Scanned and corrected by gojukai

The Citadel of the Autarch

I

The Dead Soldier

I HAD NEVER seen war, or even talked of it at length with
someone who had, but I was young and knew something of
violence, and so believed that war would be no more than a
new experience for me, as other things—the possession of authority 
in Thrax, say, or my escape from the House Absolute
had been new experiences.

War is not a new experience; it is a new world. Its inhabitants 
are more different from human beings than Famulimus
and her friends. Its laws are new, and even its geography is
new, because it is a geography in which insignificant hills and
hollows are lifted to the importance of cities. Just as our
familiar Urth holds such monstrosities as Erebus, Abaia, and
Anoch, so the world of war is stalked by the monsters called
battles, whose cells are individuals but who have a life and
intelligence of their own, and whom one approaches through
an ever-thickening array of portents.

One night I woke long before dawn. Everything seemed
still, and I was afraid some enemy had come near, so that my
mind had stirred at his malignancy. I rose and looked about.
The hills were lost in the darkness. I was in a nest of long
grass, a nest I had trampled flat for myself. Crickets sang.

Something caught my eye far to the north: a flash, I
thought, of violet just on the horizon. I stared at the point
from which it seemed to have come. Just as I had convinced
myself that what I believed I had seen was no more than a
fault of vision, perhaps some lingering effect of the drug I
had been given in the hetman's house, there was a flare of
magenta a trifle to the left of the point I had been staring at.

	I continued to stand there for a watch or more, rewarded
from time to time with these mysteries of light. At last, having 
satisfied myself that they were a great way off and came
no nearer, and that they did not appear to change in frequency, 
coming on the average with each five hundredth
beat of my heart, I lay down again. And because I was then
thoroughly awake, I became aware that the ground was shaking, 
very slightly, beneath me.

	When I woke again in the morning it had stopped. I
watched the horizon diligently for some time as I walked
along, but saw nothing disturbing.

It had been two days since I had eaten, and I was no longer
hungry, though I was aware that I did not have my normal
strength. Twice that day I came upon little houses falling to
ruin, and I entered each to look for food. If anything had
been left, it had been taken long before; even the rats were
gone. The second house had a well, but some dead thing had
been thrown down it long ago, and in any case there was no
way to reach the stinking water. I went on, wishing for some-
-thing to drink and also for a better staff than the succession
of rotten sticks I had been using. I had learned when I had
used Terminus Est as a staff in the mountains how much
easier it is to walk with one.

	About noon I came upon a path and followed it, and a
short time afterward heard the sound of hoofs. I hid where I
could look down the road; a moment later a rider crested the
next hill and flashed past me. From the glimpse I had of him,
he wore armour somewhat in the fashion of the commanders
of Abdiesus's dimarchi, but his wind-stiffened cape was green
instead of red and his helmet seemed to have a visor like
the bill of a cap. Whoever he was, he was magnificently
mounted: His destrier's mouth was bearded with foam and
its sides drenched, yet it flew by as though the racing signal
had dropped only an instant before.

	Having encountered one rider on the path, I expected others. 
There were none. For a long while I walked in tranquillity, 
hearing the calls of birds and seeing many signs of
game. Then (to my inexpressible delight) the path forded a
young stream. I walked up a dozen -strides to a spot where
deeper, quieter water flowed over a bed of white gravel. Minnows 
skittered away from my boots—always a sign of good
water—and it was still cold from the mountain peaks and
sweet with the memory of snow. I drank and drank again,
and then again, until I could hold no more, then took off my
clothes and washed myself, cold though it was. When I had
finished my bath and dressed and returned to the place
where the path crossed the stream, I saw two pug marks on
the other side, daintily close together, where the animal had
crouched to drink. They overlay the hoofprints of the officer's 
mount, and each was as big as a dinner plate, with no
claws showing beyond the soft pads of the toes. Old Midan,
who had been my uncle's huntsman when I was the girl-child
Thecia, had told me once that smilodons drink only after
they have gorged themselves, and that when they have
gorged and drunk they are not dangerous unless molested. I
went on.                          

	The path wound through a wooded valley, then up into a
saddle between hills. When I was near the highest point, I
noticed a tree two spans in diameter that had been torn in
half (as it. appeared) at about the height of my eyes. The ends
of both the standing stump and the felled trunk were ragged,
not at all like the smooth chipping of an axe. In the next two
or three leagues I walked, there were several score like it.
Judging from the lack of leaves, and in some cases of bark, on-
the fallen parts, and the new shoots the stumps had put
forth, the damage had been done at least a year ago, and
perhaps longer.                                   

	At last the path joined a true road, something I had heard
of often, but never trodden except in decay. It was much like
the old road the uhlans had been blocking when I had become 
separated from Dr. Talos, Baldanders, Jolenta, and
Dorcas when we left Nessus, but I was unprepared for the
cloud of dust that hung about it. No grass grew upon it,
though it was wider than most city streets.

	I had no choice except to follow it; the trees about it were
thick set, and the spaces between them choked with brush.
At first I was afraid, remembering the burning lances of the
uhlans; still, it seemed probable that the law that prohibited
the use of roads no longer had force here, or this one would
not have seen as much traffic as it clearly had; and when, a
short time later, I heard voices and the sound of many marching 
feet behind me, I only moved a pace or two into the trees
and watched openly while the column passed.

	An officer came first, riding a fine champing blue whose
fangs had been left long and set with turquoise to match his
bardings and the hilt of his owner's estoc: The men who
followed him on foot were antepilani of the heavy infantry, 
big shouldered and narrow waisted, with sun-bronzed.
expressionless faces. They carried three-pointed korsekos,
demilunes, and heavy-headed voulges. This mixture of armaments, 
as well as certain discrepancies among their badges
and accoutrements, led me to believe that their mora was
made up of the remains of earlier formations. If that were so,
the fighting they must have seen had left them phlegmatic.
They swung along, four thousand or so in all, without excitement, 
reluctance, or any sign of fatigue, careless in their bearing 
feat not slovenly, and seemed to keep step without
thought or effort.

	Wagons drawn by grunting, trumpeting trilophodons followed. 
I edged nearer the road as they came, for much of
the baggage they carried was clearly food; but there were
mounted men among the wagons, and one allied to me, asking 
what unit I belonged to, then ordering me to him. I fled
instead, and though I was fairly sure he could not ride among
the trees and would not abandon his destrier to pursue me on
foot, I ran until I was winded.

When I stopped at last, it was in a silent glade where
greenish sunlight filtered through the leaves of spindly trees,
Moss covered the ground so thickly that I felt as if I walked
upon the dense carpet of the hidden picture-room where I
had encountered the Master of the House Absolute. For a
while I rested my back against one of the thin trunks, listening. 
There came no sound but the gasping of my own breath
and the tidal roar of my blood in my ears.

In time I became aware of a third note: the faint buzzing
of a fly. I wiped my streaming face with the edge of my guild
cloak. That cloak was sadly worn and faded now, and I was
suddenly conscious that it was the same one Master Gurloes
had draped about my shoulders when I became a journey-
man, and that I was likely to die in it. The sweat it had
absorbed felt cold as dew, and the air was heavy with the
odour of damp earth.         

The buzzing of the fly ceased, then resumed—perhaps a
trifle more insistently, perhaps merely seeming so because I
had my breath again. Absently, I looked for it and saw it dart
through a shaft of sunlight a few paces off, then settle on a
brown object projecting from behind one of the thronging
trees.
A boot.
I had no weapon whatsoever. Ordinarily I Would not have
been much afraid of confronting a single man with my hands
alone, especially in such a place, where it would have been
impossible to swing a sword; but I knew much of my strength
was gone, and I was discovering that fasting destroys a part of
one's courage as well—or perhaps it is only that it consumes a
part of it, leaving less for other exigencies.

However that might be, I walked warily, sidelong and silently, 
until I saw him. He layed sprawled, with one leg
crumpled under him and the other extended. A falchion had
fallen near his right hand, its leather lanyard still about his
wrist. His simple barbute had dropped from his head and
rolled a step away. The fly crawled up his boot until it
reached the bare flesh just below the knee, then flew again,
with the noise of a tiny saw.

	I knew, of course, that he was dead, and even as I felt relief
my sense of isolation came rushing back, though I had not
realized that it had departed. Taking him by the shoulder, I
turned him over. His body had not yet swelled, but the smell
of death had come, however faint. His face had softened like
a made of wax set before a fire; there was no telling now
with what expression he had died. He had been young and
blond—one of those handsome, square faces. I looked for a
wound but found none.

	The straps of his pack had been drawn so tight that I could
neither pull it off nor even loosen the fastenings. In the end I
took the coutel from his belt and cut them, then drove the
into a tree. A blanket, a scrap of paper, a fire-blackened
pan with a socket handle, two pairs of rough stockings (very
welcome), and, best of all, an onion and a half loaf of dark
bread wrapped in a clean rag, and five strips of dried meat
and a lump of cheese wrapped in another.

	I ate the bread and cheese first, forcing myself, when I
found I could not eat slowly, to rise after every third bite and
walk up and down. The bread helped by requiring a great
deal of chewing; it tasted precisely like the hard bread we
used to feed our clients in the Matachin Tower, bread I had
stolen, more from mischief than from hunger, once or twice.
The cheese was dry and smelly and salty, but excellent all the
same; I thought that I had never tasted such cheese before,
and I know I have never tasted any since. I might have been
eating life. It made me thirsty, and I learned how well an
onion quenches thirst by stimulating the salivary glands.

	By the time I reached the meat, which was heavily salted
too, I was satiated enough to begin debating whether I
should reserve it against the night, and I decided to eat one
piece and save the other four.

	The air had been still since early that morning, but now a
faint breeze blew, cooling my cheeks, stirring the leaves, and
catching the paper I had pulled from the dead soldier's pack
and sending it rattling across the moss to lodge against a tree.
Still chewing and swallowing, I pursued it and picked it up. It
was a letter—1 assume one he had not had the opportunity to
send, or perhaps to complete. His hand had been angular,
and smaller than I would have anticipated, though it may be
that its smallness only resulted from his wish to crowd many
words onto the small sheet, which appeared to have been the
last he possessed.

	0 my beloved, we are a hundred leagues north of the place
	from which I last wrote you, having come by hard marches. We
	have enough to eat and are warm by day, though sometimes
	cold at night. Makar, of whom I told you, has fallen sick and
	was permitted to remain behind. A great many others claimed
	then to be ill and were made to march before us without
	weapons and carrying double packs and under guard. In all
	this time we have seen no sign of the Ascians, and we are told
	by the lochage that they are still several days' march off. The
	seditionists killed sentries for three nights, until we put three
	men on each post and kept patrols moving outside our perimeter. 
	I was assigned to one of these patrols on the first night
	and found it very discomforting, since I feared one of my
	comrades would cut me down in the dark. My time was spent
	tripping over roots and listening to the singing at the fire—

			"Tomorrow night's sleep
			Will be on stained ground,
			So tonight all drink deep,
			Let the friend-cup go round.
			Friend, I hope when they shoot,
Every shot will fly wide,                     
			And I wish you good loot,
			And myself at your side.
			Let the friend-cup go round,
			For we'll Sleep on stained ground."

Naturally, we saw no one. The seditionists call themselves the
Vodalarii after their leader and are said to be picked fighters.
And well paid^ receiving support from the Ascians. ...

II

The Living Soldier

I PUT ASIDE the half-read letter and stared at the man who
had written it. Death’s shot had not flown wide for him; now
he stared at the sun with lustreless blue eyes, one nearly winking, 
the other fully open.

Long before that moment I should have recalled the Claw,
but I had not. Or perhaps I had only suppressed the thought
in my eagerness to steal the rations in the dead man's pack,
never reasoning that I might have trusted him to share his
food with the rescuer who had recalled him from death.
Now, at the mention of Vodalus and his followers (who I felt
would surely assist me if only I were able to find them), I
remembered it at once and took it out. It seemed to sparkle
in the summer sunlight, brighter indeed than I had ever seen
it without its sapphire case. I touched him with it, then,
urged by I cannot say what impulse, put it into his mouth.

When this, too, effected nothing, I took it between my
thumb and first finger and pushed its point into the soft skin
of his forehead. He did not move or breathe, hut a drop of
blood, fresh and sticky as that of a living man, welled forth
and stained my fingers.

I withdrew them, wiped my hand with some leaves, and
would have gone back to his letter if I had not thought I
heard a stick snap some distance away. For a moment I could
not choose among hiding, fleeing, and fighting; but there was
little chance of successfully doing the first, and I had already
had enough of the second. I picked up the dead man's
falchion, wrapped myself in my cloak, and stood waiting.

	No one came-or at least, no one visible to me. The wind
made a slight sighing among the treetops. The fly seemed to
have gone. Perhaps I had heard nothing more than deer
bounding through the shadows. I had travelled so far without
any weapon that would permit me to hunt that I had almost
forgotten the possibility. Now I examined the falchion and
found myself wishing it had been a bow.
	Something behind me stirred, and I turned to look.
It was the soldier. A tremor seemed to have seized him—if
I had not seen his corpse, I would have thought him dying.
His hands shook, and there was a rattling in his throat. I bent
and touched his face; it was as cold-as ever, and I had the
impulsive need to kindle a fire.

	There had been no fire-making gear in his pack, but I knew
every soldier must carry such things. I searched his pockets
and found a few aes, a hanging dial with which to tell time,
and a flint and striking bar. Tinder lay in plenty under the
trees—the danger was that I might set fire to all of it I swept
a space clear with my hands, piling the sweepings in the centre, 
set them ablaze, then gathered a few rotten boughs,
broke them, and laid them on the fire.

	Its light was brighter than I had expected—day was almost
done, and it would soon be dark. I looked at the dead man.
His hands no longer shook; fie was silent. The flesh of his face
seemed warmer. But that was, no doubt, no more than the
heat of the fire. The spot of blood on his forehead had nearly
dried, yet it seemed to catch the light of the dying sun, shining 
as some crimson gem might, some pigeon's blood ruby
spilled from a treasure hoard. Though our fire gave little
smoke, what there was seemed to me fragrant as incense, and
like incense it rose straight until it was lost in the gathering
dark, suggesting something I could not quite recall. I shook
myself and found more wood, breaking and stacking it until I
had a pile I thought large enough to last the night.

	Evenings were not nearly so cold here in Orithyia as they
had been in the mountains, or even in the region about Lake
Diuturna, so that although t recalled the blanket I had found
in the dead man's pack, I felt no need of it. My task had
warmed me, the food I had eaten had invigorated me, and
for a time I strode up and down in the twilight, brandishing
the falchion when such warlike gestures accorded with my
thoughts but taking care to keep the fire between the dead
man and myself.

	My memories have always appeared with the intensity, almost, 
of hallucinations, as I have said often in this chronicle.
That night I felt I might lose myself forever in them, making
of my life a loop instead of a line; and for once I did not
resist the temptation but revelled in it Everything I have
described to you came crowding back to me, and a thousand
things more. I saw Eata's face and his freckled hand when he
sought to slip between the bars of the gate of the necropolis,
and the storm I had once watched impaled on the towers of
the Citadel, writhing and lashing out with its lightnings; 1
felt its rain, colder and fresher far than the morning cup in
our refectory, trickle down my face. Dorcas's voice whispered
in my ears: "Sitting in a window . . . trays and a rood. What
will you do, summon up some Erinys to destroy me?"

	Yes. Yes, indeed, I would have if I could. If I had been
Hethor, I would have drawn them from some horror behind
the world, birds with the heads of hags and the tongues of
vipers. At my order they would have threshed the forests like
wheat and beaten cities flat with their great wings . . . and
yet, if I could, I would have appeared at the final moment to
save her—not walking coldly off afterward in the way we all
wish to do when, as children, we imagine ourselves rescuing
and humiliating the loved one who has given us some supposed 
slight, but raising her in my arms.

	Then for the first time, I think, I knew how terrible it must
have been for her, who had been hardly more than a child
when death had come, and who had been dead so long, to
have been called back.

	And thinking of that, I remembered the dead soldier
whose food I had eaten and whose sword I held, and I paused
and listened to hear if he drew breath or stirred. Yet I was so
lost in the worlds of memory that it seemed to me the soft
forest earth under my feet had come from the grave Hildegrin 
the Badger had despoiled for Vodalus, and the whisper
of the leaves was the soughing of the cypresses in our necropolis 
and the rustle of the purple-flowered roses, and that
I listened, listened in vain for breath from the dead woman
Vodalus had lifted with the rope beneath her arms, lifted in
her white shroud.    

	At last, the croaking of a nightjar brought me to myself. I
seemed to see the soldiers white face staring at me, and went
around the fire and searched until I found the blanket, and
draped his corpse with it.

	Dorcas belonged, as I now realized, to that vast group of
women (which may, indeed, include all women) who betray
us—and to that special type who betray us not for some present 
rival but for their own pasts-Just as Morwenna, whom I
had executed at Saltus, must have poisoned her husband and
her child because she recalled a time in which she was free
and, perhaps, virginal, sc Dorcas had left me because I had
not existed (had, as she must unconsciously have seen it,
failed to exist) in that time before her doom fell upon her.

	(For me, also, that is the golden time, I think I must have
treasured the memory of the crude, kindly boy who fetched
books and blossoms to my cell largely because I knew him to
be the last love before the doom, the doom that was not, as I
learned in that prison, the moment at which the tapestry was
cast over me to muffle my outcry, nor my arrival at the Old
Citadel in Nessus, nor the slam of the cell door behind me,
nor even the moment when, bathed in such a light as never
shines on Urth, I felt my body rise in rebellion against me—
but that instant in which I drew the blade of the greasy
paring knife he had brought, cold and mercifully sharp, across
my own neck. Possibly we all come to such a time, and it is
the will of the Caitanya that each damn herself for what she
has done. Yet can we be hated so much? Can we be hated at
all? Not when I can still remember his kisses on my breasts,
given, not breathing to taste the perfume of my flesh—as
Aphrodisius's were, and that young man's, the nephew of the
chiliarch of the Companions—but as though he were truly
hungry for my flesh. Was something watching us? He has
eaten of me now. Awakened by the memory, I lift my hand
and run fingers through his hair.)

I slept late, wrapped in my cloak. There is a payment made
by Nature to those who undergo hardships; it is that the
lesser ones, at which people whose lives have been easier
would complain, seem almost comfortable. Several times be-
fore I actually rose, I woke and congratulated myself to think
how easily I had spent this night compared to those I had
endured in the mountains.

At last the sunlight and the singing birds brought me to
myself. On the other side of our dead fire, the soldier shifted
and, I think, murmured something. I sat up. He had thrown
the blanket aside and lay with his face to the sky. It was a
pale face with sunken cheeks; there were dark shadows be-
neath the eyes and deeply cut lines running from the mouth;
but it was a living face. The eyes were truly closed, and
breath sighed in the nostrils.

For a moment I was tempted to run before he woke. I had
his falchion still—I started to replace it, then took it back for
fear he would attack me with it. His coutel still protruded
from the tree, making me think of Agia's crooked dagger in
the shutter of Casdoe's house. I thrust it back into the sheath
at his belt, mostly because I was ashamed to think that I,
armed with a sword, should fear any man with a knife.

	His eyelids fluttered, and I drew away, remembering a time
when Dorcas had been frightened to find me bending over
her when she woke. So that I should not appear a dark figure,
I pushed back my cloak to show my bare arms and chest,
browned now by so many days' suns. I could hear the sighing
of his breath; and when it changed from sleep to waking, it
seemed to me a thing almost as miraculous as the passage
from death to life.

	Empty-eyed as a child, he sat up and looked about him.
His lips moved, but only sound without sense came forth. I
spoke to him, trying to make my tone friendly. He listened
but did not seem to understand, and I recalled how dazed
the uhlan had been, whom I had revived on the road to the
House Absolute.

	I wished that I had water to offer him, but I had none. I
drew out a piece of the salt meat I had taken from his pack,
broke it into two, and shared that with him instead.

	He chewed and seemed to feel a little better. "Stand up,"
I said. "We must find something to drink." He took my hand
and allowed me to pull him erect, but he could hardly stand.
His eyes, which had been so calm at first, grew wilder as they
became more alert. I had the feeling that he feared the trees
might rush upon us like a pride of lions, yet he did not draw
his coutel or attempt to reclaim the falchion.

	When we had taken three or four steps, he tottered and
nearly fell. I let him lean upon my arm, and together we
made our way through the wood to the road.

III

Through Dust

I DID NOT KNOW whether we should turn north or south.
Somewhere to the north lay the Ascian army, and it was
possible that if we came too near the lines we would be
caught up in some swift maneuver. Yet the farther south we
went, the less likely we were to find anyone who would help
us, and the more probable it became that we would be arrested 
as deserters. In the end I turned northward; no doubt
I acted largely from habit, and I am still not sure if I did well
or ill.

	The dew had already dried upon the road, and it’s dusty
surface showed no footprints. To either side, for three paces
or more, the vegetation was a uniform grey. We soon passed
out of the forest. The road wound down a hill and over a
bridge that vaulted a small river at the bottom of a rock-
strewn valley.

	We left it there and went down to the water to drink and
bathe our faces. I had not shaved since I had turned my back
on Lake Diuturna, and though I had noticed none when I
took the flint and striker from the soldier's pocket, I ventured
to ask him if he carried a razor.

	I mention this trifling incident because it was the first
thing I said to him that he seemed to comprehend. He
nodded, then reaching under his hauberk produced one of
those little blades that country people use, razors their
smiths grind from the halves of worn oxshoes. I touched it
up on the broken whetstone I still carried and stropped it on
the leg of my boot, then asked if he had soap. If he did, he
failed to understand me, and after a moment he seated him-
self on a rock from which he could stare into the water, re-
minding me very much of Dorcas. I longed to question him
about the fields of Death, to learn all that he remembered of
that time that is, perhaps, dark only to us. Instead, I washed
my face in the cold river water and scraped my cheeks and
chin as well as I could. When I sheathed his razor and tried
to return it to him, he did not seem to know what to do with
it, so I kept it.

	For most of the rest of that day we walked. Several times
we were stopped and questioned; more often we stopped
others and questioned them. Gradually I developed an elaborate 
lie: I was the lictor of a civil judge who accompanied the
Autarch; we had encountered this soldier on the road, and
my master had ordered me to see that he was cared for; he
could not speak, and so I did not know what unit he was
from. That last was true enough.

	We crossed other roads and sometimes followed them.
Twice we reached great camps where tens of thousands of
soldiers lived in cities of tents. At each, those who tended the
sick told me that though they would have bandaged my companion's 
wounds had he been bleeding, they could not take
responsibility for him as he was. By the time I spoke to the
second, I no longer asked the location of the Pelerines but
only to be directed to a place where we might find shelter. It
was nearly night.

	"There is a lazaret three leagues from here that may take
you in." My informant looked from one of us to the other,
and seemed to have almost as much sympathy for me as for
the soldier, who stood mute and dazed. "Co west and north
until you see a road to the tight that passes between two big
trees. It is about half as wide as the one you will have been
following. Go down that. Are you armed?"

	I shook my head; I had put the soldier's falchion back in
his scabbard. "I was forced to leave my sword behind with my
master's servants—I couldn't have carried it and managed this
man too."

	"Then you must beware of beasts. It would be better if
you had something that would shoot, but I can't give you
anything."

	I fumed to go, but he stopped me with a hand on my
shoulder.

	"Leave him if you're attacked," he said. "And if you're
forced to leave him, don't feel too badly about it. I've seen
cases like his before. He's not likely to recover."

	"He has already recovered," I told him.

	Although this man would not allow us to stay or lend me a
weapon, he did provide us with something to eat; and I departed 
with more cheerfulness than I had felt for some time.
We were in a valley where the western hills had risen to
obscure the sun a watch or more before. As I walked along
beside the soldier, I discovered that it was no longer necessary 
for me to hold his arm. I could release it, and he continued 
to walk at my side like any friend. His face was not
really like Jonas's, which had been long and narrow, but once
when I saw it sidelong I caught something there so reminiscent 
of Jonas that I felt almost that I had seen a ghost.

The grey road was greenish-white in the moonlight; the
trees and brush to either side looked black. As we strode
along I began to talk. Partially, I admit, it was from sheer
loneliness; yet I had other reasons as well. Unquestionably
there are beasts, like the alzabo, who attack men as foxes do
fowls, but I have been told that there are many others who
will flee if they are warned in time of human presence. Then
too, I thought that if I spoke to the soldier as I might have to
any other man, any ill-intentioned persons who heard us
would be less apt to guess how unlikely he was to resist them.

	"Do you recall last night?" I began. "You slept very
heavily."
There was no reply.

	"Perhaps I never told you this, but I have the facility of
recalling everything. I can't always lay hands on it when I
want, but it is always there; some memories, you know, are
like escaped clients wandering through the oubliette. One
may not be able to produce them on demand, but they are
always there, they cannot get away.

	"Although, come to think of it, that isn't entirely true.
The fourth and lowest level of our oubliette has been abandoned
there are never enough clients to fill the topmost
three anyway, and perhaps eventually Master Gurloes will
give up the third. We only keep it open now for the mad
ones that no official ever comes to see. If they were in one of
the higher levels, their noise would disturb the others. Not
all of them are noisy, of course. Some are as quiet as
yourself."

	Again there was no reply. In the moonlight I could not tell
if be was paying attention to me, but remembering the razor
I persevered.

	"I went that way myself once. Through the fourth level, I
mean. I used to have a dog, and I kept him there, but he ran
away. I went after him and found a tunnel that left our
oubliette. Eventually I crawled out of a broken pedestal in a
place called the Atrium of Time. It was full of sundials. I
met a young woman there who was really more beautiful
than anyone I've ever seen since—more lovely even than
Jolenta, I think, though not in the same way."

	The soldier said nothing, yet now something told me he
heard me; perhaps it was no more than a slight movement of
his head seen from a corner of my eye.

	"Her name was Valeria, and I think she was younger than
I, although she seemed older. She had dark, curling hair, like
Thecla's, but her eyes were dark too. Thecla's were violet.
She had the finest skin I have ever seen, like rich milk mixed
with the juice of pomegranates and strawberries.

	"But I didn't set out to talk about Valeria, but about
Dorcas. Dorcas is lovely too, though she is very thin, almost
like a child. Her face is a peri's, and her complexion is flecked
with freckles like bits of gold. Her hair was long before she
cut it; she always wore flowers there."

	I paused again. I had continued to talk of women because
that seemed to have caught his attention^ Now I could not
say if he were still listening or not.

	"Before I left Thrax I went to see Dorcas. It was in her
room, in an inn called the Duck's Nest. She was in bed and
naked, but she kept the sheet over herself, just as if we had
never slept together—we who had walked and ridden so far,
camping in places where no voice had been heard since the
land was called up from the sea, and climbing hills where no
feet had ever walked but the sun's. She was leaving me and I
her, and neither of us really wished it otherwise, though at
the last she was afraid and asked me to come with her after
all.

	"She said she thought the Claw had the same power over
time that Father Inire's mirrors are said to have over distance. 
I didn't think much of the remark then—I'm not really
a very intelligent man, I suppose, not a philosopher at ail-
but now I find it interesting. She told me, 'When you
brought the uhlan back to life it was because the Claw
twisted time for him to the point at which he still lived.
When you half-healed your friend's wounds, it was because it
bent the moment to one when they would be nearly healed.'
Don't you think that's interesting? A little while after I
pricked your forehead with the Claw, you made a strange
sound. I think it may have been your death rattle."

I waited. The soldier did not speak, but quite unexpectedly 
I felt his hand on my shoulder. I had been talking
almost flippantly; his touch brought home to me the seriousness 
of what I had been saying. If it were true—or even
some trifling approximation to the truth—then I had toyed
with powers I understood no better than Casdoe's son, whom
I had tried to make my own, would have understood the
giant ring that took his life.

	"No wonder then that you're dazed. It must be a terrible
thing to move backward in time, and still more terrible to
pass backward through death. I was about to say that it
would be like being born again; but it would be much worse
than that, I think, because an infant lives already in his
mother's womb." I hesitated. "I... Thecia, I mean ... never
bore a child."

	Perhaps only because I had been thinking of his confusion,
I found I was confused myself, so that I scarcely knew who I
was. At last I said lamely, "You must excuse me. When I'm
tired, and sometimes when I'm near sleep, I come near to
becoming someone else." (For whatever reason, his grip on
my shoulder tightened when I said that.) "It's a long story
that has nothing to do with you. I wanted to say that in the
Atrium of Time, the breaking of the pedestal had tilted the
dials so their gnomons no longer pointed true, and I have
heard that when that happens, the watches of day stop, or
run backward for some part of each day. You carry a pocket
dial, so you know that for it to tell time truly you must direct
its gnomon toward the sun. The sun remains stationary while
Urth dances about him, and it is by her dancing that we
know the time, just as a deaf man might still beat out the
rhythm of a tarantella by observing the swaying of the dancers. 
But what if the sun himself were to dance? Then, too,
the march of the moments might become a retreat.

	"I don't know if you believe in the New Sun—I'm not sure
I ever have. But if he will exist, he will be the Conciliator
come again, and thus Conciliator and New Sun are only two
names for the same individual, and we may ask why that
individual should be called the New Sun. What do you
think? Might it not be for this power to move time?"

	Now I felt indeed that time itself had stopped. Around us
the trees rose dark and silent; night had freshened the air. I
Could think of nothing more to say, and I was ashamed to
talk nonsense, because I felt somehow that the soldier had
been listening attentively to all I had said. Before us I saw
two pines far thicker through their trunks than the others
lining the road, and a pale path of white and green that
threaded its way between them. "There!" I exclaimed.

	But when we reached them, I had to halt the soldier with
my hands and turn him by the shoulders before he followed
me. I noticed a dark splatter in the dust and bent to touch it.

	It was clotted blood. "We are on the right road," I told
him. "They have been bringing the wounded here."

IV

Fever

	I CANNOT SAY how far we walked, or how far worn the night
was before we reached our destination. I know that I began
to stumble some time after we turned aside from the main
road, and that it became a sort of disease to me; just as some
sick men cannot stop coughing and others cannot keep their
hands from shaking, so I tripped, and a few steps farther on
tripped again, and then again. Unless I thought of nothing
else, the toe of my left boot caught at my right heel, and I
could not concentrate my mind—my thoughts ran off with
every step I took.

	Fireflies glimmered in the trees to either side of the path,
and for a long time I supposed that the lights ahead of us
were only more such insects and did not hurry my pace.
Then, very suddenly as it seemed to me, we were beneath
some shadowy roof where men and women with yellow lamps
moved up and down between long rows of shrouded cots. A
woman in clothes I supposed were black took charge of us
and led us to another place where there were chairs of leather
and horn, and a fire burned in a brazier. There I saw that her
gown was scarlet, and she wore a scarlet hood, and for a
.moment I thought that she was Cyriaca.
	"Your friend is very ill, isn't he?" she said. "Do you know
what is the matter with him?"

	And the soldier shook his head and answered, "No. I'm
not even sure who he is."

	I was too stunned to speak. She took my hand, then re-
leased it and took the soldier's. "He has a fever. So do you.
Now that the heat of summer is come, we see more disease
each day. You should have boiled your water and kept your-
selves as clean of lice as you could."

	She turned to me. "You have a great many shallow cuts
too, and some them are infected. Rock shards?"

	I managed to say, "I'm not the one who is ill. I brought my
friend here."

	"You are both ill, and I suspect you brought each other. I
doubt that either of you would have reached us without the
other. Was it rock shards? Some weapon of the enemy's?"

	"Rock shards, yes. A weapon of a friend's."

	"That is the worst thing, I am told—to be fired upon by
your own side. But the fever is the chief concern." She hesitated, 
looking from the soldier to me and back. "I'd like to
put you both in bed now, but you'll have to go to the bath
first,"

	She clapped her hands to summon a burly man with a
shaven head. He took our arms and began to lead us away,
then stopped and picked me lip, carrying me as I had once
carried little Severian. In a few moments we were naked and
sitting in a pool of water heated by Stones. The burly man
splashed more water over us, then made us get out one at a
time so he could crop our hair with a pair of shears. After
that we were left to soak awhile.

	"You can speak now," I said to the soldier.

	I saw him nod in the lamplight

	"Why didn't you, then, when we were coming here?"

He hesitated, and his shoulders moved a trifle. “I was
thinking of many things, and you didn't talk yourself. You
seemed so tired. Once I asked if we shouldn't stop, but you
didn't answer."                                       
	I said, "It seemed to me otherwise, but perhaps we are
both correct. Do you recall what happened to you before you
met me?"

	Again there was a pause. "I don't even remember meeting
you. We were walking down a dark path, and you were beside me."
"And before that?"
	"I don't know. Music, perhaps, and walking a long way. In
sunshine at first but later through the dark."
	"That walking was while you were with me," I said. "Don't
you recall anything else?"
	"Flying through the dark. Yes, I was with you, and we
came to a place where the sun hung just above our heads.
	There was a light before us, but when I stepped into it, it
became a kind of darkness."
	I nodded. "You weren't wholly rational, you see. On a
warm day it can seem that the sun's just overhead, and when
it is down behind the mountains it seems the light becomes
darkness. Do you recall your name?"

	At that he thought for several moments, and at last smiled
ruefully. "I lost it somewhere along the way. That's what the
jaguar said, who had promised to guide the goat."

	The burly man with the shaven head had come back with-
out either of us noticing. He helped me out of the pool and
gave me a towel with which to dry myself, a robe to wear, and
a canvas sack containing my possessions, which now smelled
strongly of the smoke of fumigation. A day earlier it would
have tormented me nearly to frenzy to have the Claw out of
my possession for an instant. That night I had hardly realized
it was gone until it was returned to me, and I did not verify
that it had indeed been returned until I lay on one of the
cots under a veil of netting. The Claw shone in my hand

then softly as the moon; and it was shaped as the moon
sometimes is. I smiled to think that its flooding light of pale
green is the reflection of the sun.

	On the first night I slept in Saltus, I had awakened thinking
I was in the apprentices dormitory in our tower. Now I
had the same experience in reverse: I slept and found in sleep
that the shadowy lazaret with its silent figures and moving
lamps had been no more than a hallucination of the day.

	I sat up and looked around. I felt well—better, in fact, than
I had ever felt before; but I was warm. I seemed to glow from
within. Roche was sleeping on his side, his red hair tousled
and his mouth slightly open, his face relaxed and boyish with-
out the energy of his mind behind it. Through the port I
could see snow drifts in the Old Court, new-fallen snow that
showed no tracks of men or their animals; but it occurred to
me that in the necropolis there would be hundreds of foot-
prints already as the small creatures who found shelter there,
the pets and the playmates of the dead, came out to search
for food and to disport themselves in the new landscape Nature 
had bestowed on them. I dressed quickly and silently,
holding my finger to my own lips when one of the other
apprentices stirred, and hurried down the steep stair that
wound through the centre of the tower.

	It seemed longer than usual, and I found I had difficulty in
going from step to step. We are always aware of the hindrance 
of gravity when we climb stairs, but we take for
ranted the assistance it gives us when we descend. Now that
assistance had been withdrawn, or nearly so. I had to force
each foot down, but do it in a way that prevented it from
sending me shooting up when it struck the step, as it would
have if I had stamped. In that uncanny way we know things
in dreams, I understood that all the towers of the Citadel
had risen at last and were on their voyage beyond the circle
of Dis. I felt happy in the knowledge, bat I still desired to go
into the necropolis and track the coatis and foxes, I was
hurrying down as fast as I could when I heard a groan. The
stairway no longer descended as it should but led into a
cabin, just as the stairs in Baldanders's castle had stretched
down the walls of its chambers.

This was Master Malrubius's sickroom. Masters are entitled 
to spacious quarters; still, this was larger by far than the
actual cabin had been. There were two ports just as I remembered, 
but they were enormous—the eyes of Mount Typhon.
Master Malrubius's bed was very large, yet it seemed lost in
the immensity of the room. Two figures bent over him.
Though their clothing was dark, it struck me that it was not
the fuligin of the guild. I went to them, and when I was so
near I could hear the sick man's laboured breathing, they
straightened up and turned to look at me. They were the
Cumaean and her acolyte Merryn, the witches we had met
atop the tomb in the ruined stone town.
"Ah, sister, you have come at last," Merryn said.
As she spoke, I realized that I was not, as I bad thought,
the apprentice Severian. I was Thecia as she had been when
she was his height, which is to say at about the age of thirteen
Of fourteen. I felt an intense embarrassment—not because of
my girl's body or because I was wearing masculine clothes
{which indeed I rather enjoyed) but because I had been unaware 
of it previously. I also felt that Merryn's words had
been an act of magic—that both Severian and I had been
present before, and that she had by some means driven him
into the background. The Cumaean kissed me on the fore-
head, and when the kiss was over wiped blood from her lips.
Although she did not speak, I knew this was a signal that I
had in some sense become the soldier too.

"When we sleep," Merryn told me, "we move from temporality 
to eternity."
"When we wake," the Cumaean whispered, "we lose the
facility to See beyond the present moment."
"She never wakes," Merryn boasted.
Master Malrubius stirred and groaned, and the Cumaean
took a carafe of water from the table by his bed and poured a
little into a tumbler. When she set down the carafe again,
something living stirred in it. I, for some reason, thought it
the undine; I drew back, but it was Hethor, no higher than
my hand, his grey, stubbled face pressed against the glass.

I heard his voice as one might hear the squeaking of mice:
"Sometimes driven aground by the photon storms, by the
swirling of the galaxies, clockwise and counter clockwise, ticking 
with light down the dark sea-corridors lined with our silver 
sails, our demon-haunted mirror sails, our hundred-league
masts as fine as threads, as fine as silver needles sewing the
threads of starlight, embroidering the stars on black velvet,
wet with the winds of Time that goes racing by. The bone in
her teeth! The spume, the flying spume of Time, cast up on
these beaches where old sailors can no longer keep their
bones from the restless, the unwearied universe. Where has
she gone? My lady, the mate of my soul? Gone across the
running tides of Aquarius, of Pisces, of Aries. Gone. Gone in
her little boat, her nipples pressed against the black velvet—
lid, gone, sailing away forever from the star-washed shores,
the dry shoals of the habitable worlds. She is her own ship,
she is the figurehead of her own ship, and the captain. Bosun,
Bosun, put out the launch! Sailmaker, make a sail! She has
left us behind; We have left her behind. She is in the past we
never knew and the future we will not see. Put out more sail,
Captain, for the universe is leaving us behind. . . ."

There was a bell on the table beside the carafe. Merryn
rang it as though to overpower Hethor's voice, and wfien
Master Malrubius had moistened his lips with the tumbler,
she took it from the Cumaean, flung what remained of its
water on the-floor, and inverted it over the neck of the carafe.
Hethor was silenced, but the water spread over the floor,
bubbling as though fed by a hidden spring. It was icy cold. I
thought vaguely that my governess would be angry because
my shoes were wet.

A maid was coming in answer to the ring—Thecla's maid,
whose flayed leg I had inspected the day after I had saved
Vodalus. She was younger, as young as she must have been
when Thecia was actually a girl, but her leg had been flayed
already and ran with blood. "I am so sorry,” I said. "I am so
sorry, Hunna. I didn't do it—it was Master Gurloes, and some
journeymen”

	Master Malrubius sat up in bed, and for the first time I
observed that his bed was in actuality a woman's hand, with
fingers longer than my arm and nails like talons. "You're
well!" he said, as though I were the one who had been dying.
"Or nearly well, at least." The fingers of the hand began to
close upon him, but he leaped from the bed and into water
that was now knee high to stand beside me.

	A dog—my old dog Triskele—had apparently been hiding
beneath the bed, or perhaps only lying on the farther side of
it, out of sight. Now he came to us, splashing the water with
his single forepaw as he drove his broad chest through it and
barking joyously. Master Malrubius took my right hand and
the Cumaean my left; together they led me to one of the
great eyes of the mountain.
	
	I saw the view I had seen when Typhon had led me there:
The world rolled out like a carpet and visible in its entirety.
This time it was more magnificent by far. The sun was be-
hind us; its beams seemed to have multiplied their strength,
Shadows were alchemised to gold, and every green thing grew
darker and stronger as I looked. I could see the grain ripening
in the fields and even the myriad fish of the sea doubling and
redoubling with the increase of the tiny surface plants that
sustained them. Water from the room behind us poured
from the eye and, catching the light, fell in a rainbow.

	Then I woke.
	While I slept, someone had wrapped me in sheets packed
with snow. (I learned later that it was brought down from the
mountaintops by sure-footed sumpters.) Shivering, I longed
to return to my dream, though I was already half-aware of

the immense distance that separated us. The bitter taste of
medicine was in my mouth, the stretched canvas felt as hard,
as a floor beneath me, and scarlet-clad Pelerines with lamps
moved to and fro, tending men and women who groaned in
the dark.

V

The Lazaret

I DO NOT BELIEVE I really slept again that night, though I may
have dozed. When dawn came, the snow had melted. Two
Pelerines took the sheets away, gave me a towel with which
to dry myself, and brought dry bedding. I wanted to give the
daw to them then—my possessions were in the bag under my
cot—but the moment seemed inappropriate. I lay down instead, 
and now that it was daylight, slept.

I woke again about noon. The lazaret was as quiet as it
ever became; somewhere far off two men were talking and
another cried out, but their voices only emphasized the stillness. 
I sat up and looked around, hoping to see the soldier.
On my right lay a man whose close-cropped scalp made me
think at first that he was one of the slaves of the Pelerines. I
called to him, but when he turned his head to look at me, I
saw I had been mistaken.

	His eyes were emptier than any human eyes I had ever
seen, and they seemed to watch spirits invisible to me.
"Glory to the Group of Seventeen," he said.
	"Good morning. Do you know anything about the way this
place is run?"
	A shadow appeared to cross his face, and I sensed that my
question had somehow made him suspicious. He answered,
"All endeavours are conducted well or ill precisely in so far as
they conform to Correct Thought."

	"Another man was brought in at the same time I was. I'd.
like to talk to him. He's a friend of mine, more or less."
	"Those who do the will of the populace are friends,
though we have never spoken to them. Those who do not do
the will of the populace are enemies, though we learned together 
as children."
	The man on my left called, "You won't get anything out
of him. He's a prisoner."
	I turned to look at him. His face, though wasted nearly to
a skull, retained something of humour. His stiff, black hair
looked as though it had not seen a comb for months.
"He talks like that all the time. Never any other way. Hey,
you! We're going to beat you!"

The other answered, "For the Armies of the Populace,
defeat is the springboard of victory, and victory the ladder to
further victory."
"He makes a lot more sense than most of them, though,”
the man on my left told me.
"You say he's a prisoner. What did he do?"
"Do? Why, he didn't die."
"I'm afraid I don't understand. Was he selected for some
kind of suicide mission?"

The patient beyond the man on my left sat up—a young
woman with a thin but lovely face. "They all are," she said.
"At least, they can't go home until the war is won, and they
know, really, that it will never be won."
"External battles are already won when internal struggles
are conducted with Correct Thought"

I said, "He's an Ascian, then. That's what you meant I've
never seen one before."
"Most of them die," the black-haired man told me.
"That's what I said."
"I didn't know they spoke our language."
"They don't. Some officers who came here to talk to him
said they thought he'd been an interpreter. Probably he questioned 
our soldiers when they were captured. Only he did
something wrong and had to go back to the ranks."

	The young woman said, "I don't think he's really mad.
Most of them are. What's your name?"
	"I'm sorry, I should have introduced myself. I'm Severian."
I almost added that I was a lictor, but I knew neither of them
would talk to me if I told them that.

	"I'm Foila, and this is Melito. I was of the Blue Huzzars,
he a hoplite."
	"You shouldn't talk nonsense," Melito growled. "I am a
hoplite. You are a huzzar."
	I thought he appeared much nearer death than she.
"I'm only hoping we will be discharged when we're well
enough to leave this place," Foila said.
	"And what will we do then? Milk somebody else's cow and
herd his pigs?" Melito fumed to me. "Don't let her talk
deceive you—we were volunteers, both of us. I was about to
be promoted when I was wounded, and when I'm promoted
I’ll be able to support a wife."
	Foila called, "I haven't promised to marry you!"
Several beds away, someone said loudly, "Take her so she'll
shut up about it!"

	At that, the patient in the bed beyond Foila's sat up. "She
will marry me." He was big, fair skinned, and pale haired, and
he spoke with the deliberation characteristic of the icy isles
of the south. "I am Hallvard."

	Surprising me, the Ascian prisoner announced, "United,
men and women are stronger; but a brave woman desires
children, and not husbands."
	Foila said, "They fight even when they're pregnant—I've
seen them dead on the battlefield."
	"The roots of the tree are the populace. The leaves fall,
but the tree remains."

	I asked Melito and Foila if the Ascian were composing his
remarks or quoting some literary source with which I was
unfamiliar.

	"Just making it up, you mean?" Foila asked. "No. They
never do that. Everything they say has to be taken from an
approved text. Some of them don't talk at all. The rest have
thousands—1 suppose actually tens or hundreds of thousands 
of those tags memorized."

	"That's impossible," I said.

	Melito shrugged. He had managed to prop himself up on
one elbow. "They do it, though. At least, that's what every-
body says. Foila knows more about them than I do."

	Foila nodded. "In the light cavalry, we do a lot of scouting,
and sometimes we're sent out specifically to take prisoners.
You don't learn anything from talking to most of them, but
just the same the General Staff can tell a good deal from
their equipment and physical condition. On the northern
continent, where they come from, only the smallest children
ever talk the way we do."

	I thought of Master Gurioes conducting the business of
our guild. "How could they possibly say something like Take
three apprentices and unload that wagon'?"

	"They wouldn't say that at all—just grab people by the
shoulder, point to the wagon, and give them a push. If they
went to work, fine. If they didn't, then the leader would
quote something about the need for labour to ensure victory,
with several witnesses present. If the person he was talking to
still wouldn't work after that, then he would have him
killed—probably just by pointing to him and quoting some-
thing about the need to eliminate the enemies of the populace."

	The Ascian said, "The cries of the children are the cries of
victory. Still, victory must learn wisdom."
	Foila interpreted for him. "That means that although children 
are needed, what they say is meaningless. Most Ascians
would consider us mute even if we learned their tongue,
because groups of words that are not approved texts are with-
out meaning for them. If they admitted—even to them-
selves—that such talk meant something, then it would be
possible for them to hear disloyal remarks, and even to make
them. That would be extremely dangerous. As long as they
only understand and quote approved texts, no one can accuse
them."

	I turned my head to look at the Ascian. It was clear that he
had been listening attentively, but I could not be certain of
what his expression meant beyond that. "Those who write
the approved texts," I told him, "cannot themselves be quoting 
from approved texts as they write. Therefore even an
approved text may contain elements of disloyalty."

	"Correct Thought is the thought of the populace. The
populace cannot betray the populace or the Group of Seventeen."
	Foila called, "Don't insult the populace or the Group of
Seventeen. He might try to kill himself. Sometimes they do."
"Will he ever be normal?"

	"I've heard that some of them eventually come to talk
more or less the way we do, if that's what you mean."

	I could think of nothing to say to that, and for some time
we were quiet. There are long periods of silence, I found, in
such a place, where almost everyone is ill. We knew that we
had watch after watch to occupy; that if we did not say what
we wished to say that afternoon there would be another opportunity 
that evening and another again the next morning.
Indeed, anyone who talked as healthy people normally do-
after a meal, for example—would have been intolerable.
	But what had been said had set me thinking of the north,
and I found I knew next to nothing about it. When I had
been a boy, scrubbing floors and running errands in the Citadel, 
the war itself had seemed almost infinitely remote. I
knew that most of the matrosses who manned the major batteries 
had taken part in it, but I knew it just as I knew that
the sunlight that fell upon my hand had been to the sun. I
would be a torturer, and as a torturer I would have no reason
to enter the army and no reason to fear that I would be
impressed into it. I never expected to see the war at the gates
of Nessus (in fact, those gates themselves were hardly more
than legends to me), and I never expected to leave the city,
or even to leave that quarter of the city that held the
Citadel.

The north, Ascia, was then inconceivably remote, a place
as distant as the most distant galaxy, since both were forever
out of reach. Mentally, I confused it with the dying belt of
tropical vegetation that lay between our own land and theirs,
although I would have distinguished the two without difficulty 
if Master Palaemon had asked me to in the classroom.

But of Ascia itself I had no idea. I did not know if it had
great cities or none. I did not know if it was mountainous like
the northern and eastern parts of our Commonwealth or as
level as our pampas. I did have the impression (though I
could not be sure it was correct) that it was a single land
mass, and not a chain of islands like our south; and most
distinct of all, I had the impression of an innumerable people
our Ascian's populace—an inexhaustible swarm that almost 
became a creature in itself, as a colony of ants does. To
think of those millions upon millions without speech, or con-
fined to parroting proverbial phrases that must surely have
long ago lost most of their meaning, was nearly more than
the mind could bear. Speaking almost to myself, I said, "It
must surely be a trick, or a lie, or a mistake. Such a nation
could not exist."

And the Ascian, his voice no louder than my own had
been, and perhaps even softer, answered, "How shall the
state be most vigorous? It shall be most vigorous when it is
without conflict. How shall it be without conflict? When it is
without disagreement. How shall disagreement be banished?
By banishing the four causes of disagreement: lies, foolish
talk, boastful talk, and talk which serves only to incite quarrels. 
How shall the four causes be banished? By speaking only
Correct Thought. Then shall the state be without disagreement 
Being without disagreement it shall be without conflict. 
Being without conflict it shall be vigorous, strong, and
secure,

I had been answered, and doubly.

VI

Miles, Foila, Melito, and Hallvard

THAT EVENING I fell prey to a fear I had been trying to put
from my mind for some time. Although I had seen nothing
of the monsters Hethor had brought from beyond the stars
since little Severian and I had escaped from the village of the
sorcerers, I had not forgotten that he was searching for me.
While I travelled in the wilderness or upon the waters of
Lake Diuturna, I had not been much afraid he would over-
take me. Now I was travelling no longer, and I could feel the
weakness in my limbs, for despite the food I had eaten I was
weaker than I had ever been while starving in the mountains.

	Then too, I feared Agia almost more than Hethor's
notules, his salamanders and slugs. I knew her courage, her
cleverness, and her malice. Any one of the scarlet-clad priest-
esses of the Pelerines moving between the cots might easily
be she, with a poisoned stiletto beneath her gown. I slept
badly that night; but though I dreamed much, my dreams
were indistinct, and I will not attempt to relate them here.

	I woke feeling less than rested. My fever, of which I had
hardly been conscious when I came to the lazaret, and which
had seemed to subside on the day previous, returned. I felt
its heat in every limb—it seemed to me that I must glow, that

the very glaciers of the south would melt if I came among
them. I took out the Claw and clasped it to me, and for a
time even held it in my mouth. My fever sank again, but left
me weak and dizzied.                              

	That morning the soldier came to see me. He wore a white
gown the Pelerines had given him in place of his armour, but
he appeared wholly recovered, and told me he hoped to leave
the next day. I said I would like to introduce him to the
acquaintances I had made in this part of the lazaret and
asked if he now recalled his name.
	He shook his head. "I can remember very little. I am hoping 
that when I go among the units of the army I will find
someone there who knows me."
	I introduced him anyway, calling him Miles since I could
think of nothing better. I did not know the Ascian's name
either and discovered that no one did, not even Foila. When
we asked him what it was, he only said, "I am Loyal to the
Group of Seventeen."

	For a time Foila, Melito, the soldier, and I chatted among
ourselves. Melito seemed to like him very well, though perhaps 
only because of the similarity of the name I had given
him to his own. Then the soldier helped me into a sitting
posture, lowered his voice, and said, "Now I have to talk to
you privately. As I said, I think I will leave here in the morning. 
From what I have seen of you, you won't be getting out
for several days—maybe not for a couple of weeks. I may
never see you again."
	"Let us hope that isn't so."
	"I hope not either. But if I can find my legion, I may be
killed by the time you're well. And if I can't find it, I'll
probably go into another to keep from being arrested as a
deserter." He paused.

	I smiled. "And I may die here, of the fever. You didn't
want to say that Do I look as bad as poor Melito?"
	He shook his head. "Not as bad, no. I think you'll make
it-"
“That's what the thrush sang while the lynx chased the
hare around the bay tree."
	Now it was his turn to smile. "You're right; I was about to
say that."
	"Is it a common expression in that part of the Common-
wealth where you were brought up?"
	The smile vanished. "I don't know. I can't remember
where my home is, and that's part of the reason I have to talk
to you now. I remember walking down a road with you at
night—that's the only thing I do remember, before I came
here. Where did you find me?"

	"In a wood, I suppose about five or ten leagues south of
here. Do you recall what I told you about the Claw as we
walked?"
	He shook his head. "I think I remember you mentioning
such a thing, but not what you said."
	"What do you remember? Tell me all of it, and I'll tell
you what I know, and what I can guess."
	"Walking with you. A lot of darkness ... I fell, or maybe
flew through it. Seeing my own face, multiplied again and
again. A girl with hair like red gold and enormous eyes."
	"A beautiful woman?"
	He nodded. "The most beautiful in the world."

	Raising my voice, I asked if anyone had a mirror he would
lend us for a moment. Foila produced one from the possessions 
beneath her cot, and I held it up for the soldier. "Is this
the face?"
	He hesitated. "I think so."
	"Blue eyes?"
	"... I can't be sure."

	I returned the mirror to Foila. "I will tell you again what I
told you on the road, and I wish we had a more private place
in which to do it. Some time ago a talisman came into my
hands. It came innocently, but it does not belong to me, and
it is very valuable—sometimes, not always, but sometimes—it
has the power to heal the sick, and even to revive the dead.
Two days ago, as I was travelling north, I came across the
body of a dead soldier. It was in a forest, away from the road.
He had been dead less than a day; I would say its likely he
had died sometime during the preceding night. I was very
hungry then, and I cut his pack straps and ate most of the
food he had been carrying with him. Then I felt guilty about
doing that and got out the talisman and tried to restore him
to life. It has failed often before, and this time I thought for
a while it was going to fail again. It didn't, although he re-
turned to life slowly and for a long time did not seem to
know where he was or what was happening to him."
	"And I was that soldier?"
	I nodded, looking into his honest blue eyes.
	"May I see the talisman?"

