The Sword of the Lictor botns-3
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At last, when I heard the footsteps no longer, I concealed myself as well as I could and lay down and slept. I half expected I would not wake from that sleep, or that I would wake with a knife at my throat, but no such thing happened. Dreaming of water, I slept well past the dawn and woke alone, cold and stiff in every limb.
I cared nothing then for the secret of the footsteps, or the guardsmen, or the ring, or for anything else in that accursed place. My only wish was to leave it, and as quickly as possible; and I was delighted — though I could not have explained why — when I found that I would not have to repass the circular building on my way to the northwestern side of the mountain.
There have been many times when I have felt I have gone mad, for I have had many great adventures, and the greatest adventures are those that act most strongly upon our minds. So it was then. A man, larger than I and far broader of shoulder, stepped from between the feet of a cataphract, and it was as though one of the monstrous constellations of the night sky had fallen to Urth and clothed itself in the flesh of humankind. For the man had two heads, like an ogre in some forgotten tale in The Wonders of Urth and Sky.
Instinctively, I put my hand on the sword hilt at my shoulder. One of the heads laughed; I think it was the only laughter I was ever to hear at the baring of that great blade.
“Why are you alarmed?” he called. “I see you are as well equipped as I am. What is your friend’s name?”
Even in my surprise, I admired his boldness. “She is Terminus Est,” I said, and I turned the sword so he could see the writing on the steel.
“ ‘This is the place of parting.’ Very good. Very good indeed, and particularly good that it should be read here and now, because this time will truly be a line between old and new such as the world has not seen. My own friend’s name is Piaton, which I fear means nothing much. He is an inferior servant to that you have, though perhaps a better steed.”
Hearing its name, the other head opened wide its eyes, which had been half closed, and rolled them. Its mouth moved as though to speak, but no sound emerged. I thought it a species of idiot.
“But now you may put up your weapon. As you see, I am unarmed, though already beheaded, and in any case, I mean you no hurt.”
He raised his hands as he spoke, and turned to one side and then the other, so that I might see that he was entirely naked, something that was already clear enough.
I asked, “Are you perhaps the son of the dead man I saw in the round building back there?”
I had sheathed Terminus Est as I spoke, and he took a step nearer, saying, “Not at all. I am the man himself.”
Dorcas rose in my thoughts as if through the brown waters of the Lake of Birds, and I felt again her dead hand clutch mine. Before I knew that I was speaking, I blurted, “I restored you to life?”
“Say rather that your coming awakened me. You thought me dead when I was only dry. I drank, and as you see, I live again. To drink is to live, to be bathed in water is to have a new birth.”
“If what you tell me is true, it is wonderful. But I am too much in need of water myself to think much about it now. You say that you have drunk, and the way you say it implies at least that you’re friendly toward me. Prove it, please. I haven’t eaten or drunk for a long time.”
The head that spoke smiled. “You have the most marvelous way of falling in with whatever I plan — there is an appropriateness about you, even to your clothing, that I find delightful. I was just about to suggest that we go where there is food and drink in plenty. Follow me.”
At that time, I think I would have followed anyone who promised me water anywhere. Since then I have tried to convince myself that I went out of curiosity, or because I hoped to learn the secret of the great cataphracts; but when I recall those moments and search my mind as it was then, I find nothing other than despair and thirst. The waterfall above Casdoe’s house wove its silver columns before my eyes, and I remembered the Vatic Fountain of the House Absolute, and the rush of water from the cliff top in Thrax when I opened the sluice gate to flood the Vincula.
The two-headed man walked before me as if he were confident I would follow him, and equally confident that I would not attack him. When we rounded a corner, I realized for the first time that I had not been, as I had thought, on one of the radiating streets that led to the circular building. It stood before us now. A door — though it was not the one through which little Severian and I had passed — was open as before, and we entered.
“Here,” the head that spoke said. “Get in.”
The thing toward which he gestured was like a boat, and padded everywhere within as the nenuphar boat in the Autarch’s garden had been; yet it floated not on water but in air. When I touched the gunwale, the boat rocked and bobbed beneath my hand, though the motion was almost too small to be seen. I said, “This must be a flyer. I’ve never seen one so close before.”
“If a flyer were a swallow, this would be — I don’t know — a sparrow, perhaps. Or a mole, or the toy bird that children strike with paddles to make it fly back and forth between them. Courtesy, I fear, demands that you enter first. I assure you there is no danger.”
Still, I hung back. There seemed something so mysterious about that vessel that for the moment I could not bring myself to set foot in it. I said, “I come from Nessus and from the eastern bank of Gyoll, and we were taught there that the place of honor in any craft is to be the last to enter and the first to leave.”
“Precisely,” the head that spoke replied, and before I realized what was happening, the two-headed man seized me about the waist and tossed me into the boat as I might have tossed the boy. It dipped and rolled under the impact of my body, and a moment later yawed violently as the two-headed man sprang in beside me. “You didn’t think, I hope, that you were to take precedence over me?”
