Nightside the Long Sun tbotls-1

by Gene Wolfe

  Murmuring a prayer for Teasel under his breath, Silk went into the sellaria and shut and bolted the Sun Street door, which Crane had left standing open. As he passed a window, he caught sight of Crane’s litter. Maytera Marble reclined beside the bearded physician, her intent metal face straining ahead as though she alone were urging the litter forward by sheer force of thought. While Silk watched, its bearers broke into a trot and it vanished behind the window frame.

  He tried to recall whether there was a rule prohibiting a sibyl from riding in a man’s litter; it seemed likely that there was, but he could not bring a particular stricture to mind; as a practical matter, he could see little reason to object as long as the curtains were up.

  The lioness-headed walking stick lay beside the chair in which he had sat for Crane’s examination. Absently, he picked it up and flourished it. For as long as the wrapping functioned he would not need it, or at least would need it very little. He decided that he would keep it near at hand anyway; it might be useful, particularly when the wrapping required restoration. He leaned it against the Sun Street door, so that he could not forget it when he and Crane left for the yellow house.

  A few experimental steps demonstrated once again that with Crane’s wrapping in place he could walk almost as well as ever. There seemed to be no good reason for him not to carry a basin of warm water upstairs and shave as he usually did. He re-entered the kitchen.

  Still on the table, the night chough cocked its head at him inquiringly. “Pet hungry,” it said.

  “So am I,” he told it. “But I won’t eat again until after midday.”

  “Noon now.”

  “I suppose it is.” Silk lifted a stove lid and peered into the firebox; for once a few embers still glowed there. He breathed upon them gently and added a handful of broken twigs from the ruined cage, reflecting that the night chough was clearly more intelligent than he had imagined.

  “Bird hungry.”

  Flames were flickering above the twigs. He debated the need for real firewood and decided against it. “Do you like cheese?”

  “Like cheese.”

  Silk found his washbasin and put it under the nozzle of the pump. “It’s hard, I warn you. If you’re expecting nice, soft cheese, you’re going to be disappointed.”

  “Like cheese!”

  “All right, you can have it.” A great many vigorous strokes of the pump handle were required before the first trickle of water appeared; but Silk half filled his basin and set it on the stove, and as an afterthought replenished the night chough’s cup.

  “Cheese now?” the night chough inquired. “Fish heads?”

  “No fish heads—I haven’t got any.” He got out the cheese, which was mostly rind, and set it next to the cup. “You’d better watch out for rats while I’m away. They like cheese too.”

  “Like rats.” The night chough clacked its crimson beak and pecked experimentally at the cheese.

  “Then you won’t be lonely.” The water on the stove was scarcely warm, the twigs beneath it nearly out. Silk picked up the basin and started for the stair.

  “Where rats?”

  He paused and turned to look back at the night chough. “Do you mean you like them to eat?”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “I see. I suppose you might kill a rat at that, if it wasn’t too big. What’s your name?”

  “No name.” The night chough returned its attention to the cheese.

  “That was supposed to be my lunch, you know. Now I’ll have to find lunch somewhere or go hungry.”

  “You Silk?”

  “Yes, that’s my name. You heard Doctor Crane use it, I suppose. But we need a name for you.” He considered the matter. “I believe I’ll call you Oreb—that’s a raven in the Writings, and you seem to be some sort of raven. How do you like that name?”

  “Oreb.”

  “That’s right. Musk named his bird after a god, which was very wrong of him, but I don’t believe that there could be any objection to a name from the Writings if it weren’t a divine name, particularly when it’s a bird’s name there. So Oreb it is.”

  At his washstand upstairs, he stropped the big, bone-handled razor that had waited in his mother’s bureau until he was old enough to shave, lathered his face, and scraped away his reddish-blond beard. As he wiped the blade clean, it occurred to him, as it did at least once a week, that the razor had almost certainly been his father’s. As he had so many times before, he carried it to the window to look for some trace of ownership. There was no owner’s name and no monogram, not even a maker’s mark.

