by Gene Wolfe
My chief wife's maidservant has brought me a gourd of good water. She is a girl older than my daughter. Some beast has clawed her, leaving scars like mine on her arms and back. These are healing, I think. I asked what beast it was. She does not know its name, but says I killed it. Her own is Mtoto. I WROTE THAT I would not write by firelight. So much for my wisdom! There is a madman laughing outside our camp. I asked Mvita whether we should not go out and drive him away. He said that there are many dangerous animals here and many demons. They will try all sorts of tricks to lure us away from the fires, and that we must not go. THE WOMEN ARE breaking camp and will not let me help them. I will write of what I saw last night. A panther as large as a lion prowled around our camp. I woke and saw this. At times it came very near the fires. It was blacker than the night and very beautiful, seeming to flow from one place to another, but looked as dangerous as a chariot with blades. I held my spear, which I had driven into the ground near my head before I slept. Our sentries never turned their eyes toward it. If it was before a sentry, he looked to one side, or down, or up at the moon, or shut his eyes. This I saw more than once. It seems strange to me, and I wish to set it down. Perhaps it was a dream. WE HAVE STOPPED at a village in which there is a man who is said to know where the temple we seek lies. He is hunting, and we wait his return. His name is Mzee.
Binti has been crying. I tried to comfort her. When I asked what was wrong, she said that when we find the holy place I will remember other people and go away. I said I would not, but she insisted. Perhaps she is right, I cannot say. I would have promised to stay, but what good is a promise from a man who cannot remember? I said that if I left she must come with me. It ended her tears, or nearly. MZEE HAS RETURNED at last. He is older than I expected, the oldest man in this village, though he still hunts-and hunts well, for he brought a fine antelope. He warned us of the holy place, saying that there are many snakes. Uraeus says that we need not fear them as long as he is with us. My sons boast that they will kill them. I have warned them to leave them strictly alone. Snakes and boys are a bad combination at the best of times, and the snakes in a sacred place are surely sacred.
Myt-ser'eu talks of her home in Sais, of the kindness of the priests and of singing, playing, and dancing at parties where she drank good wine until she could scarcely stand. I said I was sorry that I had taken her so far away. She would not blame me, or anyone, saying it was the will of the gods-if she had stayed at home, something worse might have happened. She would implore the pity of her goddess, and her goddess would help her, if only she could find a temple. Hathor, she names her goddess. I said that the sacred place the king speaks of might be sacred to Hathor, and we would pray there. As I spoke those words the gold scarab on my chest stirred like a living thing.
Mzee has given his antelope to the king, and the king has contributed it to the feast Mzee's village is preparing for us tomorrow. I will hunt tomorrow morning with Vinjari and Utundu, and we will contribute any worthy game we take. If I can teach them nothing of hunting (which is what they say), it may be that they will teach me something.
31
IN THE BUSH
WHERE WE ARE camped, there is no water. We have some in gourds and in skin bags like wine skins, but not enough. Mzee says we may find a spring tomorrow, before we reach the temple. There is game here, though not much; the animals must get water somewhere.
We marched far from the river today, following a dry stream through a deep gorge that may once have been a major tributary. I no longer remember leaving the river, but I know we must have left it at dawn from what Cheche and the children say.
My sandals are nearly worn out. I have been looking among the things we brought for materials with which to make new ones. Cheche asked what I was doing; when I told her, she said she would make me new ones of braided grass. Perhaps I will cut up an empty water skin and give my new sandals a soft leather lining.
The temple is near. The scarab I wear sees it (or scents it, perhaps) and stirs as I write. The king does not wish to enter this temple after dark. No doubt this is wise; animals may den there-leopards or the skulking wild dogs we saw so often today.
The animal I saw outside our camp not long ago was a leopard, in form at least, although it was blacker than the night save for its burning eyes. Perhaps it resents our being so near. I HAVE PROMISED my senior wife that she may leave me to return to her home. We may see a ship, she says, when we return to the river. This ship will carry her back there. Or so she hopes. It has been ahead of us for a long time, she says. I promised that if we found this ship we would board it. She said the king might not permit me to board it. She asked whether she might go alone. I said that she might, a pain that is never less. I had been looking forward to lying with her tonight, but how can I lie with her when I know she hopes to leave me? Perhaps I will lie with Cheche instead.
