by Gene Wolfe
“Wake her now, Severian. We should be going. I’ll rouse Baldanders, and we can divide the money and pack.”
“I won’t be going with you,” I said.
Dr. Talos looked at me quizzically.
“I have to return to the city. I have business with the Order of Pelerines.”
“You can remain with us until we reach the main road, then. It will be your most expeditious route back.” Perhaps because he refrained from questioning me, I felt he knew more than what he had said indicated.
Ignoring our talk, Jolenta smothered a yawn. “I’ll have to have more sleep before tonight, or my eyes won’t look as good as they should.” I said, “I will, but when we reach the road, I must go.” Dr. Talos had already turned away to wake the giant, shaking him and striking his shoulders with his slender cane. “As you wish,” he said, and I could not be sure whether he was addressing Jolenta or me. I stroked Dorcas’s forehead and whispered that we would have to move on now.
“I wish you hadn’t done that. I was having the most wonderful dream… Very detailed, very real.”
“So was I—before I woke, I mean.”
“You’ve been awake a long time then? Is this apple mine?”
“All the breakfast you’ll get, I’m afraid.”
“All I need. Look at it, how round it is, how red. What is it they say? ‘Red as the apples of…’ I can’t think of it. Would you like a bite?”
“I’ve eaten already. I had a pomegranate.”
“I should have known from the stains on your mouth. I thought you’d been sucking blood all night.” I must have looked shocked when she said this, because she added, “Well, you did look like a black bat bending over me.” Baldanders was sitting up now, rubbing his eyes with his hands like an unhappy child. Dorcas called across the fire, “Terrible to have to rise so early, isn’t it, goodman? Were you dreaming too?”
“No dreams,” Baldanders answered. “I never dream.” (Dr. Talos looked toward me and shook his head as if to say, Most unhealthy.)
“I’ll give you some of mine then. Severian says he has plenty of his own.”
Though he seemed thoroughly awake, Baldanders stared at her. “Who are you?”
“I’m…” Dorcas turned toward me, frightened.
“Dorcas,” I said.
“Yes, Dorcas. Don’t you remember? We met behind the curtain last night. You… your friend introduced us, and said I shouldn’t be afraid of you, because you would only pretend to hurt people. In the show. I said I understood, because Severian does terrible things but is really so kind.” Dorcas looked to me again. “You remember, Severian, don’t you?”
“Of course. I don’t think you have to be anxious about Baldanders just because he’s forgotten. He’s big, I know, but his size is like my fuligin clothes—it makes him look much worse than he is.”
Baldauders told Dorcas, “You have a wonderful memory. I wish I could recall everything like that.” His voice was like the rolling of heavy stones. While we were talking, Dr. Talos had produced the money box. He jingled it now to interrupt us. “Come, friends, I have promised you a fair and equitable distribution of the proceeds of our performance, and when that is complete, it will be time to be moving. Turn around, Baldanders, and spread your hands in your lap. Sieur Severian, ladies, will you gather around me as well?” I had observed, of course, that when the doctor spoke earlier of dividing the contributions he had collected the night before, he had specified division into four parts; but I had assumed it was Baldanders, who seemed to be his slave, who would receive nothing. Now, however, after ruinmaging in the box, Dr. Talos dropped a shining asimi into the giant’s hands, gave another to me, a third to Dorcas, and a fistful of orichalks to Jolenta; then he began to distribute orichalks singly. “You will notice that everything thus far is good money,” he said. “I regret to report that there are a fair number of dubious coins here as well. When the undoubted specie is exhausted, you will each come in for a share of them.”
Jolenta asked, “Have you already taken yours, Doctor? I think the rest of us ought to have been present.”
For a moment Dr. Talos’s hands, which had been darting from one of us to another as he counted out the coins, paused. “I take no share from this,” he said. Dorcas glanced toward me as if to confirm her judgment and whispered, “That doesn’t seem fair.”
I said, “It isn’t fair. Doctor, you took as large a part in the show last night as any of us, and collected the money, and from what I have seen, you provided the stage and scenery as well. If anything, you should have a double share.”
