by Gene Wolfe
“Twice before members of the guild have been dispatched to outlying towns, though whether those were such cases as this the chronicles do not say. Nevertheless, they furnish a precedent now, and an escape from the maze. You are to go to Thrax, Severian. I have prepared a letter that will introduce you to the archon and his magistrates. It describes you as highly skilled in our mystery. For such a place, it will not be a falsehood.” I nodded, being already resigned to what I was to do. Yet while I sat there, maintaining the expressionless face of a journeyman whose only will is to obey, a new shame burned in me. Though it was not so hot as the one for the disgrace I had brought upon the guild, still it was fresher, and hurt the more because I had not yet grown accustomed to the sickness of it as I had the other. It was this: that I was glad to go—that my feet already longed for the feel of grass, my eyes for strange sights, my lungs for the new, clear air of far, unmanned places.
I asked Master Palaemon where the town of Thrax might be. “Down Gyoll,” he said. “Near the sea.” Then he stopped as old men will, and said, “No, no, what am I thinking of? Up Gyoll, of course,” and for me hundreds of leagues of marching waves, and the sand, and the seabirds’ crying all faded away. Master Palaemon took a map from his cabinet and unrolled it for me, bending over it until the lens by which he saw such things nearly touched the parchment. “There,” he said, and showed me a dot on the margin of the young river, at the lower cataracts. “If you had funds you might travel by boat. As it is, you must walk.”
“I understand,” I said, and though I remembered the thin piece of gold Vodalus had given me, safe in its hiding place, I knew I could not take advantage of whatever wealth it might represent. It was the guild’s will to cast me out with no more money than a young journeyman might be expected to possess, and for prudence’s sake as well as honor’s, so I must go.
Yet I knew it was unfair. If I had not glimpsed the woman with the heart-shaped face and earned that small gold coin, it is more than possible I would never have carried the knife to Thecla and forfeited my place in the guild. In a sense, that coin had bought my life.
Very well—I would leave my old life behind me… “Severian!” Master Palaemon exclaimed. “You are not listening to me. You were never an inattentive pupil in our classes.”
“I’m sorry. I was thinking about a great many things.”
“No doubt.” For the first time he really smiled, and for an instant looked his old self, the Master Palaemon of my boyhood. “Yet I was giving you such good advice for your journey. Now you must do without it, but doubtless you would have forgotten every-thing anyway. You know of the roads?”
“I know they must not be used. Nothing more.”
“The Autarch Maruthas closed them. That was when I was your age. Travel encouraged sedition, and he wished goods to enter and leave the city by the river, where they might be easily taxed. The law has remained in force since, and there is a redoubt, so I’ve heard, every fifty leagues. Still the roads remain. Though they are in poor repair, it is said some use them by night.”
“I see,” I said. Closed or not, the roads might make for an easier passage than traveling across the countryside as the law demanded. “I doubt you do. I mean to warn you against them. They are patrolled by uhlans under orders to kill anyone found upon them, and since they have permission to loot the bodies of those they slay, they are not much inclined to ask excuses.”
“I understand,” I told him, and in private wondered how he came to know so much of travel.
“Good. The day is half spent now. If you like, you may sleep here tonight and depart in the morning.”
“Sleep in my cell, you mean.”
He nodded. Though I knew he could scarcely see my face, I felt that something in him was studying me.
“I will leave now, then.” I tried to think of what I would have to do before I turned my back on our tower forever; nothing came to me, yet it seemed there must surely be something. “May I have a watch in which to prepare? When the time is up, I will go.”
“That’s easily granted. But before you leave, I want you to return here—I have something to give you. Will you do it?”
“Of course, Master, if you want me to.”
“And Severian, be careful. There are many in the guild who are your friends—who wish this had never happened. But there are others who feel you have betrayed our trust and deserve agony and death.”
“Thank you, Master,” I said. “The second group is correct.”
My few possessions were already in my cell. I bundled them together and found the whole bundle so small I could put it in the sabretache hanging from my belt. Moved by love, and regret for what had been, I went to Thecla’s cell. It was empty still. Her blood had been scrubbed from the floor, but a wide, dark spot of blood-rust had etched the metal. Her clothing was gone, and her cosmetics. The four books I had carried to her a year before remained, stacked with others on the littIe table. I could not resist the temptation to take one; there were so many in the library that they would never miss a single volume. My hand had stretched forth before I realized I did not know which to choose. The book of heraldry was the most beautiful, but it was too large by far to carry about the country. The book of theology was the smallest of all, but the brown book was hardly larger. In the end it was that I took, with its tales from vanished worlds.
I climbed the stair of our tower then, past the storeroom to the gun room where the siege pieces lounged in cradles of pure force. Then higher still to the room of the glass roof, with its gray screens and strangely contorted chairs, and up a slender ladder until I stood on the slippery panes themselves, where my presence scattered blackbirds across the sky like flecks of soot and our fuligin pennon streamed and snapped from the staff over my head. Below me the Old Yard seemed small and even cramped, but infinitely comfortable and homey. The breach in the curtain wall was greater than I had ever realized, though to either side of it the Red Tower and the Bear Tower still stood proud and strong. Nearest our own, the witches’ tower was slender, dark, and tall; for a moment the wind blew a snatch of their wild laughter to me and I felt the old fear, though we of the torturers have always been on the most friendly terms with the witches, our sisters.