My senior wife swore that we have spoken like this many times. WHILE I SAT here watching the fires and trying to choose, my slave came to tell me he had entered the temple. It is a good place, he says, though much decayed. There are snakes there, but only a few. I asked why the king wishes me to go there. The senior wife who wishes to leave me said it was because a god had ordered it in a dream. If nothing happens there, will the king blame me for it? I cannot say, and neither could they.
Certainly I put no trust in dreams. I would not like to meet the king singly; he is a skilled warrior, and his men say he is as bold as seven lions. If I took his life, his men would take mine, I feel sure.
I HAVE TRIED the sandals Cheche made. They need no lining, and are stronger than I would have thought possible. Now Myt-ser'eu and I will sleep. VINJARI IS GONE. I have the shield the goddess gave. So much has happened that I despair of writing everything, though Myt-ser'eu and Cheche say I must. So does Myt-ser'eu's servant. I will write the first thing first.
We set out for the temple but had not gone far when a cry came from the back of the column. One of the king's warriors had trodden upon a snake, which bit him. The others killed it, a big brown snake with a head like a viper's. Unguja treated him, sucking the wound and dressing it with salve and the flesh of the dead snake; the bitten warrior soon died just the same. We buried him in the dry watercourse, heaping his grave with stones.
"I have promised you would be safe from us in the temple as long as I was with you, master," my slave whispered.
I said I had forgotten it.
"Of course, master. Yet I spoke as I said. I cannot promise that the others will be. Only you. Even you will not be safe unless I go ahead of you to tell the folk. May I go?"
I thought he merely wanted a respite from the work of piling stones, but I said he might. He left at once, and I did not see him again until the time I will write of.
The temple is stone, very old. Myt-ser'eu said that though she had seen many old things in her own land, it was older than any. Its roof has fallen in places. The king said that only he and I should enter. That was wise, I think, but Unguja pleaded with the king. When the king agreed to take him, he urged that Mzee come with us as well. That too was granted.
The king asked then whether there were any whom I would have with me. Myt-ser'eu wished to go, but I feared for her and took my sons instead. So we six entered the temple, bearing torches and unaware that a seventh would slip away and follow us.
It seemed darker there than any night, for we stepped into darkness from sunlight bright enough to blind a lion. It seemed cool as well after the heat of the day, which had been very great. Bats stirred and squeaked on the false arches above us, and the floor was crusted with their droppings.
Soon I felt a stirring on my chest, as though the gold scarab I wore feared the bats. When I looked down, I saw that it was biting the string that held it. In a moment more the string had parted, and it flew some distance, still gleaming blue and gold in the light of our torches.
Behind me the king called, demanding to know what I was doing. I tried to explain that my scarab had come to life, and flown, an
d vanished into a crevice in the floor. This was difficult, because I do not speak his tongue well and could not lay hand to many words I required.
"The string broke," the king told me. His voice was kind. "Your scarab fell and rolled into the crevice. Forget it, as you forget so much. You will never see it again."
I asked him to help me lift the stone; he shook his head, backing away. "We must find the god," he said. "That is what is important, Latro-finding the god."
Lifting the stone was difficult, not only because of its weight, but because it was hard to grasp at first. My sons helped, but would not go down the worn steps with me. I went down, walking very slowly because my torch burned badly there. I thought that my scarab (I never found it) must have rolled down the long stair; when I motioned to my sons, they looked frightened and would not follow. So it was that they learned they were only boys, after all.
As I descended I saw that the temple had once been much larger than the part that we had seen. Wind and time had heaped up soil around it; the part we had seen and entered had been an upper story once. There was a small god of black stone, in appearance a man as old as Unguja, in a niche at the landing. I held my torch close to see his face. He was bald, bearded, and smiling, round-bellied. He held a cup and a flute. I felt then as I do when I see the king, felt that he was a better friend than I knew. I touched him, and he moved at my touch. When I lifted him from the niche in which he stood, I saw that there was an opening behind him and a scroll smaller than this one in the opening.
