by Gene Wolfe
I asked, “May I see your hands?” I myself could no longer believe what I had done.
She held them out. “They’ll take me now to be a slave far away. I don’t care. No, they won’t — I’ll go to the mountains and hide.”
I was looking at her hands, which seemed perfect to me in every detail, even when I pressed them together. It is rare for a person to have hands as precisely the same size, the hand used most being always the largest; yet hers were. I muttered, “Who’ll take you, Herena? Is your village raided by cultellarii?”
“The assessors, of course.”
“Just because you have two good arms now?”
“Because I haven’t anything wrong now.” She stopped, stricken by a new possibility, eyes wide. “I don’t, do I?”
It was no time for philosophy. “No, you’re perfect — a very attractive young woman.”
“Then they’ll take me. Are you all right?”
“A little weak, that’s all. I’ll be better in a moment.” I used the hem of my cloak to wipe my forehead, just as I had when I was a torturer.
“You don’t look all nght.”
“It was mostly Urth’s energies that corrected your arm, I think. But they had to come through me. I suppose they must have carried off some of my own with them.”
“You know my name, my lord. What’s yours?”
“Severian.”
“I’ll get you food at my father’s house, Lord Severian. There’s still some left.”
A wind sprang up that sent the brightly colored leaves swirling about our faces as we walked back.
Chapter XXIX — Among the Villagers
MY LIFE HAS held many sorrows and triumphs, but few pleasures outside the simple ones of love and sleep, clean air and good food, the things anyone may know. Among the greatest I count the village hetman’s expression when he saw his daughter’s arm. Such a mixture of wonder, fear, and delight it was that I would have shaved his face for him in order to see it better. Herena, I think, enjoyed it as much as I; but when she had feasted upon it to the full, she hugged him and told him she had promised us refreshment and ducked through the doorway to embrace her mother.
As soon as we were inside too, the villagers’ fear turned to curiosity. A few of the boldest men pushed their way in and squatted silently behind us as we sat on mattings around the little table where the hetman’s wife — weeping and biting her lips all the while — spread our feast. The rest merely peered through the doorway and peeped through chinks in the windowless walls.
There were fried cakes of pounded maize, apples somewhat damaged by frost, water, and (as a great delicacy, and one at which some of the silent onlookers slavered openly) the haunches of two hares, boiled, pickled, salted, and served cold. The hetman and his family did not partake of these. I have called it a feast, for so these people thought it; but the simple sailor’s dinner we had eaten on the tender a few watches before had been a banquet compared with it. I found I was not hungry, though I felt tired and very thirsty. I ate one of the cakes and picked at the meat while drinking copious draughts of water, tben decided that the higher courtesy might consist in leaving the hetman’s family some of their food, since they plainly had so little, and began to crack nuts.
This, it appeared, was the signal that my host might speak. He said, “I am Bregwyn. Our village is called Vici. My wife is Cinnia. Our daughter is Herena. This woman” — he nodded to indicate Burgundofara — “says that you are a good man.”
“My name is Severian. This woman is Burgundofara. I am a bad man trying to be a good one.”
“We of Vici hear little of the far world. Perhaps you will tell us what chance has brought you to our village.”
He said this with an expression of polite interest and no more, yet it gave me pause. It would have been easy enough to put off these villagers with some tale of trade or pilgrimage; and indeed, if I had told him we hoped to return Burgundofara to her home beside the Ocean, it would not have been wholly a lie. But had I the right to say such things? I had told Burgundofara earlier that these were the people I had gone to the end of the universe to rescue. I glanced at the hetman’s toil-worn, tearful wife and at the men, with their grizzled beards and hard hands. What right did I have to treat them like children?
“This woman,” I said, “is from Liti. Perhaps you know of it?”
The hetman shook his head.
“The people there are fishers. She hopes to find her way back.” I drew a deep breath. “I…” The hetman leaned forward ever so slightly as I groped for words. “I have been able to help Herena. To make her more whole. You know that.”
“We are grateful,” he said.
Burgundofara. touched my arm. When I looked at her, her eyes told me that what I was doing might be perilous. I knew it already.
“Urth herself is not whole.”
The hetman, and all the other men who squatted with their backs to the walls of the hut, edged closer. I saw a few nod.
“I have come to make her whole.”
As though the words were forced from him, one of the men said, “It snowed before the corn was ripe. This is the second year.” Several others nodded, and the man who sat behind the hetman, and thus facing me, said, “The sky people are angry with us.”
I tried to explain. “The sky people — the Hierodules and Hierarchs — do not hate us. It is only that they are remote from us, and they fear us because of things we did before, long ago when our race was young. I have gone to them.” I watched the villagers’ expressionless faces, wondering whether any of them would believe me. “I have effected a conciliation — brought them nearer us and us nearer them, I think. They’ve sent me back.”
That night while Burgundofara and I lay in the hetman’s hut (which he and his wife and daughter had insisted on vacating for us), she had said, “They’ll kill us eventually, you know.”
I had promised her, “We’ll leave here tomorrow.”