  As often in this weather, Maytera Rose and Maytera Mint were enjoying their lunch at a table carried from the cenoby and set in the shade of the fig tree. When he had dried his face, Silk carried the basin back to the kitchen, poured out his shaving water, and joined the two sibyls in the garden.

  By a gesture, Maytera Rose offered him the chair that would normally have been Maytera Marble’s. “Won’t you join us, Patera? We’ve more than enough here for three.”

  It stung, as she had no doubt intended. Silk said, “No, but I ought to speak with you for a moment.”

  “And I with you, Patera. I with you.” Maytera Rose began elaborate preparations for rising.

  He sat down hurriedly. “What is it, Maytera?”

  “I had hoped to tell you about it last night, Patera, but you were gone.”

  A napkin-draped basket at Silk’s elbow exuded the very perfume of Mainframe. Maytera Marble had clearly baked that morning, leaving the fruit of her labor in the cenoby’s oven for Maytera Mint to remove after she herself had left with Crane. Silk swallowed his saliva, muttered, “Yes,” and left it at that.

  “And this morning it had quite escaped my mind. All that I could think of was that awful man, the little girl’s father. I will be sending Horn to you this afternoon for correction, Patera. I have punished him already, you may be sure. Now he must acknowledge his fault to you—that is the final penalty of his punishment.” Maytera Rose paused to render her closing words more effective, her head cocked like the night chough’s as she fixed Silk with her good eye. “And if you should decide to punish him further, I will not object. That might have a salutary effect.”

  “What did he do?”

  The synthetic part of Maytera Rose’s mouth bent sharply downward in disgust; as he had on several similar occasions, Silk wondered whether the aged, disease-ridden woman who had once been Maytera Rose was still conscious. “He made fun of you, Patera, imitating your voice and gestures, and talking foolishness.”

  “Is that all?”

  Maytera Rose sniffed as she extracted a fresh roll from the basket. “I would say it was more than enough.”

  Maytera Mint began, “If Patera himself—”

  “Before Patera was born, I endeavored to inculcate a decent respect for the holy calling of augur, a calling—like that of we sibyls—established by Our Sacred Scylla herself. I continue that effort to this day. I try, as I have always tried, to teach every student entrusted to my care to respect the cloth, regardless of the man or woman who wears it.”

  “A lesson to us all.” Silk sighed. “Very well, I’ll talk to him when I can. But I’m leaving in a few minutes, and I may not be back until late. That was what I wanted to tell you—to tell Maytera Mint particularly.”

  She look up, a question in her melting brown eyes.

  “I’ll be engaged, and I can’t say how long it may take. You remember Auk, Maytera. You must. You taught him, and you told Maytera Marble about him yesterday, I know.”

  “Oh, Patera, I do indeed.” Maytera Mint’s small, not uncomely face glowed.

  Maytera Rose sniffed, and Maytera Mint dropped her eyes again.

  “I spoke to him last night, Maytera, very late.”

  “You did, Patera?”

  Silk nodded. “But I’m forgetting something I should tell you. I’d seen him earlier that evening, and shriven him. He’s trying, quite sincerely I believe, to amend his life.” />
  Maytera Mint looked up again, her glance bright with praise. “That’s truly wonderful, Patera!”

  “It is indeed; and it’s far more your doing, and Patera Pike’s, than it is mine. What I wanted to say, Maytera, is that when I last spoke with him, he indicated that he might come here today. If he does, I’m sure he’ll want to pay his respects to you.”

  He waited for her to confirm it. She did not, sitting with folded hands and downcast eyes.

  “Please tell him that I’m anxious to see him. Ask him to wait, if he can. I doubt that he’ll come before supper. If I haven’t returned, tell him that I’ll be back as soon as possible.”

  Spreading rich yellow butter on another golden roll, Maytera Rose said, “Last night you had gone already by the time Horn had finished working for his father. I’ll tell him that he’ll have to wait, too.”