	I took it out and held it in the palm of my hand. He took
it from me, examined both sides carefully, and tested the
point against the ball of his finger. "It doesn't look magical,"
he said.
	"I'm not sure magical is the right term for it. I've met
magicians, and nothing they did reminded me of this or the
way it acts. Sometimes it glows with light—it's very faint now,
and I doubt if you can see it."
	"I can't. There doesn't seem to be any writing on it."
	"You mean spells or prayers. No, I've never noticed any,
and I've carried it a long way. I don't really know anything
about it except that it acts at times; but I think it is probably
the kind of thing spells and prayers are made with, and not
the kind that is made with them."
	"You said it didn't belong to you."
	I nodded again. "It belongs to the priestesses here, the
Pelerines."
	"You just came here. Two nights ago, when I did."
"I came looking for them, to give it back. It was taken
from them—not by me—some time ago, in Nessus."
	"And you're going to return it?" He looked at me as
though he somehow doubted it.

	"Yes, eventually."
	He stood up, smoothing his robe with his hands.
I said, "You don't believe me, do you? Not about any of
It”
	"When I came here, you introduced me to the others
nearby, the ones you'd talked with while you lay here on your
cot." He spoke slowly, seeming to ponder every word. "Of
course I've met some people too, where they put me. There's
one who isn't really wounded very badly. He's just a boy, a
youngster off some small holding a long way from here, and
he mostly sits on his cot and looks at the floor."

	"Homesick?" I asked.
	The soldier shook his head. "He had an energy weapon. A
korseke—that's what somebody told me. Are you familiar
with them?"
	"Not very."
	"They project a beam straight forward, and at the same
time two quartering beams, forward left and forward right.
Their range isn't great, but they say they're very good for
dealing with mass attacks, and I suppose they are."
	
	He looked about for a moment to see if anyone was listening, 
but it is a point of honour in the lazaret to disregard
completely any conversation not intended for oneself. If it
were not so, the patients would soon be at each other's
throats.

	"His hundred was the target of one of those attacks. Most
of the others broke and ran. He didn't, and they didn't get
him. Another man told me there were three walls of bodies
in front of him. He had dropped them until the Ascians were
climbing up to the top and jumping down at him. Then he
had backed away and piled them up again."
	I said, "I suppose he got a medal and a promotion." I
could not be sure if it was my fever returning or merely the
heat of the day, but I felt sticky and somehow suffocated.
	"No, they sent him here. I told you he was only a boy from
the country. He had killed more people that day than he had
ever seen up to the time a few months before when he went
into the army. He still hasn't gotten over it, and maybe he
never will."
	"Yes?"
	"It seems to me you might be like that."
	"I don't understand you," I said.

	"You talk as if you've just come here from the south, and I
suppose that if you've left your legion that's the safest way to
talk. Just the same, anybody can see it isn't true—people
don't get cut up the way you are except where the fighting is.
You were hit by rock splinters. That's what happened to you,
and the Pelerine who spoke to us the first night we were here
saw that right away. So I think you've been north longer than
you'll admit, and maybe longer than you think yourself. If
you've killed a lot of people, it might be nice for you to
believe you have a way to bring them back."

	I tried to grin at him. "And where does that leave you?"
"Where I am now. I'm not trying to say I owe you nothing. 
I had fever, and you found me. Maybe I was delirious. I
think it's more likely I was unconscious, and that let you
think I was dead. If you hadn't brought me here, I probably
would have died."

	He started to stand up; I stopped him with a hand on his
arm. "There are some things I should tell you before you go,'
I said. "About yourself."
	"You said you didn't know who I was."
	I shook my head. "I didn't say that, not really. I said I
found you in a wood two days ago. In the sense you mean, I
don't know who you are—but in another sense I think I may.
I think you're two people, and that I know one of them."

	"Nobody is two people."      
	"I am. I'm two people already. Perhaps more people are
two than we know. The first thing I want to tell you is much
simpler, though. Now listen." I gave him detailed directions
for finding the wood again, and when I was certain he understood 
them, I said, "Your pack is probably still there, with
the straps cut, so if you find the place you won't mistake it.
There was a letter in your pack. I pulled it out and read a
part -of it. It didn't carry the name of the person you were
writing to, but if you had finished it and were just waiting for
a chance to send it off, it should have at least a part of your
name at the end. I put it on the ground and it blew a little
and caught against a tree. It may still be possible for you to
find it."

	His face had tightened. "You shouldn't have read it, and
you shouldn't have thrown it away."
	"I thought you were dead, remember? Anyway, a good
deal was going on at the time, mostly inside my head. Per-
haps I was getting feverish—I don't know. Now here's the
other part. You won't believe me, but it may be important
that you listen. Will you hear me out?"

He nodded.
"Good. Have you heard of the mirrors of Father Inire? Do
you know how they work?"
	"I've heard of Father Inire's Mirror, but I couldn't tell you
where I heard about it. You're supposed to be able to step
into it, like you'd step into a doorway, and step out on a star.
I don't think it's real."
	"The mirrors are real. I've seen them. Up until now I always 
thought of them in much the same way you did—as if
they were a ship, but much faster. Now I'm not nearly so
sure. Anyway, a certain friend of mine stepped between those
mirrors and vanished. I was watching him. It was no trick and
no superstition; he went wherever the mirrors take you. He
went because he loved a certain woman, and he wasn't a
whole man. Do you understand?"

	"He'd had an accident?"
	"An accident had had him, but never mind that. He told
me he would come back. He said, “I will come back for her
when I have been repaired, when, I am sane and whole.” I
didn't quite know what to think when he said that, but now I
believe he has come. It was I who revived you, and I had
been wishing for his return—perhaps that had something to
do with it."                                             

	There was a pause. The soldier looked down at the trampled 
soil on which the cots had been set, then up again at
me. "Possibly whenever a man loses his friend and gets another, 
he feels the old friend is with him again.”
	"Jonas—that was his name—had a habit of speech. When-
ever he had to say something unpleasant, he softened it,
made a joke of it, by attributing what he said to some comic
situation. The first night we were here, when I asked you
your name, you said, “I lost it somewhere along the way.
That's what the jaguar said, who had promised to guide the
goat.' Do you recall that?"

	He shook his head. "I say a lot of foolish things."
"It struck me as strange; because it was the kind of thing
Jorias said, but he wouldn't have said it in that way unless he
meant more by it than you seemed to. I think he would have
said. That was the basket's story, that had been filled with
water.' Something like that."

	I waited for him to speak, but he did not.
	"The jaguar ate the goat, of course. Swallowed its flesh and
cracked its bones, somewhere along the way."

	"Haven't you ever thought that it might be just the peculiarity 
of some town? Your friend might have come from the
same place I do."
	I said, "It was a time, I think, and not a place. Long ago,
someone had to disarm fear—the fear that men of flesh and
Mood might feel when looking into a face of steel and glass.
Jonas, I know you're listening. I don't blame you. The man
was dead, and you still alive. I understand that. But Jonas,
Jolenta is gone—I watched her die, and I tried to bring her
back with the Claw, but I failed. Perhaps she was too artificial, 
I don't know. You will have to find someone else."

	The soldier rose. His face was no longer angry, but empty
as a somnambulist's. He turned and left without another
word.

	For perhaps a watch I lay on my cot with my hands behind
my head, thinking of many things. Hallvard, Melito, and
Fiola were talking among themselves, but I did not attend to
what they said. When one of the Pelerines brought the noon
meal, Melito got my ear by rapping his platter with a fork
and announced, "Severian, we have a favor to ask of you."

	I was eager to put my speculations behind me, and told
him I would help them in any way I could.
	Foila, who had one of those radiant smiles Nature grants
to some women, smiled at me now. "It's like this. These two
have been bickering over me all morning. If they were well
they could fight it out, but it will be a long time before they
are, and I don't think I could stand it so long. Today I was
thinking of my mother and father, and how they used to sit
before the fire on long winter nights. If Hallvard and I marry,
or Melito and I, someday we'll be doing that too. So I have
decided to marry the best storyteller. Don't look at me as if I
were mad—it's the only sensible thing I've done in my life.
Both of them want me, both are very handsome, neither has
any property, and if we don't settle this they'll kill each other
or I'll kill them both. You're an educated man—we can tell
by the way you talk. You listen and judge. Hallvard first, and
the stories have to be original, not out of books."

Hallvard, who could walk a little, got up from his cot and
came to sit on the foot of Melito's.

VII

Hallvard’s Story—The Two Sealers

"THIS is A true story. I know many stories. Some are made up,
though perhaps the made up ones were true in times every-
one has forgotten. I also know many true ones, because many
strange things happen in the isles of the south that you
northern people never dream of. I chose this one because I
was there myself and saw and heard as much .of it as anyone
did.

	"I come from the easternmost of the southern isles, which
is called Glacies. On our isle lived a man and a woman, my
grandparents, who had three sons. Their names were Anskar,
Hallvard, and Gundulf. Hallvard was my father, and when I
grew large enough to help him on his boat, he no longer
hunted and fished with his brothers. Instead, we two went
out so that all we caught could be brought home to my
mother, and my sisters and younger brother.

"My uncles never married, and so they continued to share
a boat. What they caught they ate themselves or gave to my
grandparents, who were no longer strong. In the summer they
fanned my grandfather's land. He had the best on our isle,
the only valley that never felt the ice wind. You could grow
things there that would not ripen anywhere else on Glacies,
because the growing season in this valley was two weeks
longer.

	"When my beard was starting to sprout, my grandfather
called all the men of our family together—that was my father,
my two uncles, and myself. When we got to his house, my
grandmother was dead, and the priest from the big isle was
there to lay out her body. Her sons wept, as I did myself.

	"That night, when we sat at my grandfather's table, with
him at one end and the priest at the other, he said, 'Now it is
time that I dispose of my property. Bega is gone. Her family
has no more claim on it, and I shall follow her shortly. Hallvard 
is married and has the portion that came to him from
his wife. With that he provides for his family, and though
they have little to spare, they do not go hungry. You, Anskar.
And you, Gundulf. Will you ever marry?'

"Both my uncles shook their heads.

"'Then this is my will. I call upon the Omnipotent to
hear, and I call upon the servants of the Omnipotent also.
When I die, all that I have shall go to Anskar and Gundulf.
If one die, it shall go to the other. When both are dead, it
shall go to Hallvard, or if Hallvard is dead, it shall be divided
among his sons. You four—if you do not agree my will is just,
speak now.'
	"No one spoke, and thus it was decided.
	"A year passed. A ship of Erebus came raiding out of the
mists, and two ships put in for hides, sea ivory, and salt fish.
My grandfather died, and my sister Fausta bore her girl.
When the harvest was in, my uncles fished with the other
men.

	"When spring comes in the south, it is still too early to
plant, for there will be many freezing nights to come. But
when men see that the days are lengthening fast, they seek
out the rookeries where the seals breed. These are on rocks
far from any shore, there is much fog, and though they are
growing longer, the days are still short. Often it is the men
who die and not the seals.

"And so it was with my Uncle Anskar, for my Uncle Gun-
dulf returned in their boat without him.

	"Now you must know that when our men go sealing, or
fishing, or hunting any other kind of sea game, they tie them-
selves to their boats. The rope is of braided walrus hide, and
it is long enough to let the man move about in the boat as
much as is needful, but not longer. The sea water is very cold
and soon kills whoever remains in it, but our men dress in
sealskin tight-sewn, and often a man's boat-mate can pull
him back and in that way save his life.

	"This is the tale my Uncle Gundulf told. They had gone
far, seeking a rookery others had not visited, when Anskar
saw a bull seal swimming in the water. He cast his harpoon;
and when the seal sounded, a loop of the harpoon line had
caught his ankle, so that he was dragged into the sea. He,
Gundulf, had tried to pull him out, for he was a very strong
man. But his pulling and the pulling of the seal on the har-
poon line, which was tied to the base of the mast, had cap-
sized their boat. Gundulf had saved himself by pulling
himself hand over hand back to it and cutting the harpoon
line with his knife. When the boat was righted he had tried
to haul in Anskar, but the life rope had broken. He showed
the frayed rope end. My Uncle Anskar was dead.

	"Among my people, women die on land but men at sea,
and therefore we call the kind of grave you make 'a woman's
boat.' When a man dies as Uncle Anskar did, a hide is
stretched and painted for him and hung in the house where
the men meet to talk. It is never taken down until no man
living can recall the man who was honoured so. A hide like
that was prepared for Anskar, and the painters began their
work.

	"Then one bright morning when my father and I were
readying the tools to break ground for the new year's crop-
well I remember it!—some children who had been sent to
gather birds' eggs came running into the village. A seal, they
said, lay on the shingle of the south bay. As everyone knows,
no seal comes to land where men are. But it sometimes happens 
that a seal will die at sea or be injured in some fashion.
Thinking of that, my father and I and many others ran to the
beach, for the seal would belong to the first whose weapon
pierced it.     

	"I was the swiftest of all, and I provided myself with an
earth-fork. Such a thing does not throw well, but several
other young men were at my heels, so when I was a hundred
strides away I cast it. Straight and true it flew and buried its
tines in the thing's back. Then followed such a moment as I
hope never to see again. The weight of the fork's long handle
overbalanced it, and it rolled until the handle rested on the
ground.

	"I saw the face of my Uncle Anskar, preserved by the cold
sea brine. His beard was tangled with the dark green kelp,
and his life rope of stout walrus hide had been cut only a few
spans from his body.

	"My Uncle Gundulf had not seen him, for he was gone to
the big isle. My father took Anskar up, and I helped him, and
we carried him to Gundulf's house and put the end of the
rope upon his chest where Gundulf would see it, and with
some other men of Glacies sat down to wait for him.

	"He shouted when he saw his brother. It was not such a cry
as a woman makes, but a bellow like the bull seal gives when
he warns the other bulls from his herd. He ran in the dark.
We set a guard on the boats and hunted him that night
across the isle. The lights that spirits make in the ultimate
south flamed all night, so we knew Anskar hunted with us.
Brightest they flashed before they faded, when we found him
among the rocks at Radbod's End."

	Hallvard fell silent. Indeed, silence lay about us every-
where. All the sick within hearing had been listening to him.
At last Melito said, "Did you kill him?"

"No. In the old days it was so, and a bad thing. Now the
mainland law avenges bloodguilt, which is better. We bound
his arms and legs and laid him in his house, and I sat with
him while the older men readied the boats. He told me he
had loved a woman on the big isle. I never saw her, but he
said her name was Nennoc, and she was fair, and younger
than he, but no man would have her because she had borne a 
child by a man who had died the winter before. In the boat, 
he had told Anskar he would carry Nennoc home, and Anskar 
called him oath-breaker. My Uncle Gundulf was strong.
He seized Anskar and threw him out of the boat, then
wrapped the life rope about his hands and snapped it as a
woman who sews breaks her thread.

"He had stood then, he said, with one hand on the mast,
as men do, and watched his brother in the water. He had
seen the flash of the knife, but he thought only that Anskar
sought to threaten him with it or to throw it."

Hallvard was silent again, and when I saw he would not
speak, I said, "I don't understand. What did Anskar do?"

A smile, the very smallest smile, tugged at Hallvard's lips
under his blond mustache. When I saw it, I felt I had seen
the ice isles of the south, blue and bitterly cold. "He cut his
life rope, the rope Gundulf had already broken. In that way,
men who found his body would know that he had been murdered. 
Do you see?"

I saw, and for a while I said nothing more.
"So," Melito grunted to Foila, "the wonderful valley land
went to Hallvard's father, and by this story he has managed
to tell you that though he has no property, he has prospects
of inheriting some. He has also told you, of course, that he
comes of a murderous family."

"Melito believes me much cleverer than I am," the blond
man rumbled. "I had no such thoughts. What matters now is
not land or skins or gold, but who tells the best tale. And I,
who know many, have told the best I know. It is true as he
says that I might share my family's property when my father
dies. But my unmarried sisters will have some part too for
their marriage portions, and only what remained would be
divided between my brother and myself. All that matters
nothing because I would not take Foila to the south, where
life is so hard. Since I have carried a lance I have seen many
better places."
Foila said, "I think your Uncle Gundulf must have loved
Nennoc very much."
Hallvard nodded. "He said that too while he lay bound.
But all the men of the south love their women. It is for them
that they face the sea in winter, the storms and the freezing
fogs. It is said that as a man pushes his boat out over the
shingle, the sound the bottom makes grating on the stones is
my wife, my children, my children, my wife."

I asked Melito if he wanted to begin his story then; but he
shook his head and said that we were all full of Hallvard's, so
he would wait and begin next day. Everyone then asked Hallvard 
questions about life in the south and compared what
they had learned to the way their own people lived. Only the
Ascian was silent. I was reminded of the floating islands of
Lake Diuturna and told Hallvard and the others about them,
though I did not describe the fight at Baldanders's castle.
We talked in this way until it was time for the evening meal.

VIII

The Pelerine

BY THE TIME we had finished eating, it was beginning to get
dark. We were always quieter then, not only because we
lacked strength, but because we knew that those wounded
who would die were more liable to do so after the sun set,
and particularly in the deep of the night. It was the time
when past battles called home their debts.

	In other ways too, the night made us more aware of the
war. Sometimes—and on that night I remember them particularly
the discharges of the great energy weapons blazed
across the sky like heat lightning. One heard the sentries
marching to their posts, so that the word watch, which we so
often used with no meaning beyond that of a tenth part of
the night, became an audible reality, an actuality of tramping
feet and unintelligible commands.

There came a moment when no one spoke, that lengthened 
and lengthened, interrupted only by the murmurings of
the well—the Pelerines and their male slaves—who came to
ask the condition of this patient or that. One of the scarlet-
clad priestesses came and sat by my cot, and my mind was so
slow, so nearly sleeping, that it was some time before I realized 
that she must have carried a stool with her.

	"You are Severian," she said, "the friend of Miles?"
	"Yes."
	"He has recalled his name. I thought you would like to
know."
I asked her what it was.
	"Why, Miles, of course. I told you."
	"He will recall more than that, I think, as time goes by."

	She nodded. She seemed to be a woman past middle age,
with a kindly, austere face. "I am sure he will. His home and
family."
	"If he has them "
	"Yes, some do not. Some lack even the ability to make a
home."
	"You're referring to me."
	"No, not at all. Anyway, that lack is not something the
person can do something about. But it is much better, particularly 
for men, if they have a home. Like the man your friend
talked about, most men think they make their homes for
their families, but the fact is that they make both homes and
families for themselves."

	"You were listening to Hallvard, then."
	"Several of us were. It was a good story. A sister came and
got me at the place where the patient's grandfather made his
will. I heard all the rest. Do you know what the trouble was
with the bad uncle? With Gundulf?"

	"I suppose that he was in love."
	"No, that was what was right with him. Every person, you
see, is like a plant. There is a beautiful green part, often with
flowers or fruit, that grows upward toward the sun, toward
the Increate. There is also a dark part that grows away from
it, tunnelling where no light comes."
	I said, "I have never studied the writings of the initiates,
but even I am aware of the existence of good and evil in
everyone."                                          

	"Was I speaking of good and evil? It is the roots that give
the plant the strength to climb toward the sun, though they
know nothing of it. Suppose that some scythe, whistling
along the ground, should sever the stalk from its roots. The
stalk would fall and die, but the roots might put up a new
stalk."                                                  

	"You are saying that evil is good."
	"No. I am saying that the things we love in others and
admire in ourselves spring from things we do not see and
seldom think about. Gundulf, like other men, had the instinct 
to exercise authority. Its proper growth is the founding
of a family—and women, too, have a similar instinct. In Gundulf 
that instinct had long been frustrated, as it is in so many
of the soldiers we see here. The officers have their commands,
but the soldiers who have no. command suffer and do not
know why they suffer. Some, of course, form bonds with others 
in the ranks. Sometimes several share a single woman, or a
man who is like a woman. Some make pets of animals, and
some befriend children left homeless by the struggle."

	Remembering Casdoe's son, I said, "I can see why you
object to that."
	"We do not Object—most certainly not to that, and not to
things vastly less natural. I am only speaking of the instinct
to exercise authority. In the bad uncle it made him love a
woman, and specifically one who already possessed a child, so
there would be a larger family for him as soon as there was a
family for him at all. In that way, you see, he would have
regained some part of the time he had lost."

She paused, and I nodded.

"Too much time, however, had been lost already; the instinct 
broke out in another way. He saw himself as the rightful 
master of lands he only held in trust for one brother, and
the master of the life of the other. That vision was delusive,
was it not?"

	"I suppose so."
	"Others can have visions equally deluding, though less
dangerous." She smiled at me. "Do you regard yourself as
possessing any special authority?"

	“I am a journeyman of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence, 
but that position carries no authority. We of the guild
only do the will of judges."
	"I thought the torturers' guild abolished long ago. Has it
become, then, a species of brotherhood for lictors?"
	"It still exists," I told her.
	"No doubt, but some centuries ago it was a true guild, like
that of the silversmiths. At least so I have read in certain
histories preserved by our order."

	As I heard her, I felt a moment of wild elation. It was not
that I supposed her to be somehow correct. I am, perhaps,
mad in certain respects, but I know what those respects are,
and such self-deceptions are no part of them. Nevertheless, it
seemed wonderful to me—if only for that moment—to exist
in a world where such a belief was possible. I realized then,
really for the first time, that there were millions of people in
the Commonwealth who knew nothing, of the higher forms
of judicial punishment and nothing of the circles within circles 
of intrigue that ring the Autarch; and it was wine to me,
or brandy rather, and left me reeling with giddy joy.

	The Pelerine, seeing nothing of all this, said, "Is there no
other form of special authority that you believe yourself to
possess?"
	I shook my head.
	"Miles told me that you believe yourself to possess the
Claw of the Conciliator, and that you showed him a small
black claw, such as might perhaps have come from an ocelot
or a caracara, and that you told him you have raised many
from the dead by means of it."

	The time had come then; the time when I would have to
give it up. Ever since we had reached the lazaret, I had
known it must come soon, but I had hoped to delay it until I
was ready to depart. Now I took out the Claw, for the last
time as I thought, and pressed it into the Pelerine's hand,
saying, "With this you can save many. I did not steal it, and I
have sought always to return it to your order."

"And with it," she asked gently, "you have revived numbers 
of the dead?"
"I myself would have died months ago without it,' I told
her, and I began to recount the story of my duel with Agilus.
	"Wait," she said. "You must keep it." And she returned
the claw to me. "I am not a young woman any longer, as you
see. Next year I will celebrate my thirtieth anniversary as a
full member of our order. At each of the five superior feasts
of the year, until this past spring, I saw the Claw of the
Conciliator when it was elevated for our adoration. It was a
great sapphire, as big around as an orichalk. It must have
been worth more than many villas, and no doubt it was for
that reason that the thieves took it."

	I tried to interrupt her, but she silenced me with a gesture.
"As for its working miraculous cures and even restoring life
to the dead, do you think our order would have any sick
among us if it were so? We are few—far too few for the work
we have to do. But if none of us had died before last spring,
we would be much more numerous. Many whom I loved, my
teachers and my friends, would be among us still. Ignorant
people must have their wonders, even if they must scrape the
mud from some epopts boots to swallow. If, as we hope, it
still exists and has not been cut to make smaller gems, the
claw of the Conciliator is the last relic we possess of the
greatest of good men, and we treasured it because we still
treasure his memory. If it had been the sort of thing you
believe yourself to have, it would have been precious to everyone, 
and the autarchs would have wrested it from us long
ago."

	"It is a claw—" I began.
	"That was only a flaw at the heart of the jewel. The 
Conciliator was a man, Severian the Lictor, and not a cat or a
bird." She stood up.
	"It was dashed against the rocks when the giant threw it
from the parapet—"
	"I had hoped to calm you, but I see that I am only exciting
you," she said. Quite unexpectedly she smiled, leaned forward, 
and kissed me. "We meet many here who believe
things that are not so. Not many have beliefs that do them as
much credit as yours do you. You and I shall talk of this
again some other time."

	I watched her small, scarlet-clad figure until it was lost
from sight in the darkness and silence of the rows of cots.
While we talked, most of the sick had fallen asleep. A few
groaned. Three slaves entered, two carrying a wounded man
on a litter while the third held up a lamp so they could see
their way. The light gleamed on their shaven heads, which
were covered with sweat. They put the wounded man on a
cot, arranged his limbs as though he were dead, and went
away.

	I looked at the Claw. It had been lifelessly black when the
Pelerine saw it, but now muted sparks of white fire ran from
its base to its point. I felt well—indeed, I found myself wondering
how I had endured lying all day upon the narrow
mattress; but when I tried to stand my legs would hardly
hold me. Afraid at every moment that I would fall on one of
the wounded, I staggered the twenty paces or so to the man I
had just seen carried in.

	It was Emilian, whom I had known as a gallant at the
Autarch's court. I was so startled to see him here that I called
him by name.
	"Thecla," he murmured. "Thecla ..."
	"Yes. Thecla. You remember me, Emilian. Now be well."
I touched him with the Claw.

	He opened his eyes and screamed.
	I fled, but fell when I was halfway to my own cot. I was so
weak I don't believe I could have crawled the remaining distance 
then, but I managed to put away the Claw and roll
beneath Hallvard's cot and so out of sight.

When the slaves came back, Emilian was sitting up and
able to speak—though they could not, I think, make much
sense of what he said. They gave him herbs, and one of them
remained with him while he chewed them, then left silently.
	
	I rolled from under the cot, and by holding on to the edge
was able to pull myself erect. All was still again, but I knew
that many of the wounded must have seen me before I had
fallen. Emilian was not asleep, as I had supposed he would
be, but he seemed dazed. "Thecla," he murmured. "I heard
Thecla. They said she was dead. What voices are here from
the lands of the dead?"

	"None now,' I told him. "You've been ill, but you'll be
well soon."
	I held the Claw overhead and tried to focus my thoughts
on Melito and Foila as well as Emilian-on all the sick in the
lazaret. It flickered and was dark.

IX

Melito's Story—The Cock, the Angel,
and the Eagle

"ONCE NOT VERY long ago and not very far from the place
where I was born, there was a fine farm. It was especially
noted for its poultry: flocks of ducks white as snow, geese
nearly as large as swans and so fat they could scarcely walk,
and chickens that were as colourful as parrots. The farmer who
had built up this place had a great many strange ideas about
farming, but he had succeeded so much better with his
strange ideas than any of his neighbours with their sensible
ones, that few had the courage to tell him what a fool he was.

	"One of his queer notions concerned the management of
his chickens. Everyone knows that when chicks are observed
to be little cocks they must be caponized. Only one cock is
required in the barnyard, and two will fight.

	"But this farmer saved himself all that trouble. 'Let them
grow up,' he said. 'Let them fight, and let me tell you some-
thing, neighbour. The best and cockiest cock will win, and he
is the one who will sire many more chicks to swell my flock.
What's more, his chicks will be the hardiest, and the best
suited to throwing off every disease—when your chickens are
wiped out, you can come to me and I'll sell you some breed-
ing stock at my own price. As for the beaten cocks, my family
and I can eat them. There's no capon so tender as a cock that
has been fought to death, just as the best beef comes from a
bull that has died in the bull ring and the best venison from a
stag the hounds have run all day. Besides, eating capons saps
a man's virility.'

	"This odd farmer also believed that it was his duty to select 
the worst bird from his flock whenever he wanted one for
dinner. 'It is impious,' he said, "for anyone to take the best.
They should be left to prosper under the eye of the Pancreator, 
who made cocks and hens as well as men and women.'
Perhaps because he felt as he did, his flock was so good that it
seemed sometimes there was no worst among it.

	"From all I have said, it will be clear that the cock of this
flock was a very fine one. He was young, strong, and brave.
His tail was as fine as the tails of many sorts of pheasants, and
no doubt his comb would have been fine too, save that it had
been torn to ribbons in the many desperate combats that had
won him his place. His breast was of glowing scarlet like the
Pelerines' robes here—but the geese said it had been white
before it was dyed in his own blood. His wings were so strong
that he was a better flier than any of the white ducks, his
spurs were longer than a man's middle finger and his bill was
as sharp as my sword.

	"This fine cock had a thousand wives, but the darling of
his heart was a hen as fine as he, the daughter of a noble race
and the acknowledged queen of all the chickens for leagues
around. How proudly they walked between the corner of the
barn and the water of the duck pond! You could not hope to
see anything finer, no, not if you saw the Autarch himself
showing off his favourite at the Well of Orchids—the more so
since the Autarch is a capon, as I hear it.

	"Everything was bugs for breakfast for this happy pair un-
til one night the cock was wakened by a terrible row. A great,
eared owl had broken into the barn where the chickens
roosted and was making his way among them as he sought for
his dinner. Of course he seized upon the hen who was the
particular favourite of the cock; and with her in his claws, he
spread his wide, silent wings to sail away. Owls can see marvelously 
well in the dark, and so he must have seen the cock
flying at him like a feathered fury. Who has ever seen an
amazed expression on the face of an owl? Yet surely there
was one on that owl in the barn that night. The cock's spurs
shuffled faster than the feet of any dancer, and his bill struck
for those round and shining eyes as the bill of a woodpecker
hammers the trunk of a tree. The owl dropped the hen, flew
from the barn, and was never seen again.

	"No doubt the cock had a right to be proud, but he became 
too proud. Having defeated an owl in the dark, he felt
he could defeat any bird, anywhere. He began to talk of
rescuing the prey of hawks and bullying the teratornis, the
largest and most terrible bird that flies. If he had surrounded
himself with wise counselors, particularly the llama and the
pig, those whom most princes choose to help guide their affairs, 
I feel sure his extravagances would soon have been effectively 
though courteously checked. Alas, he did not do so.
He listened only to the hens, who were all infatuated with
him,. and to the geese and ducks, who felt that as his fellow
barnyard fowl they shared to some extent in whatever glory
he won. At last the day came, as it always does for those who
show too much pride, when he went too far.

"It was sunrise, ever the most dangerous time for those
who do not do well. The cock flew up and up and up, until
beseemed about to pierce the sky, and at last, at the very
apogee of his flight, perched himself atop the weathervane on
the loftiest gable of the barn—the highest point in the entire
farmyard. There as the sun drove out the shadows with lashes
of crimson and gold, he screamed again and again that he was
lord of all feathered things. Seven times he crowed so, and he
might have got away with it, for seven is a lucky number. But
he could not be content with that. An eighth time he made
the same boast, and then flew down.

“He had not yet landed among his flock when there began
a most marvelous phenomenon high in the air, directly above
the barn. A hundred rays of sunlight seemed to tangle them-
selves as a kitten snarls a ball of wool, and to roll themselves
together as a woman rolls up dough in a kneading pan. This
collection of glorious light then put out legs, arms, a head,
and at last wings, and swooped down upon the barnyard. It
was an angel with wings of red and blue and green and gold,
and though it seemed no bigger than the cock, he knew as
soon as he had looked into its eyes that it was far larger on
the inside than he.    

	"’Now,’ said the angel, 'hear justice. You claim that no
feathered thing can stand against you. Here am I, plainly a
feathered thing. All the mighty weapons of the armies of
light I have left behind, and we will wrestle, we two."

	"At that the cock spread his wings and bowed so low that
his tattered comb scraped the dust. T shall be honoured to the
end of my days to have been thought worthy of such a challenge, 
he said, "which no other bird has ever received before.
It is with the most profound regret that I must tell you I
cannot accept, and that for three reasons, the first of which is
that though you have feathers on your wings, as you" say, it is
not against your wings that I would fight but against your
head and breast. Thus you are not a feathered creature for
the purposes of combat'

	"The angel closed his eyes and touched hi$ hands to his
own body, and when he drew them away the hair of his head
had become feathers brighter than the feathers of the finest
canary, and the linen of his robe had become feathers whiter
than the feathers of the most brilliant dove.

	" The second of which,' continued the cock, nothing
daunted, 'is that you, having, as you so clearly do, the power
to transform yourself, might choose during the course of our
combat to change yourself into some creature that does not
possess feathers—for example, a large snake. Thus if I were to
fight you, I should have no guarantee of fair play.”

	"At that, the angel tore open his breast, and displaying all
the qualities therein to the assembled poultry, took out his
ability to alter his shape. He handed it to the fattest goose to
hold for the duration of the match, and the goose at once
transformed himself, becoming a grey salt goose, such as
stream from pole to pole. But he did not fly off, and he kept
the angel's ability safe.

	" 'The third of which,' continued the cock in desperation,
'is that you are clearly an officer in the Pancreator's service,
and in prosecuting the cause of justice, as you do, are doing
your duty. If I were to fight you as you ask, I should be
committing a grave crime against the only ruler brave chick-
ens acknowledge.'

	" 'Very well,' said the angel, ‘It is a strong legal position,
and I suppose you think you've won your way free. The truth
is that you have argued your way to your own death. I was
only going to twist your wings back a bit and pull out your
tail feathers.' Then he lifted his head and gave a strange, wild
cry. Immediately an eagle dove from the sky and dropped
like a thunderbolt into the barnyard.

"All around the barn they fought, and beside the duck
pond, and across the pasture and back, for the eagle was very
strong, but the cock was quick and brave. There was an old
cart with a broken wheel leaning against one wall of the barn,
and under it, where the eagle could not fly at him from above
and he could cool himself somewhat in the shadow, the cock
sought to make his final stand. He was bleeding so much,
however, that before the eagle, who was almost as bloodied
as he, could come at him there, he tottered, fell, tried to rise,
and fell again.

" 'Now,' said the angel, addressing all the assembled birds,
'you have seen justice done. Be not proud! Be not boastful,
for surely retribution will be visited upon you. You thought
your champion invincible. There he lies, the victim not of
this eagle but of pride, beaten and destroyed.'

"Then the cock, whom they had all thought dead, lifted
his head. 'You are doubtless very wise. Angel,’ he said. 'But
you know nothing of the ways of cocks. A cock is not beaten
until he turns tail and shows the white feather that lies be-
neath his tail feathers. My strength, which I made myself by
flying and running, and in many battles, has failed me. My
spirit, which I received from the hand of your master the
Pancreator, has not failed me. Eagle, I ask no quarter from
you. Come here and kill me now. But as you value your
honour, never say that you have beaten me.'

	"The eagle looked at the angel when he heard what the
cock said, and the angel looked at the eagle. 'The Pancreator
is infinitely far from us,' the angel said. 'And thus infinitely
far from me, though I fly so much higher than you. I guess at
his desires—no one can do otherwise.'

	He opened his chest once more and replaced the ability he
had for a time surrendered. Then he and the eagle flew away,
and for a time the salt goose followed them. That is the end
ofthestory."
	Melito had lain upon his back as he spoke, looking up at
the canvas stretched overhead. I had the feeling he was too
weak even to raise himself on one elbow. The rest of the
wounded had been as quiet for his story as for Hallvard's.
	At last I said, "That is a fine tale. It will be very hard for
me to judge between the two, and if it is agreeable to you
and Hallvard, and to Foila, I would like to give myself time
to think about them both."

	Foila, who was Sitting up with her knees drawn under her
chin, called, "Don't judge at all. The contest isn't over yet.'
Everyone looked at her.
	"I'll explain tomorrow," she said. "Just don't judge, Severian. 
But what did you think of that story?"
	Hallvard rumbled, "I will tell you what I think. I think
Melito is clever the way he claimed I was. He is not so well as
I am, not so strong, and in this way he has drawn a woman's
sympathy to himself. It was cunningly done, little cock."
	Melito's voice seemed weaker than it had while be was
recounting the battle of the birds. "It is the worst story I
know."

	"The worst?" I asked. We were all surprised.
	"Yes, the worst. It is a foolish tale we tell our little children, 
who know nothing but the dust and the farm animals
and the sky they see above them. Surely every word of it
must make that clear."

	Hallvard asked, "Don't you want to win, Melito?"
	"Certainly I do. You don't love Foila as I love her. I would
die to possess her, but I would sooner die than disappoint
her. If the story I have just told can win, then I shall never
disappoint her, at least with my stories. I have a thousand
that are better than that."
	Hallvard got up and came to sit on my cot as he had the
day before, and I swung my legs over the edge to sit beside
him. To me he Said, "What Melito says is very clever. Everything 
he says is very clever. Still, you must judge us by the
tales we told, and not by the ones we say we know but did
not tell. I, too, know many other stories. Our winter nights
are the longest in the Commonwealth."
	I answered that according to Foila, who had originally
thought of the contest and who was herself the prize, I was
not yet to judge at all.
	
	The Ascian said, "All who speak Correct Thought speak
well. Where then is the superiority of some students to others? 
It is in the speaking. Intelligent students speak Correct
Thought intelligently. The hearer knows by the intonation
of their voices that they understand. By this superior speaking 
of intelligent students. Correct Thought is passed, like
fire, from one to another."

	I think that none of us had realized he was listening. We
were all a trifle startled to hear him speak now. After a moment, 
Foila said, "He means you should not judge by the
content of the stories, but by how well each was told. I'm not
sure I agree with that—still, there may be something in it."
"I do not agree," Hallvard grumbled. "Those who listen
soon tire of storyteller tricks. The best telling is the plainest."
	Others joined in the argument, and we talked about it and
about the little cock for a long time.

X

Ava

WHILE I WAS ILL I had never paid much attention to the
people who brought our food, though when I reflected on it I
was able to recall them clearly, as I recall everything. Once
our server had been a Pelerine—she who had talked to me the
night before. At other times they had been the shaven-
headed male slaves, or postulants in brown. This evening, the
evening of the day on which Melito had told his story, our
suppers were carried in by a postulant I had not seen before,
a slender, grey-eyed girl. I got up and helped her to pass
around the trays.

	When we were finished, she thanked me and said, "You
will not be here much longer."
	I told her I had something to do here, and nowhere else to
go.
	"You have your legion. If it has been destroyed, you will
be assigned to a new one."
	"I am not a soldier. I came north with some thought of
enlisting, but I fell sick before I got the opportunity."
	"You could have waited in your native town. I'm told that
recruiting parties go to all the towns, twice a year at least."

"My native town is Nessus, I'm afraid." I saw her smile.
"But I left it some time ago, and I wouldn't have wanted to
sit around someplace else for half a year waiting. Anyway, I
never thought of it. Are you from Nessus too?"
	"You're having trouble standing up."
	"No, I'm fine."

	She touched my arm, a timid gesture that somehow reminded 
me of the tame deer in the Autarch's garden.
"You're swaying. Even if your fever is gone, you're no longer
used to being on your feet. You have to realize that. You've
been abed for several days. I want you to lie down again
now."
	"If I do that, there'll be no one to talk to except the
people I've been talking with all day. The man on my right is
an Ascian prisoner, and the man on my left comes from some
village neither you nor I ever heard of."
	"All right, if you'll lie down I'll sit and talk to you for a
while. I've nothing more to do until the nocturne must be
played anyway. What quarter of Nessus do you come from?"

	As she escorted me to my cot, I told her that I did not
want to talk, but to listen; and I asked her what quarter she
herself called home.

"When you're with the Pelerines, that's your home—wherever 
the tents are set up. The order becomes your family and
your friends, just as if all your friends had suddenly become
your sisters too. But before I came here, I lived in the far
north western part of the city, within easy sight of the Wall."

	"Near the Sanguinary Field?"
	"Yes, very near it. Do you know the place?"
	"I fought there once.'

	Her eyes widened. "Did you, really? We used to go there
and watch. We weren't supposed to, but we did anyway. Did
you win?"
	I had never thought about that and had to consider it.
"No," I said after a moment. "I lost."
	"But you lived. It's better, surely, to lose and live than to
take another man's life."

	I opened my robe and showed her the scar on my chest
that Agilus's avern leaf had made.
	"You were very lucky. Often they bring in soldiers with
chest wounds like that, but we are seldom able to save
them." Hesitantly she touched my chest. There was a sweetness 
in her face that I have not seen in the faces of other
women. For a moment she stroked my skin, then she jerked
her hand away. "It could not have been very deep."
	"It wasn't," I told her.
	"Once I saw a combat between an officer and an exultant
in masquerade. They used poisoned plants for weapons—I
suppose because the officer would have had an unfair advantage 
with the sword. The exultant was killed and I left, but
afterward there was a great hullabaloo because the officer had
run amok. He came dashing by me, striking out with his
plant, but someone threw a cudgel at his legs and knocked
him down. I think that was the most exciting fight I ever
saw."

	"Did they fight bravely?"
	"Not really. There was a lot of argument about legalities—
you know how men do when they don't want to begin."

" I shall be honoured to the end of my days to have been
thought worthy of such a challenge, which no other bird has
ever received before. It is with the most profound regret that
I must tell you I cannot accept, and that for three reasons,
the first of which is that though you have feathers on your
wings, as you say, it is not against your wings that I would
fight.' Do you know that story?"
	Smiling, she shook her head.
	"It's a good one. I'll tell it to you some time. If you lived
so near the Sanguinary Field, your family must have been an
important one. Are you an armigette?"

	"Practically all of us are armigettes or exultants. It's a
rather aristocratic order, I'm afraid. Occasionally an optimate's 
daughter like me is admitted, when the optimate has
been a long time friend of the order, but there are only three
of us. I'm told some optimates think all they have to do is
make a large gift and their girls will be accepted, but it really
isn't so—they have to help out in various ways, not just with
money, and they have to have done it for a long time. The
world, you see, is not really- as corrupt as people like to
believe."

	I asked, "Do you think it is right to limit your order in that
way? You serve the Conciliator. Did he ask the people he
lifted out of death if they were armigers or exultants?"
	She smiled again. "That's a question that has been debated 
many times in the order. But there are other orders
that are quite open to optimates, and to the lower classes
too, and by remaining as we are we get a great deal of money
to use in our work and have a great deal of influence. If we
nursed and fed only certain kinds of people, I would say you
were right. But we don't; we even help animals when we can.
Conexa Epicharis used to say we stopped at insects, but then
she found one of us—I mean a postulant—trying to mend a
butterfly's wing."

	"Doesn't it bother you that these soldiers have been doing
their best to kill Ascians?"
	Her answer was very far from what I had expected. "As-
cians are not human."

	'I’ve already told you that the patient next to me is an
Ascian. You're taking care of him, and as well as you take
care of us from what I've seen."
	"And I've already told you that we take in animals when
we can. Don't you know that human beings can lose their
humanity?"

	"You mean die zoanthropes. I've met some."
	"Them, of course. They give up their humanity deliberately. 
There are others who lose theirs without intending to,
often when they think they are enhancing it, or rising to
some state higher than that to which we are born. Still others, 
like the Ascians, have it stripped from them."     
I thought of Baldanders, plunging from his castle wall into
Lake Diutuma. "Surely these ... things deserve our sympathy."
	"Animals deserve our sympathy. That is why we of the
order care for them. But it isn't murder for a man to kill
one."
	I sat up and gripped her arm, feeling an excitement I could
scarcely contain. "Do you think that if something—some arm
of the Conciliator, let us say—could cure human beings, it
might nevertheless fail with those who are not human?"

	"You mean the Claw. Close your mouth, please—you make
me want to laugh when you leave it open like that, and we're
not supposed to when people outside the, order are around."

	"You know!"
	"Your nurse told me. She said you were mad, but in a nice
way, and that she didn't think you would ever hurt anyone.
Then I asked her about it, and she told. You have the Claw,
and sometimes you can cure the sick and even raise the
dead."
	"Do you believe I'm mad?"
	Still smiling, she nodded.
	"Why? Never mind what the Pelerine told you. Have I
said anything to you tonight to make you think so?"

	"Or spellbound, perhaps. It isn't anything you've said at
all. Or at least, not much. But you are not just one man."
	She paused after saying that. I think she was waiting for
me to deny it, but I said nothing.

	"It is in your face and the way you move—do you know
that I don't even know your name? She didn't tell me."
	"Severian."                                   
	"I'm Ava. Severian is one of those brother—sister names,
isn't it? Severian and Severa. Do you have a sister?"
	"I don't know. If I do, she's a witch."
	Ava let that pass. "The other one. Does she have a name?"
	"You know she's a woman then."

	"Uh huh. When I was serving the food, I thought for a
moment that one of the exultant sisters had come to help
me. Then I looked around and it was you. At first it seemed
that it was just when I saw you from the corner of my eye,
but sometimes, while we've been sitting here, I see her even
when I'm looking right at you. When you glance to one side
sometimes you vanish, and there's a tall, pale woman using
your face. Please don't tell me I fast overmuch. That's what
they all tell me, and it isn't true, and even if it were, this isn't
that."

	"Her name is Thecla. Do you remember what you were
just saying about losing humanity? Were you trying to tell
me about her?"
	Ava shook her head. "I don't think so. But I wanted to ask
you something. There was another patient here like you, and
they told me he came with you."
"Miles, you mean. No, my case and his are quite different.
I won't tell you about him. He should do it himself, or no
one should. But I will tell you about myself. Do you know of
the corpse-eaters?"
"You're not one of them. A few weeks ago we had three
insurgent captives. I know what they're like."
"How do we differ?"
"With them . . ." She groped for words. "With them it's
out of control. They talk to themselves—of course a lot of
people do—and they look at things that aren't there. There's
something lonely about it, and something selfish. You aren't
one of them."

"But I am," I said. And I told her, without going into
much detail, of Vodalus's banquet.
"They made you," she said when I was through. "If you
had shown what you felt, they would have killed you."

"That doesn't matter. I drank the alzabo. I ate her flesh.
And at first it was filthy, as you say, though I had loved her.
She was in me, and I shared the life that had been hers, and
yet she was dead. I could feel her rotting there. I had a
wonderful dream of her on the first night; when I go back
among my memories it is one the things I treasure most.
Afterward, there was something horrible, and sometimes I
seemed to be dreaming while I was awake—that was the talking 
and staring you mentioned, I think. Now, and for a long
time, she seems alive again, but inside me."

"I don't think the others are like that."
"I don't either," I said. "At least, not from what I've heard
of them. There are a great many things I do not understand.
What I have told you is one of the chief ones."

Ava was quiet for the space of two or three breaths, then
her eyes opened wide. "The Claw, the thing you believe in.
Did you have it then?"
"Yes, but I didn't know what it could do. It had not
acted—or rather, it had acted, it had raised a woman called
Dorcas, but I didn't know what had happened, where she had
come from. If I had known, I might have saved Thecla,
brought her back."
"But you had it? You had it with you?"
I nodded.

"Then don't you see? It did bring her back. You just said it
could act without your even knowing it. You had it, and you
had her, rotting, as you say, inside you."

"Without the body . . ."
"You're a materialist, like all ignorant people. But your
materialism doesn't make materialism true. Don't you know
that? In the final summing up, it is spirit and dream, thought
and love and act that matter."
I was so stunned by the ideas that had come crowding in
on me that I did not speak again for some time, but sat
wrapped in my own speculations. When I came to myself
again at last, I was surprised that Ava had not gone and tried
to thank her.

"It was peaceful, sitting here with you, and if one of the
sisters had come, I could have said I was waiting in case one
of the sick should cry out."
"I haven't decided yet about what you said about Thecla.
I’ll have to think about it a long time, probably for many
days. People tell me I am a rather stupid man."
	She smiled, and the truth was that I had said what I had
(though it was true) at least in part to make her smile. "I
don’t think so. A thorough man, rather."

	"Anyway, I have another question. Often when I tried to
sleep, or when I woke in the night, I have tried to connect
my failures and my successes. I mean the times when I used
the claw and revived someone, and the times when I tried to
but life did not return. It seems to me that it should be more
than mere chance, though perhaps the link is something I
cannot know."

	"Do you think you've found it now?"
	"What you said about people losing their humanity—that
might be a part of it. There was a woman ... I think she may
have been like that, though she was very beautiful. And a
man, my friend, who was only partly cured, only helped. If
its possible for someone to lose his humanity, surely it must
be possible for something that once had none to find it.
What one loses another finds, everywhere. He, I think, was
like that. Then too, the effect always seems less when the
deaths come by violence. ..."

	"I would expect that," Ava said softly.
	"It cured the man-ape whose hand I had cut away. Perhaps
that was because I had done it myself. And it helped Jonas,
but I—Thecla—had used those whips."
	"The powers of healing protect us from Nature. Why
should the Increate protect us from ourselves? We might
protect ourselves from ourselves. It may be that he will help
us only when we come to regret what we have done."

	Still thinking, I nodded.
	"I am going to the chapel now. You’re well enough to walk
a short distance. Will you come with me?"
	While I had been beneath that wide canvas roof, it had
seemed the whole of the lazaret to me. Now I saw, though
only dimly and by night, that there were many tents and
pavilions. Most, like ours, had their walls gathered up for
coolness, furled like the sails of a ship at anchor. We entered
none of them but walked between them by winding paths
that seemed long to me, until we reached one whose walls
were down. It was of silk, not canvas, and shone scarlet be-
cause of the lights within.

	"Once," Ava told me, "we had a great cathedral. It could
hold ten thousand, yet be packed into a single wagon. Our
Domnicellae had it burned just before I came to the order."
	"I know," I said. "I saw it."
	Inside the silken tent, we knelt before a simple altar
heaped with flowers. Ava prayed. I, knowing no prayers,
spoke without sound to someone who seemed at times within
me and at times, as the angel had said, infinitely remote.

XI

Loyal to the Group of Seventeen^
Story-The Just Man

THE NEXT MORNING, when we had eaten and everyone was
Awake. I ventured to ask Foila if it was now time for me to
judge between Melito and Hallvard. She shook her head. but
before she could speak, the Ascian announced, "All must do
their share in the service of the populace- The bullock draws
the plow and the dog herds the sheep, but the cat catches
mice in the granary. Thus men, women, and even children
can serve the populace."              

	Fiola flashed  that dazzling smile. "our friend wants to tell
“what!” For a moment I thought Melito was actually
going to sit up. “Are you going to let him-let one of them-
	She gestured, and he sputtered to silence. "Why yes "
Something tugged at the corners of her lips. "Yes, I think I
shall. I’ll have to interpret for the rest of you, of course. Will
that be all right, Severian?”
"If you wish it," I said.
	Hallvard rumbled, “This was not in the original agreement.
I recall each word.
“So do I,” Foila said. It isn't against it either, and in fact
its in accordance with the spirit of the agreement, which was
that the rivals for my hand—neither very soft nor very fair
now, I'm afraid, though it's becoming more so since I've been
confined in this place—would compete. The Ascian would be
my suitor if he thought he could; haven't you seen the way
he looks at me?"

The Ascian recited, "United, men and women are stronger; 
but a brave woman desires children, and not husbands.”
"He means that he would like to marry me, but he doesn't
think his attentions would be acceptable. He's wrong." Foila
looked from Melito to Hallvard, and her smile had become
a grin. "Are you two really so frightened of him in a story-
telling contest? You must have run like rabbits when you saw
an Ascian on the battlefield."

Neither of them answered, and after a time, the Ascian
began to speak: "In times past, loyalty to the cause of the
populace was to be found everywhere. The will of the Group
of Seventeen was the will of everyone."
Foila interpreted: "Once upon a time ..."
"Let no one be idle. If one is idle, let him band together
with others who are idle too, and let them look for idle land.
Let everyone they meet direct them. It is better to walk a
thousand leagues than to sit in the House of Starvation."
"There was a remote farm worked in partnership by people 
who were not related.”

"One is strong, another beautiful, a third a cunning artificer. 
Which is best? He who serves the populace."

"On this farm lived a good man."
"Let the work be divided by a wise divider of work. Let the
food be divided by a just divider of food. Let the pigs grow
fat. Let rats starve."
"The others cheated him of his share.”
"The people meeting in counsel may judge, but no one is
to receive more than a hundred blows."
"He complained, and they beat him."

"How are the hands nourished? By the blood. How does
the blood reach the hands? By the veins. If the veins are
closed, the hands will rot away.'
	"He left that farm and took to the roads."
	"Where the Group of Seventeen sit, there final justice is
done."
	"He went to the capital and complained of the way he
had been treated.”
	"Let there be clean water for those who toil. Let there be
hot food for them and a clean bed."
	"He came back to the farm, tired and hungry after his
journey."
	"No one is to receive more than a hundred blows."
	"They beat him again"
	"Behind everything some further thing is found, forever;
thus the tree behind the bird, stone beneath soil, the sun
behind Urth. Behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts.
	"The just man did not give up. He left the farm again to
walk to the capital."
	"Can all petitioners be heard? No, for all cry together.
Who, then, shall be heard—is it those who cry loudest? No,
for all cry loudly. Those who cry longest shall be heard, and
justice shall be done to them."                         
	"Arriving at the capital, he camped upon the very door-
step of the Group of Seventeen and begged all who passed to
listen to him. After a long time he was admitted to the pal-
ace, where those in authority heard his complaints with
sympathy."
	"So say the Group of Seventeen: From those who steal,
take all they have, for nothing that they have is their own."
	"They told him to go back to the farm and tell the bad
men—in their name—that they must leave.”
	"As a good child to its mother, so is the citizen to the
Group of Seventeen."
	"He did just as they had said."
	"What is foolish speech? It is wind. It has come in at the
ears and goes out of the mouth. No one is to receive more
than a hundred blows."
	"They mocked him and beat him."
	"Behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts."
	"The just man did not give up. He returned to the capital
once more."
	"The citizen renders to the populace what is due to the
populace. What is due to the populace? Everything."
	"He was very tired. His clothes were in rags and his shoes
worn out. He had no food and nothing to trade."
	"It is better to be just than to be kind, but only-good
judges can be just; let those who cannot be just be kind."
	"In the capital he lived by begging."

	At this point I could not help but interrupt. I told Foila
that I thought it was wonderful that she understood so well
what each of the stock phrases the Ascian used meant in the
context of his story, but that I could not understand how she
did it—how she knew, for example, that the phrase about
kindness and justice meant that the hero had become a
beggar.
	"Well, suppose that someone else—Melito, perhaps—were
telling a story, and at some point in it he thrust out his hand
and began to ask for alms. You'd know what that meant,
wouldn't you?"
	I agreed that I would.
	"It's just the same here. Sometimes we find Ascian soldiers
who are too hungry or too sick to keep up with the rest, and
after they understand we aren't going to kill them, that business 
about kindness and justice is what they say. In Ascian, of
course. It's what beggars say in Ascia."