“They won’t let us,” she had replied; and morning showed that we had both been correct, in some fashion. We left indeed; but the villagers told us of another village, called Gurgustii, a few leagues away, and accompanied us there. When we arrived, Herena’s arm was exhibited and aroused much wonder, and we (not only Burgundofara and I, but Herena, Bregwyn, and the rest) were treated to a feast much like the last, save that fresh fish were substituted for the hares.
Afterward I was informed of a certain man who was a very good man and very valuable to Gurgustii, but who was now very ill. I told his fellow villagers that I could not guarantee anything, but that I would examine him and help him if I could.
The hut in which he lay seemed as old as the man himself, reeking of disease and death. I ordered the villagers who had crowded into it after me to get out. When they were gone, I rummaged about until I found a piece of ragged matting large enough to block the doorway.
With it in place, the hut was so dark I could scarcely see the sick man. As I bent over him, it seemed to me at first that my eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. After a moment I realized it was no longer quite so dark as it had been. A faint light played across him, moving with the movements of my eyes. My first thought was that it came from the thorn I kept in the little leather sack Dorcas had sewn for the Claw, though it seemed impossible that it could shine through the leather and my shirt in such a way. I took it out. It was as dark as it had been when I had tried to light the corridor outside my cabin with it, and I put it away again.
The sick man opened his eyes. I nodded to him and tried to smile.
“Have you come to take me?” he asked. It was no more than a whisper.
“I’m not Death,” I told him, “though I’ve been mistaken for him often enough.”
“I thought you were, sieur. You look so kind.”
“Do you want to die? I can manage that in a moment if you wish it.”
“Yes, if I can’t be well.” His eyes closed again.
I pulled down the homespuns that had covered him
and found he was naked beneath them. His right side was swollen, the lump the size of a child’s head. I smoothed it away, thrilling to the power that surged out of Urth, through my legs and out my fingers.
Suddenly the hut was dark again, and I was sitting on its pounded earthen floor listening spell-caught to the sick man’s breathing. It seemed that a long time had passed. I stood, tired and feeling I might soon be ill — it was just the way I had felt after I had executed Agilus. I took down the matting and stepped out into the sunshine.
Burgundofara embraced me. “Are you all right?”
I told her I was, and asked whether we could not sit down somewhere. A big man with a loud voice — I suppose he was one of the sick man’s relations — elbowed his way through the crowd demanding to know whether “Declan” would recover. I said I did not know, all the while trying to force my way through the press in the direction Burgundofara indicated. It was after nones, and the autumn day had grown warm, as such days sometimes do. If I had felt better, I would have found the milling, sweating peons comic; they were just such an assembly as we had terrified when we had performed Dr. Tabs’s play at Ctesiphon’s Cross. Now I was suffocated by them.
“Tell me!” the big man shouted in my face. “Will he be well?”
I turned on him. “My friend, you think that because your village has fed me, I’m obligated to answer your questions. You are mistaken!”
Others pulled him away, and I think knocked him down. At least, I heard the sound of a blow.
Herena took my hand. The crowd opened before us, and she led me to a spreading tree, where we sat on smooth, bare ground, no doubt where the village elders met.
Someone came bowing up to ask whether I required anything. I wanted water; a woman brought it, cold from the stream, in a dew-drenched stone jar capped with a cup. Herena had seated herself on my right, Burgundofara on my left, and we passed the cup among us.
The hetman of Gurgustii approached. Bowing, he indicated Bregwyn and said, “My brother has told me how you came to his village in a ship that sailed the clouds, and that you have come to reconcile us with the powers in the sky. All our lives we have gone to the high places and sent the smoke of offerings to them, yet the sky people are angry and send frost. Men in Nessus say the sun grows cold—”
Burgundofara interrupted. “How far is it?”
“The next village is Os, my lady. From there one may take a boat to Nessus in a day.”
“And from Nessus we can get passage to Liti,” Burgundofara hissed to me.
The hetman continued, “Yet the monarch taxes us as before, taking our children when we cannot give him grain. We have gone to the high places as our fathers did. We of Gurgustii burned our best ram before the frost came. What is it we should do instead?”
I tried to tell them how the Hierodules feared us because we had spread through the worlds in the ancient times of Urth’s glory, extinguishing many other races and bringing our cruelty and our wars everywhere. “We must be one,” I said. “We must tell only the truth, that our promises may be relied upon. We must care for Urth as you care for your fields.”
He and some of the rest nodded as though they understood, and perhaps they did. Or perhaps they at least understood some part of what I had said.
There was a disturbance at the back of the crowd, shouts and the sounds of rejoicing and weeping. Those who had sat leaped up, though I was too tired to do so. After more yelling and confused talk, the sick man was led forward, still naked except for a cloth (a length of homespun I recognized as one of his coverings) knotted around his waist.
“This is Declan,” someone announced. “Declan, explain to the sieur how you came to be well.”
He tried to speak, but I could not hear him. I gestured to the rest to be quiet.