  “I’m certain you will, Maytera. Thank you both.” Silk stood up, wincing when he put too much weight on his injured ankle. For a formal exorcism he would need the Chrasmologic Writings from the manteion, and images of the gods—of Pas and Scylla particularly. And of Sphigx the patroness of the day. The thought reminded him that he had never completed her prayers; hardly the way to gain favor.

  He would take the triptych his mother had given him; her prayers might follow it. As he tramped upstairs again, more conscious of his ankle than he had been since before Crane’s visit, he reflected that he had been trained only in dealing with devils who did not exist. He recalled how startled he had been when he had realized that Patera Pike credited them, and even spoke with gruff pride of personal efforts to frustrate them.

  Before he reached the top of the stair, he regretted leaving Blood’s walking stick in the sellaria. Sitting on his bed, he unwound the wrapping; it was distinctly cool to the touch. He dashed it against the wall as violently as he could and replaced it, then removed his shoe and put on a clean stocking.

  Blood would meet him at the yellow house on Lamp Street. Musk, or someone as bad as Musk, might come with Blood. Silk folded up the triptych, laid it in its baize-lined teak case, buckled the straps, and pulled out its folding handle. This and the Writings, which he would have to get before he left; Pas’s gammadion was about his neck already, his beads in his pocket. It might be prudent to take a holy lamp, oil, and other things as well. After considering and rejecting half a dozen possibilities, he got the key from beneath his water jug.

  * * *

  With the young eagle on his gauntleted left arm, Musk stood on the spattered white pavement by Scylla’s fountain and looked about him, his head as proudly poised, and his back as straight, as any Guardsman’s. They were watching from the deep shade of the portico: Blood, Councillor Lemur and his cousin Councillor Loris, Commissioner Simuliid, and half a dozen others. Mentally, Musk shook the dice cup.

  The eagle had been trained to wrist and to the lure. It knew his voice and had learned to associate it with food. When he removed its hood, it would see the fountain, flowing water in a countryside in which water of any kind was now a rarity. The time had come for it to learn to fly—and he could not teach it that. It would return for the lure and the hackboard. Or it would not. Time to throw the dice.

  Blood’s voice came to him faintly through the plashing of the fountain. “Don’t rush him.”

  Someone had asked what he was waiting for. He sighed, knowing he could not delay much longer. To hold on to this moment, in which the bird that he might never see again was still his.

  The sky was empty or seemed so, the skylands invisible behind the endless, straight glare of the sun. Fliers, if there were any, were invisible too. Above the tops of the trees on the other side of the wall, distant fields curved upward, vanishing in a blue haze as they mounted the air. Lake Limna seemed a fragment of mirror set into the whorl, like a gaud into a cheap picture frame.

  Time to throw.

  As though it knew what was about to happen, the young eagle stirred. Musk nodded to himself. “Come back to me,” he whispered. “Come back to me.”

  And then, as if somebody else (an interfering god or Blood’s mad daughter) controlled it, his right arm went up. Self-willed, his hand grasped the scarlet-plumed hood and snatched it away.

  The young eagle lifted its wings as though to fly, then folded them again. He should have worn a mask, perhaps. If the eagle struck at his face now, he would be scarred for life if he was not killed; but his pride had not permitted it.

  “Away, Hawk!” He lifted his arm, tilting it to tip the bird into the air. For a split second he thought it was not going to fly at all.

  The great wings seemed to blow him back. Slowly and clumsily it flew, its wingtips actually brushing the lush grass at every downstroke—out to the wall and left, past the gate and left again up the grassway. For a moment he thought it was returning to him.

  Into the portico, scattering the watchers there like quail. If it turned right at the end of the wing, mistook the cat pen for the mews—

  Higher now, as high as the top of the wall, and left again. Left until it passed overhead, its wings a distant thunder. Higher now, and higher still, still circling and climbing, riding the updraft from the baking lawn and the scorching roofs. Higher the young eagle rose and higher, black against the glare, until it, like the fields, was lost in the vastness of the sky.

  * * *

  When the rest had gone Musk remained, shading his eyes against the pitiless sun. After a long while, Hare brought him binoculars. He used them but saw nothing.

