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“Come back! Bring him back!”
    â€œWhat’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.
    â€œHe’s gone,” she said. “They took him!”
    â€œ Who’s gone?” Kennan asked, confused.
    â€œAken,” 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’t that strong.
    â€œWhere is he?” Kennan asked.
    â€œGone!” Sanda shrieked, pointing out the window. “I saw him flying away! They took him!”
    â€œ Who took him?” Kennan was beginning to comprehend, though he didn’t want to. “What do you mean, flying?”
    â€œ Flying! Through the air! By magic! The magicians took him!”
    â€œSanda, that’s crazy—why would magicians take Aken? What magicians?”
    â€œThose magicians, out in the street,” she said, pointing. “They’re flying around smashing 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 where Sway 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 destitute—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.
    â€œShut 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.
    â€œBlasted magicians,” someone said.
    â€œIs that what it was?” another voice asked.
    â€œWhat 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 what kind of magic it was, and why it had affected him. It clearly hadn’t struck everyone, or there would have been hundreds screaming, rather than a dozen or so, but it had struck him, 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 remember why 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