“I take nothing,” Dr. Talos said slowly. It was the first time I had seen him abashed. “It is my pleasure to direct what I may now call the company. I wrote the play we perform, and like…” (he looked around as if at a loss for a simile) “…that armor there I play my part. These things are my pleasure, and all the reward I require.
“Now, friends, you will have observed that we are reduced to single orichalks, and there are not enough to make the circle again. To be specific, only two are left. Whoever wishes may have both by renouncing claim to the aes and doubtful stuff remaining. Severian? Jolenta?”
Somewhat to my surprise, Dorcas announced, “I’ll take them.”
“Very good. I will not presume to judge among the rest, but simply hand it out. I warn you who receive it to be careful in passing it. There are penalties for such things, though outside the Wall—What’s this?” I followed the direction of his eyes and saw a man in shabby gray advancing toward us.
35. HETHOR
I do not know why it should be humiliating to receive a stranger while sitting on the ground, but it is so. Both the women stood as the gray figure approached, and so did I. Even Baldanders lumbered to his feet, so that by the time the newcomer was within speaking distance, only Dr. Talos, who had reoccupied our one chair, remained seated.
Yet a less impressive figure would have been difficult to imagine. He was small of stature, and because his clothes were too large for him, seemed smaller still. His weak chin was covered with stubble; as he approached, he pulled a greasy cap away to show a head on which the hair had retreated at either side to leave a single wavering line like the crest of an old and dirty burginot. I knew I had seen him elsewhere, but it was a moment before I recognized him. “Lords,” he said. “O lords and mistresses of creation, silkencapped, silken-haired women, and man commanding empires and the armies of the F-f-foemen of our Ph-ph-photosphere! Tower strong as stone is strong, strong as the o-o-oak that puts forth leaves new after the fire! And my master, dark master, death’s victory, viceroy over the n-night! Long I signed on the silver-sailed ships, the hundred-masted whose masts reached out to touch the st-st-stars, I, floating among their shining jibs with the Pleiades burning beyond the top-royal sp-sp-spar, hilt never have I seen ought like you! He-he-hethor am I, come to serve you, to scrape the mud from your cloak, whet the great sword, c-c-carry the basket with the eyes of your victims looking up at me, Master, eyes like the dead moons of Verthandi when the sun has gone out. When the sun has g-g-gone out! Where are they then, the bright players? How long will the torches burn? The f-f-freezing hands grope toward them, but the torch bowls are colder than any ice, colder than the moons of Verthandi, colder than the dead eyes! Where is the strength then that heats the lake to foam? Where is the empire, where the Armies of the Sun, long-lanced and goldenbannered? Where are the silken-haired women we loved only l-I-last night?”
“You were in our audience, I take it,” said Dr. Talos. “I can well sympathize with your desire to see the performance again. But we won’t be able to oblige you until evening, and by then we hope to be some distance from here.” Hethor, whom I had met outside Agilus’s prison with the fat man, the hungry-eyed woman and the others, did not seem to have heard him. He was staring at me, with occasional glances toward Baldanders and Dorcas. “He hurt you, didn’t he? Writhing, writhing. I saw you with the blood running, red as pentecost. Wh-wh-what honor for you! You ser
ve him too, and your calling is higher than mine.”
Dorcas shook her head and tumed her face away. The giant only stared. Dr. Talos said, “Surely you understand that what you saw was a theatrical performance.” (I remember thinking that if most of the audience had had a firmer grip on that idea, we would have found ourselves in an embarrassing dilemma when Baldanders jumped from the stage.)
“I u-understand more than you think, I the old captain, the old lieutenant, the old c-c-cook in his old kitchen, cooking soup, cooking broth for the dying pets! My master is real, but where are your armies? Real, and where are your empires? Sh-shall false blood run from a true wound? Were is your strength when the b-b-blood is gone, where is the luster of the silken hair? I w-will catch it in a cup of glass, I, the old c-captain of the old limping sh-ship, with its crew black against the silver sails, and the C-c-coalstack behind it.” Perhaps I should say here that at the time I paid little attention to the rush and stumble of Hethor’s words, though my ineradicable memory enables me to recreate them on paper now. He spoke a gobbling singsong, with a fine spray of spittle flying through the gaps in his teeth. In his slow way, Baldarders may have understood him. Dorcas, I feel sure, was too repelled by him to hear much of what he said. She turned aside as one turns from the mutterings and cracking bones when an alzabo savages a carcass, and Jolenta listened to nothing that did not concern herself.