	"Those who cry longest shall be heard, and justice shall be
done to them."
"This time he had to wait a long while before he was
admitted to the palace, but at last they let him in and heard
what he had to say."
"Those who will not serve the populace shall serve the
populace.”
"They said they would put the bad men in prison."
"Let there be dean water for those who toil. Let there be
hot food for them, and a clean bed.”
"He went back home.”
“No one is to receive more than a hundred blows."
"He was beaten again."
“Behind our efforts, let there be found our efforts."
"But he did not give up. Once more he set off for the
capital to complain.”
"Those who fight for the populace fight with a thousand
hearts. Those who fight against them with none."
"Now the bad men were afraid.”
"Let no one oppose the decisions of the Group of Seven-
teen."
They said to themselves, “He has gone to the palace again
and again, and each time he must have told the rulers there
that we did not obey their earlier commands. Surely this
time they will send soldiers to kill us."
"If their wounds are in their backs, who shall stanch their
blood?"
"The bad men ran away."
"Where are those who in times past have opposed the
decisions of the Group of Seventeen?"
"They were never seen again."
"Let there be clean water for those who toil. Let there be
hot food for them, and a clean bed. Then they will sing at
their work, and their work will be light to them. Then they
will sing at the harvest, and the harvest will be heavy."
"The just man returned home and lived happily ever
after."

Everyone applauded this story, moved by the story itself,
by the ingenuity of the Ascian prisoner, by the glimpse it had
afforded us of life in Ascia, and most of all, I think, by the
graciousness and wit Foila had brought to her translation.
I have no way of knowing whether you, who eventually will
read this record, like stories or not. If you do not, no doubt
you have turned these pages Without attention. I confess that
I love them. Indeed, it often seems to me that of all the good
things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for
itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep,
clean water and hot food (as the Ascian would have said) are
all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things
indeed in the scheme of the universe, but it is hard not to
love best what is our own—hard for me, at least.

From this story, though it was the shortest and the most
simple too of all those I have recorded in this book, I feel
that I learned several things of some importance. First of all,
how much of our speech, which we think freshly minted in
our own mouths, consists of set locutions. The Ascian
seemed to speak only in sentences he had learned by rote,
though until he used each for the first time we had never
heard them. Foila seemed to speak as women commonly do,
and if I had been asked whether she employed such tags, I
would have said that she did not—but how often one might
have predicted the ends of her sentences from their beginnings.

Second, I learned how difficult it is to eliminate the urge
for expression. The people of Ascia were reduced to speaking
only with their masters' voice; but they had made of it a new
tongue, and I had no doubt, after hearing the Ascian, that by
it he could express whatever thought he wished.

And third, I learned once again what a many-sided thing is
the telling of any tale. None, surely, could be plainer than
the Ascian's, yet what did it mean? Was it intended to praise
the Group of Seventeen? The mere terror of their name had
routed the evildoers. Was it intended to condemn them?
They had heard the complaints of the just man, and yet they
had done nothing for him beyond giving him their verbal
support. There had been no indication they would ever do
more.

	But I had not learned those things I had most wished to
learn as I listened to the Ascian and to Foila. What had been
her motive in agreeing to allow the Ascian to compete? Mere
mischief? From her laughing eyes I could easily believe it.
Was she perhaps in truth attracted to him? I found that
more difficult to credit, but it was surely not impossible.
Who has not seen women attracted to men lacking every
attractive quality? She had clearly had much to do with Ascians, 
and he was clearly no ordinary soldier, since he had
been taught our language. Did she hope to wring some secret
from him?

	And what of him? Melito and Hallvard had accused each
other of telling tales with an ulterior purpose. Had he done
so as well? If he had, it had surely been to tell Foila—and the
rest of us too—that he would never give up.

XII

Winnoc

THAT EVENING I had yet another visitor: one of the shaven-
headed male slaves. I had been sitting up and attempting to
talk with the Ascian, and he seated himself beside me. "Do
you remember me, Lictor?" he asked. "My name is Winnoc.”
	I shook my head.
	"It was I who bathed you and cared for you on the night
you arrived," he told me. "I have been waiting until you were
well enough to speak. I would have come last night, but you
were deep in talk already with one of our postulants."
	I asked what he wished to speak to me about.
	"A moment ago I called you Lictor, and you did not deny
it. Are you indeed a lictor? You were dressed as one that
night."
	"I have been a lictor," I said. "Those are the only clothes I
own."
	"But you are a lictor no longer?"
	I shook my head. "I came north to enter the army."
	"Ah," he said. For a moment he looked away.
	"Surely others do the same."
	"A few, yes. Most join in the south, or are made to join. A
few come north like you, because they want some special unit
where a friend or relation is already. A soldier's life ..."
	I waited for him to continue.
	"It's a lot like a slave's, I think. I've never been a soldier
myself, but I've talked to a lot of them."
	"Is your life so miserable? I would have thought the Pelerines 
kind mistresses. Do they beat you?"
He smiled at that and turned until I could see his back.
	"You've been a lictor. What do you think of my scars?"
	In the fading light I could scarcely make them out. I ran
my fingers across them. "Only that they are very old and were
made with the lash," I said.
	"I got them before I was twenty, and I'm nearly fifty now.
A man with black clothes like yours made them. Were you a
lictor for long?"
	"No, not long."
	"Then you don't know much of the business?"
	"Enough to practice it."
	"And that's all? The man who whipped me told me he was
from the guild of torturers. I thought maybe you might have
heard of them."
	"I have."
	"Are they real? Some people have told me they died out a
long time ago, but that isn't what the man who whipped me
said."
	I told him, "They still exist, so far as I'm aware. Do you
happen to recall the name of the torturer who scourged
you?"
	"He called himself Journeyman Palaemon—ah, you know
him!"
	"Yes. He was my teacher for a time. He's an old man
now."
	"He's still alive, then? Will you ever see him again?"
	"I don't think so."
	"I'd like to see him myself. Maybe sometime I will. The
Increate, after all, orders all things. You young men, you live
wild lives—I know I did, at your age. Do you know yet that
he shapes everything we do?"
	"Perhaps."
	"Believe me, it's so, I've seen much more than you. Since it
is so, it may be that I'll never see Journeyman Palaemon
again, and you've been brought here to be my messenger."

	Just at that point, when I expected him to convey to me
whatever message he had, he fell silent. The patients who
had listened so attentively to the Ascian's story were talking
among themselves now; but somewhere in the stack of soiled
dishes the old slave had collected, one shifted its position
with a faint clink, and I heard it.

	"What do you know of the laws of slavery?" he asked me
at last. "I mean, of the ways a man or a woman can become a
slave under the law?"
	"Very little,” I said. "A certain friend of mine" (I was
thinking of the green man) "was called a slave, but he was
only an unlucky foreigner who'd been seized by some unscrupulous 
people. I knew that wasn't legal."

	He nodded agreement. "Was he dark of skin?"
	"You might say that, yes."
	"In the olden times, or so I've heard, slavery was by skin
colour. The darker a man was, the more a slave they made
him. That's hard to believe, I know; But we used to have a
chatelaine in the order who knew a lot about history, and she
told me. She was a truthful woman."
	"No doubt it originated because slaves must often toil in
the sun," I observed. "Many of the usages of the past now
seem merely capricious to us."
	At that he became a trifle angry. "Believe me, young man,
I’ve lived in the old days and I've lived now, and I know a lot
better than you which was the best."
	"So Master Palaemon used to say."
	As I had hoped it would, that restored him to the principal
topic of his thought. "There's only three ways a man can be a
slave," he said. "Though for a woman it's different, what 
with marriage and the like.
	"If a man's brought—him being a slave—into the Commonwealth 
from foreign parts, a slave he remains, and the master
that brought him here can sell him if he wants. That's one.
Prisoners of war—like this Ascian here—are the slaves of the
Autarch, the Master of Masters and the Slave of Slaves. The
Autarch can sell them if he wants to. Often he does, and
because most of these Ascians aren't much use except for
tedious work, you often find them rowing on the upper rivers.
That's two.
	"Number three is that a man can sell himself into some-
body's service, because a free man is the master of his own
body—he's his own slave already, as it were."
	"Slaves," I remarked, "are seldom beaten by torturers.
	What need of it, when they can be beaten by their own
masters?"

	"I wasn't a slave then. That's part of what I wanted to ask
Journeyman Palaemon about. I was just a young fellow that
bad been caught stealing. Journeyman Palaemon came in to
talk to me on the morning I was going to get my whipping. I,
thought it was a kindly thing for him to do, although it was
then that he told me he was from the guild of torturers."
	"We always prepare a client, if we can," I said.
	"He told me not to try to keep from yelling—it doesn't
hurt quite so bad, is what he told me, if you yell out just as
the whip comes down. He promised me there wouldn't be
any hitting more than the number the judge said, so I could
count them if I wanted to, and that way I'd know when it
was about over. And he said he wouldn't hit harder than he
had to, to cut the skin, and he wouldn't break any bones."
I nodded.
	"I asked him then if he'd do me a favour, and he said he
would if he could. I wanted for him to come back afterward
and talk to me again, and he said he would try to when I was
a little recovered. Then a caloyer came in to read the prayer.
	"They tied me to a post, with my hands over my head and
the indictment tacked up above my hands. Probably you've
done it yourself many times."

	"Often enough," I told him.
	"I doubt the way they did me was any different. I've got
the scars of it still, but they've faded, just like you say. I've
seen many a man with worse ones. The jailers, they dragged
me back to my cell as the custom is, but I think I could have
walked. It didn't hurt as much as losing an arm or a leg. Here
I've helped the surgeons take off a good many."
	"Were you thin in those days?" I asked him.
	"Very thin. I think you could have counted every rib I
had."
	"That was much to your advantage, then. The lash cuts
deep in a fat man's back, and he bleeds like a pig. People say
the traders aren't punished enough for short weighing and
the like, but those who speak so don't know how they suffer
when they are."
	Winnoc nodded to that. "The next day I felt almost as
strong as ever, and Journeyman Palaemon came like he'd
promised. I told him how it was with me—how I lived and
all—and asked him a bit about himself. I guess it seems queer
to you that I'd talk so to a man that had whipped me?"
	"No. I've heard of similar things many times."
	"He told me he'd done something against his guild. He
wouldn't tell me what it was, but because of it he was exiled
for a while. He told me how he felt about it and how lonesome 
he was. He said he'd tried to feel better by thinking
how other people lived, by knowing they had no more guild
than he did. But he could only feel sorry for them, and pretty
soon he felt sorry for himself too. He told me that if I
wanted to be happy, and not go through this kind of thing
again, to find some sort of brotherhood for myself and join."

"Yes?" I asked.

	"And I decided to do what he's said. When I was let out, I
spoke to the masters of a lot of guilds, picking and choosing
them at first, then talking to any I thought might take me,
like the butchers and the candlemakers. None of them would
take on an apprentice as old as I was, or somebody that
didn't have the fee, or somebody with a bad character—they
looked at my back, you see, and decided I was a trouble-
maker.

	"I thought about signing on a ship or joining the army, and
since then I've often wished I'd gone ahead with one or the
other, although maybe if I had I'd wish now I hadn't, or
maybe not be living to wish at all. Then I got the notion of
joining some religious order, I don't know why. I talked to a
bunch of them, and two offered to take me, even when I told
them I didn't have any money and showed them my back.
But the more I heard about the way they were supposed to
live in there, the less I felt like I could do it. I had been
drunk a lot, and I liked the girls, and I didn't really want to
change.

	'Then one day when I was standing around on a corner I
saw a man I took to belong to some order I hadn't talked to
yet. By that time I was planning to sign aboard a certain ship,
but it wasn't going to sail for almost a week, and a sailor had
told me a lot of the hardest work came while they were get-
ting ready, and I'd miss it if I waited until they were about to
get up the anchor. That was all a lie, but I didn't know it
then.

	"Anyway, I followed this man I'd seen, and when he
stopped-he'd been sent to buy vegetables, you see-I went
up to him and asked him about his order. He told me he was
a slave of the Pelerines and it was about the same as being in
an order, bat better. A man could have a drink or two and
nobody'd object so long as he was sober when he came to his
work. He could lie with the girls too, and there were good
chances for that because the girls thought they were holy
men, more or less, and they travelled all around.

	"I asked if he thought they'd take me, and I said I couldn't
believe the life was as good as he made it out to be. He said
he was sure they would, and although he couldn't prove what
he'd said about the girls right then .and there, he'd prove
what he'd said about drinking by splitting a bottle of red
with me.

	"We went to a tavern by the market and sat down, and he
was as good as his word. He told me the life was a lot like a
sailor's, because the best part of being a sailor was seeing
various places, and they did that. It was like being a soldier
too, because they carried weapons when the order journeyed
in wild parts. Besides all of that, they paid you to sign. In an
order, the order gets an offering from every man who takes
their vow. If he decides to leave later, he gets some of it back,
depending on how long he's been in. For us slaves, as he
explained to me, all that went the other way. A slave got paid
when he signed. If he left later he'd have to buy his way out,
but if he stayed he could keep all the money.

	"I had a mother, and even though I never went to see her I
knew she didn't have an aes. While I was thinking about the
religious orders, I'd got to be more religious myself, and I
didn't see how I was going to minister to the Increate with
her on my mind. I signed the paper—naturally Goslin, the
slave who'd brought me in, got a reward for it—and I took
the money to my mother."

	I said, "That made her happy, I'm sure, and you too."

	"She thought it was some kind of trick, but I left it with
her anyhow. I had to go back to the order, right away, naturally, 
and they'd sent somebody with me. Now I've been here
thirty years."

	"You're to be congratulated, I hope."

	"I don't know. It's been a hard life, but then all lives are
hard, from what I've seen of them."

"I too," I said. To tell the truth, I was becoming sleepy
and wished that he would go. "Thank you for telling me your
story. I found it very interesting."

	"I want to ask you something," he said, "and I want you to
ask Journeyman Palaemon for me if you see him again."

	I nodded, waiting.

	"You-said you thought the Pelerines would be kind mistresses, 
and I suppose you're right. I've had a lot of kindness
from some of them, and I've never been whipped here—nothing 
worse than a few slaps. But you ought to know how they
do it. Slaves that don't behave themselves get sold, that's all.
Maybe you don't follow me."

	"I don't think I do."

	"A lot of men sell themselves to the order, thinking like I
did that it'll be an easy life and an adventure. So it is, mostly,
and it's a good feeling to help cure the sick and the wounded.
But those who don't suit the Pelerines are sold off, and they
get a lot more for them than they paid them. Do you see how
it is now? This way, they don't have to beat anybody. About
the worst punishment you get is scrubbing out the Jakes.
Only if you don't please them, you can find yourself getting
driven down into a mine.

	"What I've wanted to ask Journeyman Palaemon all these
years ..." Winnoc paused, gnawing at his lower lip. "He was
a torturer, wasn't he? He said, so, and so did you."

	"Yes, he was. He still is."

	"Then what I want to know is whether he told me what he
did to torment me. Or was he giving me the best advice he
could?" He looked away so that I would not see his expression. 
"Will you ask him that for me? Then maybe sometime
I’ll see you again."

	I said, "He advised you as well as he could, I'm certain. If
you'd stayed as you were, you might have been executed by
him or another torturer long ago. Have you ever seen a man
executed? But torturers don't know everything."

	Winnoc stood up. "Neither do slaves. Thank you, young
man."

	I touched his arm to detain him for a moment. "May I ask
you something now? I myself have been a torturer. If you've
feared for so many years that Master Palaemon had said what
he did only to give you pain, how do you know that I haven't
done the same just now?"

	"Because you would have said the other," he told me.
"Good night, young man."

	I thought for a time about what Winnoc had said, and
about what Master Palaemon had said to him so long ago.
He too had been a wanderer, then, perhaps ten years before I
was bom. And yet he had returned to the Citadel to become
a master of the guild. I recalled the way Abdiesus (whom I
had betrayed) had wished to have me made a Master. Surely,
whatever crime Master Palaemon had committed had been
hidden later by all the brothers of the guild. Now he was a
master, though as I had seen all my life, being too accustomed 
to it to wonder at it, it was Master Gurloes who directed 
the guild's affairs despite his being so much younger.
Outside the warm winds of the northern summer played
among the tent ropes; but it seemed to me that I climbed
the steep steps of the Matachin Tower again and heard the
cold winds sing among the keeps of the Citadel.

	At last, hoping to turn my mind to less painful matters, I
stood and stretched and strolled to Foila's cot. She Was
awake, and I talked with her for a time, then asked if I might
judge the stories now; but she said I would have to wait one
more day at least.

XIII

Foila's Story-The Armigers
Daughter

"HALLVARD AND MELITO and even the Ascian have had their
chances. Don't you think I'm entitled to one too? Even a
man who courts a maid thinking he has no rivals has one, and
that one is herself. She may give herself to him, but she may
also choose to keep herself for herself. He has to convince her
feat she will be happier with him than by herself, and though
men convince maids of that often, it isn't often true. In this
competition I will make my own entry, and win myself for
myself if I can. If I marry for tales, should I marry someone
who's a worse teller of them than I am myself?"

	"Each of the men has told a story of his own country. I will
do the same. My land is the land of the far horizons, of the
wide sky. It is the land of grass and wind and galloping hoofs.
In summer the wind can be as hot as the breath of an oven,
and when the pampas take fire, the line of smoke stretches a
hundred leagues and the lions ride our cattle to escape it,
looking like devils. The men of my country are brave as bulls
and the women are fierce as hawks.

	"When my grandmother was young, there was a villa in my
country so remote that no one ever came there. It belong
to an armiger, a feudatory of the Liege of Pascua. The lands
were rich, and it was a fine house, though the roof beams had
been dragged by oxen all one summer to get them to the site.
The walls were of earth, as the walls of all the houses in my
country are, and they were three paces thick. People who live
in woodlands scoff at such walls, but they are cool and make
a fine appearance whitewashed and will not burn. There was
a tower and a wide banqueting hall, and a contrivance of
ropes and wheels and buckets by which two merychips, walking 
in a circle, watered the garden on the roof.

"The armiger was a gallant man and his wife a lovely
woman, but of all their children only one lived beyond the
first year. She was tall, brown as leather yet smooth as oil,
with hair the colour of the palest wine and eyes dark as thunderheads. 
Still, the villa where they dwelt was so remote that
no one knew and no one came to seek her. Often she rode all
day alone, hunting with her peregrine or dashing after her
spotted hunting cats when they had started an antelope.
Often too she sat alone in her bedchamber all the day, hearing 
the song of her lark in its cage and turning the pages of
old books her mother had carried from her own home.

"At last her father determined that she must wed, for she
was near the twentieth year, after which few would want her.
Then he sent his servants everywhere for three hundred
leagues around, crying her beauty and promising that on his
death her husband should hold all that was his. Many fine
riders came, with silver-mounted saddles and coral on the
pommels of their swords. He entertained them all, and his
daughter, with her hair in a man's hat and a long knife in a
man's sash, mingled with them, feigning to be one of them,
so that she might hear who boasted of many women and see
who stole when he thought himself unobserved. Each night
she went to her father and told him their names, and When
she had gone he called them to him and told them of the
stakes where no one goes, where men bound in rawhide die in
the sun; and the next morning they saddled their mounts and
rode away.

"Soon there remained but three. Then the armiger's
daughter could go among them no more, for with so few she
feared they would surely know her. She went to her bed-
chamber and let down her hair and brushed it, and took off
her hunting clothes and bathed in scented water. She put
rings on her fingers and bracelets on her arms and wide hoops
of gold in her ears, and on her head that thin circlet of fine
gold that an armiger's daughter is entitled to wear. In short,
she did all she knew to make herself beautiful, and because
her heart was brave, perhaps there was no maid anywhere
more beautiful than she.

	"When she was dressed as she wished, she sent her servant
to call her father and the three suitors to her. "Now behold
me,' she said. "You see a ring of gold about my brow, and
smaller rings suspended from my ears. The arms that will
embrace one of you are themselves embraced by rings smaller
still, and rings yet smaller are on my fingers. My chest of
jewels lies open before you, and there are no more rings to be
found in it; but there is another ring still in this room—a ring
I do not wear. Cam one of you discover it and bring it to me?'

	"The three suitors looked up and down, behind the arras,
and beneath the bed. At last the youngest took the lark's
cage from its hook and carried it to the armiger's daughter;
and there, about the lark's right leg, was a tiny ring of gold.
'Now hear me,' she said. 'My husband shall be the man who
shows me this little brown bird again.’

	"And with that she opened the cage and thrust in her
hand, then carrying the lark upon her finger took it to the
window and tossed it in the air. For a moment the three
suitors saw the gold ring glint in the sun. The lark rose until
it was no more than a dot against the sky.

	"Then the suitors rushed down the stair and out the door,
calling for their mounts, the swift-footed friends that had
carried them already so many leagues across the empty pampas. 
Their silver-mounted saddles they threw upon their
backs, and in less than a moment all three were gone from
the sight of the armiger and the armiger's daughter, and from
each other's as well, for one rode north toward the jungles,
and one east toward the mountains, and the youngest west
toward the restless sea.

	"When he who went north had ridden for some days, he
came to a river too swift for swimming and rode along its
bank, ever harkening to the songs of the birds who dwelt
there, until he reached a ford. In that ford a rider in brown
sat a brown destrier. His face was masked with a brown neck-
cloth, his cloak, his hat, and all his clothing were of brown,
and about the ankle of his brown right boot was a ring of
gold.

	" 'Who are you?' " called the suitor.

	The figure in brown answered not a word.

	" 'There was among us at the armiger's house a certain
young man who vanished on the day before the last day,' said
the suitor, 'and I think that you are he. In someway you have
learned of my quest, and now you seek to prevent me. Well,
stand clear of my road, or die where you stand.'

	"And with that he drew sword and spurred his destrier into
the water. For some time they fought as the men of my
country fight, with the sword in the right hand and the long
knife in the left, for the suitor was strong and brave, and the
rider in brown was quick and blade-crafty. But at last the
latter fell, and his blood stained the water.

	"'I leave you your mount,' the suitor called, 'if your
strength is sufficient to get you into the saddle again. For I
am a merciful man.' And he rode away.

	"When he who had ridden toward the mountains had rid-
den for some days also, he came to such a bridge as the
mountain people build, a narrow affair of rope and bamboo,
stretched across a chasm like the web of a spider. No man but
a fool attempts to ride across such a contrivance, and so he
dismounted and led his mount by the reins.

"When he began to cross it seemed to him that the bridge
was all empty before him, but he had not come a quarter of
the way when a figure appeared in the centre. In form it was
much like a man, but it was all of brown save for one flash of
white, and it seemed to fold brown wings about itself. When
the second suitor was closer still he saw that it wore a ring of
gold about the ankle of one boot, and the brown wings now
seemed no more than a cloak of that colour.

	"Then he traced a Sign in the air before him to protect
him from those spirits that have forgotten their creator, and
he called, *Who are you? Name yourself!'

	" ‘You see me,' the figure answered him. "Name me true,
and your wish is my wish."

	" 'You are the spirit of the lark sent forth by the armiger's
daughter,' said the second suitor. "Your form you may
change, but the ring marks you.’

	"At that, the figure in brown drew sword and presented it
hilt foremost to the second suitor. 'You have named me
rightly,' it said. "What would you have me do?'

	" 'Return with me to the armiger's house,' said the suitor,
"so that I may show you to the armiger's daughter and so win
her.’

	"Twill return with you gladly, if that is what you wish,'
said the figure in brown. "But I warn you now that if she sees
me, she will not see in me what you see.'

	" ‘Nevertheless, come with me,' answered the suitor, for he
did not know what else to say.

	"On such a bridge as the mountain people build, a man
may turn about without much difficulty, but a four-legged
beast finds it nearly impossible to do so. Therefore, they were
forced to continue to the farther side in order that the second 
suitor might face his mount toward the armiger's house
once more. 'How tedious this is,' he thought as he walked the
great catenary of the bridge, 'and yet, how difficult and dangerous. 
Cannot that be used to my benefit?' At last he called
to the figure in brown, 'I must walk this bridge, and then
it again. But must you do so as well? Why don't you fly
to the other side and wait there for me?'

	"At that, the figure in brown laughed, a wondrous trilling
'Did you not see that one of my wings is bandaged? I fluttered 
too near one of your rivals, and he slashed at me with
his sword.'

	"'Then you cannot fly far?' asked the second suitor.

	" 'No indeed. As you approached this bridge I was perched
on the brown walkway resting, and when I heard your tread I
had scarcely strength to flutter up.'

	" 'I see,' said the second suitor, and no more. But to himself 
he thought: 'If I were to cut this bridge, the lark would
be forced to take bird-form again—yet it could not fly far, and
I should surely kill it. Then I could carry it back, and the
armiger's daughter would know it."

	"When they reached the farther side, he patted the neck
of his mount and turned it about, thinking that it would die,
but that the best such animal was a small price to set against
the ownership of great herds. 'Follow us,' he said to the figure
in brown, and led his mount onto the bridge again, so that
over that windy and aching chasm he went first, and the
destrier behind him, and the figure in brown last of all. 'The
beast will rear as the bridge falls,' he thought, 'and-the spirit
of the lark will not be able to dash past, so it must resume its
bird shape or perish.' His plans, you see, were themselves
shaped by the beliefs of my land, where those who set store
in shape-changers will tell you that like thoughts they will
not change once they have been made prisoner.

	"Down the long curve of the bridge again walked the
three, and up the side from which the second suitor had
come, and as soon as he set foot on the rock, he drew his
sword, sharp as his labour could make it. Two handrails of
rope the bridge had,, and two cables of hemp to support the
roadway. He ought to have cut those first, but he wasted a
moment on the handrails, and the figure in brown sprang
from behind into the destrier's saddle, drove spur to its
flanks, and rode him down. Thus he died under the hoofs of
his own mount,

	"When the youngest suitor, who had gone toward the sea,
had ridden some days as well, he reached its marge. There on
the beach beside the unquiet sea he met someone cloaked in
brown, with a brown hat, and a brown cloth across nose and
mouth, and a gold ring about the ankle of a brown boot.

	" 'You see me," the person in brown called. 'Name me true,
and your wish shall be my wish/

	"'You are an angel,' replied the youngest suitor, 'sent to
guide me to the lark I seek."

	"At that the brown angel drew a sword and presented it,
hilt foremost, to the youngest suitor, saying, 'You have
named me rightly. What would you have me do?"

	"Never will I attempt to thwart the will of the Liege of
Angels,' answered the youngest suitor. 'Since you are sent to
guide me to the lark, my only wish is that you shall do so."

	" 'And so I shall,' said the angel. 'But would you go by the
shortest road? Or the best?'

	"At that the youngest suitor thought to himself, 'Here
surely is some trick. Ever the empyrean powers rebuke the
impatience of men, which they, being immortal, can easily
afford to do. Doubtless the shortest way lies through the
horrors of caverns underground, or something like.' There-
fore he answered the angel, 'By the best. Would not it dishonour 
her whom I shall wed to travel any other?"

	" 'Some say one thing and some another,' replied the an-
gel. 'Now let me mount up behind you. Not far from here
there is a goodly port, and there I have just sold two destriers
as good as yours or better. We shall sell yours as well, and the
gold ring that circles my boot.'

	"In the port they did as the angel had indicated, and with
their money purchased a ship, not large but swift and sound,
and hired three knowing seamen to work her.
"On the third day out from port, the youngest suitor had
such a dream by night as young men have. When he woke he
touched the pillow near his head and found it warm, an
when he lay down to sleep again, he winded some delicate
perfume—the odour, it might have been, of the flowering
grasses the women of my land dry in spring to braid in the
hair.

	"An isle they reached where no men come, and the youngest 
suitor went ashore to search for the lark. He found it not,
but at the dying of the day stripped off his garments to cool
himself in the surging sea. There, when the stars had brightened, 
another joined him. Together they swam, and together
lay telling tales on the beach.

	"One day while they were peering over the prow of the
ship for another (for they traded at times and at times fought
also) a great gust of wind came and the angel's hat was blow
into the all-devouring sea, and soon the brown cloth that had
covered her face went to join it.

	"At last they grew weary of the unresting sea and thought
of my land, where the lions ride our cattle in autumn when
the grass burns, and the men are brave as bulls and the
women fierce as hawks. Their ship they had called the Lark
and now the Lark flew across blue waters, each morn impaling 
the red sun upon her bowsprit. In the port where the
had bought her they sold her and received three times the
price, for she had become a famous vessel, renowned in song
and story; and indeed, all who came to the port wondered at
how small she was, a trim, brown craft hardly a score of paces
from stem to rudderpost. Their loot they sold also, and the
goods they had gained by trading. The people of my land
keep the best destriers they breed for themselves, but it is tothis port that they bring the best of those they sell, and there
the youngest suitor and the angel bought good mounts an
filled their saddlebags with gems and gold, and set out for the
armiger's house that is so remote that no one ever comes
there.

"Many a scrape did they have upon the way, and many a
time bloody the swords that had been washed so often in the
cleansing sea and wiped on sailcloth or sand. Yet at last come
they did. There the angel was welcomed by the armiger,
shouting, and by his wife, weeping, and by all the servants,
talking. And there she doffed her brown clothing and became
the armiger's daughter of old once more.

	"A great wedding was planned. In my land such things
take many days, "for there are roasting pits to be dug anew,
and cattle to be slaughtered, and messengers who must ride
for days to fetch guests who must ride for days also. On the
third day, as they waited, the armiger's daughter sent her
servant to the youngest suitor, saying, "My mistress will not
hunt today. Rather, she invites you to her bedchamber, to
talk of times past upon sea and land."

	"The youngest suitor dressed himself in the finest of the
clothes he had bought when they had returned to port, and
soon was at the door of the armiger’s daughter.

	“He found her sitting on a window seat, turning the pages
of one of the old books her mother had carried from her own
home and listening to the singing of a lark in a cage. To that
cage he went, and saw that the lark had a ring of gold about
one leg. Then he looked at the armiger's daughter, wondering.

	“'Did the angel you met upon the strand not promise
you should be guided to this lark?" she said. 'And by the best
road? Each morning I open his cage and cast him out upon
the wind to exercise his wings. Soon he returns to it again,
where there is food for him, clean water, and safety."

	“Some say the wedding of the youngest suitor and the
armiger's daughter was the finest ever seen in my land."

XIV

Mannea

THAT NIGHT THERE WAS much talk of Foila's story, and this
time it was I who postponed making any judgment among
the tales. Indeed, I had formed a sort of horror of judging,
the residue, perhaps, of my education among the torturers,
who teach their apprentices from boyhood to execute the
instructions of the judges appointed (as they themselves are
not) by the officials of our Commonwealth.

	In addition, I had something more pressing on my mind. I
had hoped that our evening meal would be served by Ava,
but when it was not, I rose anyway, dressed myself in my own
clothes, and slipped off in the gathering dark.

	It was a surprise—a very pleasant one—to find that my legs
were strong again. I had been free of fever for several days,
yet I had grown accustomed to thinking myself ill (just as I
had earlier been accustomed to thinking myself well) and had
lain in my cot without complaint. No doubt many a man
who walks about and does his work is dying and ignorant of
it, and many who lie abed all day are healthier than those
who bring their food and wash them.

	I tried to recall, as I followed the winding paths between
the tents, when I had felt so well before. Not in the mountains 
or upon the lake—the hardships I had suffered there
had gradually reduced my vitality until I fell prey to the
fever. Not when I fled Thrax, for I was already worn out from
my duties as lictor. Not when I had arrived at Thrax; Dorcas
and I had undergone privations in the roadless country nearly
as severe as I was to bear alone in the mountains. Not even
when I had been at the House Absolute (a period that now
seemed as remote as the reign of Ymar), because I had still
been suffering the after effects of the alzabo and my ingestion
of Thecla's dead memories.

	At last it came to me: I felt now as I had on that memorable 
morning when Agia and I had set out for the Botanic
Gardens, the first morning after I had left the Citadel. That
morning, though I had not known it, I had acquired the
Claw. For the first time -I wondered if it had not been cursed
as well as blessed. Or perhaps it was only that all the past
months had been needed for me to recover fully from the
leaf of the avern that had pierced me that same evening. I
took out the Claw and stared at its silvery gleam, and when I
raised my eyes, I saw the glowing scarlet of the Pelerines'
chapel.

	I could hear the chanting, and I knew it would be some
time before the chapel would be empty, but I proceeded
anyway, and at last slipped through the door and took a place
in the back. Of the liturgy of the Pelerines, I will say nothing.
Such things cannot always be well described, and even when
they can, it is less than proper to do so. The guild called the
Seekers for Truth and Penitence, to which I at one time
belonged, has its own ceremonies, one of which I have de-
scribed in some detail in another place. Certainly those cere-
monies are peculiar to it, and perhaps those of the Pelerines
were peculiar to them as well, though they may once have
been universal.

	Speaking in so far as I can as an unprejudiced observer, I
would say that they were more beautiful than ours but less
theatrical, and thus in the long run perhaps less moving, The
costumes of the participants were ancient, I am sure, and
striking. The chants possessed a queer attraction I have not
encountered in other music. Our ceremonies were intended
chiefly to impress the role of the guild upon the minds of our
younger members. Possibly those of the Pelerines had a similar 
function. If not, then they were designed to engage the
particular attention of the All-Seeing, and whether they did
so I cannot say. In the event, the order received no special
protection.

	When the ceremony was over and the scarlet-clad priestesses 
filed out, I bowed my head and feigned to be deep in
prayer. Very readily, I found, the pretence became the thing
itself. I remained conscious of my kneeling body, but only as
a peripheral burden. My mind was among the starry wastes,
far from Urth and indeed far from Urth's archipelago of island 
worlds, and it seemed to me that that to which I spoke
was farther still—I had come, as it were, to the walk of the
universe, and now shouted through the walls to one who
waited outside.

	"Shouted," I said, but perhaps that is the wrong word
Rather I whispered, as Bamoch, perhaps, walled up in his
house, might have whispered through some chink to a sympathetic 
passerby. I spoke of what I had been when I wore a
ragged shirt and watched the beasts and birds through the
narrow window of the mausoleum, and what I had become. I
spoke too, not of Vodalus and his struggle against the Autarch, 
but of the motives I had once foolishly attributed to
him. I did not deceive myself with the thought that I had it
in me to lead millions. I asked only that I might lead myself;
and as I did so, I seemed to see, with a vision increasingly
clear, through the chink in the universe to a new universe
bathed in golden light, where my listener knelt to hear me.
What had seemed a crevice in the world had expanded until

I could see a face and folded hands, and the opening, like a
tunnel, running deep into a human head that for a time
seemed larger than the head of Typhon carved upon the
mountain. I was whispering into my own ear, and when I
realized it I flew into it like a bee and stood up.

	Everyone was gone, and a silence as profound as any I have
ever heard seemed to hang in the air with the incense. The
altar rose before me, humble in comparison to that Agia and
I had destroyed, yet beautiful with its lights and purity of
line and panels of sunstone and lapis lazuli.

	Now I came forward and knelt before it. I needed no
scholar to tell me the Theologoumenon was no nearer now.
Yet he seemed nearer, and I was able—for the final time—to
take out the Claw, something I had feared I could not do.
Forming the syllables only in my mind, I said, "I have carried
you over many mountains, across rivers, and across the pampas, 
You have given Thecla life in me. You have given me
Dorcas, and you have restored Jonas to this world. Surely I
have no complaint of you, though you must have many of
me. One I shall not deserve. It shall not be said that I did not-
do what I might to undo the harm I have done."

	I knew the Claw would be swept away if I were to leave it
openly on the altar. Mounting the dais, I searched among its
furnishings for a place of concealment that should be secure
and permanent, and at last noticed that the altar-stone itself
was held from below with four clamps that had surely never
been loosed since the altar was constructed, and seemed
likely to remain in place so long as it stood. I have strong
hands, and I was able to free them, though I do not think
most men could. Beneath the stone some wood had been
chiselled away so that it should be supported at the edges
only and would not rock—it was more than I had dared to
hope for. With Jonas's razor I cut a small square of cloth
from the edge of my now-tattered guild cloak. In it I wrap-
ped the daw, then I laid it under the stone and retightened
the clamps, bloodying my fingers in my effort to make sure
they would not come loose by accident.

	As I stepped away from the altar I felt a profound sorrow,
but I had not gone halfway to the door of the chapel before I
was seized with wild joy. The burden of life and death had
been lifted from me. Now I was only a man again, and I was
delirious with delight. I felt as I had felt as a child when the
long lessons with Master Malrubius were over and I was free
to play in the Old Yard or clamber across, the broken curtain
wall to run among the trees and mausoleums of our necropolis. 
I was disgraced and outcast and homeless, without
friend and without money, and I had just given up the most
valuable object in the world, which was, perhaps, in the end
the only valuable object in the world. And yet I knew that all
would be well. I had climbed to the bottom of existence and
felt it with my hands, and I knew that there was a bottom,
and that from this point onward I could only rise. I swirled
my cloak about me as I had when I was an actor, for I knew
that I was an actor and no torturer, though I had been a
torturer. I leaped into the air and capered as the goats do on
the mountainside, for I knew that I was a child, and that no
man can be a man who is not.

	Outside, the cool air seemed expressly made for me, a new
creation and not the ancient atmosphere of Urth. I bathed in
it, first spreading my cloak then raising my arms to the stars,
filled my lungs as does one who has just escaped drowning in
the fluids of birth.

	All this took less time than it has required to describe it,
and I was about to start back to the lazaret tent from which I
had come when I became aware of a motionless figure watching 
me from the shadows of another tent some distance off.
Ever since the boy and I had escaped the blindly questing
creature that had destroyed the village of the magicians, I
had been afraid that some of Hethor's servants might search
me out again. I was about to flee when the figure stepped
into the moonlight, and I saw it was only a Pelerine.

	"Wait," she called. Then, coming nearer, "I am afraid I
frightened you."

	Her face was a smooth oval that seemed almost sexless.
She was young, I thought, though not so young as Ava and a
good two heads taller—a true exultant, as tall as Thecla had
been.

	I said, "When one has lived long with danger ..."

	"I understand. I know nothing of war, but much of the
men and women who have seen it."

	"And now how may I serve you. Chatelaine?"

	"First I must know if you are well. Are you?"

	"Yes," I said. "I will leave this place tomorrow."

	"You were in the chapel giving thanks, then, for your recovery."

	I hesitated. "I had much to say. Chatelaine. That was a
part of it, yes."

	"May I walk with you?"

	"Of course. Chatelaine."

	I have heard it said that a tall woman seems taller than any
man, and perhaps it is true. This woman was far less in stature 
than Baldanders had been, yet walking beside her made
me feel almost dwarfish. I recalled too how Thecla had bent
over me when we embraced, and how I had kissed her
breasts.

	When we had taken two score steps or so, the Pelerine
said, "You walk -well. Your legs are long, and I think they
have covered many leagues. You are not a cavalry trooper?"

	"I have ridden a bit, but not with the cavalry. I came
through the mountains on foot, if that's what you mean,
Chatelaine."

	"That is well, for I have no mount for you. But I do not
believe I have told you my name. I am Mannea, mistress of
the postulants of our order. Our Domnicellae is away, and so
for the moment I am in charge of our people here."

	“I am Severian of Nessus, a wanderer. I wish that I could
give you a thousand chrisos to help carry out your good work,
but I can only thank you for the kindness I have received
here."

	"When I spoke of a mount, Severian of Nessus, I was neither 
offering to sell you one nor offering to give you one in
(he hope of thus earning your gratitude. If we do not have
your gratitude now, we shall not get it."

	"You have it," I told her, "as I've said. As I've also said, I
will not linger here presuming on your kindness.'

	Mannea looked down at me. "I did not think you would.
This morning a postulant told me how one of the sick had
gone to the chapel with her two nights ago and described
him. This evening, when you remained behind after the rest
left, I knew you were he. I have a task, you see, and no one to
perform it. In calmer days I would send a party of our slaves,
but they are trained in the care of the sick, and we have need
of every one of them and more. Yet it is said, *He sends the
beggar a stick and to the hunter a spear.' "

	"I have no wish to insult you. Chatelaine, but I think that
if you trust me because I went to your chapel you trust me
for a bad reason. For all you know, I could have been stealing
gems from the altar."

	"You mean that thieves and liars often come to pray. By
the blessing of the Conciliator they do. Believe me, Severian,
wanderer from Nessus, no one else does—in the order or out
of it. But you molested nothing. We have not half the power
ignorant people suppose—nevertheless, those who think us
without power are more ignorant still. Will you go on an
errand for me? I'll give you a safe-conduct so you will not be
taken up as a deserter."

	"If the errand is within my powers. Chatelaine."

	She put her hand on my shoulder. It was the first time she
had touched me, and I felt a slight shock, as though I had
been brushed unexpectedly by the wing of a bird.

"About twenty leagues from here," she said, "is the hermitage 
of a certain wise and holy anchorite. Until now he has
been safe, but all this summer the Autarch has been driven
back, and soon the fury of the war will roll over that place.
Someone must go to him and persuade him to come to us—or
if he cannot be persuaded, force him to come. I believe the
Conciliator has indicated that you are to be the messenger.
Can you do it?"

	"I'm no diplomatist," I told her. "But for the other business, 
I can honestly say I have received long training."

XV

The Last House

MANNEA HAD GIVEN me a rough map showing the location of
the anchorite's retreat, emphasizing that if I failed to follow
the course indicated on it precisely, I would almost certainly
be unable to locate it.

In what direction that house lay from the lazaret I cannot
say. The distances shown on the map were in proportion to
their difficulty, and turnings were adjusted to suit the dimensions 
of the paper. I began by walking east, but soon found
that the route I followed had turned north, then west
through a narrow canyon threaded by a rushing stream, and
at last south.

On the earliest leg of my journey, I saw a great many soldiers
once a double column lining both sides of the road
while mules carried back the wounded down the centre.
Twice I was stopped, but each time the display of my safe-
conduct permitted me to proceed. It was written on cream-
coloured parchment, the finest I had then seen, and bore the
narthex sigil of the order stamped in gold. It read:

To Those Who Serve-
The letter you read shall identify our servant Severian of
Nessus, a young man dark of hair and eye, pale of face, thin,

and well above the middle height. As you honor the memory
we guard, and yourselves may wish in time for succour and if
need be an honourable interment, we beg you not hinder this
Severian as he prosecutes the business we have entrusted to
him, but rather provide him such aid as he may require and
you can supply.
For the Order of the Journeying Monials of the Concilia-
tor, called Pelerines, I am

					The Chatelaine Mannea
					Instructress and
					Directress

	Once I had entered the narrow canyon, however, all the
armies of the world seemed to vanish. I saw no more soldiers,
and the rushing water drowned the distant thundering of the
Autarch's sacars and culverins—if indeed they could have
been heard in that place at all.

	The anchorite's house had been described to me and the
description augmented by a sketch on the map I carried;
moreover, I had been told that two days would be required
for me to reach it. I was considerably surprised, therefore,
when, at sunset, I looked up and saw it perched atop the cliff
looming over me.

	There was no mistaking it. Mannea's sketch had captured
perfectly that high, peaked gable with its air of lightness and
strength Already a lamp shone in one small window.

	In the mountains I had climbed many cliffs; some had
been much higher than this one, and some—at least in appearance
more sheer. I had by no means been looking forward 
to camping among the rocks, and as soon as I saw the
anchorite's house, I decided I would sleep in it that night.

	The first third of the climb was easy. I scaled the rock face
like a cat and was more than halfway up the whole of it
before the fading of the light.

	I have always had good night vision; I told myself the
moon would soon be out and continued. In that I was wrong.
The old moon had died while I lay in the lazaret, and the
new would not be born for several days. The stars shed some
light, though they were crossed and recrossed by bands of
hurrying clouds; but it was a deceptive light that seemed
worse than none, save when I did not have it. I found myself
recalling then how Agia had waited with her assassins for me
to emerge from the underground realm of the man-apes. The
skin of my back crawled as though in anticipation of the
arbalests' blazing bolts.

	Soon a worse difficulty overtook me: I lost my sense of
balance. I do not mean that I was entirely at the mercy of
vertigo. I knew, in a general way, that down was in the direction 
of my feet and up in the direction of the stars; but I
could be no more precise than that, and because I could not,
I could judge only poorly how far I might lean out to search
for each new handhold.

	Just when this feeling was at its worst, the hurrying clouds
closed their ranks, and I was left in total darkness. Sometimes
it seemed to me that the cliff face had assumed a more gentle
slope, so that I might almost have stood erect and walked up
it Sometimes I felt that it was beetling out—I must ding to
the underside or fall. Often I felt certain I had not been
climbing ^t all, but edging long distances to the left or right.
Once I found myself almost head downward.
	
	At last I reached a ledge, and there I determined to stay
until the light came again. I wrapped myself in my cloak, lay
down, and shifted my body to bring my back firmly against
the rock. No resistance met it. I shifted once more and still
felt nothing. I grew afraid that my sense of direction had
deserted me even as my sense of balance had, and that I had
somehow turned myself about and was edging toward the
drop. After feeling the rock to either side, I rolled on my
back and extended my arms.                     

	At that moment there came a flash of sulfurous light that
dyed the belly of every cloud. Not far off, some great bombard had loosed its cargo of death, and in that hectic illumination 
I saw that I had gained the top of the cliff, and

that the house I had seen there was nowhere to be found, I
lay upon an empty expanse of rock and felt the first drops of
Ac coming rain patter against my face.

Next morning, cold and miserable, I ate some of the food I
had carried from the lazaret and made my way down the
farther side of the high hill of which the cliff had formed a
part. The slope there was easier, and it was my intention to
double about the shoulder of the hill until I again reached
the narrow valley indicated on my map.

I could not do so. It was not: that my way was blocked, but
rather that when, after long walking, I arrived at what should
have been the location I sought, I found an entirely different
place, a shallower valley and a broader stream. After several
watches wasted searching there, I discovered the spot from
which (as it seemed to me) I had seen the anchorite's house
perched upon the cliff top. Needless to say, it was not there
now, nor was the cliff so high nor so steep as I recalled it.

It was there that I took out the map again, and studying it
noticed that Mannea had written, in a hand so fine that I
could scarcely believe it had been done with the pen I had
seen her use, the words THE LAST HOUSE beneath the
image of the anchorite's dwelling. For some reason those
words and the picture of the house itself atop its rock re-
called to me the house Agia and I had seen in the Jungle
Garden, where husband and wife had sat listening to the
naked man called Isangoma. Agia, who had been wise in the
ways of all the Botanic Gardens, had told me there that if I
turned on the path and attempted to go back to the hut I
should not find it.' Reflecting upon that incident, I discovered 
that I did not now believe her, but that I had believed
her at the time. It might be, of course, that my loss of credulity 
was only a reaction to her treachery, of which I had by
now had a sufficient sample. Or it might merely be that I was
far more ingenuous then, when I was less than a day gone
from the Citadel and the nurturing of the guild. But if was

also possible—so it seemed to me now—that I had believed
then because I had just seen the thing for myself, and that
the sight of it, and the knowledge of those people, had carried
its own conviction.

Father Inire was alleged to have built the Botanic Gardens. 
Might it not be that some part of the knowledge he
commanded was shared by the anchorite? Father Inire, too,
had built the secret room in the House Absolute that had
appeared to be a painting. I had discovered it by accident
but only because I had followed the instructions of the old
picture cleaner, who had meant that I should. Now I was no
longer following the instructions of Mannea.

I retraced my way around the shoulder of the hill and up
the easy slope. The steep cliff I recalled dropped before me,
and at its base rushed a narrow stream whose song filled all
the strait valley. The position of the sun indicated that I had
at most two watches of light remaining, but by that light the
diff was far easier to descend than it had been to climb by
night. In less than a watch I was down, standing in the narrow 
valley I had left the evening before. I could see no lamp
at any window, but the Last House stood where it had been,
founded upon stone over which my boots had walked that
day. I shook my head, turned away from it, and used the
dying light to read the map Mannea had drawn for me.

Before I go further, I wish to make it clear that I am by no
means certain there was anything preternatural in all that I
have described. I saw the Last House thus twice, but on both
occasions under similar lighting, the first time being by late
twilight and the second by early twilight. It is surely possible
that what I saw was no more than a creation of rocks and
shadows, the illuminated window a star.

As to the vanishing of the narrow valley when I tried to
come upon it from the other direction, there is no geographical 
feature more prone to disappear from sight than such a
narrow declivity. The slightest unevenness in the ground conceals
it. To protect themselves from marauders, some of the
autochthonous peoples of the pampas go so far as to build
their villages in that form, first digging a pit whose bottom
can be reached by a ramp, then excavating houses and stables
from the sides of it. As soon as the grass has covered the cast-
out earth, which occurs very rapidly after the winter rains,
one may ride to within half a chain of such a place without
realizing it exists.

	But though I may have been such a fool, I do not believe I
was; Master Palaemon used to say that the supernatural exists 
in order that we may not be humiliated at being frightened 
by the night wind; but I prefer to believe that there was
some element truly uncanny surrounding that house. I believe 
it now more firmly than I did then.

	However it may be, I followed the map I had been given
from that time forward, and before the night was more than
two watches old, found myself climbing a path that led to
the door of the Last House, which stood at the edge of just
such a cliff as I remembered. As Mannea had said, the trip
had taken just two days.

XVI

The Anchorite

THERE WAS A PORCH. It was hardly higher than the stone upon
which it stood, but it ran to either side of the house and
around the^ corners, like those long porches one sometimes
sees on the better sort of country houses, where there is little
to fear and the owners like to sit in the cool of the evening
and watch Urth fall below Lune. I rapped at the door, and
then, when no one answered, walked around this porch, first
right, then left, peering in the windows.

	It was too dark inside for me to see anything, but I found
that the porch circled the house as far as the edge of the cliff,
and there ended without a railing. I knocked again as fruitlessly 
as before and had laid myself on the porch to sleep (for
having a roof over it, it was a better place than any I was
likely to find among the rocks) when I heard faint footsteps.

	Somewhere high in that high house, a man was walking.
His steps were but slow at first, so that I thought he must be
an old man or a sick one. As they came nearer, however, they
became firmer and more swift, until as they neared the door
they seemed the regular tread of a man of purpose, such a
one as might, perhaps, command a maniple, or an ile of
cavalry.

I had stood again by then and dusted my cloak and made
myself as presentable as I could, yet I was only poorly prepared 
for him I saw when the door swung back. He carried a
candle as thick as my wrist, and by its light I beheld a face
that was like the faces of the Hierodules I had met in Baldanders's 
castle, save that it was a human face—indeed, I felt
that as the faces of the statues in the gardens of the House
Absolute had imitated the faces of such beings as Famulimus, 
Barbatus, and Ossipago, so their faces were only imitations, 
in some alien medium, of such faces as the one I saw
now; I have said often in this account that I remember every-
thing, and so I do; but when I try to sketch that face beside
these words of mine I find I cannot do so. No drawing that I
make resembles it in the least. I can only say that the brows
were heavy and straight, the eyes deep-set and deep blue, as
Thecla's were. This man’s skin was fine as a woman's too, but
there was nothing womanish about him, and the beard that
flowed to his waist was of darkest black. His robe seemed
white, but there was a rainbow shimmering where it caught
the candlelight.

	I bowed as I had been taught in the Matachin Tower and
told him my name and who had sent me. Then I said, "And
are you, sieur, the anchorite of the Last House?"

	He nodded. "I am the last man here. You may call me
Ash."

	He stood to one side, indicating that I should enter, then
led me to a room at the rear of the house, where a wide
window overlooked the valley from which I had climbed the
night before. There were wooden chairs there and a wooden
table. Metal chests, dully gleaming in the candlelight, rested
in the comers and in the angles between floor and walls.

	"You must pardon the poor appearance of this place," he
said. "It is here that I receive company, but I have so little
company that I have begun to use it as a storeroom."
	"When one lives alone in such a lonely spot, it is well to
seem poor. Master Ash. This room, however, does not."

	I had not thought that face capable of smiling, yet he
smiled. "You wish to see my treasures? Look." He rose and
opened a chest, holding the candle so that it lit the interior.
There were square loaves of hard bread and packages of
Impressed figs. Seeing my expression he asked, "Are you hungry?
There is no spell upon this food, if you are fearful of such
things.

	I was ashamed, because I had carried food for the journey
and still had some left for the return; but I said, "I would like
some of that bread, if you can spare it."
	He gave me half a loaf already cut (and with a very sharp
knife), cheese wrapped in silver paper, and dry yellow wine.

	"Mannea is a good woman," he told me. "And you, I
think, are a good man of the kind who does not know himself
to be one—some say that is the only kind. Does she think I
can help you?"

	"Rather she believes that I can help you. Master Ash. The
armies of the Commonwealth are in retreat, and soon the
battle will overwhelm all this part of the country, and after
die battle, the Ascians."

	He smiled again. "The men without shadows. It is one of
those names, of which there are many, that are in error and
yet perfectly correct. What would you think if an Ascian told
you he really cast no shadow?"
	"I don't know," I said. "I never heard of such a thing."
	"It is an old story. Do you like old stories? Ah, I see a light
in your eyes, and I wish I could tell it better. You call your
enemies Ascians, which of course is not what they call themselves, 
because your fathers believed they came from the
waist of Urth, where the sun is precisely overhead at noon.
The truth is that their home is much farther north. Yet Ascians 
they are. In a fable made in the earliest morning of our
race, a man sold his shadow and found himself driven out
everywhere he went. No one would believe that he was
human."

Sipping wine, I thought of the Ascian prisoner whose cot
had stood beside my own. "Did this man ever regain his
shadow. Master Ash?"

"No. But for a time he travelled with a man who had no
reflection."

Master Ash fell silent. Then he said, "Mannea is a good
woman; I wish that I could oblige you. But I cannot go, and
the war will never reach me here, no matter how its columns
march."

I said, "Perhaps it would be possible for you to come with
me and reassure the Chatelaine."
"That I cannot do either."
I saw then that I would have to force him to accompany
me, but there seemed to be no reason to resort to duress now;
there would be plenty of opportunity in the morning. I
shrugged my shoulders as though in resignation and asked,
"May I then at least sleep here tonight? I will have to return
and report your decision, but the distance is fifteen leagues or
more, and I could not walk much farther now."

Again I saw his faint smile, just such a smile as a carving of
ivory might make when the motion of a torch altered the
shadow of its lips. "I had hoped to have some news of the
world from you," he said. "But I see that you are weary.
Come with me when you have finished eating. I will show
you to your bed."

"I have no courtly manners. Master, but I am not so ill-
bred to sleep when my host still desires my conversation—
though I'm afraid I have little enough news to give. From
what I've learned from my fellow sufferers in the lazaret, the
war proceeds and waxes hotter each day. We are reinforced
with legions and half legions, they by whole armies sent down
from the north. They have much artillery too, and therefore
we must rely more upon our mounted lances, who can charge
swiftly and engage the enemy closely before his heavy pieces
can be pointed. They have more fliers also than they boasted
last year, although we have destroyed many. The Autarch
himself has come to command, bringing many of his house-
troops from the House Absolute. But . . ." Shrugging
again, I paused to take a bite of bread and cheese.
"The study of war has always seemed to me the least interesting 
part of history. Even so, there are certain patterns.
When one side in a long war shows sudden strength, it is
usually for one of three reasons. The first is that it has
formed some new alliance. Do the soldiers of these new armies 
differ in any way from those in the old?"