Beyond the wall, the great necropolis rolled down the long slope toward Gyoll, whose waters I could glimpse between the half-rotted buildings on its banks. Across the flood of the river the rounded dome of the khan seemed no more than a pebble, the city about it an expanse of many-colored sand trodden by the master torturers of old.
I saw a caique, with high, sharp prow and stem, and a bellying sail, making south with the dark current; and against my will I followed it for a time—to the delta and the swamps, and at last to the flashing sea where that great beast Abaia, carried from the farther shores of the universe in anteglacial days, wallows until the moment comes for him and his kind to devour the continents. Then I abandoned all thoughts of the south and her ice-choked sea and turned north to the mountains and the rising of the river. For a long time (I do not know how long, though the sun seemed in a new place when I took notice of its position again) I looked to the north. The mountains I could see with my mind’s eye, but not with the body’s: only the rolling expanse of the city with its million roofs. And to tell the truth, the great silver columns of the Keep and its surrounding spires blocked half my view. Yet I cared nothing for them, and indeed hardly saw them. North lay the House Absolute and the cataracts, and Thrax, City of Windowless Rooms. North lay the wide pampas, a hundred trackless forests, and the rotting jungles at the waist of the world. When I had thought on all those things until I was half mad, I came down to Master Palaemon’s study again and told him I was ready to depart.
14. TERMINUS EST
“I have a gift for you,” Master Palaemon said. “Considering your youth and strength, I don’t believe you will find it too heavy.”
“I am deserving of no gifts.”
“That is so. But you must recall, Severian, that when a g
ift is deserved, it is not a gift but a payment. The only true gifts are such as you now receive. I cannot forgive you for what you have done, but I cannot forget what you were. Since Master Gurloes rose to journeyman, I have had no better scholar.” He rose and walked stiffly to the alcove, where I heard him say, “Ah, she is not overburdensome for me yet.”
He was lifting something so dark it was swallowed by the shadows. I said, “Let me assist you, Master.”
“No need, no need. Light to raise, weighty to descend. Such is the mark of a good one.”
Upon his table he laid a night-black case nearly long enough for a coffin, but much narrower. When he opened its silver catches, they rang like bells. “I am not giving you the casket, which would only impede you. Here is the blade, her sheath to protect her when you are traveling, and a baldric.” It was in my hands before I fully understood what it was he gave me. The sheath of sable manskin covered it nearly to the pommel. I drew it off (it was soft as glove leather), and beheld the sword herself.
I shall not bore you with a catalog of her virtues and beauties; you would have to see her and hold her to judge her justly. Her bitter blade was an ell in length, straight and square—pointed as such a sword’s should be. Man-edge and woman-edge could part a hair to within a span of the guard, which was of thick silver with a carven head at either end. Her grip was onyx bound with silver bands, two spans long and terminated with an opal. Art had been lavished upon her; but it is the function of art to render attractive and significant those things that without it would not be so, and so art had nothing to give her. The words Terminus Est had been engraved upon her blade in curious and beautiful letters, and I had learned enough of ancient languages since leaving the Atrium of Time to know that they meant This Is the Line of Division. “She is well honed, I promise you,” Master Palaemon said, seeing me test the man-edge with my thumb. “For the sake of those given over to you, see you keep her so. My question is whether she is not too ponderous a mate for you. Raise her and see.”
I clasped Terminus Est as I had the false sword at my elevation, and lifted her above my head, taking care not to strike the ceiling. She shifted as though I wrestled a serpent.
“You have no difficulty?”
“No, Master. But she writhed when I poised her.”
“There is a channel in the spine of her blade, and in it runs a river of hydrargyrum—a metal heavier than iron, though it flows like water. Thus the balance is shifted toward the hands when the blade is high, but to the tip when it falls. Often you will have to wait the completion of a final prayer, or a hand signal from the quaesitor. Your sword must not slack or trembl—But you know all that. I need not tell you to respect such an instrument. May the Moira favor you, Severian.”
I took the whetstone from its pocket in the sheath and dropped it into my sabretache, folded the letter he had given me to the archon of Thrax, wrapped it in a scrap of oiled silk, and committed it to the sword’s care. Then I took my leave of him.
With the broad blade slung behind my left shoulder, I made my way through the corpse door and out into the windy garden of the necropolis. The sentry at the lowest gate, nearest the river, allowed me to pass without challenge, though with many a strange look, and I threaded the narrow streets to the Water Way, that runs with Gyoll.
