The Heavenly Lord’s Ambassador. A Kingdom Like No Other. Book 1. Андрей Кочетков

out into the hall in his undertunic and found it empty. “Of course, everyone must be at lunch.”

      Uni wandered through the unfamiliar building for what seemed like a long time without finding anyone at all. When he finally made his way outside, he ran to the sundial in hopes of finding that it was all a mistake. It really was noon. He felt like a terrible fool. Everything had been going so well, and then he went and overslept and missed the ceremony!

      Helplessly, Uni looked around and suddenly felt strange. The courtyard was silent, and frighteningly so. The palace was always a peaceful place, but there were usually noblemen walking through on business or servants calling out to each other. Where were the guards at their posts? Why were the barracks silent, as if the Empire’s best warriors had suddenly disappeared? “I hope they aren’t all at the Emperor’s ceremony,” Uni tried to make himself laugh, but he couldn’t even smile.

      After wandering around the empty courtyard a few more minutes, he decided to find the palace square. “They couldn’t have left without me! I’m the interpreter! And why didn’t anyone think to wake me?” Uni had never been in the barracks before, so it took him a while to find his way out of the labyrinth of paths and outbuildings. There was no one to ask directions from, so he ran on, hounded by his horror of what could have caused that heavy silence.

      Finally, he found it. Like a pebble from a slingshot, Uni ran out into the palace square, but then something stopped him. He felt like he had run into an invisible wall. He put his hands out to protect himself from what he saw. The palace square was empty – there were no people anywhere and no signs that a ceremony had been held. “How could they…so fast…everyone’s gone…and it’s all been cleaned up!” And there wasn’t a soul around for him to ask. “Great Sun, am I asleep? What a stupid nightmare!” Uni pinched his left shoulder. It hurt. “Is it possible that all of this is really happening?”

      If the imperial falcons had swung low in the blue, cloudless sky just then, they would have observed a strange scene: a small, disheveled man wearing nothing but his nightclothes was racing around the palace courtyard, running in and out of buildings like a beetle lost in a child’s maze. Tripping over his own feet in exhaustion, he ran through the palace gates, which stood open and unguarded. What he found outside the gates was even more shocking: the whole enormous city was empty, abandoned by its residents and left in awful, deep silence.

      It suddenly dawned on Uni that he would never be able to go down every street looking for someone to explain what had happened. Even if he tried, he would eventually pass out on the hot stones, and no one would come to his aid because there was no one left. He was overcome by a terrible need to break the awful silence, a silence that swallowed up even the rustling of the leaves on the trees, the wind whistling between buildings, the waves on the Fela at high tide, and hundreds of other sounds that make up the background of life in a big city that has suddenly been emptied of its residents.

      Uni stopped. He spread his arms and took a deep breath that filled his lungs. “When was the last time I breathed deeply?” he wondered. He wanted to yell as loud as he could, but the cold, dark, alien quiet seeped into his lungs along with the air. It filled him like an empty vessel. It stopped his heart from beating loudly and his lungs from filling and emptying noisily. Uni’s eyes widened in primal fear. He felt he was dissolving in the same sticky, invisible cotton wool that had already drowned out the cries of the palanquin bearers, the animated conversations of the merchants, the ringing laughter of women flirting with guards, and the enchanting sounds of the musical fountains that were a source of such wonder to visitors from the provinces.

      Feeling wretched, Uni looked on the city’s empty streets as if he expected to disappear as well at any time. Just then, he caught sight of the dark silhouette of a person wavering in the noonday sun off to his right. “Stop! Stop! I beg you!” he cried, surprised by the sound of his own voice. He shook off whatever had been holding him and raced after the shadow as if the stranger held Uni’s own lifeline in his hand.

      He sprinted around the corner of a red-brick shop with a sign featuring a crudely drawn baker with rosy cheeks and came to a screeching halt. Never in his entire life had he seen a woman with such beautiful, expressive eyes.

      Imagine a deep, clear lake with crystal blue water, its shores encircled by an untouched forest that hides it from the eyes of the uninvited. You are making your way with difficulty through the thick woods, all hope of finding the right path gone, when suddenly you step through the trees and see the lake. Calm, quiet, and clear. Beautiful as only something that is truly ancient and truly young can be. In one breath, you realize that you don’t have to keep looking for your path, because you’ve come unexpectedly to its end and the thing you were searching for is right there in front of you.

      That is an approximation of what Uni felt. The girl’s hair – the color of a wheat field at sunset – fell freely over her shoulders, shining around her with a golden halo. Her whole being seemed to have been formed from a wellspring of warmth and softness, and Uni felt like he had come face to face with a sunny breeze, as if the Heavenly Deity had run a hand over his head, leaving behind a pleasant wave of joy that reverberated throughout his body. In an instant, he forgot all about his troubles and the fact that he had missed an important event. All he wanted was to stand where he was for one more instant and savor the new color and flavor that his life had unexpectedly acquired.

      No one knows how long the feeling lasted. It might have been the time that it took his heart to beat once, or it might have been an eternity. Time means nothing where beauty and harmony are at their peak and the order of all things has achieved perfection. The time for Uni to join that new world, unfortunately, had not yet come. The lovely stranger smiled with exquisite gentleness and leaned her head to one side, as if asking him to follow her. Under her spell, Uni obeyed. He forgot all about himself and where he was going, simply following her the way a person tries to follow a dream that he knows will be forgotten as soon as he awakes. The stranger floated in front of him with the posture of a young pine tree and a waist that begged to be encircled by his palms.

      It was only now that Uni noticed the girl’s strange garment: halfway between a robe and a dress, it was dark blue, with sleeves that trailed almost to the ground. He wanted to see her face again, but her back was just as interesting. Uni remembered the backs he had seen before – bent and tired, fat and indifferent, or hard and unassailable, like closed doors. The girl’s back was different – kind, familiar and lovely, as if its owner was thinking about Uni all the time and might at any minute turn and bestow a shining smile on him.

      He had no idea how long they walked, him following blindly, when suddenly he saw the dock and the ambassador’s ship and the Emperor in his most impressive robe. The wondrous magic did not last long. Suddenly, Uni found himself in a swirling crowd. It shattered the silence that had until this point filled his ears. He was afraid, more afraid than he had ever been in his life. What could be more horrible than the fear of losing someone dear, someone he felt was a part of his own soul? Uni helplessly looked for a way out of the crowd. He pushed people away from him, but the mass of bodies swirled tighter and tighter around him, lazily enjoying the defenselessness of his tiny boat in the churning vortex of the human crowd. The girl was gone, as if swallowed up by the crowd, and those precious moments of unforgettable joy dissolved without a trace in the hideous, drab gray of everyday life. Uni was struck by the realization that he no longer wanted any of the things he thought he wanted. The ray of light that had pierced his soul was dearer to him than anything else in the world, and he could not bear the thought of losing it. Like a wounded animal, he leaped over the people’s heads, over the heads of the horrible, stupid crowd. They did not hate or despise him, they simply never noticed him, as if he had no right to exist. But now, thousands of hands reached for him, grabbing his clothes, pulling him back, and a frightening choir of voices rose up from somewhere in this distance: “Uni, Uni!” Cold iron bands wrapped around his body. Uni struggled. He fought for his life, and…

      “Uni? Are you still alive? You’ve been asleep for ages!” Vordius smiled down at him.

      There was a fatherly note in his voice. Standing next to him, Sevelia Virando seemed to feel a threat