Yes," I said. "I have heard that they are younger and on
the whole less strong. And there are more women among
them."
"No differences in tongue or dress?" 
I shook my head.

"Then for the present at least we can dismiss an alliance.
The second possibility would be the termination of another
war, fought elsewhere. If that were so, the reinforcements
would be veterans. You say they are not, thus only the third
remains. For some reason your foes have need of an immediate 
victory and are straining every limb."

I had finished the bread, but I was truly curious by now.
"Why should that be?"

"Without knowing more than I do, I cannot say. Perhaps
their leaders fear their people, who have sickened of the war.
Perhaps all the Ascians are only servants, and their masters
now threaten to act for themselves."
"You extend hope at one moment and snatch it away at
the next"
"Not I, but history. Have you yourself been at the front?"
I shook my head.

"That is well. In many respects, the more a man sees of war
the less he knows of it. How stand the people of your Commonwealth? 
Are they united behind their Autarch? Or has
the war so worn them that they shout for peace?"

I laughed at that, and all the old bitterness that had
helped draw me to Vodalus came rushing back. "Unite?
Shout? I know that you have isolated yourself. Master, to fix
your mind on higher things, but I would not have thought
any man could know so little of the land in which he lives
Careerists, mercenaries, and young would-be adventurers
fight the war. A hundred leagues south it is less than a rumor,
outside the House Absolute.'

	Master Ash pursed his lips. "Your Commonwealth is
stronger than I would have believed, then. No wonder your
foes are in despair."

	"If that is strength, may the All Merciful preserve us from
weakness. Master Ash, the front may collapse at any time. It
would be wise for you to come with me to a safer place."
	He appeared not to have heard. "If Erebus and Abaia and
the rest enter the field themselves, it will be a new struggle. If
and when. Interesting. But you are tired. Come with me. I
will show you your bed and the high matters that, as you said
a moment ago, I came here to study."

	We ascended two flights and entered a room that must
have been the one in which I had seen a light the evening
before. It was a wide chamber of many windows, and it occupied 
the entire story. There were machines there, but they
were smaller and fewer than those I had seen in Baldanders's
castle, and there were tables too, and papers, and many
books, and near the centre a narrow bed.

	"Here I nap," Master Ash explained, "when my work will
not let me retire. It is not large for a man of your frame, but I
think you will find it comfortable."
	I had slept on stone the night before; it looked very appealing 
indeed.

	After showing me where I could relieve myself and wash,
he left. My last glimpse of him before he darkened the light
caught the same perfect smile I had seen before.

	An instant later, when my eyes had grown accustomed to
the dark, I ceased to wonder about it, for outside all those
many windows there shone ah unbounded pearly radiance.
"We are above the clouds," I said to myself (I, too, half
smiling), "or rather, some low clouds have come to shroud
hilltop, unnoticed by me in the darkness but known in
some fashion to him. Now I see the tops of those clouds, high
matters surely, as I saw the tops of clouds from Typhon's
eye." And I laid myself down to sleep.

XVII

Ragnarok—The Final Winter

IT SEEMED STRANGE to wake without a weapon, though for
some reason I cannot explain, that was the first morning on
which I had felt so. After the destruction of Terminus Est I
had slept at the sacking of Baldanders's castle without fear,
and later journeyed north without fear. Only the night be-
fore, I had slept upon the bare rock of the cliff top weapon-
less and-perhaps only because I had been so tired—had pot
been afraid. I now think that during all those days, and indeed 
during all the days since I had left Thrax, I had been
putting the guild behind me and coming to believe that I
was what those who encountered me took me for—the sort of
would-be adventurer I had mentioned the night before to
Master Ash. As a torturer, I had not so much considered my
sword a weapon as a tool and a badge of office. Now in retrospect 
it had become a weapon to me, and I had no weapon.

	I thought about that as I lay upon my back on Master
Ash's comfortable mattress, my hands behind my head. I
would have to acquire another sword if I remained in the
war-torn lands, and it would be wise to have one even if I
turned south again. The question was whether to turn south
or not. If I remained where I was, I risked being drawn into
the fighting, where I might well be killed. But for me a return
to the south would be even more dangerous. Abdiesus, the
archon of Thrax, had no doubt posted a reward for my capture, 
and the guild would almost certainly procure my assassination 
if they learned I was anywhere hear Nessus.

	After vacillating over this decision for some time, as one
does when only half-awake, I recalled Winnoc and what he
had told me of the slaves of the Pelerines. Because it is a
disgrace to us if our clients die after torment, we are taught a
good deal of leech-craft in the guild; I thought I knew already 
at least as much as they. When I had cured the girl in
the jacal, I had felt suddenly uplifted. The Chatelaine Mannea 
had a good opinion of me already and would have a
better one when I returned with Master Ash.

	A few moments before, I had been disturbed because I
lacked a weapon. Now I felt I had one—resolution and a plan
are better than a sword, because a man whets his own edges
on them. I threw off the blankets, noticing then for the first
time, I think, how soft they were. The big room was cold but
filled with sunlight; it was almost as though there were suns
on all four sides, as though all the walls were east walls. I
walked naked to the nearest window and saw that undulating
field of white I had vaguely noted the evening before.

	It was not a mass of cloud but a plain of ice. The window
would not open, or if it would, I could not solve the puzzle
of its mechanism; but I put my face close to the glass and
peered downward as well as I could. The Last House rose, as
I had seen before, from a high hill of rock. Now this hill top
alone remained above the ice. I went from window to window, 
and the view from each was the same. Going back to
the bed that had been mine, I pulled on my trousers and
boots, and slung my cloak about my shoulders, hardly knowing 
what it was I did.

	Master Ash appeared just as I finished dressing. "I hope I
do not intrude," he said. "I heard you walking up here."
I shook my head.

	"I did not want you to become disturbed."
Without my willing it, my hands had gone to my face.
Now some foolish part of me became aware of my bristling
beard. I said, "I meant to shave before putting on my cloak.
That was stupid of me. I haven't shaved since I left the
lazaret." It was as though my mind were trudging across the
ice, leaving my tongue and lips to get along as best they
might.

	"There is hot water here, and soap."
	"That's good," I said. And then, "If I go downstairs . . ."
That smile again. "Will it be the same? The ice? No. You
are the first to have guessed. May I ask how you did it?"

	"A long time ago—no, only a few months, actually, though
it seems like such a long time now—I went to the Botanic
Gardens in Nessus. There was a place called the Lake of
Birds, where the bodies of the dead seemed to remain fresh
forever. I ws told it was some property of the water, but I
wondered even then that there should be so much power in
water. There was another place too, that they called the
Jungle Garden, where the leaves were greener than I have
ever known leaves to be—not a bright green but dark with
greenness, as if the plants could never use all the energy the
sun poured down. The people there seemed not of our time,
though I could not say if they were of the past, or the future,
or some third thing that is neither They had a little house. It
was much smaller than this, but this reminds me of it. I've
thought often of the Botanic Gardens since I left them, and
sometimes I've wondered if their secret were not that the
time never changed in the Lake of Birds, and that one moved
forward or backward—however it might be—when walking
the path of the Jungle Garden. Am I perhaps speaking
overmuch?"

	Master Ash shook his head.

	"Then when I was coming here, I saw your house at the
top of this hill. But when I climbed to it, it was gone, and the
valley below was not as I remembered it." I did not know
what else to say, and fell silent.
	You are correct," Master Ash told me. "I have been put
here to observe what you see about you now. The lower stories 
of my home, however, reach into older periods, of which
yours is the oldest."
	“That seems a great wonder."
	He shook his head. "It is almost more wonderful that this
spur of rock has been spared by the glaciers. The tops of
peaks far higher are submerged. It is sheltered by a geographic 
pattern so subtle that it could only be achieved by
accident."
	"But it too will be covered at last?" I asked.
	"Yes."
	"And what then?"
	"I shall leave. Or rather, I shall leave some time before it
occurs."

	I felt a surge of irrational anger, the same emotion I had
sometimes known as a boy when I could not make Master
Malrubius understand my questions. "I meant, what of
Urth?”

	He shrugged. "Nothing. What you see is the last glaciation. 
The surface of the sun is dull now; soon it will grow
bright with heat, but the sun itself will shrink, giving less
energy to its worlds. Eventually, should anyone come and
stand upon the ice, he will see it only as a bright star. The ice
he stands upon will not be that which you see but the atmosphere 
of this world. And so it will remain for a very long
time. Perhaps until the close of the universal day."

	I went to another window and looked out again on the
expanse of ice. "Will this happen soon?"
	"The scene you see is many thousands of years in your
future."
	"But before this, the ice must have come from the south."
	Master Ash nodded. "And down from the mountaintops.
Come with me."

	We descended to the second level of the house, which I
had scarcely noticed when I had come upstairs the night before. 
The windows were far fewer there, but Master Ash
placed chairs before one and indicated that we would sit and
look out. It was as he had said—ice, lovely in its parity, crept
down the mountainsides to war with the pines. I asked if this
too were far in the future, and he nodded once more. "You
will not live to see it again."

	"But so near that the life of a man will nearly reach it?"
He twitched his shoulders and smiled beneath his beard.
"Let us say it is a thing of degree. You will not see this. Nor
will your children, nor theirs. But the process has already
begun. It began long before you were born."

	I knew nothing of the south, but I found myself thinking
of the island people of Hallvard's story, the precious little
sheltered places with a growing season, the hunting of the
seals. Those islands would not hold men and their families 
much longer. The boats would scrape over their stony
beaches for the last time. "My wife, my children, my children, 
my wife.”

	"At this time, many of your people are already gone," Master 
Ash continued. "Those you 'call the cacogens have mercifully 
carried them to fairer worlds. Many more will leave
before the final victory of the ice. I am myself, you see, de-
fended from those refugees."

	I asked if everyone would escape.

	He shook his head. "No, not everyone. Some would not
go, some could not be found. No home could be found for
others."

	For some time I sat looking out at the beleaguered valley
and trying to order my thoughts. At last I said, "I have always
found that men of religion tell comforting things that are not
true, while men of science recount hideous truths. The
Chatelaine Mannea said you were a holy man, but you appear 
to be a man of science, and you said your people had
sent you to our dead Urth to study the ice."
	"The distinction you mention no longer holds. Religion
and science have always been matters of faith in something,
It is the same something. You are yourself what you call a
man of science, so I talk of science to you. If Mannea were
here with her priestesses, I would talk differently."

	I have so many memories that I often become lost among
them. Now as I looked at the pines, waving in a wind I could
not feel, I seemed to hear the beating of a drum. "I met
another man who said he was from the future once," I said.
"He was green—nearly as green as those trees—and he told
me that his time was a time of brighter Sun."

	Master Ash nodded. "No doubt he spoke truly."
	"But you tell me that what I see now is but a few lifetimes
away, that it is part of a process already begun, and that this
will be the last glaciation. Either you are a false prophet or
he was."
	"I am not a prophet," answered Master Ash, "nor was he.
No one can know the future. We are speaking of the past."
I was angry again. "You told me this was only a few life-
times away."

	"I did. But you, and this scene, are past events for me."
	"I am not a thing of the past! I belong to the present."
	"From your own viewpoint you are correct. But you forget
I cannot see you from your viewpoint. This is my house. It is
through my windows that you have looked. My house strikes
its roots into the past. Without that I should go mad here.
As it is, I read these old centuries like books. I hear the voices
of the long dead, yours among them. You think that time is a
single thread. It is a weaving, a tapestry that extends forever
in all directions. I follow a thread backward. You will trace a
colour forward, what colour I cannot know. White may lead
you to me, green to your green man."

	Not knowing what to say, I could only mutter that I had
conceived of time as a river.

	"Yes—you came from Nessus, did you not? And that was a
city built about a river. But it was once a city by the sea, and
you would do better to think of time as a sea. The waves ebb
and flow, and currents run beneath them."
“I would like to go downstairs, ”I said. "To return to my
own time.”
	Master Ash said, "I understand."
	"I wonder if you do. Your time, if I have heard you rightly,
is that of this house's highest story, and you have a bed there,
and other necessary things. Yet when you are not overwhelmed 
by your labours you sleep here, according to what
you have told me. Yet you say this is nearer my time than
your own."

	He stood up. "I meant that I too flee the ice. Shall we go?
You will want food before you begin the long trip back to
Mannea."
	"We both will,” I said.

	He turned to look at me before he started down the stair.
"I told you I could not go with you. You have discovered for
yourself how well hidden this house is. For all who do not
walk the path correctly, even the lowest story stands in the
future.”

	I caught both his arms behind him in a double lock and
used my-free hand to search him for weapons. There were
none, and though he was strong, he was not as strong as I had
feared he might be.

	"You plan to carry me to Mannea. Is that correct?"
	"Yes, Master, and well have a great deal less trouble if you
will go willingly. Tell me where I can find some rope—I don't
want to have to use the belt of your robe."
	"There is none," he told me.

	I bound his hands with his cincture, as I had first planned.
"When we are some distance from here," I said, "I will loose
you if you will give me your word to behave well."
	"I made you welcome in my house. What harm have I
done you?"

	"Quite a bit, but that doesn't matter. I like you. Master
Ash, and I respect you. I hope that you won't hold what I am
doing to you against me any more than I hold what you have
done to me against you. But the Pelerines sent me to fetch

you, and I find I am a certain sort of man, if you understand
what I mean. Now don't go down the steps too fast. If you
you won't be able to catch yourself."

	I led him to the room to which he had first taken me and
got some of the hard bread and a package of dried fruit.
“I don’t think of myself as one anymore," I continued, "but
I was brought up as—" It was at my lips to say torturer, but I
realized (then, I think, for the first time) that it was not quite
the correct term for what the guild did and used the official
one instead, "—as a Seeker for Truth and Penitence. We do
what we have said we will do."

"I have duties to perform. In the upper level, where you
slept."

"I am afraid they must go unperformed."
He was silent as we went out the door and onto the rocky
hilltop. Then he said, "I will go with you, if I can. I have
often wished to walk out of this door and never halt."
I told him that if he would swear upon his honour, I would
untie him at once.
He shook his head. "You might think that I betrayed
You.”
I did not know what he meant.

"Perhaps somewhere there is the woman I have called
Vine. But your world is your world. I can exist there only if
the probability of my existence is high."
I said, "I existed in your house, didn't I?"

"Yes, but that was because your probability was complete.
You are a part of the past from which my house and I have
come. The question is whether I am the future to which you
go."

I remembered the green man in Saltus, who had been solid ,
enough. "Will you vanish like a soap bubble then?" I asked.
"Or blow away like Smoke?"

"I do not know," he said. "I do not know what will happen
to me. Or where I will go when it does. I may cease to exist in
any time. That was why I never left of my own will."

I took him by one arm, I suppose because I thought I
could keep him with me in that way, and we walked on. I
followed the route Mannea had drawn for me/and the Last
House rose behind us as solidly as any other. My mind was 
busy with all the things he had told me and showed me, so
that for a while, the space of twenty or thirty paces, perhaps,
I did not look around at him. At last his remark about the
tapestry suggested Valeria to me. The room where we had
eaten cakes had been hung with them, and what he had said
about tracing threads suggested the maze of tunnels through
which I had run before encountering her. I started to tell him
of it, but he was gone. My hand grasped empty air. For a
moment I seemed to see the Last House afloat like a ship
upon its ocean of ice. Then it merged into the dark hilltop
on which it had stood; the ice was no more than what I had
once taken it to be—a bank of cloud.

XVIII

Foila's Request

FOR ANOTHER HUNDRED paces or more. Master Ash was not
entirely gone. I felt his presence, and sometimes even caught
sight of him, walking beside me and half a step behind, when
I did not try to look directly at him. How I saw him, how he
could in some sense be present while in another absent, I do
not know. Our eyes receive a rain of photons without mass or
charge from swarming particles like a billion, billion suns—so
Master Palaemon, who was nearly blind, had taught me.
From the pattering of those photons we believe we see a
man. Sometimes the man we believe we see may be as illusory 
as Master Ash, or more so.

	His wisdom I felt with me too. It had been a melancholy
wisdom, but a real one. I found myself wishing he had been
able to accompany me, though I realized it would have
meant the coming of the ice was certain. "I'm lonely. Master
Ash," I said, not daring to look back. "How lonely I didn't
realize until now. You were lonely also, I think. Who was the
woman you called Vine?"

	Perhaps I only imagined his voice. "The first woman."
	"Meschiane? Yes, I know her, and she is very lovely. My
Meschiane was Dorcas, and I am lonely for her, but for all
the Others too. When Thecla became a part of me, I thought
I would never be lonely again. But now she is so much a part
that we're only one person, and I can be lonely for others.
For Dorcas, for Pia the island girl, for little Severian and
Drotte and Roche. If Eata were here, I could hug him.

	"Most of all, I'd like to see Valeria. Jolenta was the most
beautiful woman I've ever seen, but there was something in
Valeria's face that tore my heart out. I was only a boy, I
suppose, though I didn't think so then. I crawled up out of
the dark and found myself in a place they called the Atrium
of Time. Towers—the towers of Valeria's family—rose on all
sides of it. In the centre was an obelisk covered with sundials,
and though I remember its shadow on the snow, it couldn't
have had sunlight there for more than two or three watches
of each day; the towers must shade it most of the time. Your
understanding is deeper than mine. Master Ash—can you tell
me why they might have built it so?"

	A wind that played among the rocks seized my cloak so
that it billowed from my shoulders. I secured it again and
pulled up my hood. "I was following a dog. I called him
Triskele, and I said, even to myself, that he was mine, though
I no right to keep a dog. It was a winter day when I
found him. We'd been doing laundry—washing the clients'
bedclothes—and the drain plugged with rags and lint. I'd
been shirking my work, and Drotte told me to go outside and
ram a clothes prop up it. The wind was terribly cold. That
was your ice coming, I suppose, though I didn't know it at
the time—the winters getting a little worse each year. And of
course when I got the drain open, a gush of filthy water
would come out and wet my hands.

	“I was angry because I was the oldest, except for Drotte
and Roche, and I thought the younger apprentices ought to
have to do the work. I was poking at the clog with my stick
when I saw him across the Old Yard. The keepers in the Bear
Tower had held a private fight, I suppose, the night before,
and the dead beasts were lying outside their door waiting for
the nacker. There was an arsinoither and a smilodon, and
several dire wolves. The dog was lying on top. I suppose he
had been the last to die, and from his wounds one of the dire
wolves had killed him. Of course, he wasn't really dead, but
he looked dead.

	"I went over to see him—it was an excuse to stop what I
was doing for a moment and blow on my fingers. He was as
and cold as ... well, as anything I've ever seen. I killed a
bull once with my sword, and when it was lying dead in its
own blood it still looked quite a bit more living than Triskele
did then. Anyway, I reached out and stroked his head. It was
as big as a bear's, and they had cut off his ears, so that only
two little points were left. When I touched him he opened
his eyes. I dashed back across the Yard and rammed the stick
up so hard it broke through at once, because I was afraid
Drotte would send Roche down to see what I was doing.

"When I think back on it, it was as if I had the Claw
already, more than a year before I got it. I can't describe how
he looked when he rolled his eye up to see me. He touched
my heart. I never revived an animal when I had the Claw,
but then I never tried. When I was among them, I was usually 
wishing I could kill one, because I wanted something to
eat. Now I'm no longer sure that killing animals to eat is
something we are meant to do. I noticed that you had no
meat in your supplies—only bread and cheese, and wine and
dried fruit. Do your people, on whatever world it is where
people live in your time, feel so too?"

I paused, hoping for an answer, but none came. All the
mountaintops had dropped below the sun now; I was no
longer certain whether some thin presence of Master Ash
followed me or only my shadow.

I said, "When I had the Claw I found that it would not
revive those dead by human acts, though it seemed to heal
the man-ape whose hand I had struck off. Dorcas thought it
was because I had done it myself. I can't say—I never thought
the Claw knew who held it, but perhaps it did."
A voice—not Master Ash's but a voice I had never heard
before—called out, "A fine new year to you!''

	I looked up and saw, perhaps forty paces off, just such
an uhlan as Hethor's notules had killed on the green road to
the House Absolute. Not knowing what else to do, I waved
and shouted, "Is it New Year's Day, then?"
	He touched spurs to his destrier and came galloping up.
"Mid summer today, the beginning of the new year. A
glorious one for our Autarch."

	I tried to recall some of the phrases Jolenta had been so
fond of. "Whose heart is the shrine of his subjects."
	"Well said! I'm Ibar, of the Seventy-eighth Xenagie, pa-
trolling the road until evening, worse luck."
	"Surely it's lawful to use the road here."
	"Entirely. Provided, of course, that you are prepared to
identify yourself."

	"Yes," I said. "Of course." I had almost forgotten the safe-
conduct Mannea had written for me. Now I took it out and
handed it to him.

	When I had been stopped on my way to the Last House, I
had by no means, been sure that the soldiers who had questioned 
me could read. Each had stared wisely at the parchment, 
but it might well have been that they took in no more
than the sigil of the order and Mannea's regular and vigorous, 
though slightly eccentric, penmanship. Tine uhlan unquestionably 
could. I could see his eyes travelling the lines of
script, and even guess, I think, when they paused momentarily 
at "honourable interment."

	He refolded the parchment carefully but retained it. "So
you are a servant of the Pelerines."
"I have that honour, yes."
	"You were praying, then. I thought you were talking to
yourself when I saw you. I don't hold with any religious nonsense. 
We have the standard of the xenagie near at hand and
the Autarch at a distance, and that's all I need of reverence
and mystery; but I have heard that they were good women."

	I nodded. "I believe—perhaps somewhat more than you.
But they are indeed."                  
And you were sent on a task for them. How many days
ago?”
	"Three."
	"Are you returning to the lazaret at Media Pars now?"
	I nodded again. "I hope to reach it before nightfall."
	He shook-his head. "You won't. Take it easy, that's my
advice to you." He held out the parchment.
	I took it and returned it to my sabretache. "I was travelling
with a companion, but we were separated. I wonder if you’ve
seen him," I described Master Ash.

	The uhlan shook his head. "I'll keep an eye out for him
and tell him which way you went if I see him. Now—will you
answer a question for me? It's not official, so you can tell me
it's none of my affair if you want."
	"I will if I can."
	"What will you do when you leave the Pelerines?"

	I was somewhat taken aback. "Why, I hadn't planned to
leave at all. Someday, perhaps."

	"Well, keep the light cavalry in mind. You look like a man
of your hands, and we can always use one. You'll live half as
long as you would in the infantry, and have twice as much
fun."

	He urged his mount forward, and I was left to ponder what
he had said. I did not doubt that he had been serious in
telling me to sleep on the road; but that very seriousness
made me hurry forward all the faster. I have been blessed
with long legs, so that when I need to I can walk as fast as
most men can trot. I used them then, dropping all thoughts
of Master Ash and my own troubled past. Perhaps some thin
presence of Master Ash still accompanied me; perhaps does
so yet. But if it did, I was and remain unaware of it.

Urth had not yet turned her face from the sun when I
came to that narrow road the dead soldier and I had taken
only a little over a week before. There was blood in its dust
still, much more than I had seen there previously. I had
feared from what the uhlan had said that the Pelerines had
been accused of some misdeed; now I felt sure that it was
only that a great influx of wounded had been brought to the
lazaret, and he had decided I deserved a night's rest before
being set to work on them. That thought was a vast relief to
me. A superabundance of the injured would give me an opportunity 
to show my skills and render it that much more
likely that Mannea would accept me when I offered to sell
myself to the order, if only I could contrive some tale to
account for my failure at the Last House.

When I turned the final bend in the road, however, what I
saw was entirely different.
Where the lazaret had stood, the ground seemed to have
been plowed by a host of madmen, plowed and dug—its bottom 
already a small lake of shallow water. Shattered trees
rimmed the circle.
Until darkness came, I walked back and forth across it. I
was looking for some sign of my friends, and also for some
trace of the altar that had held the Claw. I found a human
hand, a man's hand, blown off at the wrist. It might have
been Melito's, or Hallvard's, or the Ascian's, or Winnoc's. I
could not tell.

I slept beside the road that night. When morning came I
began my inquiries, and before evening I had located the
survivors, some half dozen leagues from the original site. I
went from cot to cot, but many were unconscious and so
bandaged about the head that I could not have known them.
It is possible that Ava, Mannea, and the Pelerine who had
carried a stool to my bedside were among them, though I did
not discover them there.

The only woman I recognized was Foila, and that only
because she recognized me, calling "Severian!" as I walked
among the wounded and dying. I went to her and tried to
question her, but she was very weak and could tell me little.
The attack had come without warning and shattered the
like a thunderbolt; her memories were all of the aftermath
of hearing the screams that for a long time had
brought no rescuers, and at last being dragged forth by soldiers
who knew little of medicine. I kissed her as well as I
could, and promised to come and see her again—a promise, I
think, that both of us knew I would not be able to keep. She
said, "Do you recall the time when all of us told stories? I
thought of that."
I said I knew she had.
"I mean while they were carrying us here. Melito and Hallvard 
and the rest are dead, I think. You will be the only one
who remembers, Severian."
I told her I would remember always.
"I want you to tell other people. On winter days, or a night
when there is nothing else to do. Do you remember the
stories?"

"'My land is the land of far horizons, of the wide sky.' "
"Yes,' she said, and seemed to sleep.
My second promise I have kept, first copying all the stories
onto the blank pages at the close of the brown book, then
giving them here, just as I heard them in the long, warm
noons.

XIX

Guasacht

THE NEXT TWO DAYS I spent in wandering. I will not say much
of them here, for there is little to say. I might, I suppose,
have enlisted in several units, but I was far from sure I
wanted to enlist. I would have liked to return to the Last
House, but I was too proud to cast myself on Master Ash's
charity, assuming that Master Ash was again to be found
there. I told myself I would gladly have returned to the post
of Uctor of Thrax, yet if that had been possible, I am not
certain I would have done so. I slept like an animal in
wooded {daces and took what food I could, which was little.

	On the third day I discovered a rusty falchion, dropped, as
it appeared, in some campaign of the year before. I got out
my little flask of oil and my broken whetstone (both of which
I had retained, together with her hilt, when I had cast the
wreck of Terminus Est into the water) and spent a happy
watch in cleaning and sharpening it. When that was done, I
trudged on, and soon struck a road.

	With the protection of Mannea's safe-conduct effectively
removed, I was more chary of showing myself than I had
been on my way from Master Ash's. But it seemed probable
that the dead soldier the Claw had raised, who now called

	Miles though I knew some part of him to be Jonas,
had by now joined some unit. If so, he would, be on a road or
in camp near one, if he was not actually in battle; and I
wished to speak to him. Like Dorcas, he had paused a time in
country of the dead. She had dwelt there longer, but I
hoped that if I could question him before too much time
had erased his memories of it, I might learn something that
would—if not permit me to regain her—at least help reconcile
me to her loss.

	For I found I loved her now as I never had when we
tramped cross-country to Thrax. Then my thoughts had been
too much of Thecla; I had always been reaching inside myself
to find her. Now it seemed, if only because she had been a
part of me so long, that I had grasped her indeed, in an
embrace more final than any coupling—or rather, that as the
male's seed penetrates the female body to produce (if it be
the will of Apeiron) a new human being, so she, entering my
mouth, by my will had combined with the Severian that was
to establish a new man: I who still call myself Severian but
am conscious, as it were, of my double root.

	Whether I could have learned what I sought from Miles-
Jonas, I do not know. I have never found him, though I have
persevered in the search from that day to this. By midafternoon 
I had entered a realm of broken trees, and from time to
time I passed corpses in more or less advanced stages of de-
cay. At first I tried to pillage them as I had the body of Miles-
Jonas, but others had been there before me, and indeed the
fennecs had come in the night with their sharp little teeth to
loot the flesh.

Somewhat later, as my energies were beginning to flag, I
paused at the smouldering remains of an empty supply wagon.
The draft animals, which had not, it appeared, been dead
long, lay in the road, with their driver pitched on his face
between them; and it occurred to me that I might do worse
than to cut as much meat as I wanted from their flanks and
carry it to some isolated spot where I could kindle a fire. I
had fleshed the point of the falchion in the haunch of one of
these animals when I heard the drumming of hoofs, and sup-
posing them to belong to the destrier of an estafette, moved
to the edge of the road to let him pass.

	It was instead a short, thick-bodied, energetic-looking man
on a tall, ill-used mount. He reined up at the sight of me, but
something in his expression told me there was no need for
fight or flight. (If there had been, it would have been fight.
His destrier would have done him little good among the
stumps and fallen logs, and despite his haubergeon and brass-
ringed buff cap, I thought I could best him.)

	"Who are you?" he called. And when I told him, "Severian
of Nessus, eh? You're civilized then, or half-civilized, but you
don't look like you've been eating too well."
	"On the contrary," I said. "Better than I've been accustomed 
to, recently." I did not want him to think me weak.
	"But you could use some more—that's not Ascian blood on
your sword. You're a schiavoni? An irregular?"
	"My life has been pretty irregular of late, certainly."
	"But you're attached to no formation?" With startling
dexterity he vaulted from his saddle, threw the reins to the
ground, and came striding over. He was slightly bowlegged
and had one of those faces that appear to have been moulded
in clay and flattened from the top and bottom before firing,
so that the forehead and chin are shallow but broad, the eyes
slits, the mouth wide. Still I liked him at once for his verve,
and because he took so little trouble to hide his dishonesty.

	I said, "I'm attached to nothing and no one—memories
excepted." .
	"Ahh!" He sighed, and for an instant rolled his eyes upward. 
"I know—I know. We have all had our difficulties,
every one of us. What was it, a woman or the law?"
	I had not previously viewed my troubles in that light, but
after thinking for a moment I admitted it had been a bit of
both.
	"Well, you've come to the right place and you've met the
man. How'd you likw a good meal tonight, a whole
crowd of new friends, and a handful of orichalks tomorrow?
sound good? Good!"

	He returned to his mount, and his hand darted out as
quickly as a fencer's blade to grasp her bridle before she
could shy away. When he had the reins again, he leaped into
his saddle as readily as he had left it. "Now you get up
behind me," he called. "It's not far, and she'll carry two easily
^enough."

	I did as he told me, though with considerably more difficulty 
since I had no stirrup to assist me. The instant I was
seated, the destrier struck like a bushmaster at my leg; but
her master, who had clearly been anticipating the maneuver,
dubbed her so hard with the brass pommel of his poniard
that she stumbled and nearly fell.

	"Pay no mind," he said. The shortness of his neck did not
permit him to look over his shoulder, so he spoke out of the
left side of his mouth to make it clear he was addressing me.
"She's a fine animal and a plucky fighter, and she just wants
to make sure you understand her value. A sort of initiation,
you know. You know what an initiation is?"
	I told him I thought myself familiar with the term.
"Anything that's worth belonging to has one, you'll find—
I've found that out myself. I've never seen one that a plucky
lad couldn't handle and laugh about afterwards."

	With that cryptic encouragement he set his enormous
spurs to the sides of his fine animal as if he meant to eviscerate 
her on the spot, and we went flying down the road,
-trailed by a cloud of dust.

	Since the time I had ridden Vodalus's charger out of
Saltus, I had supposed in my innocence that all mounts
might be divided into two sorts: the highbred and swift, and
the cold-blooded and slow. The better, I thought, ran with
the graceful ease, almost, of a coursing cat; the worse moved
so tardily that it hardly mattered how they did it. It used to
be a maxim of one of Thecla's tutors that all two-valued
systems are false, and I discovered on that ride a new respect
for him. My benefactor's mount belonged to that third class
(which I have since discovered is fairly extensive) comprising
those animals that you outrace the birds but seem to run with 
legs of iron upon a road of stone. Men have numberless advantages 
over women and for that reason are rightly charged
to protect them, yet there is one great one women may boast;
over men: No woman has ever had her organs of generation
crushed between her own pelvis and the bony spine of one of
these galloping brutes. That happened to me twenty or thirty
times before we reined up, and when I slid over the crupper
at last and leaped aside to dodge a kick, I was in no very good
mood.                                 

	We had halted in one of those little, lost fields one some-
times finds among the hills, an area more or less level and a
hundred strides or so across. A tent the size of a cottage had
been erected in the centre, with a faded flag of black and
green flapping before it. Several score hobbled mounts grazed
at will over the field, and an equal number of ragged men,
with a sprinkling of unkempt women, lounged about cleaning 
armour, sleeping, and gambling.

	"Look here!" my benefactor shouted, dismounting to
stand beside me. "Here's a new recruit!" To me he announced, 
“Severian of Nessus, you're standing in the presence 
of the Eighteenth Bacele of the Irregular Contarii,
every one of us a fighter of dauntless courage whenever
there's speck of money to be made."

	The ragged men and women were standing and drifting
toward us, many of them frankly grinning. A tall and very
thin man led the way.
	"Comrades, I give you Severian of Nessus!
	"Severian," my benefactor continued, "I'm your condottiere. 
Call me Guasacht This fishing pole here, taller even
than you are, is my second, Erblon. The rest will introduce
themselves, I'm sure.
	"Erblon, I want to talk to you. There'll be patrols tomorrow.
" He took the tall man by the arm and led him into
tent leaving me with the crowd of troopers who had by now
surrounded me.                   
	One of the largest, an ursine man almost my height an
least -twice my weight, gestured toward the falchion. "Don’t
you have a scabbard for that? Let's see it."

	I surrendered it without argument; whatever might happen 
next, I felt certain it would not be an occasion for kill
	"So, you're a rider, are you?"
	"No," I said. "I've ridden a bit, but I don't consider myself
an expert."      ^
	"But you know how to manage them?"
	"I know men and women better."
	Everyone laughed at that, and the big man said, " Well,
that's just fine, because you probably won't do much riding,
but a good understanding of women—and destriers—will be a
help to you."

	As he spoke, I heard the sound of hoofs. Two men were
leading up a piebald, muscular and wild-eyed. His reins had
been divided and lengthened, permitting the men to stand at
either side of his head, about three paces away. A trollop
with fox-colored hair and a laughing face sat the saddle with
ease, and in lieu of the reins held a riding Whip in each hand.
The troopers and their women cheered and clapped, and at
the sound the piebald reared like a whirlwind and pawed the
air, showing the three horny growths on each forefoot that
we call hoofs for what they were—talons adapted almost as
well to combat as to gripping turf. Their feints outsped my
eyes.

	The big man slapped me on the back. "He's not the best I
ever had, but he's good enough, and I trained him myself.
	Mesrop and Lactan there are going to pass you those reins,
and all you have to do is get up on him. If you can do it
without knocking Daria off, you can have her until we run
you down." He raised his voice: "All right, let him go!"

I had expected the two men to give me the reins. Instead
they threw them at my face, and in snatching for them I
missed them both. Someone goaded the piebald from behind, 
and the big man gave a peculiar, piercing whistle. The
piebald had been taught to fight, like the destriers in the
Bear Tower, and though his long teeth had not been augmented 
with metal, they had been left as nature made them
and stood out from his mouth like knives.

	I dodged a flashing forefoot and tried to grasp his halter; a
blow from one of the whips caught me full across the face,
and the piebald's rush knocked me sprawling.
	The troopers must have held him back or I would have
been trampled. Perhaps they also helped me to my feet—I
cannot be sure. My throat was full of dust, and blood from
my forehead trickled into my eyes.       

	I went for him again, circling to the right to keep clear of
his hoofs, but he turned more quickly than I, and the girl
called Daria snapped both lashes before my face to throw me
off. More from anger than any plan I seized one. The thong
of the whipstock was around her wrist; when I jerked the lash
she came with it, falling into my arms. She bit my ear, but I
got her by the back of the neck, spun her around, dug fingers
into one firm buttock and lifted her. Kicking the air, her legs
seemed to startle the piebald. I backed him through the
crowd until one of his tormentors goaded, him toward me,
then stepped on his reins.

	After that, it was easy. I dropped the girl, caught his halter,
twisted his head, and kicked his forefeet from under him as
we were taught to do with unruly clients. With a high-
pitched, animal scream he came crashing down. I was in the
saddle before he could get his legs beneath him, and from
there I lashed his flanks with the long reins and sent him
bolting through the crowd, then turned him and charged
them again.

	All my life I had heard of the excitement of this kind of
fighting, though I had never experienced it. Now I found
everything more than true. The troopers and their women
were yelling and running, and a few flourished, swords. They
might have threatened a thunderstorm with more effect—I
rode over half a dozen at a sweep. The girl's red hair flew like
banner as she fled, but no human legs could have outdistanced 
that steed. We flashed past her, and I caught her by
that flaming banner and threw her over the arcione before
me.

	A twisting trail led to a dark ravine, and that ravine to
another. Deer scattered ahead of us; in three bounds we overtook 
a buck in velvet and shouldered him out of the way.
While I had been Lictor of Thrax, I had-heard that the
eclectics often raced game and leaped from their mounts to
stab it. I believed those stories now—I could have cut the
buck's throat with a butcher knife.

	We left him behind, crested a new hill and dashed down
into a silent, wooded valley. When the piebald had run him-
self out, I let him find his own path among the trees, which
were the largest I had seen since leaving Saltus; and when he
stopped to crop the sparse, tender grass that grew between
their roots, I halted and threw the reins on the ground as I
had seen Guasacht do, then dismounted and helped the red-
haired girl off.

	"Thanks," she said. And then, "You did it. I didn't think
you could."
	"Or you wouldn't have agreed to this? I had supposed they
made you."
	"I wouldn't have given you that cut with the whip. You'll
want to repay me now, won't you? With the reins, I sup-
pose."
	"What makes you think that?" I was tired and sat down.
Yellow flowers, each blossom no bigger than a drop of water,
grew in the grass; I picked a few and found they smelled of
calambac.
	"You look the type. Besides, you carried me bottom up,
and men who do that always want to hit it."

"I never knew that. It's an interesting thought.”
	"I have a lot of them—that kind." Quickly and gracefully
she seated herself beside me and put a hand on my knee.
	"Listen, it was the initiation, that's all. We take turns, and it
was my turn and I was supposed to hit you. Now it's over." 
	"I understand."                                      
	"Then you won't hurt me? That's wonderful. We can have
a good time here, really. Whatever you want and as much as
you want, and we won't go back until it's time to eat"     
	"I didn't say I wouldn't hurt you."                      
	Her face, which had been wreathed with forced smiles, fell,
and she looked at the ground. I suggested that she might run 
away.

	"That would only make it more fun for you, and you'd
hurt me more before we were through." Her hand crept up
my thigh as she spoke. "You're nice looking, you know. And
so tall." She made a sitting bow, pressing her face into my lap
to give me a tingling kiss, then straightening up at once. "It
could be nice. Really it could."

	"Or you could kill yourself. Have you a knife?"
For an instant, her mouth formed a perfect little circle.
	"You're crazy, aren't you? I should have known." She leaped
to her feet.

	I caught her by one ankle and sent her sprawling to the
soft forest floor. Her shift was rotten with wear—a pull and it
fell away-"You said you wouldn't run."
	She looked over her shoulder at me with large eyes.
I said, "You have no power over me, neither you nor they.
I am not afraid of pain, or of death. There is only one living
woman I desire, and no man but myself."

XX

Patrol

WE HELD A PERIMETER no more than a couple of hundred
paces across. For the most part, our enemies had only knives
and axes—the axes and their tagged clothes recalled the volunteers 
I had helped Vodalus against in our necropolis—but
there were hundreds of them already, and more coming.

The bacele had saddled up and left camp before dawn.
The shadows were still long, somewhere along the shifting
front, when a scout showed Guasacht the deep ruts of a
coach travelling north. For three watches we tracked it.

The Ascian raiders who had captured it fought well, turning 
south to surprise us, then west, then north again like a
writhing serpent; but always leaving a trail of dead, caught
between our fire and that of the guards inside, who shot
them through the loopholes. It was only toward the end,
when the Ascians could no longer flee, that we grew aware of
other hunters.

By noon, the little valley was surrounded. The gleaming
steel coach with its dead and dying prisoners stood mired-
to the axles. Our Ascian prisoners squatted in front of it,
guarded by our wounded. The Ascian officer spoke our
tongue, and a watch earlier Guasacht had ordered him to free
the coach and shot several Ascians when he had failed; thirty
or more remained, nearly naked, listless and empty-eyed.
Their weapons were piled some distance off, near our tethered 
mounts.                                            

	Now Guasacht was making the rounds, and I saw him
pause at the stump that sheltered the trooper next to me. 
One of the enemy put her head from behind a clump of 
brush some way up the slope. My contus struck her with a 
bolt of flame; she leaped by reflex, then curled up as spiders
do when someone tosses them among the coals of a campfire.
She had been white-faced beneath her red bandana, and I
suddenly understood that she had been made to look—that
there were those behind that brush who had disliked her, or
at least not valued her, and who had forced her to look out. I
fired again, slashing the green growth with the bolt and bringing 
a puff of acrid smoke that drifted toward me like her
ghost

	"Don't waste those charges," Guasacht said at my elbow.
More from habit, I think, than from fear, he had thrown
himself flat beside me.
	I asked if the charges would be exhausted before night if I
fired six times a watch.
	He shrugged, then shook his head.
	"That’s how fast I've been shooting this thing, as well as I
can fudge by the sun. And when night comes . . ."
I looked at him, and he could only shrug again.
"When night comes," I continued, "we won't be able to
see them until they're only a few steps away. We'll fire more
or less at random and kill a few score, then draw swords and
stand back to back, and they'll kill us."

	He said, "Help will arrive before then," and when he saw I
did not believe him, he spat. "I wish I'd never looked at the
damned thing's track. I wish I'd never heard of it."
	It was my turn to shrug. "Give it back to the Ascians, and
well break out."

	“It’s coin, I tell you! Gold to pay our troops. It's too heavy
to be anything else."
	“The armour must weigh a good deal."
	“Not that much. I've seen these coaches before, and it's
gold from Nessus or the House Absolute. But those things
inside—who's ever seen such creatures?"
	"I have."        
	Guasacht stared at me.

	"When I went out through the Piteous Gate in the Wall
of Nessus. They are man-beasts, contrived by the same lost
arts that made our destriers faster than the road engines of
old," I tried to recall what else Jonas had told me of them,
and finished rather weakly by saying, "The Autarch employs
them in duties too laborious for men, or for which men cannot 
be trusted."

"I suppose that might be right enough. They can't very
well steal the money. Where would they go? Listen, I've had
my eye on you."
	"I know," I said. "I've felt it"
	"I've had my eye on you, I say. Particularly since you made
that piebald of yours go for the man that trained him. Up
here in Orithyia we see a lot of strong men and a lot of brave
ones—mostly when we step over their bodies. We see a lot of
smart ones too, and nineteen out of twenty are too smart to
be of use to anybody, including themselves. What's valuable
are men, and sometimes women, who've got a kind of power,
the power that makes other people want to do what they say.
I don't mean to brag, but I've got it. You've got it too."
	"It hasn't been overwhelmingly apparent in my life before
this."                                             
	"Sometimes it takes the war to bring it out. That's one of
the benefits of the war, and since it hasn't got many we ought
to appreciate the ones it does. Severian, I want you to go
down to the coach and treat with these man-animals. You say
you know something about them. Get them to come out and
help us fight We're both on the same side, after all."
I nodded. "And if I can get them to open the doors, we
can divide the money among us. Some of us, at least, may 
escape."                                             

	Guasacht shook his head in disgust. "What did I tell you
just a moment ago about being too smart? If you were really 
smart, you wouldn't have ignored it. No, you tell them that 
even if there's only three or four of them, every fighter 
counts. Besides, there's at least a chance the sight of them
will frighten these damn freebooters away.. Let me have your
contus, and I’ll hold your position for you until you come
back."
	I handed over the long weapon, "Who are these people,
anyway?"
	"These? Camp followers. Sutlers and whores—men as well
as women. Deserters. Every so often the Autarch or one of
his generals has them rounded up and put to work, but they
slip away before long. Slipping away's their specialty. They
ought to be wiped out."

	"I have your authority to treat with our prisoners in the
coach? You'll back me up?"

	"They're not prisoners—well, yes, I suppose they are. You
tell them what I said and make the best deal you can. I'll
back you."

	I looked at him for a moment, trying to decide whether he
meant it. Like so many middle-aged men, he carried the old
man he would become in his face, soured and obscene, al-
ready muttering the objections and complaints that would be
his in the final skirmish.
	"You've got my word. Go on."
	"All right." I rose. The armoured coach resembled the carriages 
that had been used to bring important clients to our
tower in the Citadel. Its windows were narrow and barred, its
rear wheels as high as a man. The smooth steel sides suggested 
those lost arts I had mentioned to Guasacht, and I
knew the man-beasts inside had better weapons than ours. I
extended my hands to show I was unarmed and walked as
steadily as I could toward them until a face showed at one
window grill.

	When one hears of such creatures, one imagines something
stable, midway between beast and human; but when one actually 
sees them—as I now saw this man-beast, and as I had
seen the man-apes in the mine near Saltus—they are not like
that at a11. The best comparison I can make is to the flickering 
of a silver birch tossed by the wind. At one moment it
seems a common tree, at the next, when the undersides of
the leaves appear, a supernatural creation. So it is with the
man-beasts. At first I thought a mastiff peered at me through
the bars; then it seemed rather a man, nobly ugly, tawny-
faced and amber-eyed. I raised my hands to the grill to give
him my scent, thinking of Triskele.
	"What do you want?" His voice was harsh but not un-
pleasant.
	"I want to save your lives," I said. It was the wrong thing
to say, and I knew it as soon as the words had left my mouth.
	"We want to save our honour."
	I nodded. "Honour is the higher life."
	"If you can tell us how to save our honour, speak. We will
listen. But we will never surrender our trust."
	"You have already surrendered it," I said.

	The wind died, and the mastiff was back in an instant,
flashing teeth arid blazing eyes.
	"It was not' to safeguard gold from the Ascians that you
were put into this coach, but to safeguard it from those of
our own Commonwealth who would steal it if they could.
The Ascians are beaten—look at them. We are the Autarch's
loyal humans. Those you were set to guard against will overwhelm 
us soon."

	"They must kill me and my fellows before they can get the
gold.”
	It was gold, then. I said, "They will do so. Come out and
help us fight, while there is still a chance of victory."
	He hesitated, and I was no longer sure that I had been
entirely wrong to speak first of saving his life. "No,” he said
"We cannot. What you say may be reason, I do not know.
Our law is not the law of reason. Our law is honour and obedience. 
We stay."
"But you know that we are not your enemies?"
	"Anyone seeking what we guard is our enemy."
	"We re guarding it too. If these camp followers and deserters 
came within range of your weapons, would you fire on
them?"
"Yes, of course."

	I walked over to the spiritless cluster of Ascians and asked
to speak with their commander. The man who stood was
only slightly taller than the rest; the intelligence in his face
was the kind one sometimes sees in cunning madmen. I told
him Guasacht had sent me to treat in his stead because I had
often spoken with Ascian prisoners and knew their ways. This
was, as I intended, overheard by his three wounded guards,
who could see Guasacht manning my position on the perimeter.

	"Greetings in the name of the Group of Seventeen," the
Ascian said.
“In the name of the Group of Seventeen."
The Ascian looked startled but nodded.
	"We are surrounded by the disloyal subjects of our Autarch, 
who are thus the enemies of both the Autarch and the
Group of Seventeen. Our own commander, Guasacht, has
devised a plan that will leave us all alive and free."
"The servants of the Group of Seventeen must not be
expended without purpose."

"Precisely. Here is the plan. We will harness some of our
destriers to the steel coach—as many as necessary to pull it
free. You and your people must work to free it too. When
it's free, well return your weapons and help you fight your
way out of this cordon. Your soldiers and ours will go north,
and you can keep the coach and the money inside to take to
your superiors, just as you hoped when you captured it."
"The light of Correct Thought penetrates every darkness."
"No, we haven't gone over to the Group of Seventeen.
You have to help us in return. In the first place, help get the
coach out of the mud. In the second, help us fight our way
out. In the third, provide us with an escort that will get us
through your army and back to our own lines."

The Ascian officer glanced toward the gleaming coach.
"No failure is permanent failure. But inevitable success may
require new plans and greater strength."

"Then you approve of my new plan?" I had not been
aware that I was perspiring, but now the sweat ran stinging
into my eyes. I wiped my forehead with the edge of my cloak,
just as Master Gurloes used to.

The Ascian officer nodded. "Study of Correct Thought
eventually reveals the path of success."
"Yes," I said. "All right, I've studied it. Behind our efforts,
let there be found our efforts."
When I returned to the coach, the same man-beast I had
seen before came to the window again, not quite so hostile
this time. I said, "The Ascians have agreed to try to push this
thing out once more. We're going to have to unload it."
"That is impossible."
"If we don't, the gold will be lost with the sun. I'm not
asking you to give it up—just take it out and mount guard
over it. You'll have your weapons, and if any human bearing
arms comes close to you, you can kill him. I'll be with you,
unarmed. You can kill me too."
It took a great deal more talking, but eventually they did
it. I got the wounded who had been watching the Ascians to
lay down their conti and harness eight of our destriers to the.
coach, and got the Ascians positioned to pull on the harness
and heave at the wheels. Then the door in the side of the
steel coach swung open and the man-beasts carried out small
metal chests, two working while the one I had spoken to
stood guard. They were taller than I had expected and had
fusils, with pistols in their belts to supplement them—the
first pistols I had seen since I had watched the Hierodules use
them to turn Baldsnders's charges in the gardens of the
House Absolute.

	When all the chests were out and the three man-beasts
were standing around them with their weapons at the ready,
I shouted. The wounded troopers lashed every destrier in the
new team, the Ascians heaved until their eyes started from
their straining faces . . . and just when we all thought it
would not, the steel coach lifted itself from the mud and
lumbered half a chain before the wounded could bring it to a
halt. Guasacht nearly got us both killed by running down
from the perimeter waving my contus, but the man-beasts
had just sense enough to see that he was merely excited and
not dangerous.

	He got a great deal more excited when he saw the man-
beasts carry their gold inside again, and when he heard what I
had promised the Ascians. I reminded him that he had given
me leave to act in his name.
	"When I act," he sputtered, "it's with the idea of win-
ning."
I confessed I lacked his military experience, but told him I
had found that in some situations winning consisted of disentangling 
oneself.
	"Just the same, I had hoped you would work out some-
thing better."

	Rising inexorably while we remained unaware of their motion, 
the mountain peaks to the west were already clawing for
the lower edge of the sun; I pointed to it.
	Suddenly, Guasacht smiled. "After all, these are the same
Ascians we took it from before."

	He called the Ascian officer over and told him our
mounted troopers would lead the attack, and that his soldiers
could follow the steel coach on foot. The Ascian agreed, but
when his soldiers had rearmed themselves, he insisted on
placing half a dozen on top of the coach and leading the
attack himself with the rest. Guasacht agreed with an apparent 
bad grace that seemed to me entirely assumed. We put
an armed trooper astride each of the eight-destriers of the
new team, and I saw Guasacht conversing earnestly with their
cornet.

	I had promised the Ascian we would break through the
cordon of deserters to the north, but the ground in that direction 
proved to be unsuited to the steel coach, and in the
end a route north by northwest was agreed upon. The Ascian
infantry advanced at a pace not much short of a full run,
firing as they came. The coach followed. The narrow, enduring 
bolts of the troopers' conti stabbed at the ragged mob
who tried to close about it, and the Ascian arquebuses on its
roof sent gouts of violet energy crashing among them. The
man-beasts fired their fusils from the barred windows, slaughtering 
half a dozen with a single blast.

	The remainder of our troops (I among them) followed the
coach, having maintained our perimeter until it was gone. To
save precious charges, many put their conti through the saddle 
rings, drew their swords, and rode down the straggling
remnant the Ascians and the coach had left behind.

	Then the enemy was past, and the ground clearer. At once
the troopers whose mounts pulled the coach dapped spurs to
them, and Guasacht, Erblon, and several others who were
riding just behind it swept the Ascians from its top in a cloud
of crimson flame and reeking smoke. Those on foot scattered,
then turned to fire.

	It was a fight I did not feel I could take part in. I reined
up, and so saw—I believe, before any of the others—the first
of the anpiels who dropped, like the angel in Melito's fable,
from the sun-dyed clouds. They were fair to look upon,
naked and having the slender bodies of young women; but
their rainbow wings spread wider than any teratornis's, and
each anpiel held a pistol in either hand.
Late that night, when we were back in camp and the
wounded had been cared for, I asked Guasacht if he would
do as he had again.

	He thought for a moment. "I hadn't any way of knowing
those flying girls would come. Looking at it from this end, it's
natural enough—there must have been enough in that coach
to pay half the army, and they wouldn't hesitate to send elite
troops looking for it. But before it happened, would you have
guessed it?"
	I shook my head.
	"Listen, Severian, I shouldn't be talking to you like this.
But you did what you could, and you're the best leech I ever
saw. Anyway, it came out all right in the end, didn't it? You
saw how friendly their seraph was. What did she see, after
all? Plucky lads trying to save the coach from the Ascians.
We'll get a commendation, I should think. Maybe a reward."
	I said, "You could have killed the man-beasts, and the
Ascians too, when the gold was out of the coach. You didn't
because I would have died with them. I think you deserve a
commendation. From me, at least."

	He rubbed his drawn face with both hands. "Well, I'm just
as happy. It would have been the end of the Eighteenth; in
another watch we'd have been killing each other for the
money."

XXI

Deployment

BEFORE THE BATTLE there were other patrols and days of idle-
ness. Often enough we saw no Ascians, or saw only their
dead. We were supposed to arrest deserters and drive from
our area such peddlers and vagabonds as fatten on an army;
but if they seemed to us such people as had surrounded the
steel coach, we killed them, not executing them in any for-
mal style but cutting them down from the saddle.

	The moon waxed again nearly to the full, hanging like a
green apple in the sky. Experienced troopers told me the
worst fights always came at or near the full of the moon,
which is said to breed madness. I suppose this is actually
because its refulgence permits generals to bring up reinforcements 
by night.

