by Bill Fawcett
There was no time to deal with my pain. Immediately, our Order was besieged with questions from the survivors of the flood. From being reviled and feared, we were suddenly a source of answers. In a way, no one seriously expected an ancient legend to come true, certainly not in their lifetimes. Most undoubtedly believed that if such a thing ever came to pass, it would change nothing else— but that could not be further from the truth. The people required guidance. They had no one to whom they could turn.
The Autarch had vanished with Nessus. Rumors spread over the land like the teeming waters that Severian the Lame had returned, rejuvenated, to herald the new light. If so, where was he? Was it true that he was the Conciliator come again? Who could make sense out of our world as it was now?
Unlike the Torturers, we witches almost never departed to other cities or villages out in the wide world. We were too vulnerable. Our clients must come to us. Yet this was a time that required sacrifice. For the first instance in our history, our Guildmistress sent many of us to the various centers of population, offering good sense and practical knowledge. We must keep fear from taking hold while we rebuilt, or the return to civilization would be delayed for years, if not centuries.
The rest of us were set to finding the answers. With the aid of the cacogens who still remained, chief among them the Cumaean, now unbelievably ancient, we did our best to seek out the path of the Autarch. Two of our number went off planet in search of Yesod. Others received missions here on Ushas. With my heightened senses, the Guildmistress directed me to the depths of Ocean, to plumb for drowned Nessus and whatever clues remained there. We must bring the Autarch back, to guide us forward under his New Sun.
Dark green shouting brought Chettor and me to our feet. The door of the cabin slammed open. A fresh gust of spray swept in, mirroring the sense of urgency of the barefoot seafarer who followed it.
“Mistress,” the young woman panted. “The sea has a face. And a hand.”
We hitched our way outward. I felt shipwrights of the ages in the rails that I clutched.
The sea still tossed, its fleering whitecaps taunting us, but the ship seemed to have been set in glass, so motionless it stood. I gasped as I perceived the reason: The bow was clutched in a massive hand as white as death.
Before it, Iria stood, looking as satisfied as any witch could. She beckoned me forward.
Chettor clung to me as I made my way to the side. The hand, larger than a goods wagon, each finger longer than my body, was attached to a salt-white arm. The curling water played around the enormous elbow like a frilled lace sleeve.
The face beside it, upturned, even in its monstrous size, was lovely enough to break my heart. I found deep satisfaction in the shapeliness of her cheekbones and chin. Long tresses of green and purple- brown hair floated upon the surface like sea wrack. As soon as I appeared, the gigantic eyes widened, and the plump lips parted to show white pointed teeth. Her other hand broke water in eager swirls and eddies. Before I could retreat, it seized me. A sorrowful yellow cry from the deck followed me down, until, with a metallic blue plunk, the sea closed above my head. Bubbles danced in my eyes.
The icy waters derided me, numbing my limbs. I had only half a breath of air. The pressure, both from within and without, threatened to crush my lungs.
I kicked and struggled to free myself. The creature’s grip was too strong to break. The gray sky vanished behind veil upon veil of green-gray seawater. My eyes stung. I squeezed them closed and pleaded with the Incarnate for mercy. I had been a good daughter of the faith. I was not so young that I was unaware of death. I had already borne children and given another generation to the guild, but I had so much more I wanted to learn and do. My hair streamed upward. The air in my lungs ran out of nourishing oxygen. I choked, and inhaled a mouthful of seawater.
Fool! I chided myself.
Before blackness filled my eyes, I had the presence of mind to fumble in my sodden scrip for my necklace. I put it on. An envelope of air surrounded me. I drew a deep gasp, and coughed out brackish water. I fought down my gorge. The supply of oxygen would not last long. We sank rapidly through the silken waters. Now that I did not fear immediate suffocation, I sought knowledge that would aid my escape, if not my quest.
I knew my captor. She was one of the Undines, the brides of Abaia, ruler of the abyss. Such creatures were subjects of our study. They were intelligent but rarely motivated to do anything outside their own interests.