Now I must write something that still shames me, even after all that has occurred. The watches of that afternoon were the happiest of my life. All my old hatred of the guild had vanished, and my love for it, for Master Palaemon, my brothers, and even the apprentices, my love for its lore and usages, my love which had never wholly died, was all that remained. I was leaving all those things I loved, after having disgraced them utterly. I should have wept. I did not. Something in me soared, and when the wind whipped my cloak out behind me like wings, I felt I might have flown. We are forbidden to smile in the presence of any but our masters, brothers, clients, and apprentices. I did not wish to wear my mask, but I had to pull up my hood and bow my head lest the passersby see my face. Wrongly I thought I would perish on the way. Wrongly I thought I should never return to the Citadel and our tower; but wrongly too I believed that there were many more such days to come, and I smiled.
In my ignorance, I had supposed that before dark I would have left the city behind me, and that I would be able to sleep in relative safety beneath some tree. In actuality, I had not so much as outwalked the older and poorer parts before the west was lifted to cover the sun. To ask hospitality in one of the tottering buildings that bordered the Water Way, or attempt to rest in some corner, would have been an invitation to death. And so I trudged along under stars brightened by the wind, no longer a torturer in the eyes of the few who passed me, but only a somberly clad traveler who shouldered a dark paterissa. From time to time boats glided through the weed-choked water while the wind drew music from their rigging. The poorer sort showed no lights and seemed hardly more than floating debris; but several times I beheld rich thalamegii with bow and stem lamps to show off their gilding. These kept to the center of the channel for fear of attack, yet I could hear the song of their sweepsmen across the water:
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.
And so on. Even when the lamps were no more than sparks a league or more upriver, the sound came on the wind. As I was later to see, they pull the shaft with the refrain, and put it back again with the alternate phrases, and so make their way watch upon watch.
When it seemed that it must soon be day, I saw upon the broad, black ribbon of the river a line of sparks that were not the lights of vessels but fixed fires stretching from bank to bank. It was a bridge, and after tramping long through the dark I reached it. Leaving the lapping tongues of the river, I mounted a flight of broken steps from the Water Way to the more elevated street of the bridge, and at once found myself an actor in a new’ scene. The bridge was as well lighted as the Water Way had been shadowed. There were flambeaux on staggering poles every ten strides or so, and at intervals of about a hundred strides, bartizans whose guardroom windows glared like fireworks clung to the bridge piers. Carriages with lanterns rattled along, and most of the people who thronged the walkway were accompanied by linkboys or carried lights themselves. There were vendors who shouted the wares they displayed in trays hung from their necks, externs who gabbled in rude tongues, and beggars who showed their sores, feigned to play flageolets and ophicleides, and pinched their children to make them weep.
I confess I was much interested by all this, though my training prohibited me from gawking at it. With my hood drawn well over my head, and my eyes resolutely to the front, I passed among the crowd as if indifferent to it; but for a short time at least I felt my fatigue melt away, and my strides were, I think, the longer and swifter because I wanted to remain where I was. The guards in the bartizans were not city roundsmen but peltasts in half-armor, bearing transparent shields. I was almost at the western bank when two stepped forward to bar my way with their blazing spears. “It is a serious crime to wear the costume you affect. If you intend some jape or artifice, you endanger yourself for its sake.”
I said, “I am entitled to the habit of my guild.”
“You seriously claim you are a carnifex, then? Is that a sword you carry?”
“It is, but I am no such thing. I am a journeyman of the Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence.”
There was a silence. A hundred people or so had surrounded us in the few moments required for them to ask, and me to answer, their question. I saw the peltast who had not spoken glance at the other as if to say he means it, and then at the crowd.
“Come inside. The lochage wishes to speak with you.” They waited while I preceded them through the narrow door. The interior boasted only one small room, with a table and a few chairs. I mounte
d a little stair much worn by booted feet. In the room above, a man in a cuirass was writing at a high desk. My captors had followed me up, and when we stood before him, the one who had spoken previously said, “This is the man.”
“I am aware of that,” the lochage answered without looking up.
“He calls himself a journeyman of the guild of torturers.” For a moment the quill, which had skated along steadily before, paused. “I had never thought to encounter such a thing outside the pages of some book, but I dare say he speaks no more than the truth.”
“Ought we to release him then?” the soldier asked.
“Not quite yet.”
Now the lochage wiped his quill, sanded the letter over which he had labored, and looked up at us. I said, “Your subordinates stopped me because they doubted my right to the cloak I wear.”
“They stopped you because I ordered it, and I ordered it because you were creating a disturbance, according to the report of the eastern turrets. If you are of the guild of torturers—which to be honest I had supposed reformed out of existence long ago—you have spent your life in the—What do you call it?”
“The Matachin Tower.”
He snapped his fingers, and looked as though he were both amused and chagrined.
“I mean the place where your tower stands.”
“The Citadel.”
“Yes, the Old Citadel. It’s east of the river, as I recall, and just at the northern edge of the Algedonic Quarter. I was taken there to see the Donjon when I was a cadet. How often have you gone out into the city?” I thought of our swimming expeditions and said, “Often.”
“Dressed as you are now?”
I shook my head.
“If you’re going to do that, pull back that hood. I can only see the tip of your nose wiggle.” The lochage slid from his stool and strode to a window overlooking the bridge. “How many people do you think there are in Nessus?”
“I have no idea.”