“While I lay in my bed, my lord, a seraph appeared, clothed all in light.” There were chuckles from the peons, who nudged one another as he spoke. “He asked me whether I desired to die. I told him I wished to live, and I slept; and when I woke again I was as you see me now.”
The peons laughed, and several said, “It was the sieur here who cured you,” and the like.
I shouted at them. “This man was there, and you were not! You make yourselves fools when you claim to know more than a witness!” It was the fruit of the long days I had spent in Thrax listening to the proceedings of the archon’s court, and still more of those spent sitting in judgment as Autarch, I fear.
Though Burgundofara wanted to continue to Os, I was too fatigued to go farther that day, and I had no desire to sleep in a stuffy hut again. I told the villagers of Gurgustii that Burgundofara and I would sleep under their council tree, and that they should find places in their homes for those who had come with me from Vici. They did so; but when I woke in the watches of the night, it was to find that Herena lay with us.
Chapter XXX — Ceryx
WHEN we left Gurgusth many of its peons would have come with us, as would a few of those who had brought us from Vici. I forbade them, not wanting to be carted about like a relic.
They objected at first; but when they saw I was adamant, contented themselves with lengthy (often repetitious) speeches of thanks and the presentation of gifts: a tangled staff for me, the frantic work of the two best wood-carvers in the place; a shawl embroidered with colored wool for Burgundofara that must have been the richest item of feminine apparel there; and a basket of food for us both. We ate the food on the road and threw the basket into the stream; but we kept the other things, I liking the staff for walking and she delighted with her shawl, which relieved the masculine severity of her slop-chest clothes. At twilight, just before the gates were shut, we entered the little town of Os .
It was here that the stream we had followed emptied into Gyoll, and here there were xebecs, carracks, and feluccas tied up along the riverfront. We asked for their captains, but all had gone ashore on missions of business or pleasure, and the sullen watchmen left to guard their vessels assured us we would have to return in the morning. One recommended the Chowder Pot; we were on our way there when we happened upon a man robed in tyrian and green, who stood upon an inverted tub addressing an audience of a hundred or so:
“—buried treasure! Everything hidden revealed! If there are three birds in a bush, the third may not know of the first, but I know. There is a ring — even as I speak — beneath the pillow of our ruler, the wise, the transcendent — Thank you, my good woman. What is it you wish to know? I know it, to be sure, but allow these good folk to hear it. Then I shall reveal it.”
A fat townswoman had handed him a few aes. Burgundofara said, “Come on. I’d like to sit down and get something to eat.”
“Wait,” I told her.
I stayed in part because the mountebank’s patter reminded me of Dr. Tabs, and in larger part because something in his eyes recalled Abundantius. Yet there was another thing more fundamental than either, though I am not certain I can explain it. I sensed that this stranger had traveled as I had, that we had gone far and returned in a way that even Burgundofara had not; and that though we had not gone to the same place or returned with the same gain, we had both known strange roads.
The fat woman muttered something; the mountebank announced, “She begs to be informed as to whether her husband will find a new site for his stew, and whether the venture will succeed.”
He threw his arms above his head, clasping a long wand with both hands. His eyes remained open, rolling upward until the whites showed like the skins of two boiled eggs. I smiled, expecting the crowd to laugh; yet there was something terrible about his blind, invocatory figure, and no one did. We heard the lapping of the river and the sigh of the evening breeze, though it blew too gently to stir my hair.
Abruptly his arms fell and his snapping black eyes were back in place. “The answers are: Yes! And yes! The new bathhouse will stand not half a league from where we are now.”
“Easy enough,” Burgundofara whispered. “The whole town can’t be a league across.”
He flung them to the crowd, a good deal more than he had received from the woman, I think. There was a wild scramble.
I said, “All right, let’s go.”
Burgundofara shook her head. “I want to listen to this.”
“These are bad times, friends! You are hungry for wonders. For thaumaturgical cures and apples from pine trees! Why, only this afternoon I learned that some quack-salver has been touring the villages up the Fluminis, and was headed our way.” His gaze locked with mine. “I know that he is here now. I dare him to step forward. We shall hold a competition for you, friends — a trial of magic! Come, fellow. Come to Ceryx!”
The crowd stirred and murmured. I smiled and shook my head.
“You, my good man.” He leveled a finger at me. “Do you know what it is to train your will until it’s like a bar of iron? To drive your spirit before you like a slave? To toil ceaselessly for an end that may never come, a prize so remote that it seems it will never come?”
I shook my head.
“Answer! Let them hear you!”
“No,” I said. “I haven’t done those things.”
“Yet they are what must be done, if you would seize the scepter of the Increate!”
I said, “I know nothing of seizing that scepter. To tell the truth, I’m certain it could not be done. If you wish to be as the Increate is, I question whether you can do it by acting as the Increate does not.”
I took Burgundofara by the arm and drew her away. We had passed one narrow side street when the staff I had been given in Gurgustii snapped with a loud report. I tossed the half that had remained in my hand into the gutter, and we continued up the steep slope that led from the embankment to the Chowder Pot.