“You can see for yourself that the young woman is unharmed.” Dr. Talos rose and put away his money box. “It’s always a pleasure to speak to someone who has appreciated our performance, but I’m afraid we’ve work to do. We must pack. If you’ll excuse us?”
Now that his conversation had become one with Dr. Talos exclusively, Hethor put his cap on again, pulling it down until it nearly covered his eyes. “Stowage? There’s no one better for it than I, the old s-supercargo, the old chandler and steward, the old st-stevedore. Who else shall put the kernels back on the cob, fit the f-fledgling into the egg again? Who shall fold the solemn-winged m-moth with w-wings each like stuns’ls, into the broken cocoon left h-hanging like a s-s-sarcophagus? And for the love of the M-master, I’ll do it, for the sake of the M-master, I’ll do it. And f-f-f-follow anywhere, anywhere he goes.” I nodded, not knowing what to say. Just at the moment, Baldanders—who had apparently caught the references to packing if he had caught nothing else—scooped a backdrop from the stage and began to wind it on its pole. Hethor vaulted up with unexpected agility to fold the set for the Inquisitor’s chamber and reel in the projector wires. Dr. Talos turned to me as if to say, He’s your responsibility after all, just as Baldanders is mine.
“There are a good many of them,” I told him. “They find pleasure in pain, and want to associate with us just as a normal man might want to be around Dorcas and Jolenta.”
The doctor nodded. “I wondered. One can imagine an ideal servent who serves out of pure love for his master, just as one can an ideal rustic who remains a ditcher from a love of nature, or an ideal fricatrice who spreads her legs a dozen times a night from a love of copulation. But one never encounters these fabulous creatures in reality.”
In about a watch we were on the road. Our small theater packed itself quite neatly into a huge barrow formed from parts of the stage, and Baldanders, who wheeled this contraption, also carried a few odds and ends on his back. Dr. Talos, with Dorcas, Jolenta, and me behind him, led the way, and Hethor followed Baldanders at a distance of perhaps a hundred paces. “He’s like me,” Dorcas said, glancing back. “And the doctor is like Agia, only not as bad. Do you remember? She couldn’t make me go away, and eventually you made her stop trying.”
I did remember, and asked why she had followed us with such determination. “You were the only people I knew. I was more afraid of being alone than I was of Agia.”
“Then you were afraid of Agia.”
“Yes, very much. I still am. But… I don’t know where I’ve been, but I think I’ve been alone, wherever I was. For a long time. I didn’t want to do that anymore. You won’t understand this—or like it—but…”
“Yes?”
“If you had hated me as much as Agia did, I would have followed you anyway.
“I don’t think Agia hated you.”
Dorcas stared up at me, and I can see that piquant face now as well as if it were reflected in the quiet well of vermillion ink. It was, perhaps, a trifle pinched and pale, too childlike for great beauty; but the eyes were bits of the azure firmament of some hidden world waiting for Man; they could have vied with Jolenta’s own. “She hated me,” Dorcas said softly. “She hates me more now. Do you remember how dazed you were after the fight? You never looked back when I led you away. I did, and I saw her face.”
Jolenta had been complaining to Dr. Talos because she had to walk. Baldanders’s deep, dull voice came from behind us now. “I will carry you.” She glanced back at him. “What? On top of all the rest?”
He did not reply.
“When I say I want to ride, I don’t mean, as you seem to think, like a fool at a flogging.”
In my imagination, I saw the giant’s sad nod.