I wriggled in the huge female’s grasp and pounded my fists on the edge of her palm to draw her attention. She stopped her descent and bobbed in place, then drew one massive eye down to the level of my head. Cnidaria and anguillas swirled around us like living streamers. I held the bubble formed by my necklace against her nose.
I beseeched her. “Sister, I will die if you take me to the depths.”
Her eyes crinkled with merriment. The very lines at the corners radiated amusement. Her voice caused my whole body to resound like the head of a drum.
“You shall not die!”
She brought her tremendous mouth up and pressed her lips to mine, penetrating the necklace’s bubble. Suddenly we seemed of a size, though I was still trapped within her hand. Her arms surrounded me, and one leg hooked behind my knees, pressing our bodies together. The kiss was as silken as a lover’s, but went deeper than any ever had, suffusing me not with warmth but with coolness. I trembled desperately, feeling as if I would break all my bones. Then suddenly, the shivering ceased.
The Undine poked a long fingernail under the circle of my necklace and flicked. The circlet broke and sank into the depths. I cried out, then realized I could breathe.
I had always liked the taste of salt, but it seemed that when I respired seawater, the flavor was lost to me. I should have been choking my lungs out, but they had turned to an expanded gill that filled my chest, giving me oxygen. Whether it was a permanent gift, it saved my life. But how could she be two sizes at once?
The Undine left me no time to ponder.
“What seek you here in my lover’s domain?” she asked.
Her voice boomed with colors of wine and ultramarine, like horns and harps together. I felt in her skin nothing but gentle curiosity. She truly meant me no harm. I relaxed and summoned my wits.
“The Autarch Severian,” I said. “He vanished with the waters from Nessus. Now Ushas floods, and we seek his guidance for the way forward.”
“Nessus is here,” she said, gesturing downward with her huge hand, a move that made me tremble. Beyond the murky currents I could see faint shapes, gray on gray. “But Severian is not.”
“Then I seek his wisdom,” I pleaded. “His words. He wrote his memoirs and left them in the library of the Citadel. So much has changed that the knowledge left behind of the old world has scattered, drowned, or dissolved, but wisdom is eternal. We need guidance. Those memoirs would offer a concrete symbol that would give hope to the people who survived.”
She shook her head, and the tresses of purple- green hair traced puzzled curves in the water.
“I know not of that. Such things are of little importance to us.”
“But you befriended our Autarch!” I said.
“Not I; one of my sisters, Juturna.”
“May I speak with her?”
Again, the hair danced in the current.
“You seek dreams. Nothing is eternal. You seek to follow one who has stepped out of your world.”
“Then, give me dreams,” I said, firmly. “Ideals are always dreams. Kingdoms have been built on less.”
She smiled. “For those, you must ask my master.”
My heart pounded. My voice rose to a thin, white pipe. “Abaia? Where . . . where must I go?”
“Nowhere and everywhere,” the Undine said, her white teeth a threat in her soft mouth.
I felt the sea around us warm slightly. The water became thicker, like honey. Fear built in my heart, until it hammered at my ribs, demanding escape. What little light there had been, fled. This was m
y darkest fear, drowning in the dark. I struggled to escape. Nothing held me, but there was nowhere to go.
Gradually, I became aware of a voice of the deepest red. As the Undine said, it came from nowhere and everywhere. My body thrummed with it, became part of it.
“A new bride? Ulundra, you honor me!”
I felt rather than saw the dimpling smile.
“My love, all that I have is yours.”
I could not see him, so I glared straight ahead of me.
“I am not a toy to be given away!”
The red voice boomed. “You have entered my realm, and all here is at my pleasure! You have become mine, to do with as I choose!”
It was a foolish gesture to protest, when both these enormous presences held my life between them, but I despised a bully.