On the day of the battle, the graisle's bray summoned us
from our blankets at dawn. We formed a ragged double column 
in the mist, with Guasacht at our head and Erblon
following him with our flag. I had supposed that the women
would stay behind—as most had when we had gone on patrol—
but more than half drew conti and came with us. Those
who had helmets, I noticed, thrust their hair up into the
bowl, and many wore corslets that flattened and concealed
their breasts. I mentioned it to Mesrop, who rode opposite
me.
	"There might be trouble about the pay,' he said. "Somebody 
with sharp eyes will be counting us, and the contracts
usually call for men."
	"Guasacht said there'd be more money today,' I reminded
him.
	He cleared his throat and spat, the white phlegm vanishing
into the clammy air as though Urth herself had swallowed it.
	"They won't pay until it's over. They never do."
	Guasacht shouted and waved an arm; Erblon gestured
with our flag, and we were off, the hoofbeats sounding like
the thudding of a hundred muffled drums. I said, "I suppose
that way they don't have to pay for those who are killed."
	"They pay triple-once because he fought, once for blood
money, and once for discharge money."
	"Or she fought, I suppose."
Mesrop spat again.

	We rode for some time, then halted at a spot that seemed
no different from any other. As the column fell silent, I heard
a humming or murmuring in the hills all around us. A scattered army, 
dispersed no doubt for sanitary reasons and to
deprive the Ascian enemy of a concentrated target, was assembling 
now just as particles of dust in the stone town had
come together in the bodies of its resuscitated dancers.

	Not unnoticed. Even as birds of prey had once followed us
before we reached that town, now five-armed shapes that
spun like wheels pursued us above the scattered clouds that
dimmed and melted in the level red light of dawn. At first,
when they were highest, they seemed merely grey; but as we
watched they dropped toward us, and I saw they were of a
hue for which I can find no name but that stands to achroma
as gold to yellow, or silver to white. The air groaned with
their turning.

	Another that we had not seen came leaping across our
path, hardly higher than the treetops. Each spoke was the
length of a tower, pierced with casements and ports. Though
it lay flat upon the air, it seemed to stride along. Its wind
whistled down upon us as if to blow away the trees. My
piebald screamed and bolted, and so did many other destriers, 
often falling in that strange wind.

	In the space of a heartbeat it was over. The leaves that had
swirled about us like snow fell to earth. Guasacht shouted
and Erblon sounded the graisle and brandished our flag. I got
the piebald under control and cantered from one destrier to
another, taking them by the nostrils until their riders could
manage them again.

	I rescued Daria, who I had not known was in the column,
in this way. She looked very pretty and boyish dressed as a
trooper, with a contus, and a slender sabre at either side of
her saddle horn. I could not help thinking when I saw her of
how other women I had known would appear in the same
situation: Thea a theatrical warrior maid, beautiful and dramatic 
but essentially the figure of a figurehead; Thecla—how
part of myself—a vengeful mimalone brandishing poisoned
weapons; Agia astride a slender-legged sorrel, wearing a cuirass 
moulded to her figure, while her hair, plaited with bow-
strings, flew wild in the wind; Jolenta a floriate queen in
armour spikey with thorns, her big breasts and fleshy thighs
absurd at any gait faster than a walk, smiling dreamily at each
halt and attempting to recline in the saddle; Dorcas a naiad
riding, lifted momentarily like a fountain flashing with sun-
shine; Valeria, perhaps, an aristocratic Daria.

	I had supposed, when I saw our people scatter, that it
would be impossible to reassemble the column; but within a
few moments of the time the pentadactyl air-strider had
passed over us, we were together again. We galloped for a
league or more—mostly, I suspect, to dissipate some of the
nervous energy of our destriers—then halted by a brook and
gave them just as much water as would wet their mouths
without making them sluggish. When I had fought the
piebald back from the bank, I rode to a clearing from which I
could watch the sky. Soon Guasacht trotted over and asked
me jocularly, "You looking for another one?"
	I nodded and told him 1 had never seen such craft before.
	"You wouldn't have, unless you've been close to the front.
They'd never come back if they tried to go down south."
	"Soldiers like us wouldn't stop them."
	He grew suddenly serious, his tiny eyes mere slits in the
sun-browned flesh. "No. But plucky lads can stop their raiding 
parties. The guns and air-galleys can't do that."

	The piebald stirred and stamped with impatience. I said,
"I come from a part of the city you've probably never heard
of, the Citadel. There are guns there that look out over the
whole quarter, but I've never known them to be fired except
ceremonially." Still staring at the sky, I thought of the wheeling 
pentadactyls over Nessus, and a thousand blasts, issuing
not just from the Barbican and the Great Keep, but from all
the towers; and I wondered with what weapons the pentadactyls 
would reply.

	"Come along," Guasacht said. "I know it's a temptation to
keep a lookout for them, but it doesn't do any good."
	I followed him back to the brook, where Erblon was lining
up the column. "They didn't even fire at us. They must
surely have guns in those fliers."
	"We're pretty small fish." I could see that Guasacht
wanted me to rejoin the column, though he hesitated to
order me to do so directly.

	For my part, I could feel fear grip me like a spectre, strongest 
about my legs, but lifting cold tentacles into my bowels,
touching my heart. I wanted to be silent, but I could
not stop talking. "When we go onto the field of battle-"
(I think I imagined this field like the shaven lawn of the
Sanguinary Field, where I had fought Agilus.)
	Guasacht laughed. "When we go into the fight, our gunners 
would be delighted to see them out after us." Before I
understood what he was about to do, he struck the piebald
with the flat of his blade and sent me cantering off.

	Fear is like those diseases that disfigure the face with running 
sores. One becomes almost more afraid of their being
seen than of their source, and comes to feel not only disgraced 
but defiled. When the piebald began to slow, I dug
my heels into him and fell into line at the very end of the
column.

	Only a short time before I had been on the point of replacing 
Erblon; now I was demoted, hot by Guasacht but by
myself, to the lowest position. And yet when I had helped
reassemble the scattered troopers, the thing I feared had al-
ready passed; so that the entire drama of my elevation had
been played out after it had ended in debasement. It was as
though one were to see a young man idling in a public garden
stabbed—then watch him, all unknowing, strike up an acquaintance 
with the voluptuous wife of his murderer, and at
last, having ascertained, as he thought, that her husband was
in another part of the city, clasp her to him until she cried
out from the pain of the dagger's hilt protruding from his
chest.

	When the column lurched forward, Daria detached herself
from it and waited until she could fall in beside me. "You're
afraid," she said. It was not a question but a statement, and
not a reproach but almost a password, like the ridiculous
phrases I had learned at Vodalus's banquet.
	"Yes. You're about to remind me of the boast I made to
you in the forest. I can only say that I did not know it to be
an empty one when I made it. A certain wise man once tried
to teach me that even after a client has mastered one excruciation, 
so that he can put it from his mind even while he
screams and writhes, another quite different excruciation
may be as effectual in breaking his will as in breaking a
child's. I learned to explain all this when he asked me but
never until now to apply it, as I should, to my own life. But if
I am the client here, who is the torturer?"
	"We're all more or less afraid," she said. "That was why-
yes, I saw it—Guasacht sent you away. It was to keep you
from making his own feeling worse. If it were worse, he
wouldn't be able to lead. When the time comes, you'll do
what you have to, and that's all any of them do."
	"Hadn't we better go?" I asked. The end of the column
was moving off in that surging way the tail of a long line
always does.
	"If we go now, a lot of them will know we're at the rear
because we're afraid. If we wait just a little while longer,
many of those who saw you talking with Guasacht will think
he sent you back here to speed up stragglers, and that I came
back to be with you."
	"All right," I said.

	Her hand, damp with sweat and as thin as Dorcas's, came
sliding into mine.
	Until that moment, I had been certain she had fought
before. Now I asked her, "Is this your first time too?"
	"I can fight better than most of them," she declared, "and
I'm sick of being called a whore."
	Together, we trotted after the column.

XXII

Battle

I SAW THEM first as a scattering of coloured dots on the farther
side of the wide valley, skirmishers who seemed to move and
mix, as bubbles do that dance upon the surface of a mug of
cider. We were trotting through a grove of shattered trees
whose white and naked wood was like the living bone of a
compound fracture. Our column was much larger now, per-
haps the whole of the irregular contarii. It had been under
fire, in a more or less dilatory way, for about half a watch.
Some troopers had been wounded (one, near me, quite
badly) and several killed. The wounded cared for themselves
and tried to help each other—if there were medical attendants 
for us they were too far behind us for me to be conscious 
of them.

From time to time we passed corpses among the trees;
usually these were in little clusters of two or three, sometimes
they were merely solitary individuals. I saw one who had contrived 
in dying to hook the collar of his brigandine jacket to a
splinter protruding from one of the broken trunks, and I was
struck by the horror of his situation, his being dead and yet
unable to rest, and then by the thought that such was the
plight of all those thousands of trees, trees that had been
killed but could not fall.
	At about the same time I became aware of the enemy, I
realized that there were troops of our own army to either
side. To our right a mixture, as it were, of mounted men and
infantry, the riders helmetless and naked to the waist, with
red and blue blanket rolls slung across their bronzed chests.
They were better mounted, I thought, than most of us. They
carried lancegays not much longer than the height of a man,
many of them holding them aslant their saddle-bows. Each
had a small copper shield bound to the upper part of his left
arm. I had no idea from what part of the Commonwealth
these men might come; but for some reason, perhaps only
because of their long hair and bare chests, I felt sure they
were savages.

	If they were, the infantry that moved among them was
something lower still, brown and stooped and shaggy-haired.
I had only glimpses through the broken trees, but I thought
they dropped to all fours at times. Occasionally one seemed
to grasp the stirrup of some rider, as I had sometimes taken
Jonas's when he rode his merychip; whenever that occurred,
the rider struck at his companion's hand with the butt of his
weapon.

	A road ran through lower ground to our left; and down it,
and to either side of it, there moved a force far more numerous 
than our column and the savage riders and their companions 
all combined: battalions of peltasts with blazing spears
and big, transparent shields; hobilers on prancing mounts,
with bows and arrow cases crossed over their backs; lightly
armed cherkajis whose formations were seas of plumes and
flags.

	I could know nothing of the courage of all these strange
soldiers who had suddenly become my comrades, but I unconsciously 
assumed it to be no greater than my own, and
they seemed a slender defence indeed against the moving
dots on the farther side. The fire to which we were subjected
grew more intense, and so far as I could see, our enemies were
under none at all.                         

	Only a few weeks before (though it felt like at least a year
now) I would have been terrified at the thought of being shot
at with such a weapon as Vodalus had used on the foggy
night in our necropolis with which I have begun this account.
The bolts that struck all around us. made that simple beam
appear as childish as the shining slugs thrown from the hetman's 
archer's pellet bow.

	I had no idea what sort of device was used to project these
bolts, or even whether they were in fact pure energy or some
type of missile; but as they landed among us, their nature was
that of an explosion lengthened into something like a rod.
And though they could not be seen until they struck, they
whistled as they came, and by that whistled note, which endured 
no longer than the blink of an eye, I soon learned to
tell how near they would hit and how powerful the extended
detonation would be. If there was no change in the tone, so
that it resembled the note a coryphaeus sounds on his pitch
pipe, the strike would be some distance off. But if it rose
quickly, as though a note first sounded for men had become
one for women, its impact would be nearby; and though only
the loudest of the monotonal bolts were dangerous, each that
rose to a scream claimed at least one of us and often several.

	It seemed madness to trot forward as we did. We should
have scattered, or dismounted to take refuge among the
trees; and if one of us had done it, I think all the rest would
have followed him. With every bolt that felly I was almost
that one. But again and again, as if my mind were chained in
some narrow circle, the memory of the fear I had shown
earlier held me in my place. Let the rest run and I would run
with them; but I would not run first.

Inevitably, a bolt struck parallel to our column. Six troopers 
flew apart as though they themselves had contained small
bombs, the head of the first bursting in a gout of scarlet, the
neck and shoulders of the second, the chest of the third, the
bellies of the fourth and fifth, and the groin (or perhaps on
the saddle and the back of his destrier) of the sixth, before
the bolt struck the ground and sent up a geyser of dust and
stones. The men and animals opposite those who were destroyed 
in this way were killed too, wracked by the force of
the explosions and bombarded with the limbs and armour of
the others.

	Holding the piebald to a trot, and often to a walk, was the
worst of it; if I could not run, I wanted to press forward, to
get the fighting begun, to die if I was in fact to die. This hit
gave me some opportunity to relieve my feelings. Waving to
Daria to follow, I let the piebald lope past the little group of
survivors who had been riding between us and the last
trooper to die, and moved into the space in the column that
had been the casualties'. Mesrop was there already, and he
grinned at me. "Good thinking. Chances are there won't be
another one here for quite a while." I forbore to disabuse
him.

	For a time it seemed he was correct anyway. Having hit us,
the enemy gunners diverted their fire to the savages on our
right. Their shambling infantry shrieked and gibbered as the
bolts fell among them, but the riders reacted, so it appeared,
by calling on magic to protect them. Often their chants
sounded so clearly that I could make out the words, though
they were in no language I had ever heard. Once one actually
stood on his saddle like a performer in a riding exhibition,
lifting a hand to the sun and extending the other toward the
Ascians. Each rider seemed to have a personal spell; and it
was easy to see, as I watched their numbers shrink under the
bombardment, how such primitive minds come to believe in
their charms, for the survivors could not but feel their thaumaturgy 
had saved them, and the rest could not complain of
the failure of theirs.

	Though we were advancing, for the most part, at the trot,
we were not the first to engage the enemy. On the lower
ground, the cherkajis had streaked across the valley, crashing
against a square of foot soldiers like a wave of fire.

	I had vaguely supposed that the enemy would be provided
with weapons far superior to anything w^ had in the contarii
perhaps pistols and fusils, such as the man-beasts had
carried—and that a hundred fighters so armed would easily
destroy any quantity of cavalry. Nothing of the kind happened. 
Several rows of the square gave way, and I was close
enough now to hear the riders' war cries, distant yet distinct,
and see individual foot soldiers in flight. Some were casting
aside immense shields, shields even larger than the glassy
ones of the peltasts, though they shone with the lustre of
metal. Their offensive arms seemed to be splay-headed spears
no more than three cubits long, weapons that could produce
sheets of cleaving flame, but short in range.

	A second infantry square emerged behind the first, then
another and another, farther down the valley.
	Just as I was sure we were about to ride to the assistance of
the cherkajis, we received the order to halt. Looking to the
right, 1 saw that the savages had already done so, stopping
some distance behind us, and were now driving the hairy
creatures that had accompanied them toward the side of
their position farthest from us.
	Guasacht called, "We're blocking! Sit easy, lads!"
	I looked at Daria, who returned a look equally bewildered.
Mesrop waved an arm toward the eastern end of the valley.
"We're watching the flank. If nobody comes, we ought to
have a good enough time of it today."
	I said, "Except for the ones who've already died." The
bombardment, which had been diminishing, now seemed to
have stopped altogether. The silence of its absence lay all
about us, almost more frightening than its screaming bolts
had been.
	"I suppose so." His shrug announced eloquently that we
had lost a few dozen from a force of hundreds.

The cherkajis had recoiled, retreating behind a screen of
hobilers who directed a shower of arrows at the leading edge
of the Ascians' checkerboard battle line. Most seemed to
glance off the shields, but a few must have buried their heads
in the metal, which took Ere from them and burned with a
flame as bright as theirs and billowing white smoke.

	When the arrows slackened, the squares of the checker-
board advanced again with a mechanical jerkiness. The cherkajis 
had continued to fall back and were now in the rear of a
line of peltasts, very little in advance of us. I could see their
dark faces clearly. They were all men and bearded, and
numbered about two thousand; but they had among them
a dozen or so bejeweled young women borne in gilded
howdahs on the backs of caparisoned arsinoithers.

	These women were dark-eyed and dark complexioned like
the men, yet in their lush figures and languishing looks they
reminded me of Jolenta. I pointed them out to Daria and
asked if she knew how they were armed, since I could see no
Weapons.
	“You'd like one, would you? Or two. I'll bet they look
good to you even from here."
Mesrop winked and said, "I wouldn't mind a couple
myself."
	Daria laughed. "They'd fight like alraunes if either of you
tried to have anything to do with them. They're sacred
and forbidden, the Daughters of War. Have you ever been
around those animals they're riding?"
I shook my head.
	"They charge easy and nothing stops them, but they al-
ways go the same way—straight at whatever it is that bothers
them and past it for a chain or two. Then they stop and go
back."

	I watched. Arsinoithers have two big horns—not spreading
horns like the horns of bulls, but horns that diverge about as
much as a man's first and second fingers can. As I soon saw,
they charge head down, with those horns level with the
ground, and these did just as Daria had said. The cherkajis
rallied and attacked again with their slender lances and
forked swords. Trailing far behind that lightning dash, the
arsinoithers lumbered forward, grey-black heads down and
tails up, with the deep-bosomed, dark-faced maidens standing 
erect under their canopies and gripping the gilded poles.
One could see from the way these women held themselves
that their thighs were as full as the udders of milch cows and
round as the trunks of trees.

	The charge carried them through the swirling fight and
deep—but not too deep—into the checkerboard. The Ascian
foot soldiers blasted the sides of their beasts, which must
have been like burning horn or cuir boli; they tried to mount
their heads and were tossed into the air; they struggled to
climb the grey flanks. The cherkajis came crashing to the
rescue, and the checkerboard flowed and ebbed and lost a
square.
	Watching it from such a distance, I recalled my own
thoughts of battle as a game of chess, and I felt that some-
where someone else had entertained the same thoughts and
unconsciously allowed them to shape his plan.
	"They're lovely," Daria continued, teasing me. "Chosen at
twelve and fed on honey and pure oils. I've heard their flesh
is so tender they can't lie on the ground without being
bruised. Bags of feathers are carried about for them to sleep
on. If those are lost, the girls have to lie in mud that shapes
itself to support their bodies. The eunuchs who care for them
mix it with wine warmed over a fire, so they will sleep and
not be cold."
	"We should dismount," Mesrop said. "It'll spare the
animals."
	But I wanted to watch the battle and would not get down,
though soon only Guasacht and I remained in the saddle out
of our entire bacele.
	The cherkajis had- been driven back once again, and now
came under a withering bombardment from unseen artillery.
The peltasts dropped to the ground, covering themselves
with their shields. New squares of Ascian infantry emerged
from the forest on the north side of the valley. There seemed
to be no end to them; I felt we had been committed against
an inexhaustible enemy.
	The feeling grew stronger when the cherkajis charged a
third time. A bolt struck an arsinoither, blowing it and the
lovely woman it had carried to bloody ruin. The infantry was
firing at those women now; one crumpled, and howdah and
canopy vanished in a puff of flame. The infantry squares advanced 
over brightly clad corpses and dead destriers.
	By each step in war the winner loses. The ground the
checkerboard had won exposed the side of its leading square
to us, and to my astonishment we were ordered to mount,
spread into line, and wheeled against it, first trotting, then
cantering, and at last, with the brass throats of all the graisles
shouting, in a desperate rush that nearly blew the skin from
our faces.

	If the cherkajis were lightly armed, we were armed more
lightly still. Yet there was a magic in the charge more powerful 
than the chants of our savage allies. The wildfire of our
weapons played along the distant ranks as scythes attack a
wheat field. I lashed the piebald with his reins to keep from
being outdistanced by the roaring hoofs I heard behind me.
Yet I was, and glimpsed Daria as she shot past, the flame of
her hair flying free, her contus in one hand and a sabre in the
other, her cheeks whiter than the foaming flanks of her des-
trier. I knew then how the custom of the cherkajis had begun, 
and I tried to charge faster still so that she should not
die, though Thecla laughed through my lips at the thought.

	Destriers do not run like common beasts—they skim the
ground as arrows do air. For an instant, the fire of the Ascian
infantry half a league away rose before us like a wall. A moment 
later we were among them, the legs of every mount
bloody to the knee. The square that had seemed as solid as a
building stone had become only a crowd of frantic soldiers
with big shields and cropped heads, soldiers ^who often slew
one another in their eagerness to slay us.

	Fighting is a stupid business at best; but there are things to
be learned about it, of which the first is that numbers tell
only in time. The immediate struggle is always that of an
individual against one or two others. In this our destriers gave
us the upper hand—not only because of their height and
weight, but because they bit and struck out with their fore-
feet, and the blows of their hoofs were more powerful than
any man save Baldanders could have delivered with a mace.
	Fire cut through my contus. I dropped it but continued to
kill, slashing left, then right, then left again with the falchion
and hardly noticing that the blast had laid open my leg.
	I think I must have cut down half a dozen Ascians before I
saw that they all looked the same—not that they all had the
same face (as the men in some units of our own army do, who
are indeed closer than brothers), but that the differences
among them seemed accidental and trivial. I had observed
this among our prisoners when We had retrieved the steel
coach, but it had not really impressed itself upon my mind.
In the madness of battle it did so, for it seemed a part of that
madness. The frenzied figures were male and female: the
women had small but pendulous breasts and were half a head
shorter, but there was no other distinction. All had large,
brilliant, wild eyes, hair clipped nearly to the skull, starved
faces, screaming mouths, and prominent teeth.

	We fought free as the cherkajis had; the square had been
dented but not destroyed. While we let our mounts catch
breath it reformed, the light, polished shields to the front. A
spearman broke ranks and came running toward us waving his
weapon. At first I thought it mere bluster; then, as he came
nearer (for a normal man runs much less swiftly than a des-
trier), that he wished to surrender. At last, when he had almost 
reached our line, he fired, and a trooper shot him down.
In his convulsions he threw his blazing spear into the air; I
remember how it twisted against the dark blue sky.
Guasacht came trotting over. "You're bleeding bad. Can
you ride when we charge them again?"
	I felt as strong as I ever had in my life and told him so.
	"Still, you'd better get a bandage on that leg."
	The seared flesh had cracked; blood was oozing out. Daria,
who had not been hurt at all, bound it up.
	The charge for which I had been prepared never took
place. Quite unexpectedly (at least as far as I was concerned)
the order came to turn about, and we went trotting off to the
northeast over open, rolling country whisperous with coarse
grass.

	The savages seemed to have vanished. A new force appeared 
in their place, on the flank that had now become our
front. At first I thought they were cavalry on centaurs, creatures 
whose pictures I had encountered in the brown book. I
could see the heads and shoulders of the riders above the
human heads of their mounts, and both appeared to bear
arms. When they drew nearer, I saw they were nothing so
romantic: merely small men—dwarfs, in fact—upon the shoulders 
of very tall ones.

	Our directions of advance were nearly parallel but slowly
converged. The dwarfs watched us with what seemed a sullen
attention. The tall men did not look at us at all. At last,
when our column was no more than a couple of chains from
theirs, we halted and turned to face them. With a horror I
had not felt before, I realized that these strange riders and
strange steeds were Ascians; our maneuver had been intended
to prevent them from taking the peltasts in the flank, and
had now succeeded in that they would now have to make
their attack, if they could, through us. There seemed to be
about five thousand of them, however, and there were certainly 
many more than we had fit to fight.
	Yet no attack came. We had halted and formed a tight
line, stirrup to stirrup. Despite their numbers, they surged
nervously up and down before it as though attracted first by
the thought of passing it on the right, then on the left, then
on the right again. It was clear, however, that they could not
pass at all unless a part of their force engaged our front to
prevent our striking the rest from behind. As if hoping to
postpone the fight, we did not fire..

	Now we saw repetitions of the behavior of the lone spearman 
who had left his square to attack us. One of the tall men
dashed forward. In one hand he held a slender-staff, hardly
more than a switch; in the other, a sword of the kind called a
shotel, which has a very long, double-edged blade whose for-
ward half is curved into a semicircle. As he drew nearer he
slowed, and I saw that his eyes were unfocused; that he was in
fact blind. The dwarf on his shoulders had an arrow nocked
to the string of a short, recurved bow.
	When these two were within half a chain of us, Erblon
detailed two men to drive them off. Before they could close
with the blind man, he broke into a run as swift as any destriers 
but eerily silent, and came flying toward us. Eight or
ten troopers fired, but I saw then how difficult it is to hit a
target moving at such speed. The arrow struck and burst in a
blaze of orange light. A trooper tried to parry the blind man's
wand—the shotel flashed down, and its hooked blade laid
open the trooper's skull.
	Then a group of three of the blind men with three riders
detached itself from the mass of the enemy. Before they
reached us, there were clusters of five or six coming. Far
down the line, our hipparch raised his arm; Guasacht waved
us forward and Erblon blew the charge, echoed to right and
left—a bellowing note that seemed to have deep-mouthed
bells in it.
	Though I did not know it at the time, it is axiomatic that
encounters purely between cavalry rapidly degenerate into
mere skirmishes. So it was with ours. We rode at them, and
though we lost twenty or thirty in doing so, we rode through
them. At once we turned to engage them again, both to
prevent their flanking the peltasts and to regain contact with
our own army. They, of course, turned to face us; and in a
short time neither we nor they had anything that could be
called a front, or any tactics beyond those each fighter forged
for himself.

	My own were to veer away from any dwarf who looked
ready to shoot and try to catch others from behind or from
the side. They worked well enough when I could apply them,
but I quickly found that though the dwarfs appeared almost
helpless when the blind men they rode were killed under
them, their tall steeds ran amok without their riders, attacking 
anything that stood in their path with frantic energy, so
that they were more dangerous than ever.
	Very soon the dwarfs' arrows and our conti had kindled
scores of fires in the grass. The choking smoke rendered the
confusion worse than ever. I had lost sight of Daria and
Guasacht—of everyone I knew—sometime before. Through
the acrid grey haze I could just make out a figure on a plunging 
destrier fighting off four Ascians. I went to him, and
though one dwarf turned his blind steed and sent an arrow
whizzing by my ear, I rode over them and heard the blind
man's bones snap under the piebald's hoofs. A hairy figure
rose from the smouldering grass behind the other pw and cut
them down as a peon hews a tree—three or four strokes of his
axe to the same spot until the blind man fell.

	The mounted soldier I had come to rescue was not one of
our troopers, but one of the savages who had been on our
right earlier. He had been wounded, and when I saw the
blood I recalled that I had been wounded too. My leg was
stiff, my strength nearly gone. I would have ridden back
toward the south crest of the valley and our own lines if I had
known which way to go. As it was, I gave the piebald his head
and a good slap from the reins, having heard that these animals 
will often return to the place where they last had water
and rest. He broke into a canter that soon became a gallop.
Once he jumped, nearly throwing me from the saddle, and I
looked down to glimpse a dead destrier with Erblon dead
beside him, and the brass graisle and the black and green flag
lying on the burning turf. I would have. turned the piebald
and gone back for them, but by the time I pulled him up, I
no longer knew the spot. To my right, a mounted line
showed through the smoke, dark and almost formless, but
serrated. Par behind it loomed a machine that flashed fire, a
machine that was like a tower walking.

	At one moment they were nearly invisible; at the next they
were upon me like a torrent. I cannot say who the riders were
or on what beasts they rode; not because I have forgotten
(for I forget nothing) but because I saw nothing clearly.
There was no question of fighting, only of seeking in some
way to live. I parried a blow from a twisted weapon that was
neither sword nor axe; the piebald reared, and I saw an arrow
protruding from his chest like a horn of fire. A rider crashed
against us, and we fell into the dark.

XXIII

The Pelagic Argosy Sights Land

WHEN I REGAINED consciousness, it was the pain in my leg
that I felt first. It was pinned beneath the body of the
piebald, and I struggled to free it almost before I knew who I
was or how I found myself where I did. My hands and face,
the very ground on which I lay, were crusted with blood.
	And it was quiet—so quiet. I listened for the thudding of
hoofs, the drum roll that makes Urth herself its drum. It was
not there. The shouts of the cherkajis were no more, nor the
shrill, mad cries that had come from the checkerboard of
Ascian infantry. I tried to turn to push against the saddle,
but I could not do so.

	Somewhere far off, no doubt on one of the ridges that
rimmed the valley, a dire wolf raised its maw to Lune. That
inhuman howling, which Thecla had heard once or twice before 
when the court went to hunt near Silva, made me realize
that the dimness of my sight was not due to the smoke of the
grass fires that had burned earlier that day, or, as I had half
feared, to some head injury. The land was twilit, though
whether by dusk or dawn I could not say.
	I rested and perhaps I slept, then roused again at the
sound of footsteps. It was darker than I remembered. The
footsteps were slow, soft, and heavy. Not the sound of cavalry 
on the move, nor yet the measured tread of inarching infantry—
a walk heavier than Baldanders's and more slow. I
opened my mouth to cry for help, then closed it again, thinking 
I might call upon myself something more terrible than
that I had-once waked in the mine of the man-apes. I lunged
away from the dead piebald until it seemed I would wrench
my leg from its socket. Another dire wolf, as frightful as the
first and much closer, howled to the green isle overhead.

	As a boy, I was often told I lacked imagination. If it were
ever true, Thecla must have brought it to our nexus, for I
could see the dire wolves in my mind, black and silent shapes,
each as large as an onyger, pouring down into the valley; and
I could hear them cracking the ribs of the dead. I called, and
called again, before I knew what it was I did.
It seemed to me that the heavy footsteps paused. Certainly 
they moved toward me, whether they had been coming
toward me before or not. I heard a rustling in the grass, and a
little phenocod, striped like a melon, bounded out, terrified
by something I still could not see. It shied at the sight of me
and in a moment was gone.

I have said that Erblon's graisle was silenced. Another blew
now, a deeper, longer, wilder note than I had ever heard. The
outline of a bent orphicleide showed against the dusky sky.
When its music was ended it fell, and in a moment more I
saw the head of the player blotting out the brightening moon
at three times the height of a mounted trooper's helmet—a
domed head shaggy with hair.
The orphicleide sounded once more, deep as a waterfall,
and this time I saw it rise, and the white, curling tusks that
guarded it on each side, and I knew I lay in the path of the
very symbol of dominion, the beast called Mammoth.
Guasacht had said I held some mastery over animals, even
without the Claw. I strove to use it now, whispering I know
not what, concentrating my thought until it seemed my temples 
would burst. The mammoth's trunk came questing
toward me, its tip nearly a cubit across. Lightly as a child's
hand it touched my face, flooding me with moist, hot breath
sweet with hay. The corpse of the piebald was lifted away; I
tried to stand but somehow fell. The mammoth caught me
up, winding its trunk about my waist, and lifted me higher
than its own head.
	The first thing I saw was the muzzle of a trilhoen with a
dark, bulging lens the size of a dinner plate. It was fitted with
a seat for the operator, but no one sat there. The gunner had
come down and stood upon the mammoth's neck as a sailor
might upon the deck of a ship, with one hand on the barrel
for balance. For a moment a light shone in my face, blinding
me.
	"It's you. Miracles converge on us." The voice was not
truly either a man's or a woman's; it might almost have been
a boy's. I was laid at the speaker's feet, and he said, "You're
hurt. Can you stand on that leg?"
	I managed to say I did not think I could.
	"This is a poor place to lie, but a good one to fall from.
There's a gondola farther back, but I'm afraid Mamillian
can't reach it with his trunk. You'll have to sit up here, with
your back against the swivel."
	I felt his hands, small, soft, and moist, beneath my arms.
Perhaps it was their touch that told me who he was: The
androgyne I had met in the snow-covered House Azure, and
later in that artfully foreshortened room that posed as a
painting hanging in a corridor of the House Absolute.
	The Autarch.
	In Thecla's memories I saw him robed in jewels. Although
he had said he recognized me, I could not believe in my
dazed state that it was so, and I gave him the code phrase he
had once given me, saying, "The pelagic argosy sights land."

	"It does. It does indeed. Yet if you fall overboard now, I'm
afraid Mamillian's not quite quick enough to catch you . . .
despite his undoubted wisdom. Give him as much help as
you can. I'm not as strong as I look."

	I got some part of the trilhoen's mount in one hand and
was able to pull myself around on the musty-smelling mat
that was the mammoth's hide. "To speak the truth," I said,
"you've never looked strong to me."
	"You have the professional eye and ought to know, but
I'm not even as strong as that. You, on the other hand have
always seemed to me a construction of horn and boiled
leather. And you must be, or you'd be dead by now. What
happened to your leg?"
	"Burned, I think."
	"Well have to get you something for it." He raised his
voice slightly. "Home! Back home, Mamillian!”

	"May I ask what you're doing here?"
	"Having a look at the field of battle. You fought here
today, I take it."
	I nodded, though I felt my head would tumble from my
shoulders.

	"I didn't... or rather, I did, but not personally. I ordered
certain bodies of light auxiliaries into action, with a legion of
peltasts in support. I suppose you must have been one of the
auxiliaries. Were any of your friends killed?"
	"I only had one. She was all right the last time I saw her."
	His teeth flashed in the moonlight. "You maintain your
interest in women. Was it the Dorcas you told me of?"
	"No. It doesn't matter." I did not quite know how to
phrase what I was about to say. (It is the worst of bad manners 
to state openly that one has penetrated an incognito.)
At last I managed, "I can see you hold high rank in our
Commonwealth. If it won't get me pushed from the back of
this animal, can you tell me what someone who commands
legions was doing conducting that place in the Algedonic
Quarter?"

	While I spoke, the night had grown rapidly darker, the
stars winking out one after another like the tapers in a hall
when the ball is over and footmen walk among them with
snuffers like mitres of gold dangling from spidery rods. At a
great distance I heard the androgyne say, "You know who we
are. We are the thing itself, the self-ruler, the Autarch. We
know more. We know who you are."
	Master Malrubius was, as I realize now, a very sick man
before he died. At the time I did not know it, because the
thought of sickness was foreign to me. At least half our apprentices, 
and perhaps more than half, died before they were
raised to journeyman; but it never occurred to me that our
tower might be an unhealthy place, or that the lower reaches
of Gyoll, where we so often swam, were little purer than a
cesspool. Apprentices had always died, and when we living
apprentices dug their graves we turned up small pelvises and
skulls, which we, the succeeding generation, reburied again
and again until they were so much injured by the spade that
their chalky particles were lost in the tar like soil. I, however,
never suffered more than a sore throat and a running nose,
forms of sickness that serve only to deceive healthy people
into the belief that they know in what disease consists. Master 
Malrubius suffered real illness, which is to see death in
shadows.                    

	As he stood at his little table, one. felt that he was conscious 
of someone standing behind him. He looked straight
to the front, never turning his head and hardly moving a
shoulder, and he Spoke as much for that unknown listener as
for us.
	"I have done my best to teach you boys the rudiments of
learning. They are the seeds of trees that should grow and
blossom in your minds. Severian, look to your Q. It should be
round and full like the face of a happy boy, but one of its
cheeks is as fallen-in as your own. You have all, all you boys,
seen how the spinal cord, lifting itself toward its culmination,
expands and at last blossoms in the myriad pathways of the
brain. And this one, one cheek round, the other seared and
shrivelled."
	His trembling hand reached for the slate pencil, but it
escaped his fingers and rolled over the edge of the table to
clatter on the floor. He did not stoop to pick it up, fearful,
I think, that in. stooping he might glimpse the invisible
presence.
	"I have spent much of my life, boys, in trying to implant
those seeds in the apprentices of our guild. I have had a few
successes, but not many. There was a boy, but he—"
	He went to the port and spat, and because I was sitting
near it I saw the twisted shapes formed by the seeping blood
and knew that the reason I could not see the dark figure (for
death is of the colour that is darker than fuligin) that accompanied 
him was that it stood within him.

	Just as I had discovered that death in a new form, in the
shape of war, could frighten me when it could no longer do
so in its old ones, so I learned now that the weakness of my
body could afflict me with the terror and despair my old
teacher must have felt. Consciousness came and went.
	Consciousness went and came like the errant winds of
spring, and I, who so often have had difficulty in falling
asleep among the besieging shades of memory, now fought to
stay awake as a child struggles to lift a faltering kite by the
string. At times I was oblivious to everything except my injured 
body. The wound in my leg, which I had hardly felt
when I received it, and whose pain I had so effortlessly locked
away when Daria had bandaged it, throbbed with an intensity 
that formed the background to all my thoughts, like the
rumbling of the Drum Tower at the solstice. I turned from
side to side, thinking always that I lay upon that leg.

	I had hearing without sight and occasionally sight with-
out hearing. I rolled my cheek from the matted hair of
Mamillian and laid it on a pillow woven of the minute,
downy feathers of hummingbirds.

	Once I saw torches with dancing flames of scarlet and radiant 
gold held by solemn apes. A man with the horns and
muzzled face of a bull bent over me, a constellation sprung
to life. I spoke to him and found myself telling him that I
was unsure of the precise date of my birth, that if his benign
spirit of meadow and unfeigning force had governed my life I
thanked him for it; then remembered that I knew the date,
that my father had given a ball for me each year until his
death, that it fell under the Swan. He listened intently, fuming 
his head to watch me from one brown eye.

XXIV

The Flier

SUNLIGHT IN MY FACE.
	I tried to sit up, and in fact succeeded in getting one elbow
beneath me. All about me shimmered an orb of colour—purple
and cyan, ruby and azure, with the orpiment of the sun piercing 
these enchanted tints like a sword to fall upon my eyes.
Then it was blotted out, and its extinction revealed what its
splendour had obscured: I lay in a domed pavilion of variegated 
silk, with an open door.
	The rider of the mammoth was walking toward me. He
was robed in saffron, as I had always seen him, and carried an
ebony rod too light to be a weapon. "You have recovered,"
he said.
	"I'd try and say yes, but I'm afraid the effort of speaking
might kill me."
	He smiled at that, though the smile was no more than a
twitching of the mouth. "As you should know better than
almost anyone, the sufferings we endure in this life make
possible all the happy crimes and pleasant abominations we
shall commit in the next. . . aren't you eager to collect?"
	I shook my head and laid it on the pillow again. The soft-
ness smelled faintly of musk.

"That is just as well, because it will be some time before
you do."
	"Is that what your physician says?"
	"I am my own, and I've been treating you myself. Shock
was the principal problem. ... It sounds like a disorder for
old women, as you are no doubt thinking at this moment.
But it kills a great many men with wounds. If all of mine who
die of it would only live, I would readily consent to the death
of those who take a thrust in the heart."

	"While you were being your own physician—and mine-
were you telling the truth?"
	He smiled more broadly at that. "I always do. In my position, 
I have to talk too much to keep a skein of lies in order;
of course, you must realize that the truth ... the little,
ordinary truths that farm wives talk of, not the ultimate and
universal Truth, which I'm no more capable of uttering than
you ... that truth is more deceptive."

	"Before I lost consciousness, I heard you say you are the
Autarch."
	He threw himself down beside me like a child, his body
making a distinct sound as it struck the piled carpets. "I did.
I am. Are you impressed?"
	"I would be more impressed," I said, "if I did not recall
you so vividly from our meeting in the House Azure."
(That porch, covered with snow, heaped with snow that
deadened our footsteps, stood in the silken pavilion like a
spectre. When the Autarch's blue eyes met mine, I felt that
Roche stood beside me in the snow, both of us dressed in
unfamiliar and none-too-well-fitting clothes. Inside, a woman
who was not Thecla was transforming herself into Thecla as I
was later to make myself Meschia, the first man. Who can say
to what degree an actor assumes the spirit of the person he
portrays? When I played the Familiar, it was nothing, because 
it was so close to what I was—or had at least believed
myself to be—in life; but as Meschia I had sometimes had
thoughts that could never have occurred to me otherwise,
thoughts alien equally to Severian and to Thecla, thoughts of
the beginnings of things and the morning of the world.)

	"I never told you, you will recall, that I was only the
Autarch."                                    
	"When I met you in the House Absolute, you appeared to
be a minor official of the court. I admit you never told me
that, and in fact I knew then who you were. But it was you,
wasn't it, who gave the money to Dr. Talos?"
	"I would have told you that without a blush. It is completely 
true. In fact, I am several of the minor officials of my
court. . . . Why shouldn't I be? I have the authority to appoint 
such officials, and I can just as well appoint myself. An
order from the Autarch is often too heavy an instrument, you
see. You would never have tried to slit a nose with that big
headsman's sword you carried. There is a time for a decree
from the Autarch, and a time for a letter from the third
bursar, and I am both and more besides."
	"And in that house in the Algedonic Quarter—"
	"I am also a criminal. .. just as you are."

	There is no limit to stupidity. Space itself is said to be
bounded by its own curvature, but stupidity continues be-
yond infinity. I, who had always thought myself, though not
truly intelligent, at least prudent and quick to learn simple
things, who had always counted myself the practical and fore-
seeing one when I had travelled with Jonas or Dorcas, had
never until that instant connected the Autarch's position at
the very apex of the structure of legality with his certain
knowledge that I had penetrated the House Absolute as an
emissary of Vodalus. At that moment, I would have leaped
up and fled from the pavilion if I could, but my legs were like
water.

	"All of us are—all of us must be who must enforce the law.
Do you think your guild brothers would have been so severe
with you—and my agent reports that many of them wished to
kill you—if they had themselves been guilty of something of
the same kind? You were a danger to them unless you were
terribly punished because they might otherwise someday be
tempted. A judge or a jailer who has no crime of his own is a
monster/alternately purloining the forgiveness that belongs
to the Increate alone and practicing a deathly rigor that belongs 
to no one and nothing.

	"So I became a criminal. The violent crimes offended my
love of humanity, and I lack the quickness of hand and
thought required of a thief. After blundering about for some
time... that would be in about the year you were born, I
suppose ... I found my true profession. It takes care of
certain emotional needs I cannot now satisfy otherwise . . .
and I have, I really do have, a knowledge of human nature. I
know just when to offer a bribe and how much to give, and,
the most important thing, when not to. I know how to keep
the girls who work for me happy enough with their careers to
continue, and discontented enough with their fates. . . .
They're khaibits, of course, grown from the body cells of
exultant women so an exchange of blood will prolong the
exultants' youth. I know how to make my clients feel that
the encounters I arrange are unique experiences instead of
something midway between dewy-eyed romance and solitary
vice. You felt that you had a unique experience, didn't you?"

	"That's what we call them too," I said. "Clients.” had
been listening as much to the tone of his voice as to his
words. He was happy, as I thought he had not been on either
of the other occasions on which I had encountered him, and
to hear him was like hearing a thrush speak. He almost
seemed to know it himself, lifting his face and extending his
throat, the Rs in arrange and romance trilled into the sunlight.

	"It is useful too. It keeps me in touch with the underside
of the population, so I know whether or not taxes are really
being collected and whether they're thought fair, which elements 
are rising in society and which are going down."
	I sensed that he was referring to me, though I had no idea
what he meant. "Those women from the court," I said.
	"Why didn't you get the real ones to help you? One of them
was pretending to be Thecla when Thecla was locked under
our tower."

	He looked at me as though I had said something particularly 
stupid, as no doubt I had. "Because I can't trust them,
of course. A thing like that has to remain a secret.... Think
of the opportunities for assassination. Do you believe that
because all those gilded personages from ancient families
bow so low in my presence, and smile, and whisper discreet
jokes and lewd little invitations, they feel some loyalty to
me? You will learn differently, you may be sure. There are
few at my court I can trust, and none among the exultants."
	"You say I'll learn differently. Does that mean you don't
intend to have me executed?" I could feel the pulse in my
neck and see the scariet gout of blood.
	"Because you know my secret now? No. We have other
uses for you, as I told you when we talked in the room be-
hind the picture."
	"Because I was sworn to Vodalus."
	At that his amusement mastered him. He threw back his
head and laughed, a plump and happy child who had just
discovered the secret of some clever toy. When the laughter
subsided at last into a merry gulping, he clapped his hands.
Soft though they looked, the sound was remarkably loud.
	Two creatures with the bodies of women and the heads of
cats entered. Their eyes were a span apart and as large as
plums; they strode on their toes as dancers sometimes do, but
more gracefully than any dancers I have ever seen, with some-
thing m their motions that told me it was their normal gait. I
have said they had the bodies of women, but that was not
quite true, for I saw the tips of claws sheathed in the short,
soft fingers that dressed me. In wonder, I took the hand of
one and pressed it as I have Sometimes pressed the paw of a
friendly cat, and saw the claws barred. My eyes brimmed with
tears at the sight of them, because they were shaped like that
claw that is the Claw, that once lay concealed in the gem
that I, in my ignorance, called the Claw of the Conciliator.
The Autarch saw I was Weeping, and told the woman-cats
they were hurting me and must put me down. I felt like an
infant who has just learned he will never see his mother
again.
	"We do not harm him. Legion," one protested in such a
voice as I had never heard before.
	”Put him down, I said!"
	"They have not so much as grazed my skin, Sieur," I told
him.

	With the woman-cats' support I was able to walk. It was
morning, when all shadows flee the first sight of the sun; the
tight that had wakened me had been the earliest of the new
day. Its freshness filled my lungs now, and the coarse grass
over which we walked darkened my scuffed old boots with its
dew; a breeze faint as the dim stars stirred my hair.
	The Autarch's pavilion stood on the summit of a hill. All
around lay the main bivouac of his army—tents of black and
grey, and others like dead leaves; huts of turf and pits that
led to shelters underground, from which streams of soldiers
issued now like silver ants.
	"We must be careful, you see," he said. "Though we are
some distance behind the lines here, if this place were plainer
it would invite attack from above."
	"I used to wonder why your House Absolute lay beneath
its own gardens, Sieur."
	"The need has long passed now, but there was a time when
they laid waste to Nessus."
	Below us and all around us, the silver lips of trumpets
sounded.
	"Was it only the night?" I asked. "Or have I slept a whole
day away?"
	"No. Only the night. I gave you medicines to ease your
pain and keep infection from your wound. I would not have
roused you this morning, but I saw you were awake when I
came in ... and there is no more time."

	I was not certain what he meant by that. Before I could
ask, I caught sight of six nearly naked men hauling at a rope.
My first impression was that they were bringing down some
huge balloon, but it was a flier, and the sight of its black bid!
brought vivid memories of the Autarches court.
	"I was expecting—what was its name? Mamillian."
	"No pets today. Mamillian is an excellent comrade, silent
and wise and able to fight with a mind independent of my
own, but when all is said and done, I ride him for pleasure.
We will thieve a string from the Ascians' bow and use a
mechanism today. They steal many from us."
	"Is it true that it consumes their power to land? I think
one of your aeronauts once told me that."
	"When you were the Chatelaine Thecla, you mean.
Thecla purely."

"Yes, of course. Would it be impolitic. Autarch, to ask
why you had me killed? And how you know me now?"
	"I know you because I see your face in the face of my
young friend and hear your voice in his. Your nurses know
you too. Look at them."

	I did, and saw the woman-cats' faces twisted in snarls of
fear and amazement.
	"As to why you died, I will speak of that—to him—on
board the flier . . . have we time. Now, go back. You find it
easy to manifest yourself because he is weak and ill, but I
must have him now, not you. If you will not go, there are
means."

	"Sieur-"
	"Yes, Severian? Are you afraid? Have you entered such a
contrivance before?"
	"No," I said. "But I am not afraid."
	"Do you recall your question about their power? It is true,
in a sense. Their lift is supplied by the antimaterial equivalent 
of iron, held in a penning trap by magnetic fields. Since
the anti-iron has a reversed magnetic structure, it is repelled
by promagnetism. The builders of this flier have surrounded
it with magnets, so that when it drifts from its position at the
centre it enters a stronger field and is forced back. On an
antimaterial world, that iron would weigh as much as a boulder, 
but here on Urth it counters the weight of the promatter
used in the construction of the flier. Do you follow me?"

	"I believe so, Sieur."
	"The trouble is that it is beyond our technology to seal the
chamber hermetically. Some atmosphere—a few molecules-
is always creeping in through porosities in the welds, or by
penetrating the insulation of the magnetic wires. Each such
molecule neutralizes its equivalent in anti-iron and produces
heat» and each time one does so, the flier loses an infinitesimal 
amount of lift. The only solution anyone has found is to
keep fliers as high as possible, where there is effectively no air
pressure.”
	
	The flier was nosing down now, near enough for me to
appreciate the beautiful sleekness of its lines. It had precisely
the shape of a cherry leaf.
	"I didn't understand all of that," I said. "But I would
think the ropes would have to be immensely long to allow
the fliers to float high enough to do any good, and that if the
Ascian pentadactyls came over by night they would cut them
and let the fliers drift away."
	The woman-cats smiled at that with tiny, secretive twitch-
ings of their lips.
	"The rope is only for landing. Without it, our flier would
require sufficient distance for its forward speed to drive it
down. Now, knowing we're below, it drops its cable just as a
man in a pond might extend his hand to someone who would
pull him out. It has a mind of its own, you see. Not like
Mamillian's—a mind we have made for it, but enough of a
mind to permit it to stay out of difficulties and come down
when it receives our signal."
	The lower half of the flier was of opaque black metal, the
upper half a dome so clear as to be nearly invisible—the same
substance, I suppose, as the roof of the Botanic Gardens. A
gun like the one the mammoth had carried thrust out from
the stem, and another twice as large protruded from the bow.
	The Autarch lifted one hand to his mouth and seemed to
whisper into his palm. An aperture appeared in the dome (it
was as if a hole had opened in a soap bubble) and a flight of
silver steps, as thin and insubstantial looking as the web lad-
der of a spider, descended to us. The bare-chested men had
left off pulling. "Do you think you can climb those?" the
Autarch asked.
	"If I can use my hands," I said.
	He went before me, and I crawled up ignominiously after
him, dragging my wounded leg. The seats, long benches that
followed the curve of the hull on either side, were upholstered 
in fur; but even this fur felt colder than any ice. Be-
hind me, the aperture narrowed and vanished.
	"We will have surface pressure in here no matter how high
we go. You don't have to worry about suffocating."
	"I am afraid I am too ignorant to feel the fear, Sieur."
	"Would you like to see your old bacele? They're far to the
right, but I’ll try to locate them for you."

	The Autarch had seated himself at the controls. Almost
the only machinery I had seen before had been Typhon's and
Baldanders's, and that which Master Gurloes controlled in
the Matachin Tower. It was of the machines, not of suffocation, 
that I was afraid; but I fought the fear down.
	"When you rescued me last night, you indicated that you
had not known I was in your army."
	"I made inquiries while you slept."
	"And it was you who ordered us forward?”
	"In a sense ... I issued the order that resulted in your
movement, though I had nothing to do with your bacele
directly. Do you resent what I did? When you joined, did
you think you would never have to fight?"
	We were soaring upward, calling, as I had once feared to
do, into the sky. But I remembered the smoke and the brassy
shout of the graisle, the troopers blown to red paste by the
whistling bolts, and all my terror fumed to rage. "I knew
nothing of war. How much do you know? Have you ever
really been in a battle?"
	He glanced over his shoulder at me, his blue eyes flashing.
“I’ve been in a thousand. You are two as people are usually
counted. How many do you think I am?"

It was a long while before I answered him.

XXV

The Mercy of Agia

AT FIRST I THOUGHT there could be nothing stranger than to
see the army stretch across the surface of Urth until it lay like
a garland before us, coruscant with weapons and armour,
many-hued; the winged anpiels soaring above it nearly as
high as we, circling and rising on the dawn wind.
	Then I beheld something stranger still. It was the army of
the Ascians, an army of watery whites and greyish blacks,
rigid as ours was fluid, deployed toward the northern horizon.
I went forward to stare at it.
	"I could show them to you more closely," the Autarch
said. "Still, you would see only human faces."
	I realized he was testing me, though I did not know how.
"Let me see them," I said.

	When I had ridden with the schiavoni and watched our
troops go into action, I had been struck by their look of
weakness in the mass, the cavalry all ebb and flow like a wave
that crashes with great force—then drains away as mere water,
too weak to bear the weight of a mouse, pale stuff a child
might scoop up in his hands. Even the peltasts, with their
serried ranks and crystal shields, had seemed hardly more formidable 
than toys on a tabletop. Now I saw how strong the
rigid formations of our enemy appeared, rectangles that held
machines as big as fortresses and a hundred thousand soldiers
shoulder to shoulder.

	But on a screen in the centre of the control panel I looked
under the visors of their helmets, and all that rigidity, all that
strength, melted into a kind of horror. There were old people
and children in the infantry files, and some who seemed idiots. 
Nearly all had the mad, famished faces I had observed
the day before, and I recalled the man who had broken from
his square and thrown his spear into the air as he died. I
turned away.

	The Autarch laughed. His laughter held no joy now; it was
a flat sound, like the snapping of a flag in a high wind. "Did
you see one kill himself?"
	"No," I said.
	"You were fortunate. I often do, when I look at them.
They are not permitted arms until they are ready to engage
us, and so many take advantage of the opportunity. The
spearmen drive the butts of their weapons into soft ground,
usually, then blast off their own heads. Once I saw two
swordsmen—a man and a woman—who had made a compact.
They stabbed each other in the belly, and I watched them
counting first, moving their left hands . . .one . . . two . . .
three, and dead."
	"Who are they?" I asked.
	He shot me a look I could not interpret. "What did you
say?"
	"I asked who they are, Sieur. I know they're our enemies,
that they live to the north in the hot countries, and that
they're said to be enslaved by Erebus. But who are they?"
	"Up until now I doubt you knew you did not know. Did
you?"
	My throat felt parched, though I could not have told why.
I said, "I suppose not. I'd never seen one until I came into
the lazaret of the Pelerines. In the south, the war seems very
remote."

	He nodded. "We have driven them half as far to the north
As they once drove us south, we autarchs. Who they are you
will discover in due time. . . . What matters is that you wish
to know."   paused. "Both could be ours. Both armies, not
just the one to the south. . . *. Would you advise me to take
both?" As he spoke, he manipulated some control and the
flier canted forward, its stern pointing at the sky and its bow
to the green earth, as though he meant to pour us out upon
the disputed ground.
	“I don't understand what you mean," I told him.
	"Half what you said of them was incorrect. They do not
come from the hot countries of the north, but from the continent 
that lies across the equator. But you were right when
you called them the slaves of Erebus. They think themselves
the allies of those who wait in the deep. In truth, Erebus and
his allies would give them to me if I would give our south to
them. Give you and all the rest."
	I had to grip the back of the seat to keep from falling
toward him. "Why are you telling me this?"

	The flier righted itself like a child's boat in a puddle,
bobbing.
	"Because it will soon be necessary for you to know that
others have felt what you will feel."
	I could not frame a question I dared to ask. At last I
ventured, "You said you'd tell me here why you killed
Thecla."
	"Does she not live in Severian?"
	A windowless wall in my mind fell to ruins. I shouted: "I
died!" Not realizing what I had said until the words were past
my lips.
	The Autarch took a pistol from beneath the control panel,
letting it lie across his thighs as he fumed to face me.
	"You won't need that, Sieur," I said. "I'm too weak."

