The Golem's Eye

gone.
    "Queezle?" No answer. Nothing but the howling of the wind.
    A moment later, perched on the horseman's hat, I scanned the seven roads on each of the seven planes. The spaniel was nowhere to be seen; nor were there any djinn, imps, hexes, or other magical effusions. The streets were deserted. I was quite alone.
    In doubt, I returned to the plinth and subjected it to a minute inspection. I thought to detect a faint black mark upon the stonework, roughly where we had been sitting, but it was impossible to tell whether or not it had been there before.
    All of a sudden I felt very exposed. Whichever way I turned on the plinth, my back was vulnerable to something creeping up quietly out of the rain. I took off promptly and spiraled up around the statue, the crashing of the raindrops thrumming in my ears. Up above rooftop level I rose, safely out of reach of anything lurking in the street.
    It was then that I heard the crash. It wasn't a nice, restrained sort of crash—like a bottle breaking on a bald man's head, say. It sounded rather as if a large forest oak had been uprooted and tossed casually aside, or an entire building had been swatted impatiently out of the path of something very big. Unpromising, in other words.
    Worse still, I could tell the direction from which it came. If the rain had been just a little louder, or the crashing just a little quieter, I might have been able to misjudge it and head off bravely to investigate in the wrong direction. But no such luck.
    Anyway, there was always the small possibility that Queezle might still be alive.
    So I did two things. First, I sent up another Flare, hoping against hope that it would be spotted by another watcher in our group. The nearest, if memory served, was a foliot, based somewhere down near Charing Cross. He was a meager individual, devoid of valor or initiative, but any reinforcements would be welcome now, if only as cannon fodder.
    Next, I proceeded in a northerly direction, at chimney height along the road from which the sound had come. I was heading for the museum quarter. I flew about as slowly as an eagle can without falling out of the air. [1]  All the while I scanned the buildings below. It was an area of luxury shops, small, dark, discreet. Old painted signs above the doors hinted at the delights within: necklaces, rolls of silk, jeweled pocket watches. Gold featured prominently in this district, diamonds likewise. It was to these establishments that magicians came to buy those little extras that emphasized their status. Rich tourists flocked here too.
     
    [1] If it's possible to flap your wings gingerly, that's exactly what I did.
     
    The tremendous crash had not been repeated; all the shop fronts seemed healthy enough, their alcove lights burning, their wooden signs creaking in the wind.
    Rain fell around me. down into the street. In places the cobbles had disappeared beneath the stippled surface of the water. There was no sign of anyone, mortal or otherwise. I might have been flying above a ghost town.
    The road widened a little, to pass on either side of a small circle of grass and pretty flowers. It seemed an incongruous sight in the narrow street, perhaps a little out of place. Then you noticed the old broken post in the center of the grass, the flagstones hidden among the flowers, and realized its original purpose. [2]  Tonight it was all looking very water-blown and windswept, but what interested me, and made me circle around to land upon the post, were the markings in the grass.
     
    [2] The name of the road, Gibbet Street, kind of gave the game away, too. The London authorities had always been good at setting examples for the commoners, although in recent years the bodies of felons were hung up only in the prison district, around the Tower. Elsewhere it was thought to deter tourism.
     
    They were footprints, of a sort. Large ones. Vaguely spatula-shaped, with the imprint of one separate toe visible at the wider end. They crossed the grass circle from one side to the other, each print driven down deep into the earth.
    I shook moisture from my head feathers and drummed my claws against the post. Perfect. Just perfect. My enemy wasn't just mysterious and powerful, he was big and heavy, too. The night was getting better and better.
    I followed the direction of the footsteps with my eagle eye. For the first few steps beyond the grass they were still partially visible, as indicated by a desultory trail of deposited mud. Beyond that