“If you want me for a bride, then I demand a bride price,” I said. “When the Exultant Odaracus wooed me in the court of the Autarch, he gave me gifts. In exchange for that, I gave him fifteen years of devotion and two daughters until he left me for one of his own rank. What do you offer me?”
The viscous substance surrounding me suffused with merriment.
“A challenge! Name your price, then, toy.”
“My name is Nedell,” I declared. It gave him power over me, but if I could fulfill my mission for the Order, I would do it. My life was only one of the myriad I could save. The New Sun had come; I had lived to see it. It was enough. I steeled my quavering heart. “I want Severian’s memoirs, to bring back to the people of Ushas. I need to save my world. Give me that, and I am yours forever.”
“Forever?” the voice echoed. “Do you even know the meaning of that, Nedell?”
“No,” I said simply.
“Then, learn!”
Long ago, when I had crossed into the sixth level of initiation of our Order, I had to learn to blend my thoughts with others. For my elevation, I had to follow the mind of a many-times senior initiate, a cacogen from the star that circled the head of the Ram. She drew me out of myself until I joined with her. Our minds together flicked between the mirrors in the Guildmistress’s study and out toward that star, where I saw worlds illuminated with blue light instead of red. At the time it was as much as I could bear. The girl I was then would have quailed against the sight I now beheld. Even my elder self feared, though we both marveled.
The gray- green murk dissolved, leaving a curtain of blackness. Myriad pinpoints pierced that curtain, diamonds against the dark. Their beauty and their number overwhelmed me. I saw the universe as I never hoped to see it. Tears overspilled my eyes and rolled in every direction, freezing on my forehead, nose and cheeks, some trickling off to hang around me like tiny stars.
“There, you form your own worlds,” the red voice murmured. “They, too, will spawn life.” I turned my head, and my whole body spun. I flailed to control myself. Ulundra laughed.
I saw her, then. In the void, she swam as easily as she did in the deeps. Her sleek nakedness was more beautiful than any mortal, any work of art I had ever seen. Her hair curled and flowed like the tail of a comet. Her breasts were perfect half- spheres, tipped with blue- green nipples. I had suspected a fish’s tail, but her legs were like mine, but ideal in shape, with pillowy thighs and slender calves. Beside her was a male, as naked as she, corded muscles rippling beneath gray- blue skin. His shoulders were as broad as a blacksmith’s, his arms a swordsman’s, and his manhood longer than I was tall. His hair was pure black with a few silver threads brighter than the suns that surrounded us. His eyes glowed as red as his voice.
“I set you a challenge of my own. Where is your New Sun?”
I tore my eyes from his beauty and looked around me. The flecks of light shone. I saw different colors among them, blue, gold, red, even green. The New Sun was white, but there seemed a preponderance of white.
“There are too many,” I said.
“If your world means so much to you that you would give me your life in exchange, can you truly tell me that you do not know it?”
Know it? How could I distinguish it?
I cudgeled myself to remember what I had learned in Mistress Cinitha’s astronomy lectures.
Ah, but I might! The old Nedell, who had been maiden, mother, and now encroaching upon crone, could not, but the new Nedell, as new as the New Sun itself, had been given a gift on the day of its birth.
I closed my eyes and concentrated. Where was my sisterhood? They were in my heart, as they had been all of my life.
“Well, toy?”
“Patience!” I snapped, as if Abaia were no more than Chettor.
He chuckled.
Unlike most guilds, we did not often raise apprentices from infancy. Rather, a baffled-looking child was occasionally left at the Mercy Gate outside our tower, or a young man who knew the spots on the dice before they fell too often for chance, or a frightened woman, pursued by an angry mob, rang our alarm bell. Most of the time, the fact that she had reached our tower kept the mob back long enough for us to rescue her. Sometimes, it didn’t. Our small cemetery had an ossuary of bones of those whom had sought our protection yet not survived to enter the guild. We had plenty of charlatans and wish-they-weres come to the door, but they did not stay, as we could easily discern the falsehood. For the others, they knew from the moment the great door shut behind them that they had come home.