	"You have remarkable powers of recovery. ... I have seen
them already. Yes, the Chatelaine Thecla is gone, save as she
endures in you, and though the two of you are always together, 
you are both lonely. Do you still seek for Dorcas? You
told me of her, you remember, when we met in the Secret
House."
	"Why did you kill Thecla?"
	"I did not. Your error lies in thinking I-am at the bottom
of everything. No one is. . . . Not I, or Erebus, or any
other. As to the Chatelaine, you are she. Were you arrested
openly?"'

	The memory came more vividly than I would have
thought possible. I walked down a corridor whose walls were
lined with sad masks of silver and entered one of the abandoned 
rooms, high-ceilinged and musty with ancient hanging. 
The courier I was to meet had not yet come. Because I
knew the dusty divans would soil my gown, I took a chair, a
spindly thing of gilt and ivory. The tapestry spilled from the
wall behind me; I recalled looking up and seeing Destiny
crowned in chains and Discontent with her staff and glass, all
worked in coloured wool, descending upon me.

	The Autarch said, "You were taken by certain officers, who
had learned that you were conveying information to your
half sister's lover. Taken secretly, because your family has so
much influence in the north, and conveyed to an almost for-
gotten prison. By the time I learned what had occurred, you
were dead. Should I have punished those officers for acting in
my absence? They are patriots, and you were a traitor."
	"I, Severian, am a traitor too." I said, and I told him, then
for the first time in detail, how I had once saved Vodalus,
and of the banquet I had later shared with him,
	When I had concluded, he nodded to himself. "Much of
the loyalty you felt for Vodalus comes, surely, from the
Chatelaine. Some she imparted to you while she was yet living, 
more after her death. Naive though you have been, I am
certain you are not so naive as to think it a coincidence that
it was she whose flesh was served to you by the corpse-eaters."
I protested, "Even if he had known of my connection with
her, there was no time to bring her body from Nessus."

	The Autarch smiled. "Have you forgotten that you told
me a moment ago that when, you had saved him, he fled in
such a craft as this? From that forest, hardly a dozen leagues
outside the City Wall, he could have flown to the centre of
Nessus, unearthed a corpse preserved by the chill soil of early
spring, and returned in less than a watch. Actually, he need
not have known so much or moved so swiftly. While you
were imprisoned by your guild, he may have learned that the
Chatelaine Thecla, who had been loyal to him even to death,
was no more. By serving her flesh to his followers, he would
strengthen them in his cause. He would require no additional
motive to take her body, and no doubt he reinterred her in
hoarded snow in some cellar, or in one of the abandoned
mines with which that region abounds. You arrived, and
wishing to bind you to him, he ordered her brought out"

	Something passed too swiftly to be seen—an instant later
The fier rocked with the violence of its motion. Sparks maneuvered 
on the screen.
	Before the Autarch could take the controls again, we
were scudding backward. There was a detonation so loud it
seemed to paralyse me, and the reverberating sky opened in a
blossom of yellow fire. I have seen a sparrow, struck by a
stone from Eata's sling, reel in the air just as we did, and fall,
like us, fluttering to one side.
	I woke to darkness, pungent smoke, and the smell of fresh
earth. For a moment or a watch I forgot my rescue and believed 
I lay on the field where Daria and I, with Guasacht,
Erblon, and the rest, had fought the Ascians.

	Someone lay near me—I heard the sigh of his breath, and
the creakings and scrapings that betray movement—but at
first I paid no heed to them, and later I came to believe that
these sounds were made by foraging animals, and grew afraid;
later still, I recalled what had happened and knew they were
surely made by the Autarch, who must have survived the
crash with me, and I called to him.

"So you still live, then." His voice was very weak. "I feared
you would die ... though I should have known better. I
could not revive you, and your pulse was but faint."
	"I have forgotten! Do you remember when we flew over
the armies? For a time I forgot it! I know now what it is to
forget."
	There was pale laughter in his voice. "Which you will now
remember always."
	"I hope so, but it fades even as we speak. It vanishes like
mist, which must itself be a forgetting. What was that
weapon that brought us down?"
	"I do not know. But listen. These are the most important
words of my life. Listen. You have served Vodalus, and his
dream of renewed empire. You still wish, do you not, that
humankind should go again to the stars?"

	I recalled something Vodalus had told me in the wood and
said, "Men of Urth, sailing between the stars, leaping from
galaxy to galaxy, the masters of the daughters of the sun."
	"They were so once . . ..and brought all the old wars of
Urth with them, and in the young suns kindled new ones.
Even they," (I could not see him^ yet I knew by his tone that
he had indicated the Ascians) "understand it must not be so
again. They wish the race to become a single individual ...
the same, duplicated to the end of number. We wish each to
carry all the race and its longings within himself. Have you
noticed the phial I wear at my neck?"
	"Yes, often."
	"It contains a pharmacon like alzabo, already mixed and
held in suspension. I am cold already below the waist. I will
die soon. Before I die .. . you must use it."
	"I cannot see you," I said. "And I can scarcely move*"
	"Nevertheless, you will find a way. You remember everything, 
and so you must recall the night you came to my
House Azure. That night someone else came to me. I was a
servant once, in the House Absolute. . . . That is why they
hate me. As they will hate you, for what you once were.
Paeon, who trained me, who was honey-steward fifty years
gone by. I knew what he was in truth, for I had met him
before. He told me you were the one .. , the next. I did not
think it would be quite so soon. ..."
	
	His voice fell away, and I began to grope for him, pulling
myself along. My hand found his, and he whispered, "Use
the knife. We are behind the Ascian line, but I have called
upon Vodalus to rescue you. . .. I hear the hoofs of his
destriers."
	The words were so faint I could hardly hear, though my ear
was within a span of his mouth. "Rest," I said. Knowing that
Vodalus hated him and sought to destroy him, I thought him
delirious.
	"I am his spy. That is another of my offices. He draws the
traitors.... I learn who they are and what they do, what they
think. That is one of his. Now I have told him the Autarch is
trapped in this flier and given him our location. He has
served me ... as my bodyguard ... before this."
	Now even I could hear the sound of feet on the ground
outside. I reached up, searching for some means by which to
signal; my hand touched fur, and I knew the flier had over-
turned, leaving us like hidden toads beneath it.

	There was a snap and the scream of tearing metal. Moon-
light, seeming bright as day but green as willow leaves, came
flooding through a rent in the hull that gaped as I watched. I
saw the Autarch, his thin white hair darkened with dried
blood.
	And above him silhouettes, green shades looking down
upon us. Their faces were invisible; but I knew those gleaming 
eyes and narrow heads belonged to no followers of
Vodalus. Frantically, I searched for the Autarch's pistol. My
hands were seized. I was drawn up, and as I emerged I could
not help thinking of the dead woman I had seen pulled from
her grave in the necropolis, for the flier had fallen on soft
ground and half buried itself. Where the Ascian bolt had
struck it, its side was torn away, leaving a tangle of ruined
wiring. The metal was twisted and burned.

	I did not have much time to look at it My captors turned
me around and around as one after another took my face in
his hands. My cloak was fingered as though they had never
seen cloth. With their large eyes and hollow cheeks, these
evzones seemed to me much like the infantry we had fought
against, but though there were women among them, there
were no old people and no children. They wore silvery caps
and shirts in place of armour, and carried strangely shaped
jezails, so long barrelled that when their butt plates rested on
the ground their muzzles were higher than their owners'
heads. As I saw the Autarch lifted from the flier, I said,
"Your message was intercepted, Sieur, I think."
	"Nevertheless, it arrived." He was too weak to point, but I
followed the direction of his eyes, and after a moment I saw
flying shapes against the moon.

	It almost seemed they slid down the beams to us, they
came so quickly and so straight. Their heads were like the
skulls of women, round and white, capped with miters of
bone and stretched at the jaws into curved bills lined with
pointed teeth. They were winged, the pinions so great they
seemed to have no bodies at all Twenty cubits at least these
pinions stretched from tip to tip, when they beat they made
no sound, but far below I felt the rush of air.

	(Once I had imagined such creatures threshing the forests
of Urth and beating flat her cities. Had my thought helped
bring these?)

	It seemed a long time before the Ascian evzones saw them.
Then two or three fired at once, and the converging bolts
caught one at their intersection and blew it to rags, then
another and another. For an instant the light was blotted
out, and something cold and flaccid struck my face, knocking
me down.

	When I could see again, half a dozen of the Ascians were
gone and the rest were firing into the air at targets almost
imperceptible to me. Something whitish fell from them. I
thought it would explode and put my head down, but in-
instead the hull of the wrecked flier rang like a cymbal. A
body—a human body broken like a doll’s-had struck it, but
there was no blood.

	One of the evzones jammed his weapon in my back and
pushed me forward. Two more were supporting the Autarch
much as the woman-cats had supported me. I discovered that
I had lost all sense of direction. Though the moon still shone,
masses of cloud veiled most of the stars. I looked in vain for
the cross and for those three stars that are, for reasons no one
understands, called The Eight and hang forever over the
southern ice. Several of the evzones were still firing when
there came blazing among us some arrow or spear that burst
in a mass of blinding white sparks.
	"That will do it," the Autarch whispered.
I was rubbing my eyes as I stumbled along, but I managed
to ask what he meant.

	"Can you see? No more can they. Our friends above . . ,
Vodalus's, I think . . . did not know our captors were so well
armed. Now there will be no more good shooting, and as
soon as that cloud drifts across the disc of Lune . .."
	I felt cold, as though a chill mountain wind had cut the
tepid air around us. A few moments before I had been in
despair to find myself among these gaunt soldiers. Now 1
would have given anything for some guarantee that I would
remain among them.

	The Autarch was to my left, hanging limp between two
evzones who had slung their long-barrelled jezails aslant their
backs. As I watched, his head lolled to one side, and I knew
he was unconscious or dead. "Legion" the woman-cats had
called him, and it did not take great intellect to combine
that name with what he had told me in the wrecked flier.
Just as Thecla and Severian had joined in me, many personalities 
were surely united in him. Ever since the night I
had first seen him, when Roche had brought me to the
House Azure (whose odd name I was now, perhaps, beginning 
to grasp) I had sensed the complexity of his thought, as
we sense, even in a bad light, the complexity of a mosaic, the
myriad, infinitesimal chips that combine to produce the illuminated 
face and staring eyes of the New Sun.

	He had said I was destined to succeed him, but for how
long a reign? Preposterous as it was in a prisoner, and in a
man so injured and so weak that a watch of rest on the coarse
grass would have seemed like paradise, I was consumed with
ambition. He had said I must eat his flesh and swallow the
drug while he still lived; and, loving him, I would have torn
my own from the grasp of my captors, if I had possessed the
strength, to claim that luxury and pomp and power. I was
Severian and Thecla united now, and perhaps the torturers'
ragged apprentice had, without fully knowing it, longed for
those things more than the young exultant held captive at
court. I knew then what poor Cyriaca had felt in the gardens
of the archon; yet if she had felt fully what I felt at that
moment, it would have burst her heart.

An instant later I was unwilling. Some part of me treasured
the privacy that not even Dorcas had entered. Deep inside
the convolutions of my mind, in the embrace of the molecules, 
Thecla and I were twined together. For others—a
dozen or a thousand, perhaps, if in absorbing the personality
of the Autarch I was also to absorb those he had incorporated 
into himself—to come 'where we lay would be for the
crowds of the bazaar to enter a bower. I clasped my heart's
companion to me, and felt myself clasped. I felt myself
clasped, and clasped my heart's companion to me.

The moon dimmed as a dark lantern does when one
presses the lever that makes its plates iris closed until there
remains no more than a point of light, then nothing. The
Ascian evzones fired their jezails in a lattice of lilac and heliotrope, 
beams that diverged high in the atmosphere and at
last pricked the clouds like coloured pins; but without effect.

There was a wind, hot and sudden, and what I can only call a
flash of black. Then the Autarch was gone, and something
huge rushed toward me. I threw myself down.
Perhaps I struck the ground, but I do not remember it. In
an instant, it seemed, I was swooping through the air, turning 
climbing surely, the world below no more than a darker
night An emaciated hand, hard as stone and three time!
human size, clutched me about the waist.

We ducked, turned, lurched, slipped sidewise down a slope
of air, then, catching a rising wind, climbed till the cold stung
and stiffened my skin. When I craned my neck to look upward, 
I could see the white, inhuman jaws of the creature
that bore me. It was the nightmare I had known months
earlier when I had shared Baldanders's bed, though in my
dream I had ridden the thing's back. Why that difference
between dream and truth should be, I cannot say. I cried out
(I do not know what) and above me the thing opened its
scimitar beak to hiss.

From above, too, I heard a woman's voice call, "Now I
have repaid you for the mine—you are still alive."

XXVI

Above the Jungle

WE LANDED BY STARLIGHT. It was like awakening; I felt that it
was not the sky but the country of nightmare I was leaving
behind. Like a falling leaf, the immense creature settled in
narrowing circles through regions of progressively warmer air
until I could smell the odour of the Jungle Garden: the mingling 
of green life and rotting wood with the perfume of
wide, waxen, unnamed blossoms.

	A ziggurat lifted its dark head above the trees—yet carried
the trees with it, for they sprouted from its crumbling walls
like fungi from a dead tree. We settled on it weightlessly,
and at once there came torches and excited voices. I was still
faint from the thin and icy air I had been breathing only
moments before.

	Human hands replaced the claws that had grasped me for
so long. We wound down ledges and stairways of broken
stone until at last I stood before a fire and saw across it the
handsome, unsmiling face of Vodalus and the heart-shaped
one of his consort, Thea, our half sister.
	"Who is this?" Vodalus asked.
	I tried to lift my arms, but they were held. "Liege," I said,
"you must know me."
	From behind me, the voice I had heard in the air answered, 
"This is the man of the price, the killer of my
brother. For him, I—and Hethor, who serves me—have served
you.”       

	"Then why do you bring him to me?" Vodalus asked. "He
is yours. Did you think that when I had seen him, I would
repent of our agreement?"
	Perhaps I was stronger than I felt myself to be. Perhaps I
only caught the man on my right off-balance; however it was,
I succeeded in twisting about, jerking him into the fire, where
his feet sent the red brands flying.
	Agia stood behind me, naked to the waist, and Hethor
behind her, showing all his rotten teeth as he cupped her
breasts. I fought to escape. She slapped me with an open
hand— there was a pull at my cheek, tearing pain, then the
warm rush of blood.

	Sitter then, I have learned that the weapon is called a lucivee, 
and that Agia had it because Vodalus had forbidden
any but his own bodyguard to carry arms in his presence. It is
no more than a small bar with rings for the thumb and fourth
finger, and four or five curved blades that can be concealed in
the palm; but few have survived its blow.
	I was one of those few, and rose after two days to find
myself shut in a bare room. Perhaps in each life one room
must become better known than any other: for prisoners, it is
always a cell. I, who had worked outside so many, thrusting in
trays of food to the disfigured and demented, now knew
again a cell of my own. What the ziggurat had once been, I
never guessed. Perhaps a prison indeed; perhaps a temple, or
the atelier of some forgotten art. My cell was about twice the
size of the one I had occupied beneath the tower of the
torturers, six paces wide and ten long. A door of ancient,
gleaming alloy stood against the wall, useless to Vodalus's
jailers because they could not lock it; a new one, roughly
made of the ironlike timbers of some jungle tree, closed the
doorway. A window I believe had never been meant for one,
a circular opening hardly bigger than my arm, pierced the
discoloured wall high up and gave light to the cell.

	Three days more passed before I was strong enough to
jump and, gripping its lower edge with one hand, pull myself
up to look out. When that day came, I saw a rolling green
country dotted with butterflies—a place so foreign to what I
had expected that I felt I might be mad and lost my hold
upon the window in my astonishment. It was, as I eventually
realized, the country of treetops, where ten-chain hardwoods
spread a lawn of leaves, seldom seen save by the birds.

	An old man with a knowledgeable, evil face had bandaged
my cheek and changed the dressings on my leg. Later he
brought a lad of about thirteen whose bloodstream he linked
with mine until the boy's lips fumed the hue of lead. I asked
the old leech where he came from, and he, apparently thinking 
me a native of these parts, said, "From the big city in the
south, in the valley of the river that drains the cold lands. It
is a longer river than yours, is the Gyoll, though its flood is
not so fierce."
"You have great skill," I said. "I've never heard of a physician 
who did as much. I feel well already, and wish you would
stop before this boy dies."

The old man pinched his cheek. "He'll recover quickly—in
time to warm my bed tonight. At his age they always do.
Nay, it's not what you think. I only sleep beside him because
the night-breath of the young acts as a restorative to those of
my years. Youth, you see, is a disease, and we may hope to
catch a mild case. How stands your wound?"

There was nothing—not even an admission, which might
have been rooted in some perverse desire to maintain an
appearance of potency—that could have convinced me so
completely as his denial. I told him the truth, that my right
cheek was numb save for a vague burning as irritating as an
itch, and wondered which of his duties the miserable boy
minded most.

The old man stripped away my bandages and gave my
wounds a second coating of the foul-smelling brown salve he
had used previously. "I'll be back tomorrow," he told me.
“Although I don't think you’ll need Mamas here again.
You’re coming along nicely. Her exultancy" (with a jerk of
the head to show this was an ironical reference to Agia's
stature) "will be most pleased."

I said, in what I sought to make an offhand way, that I
hoped all his patients were doing as well.
“You mean the delator who was brought in with you? He’s
as well as can be expected." He turned aside as he spoke, so
that I would not see his frightened expression.
On the chance that I might gain influence with him that
would enable me to aid the Autarch, I praised his understanding 
of his craft extravagantly and ended by saying that I
failed to comprehend why a physician of his ability consorted
with these wicked people.

He looked at me narrowly, and his face grew serious. "For
knowledge. There is nowhere a man in my profession can
learn as I learn here."

"You mean the eating of the dead? I have shared in that
too, though they may not have told you so."
No, no. Learned men—parrticularly those of my profession—
practice that everywhere, and usually with better effect,
since we are more selective of our subjects and confine ourselves 
to the most retentive tissues. The knowledge I seek
cannot be learned in that way, since none of the recently
dead possessed it, and perhaps no one has ever possessed it."
He was leaning against the wall now, and seemed to be
speaking as much to some invisible presence as to me. "The
pasts sterile science led to nothing but the exhaustion of
the planet and the destruction of its races. It was founded in
the mere desire to exploit the gross energies and material
substances of the universe, without regard to their attractions, 
antipathies, and eventual destinies. Look?" He thrust
his hand into the beam of sunshine that was then issuing
from my high, circular window. "Here is light. You will say
that it is not a living entity, but you miss the point that it is
more, not less. Without occupying space, it fills the universe.
It nourishes everything, yet itself feeds upon destruction. We
claim to control it, but does it not perhaps cultivate us as a
source of food? May it not be that all wood grows so that it
can be set ablaze, and that men and women are born to
kindle fires? Is it not possible that our claim to master light is
as absurd as wheats claiming to master us because we prepare 
the soil for it and attend its intercourse with Urth?"  

	"All that is well said," I told him. "But nothing to the
point. Why do you serve Vodalus?"                      
	"Such knowledge is not gained without experiment" He
smiled as he spoke, and touched the shoulder of the boy, and
I had a vision of children in flames. I hope that I was wrong.

	That had been two days before I pulled myself up to the
window. The old leech did not come again; whether he had
fallen from favour, or been dispatched to another place, or
had merely decided no further attentions were necessary, I
had no way of knowing.

Agia came once, and standing between two of Vodalus's
armed women spat in my face as she described the torments
she and Hethor had contrived for me when I was strong
enough to endure them. When she finished, I told her quite
truthfully that I had spent most of my life assisting at operations 
more terrible, and advised her to obtain trained assistance, 
at which she went away.
Thereafter for the better part of several days I was left
alone. Each time I woke, I felt myself almost a different
person, for in that solitude the isolation of my thoughts in
the dark intervals of sleep was nearly sufficient to deprive me
of my sense of personality. Yet all these Severians and
Theclas sought freedom.
The retreat into memory was easy; we made it often, reliving 
those idyllic days when Dorcas and I had journeyed
toward Thrax, the games played in the hedge-walled maze
behind my father's villa and in the Old Yard, the long walk
down the Adamnian Steps that Agia and I had taken before I
knew her for my enemy.

But often too, I left memory and forced myself to think,
sometimes limping up and down, sometimes only waiting for
insects to enter the window so that I might for my amusement 
pluck them from the air. I planned escape, though until 
my circumstances altered there seemed no possibility of it;
I pondered passages from the brown book and sought to
match them to my own experiences in order to produce, insofar 
as possible, some general theory of human action that
would be of benefit to me should I ever free myself.    
For if the leech, who was an elderly man, could still pursue
knowledge despite the certainty of imminent death, could
not I whose death appeared more imminent still, take some
comfort in the surety that it was less certain?

Thus I sifted the actions of the magicians, and of the man
who had accosted me outside the jacal of the sick girl, and of
many other men and women I had known, seeking for a key
that would unlock all hearts.

I found none that could be expressed in few words: "Men
and women do as they do because of thus and so...” None
of the ragged bits of metal fit—the desire for power, the lust
of love, "the need for reassurance, or the taste for seasoning
life with romance. But I did find one principle, which I came
to call that of Primitivity, that I believe is widely applicable,
and which, if it does not initiate action, at least seems to
influence the forms that action takes. I might state it this
way: Because the prehistoric cultures endured for so many
chiliads, they have shaped our heritage in such a way as to
cause us to behave as if their conditions obtained today.

For example, the technology that once might have permitted 
Baldanders to observe all the actions of the hetman of
the lakeside village has been dust now for thousands of years;
but during the eons of its existence, it laid upon him a spell,
as it were, by which it remained effective though no longer
extant.

	In the same way, we all have in us the ghosts of long-
vanished things, of fallen cities and marvellous machines. The
story I once read to Jonas when we were imprisoned (with
how much less anxiety and how much more companionship)
showed that clearly, and I read it over again in the ziggurat
The author, having need for some sea-born fiend like Erebus
or Abaia, in a mythical setting, gave it a head like a ship—
which was the whole of its visible body, the remainder being
underwater—so that it was removed from protoplasmic reality 
and became the machine that the rhythms of his mind
demanded.

	While I amused myself with these speculations, I became
increasingly aware of the impermanent nature of Vodalus's
occupation of the ancient building. Though the leech came
no more, as I have said, and Agia never visited me again, I
frequently heard the sound of running feet in the corridor
outside my door and occasionally a few shouted words.
	Whenever such sounds came, I put my unbandaged ear to
the planks; and in fact I often anticipated them, sitting that
way for long periods in the hope of overhearing some snatch
of conversation that would tell me something of Vodalus's
plans. I could not help but think then, as I listened in vain,
of the hundreds in our oubliette who must have listened to
me when I carried their food to Drotte, and how they must
have strained to overhear the fragments of conversation that
drifted from Thecla's cell into the corridor, and thus into
their own cells, when I visited her.

And what of the dead? I own that I thought of myself, at
times, almost as dead. Are they not locked below ground in
chambers smaller than mine was, in their millions of mil-
lions? There is no category of human activity in which the
dead do not outnumber the living many times over. Most
beautiful children are dead. Most soldiers, most cowards.
The fairest women and the most learned men—all are dead.
Their repose in caskets, in sarcophagi, beneath arches
Of rude stone, everywhere under the earth. Their spirits
it our minds, ears pressed to the bones of our foreheads.
Who can say how intently they listen as we speak, or for what
word?

XXVII

Before Vodalus

ON THE MORNING of the sixth day, two women came for me. I
had slept very little the night before. One of the blood bats
common in those northern jungles had entered my room by
the window, and though I had succeeded in driving it out
and staunching the blood, it had returned again and again,
attracted, I suppose, by the odour of my wounds. Even now I
cannot see the vague green darkness that is diffused moon-
light without imagining I see the bat crawling there like a big
spider, then springing into the air.

	The women were as surprised to find me awake as I was to
see them; it was just dawn. They made me stand, and one
bound my hands while the other held her dirk to my throat.
She asked how my cheek was healing, however, and added
that she had been told I was a handsome fellow when I was
brought in.
	"I was almost as near to death then as I am now," I said to
her. The truth was that though the concussion I had suffered
when the flier crashed had healed, my leg, as well as my face,
was still, giving me considerable pain.
	The women brought me to Vodalus; not, as I had more or
less expected, somewhere in the ziggurat or on the ledge
where he had sat in state with Thea, but in a clearing em-
braced on three sides by slow green water. It was a moment
or two—I had to stand waiting while some other business was
conducted—before I realized that the course of this river was
fundamentally to the north and east, and that I had never
seen northeastward-flowing water before; all streams, in my
previous experience, ran south or southwest to join south-
western flowing Gyoll.

	At last Vodalus inclined his head toward me, and I was
brought forward. When he saw that I could scarcely stand,
he ordered my guards to seat me at his feet, then waved them
back out of hearing distance. "Your entrance is somewhat
less impressive than that you made in the forest beyond
Nessus," he said.
	I agreed. "But, Liege, I come now, as I did then, as your
Servant. Just as I was the first time you met me, when I saved
your neck from the axe. If I appear before you in bloody rags
and with bound hands, it is because you treat your servants
so.”
	"Certainly I would agree that securing your wrists seems a
trifle excessive in your condition." He smiled faintly. "Is it
painful?”

	"No. The feeling is gone."
	"Still, the cords aren't needed." Vodalus stood and drew a
slender blade, and leaning over me, flicked my bonds with
the point.
	I flexed my shoulders and the last strands parted. A thousand 
needles seemed to pierce my hands.
	When he had taken his seat again, Vodalus asked if I were
not going to thank him.
	"You never thanked me. Liege. You gave me a coin instead. 
I think I have one here somewhere." I fumbled in my
sabretache for the money I had been paid by Guasacht.
	"You may keep your coin. I'm going to ask you for much
more than that. Are you ready to tell me who you are?"
	"I’ve always been ready to do that. Liege. I'm Severian,
formerly a journeyman of the guild of torturers."
"But are you nothing else besides a former journeyman of
that guild?"
“No."
	Vodalus sighed and smiled, then leaned back in his chair
and sighed again. "My servant Hildegrin always insisted you
were important. When I asked him why, he had any number
of speculations, none of which I found convincing. I thought
he was trying to get silver from me for a little easy spying. Yet
he was right."
	"I have only been important once to you. Liege."
	"Each time we meet, you remind me that you saved my
life once. Did you know that Hildegrin once saved yours? It
was he who shouted 'Run!' to your opponent when you dueled 
in the city. You had fallen, and he might have stabbed
you."
	"Is Agia here?" I asked. "She'll try to kill you if she hears
that"
	"No one can hear you but myself. You may tell her later, if
you like. She will never believe you."
	"You can't be sure of that."
	He smiled more broadly. "Very well, I'll turn you over to
her. You can then test your theory against mine."
	"As you wish."

	He brushed my acquiescence aside with an elegant motion
of one hand. "You think you can stalemate me with your
willingness to die. Actually you're offering me an easy exit
from a dilemma. Your Agia came to me with a very valuable
thaumaturgist in her train, and asked as the price of his ser-
vice and her own only that you, Severian of the Order of the
Seekers for Truth and Penitence, should be put into her
hands. Now you say you are that Severian the Torturer and
no one else, and it is with great embarrassment that I resist
her demands."
	"And whom do you wish me to be?" I asked.
	"I have, or I should say I had, a most excellent servant in
the House Absolute. You know him, of course, since it was to
him that you gave my message." Vodalus paused and smiled
again. "A week or so ago we received one from him. It was
not to be sure, openly addressed to me, but I had seen to it
not long before that he was aware of our location, and we
were not far from him. Do you know what he said?"
I shook my head.
“That’s odd, because you must have been with him at the
time. He said he was in a wrecked flier—and that the Autarch
was on the flier with him. He would have been an idiot to
have sent such a message in the ordinary course of things,
because he gave his location—and he was behind our lines, as
he must have known."
“You are a part of the Ascian army, then?"
“We serve them in certain scouting capacities, yes. I see
you are troubled by the knowledge that Agia and the thaumaturgist 
killed a few of their soldiers to take you. You need
not be. Their masters value them even less than I do, and it
was not the time for negotiation.”

“But they did not capture the Autarch." I am not a good
liar, but I was too exhausted, I think, for Vodalus to read my
face easily.

He leaned forward, and for a moment his eyes glowed as
though candles burned in their depths. "He was there, then.
How wonderful. You have seen him. You have ridden in the
royal flier with him."
I nodded once more.
"You see, ridiculous though it sounds, I feared you were
he. One never knows. An Autarch dies and another takes his
place, and the new Autarch may be there for half a century
or a fortnight. There were three of you then? No more?"
"No."
“What did the Autarch look like?-Let me have every detail."
I did as he asked, describing Dr. Talos as he had appeared
in the part.
"Did he escape both the thaumaturgists creatures and the
Ascians? Or do the Ascians have him? Perhaps the woman
and her paramour are holding him for themselves.”
	"I told you the Ascians did not take him."
	Vodalus smiled again, but beneath his glowing eyes his
twisted mouth suggested only pain. "You see," he repeated,
"for a time I thought you might be the one. We have my
servant, but he has suffered a head injury and is never conscious 
for more than a few moments. He will die very shortly,
I'm afraid. But he has always told me the truth, and Agia says
that you were the only one with him."
	"You think that I am the Autarch? No."
	"Yet you are changed from the man I met before."
	"You yourself gave me the alzabo, and the life of the
Chatelaine Thecla. I loved her. Did you think that to thus
ingest her essence would leave me unaffected? She is with me
always, so that I am two, in this single body. Yet I am not the
Autarch, who in one body is a thousand."

	Vodalus answered nothing, but half closed his eyes as
though he were afraid I would see their 6re. There was no
sound but the lapping of the river water and the much-
muted voices of the little knot of armed men and women,
who talked among themselves a hundred paces off and
glanced from time to time at us. A macaw shrieked, fluttering
from one tree to another.

"I would still serve you," I told Vodalus, "if you would
permit it." I was not certain it was a lie until the words had
left my lips, and then I was bewildered in mind, seeking to
understand how those words, which would have been true in
the past for Thecla and for Severian too, were now false for
me.
" 'The Autarch, who in one body is a thousand,' " Vodalus
quoted me. "That is correct, but how few of us know it."

XXVIII

On the March

TODAY, THIS BEING the last before I am to leave the House
Absolute, I participated in a solemn religious ceremony. Such
rituals are divided into seven orders according to their importance, 
or as the heptarchs say, their "transcendence” —something 
I was quite ignorant of at the time of which I was
writing a moment ago. At the lowest level, that of Aspiration, 
are the private pieties, including prayers pronounced
privately, the casting of a stone upon a cairn, and so forth.
The gatherings and public petitionings that I, as a boy,
thought constituted the whole of organized religion, are actually 
at the second level, which is that of Integration. What
we did today belonged to the seventh and highest, the level
of Assimilation.

In accordance with the principle of circularity, most of the
accretions gathered in the progression through the first six
were now dispensed with. There was no music, and the rich
vestments of Assurance were replaced by starched robes
whose sculptural folds gave all of us something of the air of
icons. It is no longer possible for us to carry out the ceremony, 
as once we did, wrapped in the shining belt of the
galaxy; but to achieve the effect as nearly as possible, Urth’s
attractive field was excluded from the basilica. It was a novel
sensation for me, and though I was unafraid, I was reminds
again of that night I spent among the mountains when I felt
myself on the point of falling off the world—something I will
undergo in sober earnest tomorrow. At times the ceiling
seemed a floor, or (what was to me far mote disturbing) a
wall became the ceiling, so that one looked upward through
its open windows to see a mountainside of grass that lifted
itself forever into the sky. Startling as it was, this vision was
no less true than that we commonly see.                  I

	Each of us became a sun; the circling, ivory skulls were our
planets. I said we had dispensed with music, yet that was not
entirely true, for as they swung about us there came a faint,
sweet humming and whistling, caused by the flow of air
through their eye sockets and teeth; those in nearly circular
orbits maintained an almost steady note, varying only slightly
as they rotated on their axes; the songs of those in elliptical
orbits waxed and waned, rising as they approached me, sinking 
to a moan as they receded.                            

	How foolish we are to see in those hollow eyes and marble 
calottes only death. How many friends are among them! The
brown, book, which I carried so far, the only one of the possessions 
I took from the Matachin Tower that still remains
with me, was sewn and printed and composed by men and
women with those bony faces; and we, engulfed by their
voices, now on behalf of those who are the past, offered ourselves 
and the present to the fulgurant light of the New Sun.

	Yet at that moment, surrounded by the most meaningful
and magnificent symbolism, I could not but think how different 
the actuality had been when we had left the ziggurat on
the day after my interview with Vodalus and had marched (I
under the guard of six women, who were sometimes forced to
carry me) for what must have been a week or more through
pestilential jungle. I did not know—and still do not know—
whether we were fleeing the armies of the Commonwealth or
Ascians who had been Vodalus's allies. Perhaps we were
merely seeking to rejoin the major part of the insurgent
force. My guards complained of the moisture that dripped
from the trees to eat at their weapons and armour like acid,
and of suffocating heat; I felt nothing of either. I remember
looking down once at my thigh and noticing with surprise
that the flesh had fallen away so that the muscles there stood
out like cords and I could see the sliding parts of my knee as
one sees the wheels and shafts of a mill.

 The old leech was with us, and now visited me two or three
times each day. At first he tried to keep dry bandages on my
face when he saw the effort was futile, he removed them all
and contented himself with plastering the wounds there with
salve. After that, some of my women guards refused to
look at me, and if they had reason to speak to me did so with
downcast eyes. Others seemed to take pride in their ability to
confront my torn face, standing straddle-legged (a pose they
appeared to consider warlike) and resting their left hands
upon the hilts of their weapons with studied casualness.

I talked with them as often as I could. Not because I
desired them—the illness that had come with my wounds had
taken all such desire from me—but because in the midst of
the straggling column I was lonely in a way I had never been
when I was alone in the war-torn north or even when I had
been locked in my ancient, mould-streaked cell in the ziggurat,
and because in some absurd corner of my mind I still hoped
to escape. I questioned them about every subject of which
they might conceivably have knowledge, and I was endlessly
amazed to find how few were the points on which our minds
coincided. Not one of the six had joined Vodalus because of
an appreciation of the difference between the restoration of
progress he sought to represent and the stagnation of the
Commonwealth. Three had merely followed some man into
the ranks; two had come in the hope of gaining revenge for
some personal injustice/and one because she had been fleeing 
from a detested stepfather. All but the last now wished
they had not joined. None knew with any precision where we
had been or had the slightest idea where we were going. 
	For guides our column had three savages: a pair of young
men who might have been brothers or even twins, and a 
much older one, twisted, I thought, by deformities as well as 
age, who perpetually wore a grotesque mask. Though the first
two were younger and the third much older, all three of them
recalled to me the naked man I had once seen in the Jungle 
Garden. They were as naked as he and had the same dark,
metallic-looking skin and straight hair. The younger two carried 
cerbotanas longer than their outstretched arms and dart 
bags hand-knotted of wild cotton and dyed a burnt umber,
doubtless with the juice of some plant. The old man had a
staff as crooked as himself, topped with the dried head of a
monkey.

	A covered palanquin whose place in the column was considerably 
more advanced than my own bore the Autarch,
whom my leech gave me to understand was still alive; and
one night when my guards were chattering among themselves 
and I sat crouched over our little fire, I saw the old
guide (his bent figure and the impression of an immense head
conferred by his mask were unmistakable) approach this palanquin 
and slip beneath it. Some time passed before he scuttled away. 
This old man was said to be an uturuncu, a
shaman capable of assuming the form of a tiger.

	Within a few days of our leaving the ziggurat, without
encountering anything that might be called a road or even a
path, we struck a trail of corpses. They were Ascians, and
they had been stripped of their clothing and equipment, so
that their starved bodies seemed to have dropped from the
air to the places where they lay. To me, they appeared to be
about a week dead; but no doubt decay had been accelerated

by the dampness and heat, and the actual time was much
less. The cause of death was seldom apparent.
	Until then we had seen few animals larger than the grotesque 
beetles that buzzed about our fires by night. Such
birds as called from the treetops remained largely invisible,
and if the blood-bats visited us, their inky wings were lost in
the smothering dark. Now we moved, as it seemed, through
an army of beasts drawn to the corpse trail as flies are to a
dead sumpter. Hardly a watch passed without our hearing
the sound of bones crushed by great jaws, and by night green
and scarlet eyes, some of them two spans apart, shone outside
our little circles of firelight. Though it was preposterous to
suppose these carrion-gorged predators would molest us, my
guards doubled their sentries; those who slept did so in their
corslets, with curtelaxes in their hands.

With each new day the bodies were fresher, until at last
not all were dead. A madwoman with cropped hair and staring 
eyes stumbled into the column just ahead of our party,
shouted words no one could understand, and fled among the
trees. We heard cries for help, screams, and ravings, but
Vodalus permitted no one to turn aside, and on the afternoon 
of that day we plunged—much in the same sense
we might earlier have been said to have plunged into the
jungle—into the Ascian horde.

Our column consisted of the women and supplies, Vodalus
himself and his household, and a few of his aides with their
retinues. In all it surely amounted to no more than a fifth of
his force; but if every insurgent he could have called to his
banner had been there, and every fighter become a hundred,
they would still have been among that multitude as a cupful
of water in Gyoll.

Those we encountered first were infantry. I recalled that
the Autarch had told me their weapons were kept from them
until the time of battle; but if it were so, their officers must
have thought that time to be at hand, or nearly. I saw thou-
sands armed with the ransieur, so that at length I came to
believe that all their infantry was equipped in that way; then,
as night was falling, we overtook thousands more carrying
demilunes.

	Because we marched faster than they, we moved more
deeply into their force; but we camped sooner than they (if
they camped at all) and all that night, until at last I fell
asleep, I heard their hoarse cries and the shuffling of their
feet. In the morning we were again among their dead and
dying, and it was a watch or more before we overtook the
stumbling ranks.

	These Ascian soldiers had a rigidity, a will-less attachment
to order, that I have never seen elsewhere, and that appeared
to me to have no roots in either spirit or discipline as I understand 
them. They seemed to obey because they could not
conceive of any other course of action. Our soldiers nearly
always carry several arms—at the very least an energy weapon
and a long knife (among the schiavoni I was exceptional in
not possessing such a knife in addition to my falchion). But I
never saw an Ascian with more than one, and most of their
officers bore no weapon at all, as if they regarded actual fighting 
with contempt.

XXIX

Autarch of the Commonwealth

BY THE MIDDLE of the day, we had again passed all those
whom we had passed the afternoon before and came upon
the baggage train. I think all of us were amazed to discover
that the enormous force we had seen was no more than the
rear guard of an army inconceivably greater.

	The Ascians used uintathers and platybelodons as beasts of
burden. Mixed with them were machines with six legs, machines 
apparently built to serve that purpose. So far as I
could see, the drivers made no distinction between these devices 
and the animals; if a beast lay down and could not be
made to rise again, or a machine fell and did not right itself,
its load was distributed among those nearest to hand, and it
was abandoned. There appeared to be no effort to slaughter
the beasts for their meat or to repair or take parts from the
machines.

	Late in the afternoon some great excitement passed down
our column, though neither I nor my guards could discover
what it- was. Vodalus himself and several of his lieutenants
came hurrying by, and afterward there was much coming and
going between the end of the column and its head. When
dark came we did not camp, but continued to tramp through
the night with the Ascians. Torches were passed back to us,
and since I had no weapons to carry and was somewhat
stronger than I had been, I carried them, feeling almost as
though I commanded the six swords who surrounded me.

	About midnight, as nearly as I could judge, we halted. My
guards found sticks for a fire, which we kindled from a torch.
Just as we were about to lie down, I saw a messenger rouse
the palanquin bearers ahead of us and send them blundering
forward in the dark. They were no sooner gone than he loped
back to us and held a quick, whispered conversation with the
sergeant of my guards. At once my hands were bound (as
they had not been since Vodalus had cut them free) and we
were hurrying after the palanquin. We passed the head of
the column, marked by the Chatelaine Thea's little pavilion,
without pausing, and were soon wandering among the myriad
Ascian soldiers of the main body.

	Their headquarters was a dome of metal. I suppose it must
have folded or collapsed in some way as a tent does, but it
appeared as permanent and solid as any building, black externally 
but glowing with a sourceless, pale light within when
the side opened to admit us. Vodalus was there. Stiff and
deferential; beside him the palanquin stood with its curtains
opened to show the immobile body of the Autarch. At the
centre of the dome, three women sat around a low table.
Neither then nor later did they look at Vodalus, or the Au-
tarch in his palanquin, or at me when I was brought forward,
save for an occasional glance. There were stacks of papers
before them, but they did not look at those at all—only at
one another. In appearance they were much like the other
Ascians I had seen, save that their eyes were saner and they
were less starved looking.

	"Here he is," Vodalus said. "Now you see them both before 
you."
	One of the Ascians spoke to the other two in their own
tongue. Both nodded and the one who had spoken said,
"Only he who acts against the populace need hide his face."
	There was a lengthy pause, then Vodalus hissed at me,
	“Answer her?"
	"Answer what? There has been no question."
	The Ascian said, "Who is the friend of the populace? He
who aids the populace. Who is the enemy of the populace?"
	Speaking very rapidly, Vodalus asked, "To the best of your
knowledge are you, or is this unconscious man here, the
leader of the peoples of the southern half of this hemisphere?"
	"No," I said. It was an easy lie, since from what I had seen,
the Autarch was the leader of very few in the Commonwealth. 
To Vodalus I added under my breath, "What kind
foolishness is this? Do they believe I would tell them if I
were the Autarch?”
	“All we say is being transmitted to the north."
	One of the Ascians who had not spoken previously spoke
now. Once she gestured in our direction. When she was finished, 
all three sat deathly still. I had the impression that
they heard some voice inaudible to me, and that they did not
dare move while it spoke; but that may have been mere imagination 
on my part. Vodalus fidgeted, I shifted my position
to put a little less weight on my injured leg, and the Autarch’s
narrow chest heaved to the unsteady rhythm of his
breathing, but the three of them remained as immobile as
figures in a painting.
	At last the one who had spoken first said, "All persons
belong to the populace." At that the others seemed to relax.
	"This man is ill," Vodalus said, looking toward the Autarch,” 
and he has been a useful servant to me, though I
suppose his usefulness is now ended. The other I have promised 
to one of my followers."
"The merit of sacrifice falls on him who without thought
to his own convenience offers what he has toward the service
of the populace." The Ascian woman's tone made it clear
that no further argument was possible.

Vodalus looked toward me and shrugged, then turned on
his heel and strode out of the dome. Almost at once a file of
Ascian officers entered carrying lashes.

	We were imprisoned in an Ascian tent perhaps twice the
size of my cell in the ziggurat. There was a fire there but no
bedding, and the officers who had carried in the Autarch had
merely dropped him on the ground beside it. After working
my hands free, I tried to make him comfortable, turning him
over on his back as he had been in the palanquin and arranging 
his arms at his sides.
	About us the army lay quiet, or at least as quiet as an
Ascian army ever is. From time to time someone far off cried
out—in sleep, it seemed—but for the most part there was no
sound but the slow pacing of the sentries outside. I cannot
express the horror that the thought of going north to Ascia
evoked in me then. To see only the Ascians’ wild, starved
faces and to encounter myself, no doubt for the remainder of
my life, whatever it was that had driven them mad, seemed
to me a more horrible fate than any the clients in the
Matachin Tower were ever forced to endure. I tried to lift
the skirt of the tent, thinking that the sentries could do nothing 
worse than take my life; but the edges were welded to the
ground by some means I did not understand. All four walls
were of a slick, tough substance I could not tear, and Miles's
razor had been taken from me by my six female guards. I was
about to rush out the door when the Autarch's well-remembered 
voice whispered, "Wait." I dropped to my knees beside 
him, suddenly afraid we would be overheard.

	"I thought you were—sleeping."
	"I suppose I have been in a coma most of the time. But
when I was not, I feigned, so Vodalus would not question
me. Are you going to escape?"
	"Not without you, Sieur. Not now. I had given you up for
dead."
	"You were not far wrong ... certainly not by so much as a
day. Yes, I think that is best, you must escape. Father Inire is
with the insurgents. He was to bring you what is necessary,
then help you get away. But we are no longer there ... are
we? He may not be able to aid you. Open my robe. What
you first require is thrust into my waistband."

	I did as he asked; the flesh my fingers brushed was as cold
as a corpse's. Near his left hip I saw a hilt of silvery metal no
thicker than a woman's finger. I drew the weapon forth; the
mace was not half a span in length, but thick and strong, and
of that deadly sharpness I had not felt since Baldanders's
mace had shattered Terminus Est
	"You must not go yet," the Autarch whispered.
	“I will not leave you while you live," I said. "Do you doubt
me?"
	"We will both live, and both go. You know the abomination
"His hand dosed on mine. "The eating of the dead,
to devour their dead lives. But there is another way you do
not know, and another drug. You must take it, and swallow
the living cells of my forebrain."
	I must have drawn away, for his hand gripped my own
harder.
	"When you lie with a woman, you thrust your life into
hers so that perhaps there will be new life. When you do as I
have commanded you, my life and the lives of all those who
live in me will be continued in you. The cells will enter your
own nervous system and multiply there. The drug is in the
vial I wear at my neck, and that blade will split the bones of
my skull like pine. I have had occasion to use it, and I promise 
it Do you recall how you swore to serve me when I shut
the book? Use the knife now, and go as quickly as you can."
	I nodded and promised I would.
	"The drug will be stronger than any you have known, and
though all but mine will be faint, there will be hundreds of
personalities. . . . We are many lives."
	"I understand," I said.
	“The Ascians march at dawn. Can there be more than a
single watch remaining of the night?"
"I hope that you will live it out, Sieur, and many more.
That you'll recover."
	"You must kill me now, before Urth turns to face the sun.
Then I will live in you . . . never die, I live by mere volition 
now. I am relinquishing my life as I speak."
	To my utter surprise, my eyes were streaming with tears.
"I've hated you since I was a boy, Sieur. I've done you no 
harm, but I would have harmed you if I could, and now I'm
sorry."

	His voice had faded until it was softer than the chirping of
a cricket. "You were right to hate me, Severian. I stand ... as
you will stand .. .for so much that is wrong."

	"Why?" I asked. "Why?" I was on my knees beside him.
	"Because all else is worse. Until the New Sun comes, we
have but a choice of evils. All have been tried, and all have 
failed. Goods in common, the rule of the people . . . everything. 
You wish for progress? The Ascians have it. They are
deafened by it, crazed by the death of Nature till they are
ready to accept Erebus and the rest as gods. We hold human
kind stationary ... in barbarism. The Autarch protects the
people from the exultants, and the exultants... shelter them
from the Autarch. The religious comfort them. We have
closed the roads to paralyse the social order. ..."          
	His eyes fell shut. I put my hand upon his chest to feel the
faint stirring of his heart.                                  
	"Until the New Sun . .."                          
	This was what I had sought to escape, not Agia or Vodalus
or the Ascians. As gently as I could, I lifted the chain from 
his neck, unstoppered the vial and swallowed the drug. Then 
with that short, stiff blade I did what had to be done.      

	When it was over, I covered him from head to toe with his 
own saffron robe and hung the empty vial about my own
neck. The effect of the drug was as violent as he had warned
me it would be. You that read this, who have never, perhaps, 
possessed more than a single consciousness, cannot know
what it is to have two or three, much less hundreds. They
lived in me and were joyful, each in his own way, to find they
had new life. The dead Autarch, whose face I had seen in
scarlet ruin a few moments before, now lived again. My eye
and hands were his, I knew the work of the hives of the bee
of the House Absolute and the sacredness of them, who steer
by the sun and fetch gold of Urth's fertility. I knew his course
to the Phoenix Throne, and to the stars, and back. His mind
was mine and filled mine with lore whose existence I had
never suspected and with the knowledge other minds had
brought to his. The phenomenal world seemed dim and
vague as a picture sketched in sand over which an errant wind
veered and moaned. I could not have concentrated on it if I
had wished to, and I had no such wish.

The black fabric of our prison tent faded to a pale dove-
grey, and the angles of its top whirled like the prisms of
kaleidoscope. I had fallen without being aware of it and lay
near the body of my predecessor, where my attempts to rise
resulted in nothing more than the beating of my hands upon
the ground.

How long I lay there I do not know. I had wiped the
knife now, still, my knife—and concealed it as he had. I
could vividly picture a self of dozens of superposed images
slitting the wall and slipping out into the night. Severian,
Thecla, myriad others all escaping. So real was the thought
that I often believed I had done it; but always, when I ought
to have been running between the trees, avoiding the exhausted
sleepers of the army of the Ascians, I found myself
instead in the familiar tent, with the draped body not far
from my own.

Hands clasped mine. I supposed that the officers had returned
with their lashes, and tried to see and to rise so I
would not be struck. But a hundred random memories intruded
themselves like the pictures the owner holds up to us
in rapid succession in a cheap gallery: a footrace, the towering
pipes of an organ, a diagram with labelled angles, a woman
riding in a cart.
	Someone said, "Are you all right? What's happened to
you?" I felt the spittle dribbling from my lips, but no words
came.

XXX

The Corridors of Time

SOMETHING STRUCK MY FACE a tingling blow.
	"What's happened? He's dead. Are you drugged?"
	"Yes. Drugged." Someone else was speaking, and after a
moment I knew who it was: Severian, the young torturer.
	But who was I?
	"Get up. We've got to get out."
	"Sentry."
	"Sentries," the voice corrected us. "There were three of
them. We killed them."

	I was walking down a stair white as salt, down to nenuphars 
and stagnant water. Beside me walked a suntanned girl
with long and slanting eyes. Over her shoulder peered the
sculptured face of one of the eponyms. The carver had
worked in jade; the effect was that of a face of grass.
	"Is he dying?"
	"He sees us now. See his eyes."
	I knew where I was. Soon the pitchman would thrust his
head through the doorway of the tent to tell me to be gone.
"Above ground," I said. "You told me I would see her above
ground. But that was easy. She is here."
"We must go." The green man took my left arm and Agia
my right, and they led me out.

	We walked a long way, just as I had envisioned myself
running; stepping sometimes over sleeping Ascians.
	"They keep little guard," Agia whispered. "Vodalus told
me their leaders are so well obeyed they can scarcely conceive
of treacherous attack, In the war, our soldiers surprise them
often."
	I did not understand and repeated, " *0ur soldiers . . '"
like a child.
	"Hethor and I will no longer fight for them. How could
we, after we have seen them? My business is with you."
	I was beginning to find myself again, the minds that made
up my mind all falling into place. I had been told once that
autarch meant "self-ruler," and I glimpsed the reason that
title had come into being. I said, "You wanted to kill me.
Now you are freeing me. You could have stabbed me." I saw
a crooked dagger from Thrax quivering in Casdoe's shutter.
	"I could have killed you more readily than that. Hethor's
mirrors have given me a worm, no longer than your hand,
that glows with white fire. I have only to fling it, and it kills
and crawls back to me—one by one I slew the sentries so. But
this green man would not permit it, and I would not wish it.
Vodalus promised me your agony spread over weeks, and I
will not have less."
	"You're taking me back to him?"
	She shook her head, and in the faint, grey dawn light that
had crept through the leaves I saw her brown curls bounce on
her shoulders as they had when I had watched her raise the
gratings outside the rag shop. "Vodalus is dead. With the
worm at my command, do you think I would let him cheat
me and live? They would have taken you away. Now I will let
you go free—because I have some inkling of where you will.
go—and in the end you will come into my hands again, as you
did when our pteriopes took you from the evzones."
	"You are rescuing me because you hate me then," I said,
and she nodded. Vodalus, I suppose, had hated that part of
me that had been the Autarch in the same way.
	Or rather, he had hated his conception of the Autarch, for
he had been loyal, in so far as he was capable of it, to the real
Autarch, whom he supposed his servant. When I had been a
boy in the kitchens of the House Absolute, there was a cook
who so despised the armigers and exultants for whom he
prepared food that, in order that he should never have to
bear the indignity of their reproaches, he did everything with
a feverish perfection. He was eventually made chief of the
cooks of that wing. I thought of him, and while I did, Agia's
touch on my arm, which had become almost imperceptible as
we hastened along, vanished altogether. When I looked for
her, she was gone; I was alone with the green man.

	"How did you come to be here?" I asked him. "You nearly
lost your life in these times, and I know you cannot thrive
under our sun."
	He smiled. Though his lips were green, his teeth were
white; they gleamed in the faint light. "We are your children, 
and we are not less honest than you, though we do not
kill to eat. You gave me half your stone, the stone that
gnawed the iron and set me free. What did you think I
would do when the chain no longer bound me?"
	"I supposed you would return to your own day," I said.
The spell of the drug had faded sufficiently for me to fear our
talk would wake the Ascian soldiers. Yet I could see none-
only the dark, towering boles of the jungle hardwoods.
	"We requite our benefactors. I have been running up and
down the corridors of Time, seeking for a moment in which
you also were imprisoned, that I might free you."
	When I heard that, I did not know what to say. At last I
told him, "You cannot imagine how strange I feel now,
knowing that someone has been searching my future, looking
for an opportunity to do me good. But now, now that we are
quits, surely you understand that I did not help you because
I believed you could help me."

	"You did—you desired my help in finding the woman who
just left us, the woman whom since that occasion you have
found several times. However, you ought to know that I was
not alone: There are others questing there—1 shall send two
of them to you. And you and I are not yet at a balance, for
although I found you captive here, the woman found you
also and would have freed you without my help. So I shall see
you again."

	As he said these words, he let go of my arm and stepped in
that direction I had never seen until I watched the ship vanish 
into it from the top of Baldanders's castle and could only
see, it seemed, when there was something there. Immediately
he turned and began to run, and despite the dimness of the
dawn sky I could see his running figure for a long time, illuminated 
by intermittent but regular flashes. At last he
faded to a point of darkness; but then, just when I expected
that point to disappear utterly, it began to grow, so that I
had the impression of something huge rushing toward me
down that strangely angled tunnel.

	It was not the ship I had seen but another and much
smaller one. Still, it was so large that when it moved at last
entirely info our field of consciousness, its gunwales touched
several of the thick trunks at once. The hull dilated, and a
pont, much shorter than the steps that had descended from
the Autarch's flier, slid out to touch the ground.