Jolenta was afraid of looking foolish, and what I am going to write now will sound foolish indeed, though it is true. You, my reader, may enjoy yourself at my expense. It struck me then how fortunate I was, and how fortunate I had been since leaving the Citadel. Dorcas I knew was my friend—more than a lover, a true companion, though we had been together only a few days. The giant’s heavy tread behind me reminded me of how many men there are who wander Urth utterly alone. I knew then (or thought I did) why Baldanders chose to obey Dr. Talos, bending his mighty strength to whatever task the red-haired man laid on him. A touch at my shoulder took me from my revery. It was Hethor, who must have come up silently from his position in the rear. “Master,” he said. I told him not to call me that, and explained that I was only a journeyman of my guild, and would probably never attain to mastership. He nodded humbly. Through his open lips I could glimpse the broken incisors.
“Master, where do we go?”
“Out the gate,” I said, and told myself I said it because I wanted him to follow Dr. Talos and not me; the truth was that I was thinking of the preternatural beauty of the Claw, and how sweet it would be to carry it to Thrax with me, instead of retracing my steps to the center of Nessus. I gestured toward the Wall, which now rose in the distance as the walls of a common fortress must rise before a mouse. They were black as thunderheads, and held certain clouds captive at their summit.
“I will carry your sword, Master.”
The offer seemed honestly made, though I was reminded that the plot Agia and her brother had conceived against me had been born of their desire for Terminus Est. As firmly as I could, I said, “No. Not now or ever.”
“I feel pity for you, Master, seeing you walk with it on your shoulder so. It must be very heavy.”
I was explaining, quite truthfully, that it was not as burdensome as it appeared, when we rounded the side of a gentle hill and saw half a league off a straight highway running toward an opening in the Wall. It was crowded with carts and wagons and traffic of all kinds, all dwarfed by the Wall and the towering gate until the people looked like mites and the beasts like ants pulling at little crumbs. Dr. Talos turned until he was walking backward and waved at the Wall as proudly as if he had built it himself. “Some of you, I think, have never seen this. Severian? Ladies? Have you been this near before?”
Even Jolenta shook her head, and I said, “No. I’ve spent my life so near the middle of the city that the Wall was no more than a dark line on the northern horizon when we looked from the glass-roofed room at the top of our tower. I am astounded, I admit.”
“The ancients built well, did they not? Think—after so many millennia, all the open area through which we have passed today yet remains for the growth of the city. But Baldanders is shaking his head. Don’t you see, my dear patient, that all these bosquets and pleasant meadows among which we have journeyed this morning will one day
be displaced by buildings and streets?” Baldanders said, “They were not for the growing of Nessus.”
“Of course, of course. I’m sure you were there, and know all about it.” The doctor winked at the rest of us. “Baldanders is older than I, and so believes he knows everything. Sometimes.”
We were soon within a hundred paces or so of the highway, and Jolenta’s attention became fixed on its traffic. “If there’s a litter for hire, you must get it for me,” she told Dr. Talos. “I won’t be able to perform tonight if I have to walk all day.”
He shook his head. “You forget, I have no money. Should you see a litter and wish to engage it, you are of course free to do so. If you cannot appear tonight, your understudy will take your role.”
“My understudy?”
The doctor gestured toward Dorcas. “I’m certain she is eager to try the starring part, and that she will do famously. Why do you think I permitted her to join us and share in the proceeds? Less rewriting will be necessary than if we have two women.”
“She will go with Severian, you fool. Didn’t he say this morning he was going back to look for—” Jolenta wheeled on me, more beautiful than ever for being angry. “What did you call them? Pelisses?”
I said, “Pelerines.” And at this a man riding a merychip at the edge of the concourse of people and animals reined his diminutive mount over. “If you’re looking for the Pelerines,” he said, “your way lies with mine—out the gate, not toward the city. They passed along this road last night.” I quickened my step until I could grasp the cantle of his saddle, and asked if he were sure of his information.
“I was disturbed when the other patrons of my inn rushed into the road to receive their blessing,” the man on the merychip said. “I looked out the window and saw their procession. Their servants carried deeses illuminated with candles but reversed, and the priestesses themselves had torn their habits.” His face, which was long and worn and humorous, split in a wry grin. “I don’t know what was wrong, but believe me, their departure was impressive and unmistakable—that’s what the bear said, you know, about the picnickers.” Dr. Talos whispered to Jolenta, “I think the angel of agony there, and your understudy, will remain with us a while longer.”