I had the very smell of the herb gardens in my nostrils. Scents as thick as wax and soft as silk caressed me. Gentle breezes brought birdsong and the chirring of insects. Unlike my present misfortune, that is a genuine memory, one I will always treasure, and hope to hold again, once the new gardens are grown and I have returned to the bosom of my family— the Guild of Witches. I sought for that single point of light that meant home. It was faint, so faint, at this distance, but I knew the kindness of the Infirmaress, the patience of the teachers, the love that the Guildmistress had for us all, and the children I loved and had to let go so that they, like I, could fulfill their destinies. It was there, I knew it!
I opened my eyes. A cluster of stars hung before me like a cloud of gnats. Ushas was among them.
“Well, toy, which one?” Abaia taunted me.
From this coign the tiny spots of white light seemed alike, taraxacum seeds dancing in night air. All of them felt like strangers going about their business but one, that faint point just to the right of the topmost light.
“That one,” I said.
“Are you certain? Would you stake all their lives as well as your own?”
I quailed in dread.
“Please don’t make them suffer more than they have,” I begged. There was no floor on which I could drop to my knees, but I crouched low and held my tiny hands out to him. “If I am wrong, let only me pay. I offered you my life. Take it. Let them be.”
“Who are you to demand anything at all?” Abaia asked, the magnificent eyebrows lifting high on the broad brow. “Order is at my whim, because chaos reigns when I will it.”
I swallowed. “But the Autarchs . . .”
“Are a mere moment in all of history. All but one. I rule for infinity! But you are correct, Nedell.” He smiled, showing all his teeth. In that flash of whiteness, I saw an infinity of reflections of myself, and suddenly we were back in the grayness of the deep. Ulundra clapped her hands with delight, as if I were an animal that had just done a trick.
Arms again enfolded me, but they exuded the majestic intelligence of Abaia himself. We spun together. The rags of my clothing fell away, until I was as naked as Ulundra. I felt his body explore mine, seeking its inner secrets. I felt passion as I had not for years as his lips and hands explored my flesh. The lapping of the seawater around us only excited me more greatly. But when he opened up my vulnerability, our minds were shared, as mine had been with the cacogen. I saw stars in the blackness within him, and realized that he was the universe turned inside out. I knew his truth.
When our passion was spent, he returned to titan size and floated lazily beside me.
“You
don’t fear me.”
I considered the question.
“No. I am curious about you.”
He extended a huge hand. I kissed the nearest fingertip.
“I could snuff you out between two fingers.”
“That would not stop my curiosity,” I said. “I have faced my greatest fears and lived. I know yours. You fear being unmade by order. You are chaos. This is a time for you to thrive, but all will settle again, and you will lose the upper hand you have now.”
“Be my bride,” he said. “Join my women. You shall learn the beauty of chaos.”
I bowed my head. “When I have brought back to my Order that which we require.”
“I grant you leave,” Abaia said. “The coffer that held your Autarch’s memories is buried deep, and the other flung into another existence, where not even the cacogens can retrieve it. It belongs to the ages and the void.”
“Then we are lost,” I said.
“Chaos will reign, as is right.”
“I will seek the coffer,” I said stubbornly. I fought against the void of despair into which he sought to drag me. I had the strength of my sisters behind me, as well as the training and the weight of my years. We mystes were initiates in many disciplines. “Will you guide me to the archives? That is its most likely location.” He waved the hand. The swirling current it caused flung me outward several leagues and brought me back again.
“Ulundra will take you.”
I expected the Undine to be jealous of Abaia’s proposal. Instead, she was delighted. She gathered me up in her hand and swam down toward the shadows on the sea floor.
“We have had no new brides for an age,” she said. “We will so love having you join us. Come, this way! This is the way to seek your dream.”
My heart rent again and again as we flitted among the ruins of the great Citadel. No bodies of human or animal remained, but all the buildings and possessions left by those who fled or drowned cried out the stories of their makers to me.