Down it came Master Malrubius and my dog, Triskele.
At that moment I regained a command of my personality
that I had not truly possessed since I had drunk alzabo with
Vodalus and eaten Thecla's flesh. It was not that Thecla was
gone (and indeed I could not wish her gone, though I knew
that in many respects she had been a cruel and foolish
woman) or that my predecessor and the hundred minds that
had been enveloped in his had vanished. The old, simple
structure of my single personality was no more; but the new,
complex structure no longer dazzled and bewildered me. It
was a maze, but I was the owner and even the builder of that
maze, with the print of my thumb on every passageway. Malrubius 
touched me, and then taking my wondering hand in
his laid it gently against his own cool cheek.
"You are real, then," I said.
"No. We are almost what you think us—powers from
above the stage. Only not quite deities. You are an actor, I
believe."
I shook my head. "Don't you know me. Master? You
taught me when I was a boy, and I have become a journey-
man of the guild."
"Yet you are an actor too. You have as much right to think
of yourself in that way as the other. You had been performing 
when we spoke to you in the field near the Wall, and the
next time we saw you, at the House Absolute, you were acting 
again. It was a good play; I should have liked to see the
end."
"You were in our audience?"
Master Malrubius nodded. "As an actor, Severian, you
surely know the phrase I hinted at a moment ago. It refers to
some supernatural force, personified and brought onto the
stage in the last act in order that the play may end well.
None but poor playwrights do it, they say, but those who say
so forget that it is better to have a power lowered on a rope,
and a play that ends well, than to have nothing, and a play
that ends badly. Here is our rope—many ropes, and a stout
ship too. Will you come aboard?"
I said, "Is that why you are as you are? In order that I will
trust you?"
"Yes, if you like." Master Malrubius nodded, and Triskele,
who had been sitting at my feet and looking up into my face,
ran with his bumping, three-legged gallop halfway up the
pont and fumed to look back at me, his stump tail wagging
and his eyes pleading as a dog's eyes do.

“I know you can't be what you seem. Perhaps Triskele is,
but I saw you buried. Master. Your face is no mask, but
there's a mask somewhere, and under that mask you're what
the common people call a cacogen, although Dr. Talos explained 
to me once that you prefer to be called Hierodules."

	Again Malrubius laid his hand on mine. "We would not
deceive you if we could. But I hope that you will deceive
yourself, to your good and all Urth's. Some drug now dulls
your mind—more than you realize—just as you were under
the sway of sleep when we spoke to you in that meadow near
the Wall. If you were undrugged now, perhaps you would
lack the courage to come with us, even if you saw us, even if
your reason convinced you that you should."
	I said, "So far it hasn't convinced me of that, or of anything 
else. Where do you want to take me, and why do you
want to take me there? Are you Master Malrubius or a Hiero-
dule?" As I spoke I became more conscious of the trees,
standing as soldiers stand while the officers of the staff discuss
some point of strategy. Night was upon us still, but it had
become a thinner darkness, even here.
	"Do you know the meaning of that word Hierodule you
use? I am Malrubius, and no Hierodule. Rather I serve those
the Hierodules serve. Hierodule means, holy slave. Do you
think there can be slaves without masters?"
	"And you take me—"   '
	"To Ocean, to preserve your life." As if he had read my
thought, he continued, "No, we do not take you to the paramours 
of Abaia, those who spared and succoured you because
you had been a torturer and would be Autarch. In any event,
you have much worse to fear. Soon the slaves of Erebus, who
held you captive here, will discover you have escaped; and
Erebus would hurl that army, and many others like it, into
the abyss to capture you. Come." He drew me onto the pont.

XXXI

The Sand Garden

THAT SHIP WAS worked by hands I could not see. I had supposed 
we would float up as the flier had or vanish like the
green man down some corridor in time. Instead we rose so
quickly I felt sick; alongside I heard the crashing of great
limbs.

	"You are the Autarch now," Malrubius told me. "Do you
know it?" His voice seemed to blend with the whistle of the
wind in the rigging.
	"Yes. My predecessor, whose mind is now one of mine,
came to office as I have. I know the secrets, the words of
^authority, though I haven't had time yet to think about
them. Are you returning me to the House Absolute?"

	He shook his head. "You are not ready. You believe that
all the old Autarch knew is available to you now. You are
correct—but it is not yet in your grasp, and when the tests
come, you will encounter many who will slay you should you
falter. You were nurtured in the Citadel of Nessus—what are
the words for its castellan? How are the man-apes of the
treasure mine to be commanded? What phrases unlock the
vaults of the Secret House? You need not tell me, because
these things are the arcana of your state, and I know them in
any case. But do you yourself know them, without thinking
long?”                           

	The phrases I required were present in my mind, yet I
failed when I sought to pronounce them to myself. Like little
fish, they slipped aside, and in the end I could only lift my
shoulders.
	"And there is one thing more for you to do. One adventure
more, beside the waters."
	"What is it?"
	"If I were to tell you, it would not come to pass. Do not be
alarmed. It is a simple thing, over in a breath. But I must
explain a great deal, and I have not much time in which to
doit. Have you faith in the coming of the New Sun?"

	As I had looked within myself for the words of command,
so I looked within for my belief; and I could no more find it
than I had found them. "I have been taught so all my life," I
said. "But by teachers-the true Malrubius was One-who
I think did not themselves believe. So I cannot now say
whether I believe or not"
	"Who is the New Sun? A man? If a man, how can it be
that every green thing is to grow darkly green again at his
coming, and the granaries full?"

	If was unpleasant to be drawn back to things half heard in
childhood now, when I was just beginning to understand that
I had inherited the Commonwealth. I said, "He will be the
Conciliator come again-his avatar, bringing justice and
peace. In pictures he is shown with a shining face, like the
sun. I was an apprentice of the torturers, not an acolyte, and
that is all I can tell you." I drew my cloak about me for
shelter from the cold wind. Triskele was huddled at my feet.
	“And which does humanity need more? Justice and peace?
or a New Sun?"
	"At that I tried to smile. "It has occurred to me that though
you cannot possibly be my old teacher; you may incorporate
his personality as I do the Chatelaine Thecla's. If that is so,
you already know my answer. When a client is driven to the
utmost extremity, it is warmth and food and ease from pain
he wants. Peace and justice come afterward. Rain symbolizes
mercy and sunlight charity, but rain and sunlight are better
than mercy and charity. Otherwise they would degrade the
things they symbolize."

	"To a large extent you are correct. The Master Malrubius
you knew lives in me, and your old Triskele in this Triskele.
But that is not important now. If there is time, you will
understand before we go." Malrubius closed his eyes and
scratched the grey hair on his chest, just as I remembered
him doing when I was among the youngest of the apprentices. 
"You were afraid to board this little ship, even when I
told you it would not carry you away from Urth, or even to a
continent other than your own. Suppose I were to tell you—I
do not tell you, but suppose I did—that it would in fact take
you from Urth, past the orbit of Phaleg, which you call Verthandi, 
past Bethor and Aratron, and at last into the outer
dark, and across the dark to another place. Would you be
frightened, now that you have sailed with us?"

"No man enjoys saying he is afraid. But yes, I would."
"Afraid or not, would you go if it might bring the New
Sun?"

It seemed then that some icy spirit from the gulf had already 
wrapped its hands about my heart. I was not deceived,
nor, I thinly did he mean I should be. To answer yes would
be to undertake the journey. I hesitated, in silence except for
the roar of my own blood in my ears.
“You need not answer now if you cannot. We will ask
again. But I can tell you nothing more until you answer."
For a long time I stood on that strange deck, sometimes
walking up and down, blowing on my fingers in the freezing
wind while all my thoughts crowded around me. The stars
watched us, and it seemed to me that Master Malrubius's
eye were two more such stars.

At last I returned to him and said, "I have long wanted ...
if it would bring the New Sun, I would go.”

"I can give you no assurance. If it might bring the New
Sun, would you then? Justice and peace, yes, but a New
Sun—such an outpouring of warmth and energy upon Urth as
she knew before the birth of the first man?"

	Now came the strangest happening I have to tell in all this
already over long tale; yet there was no sound or sight associated 
with it, no speaking beast or gigantic woman. It was only
that as I heard him I felt a pressure against my breastbone, as
I bad felt it in Thrax when I knew I should be going north
with the daw. I remembered the girl in the jacal. "Yes," I
said. "If it might bring the New Sun, I would go."
	"What if you were to stand trial there? You knew him who
was autarch before you, and in the end you loved him. He
lives in you. Was he a man?"
	"He was a human being—as you, I think, are not. Master."
	"That was not my question, as you know as well as I. Was
he a man as you are a man? Half the dyad of man and
woman?"
	I shook my head.
	"So you will become, should you fail the trial. Will you
still go?”

Triskele laid His scarred head against my knee, the ambassador 
of all crippled things, of the Autarch who had carried a
tray in the House Absolute and lain paralysed in the palanquin 
waiting to pass to me the humming voices in his skull,
of Thecla writhing under the Revolutionary, and of the
woman even I, who had boasted I could forget nothing, had
nearly forgotten, bleeding and dying beneath our tower. Per-
haps after all it was my discovery of Triskele, which I have
said changed nothing, that in the end changed everything. I
did not have to answer this time; Master Malrubius saw my
answer in my face.
	"You know of the chasms of space, which some call the
Black Pits, from which no speck of matter or gleam of light
ever returns. But what you have not known until now is that
these chasms have their counterparts in White Fountains,
from which matter and energy rejected by a higher universe
flow in endless cataract into this one. If you pass—if our race
is judged ready to reenter the wide seas of space—such a
white fountain will be created in the heart of our sun."

	"But if I fail?"
	"If you fail, your manhood will be taken from you, so that
you cannot bequeath the Phoenix Throne to your descendants. 
Your predecessor also accepted the challenge."
	"And failed. That is clear from what you said."
	"Yes. Still, he was braver than many who are called heroes,
the first to go in many reigns. Ymar, of whom you may have
heard, was the last before him."
	"Yet Ymar too must have been judged unfit. Are we going
now? I can see only stars beyond the rail."
	Master Malrubius shook his head. "You are not looking as
carefully as you think. We are already near our destination."

	Swaying, I walked to the railing. Some of my unsteadiness
had its origin in the motion of the ship, I think; but some,
too, came from the lingering effects of the drug.

	Night still covered Urth, for we bad flown swiftly to the
west, and the faint dawn that had come to the Ascian army
in the jungle had not yet appeared here. After a moment I
saw that the stars over the side seemed to slip, and slide in
their heaven, with an uneasy and wavering motion. Almost it
seemed that something moved among the stars as the wind
moves through wheat. Then I thought. It is the sea . . . and
at that moment Master Malrubius said, "It is that great sea
called Ocean."
	"I have longed to visit it."
	"In a short time you will be standing at its margin. You
asked when you would leave this planet. Not until your rule
here is secure. When the city and the House Absolute obey
you and your armies have repelled the incursions of the slaves
of Erebus. Within a few years, perhaps. But perhaps not for
decades. We two will come for you."

	"You are the second tonight to tell me I will see you
again," I said. Just as I spoke, there was a slight shock, like
the sensation one feels when a boat is brought skillfully to
the dock. I walked down the pont and out upon sand. and
Master Malrubius and Triskele followed me. I asked if they
would not stay with me for a time to counsel me.
	"For a short time only. If you have further questions, you
must ask them now."

	The silver tongue of the pont was already creeping back
into the hull. It seemed that it had hardly come home before
the ship lifted itself and scudded down the same aperture in
reality into which the green man had run.
	"You spoke of the peace and justice that the New Sun is
to bring. Is there justice in his calling me so far? What is the
test I must pass?"
	"It is not he who calls you. Those who call hope to summon 
the New Sun to them," Master Malrubius said, but I
did not understand him. Then he recounted to me in brief
words the secret history of Time, which is the greatest of all
secrets, and which I will set down here in the proper place.
When he had finished, my mind reeled and I feared I would
forget all he had said, because it seemed too great a thing for
any living man to know, and because I had learned at last
that the mists close for me as for other men.

	"You will not forget, you above all. At Vodalus’s banquet,
you said you felt sure you would forget the foolish passwords
he taught you in imitation of the words of authority. But you
did not. You will remember everything. Remember too, not
to be afraid. It may be that the epic penance of mankind is at
an end. The old Autarch told you the truth-we will not go
to the stars again until we go as a divinity, but that time may
not be far off now. In you all the divergent tendencies of our
race may have achieved synthesis."

	Triskele stood on his hind legs for a moment as he used to,
then spun around and galloped down the starlit beach, three
paws scattering the little cat's-paw waves. When he was a
hundred strides off he turned and looked back at me, as
though he wished me to follow.

	I took a few steps toward him, but Master Malrubius said,
"You cannot go where he is going, Severian. I know you
think us cacogens of a kind, and for a time I felt it would not
be wise to wholly undeceive you, but I must do so now. We
are aquastors, beings created and sustained by the power of
the imagination and the concentration of thought."
	"I have heard of such things," I told him. "But I have
touched you."
	"That is no test. We are as solid as most truly false things
are—a dance of particles in space. Only the things no one can
touch are true, as you should know by now. Once you met a
woman named Cyriaca, who told you tales of the great thinking 
machines of the past. There is such a machine on the ship
in which we sailed. It has the power to look into your mind."
	I asked, "Are you that machine, then?" A feeling of loneliness 
and vague fear grew in me.

	"I am Master Malrubius, and Triskele is Triskele. The machine 
looked among your memories and found us. Our lives
in your mind are not so complete as those of Thecla and the
old Autarch, but we are there nevertheless, and live while you
live. But we are maintained in the physical world by the
energies of the machine, and its range is but a few thousand
years."
	
	As he spoke these final words, his flesh was already fading
into bright dust. For a moment it glinted in the cold star-
light. Then it was gone. Triskele remained with me a few
breaths longer, and when his. yellow coat was already silvered
and blowing away in the gentle breeze, I heard his bark.
	Then I stood alone at the edge of the sea I had longed for
so often; but though I was alone, I found it cheering, and
breathed the air that is like no other, and smiled to hear the
soft song of the little waves. Land—Nessus, the House Absolute, 
and all the rest—lay to the east; west lay the sea; I
walked north because I was reluctant to leave it too soon,
and because Triskele had run in that direction, along the
margin of the sea. There great Abaia might wallow with his
women, yet the sea was older far, and wiser than he; we human 
beings, like all the life of the land, had come from the
sea; and because we could not conquer it, it was ours always.
The old, red sun rose on my right and touched the waves
with his fading beauty, and I heard the calling of the sea
tods, the innumerable birds.

	By the time the shadows were short, I was tired. My face
and my wounded leg pained me; I had not eaten since noon
of the previous day and had not slept save for my trance in
the Ascian tent. I would have rested if I could, but the sun
was warm, and the line of cliffs beyond the beach offered no
shade. At last I followed the tracks of a two-wheeled cart and
came to a clump of wild roses growing from a dune. There I
halted, and seated myself in their shadow to take off my
boots and pour out the sand that had entered their splitting
seams.

	A thorn caught my forearm and broke from its branch,
remaining embedded in my skin, with a scariet drop of blood,
no bigger than a grain of millet, at its tip. I plucked it out-
then fell to my knees.                            
	It was the Claw.
	The claw perfect, shining black, just as I had placed it
under the altar stone of the Pelerines. All that bush and all
the other bushes growing with it were covered with white
blossoms and these perfect Claws. The one in my palm
flamed with transplendent light as I looked at it.

	I had surrendered the Claw, but I had retained the little
leather sack Dorcas had sewn for it I took it from my
sabretache and hung it about my neck in the old way, with
the claw once more inside. It was only when I had thus put
it away that I recalled seeing just such a bush in the Botanic
Gardens at the beginning of my journey.
	
	No one can explain such things. Since I have come to the
House Absolute, I have talked with the heptarch and with
various acaryas; but they have been able to tell me very little
save that the Increate has chosen before this to manifest
himself in these plants.

	At that time I did not think of it, being filled with won-
der—but may it not be that we were guided to the unfinished
Sand Garden? I carried the Claw even then, though I did not
know it; Agia had already slipped it under the closure of my
sabretache. Might it not be that we came to the unfinished
garden so that the Claw, flying as it were against the wind of
Time, might make its farewell? The idea is absurd. But then,
all ideas are absurd.

	What struck me on the beach—and it struck me indeed, so
that I slavered as at a blow—was that if the Eternal Principle 
had rested in that curved thorn I had carried about my
neck across so many leagues, and if it now rested in the new
thorn (perhaps the same thorn) I had only now put there,
then it might rest in anything, and in fact probably did rest
in everything, in every thorn on every bush, in every drop of
Water in the sea. The thorn was a sacred Claw because all
thorns were sacred Claws; the sand in my boots was sacred
sand because it came from a beach of sacred sand. The
cenobites treasured up the relics of the sannyasins because
the sannyasins had approached the Pancreator. But every-
thing had approached and even touched the Pancreator, because 
everything had dropped from his hand. Everything was
a relic. All the world was a relic. I drew off my boots, that had
travelled with me so far, and threw them into the waves that I
might not walk shod on holy ground.

XXXII

TheSamru

AND I WALKED ON as a mighty army, for I felt myself in the
company of all those who walked in me. I was surrounded by
a numerous guard; and I was the guard about the person of
the monarch. There were women in my ranks, smiling and
grim, and children who ran and laughed and, daring Erebus
and Abaia, hurled seashells into the sea.

	In half a day I came to the mouth of Gyoll, so wide that
the farther shore was lost in distance. Three-sided isles lay in
it, and through them vessels with billowing sails picked their
way like clouds among the peaks of the mountains. I hailed
one passing the point on which I stood and asked for passage
to Nessus. A wild figure I must have appeared, with my
scarred face and tattered cloak and every rib showing.

	Her captain sent a boat for me nonetheless, a kindness I
have not forgotten. I saw fear and awe in the eyes of the
rowers. Perhaps it was only at the sight of my half-healed
wounds; but they were men who had seen many wounds, and
I recalled how I had felt when I first saw the face of the
Autarch in the House Azure, though he was not a tall man,
Or even a man, truly.

	Twenty days and nights the Sammru made her way up
Gyoll. We sailed when we could, and rowed, a dozen sweeps
to a side, when we could not. It was a hard passage for the
sailors, for though the current is almost imperceptibly slow, it
runs day and night, and so long and so wide are the meanders
of the channel, that an oarsman often sees at evening the spot
from which he laboured When the beating of the drum first
roused the watch.

	For me it was as pleasant as a yachting expedition. Although 
I offered to make sail and row with the rest, they
would not permit it. Then I told the captain, a sly-faced man
who looked as though he lived by bargaining as much as by
sailing, that I would pay him well when we reached Nessus;
but he would not hear of it, and insisted (pulling at his mustache, 
which he did whenever he wished to show the greatest
sincerity) that my presence was reward enough for him and
his crew. I do not believe they guessed I was their Autarch,
and for fear of such as Vodalus had been I was careful to
drop no hints to them; but from my eyes and manner they
seemed to feel I was an adept.

	The incident of the captain's sword must have strengthened 
their superstition. It was a craquemarte, the heaviest of
the sea swords, with a blade as wide as my palm, sharply
curved and graven with stars and suns and other things the
captain did not understand. He wore it when we were close
enough to a riverbank village or another ship to make him
feel the occasion demanded dignity; but for the most part he
left it lying on the little quarterdeck. I found it there, and
having nothing else to do but watch sticks and fruit skins bob
in the green water, I took out my half stone and sharpened it.
After a time he saw me testing the edge with my thumb and.
began to boast of his swordsmanship. Since the craquemarte
was at least two-thirds the weight of Terminus Est, with a
short grip, it was amusing to hear him; I listened with delight
for half a watch or so. As it happened there was a hempen
cable about the thickness of my wrist coiled nearby, and
when he began to lose interest in his own inventions, I had
him and the mate hold up three cubits or so between them.
The craquemarte severed it like a hair; then before either of
them could recover breath, I threw it flashing toward the sun
and caught it by the hilt.

	As I fear that incident shows too well, I was beginning to
feel better. There is nothing to enthrall the reader in rest,
fresh air, and plain food; but they can work wonders against
wounds and exhaustion.

	The captain would have given me his cabin if I had let
him, but I slept on deck rolled in my cloak, and on our one
night of rain found shelter under the boat, which was stowed
bottom-up amidships. As I learned on board, it is the nature
of breezes to die when Urth turns her back to the sun; so I
went to sleep, on most nights, with the chant of the rowers in
my ears. In the morning I woke to the rattle of the anchor
chain.

	Sometimes, though, I woke before morning, when we lay
close to shore with only a sleepy lookout on deck. And sometimes 
the moonlight roused me to find us gliding forward
under reefed sails, with the mate steering and the watch
asleep beside the halyards. On one such night, shortly after
we had passed through the Wall, I went aft and saw the
phosphorescence of our wake like cold fire on the dark water
and thought for a moment that the man-apes of the mine
were coming to be cured by the Claw, or to gain an old
revenge. That, of course, was not truly strange—only the
foolish error of a mind still half in dream. What happened
the next morning was not truly strange either, but it affected
me deeply.

The oarsmen were rowing a slow beat to get us around a
leagues-long bend to a point where we could catch what little
wind there was. The sound of the drum and the hissing of
the water falling from the long blades of the sweeps are hypnotic, 
I think because they are so similar to the beating of
one's own heart in sleep and the sound the blood makes as it
moves past the inner ear on its way to the brain.

	I was standing by the rail looking at the shore, still marshy
here where the plains of old have been flooded by silt-choked
Gyoll; and it seemed to me that I saw forms in the hillocks
and hummocks, as though all that vast, soft wilderness had a
geometrical soul (as certain pictures do) that vanished when I
stared at it, then reappeared when I took my eyes away. The
captain came to stand beside me, and I told him I had heard
that the ruins of the city extended far downriver and asked
when we would sight them. He laughed and explained that
we had been among them for the past two days, and loaned
me his glass so I could see that what I had taken for a stump
was in actuality a broken and tilted column covered with
moss.

	At once everything—walls, streets, monuments—seemed to
spring from hiding, just as the stone town had reconstructed
itself while we watched from the tomb roof with the two
witches. No change had occurred outside my own mind, but
I had been transported, far faster than Master Malrubius's
ship could have taken me, from the desolate countryside to
the midst of an ancient and immense ruin.

	Even now I cannot help but wonder how much any of us
see of what is before us. For weeks my friend Jonas had
seemed to me only a man with a prosthetic hand, and when I
was with Baldanders and Dr. Talos, I had overlooked a hundred 
clues that should have told me Baldanders was master.
How impressed I was outside the Piteous Gate because Baldanders 
did not escape the doctor when he could.

	As the day wore on, the ruins became plainer and plainer
still. At each loop of the river, the green walls rose higher,
from ever firmer ground. When I woke the next morning,
some of the stronger buildings retained their upper stories.
Not long afterward, I saw a little boat, newly built, tied to an
ancient pier.. I pointed it out to the captain, who smiled at
my naivety and said, "There are families who live, grandson
following grandsire, by sifting these ruins."

	"So I've been told, but that cannot be one of their boats.
Its too small to take much loot away in."
	"Jewelry or coins. No one else goes ashore here. There's no
law—the pillagers murder each other, and anyone else who
lands."
	"I must go there. Will you wait for me?"
	He stared at me as though I were mad. "How long?"
	"Until noon. No later."
	"Look," he said, and pointed. "Ahead is the last big bend.
Leave us here and meet us there, where the channel bows
around again. It will be afternoon before we get there."

	I agreed, and he had the Samru's boat put into the water
for me, and told four men to row me ashore. As we were
about to cast off, he unbelted his craquemarte and handed it
to me, saying solemnly, "It has stood by me in many a grim
fight. Go for their heads, but be careful not to knick the edge
on their belt buckles."
	I accepted his sword with thanks, and told him I had always 
favoured the neck. "That's good," he said, "if you don't
have shipmates by that might be hurt when you swing it
flat," and he pulled his mustache.

	Sitting in the stern, I had ample opportunity to observe
the faces of my rowers, and it was plain they were nearly as
frightened of the shore as they were of me. They laid us
alongside the small boat, then nearly capsized their own in
their haste to be away. After determining that what I had
seen from the rail was in fact what I had taken it to be, a
wilted scarlet poppy left lying on the single seat, I watched
them row back to the Samru and saw that though a light
wind now favoured the billowing mains'l, the sweeps had been
brought out and were beating a quick-stroke. Presumably the
captain planned to round the long meander as swiftly as he
could; if I were not at the spot he had pointed out, he could
proceed without me, telling himself (and others, should others 
inquire) that it was I who had failed our appointment and
not he. By parting with the craquemarte he had further
salved his conscience.

	Stone steps very like those I had swum from as a boy had
been cut into the sides of the pier. Its top was empty, nearly
as lush as a lawn with the grass that had rooted between its
stones. The ruined city, my own city of Nessus though it was
the Nessus of a time now long past, lay quiet before me. A
few birds wheeled overhead, but they-were as silent as the
sun-dimmed stars. Gyoll, whispering to itself in midstream,
already seemed detached from me and the empty hulks of
buildings among which I limped. As soon as I was out of sight
of its waters, it fell silent, like some uncertain visitor who
ceases to speak when we step into another room.

	It seemed that this could hardly be the quarter from which
(as Dorcas had told me) furniture and utensils were taken. At
first I looked in often at doors and windows, but nothing had
been left within but wrack and a^ few yellow leaves, drifted
already from the young trees that were overturning the paving 
blocks. Nor did I see any sign of human pillagers, although 
there were animal droppings and a few feathers and
scattered bones.

	I do not know how far inland I walked. It seemed a league,
though it may have been much less. Losing the transportation 
of the Samru did not much bother me. I had walked
from Nessus most of the way to the mountain war, and although 
my steps were uneven still, my bare feet had been
toughened on the deck. Because I had never really become
accustomed to carrying a sword at my waist, I drew the
craquemarte and put it on my shoulder, as I had often borne
Terminus Est. The summer sunshine held that special, luxurious 
warmth it gains when a suggestion of chill has crept
into the morning air. I enjoyed it, and would have enjoyed it
more, and the silence and solitude too, if I had not been
thinking of what I would say to Dorcas, if I found her, and
what she might say to me.
	Had I only known, I might have saved myself that concern;
	I came upon her sooner than I could reasonably have expected, 
and I did not speak to her—nor did she speak to me,
or so far as I could judge, even see me.

	The buildings, which had been large and solid near the
river, had long since given way to lesser, f alien-in structures
that must once have been houses and shops. I do not know
what guided me to hers. There was no sound of weeping,
though there may have been some small, unconscious noise,
the creaking of a hinge or the scrape of a shoe. Perhaps it was
no more than the perfume of the blossom she wore, because
when I saw her she had an arum, freckled white and sweet as
Dorcas herself had always been, thrust into her hair. No
doubt she had brought it there for that purpose, and had
taken out the wilted poppy and cast it down when she had
tied up her boat. (But I have gotten ahead of my story.)

	I tried to enter the building from the front, but the rotting
floor was falling into the foundation in places as the arches
under it collapsed. The storeroom at the rear was less open;
the silent, shadowed walk, green with ferns, had been a dangerous 
alley once, and shopkeepers had put small windows
there or none. Still, I found a narrow door hidden under ivy,
a door whose iron had been eaten like sugar by the rain,
whose oak was falling into mould. Stairs nearly sound led to
the floor above.

	She was kneeling with her back to me. She had always been
slender; now her shoulders made me think of a wooden chair
with a woman’s jupe hung over it. Her hair, like the palest
gold, was the same—unchanged since I had seen her first in
the Garden of Endless Sleep. The body of the old man who
had poled the skiff there lay on a bier before her, his back so
straight, his face, in death, so youthful, that I hardly knew
him. On the floor near her was a basket—not small yet not
large either, and a corked water jar.

	I said nothing, and when I had watched her for a time I
went away. If she had been there long, I would have called to
her and embraced her. But she had just arrived, and I saw
that it was impossible. All the time I had spent in journeying
from Thrax to Lake Diuturna, and from the lake to the war,
and all the time I had spent as a prisoner of Vodalus, and in
sailing up Gyoll, she had spent in returning here to her place,
where she had lived forty years ago or more though it had
now fallen into decay.

	As I had myself, an ancient buzzing with antiquity as a
corpse with flies. Not that the minds of Thecla and the old
Autarch, or the hundred contained in his, had made me old.
It was not their memories but my own that aged me, as I
thought of Dorcas shivering beside me on the brown track of
floating sedge, both of us cold and dripping, drinking together 
from Hildegrin's flask like two infants, which in fact
we had been,

	I paid no heed to where I walked after that. I went straight
down a long street alive with silence, and when it ended at
last. I turned at random. After a time I reached Gyoll, and
looking downstream saw the Samru riding at anchor at the
meeting place. A basilosaur swimming up from the open sea
would not have astounded me more.

	In a few moments I was mobbed by smiling sailors. The
captain wrung my hand, saying, "I was afraid we'd come too
late. In my mind's eye I could see you struggling for your life
in sight of the river, and us still half a league off."

	The mate, a man so abysmally stupid that he thought the
captain a leader, clapped me on the back and shouted, "He'd
have given 'em a good fight!"

 

XXXIII

The Citadel of the Autarch 

THOUGH EVERY LEAGUE that separated me from Dorcas tore
my heart, it was tetter than I can tell you. to be back on the
Samru again after seeing the empty, silent south.
	Her decks were of the impure but lovely white of new-cut
wood, scrubbed daily with a great mat called a bear—a sort of
scouring pad woven from old cordage and weighed with the
gross bodies of our two cooks, whom the crew had to drag
over the last span of planking before breakfast. The crevices
between the planks were sealed with pitch, so that the decks
seemed terraces paved in a bold, fantastic design.
	She was high in the bow, with a stem that curled back
upon her, Eyes, each with a pupil as big as a plate and a sky-
blue iris of the brightest obtainable paint, stared out across
the green waters to help find her way; her left eye wept the
anchor.
	Forward of her stem, held there by a triangular wooden
brace itself carved, pierced, gilded, and painted, was her figurehead, 
the bird of immortality. Its head was a woman's, the
face long and aristocratic, the eyes tiny and black, its expressionlessness 
a magnificent commentary on the sombre tranquillity 
of those who will never know death. Painted wooden
feathers grew from its wooden scalp to clothe its shoulders
and cup its hemispherical breasts; its arms were wings lifted
up and back, their tips reaching higher than the termination
of the stem and their gold and crimson primary feathers partially 
obscuring the triangular brace. I would have thought it
a creature wholly fabulous—as no doubt the sailors did—had I
not seen the Autarch's anpiels.                    

	A long bowsprit passed to starboard of the stem, between
the wings of the samru. The foremast, only slightly longer
than this bowsprit, rose from the forecastle. It was raked for-
ward to give the foresail room, as though it had been pulled
out of true by the forestay and the labouring jib. The main-
mast stood as straight as the pine it had once been, but the
mizzenmast was raked back, so the mastheads of the three
masts were considerably more separated than their bases,
Each mast held a slanting yard made by lashing together two
tapering spars that had once been entire saplings, and each of
these yards carried a single, triangular, rust-coloured sail.
	The hull itself was painted white below the water and
black above it, save for the figurehead and eyes I have already
mentioned, and the quarterdeck rail, where scarlet had been
used to symbolize both the captain's high state and his sanguinary 
background. This quarterdeck actually occupied no
more than a sixth of the Samru's length, but the wheel and
the binnacle were there, and it was there that one had the
finest view, short of that provided by the rigging. The ship's
only real armament, a swivel gun not much larger than
Mamillian's, was there, ready alike for freebooters and mutineers. 
Just aft of the sternrail, two iron posts as delicately
carved as the horns of a cricket lifted many-faceted lanterns,
one of palest red, the other viridescent as moonlight.

	I was standing by these lanterns the next evening, listening
to the thudding of the drum, the soft splashing of the sweep-
blades, and the rowers' chant, when I saw the first lights
along the riverbank. Here was the dying edge of the city, the
home of the poorest of the poorest of the poor—which only-
meant that the living edge of the city was here, that death's
dominion ended here. Human beings were preparing to sleep
here, perhaps still sharing the meal that marked the day's
end. I saw a thousand kindnesses in each of those lights, and
heard a thousand fireside stories. In some sense I was home
again; and the same song that had urged me forth in the
spring now bore me back:

			Row, brothers, row!
			The current is against us.
			Row, brothers, row!
			Yet God is for us.
			Row, brothers, row!
			The wind is against us.
			Row, brothers, row!
			Yet God is for us.
	
I could not help but wonder who was setting out that night.

	Every long story, if it be told truly, will be found to contain 
all the elements that have contributed to the human
drama since the first rude ship reached the strand of Lune:
not only noble deeds and tender emotion, but grotesquerie,
bathos, and so on. I have striven to set down the unembellished 
truth here, without the least worry that you, my
reader, would find some parts improbable and others insipid;
and if the mountain war was the scene of high deeds (belonging 
more to others than to me), and my imprisonment by
Vodalus and the Ascians a time of horror, and my passage on
the Samru an interlude of tranquillity, then we are come to
the interval of comedy.

We approached that part of the city where the Citadel
stands— which is southern but not the southernmost—under
sail and by day. I watched the sun-gilt eastern bank with
great care, and had the captain land me on those slimy steps
where I had once swum and fought. I hoped to pass through
the necropolis gate and so enter the Citadel through the
breach in the curtain wall that was near the Matachin Tower;
but the gate was closed and locked, and no convenient party
of volunteers arrived to admit me. Thus I was forced instead
to walk many chains along the margin of the necropolis, and
several more along the curtain wall to the barbican. 

	There I encountered a numerous guard who carried me
before their officer, who, when I told him I was a torturer,
supposed me to be one of those wretches that, most often at
the onset of winter, seek to gain admission to the guild. He
decided (very properly, had he been correct) to have me
whipped; and to prevent it I was forced to break the thumbs
of two of his men, and then demand while I held him in the
way called the kitten and ball that he take me to his superior,
the castellan.

	I admit I was somewhat awed at the thought of this official, 
whom I had seldom so much as seen in all the years I
had been an apprentice in the fortress he commanded. I
found him an old soldier, silver-haired and as lame as I. The
officer stammered out his accusations while I stood by: I had
assaulted and insulted (not true) his person, maimed two of
his men, and so on. When he had finished, the castellan
looked from me to him and back again, dismissed him, and
offered me a seat.

	"You are unarmed," he said. His voice was hoarse but soft,
as though he had strained it shouting commands.
	I admitted that I was.
	"But you have seen fighting, and you have been in the
jungle north of the mountains, where no battle has been
since they turned our flank by crossing the Uroboros."
	"That's true," I said. "But how can you know?"
	"That wound in your thigh came from one of their spears.
I've seen enough to recognize them. The beam flashed up
through the muscle, reflected by the bone. You might have
been up a tree and been stuck by a hastarus on the ground, I
suppose, but the most likely thing is that you were mounted
and charging infantry. Not a cataphract, or they wouldn't
have got you so easily. The demilances?"
	"Only the light irregulars."
	"You'll have to tell me about that later, because you're a
city man from your accent, and they're eclectics and suchlike
for the most part. You have a double scar on your foot too,
white and clean, with the marks half a span apart. That was a
blood bat's bite, and they don't come that large except in the
true jungle at the waist of the world. How did you get
there?"
	"Our flier crashed. I was taken prisoner."
	"And escaped?"
	In a moment more I would have been forced to talk of
Agia and the green man, and of my journey from the jungle
to the mouth of Gyoll, and those were high matters which I
did not wish to disclose thus casually. Instead of an answer, I
pronounced the words of authority applicable to the Citadel
and its castellan.

	Because he was lame, I would have had him remain seated
if I could; but he sprang to his feet and saluted, then
dropped to his knees to kiss my hand. He was thus, though
he could not have known it, the first to pay me homage, a
distinction that entitles him to a private audience once a
year—an audience he has not yet requested and perhaps
never will.

	For me to proceed now, clothed as I was, was impossible.
The old castellan would have died of a stroke had I demanded it, 
and he was so concerned for my safety that any
incognito would have been accompanied by at least a platoon 
of lurking halberdiers. I soon found myself arrayed in
lapis lazuli jazerant, cothurni, and a stephane, the whole set
off by an ebony baculus and a voluminous damassin cape
embroidered with rotting pearls. All these things were indescribably 
ancient, having been taken from a store preserved
from the period when the Citadel was the residence of the
autarchs.

	Thus in place of entering our tower, as I had intended, in
the same cloak in which I had left it, I returned as an unrecognizable 
being in ceremonial fancy dress, skeletally thin,
lame, and hideously scarred. It was with this appearance that
I entered Master Palaemon's study, and I am certain I must
almost have frightened him to death, since he had been told
only a few moments before that the Autarch was in the Cit-
adel and wished to converse with him.

	He seemed to me to have aged a great deal while I was
gone. Perhaps it was simply that I recalled him pot as he was
when I was exiled, but as I had seen him in our little class-
room when I was a boy. Still, I like to think he was concerned
for me, and it is not really so unlikely that he was: I had
always been his best pupil and his favourite; it was his vote,
beyond doubt, that had countered Master Gurloes's and
saved my life; he had given me his sword.  

	But whether he had worried much or little, his face seemed
more deeply lined than it had been; and his scant hair, which
I had thought grey, was now of that yellow hue seen in old
ivory. He knelt and kissed my fingers, and was more than a
little surprised when I helped him to rise and told him to seat
himself behind his table again.
	"You are too kind. Autarch," he said. Then, using an old
formula, "Your mercy extends from sun to Sun."
	"Do you not recall us?"
	"Were you confined here?" He peered at me through the
curious arrangement of lenses that alone permitted him to
see at all, and I decided that his vision, exhausted long before
I was born on the faded ink of the records of the guild, must
have deteriorated further. "You have suffered torment, I see.
But it is too crude, I hope, for our work."
"It was not your doing," I said, touching the scars on my
cheek. "Nevertheless, we were confined for a time in the
oubliette beneath this tower."
	He sighed—an old man's shallow breath—and looked down
at the grey litter of his papers. When he spoke I could not
hear the words, and had to ask him to repeat them.

	"It has come," he said. "I knew it would, but I hoped to be
dead and forgotten. Will you dismiss us. Autarch? Or put us
to some other task?"                                .
	"We have not yet decided what we will do with you and
the guild you serve."
	"It will not avail. If I offend you. Autarch, I ask your indulgence 
for my age ... but still it will not avail. You will find in
the end that you require men to do what we do. You may
call it healing, if you wish. That has been done often. Or
ritual, that has been done too. But you will find the thing
itself grows more terrible in its disguise. Will you imprison
those undeserving of death? You will find them a mighty
army in chains. You will discover that you hold prisoners
whose escape would be a catastrophe, and that you need
servants who will wreak justice on those who have caused
scores to die in agony. Who else will do that?"

	"No one will wreak such justice as you. You say our mercy
extends from sun to Sun, and we hope it is so. By our mercy
we will grant even the foulest a quick death. Not because we
pity them, but because it is intolerable that good men should
spend a lifetime dispensing pain."
	His head came up and the lenses flashed. For the only time
in all the years I had known him, I was able to see the youth
he had been. "It must be done by good men. You are badly
advised, Autarch! What is intolerable is that it should be
done by bad men."

	I smiled. His face, as I had seen it then, had recalled some-
thing I had thrust from my mind months before. It was that
this guild was my family, and all the home I should ever
have. I would never find a friend in the world if I could not
find friends here. "Between us. Master," I told him, "we have
decided it should not be done at all."
	
	He did not reply, and I saw from his expression that he had
not even heard what I had said. He had been listening instead 
to my voice, and doubt and joy flickered over his worn,
old face like shadow and firelight.

	"Yes," I said. "It is Severian," and while he was struggling
to regain possession of himself, I went to the door and got
my sabretache, which I had ordered one of the officers of my
guard to bring. I had wrapped it in what had been my fuligin
guild cloak, now faded to mere rusty black. Spreading the
cloak over Master Palaemon's table, I opened the sabretache
and poured out its contents. "This is all we have brought
back," I said.
He smiled as he used to in the schoolroom when he had
caught me out in some minor matter. "That and the throne?
Will you tell me about it?"

And so I did. It took a long while, and more than once my
protectors rapped at the door to ascertain that I was unharmed, 
and at last I had a meal brought in to us; and when
the pheasant was mere bones and the cakes were eaten and
the wine drunk, we were still talking. It was then that I conceived 
the idea that has at last borne fruit in this record of
my life. I had originally intended to begin it at the day I left
our tower and to end it when I returned. But I soon saw that
though such a construction would indeed supply the symmetry 
so valued by artists, it would be impossible for anyone to
understand my adventures without knowing something of my
adolescence. In the same way, some elements of my story
would remain incomplete if I did not extend it (as I propose
to do) a few days beyond my return. Perhaps I have contrived
for someone The Book of Gold. Indeed, it may be that all
my wanderings have been no more than a contrivance of the
librarians to recruit their numbers; but perhaps even that is
too much to hope.

XXXIV

The Key to the Universe

WHEN HE HAD HEARD everything. Master Palaemon went to
my little heap of possessions and took up the grip, pommel,
and silver guard that were all that remained of Terminus Est.
"She was a good sword," he said. "Nearly I gave you your
death, but she was a good sword."
	We were always proud to bear her, and never found rea-
son to complain of her."

	He sighed, and the breath seemed to catch in his throat,
"She is gone. It is the blade that is the sword, not the sword
furniture. The guild will preserve these somewhere, with your
cloak and sabretache, because they have belonged to you.
When you and I have been dead for centuries, old men like
me will point them out to the apprentices. It's a pity we
haven't the blade too. I used her for many years before you
came to the guild, and never thought she would be destroyed
fighting some diabolical weapon." He put down the opal
pommel and frowned at me. "What's troubling you? I've
seen men wince less when their eyes were torn out."

	"There are many kinds of diabolical weapons, as you call
them, that steel cannot withstand. We saw something of
them when we were in Orithyia. And there are tens of thousands 
of our soldiers there holding them off with firework
lances and javelins, and swords less well forged than Terminus 
Est They succeed in so far as they do because the energy
weapons of the Ascians are not numerous, and they are few
because the Ascians lack the sources of power needed to produce 
them. What will happen if Urth is granted a New Sun?
Won't the Ascians be better able to use its energy than we
can?"

	"Perhaps that may be," Master Palaemon acknowledged.
	"We have been thinking with the autarchs who have gone
before us—our guild brothers, as it were, in a new guild. Master 
Malrubius said that only our predecessor has dared the
test in modern times. When we touch the minds of the others, 
we often find that they have refused it because they felt
our enemies, who have retained so much more of the ancient
sciences, would gain a greater advantage. Is it not possible
they were right?"

	Master Palaemon thought a long time before he answered.
"I cannot say. You believe me wise because I taught you
once, but I have not been north, as you have. You have seen
armies of Ascians, and I have never seen one. You flatter me
by asking my opinion. Still—from all you've said, they are
rigid, cast hard in their ways. I would guess that very few
among them think much."

	I shrugged. "That is true in any aggregate. Master. But as
you say, it is possibly more true among them. And what you
call their rigidity is terrible—a deadness that surpasses belief.
Individually they seem men and women, but together they
are like a machine of wood and stone."

	Master Palaemon rose and went to the port and looked
out upon the thronging towers. "We are too rigid here," he
said, "Too rigid in our guild, too rigid in the Citadel. It tells
me a great deal that you, who were educated here, saw them
as you did; they must be inflexible indeed. I think it may be
that despite their science, which may amount to less than
you suppose, the people of the Commonwealth will be better
able to turn new circumstances to their benefit."
	"We are not flexible or inflexible," I said. "Except for an
unusually good memory, we are only an ordinary man."
	"No, no!" faster Palaemon struck his table, and again the
lenses flashed. "You are an extraordinary man in an ordinary
time. When you were a little apprentice, I beat you once or
twice—you will recall that, I know. But even when I beat you,
I knew you would become an extraordinary personage, the
greatest master our guild would ever have. And you will be a
master. Even if you destroy our guild, we will elect you!"

	"We have already told you we mean to reform the guild,
not destroy it. We're not even sure we're competent to do
that. You respect us because we've moved to the highest
place. But we reached it by chance, and know it. Our predecessor 
reached it by chance too, and the minds he brought to
us, which we touch only faintly even now, are not, with one
or two exceptions, those of genius. Most are only common
men and women, sailors and artisans, farmwives and wantons.
Most of the rest are eccentric second-rate scholars of the sort
Thecla used to laugh at."
	"You have not just moved into the highest place," Master
Palaemon said, "you have become it. You are the state."
	"We are not. The state is everyone else—you, the castellan,
those officers outside. We are the people, the Common-
wealth." I had not known it myself until I spoke.

	I picked up the brown book. "We are going to keep this. It
was one of the good things, like your sword. The writing of
books shall be encouraged again. There are no pockets in
these clothes; but perhaps it will do good if we are seen to
carry it when we leave."
	"Carry it where?" Master Palaemon cocked his head like
an old raven.
	"To the House Absolute. We've been out of touch, or the
Autarch has, if you wish to put it so, for over a month. We
have to find out what's happening at the front, and perhaps
dispatch reinforcements." I thought of Lomer and Nicarete
and the other prisoners in the antechamber. "We have other
tasks there too," I said.
Master Palaemon stroked his chin. "Before you go. Severian—
Autarch—would you like to tour the cells, for old times
sake? I doubt those fellows out there know of the door that
opens to the western stair."
It is the least-used staircase in the tower, and perhaps the
oldest. Certainly it is the one least altered from its original
condition. The steps are narrow and steep, and wind down
around a central column black with corrosion. The door to
the room where I, as Thecla, had been subjected to the device 
called the Revolutionary stood half open, so that though
we did not go inside, I nevertheless saw its ancient mechanisms; 
frightful, yet less hideous to me than the gleaming but
far older things in Baldanders's castle.

Entering the oubliette meant returning to something I
had, from the time I left for Thrax, assumed gone forever.
Yet the metal corridors with their long rows of doors were
unchanged, and when I peered through the tiny windows
that pierced those doors I saw familiar faces, the faces of men
and women I had fed and guarded as a journeyman.
"You are pale. Autarch," Master Palaemon said. "I feel
your hand tremble." (I was supporting him a little with one
hand on his arm.)
"You know that our memories never fade," I said. "For us
the Chatelaine Thecla still sits in one of these cells, and the
Journeyman Severian in another."
"I had forgotten. Yes, it must be terrible for you. I was
going to take you to the Chatelaine's old one, but perhaps
you would rather not see it."
I insisted that we visit it; but when we arrived, there was a
new client inside, and the door was locked. I had Master
Palaemon call the brother on duty to let us in, then stood for
a moment looking at the cramped bed and the tiny table. At
last I noticed the client, who sat upon the single chair, with
wide eyes and an indescribable expression blended of hope
and wonder. I asked him if he knew me.
	"No,exultant."
	"We are no exultant. We are your Autarch. Why are you
here?"
	He rose, then fell to his knees. "1 am innocent! Believe
me!”
	"All right," I said. "We believe you. But we want you to
tell us what you were accused of, and how you came to be
convicted."      

	Shrilly, he began to pour forth one of the most complex
and confused accounts I have ever heard. His sister-in-law
had conspired with her mother against him. They said he had
stuck his wife, that he had neglected his ill wife, that he had
stolen certain moneys from her that she had been entrusted
with by her father, for purposes about which they disagreed.
In explaining all this (and much more) he boasted of his own
cleverness while decrying the frauds, tricks, and lies of the
others that had sent-him to the oubliette. He said that the
gold in question had never existed, and also that his mother-
in-law had used a part of it to bribe the judge. He said he had
not known his wife was ill, and that he had procured the best
physician he could afford for her.

	When I left him, I went to the next call and heard the
client there, and then to the next and the next, until I had
visited fourteen. Eleven clients protested their innocence,
some better than the first, some even worse; but I found
none whose protestations convinced me. Three admitted
that they were guilty (though one swore, I think sincerely,
that though he had committed most of the crimes with
which he had been charged, he had also been charged with
several he had not committed). Two of these promised earnestly 
to do nothing that would return them to the oubliette
if only I would release them; which I did. The third—a
woman who had stolen children and forced them to serve as
articles of furniture in a room she had set aside for the purpose, 
in one instance nailing the hands of a little girl to the
underside of a small tabletop so that she became in effect its
pedestal—told me with apparently equal frankness that she
felt sure she would return to what she called her sport because 
it was the only activity that really interested her. She
did not ask to be released, only to have her sentence commuted 
to simple imprisonment. I felt certain she was mad,
yet nothing in her conversation or her clear blue eyes indicated 
it, and she told me she had been examined prior to her
trial and pronounced sane. I touched her forehead with the
New Claw, but it was as inert as the old Claw had been when
I had attempted to use it to help Jolenta and Baldanders,

	I cannot escape the thought that the power manifested in
both Claws is drawn from myself, and that it is for this reason
that their radiance, said by others to be warm, has always
seemed cold to me. This thought is the psychological equivalent 
of that aching abyss in the sky into which I feared to
fall when I slept in the mountains. I reject and fear it because
I desire so fervently that it be true; and I feel that if there
were the least echo of truth in it, I would detect it within
myself. I do not.

	Furthermore, there are profound objections to it besides
this lack of internal resonance, the most important, convincing, 
and apparently inescapable being that the Claw
unquestionably reanimated Dorcas after many decades of
death—and did so before I knew I carried it.

	That argument appears conclusive; and still I am not sure
that it is so. Did I in fact know? What is meant by know, in
an appropriate sense? I have assumed I was unconscious
when Agia dipped the Claw into my sabretache; but I may
have been merely dazed, and in any case, many have long
believed that unconscious persons are aware of their surroundings 
and respond internally to Speech and music. How
else explain the dreams dictated by external sounds? What
portion of the brain is unconscious, after all? Not the whole
of it, or the heart would not beat and the lungs no longer
breathe. Much of the memory is chemical All that, in fact, I
have from Thecla and the former Autarch is fundamentally
so—the drugs serving only to permit the complex compounds
of thought to enter my own brain as information. May it not
be that certain information derived from external phenomena 
are chemically impressed on our brains even when the
electrical activity on which we depend for conscious thought
has temporarily ceased?

	Besides, if the energy has its origins in me, why should it
have been necessary for me to be aware of the presence of the
claw for them to operate, any more than it would be necessary 
if they had their origin in the Claw itself? A strong suggestion 
of another kind might be equally effective, and
certainly our careening invasion of the sacred precincts of the
Pelerines and the way in which Agia and I emerged unhurt
from the accident that killed the animals might have furnished 
such a suggestion. From the cathedral we had gone to
the Botanic Gardens, and there, before we entered the Gar-
den of Endless Sleep, I had seen a bush covered with Claws.
At that time I believed the Claw to be a gem, but may not
they have suggested it nonetheless? Our minds often play
such punning tricks. In the yellow house we had met three
persons who believed us supernatural presences.

	If the supernatural power is mine (and yet clearly it is not
mine), how did I come to have it? I have devised two explanations, 
both wildly improbable. Dorcas and I talked once of
the symbolic significance of real-world things, which by the
teachings of the philosophers stand for things higher than
themselves, and in a lower order are themselves symbolized.
To take an absurdly simple example, suppose an artist in a
garret limning a peach. If we put the poor artist in the place
of the Increate, we may say that his picture symbolizes the
peach, and thus the fruits of the soil, while the glowing curve
of the peach itself symbolizes the ripe beauty of womanhood.
Were such a woman to enter the artist's garret (an improbability 
we must entertain for the sake of the explanation), 
she would doubtless remain unaware that the fullness
of her hip and the hardness of her heart found their echoes in
a basket on the table by the window, though perhaps the
artist might be able to think of nothing else.

	But if the Increate is in actual fact in place of the artist, is
it not possible that such connections as these, many of which
must always be unguessable by human beings, may have profound 
effects on the structure of the world, just as the artist's
obsession may colour his picture? If I am he who is to renew
the youth of the sun with the White Fountain of which I
have been told, may it not be that I have been given, almost
unconsciously (if that expression may be used), the attributes
of life and light that will belong to the renewed sun?

The other explanation I mentioned is hardly more than a
speculation. But if, as Master Malrubius told me, those who
will judge me among the stars will take my manhood should I
fail their judgment, is it not possible also that they will confirm 
me in some gift of equal worth should I, as Humanity's
representative, conform to their desires? It seems to me that
justice demands it. If that is the case, may it not be that their
gift transcends time, as they do themselves? The Hierodules
I met in Baldanders's castle said they interested themselves
in me because I would gain the throne—but would their interest 
have been so great if I were to be no more than the
embattled ruler of some part of this continent, one of many
embattled rulers in the long history of Urth?

On the whole, I think the first explanation the most probable; 
but the second is not wholly unlikely. Either would seem
to indicate that the mission I am about to set out on will
succeed. I will go with good heart.

And yet there is a third explanation. No human being or
near-human being can conceive of such minds as those of
Abaia, Erebus, and the rest. Their power surpasses under-
standing, and I know now that they could crash us in a day if
it were not that they count only enslavement, and not annihilation, 
as victory. The great undine I saw was their creature, 
and less than their slave: their toy; It is possible that the
power of the Claw, the Claw taken from a growing thing so
near their sea, comes ultimately from them. They knew my
destiny as well as Ossipago, Barbatus, and Famulimus and
Ihey saved me when I was a boy so that I might fulfil it.
After I departed from the Citadel they found me again, and
thereafter coarse was twisted by the Claw. Perhaps they
hope to triumph by raising a torturer to the Autarchy, or to
that position that is higher than the Autarch’s

Now I think that it is time to record what Master Malrubius 
explained to me. I cannot vouch for its truth, but I
believe it to be true. I knew no more than I set down here.
Just as a flower blooms, throws down its seed, dies, and
Rises from its seed to bloom again, so the universe we know
Diffuses itself to nullity in the infinitude of space, gathers its
Fragments (which because of the curvature of that space meet
at last where they began) and from that seed blooms again.
Each such cycle of flowering and decay marks a divine year.

As the flower that comes is like the flower from which it
came, so the universe that comes repeats the one whose ruin
was its origin; and this is as true of its finer features as of its
grosser ones: The worlds that arise are not unlike the worlds
that perished, and are peopled by similar races, though just as
the flower evolves from summer to summer, all things advance 
by some minute step.

In a certain divine year (a time truly inconceivable to us,
though that cycle of the universes was but one in an endless
succession), a race was born that was so like to ours that
Master Malrubius did not scruple to call it human. It expanded 
among the galaxies of its universe even as we are said
to have done in the remote past, when Urth was, for a time,
the centre, or at least the home and symbol, of an empire.

