennan looked. The iron latch had been twisted into an unrecognizable lump.

Kennan still didn't understand. He didn't understand where Aken was or what had happened to the latch. It looked as if someone very, very strong had crushed it in his fist.

Aken was a strong young man, but he wasn'tthat strong.

"Where is he?" Kennan asked.

"Gone!" Sanda shrieked, pointing out the window. "I saw him flying away! Theytook him!"

"Whotook him?" Kennan was beginning to comprehend, though he didn't want to. "What do you mean, flying?"

"Flying!Through the air! By magic! The magicians took him!"

"Sanda, that's crazy-why would magicians take Aken? What magicians?"

"Those magicians, out in the street," she said, pointing. "They're flying around smas.h.i.+ng things. And they took your son, I saw it."

Kennan, not really wanting to look, tiptoed across the room and looked past Sanda, out the window.

It was as she had said-there were people flying through the streets and up above the rooftops, most of them heading north, toward the docks, and there were things flying with some of them-clothes and jewels and furniture. It was all madness.

And there was no sign of Aken.

Like so many others, Zarek the Homeless awoke from a nightmare, screaming-and was astonished to hear perhaps a dozen other scattered voices screaming as well. He sat up, still wrapped in his moth-eaten blanket, and looked out at his surroundings.

He lay in the middle of the Hundred-Foot Field, not far from whereSway Street met Wall Street, in the Westwark district of Ethshar of the Spices. Around him were the blankets, tents, and crude huts of scores of the city's other dest.i.tute-and several of them were screaming, though the number of voices seemed to be declining rapidly. A lantern flared up nearby, and voices chattered excitedly inside little Pelirrin's tent.

"Shut up and let me sleep!" someone called as the last two or three voices continued to scream.

One voice dropped to a low moan; another fell silent. Finally only one woman's voice still screamed, a thin, breathy wailing that sounded almost like a night wind-but the air was still.

"Blasted magicians," someone said.

"Is that what it was?" another voice asked.

"What else could it be? People waking up screaming all at once-if that's not magic, I'm Azrad the Great."

Zarek could hardly argue with that; he wondered idly whatkind of magic it was, and why it had affected him. It clearly hadn't struck everyone, or there would have beenhundreds screaming, rather than a dozen or so, but it had struckhim, all right. His throat was sore from screaming-though his throat was often sore anyway, from bad water and worse food or the various contagions found in the Field.

He tried to rememberwhy he had been screaming, and could only remember a feeling of suffocation and entrapment.

He mused about the significance of this. It might be important, he supposed.

In the morning he would go make a few inquiries-talk to the guards at Westgate, maybe, or see if anyone in the Wizards' Quarter would answer a few questions. Perhaps there was some way he could capitalize on being included in this misdirected magic-he thought he might get a decent meal out of it, anyway. Maybe some curious wizard would pay him for a report on what had happened.

In fact, he thought, maybe he shouldn't wait until morning. That woman was still screaming, and he wasn't going to get back to sleep right away, and if he waited someone else might collect whatever payment the magicians might be willing to make. He kicked aside his blanket and got to his feet.

A moment later the woman finally stopped screaming, but Zarek had already headed eastward into the city streets.

Throughout the city, dozens of others tried to figure out what had happened, or rolled over and went back to sleep, or panicked and ran or flew out into the streets. Hundreds walked or ran or flew northward.

And in Ethshar of the Sands, forty leagues to the west, the same scenes were repeated, on the same scale.

In Ethshar of the Rocks, far to the northwest, again the same events played out, though fewer people were affected there than in the more southerly cities.

In farms and villages beyond the walls of the cities, throughout the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, people awoke choking or screaming, and a few of those who had been awake all along felt the touch of a strange new power. In the Baronies of Sardiron, in the war-tornlandofTintallion , in the many tiny nations of the Small Kingdoms, magic flashed across the World and drove unsuspecting people from their beds.

Everywhere, those touched by the magic and those who saw them wondered what had happened, whatthis unfamiliar magic was, what would happen next.

And nowhere were there immediate answers to any of these questions.

Chapter Five.

Lord Hanner ducked down in the doorway of a potter's shop, hands over his head, as a nightgowned woman flew past shrieking at the top of her lungs, surrounded by a cloud of kitchen knives, broken gla.s.s, and miscellaneous debris. When she had pa.s.sed he straightened up and looked after her.

Despite her screams, he could see no sign that she was injured or in pain; presumably she had simply panicked when... when whatever it was that happened had happened. She appeared unhurt and seemed to be controlling her magically propelled movements and the movements of her accompanying objects.

Anyone who wasn't quick enough getting out of her way was likely to be hurt, though.

As the wind of her pa.s.sage died away Hanner wondered what he should do. He was a lord, one of the overlord's servants, responsible for keeping order in Ethshar, and whatever wild magic had broken loose moments earlier, it was definitely not orderly. That flying woman hadn't been the first manifestation of out-of-control magic he had encountered in the quarter hour since the screaming and other commotion started-nor the second, nor the fifth. Something magical was definitely loose in the city, and definitely causing trouble.

So far he had been unable to make sense of it; the people he had encountered who were caught up in the magic, whatever it was, had shown no interest in talking to him. They didn't seem to want any help, either, not even the ones who were still screaming. Instead they tended to fly about wildly, and some of them seemed willing to smash anything that got in their way.

"Is she gone?" a voice behind him asked. Hanner started.

"I think so," he said, turning to find that a plain woman of uncertain age had opened the door of the shop.

She peered about cautiously, then stepped out beside Hanner.

"Why was she screaming?"

"I don't know," Hanner said.

"Is she a wizard? She was flying, wasn't she?" "She was flying," Hanner agreed, "but I don't think she's a wizard. There's some kind of magic causing trouble. She might be hurt-maybe we should follow her, see if we can help ..."

The woman snorted."I'm not going after anyone who can fly! If you want to deal with magic, find a magician. I'm just a potter." She looked back and forth alongNewmarket Street . "Are there any more?"

"There were other people screaming earlier, but I don't-"

Hanner's sentence was interrupted by the sound of breaking gla.s.s.

"I think there are more," he concluded.

"Then I'm staying inside," the potter said. "Andyou should go somewhere else." She pushed Hanner out of the doorway into the street, then stepped back inside her shop and slammed the door shut.