  THE CAT WITH THE RED-HOT TAIL

  Lamp Street was familiar and safe once more, stripped of the mystery of night. Silk, who had walked it often, found that he recognized several shops, and even the broad and freshly varnished door of the yellow house.

  The corpulent woman who opened it in response to Crane’s knock seemed surprised by his presence. “It’s awfully early, Patera. Just got up myself.” She yawned as if to prove it, only tardily concealing her mouth. Her pink peignoir gaped in sympathy, its vibrant heat leaving the bulging flesh between its parted lips a deathly white.

  The air of the place poured past her, hot and freighted with a hundred stale perfumes and the vinegar reek of wasted wine. “I was to meet Blood here at one o’clock,” Silk told her. “What time is it?”

  Crane slipped past them into the reception room beyond.

  The woman ignored him. “Blood’s always late,” she said vaguely. She led Silk through a low archway curtained with clattering wooden beads and into a small office. A door and a window opened onto the courtyard he had imagined the night before, and both stood open; despite them, the office seemed hotter even than the street outside.

  “We’ve had exorcists before.” The corpulent woman took the only comfortable-looking chair, leaving Silk an armless one of varnished wood. He accepted it gratefully, dropping his bag to the floor, laying the cased triptych across his thighs, and holding Blood’s lioness-headed stick between his knees.

  “I’ll have somebody fetch you a pillow, Patera. This is where I talk to my girls, and a hard chair’s better. It keeps them awake, and the narrow seat makes them think that they’re getting fat, which is generally the case.”

  The memory of his fried tomatoes brought Silk a fresh pang of guilt, well salted with hunger. Could it be that some god spoke through this blowsy woman? “Leave it as it is,” he told her. “I, too, need to learn to love my belly less, and my bed.”

  “You want to talk to all the girls together? One of the others did. Or I can just tell you.”

  Silk waved the question aside. “What these particular devils may have done here is no concern of mine, and paying attention to their malicious tricks would risk encouraging them. They are devils, and unwelcome in this house; that is all I know, and if you and—and everyone else living here are willing to cooperate with me, it is all I need to know.”

  “All right.” The corpulent woman adjusted her own chair’s ample cushions and leaned back. “You believe in them, huh?”


  Here it was. “Yes,” Silk told her firmly.

  “One of the others didn’t. He said lots of prayers and had the parade and all the rest of it anyway, but he thought we were crazy. He was about your age.”

  “Doctor Crane thinks the same,” Silk told her, “and his beard is gray. He doesn’t phrase it quite as rudely as that, but that’s what he thinks. He thinks that I’m crazy too, of course.”

  The corpulent woman smiled bitterly. “Uh-huh, I can guess. I’m Orchid, by the way.” She offered her hand as though she expected him to kiss it.

  He clasped it. “Patera Silk, from the manteion on Sun Street.”

  “That old place? Is it still open?”

  “Yes, very much so.” The question reminded Silk that it soon might not be, although it was better not to mention that.

  “We’re not now,” Orchid told him. “Not until nine, so you’ve got plenty of time. But tonight’s our biggest night, usually, so I’d appreciate it if you were finished by then.” At last noticing his averted eyes, she tugged ineffectually at the edges of the pink peignoir.

  “It should take me no more than two hours to perform the initial rites and the ceremony proper, provided I have everyone’s cooperation. But it may be best to wait until Blood arrives. He told me last night that he would meet me here, and I feel sure that he will wish to take part.”

  Orchid was eyeing him narrowly. “He’s paying you?”

  “No. I’m performing this exorcism as a favor to him—I owe him much more, really. Did he pay the other exorcists you spoke of?”

  “He did or I did, depending.”

  Silk relaxed a little. “In that case, it’s not to be wondered at that their exorcisms were ineffectual. Exorcism is a sacred ceremony, and no such ceremony can be bought or sold.” Seeing that she did not understand, he added. “They cannot be sold—my statement is true in the most literal sense of its words—because once sold the ceremony loses all its sacred character. What is sold is then no more than a profane mummery. That is not what we will carry out here today.”