These men encountered many beings on other worlds who
had intelligence to some degree, or at least the potential for
intelligence, and from them—that they might have comrades
in the loneliness between the galaxies and allies among their
swarming worlds—they formed beings like themselves.

It was not done swiftly or easily. Uncountable billions suffered 
and died under their guiding hands, leaving ineradicable 
memories of pain and blood. When their universe was
old, and galaxy so far separated from galaxy that the nearest
could not be seen even as faint stars, and the ships were
steered thence by ancient records alone, the thing was done.
Completed, the work was greater than those who began it
could have guessed. What had been made was not a new race
like Humanity's, but a race such as Humanity wished its own
to be: united, compassionate, just.                     

I was not told what became of the Humanity of that cycle.
Perhaps it survived until the implosion of the universe, then
perished with it. Perhaps it evolved beyond our recognition.
But the beings Humanity had shaped into what men and
women wished to be escaped, opening a passage to Yesod,
the universe higher than our own, where they created worlds
suited to what they had become.

From that vantage point they look both forward and back,
and in so looking they have discovered us. Perhaps we are no
more than a race like that who shaped them. Perhaps it was
we who shaped them—or our sons—or out fathers. Malrubius
said he did not know, and I believe he told the truth. How-
ever it may be, they shape us now as they themselves were
shaped; it is at once their repayment and their revenge.

The Hierodules they have found too, and formed more
quickly, to serve them in this universe. On their instructions,
the Hierodules construct such ships as the one that bore me
from the jungle to the sea, so that aquastors like Malrubius
and Triskele may serve them also With these tongs, we are
held in the forge,

The hammer they wield is their ability to draw their servants 
back, down the corridors of time, and to send them
hurtling forward to the future. (This power is in essence the
same as that which permitted them to evade the death of
their universe—to enter the corridors of time is to leave the
universe.) On Urth at least, their anvil is the necessity of life:
our need in this age to fight against an ever-more-hostile
world with the resources of the depleted continents. Because
it is as cruel as the means by which they themselves were
shaped, there is a conservation of justice; but when the New
Sun appears, it will be a signal that at least the earliest operations of the shaping are complete.

XXXV

Father Inire's Letter

THE QUARTERS ASSIGNED to me were in the most ancient part
of the Citadel. The rooms had been empty so long that the
old castellan and the steward charged with maintaining them
supposed the keys to have been lost, and offered, with many
apologies and much reticence, to break the locks for me. I
did not permit myself the luxury of watching their faces, but
I heard their indrawn breath as I pronounced the simple
words that controlled the doors.

	It was fascinating, that evening, to see how much the fashions 
of the period in which those chambers were furnished
differed from our own. They did without chairs as we know
them, having for seats only complex cushions; and their tables 
lacked drawers and that symmetry we have come to consider 
essential. By our standards too, there was too much
fabric and not enough wood, leather, stone, and bone; I
found the effect at once sybaritic and uncomfortable.

	Yet it was impossible that I should occupy a suite other
than that anciently set aside for the autarchs; and impossible
too that I should have it refurnished to a degree that would
imply criticism of my predecessors. And if the furniture had
more to recommend it to the mind than to the body, what a
delight it was to discover the treasures those same predecessors 
had left behind: There were papers relating to
matters now utterly forgotten and not always identifiable;
mechanical devices ingenious and enigmatic; a microcosm
that stirred to life at the warmth of my hands, and whose
minute inhabitants seemed to grow larger and more human
as I watched them; a laboratory containing the fabled "emerald 
bench" and many other things, the most interesting of
which was a mandragora in spirits.

	The cucurbit in which it floated was about seven spans in
height and half as wide; the homuncule itself no more than
two spans tall. When I tapped the glass, it turned eyes like
clouded beads toward me, eyes blinder far in appearance
than Master Palaemon's. I heard no sound when its lips
twitched, yet I knew at once what words they shaped—and in
some inexplicable sense I felt the pale fluid in which the
mandragora was immersed had become my own blood-tinged
urine.
	“Why have you called me. Autarch, from the contempla-
tion of your world?"                                 -

	I asked, "Is it truly mine? I know now that there are seven
continents, and none but a part of this are obedient to the
hallowed phrases."

"You are the heir,” the wizened thing said and turned, I
could not tell if by accident or design, until it no longer faced
me.
	I tapped the cucurbit again. "And who are you?"
	"A being without parents, whose life is passed immersed in
blood."
	"Why, such have I been! We should be friends then, you
and I, as two of similar background usually are."
	"You jest."
	"Not at all. I feel a real sympathy for you, and I think we
are more alike than you believe."
	The tiny figure turned again until its little face looked up
into my own. "I wish that I might credit you. Autarch."

	"I mean it. No one has ever accused me of being an honest
man, and I've told lies enough when I thought they would
serve my turn, but I'm quite sincere. If I can do anything for
you, tell me what if is."
	"Break the glass."
	I hesitated. "Won't you die?"
	"I have never lived. I will cease thinking. Break the glass."
	"You do live."
	"I neither grow, nor move, nor respond to any stimulus
save thought, which is counted no response. I am incapable
of propagating my kind, or any other. Break the glass."
	"If you are indeed unliving, I would rather find someway
to stir you to life."
	"So much for brotherhood. When you were imprisoned
here, Thecla, and that boy brought you the knife, why did
not you look for more life then?"

	The blood burned in my cheek, and I lifted the ebony
baculus, but I did not strike. "Alive or dead, you have a
penetrating intelligence. Thecla is that part of me most
prone to anger."
	"If you had inherited her glands with her memories, I
would have succeeded."
	"And you know that. How can you know so much, who are
Mind?"
	"The acts of coarse minds create minute vibrations that
stir the waters of this bottle. I hear your thoughts."
	"I notice that I hear yours. How is it that I can hear them,
and not others?"

	Looking now directly into the pinched face, which was lit
by the sun's last shaft penetrating a dusty port, I could not
be sure the lips moved at all. "You hear yourself, as ever. You
cannot hear others because your mind shrieks always, like an
infant crying in a basket. Ah, I see you remember that."
	"I remember a time very long ago when I was cold and
hungry. I lay upon my back, encircled by brown walls, and
heard the sound of my own screams. Yes, I must have been
an infant Not old enough to crawl, I think. You are very
clever. What am I thinking now?"
	"That I am but an unconscious exercise of your own
power, as the Claw was. It is true, of course. I was deformed,
and died before birth, and have been kept here since in white
brandy. Break the glass.”
	"I would question you first,'^ I said.
	"Brother, there is an old man with a letter at your door."
	I listened. It was strange, after having listened only to his
words in my mind, to hear real noises again—the calling of
the sleepy blackbirds among the towers and the tapping at
the door.

	The messenger was old Rudesind, who had guided me to
the picture-room of the House Absolute. I motioned him in
(to the surprise, I think, of the sentries) because I wanted to
talk to him and knew that with him I had no need to stand
upon my dignity.
	"Never been in here in all my years," he said. "How can I
help you. Autarch?"        

	"We're served already, just by the sight of you. You know
who we are, don't you? You recognized us when we met
before."
	"If I didn't know your face. Autarch, I'd know a couple
dozen times over anyhow. I've been told that often. Nobody
here talks about anything else, seems like. How you was
licked to shape right here. How they seen you this time and
that time. How you looked, and what you said to them.
There ain't one cook that didn't treat you to a pastry often.
All them soldiers told you stories. Been a while now since I
met a woman didn't kiss you and sew up a hole in your pants.
You had a dog—"
	"That's true enough," I said. "We did."
	"And a cat and a bird and a coti that stole apples. And you
climbed every wall in this place. And jumped off after, or else
swung on a rope, or else hid and pretended you'd jumped.
You're every boy that's ever been here, and I've heard stories
put on you that belong to men that was old when I was just a
boy, and I've heard about things I did myself, seventy years
ago."

	"We've already learned that the Autarch's face is always
concealed behind the mask the people weave for him. No
doubt it's a good thing; you can't become too proud once
you understand how different you really are from the thing
they bow to. But we want to hear about you. The old Autarch 
told us you were his sentinel in the House Absolute,
and now we know you're a servant of Father Inire's."
	"I am," the old man said. "I have that honour, and it's his
letter I carry." He held up a small and somewhat smudged
envelope.
	"And we are Father Inire's master."
	He made a countrified bow. "I know so. Autarch." 

	"Then we order you to sit down, and rest yourself. We've
questions to ask you, and we don't want to keep a man your
age standing. When we were that boy you say everyone's
talking of, or at least not much older, you directed us to
Master Ultan's stacks. Why did you do that?"
	"Not because I knew something others didn't. Not because 
my master ordered it, either, if that's what you're
thinking. Won't you read his letter?"
	"In a moment. After an honest answer, in a few words."

	The old man hung his head and pulled at his thin beard. I
could see the dry skin of his face rise in hollow-sided, tiny
cones as it sought to follow the white hairs. "Autarch, you
think I guessed at something back then. Perhaps some did.
Perhaps my master did, I don't know." His rheumy eyes
rolled up under his brows to look at me then fell again. "You
were young, and seemed a likely-looking boy, so I wanted you
to see."
	"To see what?"
	"I'm an old man. An old man then, and an old man now.
You've grown up since. I see it in your face. I'm hardly any
older because that much time isn't anything to me. If you
counted all the time I’ve spent just going up and down my
ladder, it'd be longer than that. I wanted you to see there has
been a lot come before you. That there was thousands and
thousands that lived and died before you was ever thought
of, some better than you. I mean. Autarch, the way you was
then. You'd think anybody growing up here in the old Citadel 
would be born knowing all that, but I've found they're
not. Being around it all the time, they don't see it. But going
down there to Master Ultan brings it home to the cleverer
ones."
	“You are the advocate of the dead."
	The old man nodded. "I am. People talk about being fair
to this one and that one, but nobody I ever heard talks about
doing right by them. We take everything they had, which is
all right. And spit, most often, on their opinions, which I
suppose is all right too. But we ought to remember now and
then how much or what we have we got from them. I figure
while I'm still here I ought to put a word in for them.- And
now, if you don't mind. Autarch, I'll just lay the letter here
on this funny table—"
	"Rudesind ..."
	"Yes, Autarch?"
	"Are you going to clean your paintings?"

	He nodded again. "That's one reason I'm eager to be gone,
Autarch. I was at the House Absolute until my master—"
here he paused and seemed to swallow, as men do when they
fed they have perhaps said too much “—went away north.
Got a Fechin to dean, and I'm behind."

	"Rudesind, we already know the answers to the question
you think we are going to ask. We know your master is what
the people call a cacogen, and that for whatever reason, he is
one of those few who have chosen to cast their lots entirely
with humanity, remaining on Urth as a human being. The
Cumaean is another such, though perhaps you did not know
that. We even know that your master was with us in the
jungles of the north, where he tried until it was too late to
rescue my predecessor. We only want to say that if a young
man with an errand comes past again while you are on your
ladder, you are to send him to Master Ultan. That is our
order."

	When he had gone, I tore open the envelope. The sheet
within was not large, but it was covered with tiny writing, as
though a swarm of hatchling spiders had been pressed into its
surface.
	
His servant Inire hails the bridegroom of the Urth, Master of 
Nessus and the House Absolute, Chief of his Race, Gold of
his People, Messenger of Dawn, Helios, Hyperion, Surya, Savitar, 
and Autarch!

I hasten, and will reach you within two days.
It was a day and more ere I learned what had taken place.
Much of my information came from the woman Agia, who at
least by her own account was instrumental in freeing you. She
told me also something or your past dealings with her, for I
have, as you know, means of extracting information.
You will have learned from her that the Exultant Vodalus
is dead by her act His paramour, the Chatelaine Thea, at first
attempted to gain control of those myrmidons who were
about him at his death; but as she is by no means fitted to
lead them, and still less to hold in check those in the south, I
have contrived to set this woman Agia in her place. From
your former mercy toward her, I trust that will meet with your
approval. Certainly it is desirable to maintain in being a
movement that has proved so useful in the past, and as long
as the mirrors of the caller Hethor remain unbroken, she provides 
it with a plausible commander.

You will perhaps consider the ship I summoned to aid my
master, the autarch of his day, inadequate—as for that matter
do I—yet it was the best I could obtain, and I was hard
pressed to get it. I myself have been forced to travel south
otherwise, and much more slowly; the time may come soon
when my cousins are ready to side not just with humankind
but with us—but for the present they persist in viewing Urth
as somewhat less significant than many of the colonized
worlds, and ourselves on a par with the Ascians, and for that
matter with the Xanthoderms and many others.
	You will perhaps already have gained news both fresher and
more precise than mine. On the chance that you have not:

	The war goes well and ill. Neither point of their envelopment
penetrated far, and the southern thrust, particularly, suffered
such losses that it may fairly be said to have been destroyed. I
know the death of so many miserable slaves of Erebus will
bring no joy to you, but at least our armies have a respite. -
	That they need badly. There is sedition among the Paralians, 
which must be rooted out. The Tarentines, your Antrustiones, 
and the dry legions—the three groups that bore the
brunt of the fighting—having suffered almost as badly as the
enemy. There are cohorts among them that could not-muster
a hundred able soldiers.

	I need not tell you we should obtain more small arms and,
particularly, artillery, if my cousins can be persuaded to part
with them at a price we can pay. In the meanwhile, what can
be done to raise fresh troops must be done, and in time for
the recruits to be trained by spring. Light units capable of
skirmishing without scattering are the present need; but if the
Ascians break out next year, we will require piquenaires and
pilani by the hundreds of thousands, and it might be well to
bring at least a part of them under arms now.

	Any news you have of Abaia’s incursions will be fresher
than mine; I have had none since I left our lines. Hormisdas
has gone into the South, I believe, but Olaguer may be able
to inform you.

						In haste and reverence,
						INIRE

XXXVI

Of Bad Gold and Burning

NOT MUCH REMAINS to be told. I knew I would have to leave
the city in a few days, so all I hoped to do here would have to
be done quickly. I had no friends in the guild I could be sure
of beyond Master Palaemon, and he would be of little use in
what I planned. I summoned Roche, knowing that he could
not deceive me to my face for long. (I expected to see a man
older than myself, but the red-haired journeyman who came
at my command was hardly more than a boy; when he had
gone, I studied my own face in a mirror, something I had not
done before.)

	He told me that he and several others who had been
friends of mine more or less close had argued against my
execution when the will of most of the guild was to kill me,
and I believed him. He also admitted quite freely that he
had proposed that I be maimed and expelled, though he said
he had only done so because he had felt it to be the only way
to save my life. I think he expected to be punished in some
way—his cheeks and forehead, normally so ruddy, were white
enough to make his freckles stand out like splatters of paint.
His voice was steady, however, and he said nothing that
seemed intended to excuse himself by throwing blame on 
someone else.                           

	The fact was, of course, that I did intend to punish him
together with the rest of the guild. Not because I bore him or
them any ill will, but because I felt that being locked below
the tower for a time would arouse in them a sensitivity to 
that principle of justice of which Master Palaemon had spoken, 
and because it would be the best way to assure that the
order forbidding torture I intended to issue would be carried
out. Those who spend a few months in dread of that art are
not likely to resent its being discontinued.

	However, I said nothing about that to Roche but only
asked him to bring me a journyman's habit that evening
and to be ready with Drotte and Eata to aid me the next
morning.
	He returned with the clothing just after vespers. It was an
indescribable pleasure to take off the stiff costume I had
been wearing and put on fuligin again. By night, it’s dark
embrace is the nearest approach to invisibility I know, and
after I had slipped out of my chambers by one of the secret
exits, I moved between tower and tower like a shadow until I
reached the fallen section of the curtain wall.
	Day had been warm; but the night was cool, and the necropolis 
filled with mist, just as it had been when I had
come from behind the monument- to save Vodalus. The
mausoleum where I had played as a boy stood as I had left it,
its jammed door three-quarters shut.

	I had brought a candle, and I lit it when I was inside. The
funeral brasses I had once kept polished were green again;
drifted leaves lay uncrushed everywhere. A tree had flung a
slender limb through the little, barred window.

			Where I put you, there you lie,
			Never let a stranger spy,
			Like grass grow to any eye,
			Not of me.
			Here be safe, never leave it,
			Should a hand come, deceive it,
			Let strange eyes not believe it,    
			Till I see.

The stone was smaller and lighter than I remembered. The
coin beneath it had grown dull with damp; but it was still
there, and in a moment I held it again and recalled the boy
I had been, walking shaken back to the torn wall through
The fog.
	Now I must ask you, you that have pardoned so many
deviations and digressions from me, to excuse one more. It is
the last.
	A few days ago (which is to say, a long time after the real
termination of the events I have set myself to narrate) I was
told that a vagabond had come here to the House Absolute
saying that he owed me money, and that he refused to pay it
to anyone else. I suspected that I was about to see some old
acquaintance, and told the chamberlain to bring him to me.
	It was Dr. Talos. He appeared to be in funds, and he had
dressed himself for the occasion in a capot of red velvet and a
cechia of the same material. His face was still that of a
stuffed fox; but it seemed to me at times that some hint of
life crept into it, that something or someone now peered
through the glass eyes.
	"You have bettered yourself," he said, making such a low
bow that the tassel of his cap swept the carpet. "You may
recall that I invariably affirmed you would. Honesty, integrity, 
and intelligence cannot be kept down."

"We both know that nothing is easier to keep down," I
said. "By my old guild, they were kept down every day. But it
is good to see you again, even if you come as the emissary of
your master."

For a moment the doctor looked blank. "Oh, Baldanders,
you mean. No, he has dismissed me, I'm afraid. After the
fight. After he dived into the lake."
"You believe he survived, then."

	"Oh, I'm quite sure he survived. You didn't know him as I
did, Severian. Breathing water would be nothing to him
Nothing! He had a marvellous mind. He was a supreme genius 
of a unique sort: every thing, turned inward. He combined 
the objectivity of the scholar with the self-absorption
of the mystic."
	I said, "By which you mean he carried out experiments on
himself."                                              

	"Oh, no, not at all. He reversed that! Others experiment
upon themselves in order to derive some rule they can apply
to the world. Baldanders experimented on the world and
spent the proceeds, if I can put it so bluntly, upon his person.
They say—" here he looked about nervously to make sure no
one but myself was in earshot "—they say I'm a monster, and
so I am. But Baldanders was more monster than I. In some
sense he was my father, but he had built himself. It's the law
of nature, and of what is higher than nature, that each creature 
must have a creator. But Baldanders was his own creation; 
he stood behind himself, and cut himself off from the
line linking the rest of us with the Increate. However, I stray
from my Subject." The doctor had a wallet of scarlet leather
at his belt; he loosened the strings and began to rummage in
it. I heard the chink of metal.                          

"Do you carry money now?" I asked. "You used to give
everything to him."
His voice sank until I could hardly hear it. "Wouldn't you,
in my present position, do the same thing? Now I leave coins,
little stacks of aes and orichalks, near water." He spoke more
loudly: "It does no harm, and reminds me of the great days.
But I am honest, you see! He always demanded that of me.
And he was honest too, after his fashion. Anyway, do you
recall the morning before we came out the gate? I was handing 
round the receipts from the night before, and we were
interrupted. There was a coin left, and it was to go to you, I
saved it and meant to give it to you later, but I forgot, and
then when you came to the castle. . . ." He gave me a side-
long glance. "But fair-trade ends paid, as they say, and I have
Abere."

The coin was precisely like the one I had taken from under
the stone.
"You see now why I couldn't give it to your man—I'm sure
he thought me mad."
I flipped the coin and caught it. It felt as though it had
been lightly greased. "To tell the truth. Doctor, we don't."
"Because it's false; of course. I told you so that morning.
How could I have told him I had come to pay the Autarch,
and then given him bad coin? They're terrified of you, and
they'd have disembowelled me looking for a good one Is it
true you've an explosive that takes days to go up, so you can
blow people apart slowly?"

I was looking at the two coins; They had the same brassy
shine and appeared to have been struck in the same die.
But that little interview, as I have said, took place a long
tame after the proper close of my narrative. I returned to my
chambers in the Flag Tower by the way I had come, and
when I reached them again, took off the dripping cloak and
hung it up. Master Gurloes used to say that not wearing a
shirt was the hardest thing about belonging to the guild.
Though he meant it ironically, it was in some sense true. I,
who had gone through the mountains with a naked chest,
had been softened sufficiently by a few days in the stifling
autarchial vestments to shiver at a foggy autumn night.

There were fireplaces in all the rooms, and each was piled
with wood so old and dry that I suspected it would fall to
dust should I strike it against an andiron. I had never lit any
of these fires; but I decided to do so now, and warm myself,
and spread the clothes Roche had brought over the back of a
chair to dry. When I looked for my firebox, however, I discovered 
that in my excitement I had left it in the mausoleum
with the candle. Thinking vaguely that the autarch who had
inhabited these rooms before me (a ruler far beyond the
reach of my memory) must surely have kept some means of
kindling his numerous fires close to hand, I began searching
the drawers of the cabinets.

These were largely filled with the papers that had so fascinated me before; but instead of stopping to read them, as I
had when I had made my original survey of the rooms, I
lifted them from each drawer to see if there was not a steel,
igniter, or syringe of amadou beneath them.
I found none; but instead, in the largest drawer of the
largest cabinet, concealed under a filigree pen case, I discovered small pistol.

I had seen such weapons before the first time having been
when Vodalus had given me the false coin I had just reclaimed. 
Yet I had never held one in my own hands, and I
found now that it was a very different thing from seeing them
in the hands of others. Once when Dorcas and I were riding
north toward Thrax we had fallen in with a caravan of tinkers
and peddlers. We still had most of the money Dr. Talos had
shared out when we met him in the forest north of the House
Absolute; but we were uncertain how far it might carry us
and how far we had to go, and so I was plying my trade with
the rest, inquiring at each little town if there were not some
malefactor to be mutilated or beheaded. The vagrants considered 
us two of themselves, and though some accorded us
more or less exalted rank because I laboured only for the authorities, others affected to despise us as the instruments of
tyranny.

One evening, a grinder who had been friendlier than most
and had done us several trifling favours offered to sharpen
Terminus Est for me. I told him I kept her quite sharp
enough for the work and invited him to test her edge with a
finger. After he had cut himself slightly (as I had known he
would) he grew quite taken with her, admiring not only her 
blade but her soft sheath, her carven guard, and so on. When
I had answered innumerable questions regarding her making,
history, and mode of use, he asked if I would permit him to
hold her. I cautioned him about the weight of the blade and
the danger of striking its fine edge against something that
might injure it, then handed her over. He smiled and gripped
the hilt as I had instructed him; but as he began to lift that
long and shining instrument of death, his face went pale and
his arms began to tremble so that I snatched her away from
him before he dropped her. Afterward all he would say was
I’ve sharpened soldiers’ swords often, over and over.

Now I learned how he had felt. I laid the pistol on the
table so quickly I nearly lost hold of it, then walked around
and around it as though it had been a snake coiled to strike.
It was shorter than my hand, and so prettily made that it
might have been a piece of jewelery; yet every line of it told of
an origin beyond the nearer stars. Its silver had not yellowed
with time, but might have come fresh from the buffing
wheel. It was covered with decorations that were, perhaps,
writing could not really tell which, and to eyes like mine,
accustomed to patterns of straight lines and curves, they
sometimes appeared to be no more than complex or shimmering reflections, save that they were reflections of some-
thing not present. The grips were encrusted with black stones
whose name I did not know, gems like tourmalines but
brighter. After a time I noticed that one, the smallest of all,
seemed to vanish unless I looked at it straight on, when
it sparkled with four-rayed brilliancy. Examining it more
closely, I found it was not a gem at all, but a minute lens
through which some inner fire shone. The pistol retained its
charge then, after so many centuries.

Illogical though it might be, the knowledge reassured me.
A weapon may be dangerous to its user in two ways: by
wounding him by accident, or by failing him. The first remained; but when I saw the brightness of that point of light,
I knew the second could be dismissed.

There was a sliding stud under the barrel that seemed
likely to control the intensity of the discharge. My first
thought was that whoever had last handled it would probably
have set it to maximum intensity, and that by reversing the
setting I would be able to experiment with some safety. But
it was not so—the stud was positioned at the centre of its
range. At last I decided, by analogy with a bowstring, that
the pistol was likely to be least dangerous when the stud was
as far toward as possible. I put it there, pointed the weapon
at the fireplace, and pulled the trigger.

	The sound of a shot is the most horrible in the world. It is
the scream of matter itself. Now the report was not loud, but
threatening, like distant thunder. For an instant—so brief a
time I might almost have believed I dreamed it—a narrow
cone of violet flashed between the muzzle of the pistol and
the heaped wood. Then it was gone, the wood was blazing,
and slabs of burned and twisted metal fell with the noise of
cracked bells from the back of the fireplace. A rivulet of silver
ran out onto the hearth to scorth the mat and send up nauseous 
smoke.
	I put the pistol into the sabretache of my new journey-
man's habit.

XXXVII

Across the River Again

BEFORE DAWN, Roche was at my door, with Drotte and Eata.
Drotte was the oldest of us, yet his face and flashing eyes
made him seem younger than Roche. He was still the very
picture of wiry strength, but I could not help but notice that
I was now taller than he by the width of two fingers. I must
surely have been so already when I left the Citadel, though I
had not been conscious of it. Eata was still the smallest, and
not yet even a journeyman—so I had only been away one
summer, after all. He seemed a bit dazed when he greeted
me, and I suppose he was having trouble believing I was now
Autarch, particularly since he had not seen me again until
now, when I was once more dressed in the habit of the guild.
	I had told Roche that the three of them were to be armed;
he and Drotte carried swords similar in form (though vastly
inferior in workmanship) to Terminus Est, and Eata a clava I
recalled having seen displayed at our Masking Day festivities.
Before I had seen the fighting in the north, I would have
thought them well-enough equipped; now all three, not only
Eata, seemed like boys burdened with sticks and pinecones,
ready to play at war.

For the last time we went out through the rent in the wall
and threaded the paths of bone that wound among the
cypresses and tombs. The death roses I had hesitated to pick
for Thecla still showed a few autumnal blooms, and I found
myself thinking of Morwenna, the only woman whose life I
have ever taken, and of her enemy, Eusebia.
	When we had passed the gate of the necropolis and entered 
the squalid city streets, my companions seemed to become 
almost lighthearted. I think they must have been
subconsciously afraid they would be seen by Master Gurloes
and punished in some way for having obeyed the Autarch.
	"I hope you're not planning on going for a swim," Drotte
said. "These choppers would sink us."
	Roche chuckled. "Eata can float with his."
	"We're going far to the north. Well need a boat, but I
think well be able to hire one if we walk along the embankment."
	"If anybody will rent to us. And if we're not arrested. You
know. Autarch—"
	"Severian," I reminded him. "For as long as I wear these
clothes."
	"—Severian, we're only supposed to carry these things to
the block, and it will take a lot of talking to make the peltasts
think three of us are necessary. Will they know who you are?
I don't-"
	This time it was Eata who interrupted him, pointing
toward the river. "Look, there's a boat!"
	Roche bellowed, all three waved, and I held up one of the
chrisos I had borrowed from the castellan, turning it so it
would flash in the sunlight that was then just beginning to
show over the towers behind us. The man at the tiller waved
his cap, and what appeared to be a slender lad sprang forward
to put the dipping lugsails on the other tack.
	
	She was two-masted, rather narrow of beam and low of
freeboard—an ideal craft, no doubt, for running untaxed merchandise 
past the patrol cutters that had suddenly become
mine. The grizzled old moonraker of a steersman looked capable 
of much worse, and the slender "lad" was a girl with
laughing eyes and a facility for looking from them sidelong.
	"Well, this 'pears to be a day," the steersman said when he
saw our habits. "I thought you was in mournin', I did, till I
got up close. Eyes? I never heard of 'um, no more than a crow
in court."
	"We are,' I told him as I got on board. It gave me a
ridiculous pleasure to find I had not lost the sea legs I had
acquired on the Samru, and to watch Drotte and Roche grab
to the sheets when the lugger rocked beneath their weight.
"Mind if I've a look at that yellow boy? Just to see if he's
good. I'll send him right home."
I tossed him the coin, which he rubbed and bit and at last
surrendered with a respectful look.
"We may need your boat all day."
"For the yellow boy, you can have her all night too. We'll
both be glad of the company, like the undertaker remarked
to the ghost. There was things in the river up till first light,
which I suppose might have something to do with you optimates 
being out on the water this mornin?'

"Cast off," I said. "You can tell me, if you will, what these
strange things were while we are under way."
Although he had broached the subject himself, the steers-
man seemed reluctant to go into much detail—perhaps only
because he had difficulty in finding words to express what he
had felt and to describe what he had seen and heard. There
was a light west wind, so that with the lugger's batten-
stiffened sails drawn taut we were able to, run upstream handily. 
The brown girl had little to do but sit in the bow and
trade glances with Eata. (It is possible she thought him, in his
dirty grey shirt and trousers, only a paid attendant of ours.)
The steersman, who called himself her uncle, kept a steady
pressure on the tiller as he talked, to keep the lugger from
flying off the wind.

"I'll tell you what I saw myself, like the carpenter did when
he had the shutter up. We was eight or nine leagues north of
where you hailed us. Clams was our cargo, you see, and
there's no stoppin' with them, not when there's a chance of a
warm afternoon. We goes down to the lower river and buys
them off the diggers, do you see, then runs them up the
channel quick so's they can be et before they goes bad. If
they goes off you lose all, but you make double or better it
you can sell them good.

	"I've spent more nights on the river in my life than any-
where else—it's my bedroom, you might say, and this boat's
my cradle, though I don't usually get to sleep until mornin'.
But last night-sometimes I felt like I wasn't on old Gyoll at
all, but on some other river, one that run up into the sky, of
under the ground.

	"I doubt you noticed unless you was out late, but it was a
still night with just little breaths of wind that would blow for
about as long as it takes a man to swear, then die down, then
blow again. There was mist too, thick as cotton. It hung over
the water the way mists always does, with about so much
dear space as you could roll a keg through between it and the
"river. Most of the time we couldn't see the lights on either
shore, just the mist. I used to have a horn I blowed for those
that couldn't see our lights, but it went over the side last
year, and being copper it sunk. So I shouted last night, when-
ever I felt like there was another boat or anything close by us.

	"About a watch after the mist came I let Maxellindis go to
sleep. Both sails was set, and when each puff of air come we
would go up river a bit, and then I'd set out the anchor again.
You maybe don't know it, optimates, but the rule of the river
is that them that's goin' up keeps to the sides and them
that's goin' down takes the middle. We was goin' up and
ought to have been over to the east bank, but with the mist I
couldn't tell.

"Then I heard sweeps. I looked in the mist, but I couldn't
see lights, and I hollered so they'd sheer off. I leaned over the
gunnel and put my ear close to the water so's to hear better.
A mist soaks up noises, but the best hearin' you can ever have
Is when you gets your head under one, because the noise run;
right along the water. Anyway, I did that, and she was a big
one. You can't count how many sweeps there is with a good
crew pullin', because they all go in and come up together
but when a big vessel goes fast you can hear water breakin
under her bow, and this was a big one. I got up on top of the
deckhouse tryin' to see her, but there still wasn't any lights
though I knew she had to be close.

	"Just when I was climbin' down I caught the sight of her-
a galleass, four-masted and four-banked, no lights, comin
right up the channel, as near as I could fudge. Pray for them
that's comin' down, thinks I to myself, like the ox said when
he fell out of the riggin”.

	"Of course I only saw her for a minute before she was gone
in the mist again, but I heard her a long while after. Seein
her like that made me feel so queer I yelled every once in a
while even if no other craft was by. We had made another
half league, I suppose, or maybe a little less, when I heard
somebody yell back. Only it wasn't like answerin' my hail,
but like somebody'd laid a rope end to him. I called again,
and he called back regular, and it was a man I know named
Trason what has his own boat just like I do. 'Is it you?' he
called, and I said it was and asked if he was all right. 'Tie up!
he says.

	"I told him I couldn't. I had clams, and even if the night
was cool, I wanted to sell soon as I could. Tie up,’ Trason
calls again. Tie up and go ashore.' So I call back, 'Why don't
you?' Just then he come in sight, and there was more on his
boat than I would've thought it would hold—pandours, I'd
have said, but every pandour ever I saw had a face brown as
mine or nearly, and these was white as the mist. They had
scorpions and voulges—I could see the heads of them stickin'
up over the crests of their helmets."
	I interrupted him to ask if the soldiers he had seen were
starved looking and if they had large eyes.
	He shook his head, one corner of his mouth twisting up.
"They was big men, bigger than you or me or anybody in this
boat, a head taller than Trason. Anyway, they were gone in a
moment, just like the galleass. That was the only other craft I
saw till the mist lifted. But..."
	I said, "But you saw something else. Or heard something."
	He nodded. "I thought maybe you and your people here
was out because of them. Yes, I saw and I heard things.
There was things in this river I never saw before. Maxellindis,
when she woke up and I told her about it, said it was
Ac manatees. They're pale in moonlight and look human
enough if you don't come too close. But I've seen 'em since I
was a boy and never been fooled once. And there was
women's voices, not loud but big. And something else. I
couldn't understand what any of 'em was sayin', but I could
hear the tone of it. You know how it is when you're listenin'
to people over the water? They would say so-and-so-and so,
Then the deeper voice—I can't call it a man's because I don't
think it was one—the deeper voice'd say go-and-do-that-and-
this-and-that I heard the women's voices three times and the
other voice twice. You won't believe it, optimates, but some-
times it sounded like the voices was coming up out of the
river."
	With that he fell silent, looking out over the nenuphars.
We were well above that part of Gyoll opposite the Citadel,
but they were still packed more densely than wildflowers in
any meadow this side of paradise.

	The Citadel itself was visible now as a whole, and for all its
vastness seemed a glittering flock fluttering upon the hill, its
thousand metal towers ready to leap into the air at a word.
Below them the necropolis spread an embroidery of mingled
white and green. I know it is fashionable to speak in tones of
faint disgust of the "unhealthy" growth of the lawns and
trees in such places, but I have never observed that there is
actually anything unhealthy about it. Green things die that
men may live, and men die that green things may live, even
that ignorant and innocent man I killed with his own axe
there long ago. All our foliage is faded, so it is said, and no
doubt it is so; and when the New Sun comes, his bride, the
New Urth, will give glory to him with leaves like emeralds.
But in the present day, the day of the old sun and old Urth, I
have never seen any other green so deep as the great pines' in
the necropolis when the wind swells their branches. They
draw their strength from the departed generations of man-
kind, and the masts of argosies, that are built up of many
trees, are not so high as they.

	The Sanguinary Field stands far from the river. We four
drew strange looks as we journeyed there, but no one halted
us. The Inn of Lost Loves, which had ever seemed to me the
least permanent of the houses of men, still stood as it had on
the afternoon when I had come there with Agia and Dorcas.
The fat innkeeper very nearly fainted when he saw us; I made
him fetch Ouen, the waiter.
	I had never really looked at him on that afternoon when
he had carried in a tray for Dorcas, Agia, and me. I did so
now. He was a balding man about as tall as Drotte, thin and
somehow pinched looking; his eyes were deep blue, and there
was a delicacy to the moulding of his eyes and mouth that I
recognized at once.
	"Do you know who we are?" I asked him.
	Slowly, he shook his head.
	"Have you never had a torturer to serve?"
	"Once this spring, sieur," he said. "And I know these two
men in black are torturers. But you're no torturer, sieur,
though you're dressed like one."
	I let that pass. "You have never seen me?"
	"No, sieur."
	"Very well, perhaps you have not." (How strange it was to
realize that I had changed so much.) "Ouen, since you do not
know me, it might be well if I knew you. Tell me where you
were born and who your parents were, and how you came to
be employed at this inn."
"My father was a shopkeeper, sieur. We lived in Oldgate,
on the west bank. When I was ten or so, I think, he sent me
to an inn to be a potboy, and I've worked in one or another
since."
	"Your father was a shopkeeper. What of your mother?"
	Ouen's face still held a waiter's deference, but his eyes
were puzzled, "I never knew her, sieur. Cas they called her,
but she died when I was young. In childbirth, my father
said.'
	"But you know what she looked like."
	He nodded. "My father had a locket with her likeness.
Once when I was twenty or so I came to see him and found
out he'd pledged it I'd come into a bit of money then helping 
a certain optimate with his affairs—carrying messages to
the ladies and standing watch outside doors and so on, and I
went to the pawnbroker's and paid the pledge and took it. I
still wear it, sieur. In a place like ours, where there's so many
in 'n out all the time, it's best to keep your valuables about
you."

	He leached into his shirt and drew out a locket of
cloisonn^ enamel. The pictures inside were of Dorcas in full
face and profile, a Dorcas hardly younger than the Dorcas I
had known.
	"You say you became a potboy at ten, Ouen. But you can
read and write."
	"A bit, sieur." He looked embarrassed. "I've asked people,
various times, what writing said. I don't forget much."
	"You wrote something when the torturer was here this
spring," I told him. ^Do you recall what you wrote?"

Frightened, he shook his head. "Only a note to warn the
girl."
"I do. It was. The woman with you has been here before.
Do not trust her. Trudo says the man is a torturer. You are
my mother come again.' "                         
Ouen tucked his locket under his shirt. "It was only that
she was so much like her, sieur. When I was a younger man, I
used to think that someday I'd find such a woman. I told
myself, you know, that I was a better man than my father,
and he had, after all. -But I never did, and now I'm not so
sure I'm a better man."
"At that time, you did not know what a torturer's habit
looked like," I said. "But your friend Trudo, the ostler, knew.
He knew a good deal more about torturers than you, and
that was why he ran away."
"Yes, sieur. When he heard the torturer was asking for
him, he did."
"But you saw the innocence of the girl and wanted to warn
her against the torturer and the other woman. You were right
about both of them, perhaps."
"If you say it, sieur."
"Do you know, Ouen, you look a bit like her."
The fat innkeeper had been listening more or less openly.
Now he chuckled. "He looks more like you!"
I am afraid I turned to stare at him.

"No offense intended, sieur, but it's true. He's a bit older,
but when you were talking I saw both your faces from the
side, and there isn't a patch of difference."
I studied Ouen again. His hair and eyes were not dark like
mine, but with that colouring aside, his face might almost
have been my own.

"You said you never found a woman like Dorcas-like that
one in your locket. Still you found a woman, I think."
His eyes would not meet mine. "Several, sieur."
"And fathered a child."
"No, sieur!" He was startled. "Never, sieur!"
"How interesting. Were you ever in difficulties with the
law?"
"Several times, sieur."
"It is well to keep your voice low, but it need not be so low
as that. And look at me when you speak to me. A woman you
loved—or perhaps only one who loved you—a dark woman-
was taken once?"

"Once, sieur," he said. "Yes, sieur. Catherine was her
name. Its sin old-fashioned name, they tell me." He paused
and shrugged. "There was trouble, as you say, sieur. She'd run
off from some order of monials. The law got her, and I never
saw her again."

	He did not want to come, but we brought him with us
when we returned to the lugger.
	When I had come upriver by night on the Samru, the line
between the living and the dead city had been like that
between the dark curve of the world and the celestial
dome with its stars. Now, when there was so much more
light, it had vanished. Half-ruinous structures lined the
banks, but whether they were the homes of the most
wretched of our citizens or mere deserted shells I could not
determine until I saw a string on which three rags flapped.

	"In the guild we have the ideal of poverty," I said to
Drotte as we leaned on the gunnel. "But those people do not
need the ideal; they have achieved it."
	"I should think they'd need it most of all," he answered.
	He was wrong. The Increate was there, a thing beyond the
Hierodules and those they serve; even on the river, I could
feel his presence as one feels that of the master of a great
house, though he may be in an obscure room on another
floor. When we went ashore, it seemed to me that if I were
to step through any doorway there, I might surprise some
shining figure; and that the commander of all such figures
was everywhere invisible only because he was too large to be
seen.

	We found a man's sandal, worn but not old, lying in one
of the grass-grown streets. I said, "I'm told there are looters
wandering this place. That is one reason I asked you to come.
If there were no one but myself involved, I would do it
alone."
	Roche nodded and drew his sword, but Drotte said,
"There's no one here. You've become a great deal wiser than

	we are, Severian, but still, I think you've grown a little too
accustomed to things that terrify ordinary people."
tasked what he meant.
	"You knew what the boatman was talking about. I could
see that in your face. You were afraid too, or at least concerned. 
But not frightened like he was in his boat last night,
or like Roche or Ouen there or I would have been if we'd
been close to the river and knew what was going on. The
looters you're talking about were around last night, and they
must keep a watch out for revenue boats. They won't be
anywhere near water today, or for several days to come."

Eata touched my arm. "Do you think that girl—Maxellindis
is she in danger, back there on the boat?"
	"She's not in as much danger as you are from her," I said.
He did not know what I meant, but I did. His Maxellindis
was not Thecla; his story could not be the same as my own.
But I had seen the revolving corridors of Time behind the
gamin face with the laughing brown eyes. Love is a long labour
for torturers; and even if I were to dissolve the guild, Eata
would become a torturer, as all men are, bound by the contempt 
for wealth without which a man is less than a man,
inflicting pain by his nature, whether he willed it or not. I
was sorry for him, and more sorry for Maxellindis the sailor
girl.

	Ouen and I went into the house, leaving Roche, Drotte,
and Eata to keep watch from some distance away. As we
stood at the door, I could hear the soft sound of Dorcas's
steps inside.

	"We will not tell you who you are," I said to Ouen. "And
we cannot tell you what you may become. But we are your
Autarch, and we tell you what you must do."
I had no words for him, but I discovered I did not need
them. He knelt at once, as the castellan had.
	"We brought the torturers with us so that you might know
what was in store for you if you disobeyed us. But we do not
wish you to disobey, and now, having met you, we doubt
they were needed. There is a woman in this house. In a moment 
you will go in. You must tell her your story, as you told
it to us, and you must remain with her and protect her, even-
if she tries to send you away."
	"I will do my best. Autarch," Ouen said.
	"When you can, you must persuade her to leave this city
of death. Until then, we give you this." I took out the pistol
and handed it to him. "It is worth a cartload of chrisos, but
as long as you are here, it is far better for you to have than
chrisos. When you and the woman are safe, we will buy it
back from you, if you wish." I showed him how to operate
the pistol and left him.

	I was alone then, and I do not doubt that there are some
who, reading this too-brief account of a summer more than
normally turbulent, will say that I have usually been so.
Jonas, my only real friend, was in his own eyes merely a machine; 
Dorcas, whom I yet love, is in her own eyes merely a
kind of ghost

	I do not feel it is so. We choose—or choose not—to be
alone when we decide whom we will accept as our fellows,
and whom we will reject. Thus an eremite in a mountain
cave is in company, because the birds and coneys, the initiates 
whose words live in his "forest books," and the winds—
the messengers of the Increate—are his companions. Another
man, living in the midst of millions, may be alone, because
there are none but enemies and victims around him.

	Agia, whom I might have loved, has chosen instead to become 
a female Vodalus, taking all that lives most fully in
"humanity as her opponent I, who might have loved Agia,
who loved Dorcas deeply but perhaps not deeply enough, was
now alone because I had become a part of her past, which she
loved better than she had ever (except, I think, at first) loved
me.

XXXVIII

Resurrection

ALMOST NOTHING REMAINS to be told. Dawn has come, the
red sun like a bloody eye. The Wind blows cold through the
window. In a few moments, a footman will carry in a steaming 
tray; with him, no doubt, will be old, twisted Father
Inure eager to confer during the last few moments that remiain; 
old Father Inire, alive so long beyond the span of his
short-lived kind; old Father Inire, who will not, I fear, long
survive the red sun. How upset he will be to find I have been
sitting up writing all night here in the clerestory.

	Soon I must don robes of argent, the colour that is more
pure than white. Never mind.
	There will be long, slow days on the ship. I will read. I still
have so much to learn. I will sleep, dozing in my berth, listening 
to the centuries wash against the hull. This manuscript I
shall send to Master Ultan; but while I am on the ship, when
I cannot sleep and have tired of reading, I shall write it out
again—I who forget nothing—every word, just as I have writ-
ten it here. I shall call it The Book of the New Sun, for that
book, lost now for so many ages, is said to have predicted his
coming. And when it is finished again, I shall seal that second
copy in a coffer of lead and set it adrift on the seas of space
and time.
	Have I told you all I promised? I am aware that at various
places in my narrative I have pledged that this or that should
be made clear in the knitting up of the story. I remember
them all, I am sure, but then I remember so much else. Be-
fore you assume that I have cheated you, read again, as I will
write again.
	Two things are clear to me. The first is that I am not the
first Severian. Those who walk the corridors of Time saw him
gain the Phoenix Throne, and thus it was that the Autarch,
having been told of me, smiled in the House Azure, and the
undine thrust me up when it seemed I must drown. (Yet
surely the first Severian did not; something had already begun 
to reshape my life.) Let me guess now, though it is only, a
guess, at the story of that first Severian

	He too was reared by the torturers, I think. He too was
sent forth to Thrax. He too fled Thrax, and though he did
not carry the Claw of the Conciliator, he must have been
drawn to the fighting in the north—no doubt he hoped to 
escape the archon by hiding himself among the army. How
he encountered the Autarch there I cannot say, but encounter 
him he did, and so, even as I, he (who in the final sense
was and is myself) became Autarch in turn and sailed beyond
the candles of night. Then those who walk the corridors
walked back to the time when he was young, and my own
story—as I have given it here in so many pages—began.

	The second thing is this. He was not returned to his own
time but became himself a walker of the corridors. I know
now the identity of the man called the Head of Day, and
why Hildegrin, who was too near, perished when we met, and
why the witches fled. I know too in whose mausoleum I tarried 
as a child, that little building of stone with its rose, its
fountain, and its flying ship all graven. I have disturbed my 
own tomb, and now I go to lie in it.

When Drotte, Roche, Eata, and I returned to the Citadel,
I received urgent messages from Father Inire and from the
Absolute, and yet I lingered. I asked the castellan for
after much searching he produced one, large and old,
in many places. It showed the curtain wall whole, but
the names of the towers were not the names I knew—or that
the castellan knew, for that matter—and there were towers on
that map that are not in the Citadel, and towers in the Citadel 
that were not on that map.
I ordered a flier then, and for half a day soared among the
No doubt I saw the place I sought many times, but if
not recognize it.

At last, with a bright and unfailing lamp, I went down into
our oubliette once more, down flight after flight of steps until
I had reached the lowest level. What is it, I wonder, that
has given so great a power to preserve the past to under-
ground places? One of the bowls in which I had carried soup
to Triskele was there still. (Triskele, who had stirred back to
life beneath my hand two years before I bore the Claw.) I
followed Triskele's footprints once more, as I had when still
an apprentice, to the forgotten opening, and from there my
own into the dark maze of tunnels.

Now in the steady light of my lamp I saw where I had lost
the track, running straight on when Triskele had turned
aside. I was tempted then to follow him instead of myself, so
that I might see where he had emerged, and in that way
perhaps discover who it was who had befriended him and to
whom he used to return after greeting me, sometimes, in the
byways of the Citadel. Possibly when I come back to Urth I
shall do so, if indeed I do come back.

But once again, I did not turn aside. I followed the boy-
Man I had been, down a straight corridor floored with mud
And pierced at rare intervals with forbidding vents and doors.
The Severian I pursued wore ill-fitting shoes with run-down
Heels and worn soles; when I turned and flashed my light
behind me, I observed that though the Severian who pursued
him had excellent boots, his steps were of unequal length any
the toe of one foot dragged at each. I thought. One Severian
had good boots, the other good legs. And I laughed to myself, 
wondering who should come here in after years, and
whether he would guess that the same feet left both tracks.
	To what use these tunnels were once put, I cannot say.
Several times I saw stairs that had once descended farther
still, but always they led to dark, calm water. I found a skeleton,
its bones scattered by the running feet of Severian, but
it was only a skeleton, and told me nothing. In places there"
was writing on the walls, writing in faded orange or sturdy
black; but it was in a character I could not read, as unintelligible 
as the scrawlings of the rats in Master Ultan^ library. 
A few of the rooms into which I looked held walls in 
which there had once ticked a thousand or more docks of
various kinds, and though all were dead now, their chimes
silenced and their hands corroded at hours that would never
come again, I thought them good omens for one who sought
the Atrium of Time.                                     

	And at last I found it. The little spot of sunshine was just
as I had remembered it. No doubt I acted foolishly, but I
extinguished my lamp and stood for a moment in the dark,
looking at it. All was silence, and its bright, uneven square
seemed at least as mysterious as it had before.
	I had feared I would have difficulty in. squeezing through
its narrow crevice, but if the present Severian was somewhat
larger of bone, he was also leaner, so that when I had worked
my shoulders through the rest followed easily enough.      
	The snow I recalled was gone, but a chill had come into
the air to say that it would soon return. A few dead leaves
which must have been carried in some updraft very high indeed, 
had come to rest here among the dying roses. The
tilted dials still cast their crazy shadows, useless as the dead
docks beneath them, though not so unmoving. The carver
animals stared at them, unwinking still.                   
	I crossed to the door and tapped on it. The timorous old
woman who had served us appeared, and I, stepping into that
musty room in which I had warmed myself before, told her to
bring Valeria to me. She hurried away, but before she was
out of sight, something had wakened in the time-worn walls,
its disembodied voices, hundred-tongued, demanding that
Valeria report to some antiquely titled personage who I realized 
with a start must be myself.

	Here my pen shall halt, reader, though I do not. I have
carried you from gate to gate—from the locked and fog-
shrouded gate of the necropolis of Nessus to that cloud-
racked gate we call the sky, the gate that shall lead me, as I
hope, beyond the nearer stars.
	"My pen halts, though I do not. Reader, you will walk no
more with me. It is time we both take up our lives.

To this account, I, Severian the Lame, Autarch, do set my
hand in what shall be called the last year of the old sun.

APPENDIX

The Arms of the Autarch and the
Ships of the Hierodules

NOWHERE ARE THE manuscripts of The Book of the New Sun
more obscure than in their treatment of weapons and military 
organization.

	The confusion concerning the equipment of Severian's allies 
and adversaries appears to derive, from two sources, of
which the first is his marked tendency to label every variation
in design or purpose with a separate name. In translating 
these, I have endeavoured to bear in mind the radical meaning 
of the words employed as well as what I take to be the appearance 
and function of the weapons themselves. Thus 
falchion, fuscina, and many others. At one point I have put
the athame, the warlock's sword, into Agia's hands.         

	The second source of difficulty seems to be that three
quite different gradations of technology are involved. The
lowest of these could be termed the smith level. The arms
produced by it appear to consist of swords, knives, axes, and
pikes, such as might have been forged by any skilled metal-
worker of, say, the fifteenth century. These appear to be 
readily obtained by the average citizen and to represent the 
technological ability of the society as a whole.

	The second gradation might be called the Urth level. The
long cavalry weapons I have chosen to call lances, conti, and
so on undoubtedly belong to this group, as do the "spears"
with which the hastarii menaced Severian outside the door of
the antechamber and other arms used by infantry. How
widely available such weapons were is not clear from the text,
which at one point speaks of "arrows" and "long-shafted
khetens" being offered for sale in Nessus. It seems certain
that Guasachts irregulars were issued their conti before bat-
battle and that these were collected and stored somewhere (possibly 
in his tent) afterward. Perhaps it should be noted that
small arms were issued and collected in this way in the navies
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries^ although cutlasses 
and firearms could be freely purchased ashore. The arbalests 
used by Agia's assassins outside the mine are surely
what I have called Urth weapons, but it is likely these men
were deserters.

	The Urth weapons, then, appear to represent the highest
technology to be found on the planet, and perhaps in its
solar system. How efficient they would be in comparison with
our own arms is difficult to say. Armour appears to be not
wholly ineffective against them, but precisely this is true with
regard to our rifles, carbines, and submachine guns.
	The third gradation I would call the stellar level: The
pistol given Thea by Vodalus and the one given Ouen by
Severian are unquestionably stellar weapons, but about many
arms mentioned in the manuscript we cannot be so
sure. Some, or even all, of the artillery used in the mountain
war may be stellar. The fusils and jezails carried by special
troops on both sides may or may not belong to this gradation, 
though I am inclined to think they do.

	It seems fairly clear that stellar weapons could not be produced 
on Urth and had to be obtained from the Hierodules
at great cost. An interesting question—to which I can offer no
certain answer—concerns the goods given in exchange. The
Urth of the old sun seems, by our standards, destitute of raw
materials; when Severian speaks of mining, he appears to
mean what we should call archaeological pillaging, and the
new continents said (in Dr. Talos's play) to be ready to rise,
with the coining of the New Sun have among their attractions 
"gold, silver, iron, and copper . . ." (Italics added,)
Saves—some slavery certainly exists in Severian's society-
furs, meat and other foodstuffs, and labour-intensive items
such as handmade jewellery would appear to be among the
possibilities.

	We would like to know more about almost everything
mentioned in these manuscripts; but most of all, certainly,
we would like to know more about the ships that sail between 
the stars, commanded by the Hierodules but sometimes 
crewed by human beings. (Two of the most enigmatic
figures in the manuscripts, Jonas and Hethor, seem once to
have been such crewmen.) But here the translator is forced
against one of the most maddening of all his difficulties—
Severian's failure to distinguish clearly between space-going
and ocean-going craft.

	Irritating though it is, it seems quite natural, given his
circumstances. If a distant continent is as remote as the
moon, then the moon is no more remote than a distant continent. 
Furthermore, the star-travelling ships appear to be propelled 
by light pressure on immense sails of metal foil, so
that an applied science of masts, cables, and spars is common
to ships of both kinds. Presumably, since many skills {and
perhaps most of all that of enduring long periods of isolation) 
would be required equally on both types of craft, crew-
men from vessels that would only excite our contempt may
sign aboard others whose capabilities would astonish us. One
notes that the captain of Severian's lugger shares some of
Jonas's habits of speech.

	And now, a final comment. In my translations and in these
appendixes I have attached to them, I have attempted to
eschew all speculations; it seems to me that now, near the
dose of seven years' labour, I may be permitted one. It is that
the ability to traverse hours and aeons possessed by these
ships may be no more than the natural consequence of their
ability to penetrate interstellar and even intergalactic space,
and to escape the death throes of the universe; and that to
travel thus in time may not be so complex and difficult an
affair as we are prone to suppose. It is possible that from the
beginning Severian had some presentiment of his future.

									G.W.