He whispered something and the vessel began to move. It glided forward slowly at first, but it was picking up speed.
“True courtesy,” he continued, “earns the name. It is courtesy that is truthful. When the plebeian kneels to the monarch, he is offering his neck. He offers it because he knows his ruler can take it if he wishes. Common people like that say — or rather, they used to say, in older and better times — that I have no love of truth. But the truth is that it is precisely truth that I love, an open acknowledgment of fact.”
All this time we were lying at full length, with hardly the width of a hand between us. The idiotic head the other had called Piaton goggled at me and moved its lips as he spoke, making a confused mumbling.
I tried to sit up. The two-headed man caught me with an arm of iron and pulled me down again, saying, “It’s dangerous. These things were built to lie in. You wouldn’t want to lose your head, would you? It’s nearly as bad, believe me, as getting an extra one.”
The boat nosed down and plunged into the dark. For a moment I thought we were going to die, but the sensation became one of exhilarating speed, the kind of feeling I had known as a boy when we used to slide on evergreen boughs among the mausoleums in winter. When I had become somewhat accustomed to it, I asked, “Were you born as you are? Or was Piaton actually thrust upon you in some way?” Already, I think, I had begun to realize that my life would depend on finding out as much as I could about this strange being.
The head that spoke laughed. “My name is Typhon. You might as well call me by it. Have you heard of me? Once I ruled this planet, and many more.”
I was certain he lied, so I said, “Rumors of your might echo still… Typhon.”
He laughed again. “You were on the point of calling me Imperator or something of the sort, weren’t you? You shall yet. No, I was not born as I am, or born at all, as you meant it. Nor was Piaton grafted to me. I was grafted to him. What do you think of that?”
The boat moved so rapidly now that the air was whistling above our heads, but the descent seemed less steep than it had been. As I spoke, it became nearly level. “Did you wish it?”
“I commanded it.”<
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“Then I think it very strange. Why should you desire to have such a thing done?”
“That I might have life, of course.” It was too dark now for me to see either face, though Typhon’s was less than a cubit from my own. “All life acts to preserve its life — that is what we call the Law of Existence. Our bodies, you see, die long before we do. In fact, it would be fair to say that we only die because they do. My physicians, of whom I naturally had the best of many worlds, told me it might be possible for me to take a new body, their first thought being to enclose my brain in the skull previously occupied by another. You see the flaw in that?”
Wondering if he were serious, I said, “No, I’m afraid I do not.”
“The face — the face! The face would be lost, and it is the face that men are accustomed to obey!” His hand gripped my arm in the dark. “I told them it wouldn’t do. Then one came who suggested that the entire head might be substituted. It would even be easier, he said, because the complex neural connections controlling speech and vision would be left intact. I promised him a palatinate if he should succeed.”
“It would appear to me—” I began.
Typhon laughed once more. “That it would be better if the original head were removed first. Yes, I always thought so myself. But the technique of making the neural connections was difficult, and he found that the best way — all this was with experimental subjects I provided for him — was to transfer only the voluntary functions by surgery. When that was done, the involuntary ones transferred themselves, eventually. Then the original head could be removed. It would leave a scar, of course, but a shirt would cover it.”
“But something went wrong?” I had already moved as far from him as I could in the narrow boat.
“Mostly it was a matter of time.” The terrible vigor of his voice, which had been unrelenting, now seemed to wane. “Piaton was one of my slaves — not the largest, but the strongest of all. We tested them. It never occurred to me that someone with his strength might be strong, too, in holding to the action of the heart…”
“I see,” I said, though in truth I saw nothing.
“It was a period of great confusion as well. My astronomers had told me that this sun’s activity would decay slowly. Far too slowly, in fact, for the change to be noticeable in a human lifetime. They were wrong. The heat of the world declined by nearly two parts in a thousand over a few years, then stabilized. Crops failed, and there were famines and riots. I should have left then.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked.
“I felt a firm hand was needed. There can only be one firm hand, whether it is the ruler’s or someone else’s…
“Then too, a wonder-worker had arisen, as such people do. He wasn’t really a troublemaker, though some of my ministers said he was. I had withdrawn here until my treatment should be complete, and since diseases and deformities seemed to flee from him, I ordered him brought to me.”
“The Conciliator,” I said, and a moment later could have opened my own wrist for it.
“Yes, that was one of his names. Do you know where he is now?”
“He has been dead for many chiliads.”
“And yet he remains, I think?”
That remark startled me so that I looked down at the sack suspended from my neck to see if azure light were not escaping from it.
At that moment, the vessel in which we rode lifted its prow and began to ascend. The moaning of the air about us became the roaring of a whirlwind.
XXVI
The Eyes of the World
PERHAPS THE BOAT was controlled by light — when light flashed about us, it stopped at once. In the lap of the mountain I had suffered from the cold, but that was nothing to what I felt now. No wind blew, but it was colder than the bitterest winter I could recall, and I grew dizzy with the effort of sitting up.
