Ian Whates - City of Dreams and Nightmare

Only men of the right sort were eligible to join the Kite Guard. Only those with families of sufficient standing and the proper pedigree were even permitted to apply. Tylus qualified. Just.

From an early age his parents had groomed him for the part, sculpting his soul with philosophy, channelling his mind with geometry, anemonautics and alchemy, broadening his intellect with semantics and linguistics and honing his physique with fencing, swimming and pugilism. It seemed his whole life had been spent in preparation for the day he would apply to join the Kite Guard.

The day the Guard actually accepted him was the proudest of his parents lives. At the lavish party to celebrate, his father, a functionary of minor significance within the mechanism of senior government, puffed and preened to such an extent that any there would have been forgiven for assuming that it was he who had achieved something commendable rather than his son. His mother became the focus of the local coffee circle for many months on the back of his success no event was considered complete without her.

Yet in all the joy of that day and in all the years of toil and dedication that had led up to it, nobody ever stopped to ask Tylus whether this was what he wanted. Not even Tylus himself. Not until it was too late.

He wondered afterwards whether this played a part in the events of that night. Could it have been a simple, straightforward arrest had he been more diligent and more enthusiastic in his duties? Might all that was to follow have been avoided had he been the guard his parents always intended him to be?

These were questions that would haunt him often in the days that followed.

Tom was unnerved, far more so than he cared to admit. Not scared, no he would never confess to that just a little unsettled. No doubt this was due in part to being so close to his goal, a goal which, in his heart of hearts, he had never believed achievable. Yet as the Rows fell away one after another, and he climbed unseen into the citys highest reaches, where both custom and law forbade him to go, he began to hope and, eventually, to believe.

This was Thaiburley: the City of a Hundred Rows, known by many as the City of Dreams and by those who dwelt beneath it as the City of Nightmare.

Tom was born to the nightmare but now, for the first time in his young life, he had caught a glimpse of the dream.

Presently he was crouching in the shadows on yet another Row, willing himself invisible as he hid beneath a wrought iron staircase, his heart pounding and blood racing. He refused to dwell on where he was, on the impossibility of it all. If he did, he would likely lose his nerve altogether and bolt straight back down again.

His feet were sore from all the climbing, all the walking and occasionally running. It felt as if the sole of his left shoe was wearing through again, but there was nothing handy to patch it with and, besides, he had lived with worse things. At least it wasnt as cold up here as he had half-expected it might be.

The staircase that hid him rose from a broad, stone walkway, walled on one side with the familiar yellow-brown stone that predominated throughout the city. The walls surface contained an apparently endless row of evenly spaced doors, all of them closed. He assumed that behind these doors were quarters or dwellings of some sort. The other side of the walkway stood open to the outside world, with just a calf-high sculpted guardrail separating passers-by from a headlong plunge into a veritable abyss.

Having looked over that rail once, Tom had no intention of venturing anywhere near it again. This was the other reason he was so unnerved; he had again fallen victim to his insatiable curiosity and peered over the edge, even when a tiny voice at the back of his mind whispered that it would be a mistake to do so. Below him, the walls of the city had dropped away, dimly visible where torches and lanterns burned, before disappearing into the darkness completely. In their place there was nothing: a vast, gaping space. Raised in the crowded slums of the City Below, Tom had never seen so much emptiness. It horrified him but at the same time pulled at him. His head spun, he couldnt breathe and felt himself breaking out in a sweat. For a moment he had lost all sense of where he was, uncertain even of which direction was up or down.

This all occurred within a handful of seconds, though to Tom it seemed far longer before he was able to stagger back from the edge, wondering for a panicked heartbeat whether in doing so he was actually surrendering to the void, so uncertain was he of his own judgment. Then he felt the solid stone beneath his feet and perspective was restored, leaving him safe to scrabble to the nearby stairway and to haul his trembling body beneath it. There he was determined to remain, until his legs felt more stable and his heart ceased pounding quite so quickly.

Never having experienced anything like this before, Tom had no name for the awful sensation, though anyone who actually lived at these levels would have nodded knowingly and informed him that he had just suffered an attack of vertigo, before slapping him on the back with a jovial smile and telling him not to worry, that it would soon pass. Lacking such sage advice, Tom could only wait and hope that it would.

He knew that when he did move, he was going to hug the wall as closely as possible; anything to avoid approaching that drop again. The wind up here was ill-tempered and unpredictable. It huffed and puffed with erratic bluster, and he was afraid that going too far away from the wall would leave him vulnerable to a particularly strong gust picking him up and tipping him over the balustrade.

Slowly his thoughts cleared and his breathing returned to normal. His legs still felt as if somebody had used the bones as moulds, pouring jelly into them before removing the bone and leaving just the jelly behind, but he knew that time was pressing. Night was not about to linger for his sake; it had a nasty habit of turning into day when you least wanted it to, and he intended to be long gone before dawn arrived and Thaiburley started to stir. His legs would just have to cope.

The rest of the gang would be amazed when he returned and told them of his exploits, and none would dare call him a liar, not when Lyle was there to back him up. His status was assured. All of them would want to be seen with him, to associate with him, even Barton, who boasted so often and so loudly of his own exploits but who had never ventured beyond the Shopping Rows. Tom had left those behind long ago. Then there was Jezmina. How could she fail to be impressed when he returned a conquering hero from the furthest reaches of the City Above?

Of course, before he could do that, there was the small matter of completing this unlikely task, the task Lyle had set him, which he had accepted in a rush of blood, dazzled by the wide-eyed smile of a certain girl whod been looking on. Yes, all he had to do was achieve the impossible and then retrace his steps all of them, without being caught, through a city that would be stirring with the onset of morning.

That was all.

He was feeling progressively better and knew that it was time to move on, though he wished hed kept a better check on the Rows. The truth was that Tom had no idea precisely how high he had come, how much further remained to go.

At first hed kept count, reciting the lines of the levels-verse which every citizen, Below or Above, learnt almost as soon as they could speak, but there were so many of them; and so many other things to worry about as well: not being seen, for example. Despite his determination not to, Tom had quickly lost count. He knew this must be somewhere close to the top, but had no idea how close.