key to escape the pseudo-reality in which he was locked. He turned slowly, away from the ships and toward the buildings beyond the foot of the pier. The tall one, multistoried and far too elegantly proportioned to be a warehouse, beckoned to him, or at least, that was how it seemed.
He continued turning, then began to walk toward the building, his steps quick.
“You! Where are you going? Crew aren’t allowed off the pier!” The language was both familiar and unfamiliar, and it came from one of the guards, who had drawn his sword, a gladius not even as long as a man’s arm, and stepped toward Estafen.
“I’m not going that far,” Estafen replied, looking over his shoulder.
“Just get back aboard, and there won’t be any trouble.”
Getting on the ship wasn’t right. That Estafen knew. Once on the ship, he’d have forfeited the chance and choices he had to give to the dreamers.
Suddenly, there was a pilum in the soldier’s hand, ready to be thrown. “Just get back here.”
“I don’t belong there.”
“I don’t care. Crews don’t leave their ships.”
Estafen immediately sprinted away, trying to zig and zag unpredictably.
The javelin almost grazed Estafen’s shoulder, but he kept running, hearing the sounds of footsteps behind him. As he kept running toward the foot of the pier and the taller building beyond, Estafen heard the insistent clanging of bells, then saw wispy streams of smoke issuing from an elegant stone structure, and below them larger gouts of smoke and a few flames. Ahead was a line of men in the short-sleeved and shortened robes of slaves, a line that extended from the water at the foot of the pier to the burning building, passing baskets from one to another.
Baskets of water? Then Estafen realized that the insides of the reed baskets were coated with black pitch.
Still running, he glanced from the water-passers back to the building, only to see that flames were now flaring out from every window and between every column, and that the late afternoon sky was being darkened quickly by the plumes of smoke.
“Stop that man!” called the guard chasing Estafen. “He’s a thief!”
None of the slaves even turned to look at Estafen, possibly because an overseer shouted, “Water! More water! Faster!”
But Estafen could see another pair of guards at the foot of the pier, less than fifteen yards away, one of whom had turned toward Estafen and drawn his gladius as well.
Shouts from beyond the pier drifted toward Estafen.
“The Great Library is burning!”
“The library is burning!”
“. . . soldiers did it!”
The library! Knowledge! Those were the keys to escaping and getting on with what had to be done.
Estafen kept running. As he neared the pier guard, he glanced around to see if there was anything he could use, but he saw nothing. He studied the harbor water, which looked less than appetizing, but there was no help for it. He dashed to the side of the pier and jumped as far as he could, hoping that the water wasn’t too shallow and that he didn’t land on something concealed by the debris floating on the surface. When he hit the water, he dropped far enough that his head went just beneath the surface of the scum and other floating garbage and his sandaled feet went ankle-deep in the muck coating the harbor floor.
He struggled to free his feet from the muck, and then began to swim away from the pier and toward the harbor wall fronting the burning library, keeping his head above the scum on the water’s surface. In moments, he was pulling himself out of the water in front of the library, checking to see if more guards were coming, but the pier guards were caught behind the line of slaves passing baskets of water.
After straightening up, Estafen sprinted for the columns supporting the closest side of the library. When he reached them, he darted between two, looking for an actual entrance . . . except the sun-warmed columns and stone walls, and the acrid smoke, all vanished in blackness.