I took it out; and as I replaced the image of the happy old god, I heard the voice of my senior wife, Myt-ser'eu, behind me. I turned at once, almost dropping the scroll he had given me.
She stood on the stair. Behind her was a man blacker than the king, not the small and friendly god whose image I had moved, but a tall man with the look of a warrior who kills the wounded. His hands were on her shoulders, and there was a thing in her face I cannot put into words. She might have been dreaming (though her eyes were very wide) and frightened by her dream. "You must give it to Sahuset," she told me. "Don't you remember? You promised to give it to Sahuset."
I did not remember, nor do I know who Sahuset may be.
"You promised him. Swore that you would give it to him."
I tried to untie the cords, for I wished to see whether I could read it. There was no knot.
"You must not open it," Myt-ser'eu told me.
I was afraid for her. I would have cast my spear at the black man behind her if he had stood alone; I felt I could not throw without killing her, for he would lift her to receive it. "I love you," I said; I knew it was true, and that she did not know it.
"If you open it," she told me, "you will never find your shield."
I saw it was important to her and said I would not. The truth is that I could not. The leather case that carries this scroll was slung on my back, as I would think it always must be on the march. I opened that instead, and put the scroll I had found into it. It is a smaller scroll than this, tightly wound.
I stopped just now to look at it again, but did not cut its cords. It is not mine to open, or so I feel.
When I had fastened the straps of my scroll case, the tall man who had held Myt-ser'eu was gone. I asked her who he had been; she said there had been no such man.
"A tall, hard-faced man," I said, "darker than your eyes. His own seemed to burn."
"I've seen many men like that here," Myt-ser'eu replied. "There are dozens like that with us. Did you mean it? What you said when I was on the steps above you?"
I nodded and she kissed me. I held her close, delighting in the breasts she pressed so tightly to me. How small she is! How sweet and good!
We descended the second stair to the bottom hand in hand, and searched for the inner room in which the god would stand. I knew it was what we must find, because the king had said it, and because Myt-ser'eu did not seem to understand me when I asked about the shield she had said only a moment before that I had lost. "I suppose I must have owned a shield once," I said, "but I don't recall it."
"You recall very little," she told me. "When you fought Cheche's brother-in-law you won his shield, but you did not like it. It was too big, you said, and not strong enough. The king did not want you to have it, either. You left it behind in Cheche's village."
If there were pictures on the walls of that temple once, the passing years had worn them away. We saw only bare stones, somewhat rough, somewhat soiled, and strangely fitted. Windows had spilled sand and shale onto the floor, and here and there a wall bulged and seemed about to fall. Once I heard a thrumming ahead of us, as if a beetle flew through the darkness there; and once I saw a faint gleam that might have been gold, though there was no gold there when I went to look where it had been.
The holiest place held the rude statue of a woman. From her left hand dangled such a cross as I know I have seen elsewhere, though I do not know where; her right held a long arrow. Her headdress was a disk, as of the sun or moon, held by curved supports.
Myt-ser'eu knelt to her, bent her head and prayed. Her whispers were too soft for me to make out the words, and I felt certain she was praying that she be returned to her city in the north.
The goddess stepped from her pedestal, becoming a living woman no larger than Myt-ser'eu herself-smaller, perhaps-but standing before a thing brighter than she. She held out her arrow to me; with the hand I freed by accepting it, she took the disk from her headdress and held it before Myt-ser'eu's eyes. "Your prayer for the man with you is granted," she told Myt-ser'eu. "You are to give him this. The wish you left unvoiced is granted as well. You shall return to your home as you desire, though you shall leave again by your desire."
Her arrow had melted into my hand the moment I grasped it. The disk she had shown Myt-ser'eu rang as it fell to the stones on which she stood, and at the sound there was no woman standing there, only the image of a woman standing upon its pedestal.
Myt-ser'eu straightened up and picked up a larger disk. "Look, Latro! A shield! We didn't see it because it lay flat on the floor, but here it is."