Typhon sprang out. “It’s been a long time since I was here last. Well, it’s good to be home again.”
We were in an empty chamber hewn from solid rock, a place as big as a ballroom. Two circular windows at the far end admitted the light; Typhon hastened toward them. They were perhaps a hundred paces apart, and each was some ten cubits wide. I followed him until I noticed that his bare feet left distinct, dark prints. Snow had drifted through the windows and spilled upon the stone floor. I fell to my knees, scooped it up, and stuffed my mouth with it.
I have never tasted anything so delicious. The heat of my tongue seemed to melt it to nectar at once; I truly felt that I could remain where I was all my life, on my knees devouring the snow. Typhon turned back, and seeing me, laughed. “I had forgotten how thirsty you were. Go ahead. We have plenty of time. What I wanted to show you can wait.”
Piaton’s mouth moved too as it had before, and I thought I caught an expression of sympathy on the idiot face. That brought me to myself again, possibly only because I had already gulped several mouthfuls of the melting snow. When I had swallowed again, I remained where I was, scraping a new heap together, but I said, “You told me about Piaton. Why can’t he speak?”
“He can’t get his breath, poor fellow,” Typhon said. Now I saw that he had an erection, which he nursed with one hand. “As I told you, I control all the voluntary functions — I will control the involuntary ones too, soon. So although poor Piaton can still move his tongue and shape his lips, he is like a musician who fingers the keys of a horn he cannot blow. When you’ve had enough of that snow, tell me, and I’ll show you where you can get something to eat.”
I filled my mouth again and swallowed. “This is enough. Yes, I am very hungry.”
“Good,” he said, and turning away from the windows went to the wall at one side of the chamber. When I neared it, I saw that it, at least, was not (as I had thought) plain stone. Instead, it seemed a kind of crystal, or thick, smoky glass; through it I could see loaves and many strange dishes, as still and perfect as food in a painting.
“You have a talisman of power,” Typhon told me. “Now you must give it to me, so that we can open this cupboard.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean. Do you want my sword?”
“I want the thing you wear at your neck,” he said, and stretched out a hand for it. I stepped back. “There is no power in it.”
“Then you lose nothing. Give it to me.” As Typhon spoke, Piaton’s head moved almost imperceptibly from side to side. “It is only a curio,” I said. “Once I thought it had great power, but when I tried to revive a beautiful woman who was dying, it had no effect, and yesterday it could not restore the boy who traveled with me. How did you know of it?”
“I was watching you, of course. I climbed high enough to see you well. When my ring killed the child and you went to him, I saw the sacred fire. You don’t have to actually put it in my hand if you don’t want to — just do what I tell you.”
“You could have warned us, then,” I said. “Why should I? At that time you were nothing to me. Do you want to eat or not?”
I took out the gem. After all, Dorcas and Jonas had seen it, and I had heard the Pelerines had displayed it in a monstrance on great occasions. It lay on my palm like a bit of blue glass, all fire gone.
Typhon leaned over it curiously. “Hardly impressive. Now kneel.”
I knelt.
“Repeat after me: I swear by all this talisman represents that for the food I shall receive, I shall be the creature of him I know as Typhon, evermore—”
A snare was closing beside which Decuman’s net was a primitive first attempt. This one was so subtle I scarcely knew it was there, and yet I sensed that every strand was of hard-drawn steel.
“—rendering to him all I have and all I shall be, what I own now and what I shall own in days to come, living or dying at his pleasure.”
“I have broken oaths before,” I said. “If I took it, I should break that one.”
“Then take it,” he said. “It is no more than a form we must follow. Take it, and I can release you as soon as you have finished eating.”
If I had not done so, it would have been lost forever a moment later. Typhon seized me, pinning my arms to my sides so I could not draw Terminus Est, and ran with me to one of the windows. I struggled, but it was as a puppy struggles in the hands of a strong man.
As we approached it, the great size of the window made it seem not a window at all; it was as though a part of the outer world had intruded itself into the chamber, and it was a part consisting not of the fields and trees at the mountain’s base, which was what I had expected, but of mere extension, a fragment of the sky. The chamber’s rock wall, less than a cubit thick, floated backward at the corner of my vision like the muddled line we see, swimming with open eyes, that is the demarcation between the water and the air.
Then I was outside. Typhon’s hold had shifted to my ankles, but whether because of the thickness of my boots or merely because of my panic, for a moment I felt I was not held at all. My back was to the mass of the mountain. The Claw, in its soft bag, dangled below my head, held by my chin. I remember feeling a sudden, absurd fear that Terminus Est would slip from her sheath.
I pulled myself up with my belly muscles, as a gymnast does when he hangs from the bar by his feet. Typhon released one of my ankles to strike my mouth with his fist, so that I fell back again. I cried out, and tried to wipe my eyes clear of the blood trickling into them from my lips.
The temptation to draw my sword, raise myself again, and strike with it was almost too great to resist. Yet I knew that I could not do so without giving Typhon ample time to see what I intended and let me fall. Even if I succeeded, I would die.