She held it out to me, and I took it. It is of bronze green with age. The handle on the back is bronze also. These small clipei have no strap for the arm. I have it before me as I write, and will polish it when I have written all I must.
When we returned to the upper level, I showed it to the king, who looked at it from every angle but would not touch it. When he had examined it in that fashion, he said that we must go, calling Mzee and Unguja to him. I was about to call my sons, when they ran to me trembling. Vinjari had seen a big snake, the younger said, and cast his spear at it. When the spear struck, it was a man.
I ran to look, making them come with me, though they were badly frightened. The man was my slave. His mouth was wide as he coughed blood, and I saw that he had fangs. I do not believe I can ever have seen a man with fangs before. I do not think anyone else saw these fangs.
I gave my spear and shield to Utundu, and picked up my slave. He died in my arms. I told the king we must bury him. He had belonged to me, and I owed him that and more. The king agreed.
My wives, my sons, my daughter, and our servant girl went with me into the bush. In the bed of the dry stream, in a place of many stones, we dug a grave with spears; but when we would have laid him in it, he was gone. I said that some animal must have carried the body away while we worked. The women and girls said it could not be. They had been sitting beside it a moment before, talking quietly among themselves and waving off the flies.
Perhaps they slept.
Or it may be that Vinjari took it, and they would not tell me. However that may be, he has gone off into the bush. Utundu and I tracked him a long way, but lost the trail at last. NOW I MUST write again. I have built up the fire, and there will be light enough for a time. I polished the new shield the goddess gave me while the others slept, rubbing it with fine sand to make it bright. Soon it was so clear in the place I rubbed that I could see the leaping flames behind me re
flected there.
They vanished, and in their place I saw a self younger than I am whose head was wrapped in bloodstained bandages. This self threw his sword into the river, offering a prayer to the river god. The river god tempered it, heating it in flickering flames that rose from his waters and quenching it in them. At length he returned it, and nothing save my own shadow and the flickering flames showed in the bright metal over which I had labored.
But I remembered! I remember even now. Not just seeing it in the metal, but the whole event: How my head ached that day, and how weak I was. How I had prayed for the black man with me-he was the king, I know, for his face was the same.
He was my only friend, and the river god the only god I knew. I cast my sword into the river when I had asked the river god to bless him. The river god showed it to his daughters, beautiful young girls with skin as white as his, and his skin was as white as foam. When they had seen it and tried to take it from him, he returned it to me.
"Not wood, nor bronze, nor iron shall stand against her, and she will not fail you until you fail her."
I have failed her now, but I will redeem my failure. Or walk alone and sorrowing, as this says my son did, into the bush to die.
32
THE QUEEN IS OVERJOYED
TOMORROW WE WILL go down the Great River. Last night I talked long with the king. I spoke as Hellenes do, he as his people do. I understand that speech better than I speak it.
He told me many things that had taken place while we were together in Hellas. They are fading from my mind even as I write. It may be well that they do, because there are many I cannot believe or may have misunderstood.
I told him of casting Falcata into the river, and he said I had told him of it before, long ago. I said that I must find her and hold her again, or die in the attempt. I had spoken of Falcata to my senior wife. (Myt-ser'eu is her name, and she is the smaller of the two.) She told me how I had lost it when I fought the men of Nubia. It must surely be somewhere in Nubia now, I told the king, for no soldier would cast aside such a weapon. I was going there to find it, I said; and I asked in the light of our friendship that he see that my wives and children did not want while I was away. He said he would, but soon said that he himself would go with me. He will bring warriors and gold, for it may be that we will have to buy back Falcata from her new owner. He will bring the queen as well; and when I have regained Falcata, we will journey north into Riverland and from there to her city. Unguja will govern for the king in his absence. We spoke with him, and he swore that he would see that my wives and children are well treated and have good food. AS SOON AS I could, I told Myt-ser'eu much of what the king and I had said. I do not recall it now-only the casting my sword into the river of Hellas-but when we spoke I did, and no doubt some are written here. She raged and wept and raged again. I swore, she said, that I would return her to her native city. She will have no gift from me, for I have become poor, her jewelry is gone, and now I intend to break my oath. She would take her own life-this she said again and again.