Return to the Whorl tbotss-3

by Gene Wolfe

  She had big eyes that looked like they cried a lot, only she did not look like she was going to cry any more ever just then, if you know what I mean. She looked like life was just so wonderful there in her little room that she loved the whole whorl and nothing could ever make her unhappy again. She looked up at me when I tapped on the door with my sword, but then she looked back at Juganu like looking at anything else was just a big waste of time.

  When we had gone out to the cemetery that they called the necropolis, Father and I had just walked though the wall, the bird and the girl flew over, and the boy had climbed it where it had fallen down. And I had been thinking it would probably have been better if we had come back the same way and not gotten the fat man all upset. So right then I tried to see if I could just walk through that door, too, without Father there to tell me how. I tried, and I did it. It worked fine.

  There was something funny about being in there just the same. I kept thinking about what if it did not work fine when I tried to go out? What if it did not work at all? I thought about being locked in there like the woman with the big eyes, and never seeing daylight, and what did Father need me here for anyway? He could have left me on the boat with Babbie. When I told the others about that, we all laughed. But it was not funny then. It was hard to keep from turning right around and going out, one of the hardest things I have ever done.

  Juganu wanted to know what I wanted, but I think he knew. I said it was time to go, and she cried and held on to him. He said, "Are you saying that we're going to leave this moment? Where's the Raj an?"

  So I explained about the dog and said that we would just go down and look at it because the boy wanted us to, and Father would be along soon to see it, and then we were leaving.

  He did not say anything to that for a minute. Then he said, "I have to think."

  Just then I heard a new voice through the little window in the door. I turned and looked, and it was a man I had not seen before. A big, heavy man with a big heavy face had hold of the boy. He was telling him to come along, and from the way he said it, it sounded like the boy was in for a whipping. The boy said, "I will, Master. I'm sorry, Master. I meant no harm."

  Then the bird came yelling, "Watch out! Watch out!" like it did sometimes. The big man stopped to look at it and said, "What's that doing in here?"

  "It belongs to Master Malrubius, Master," the boy told him, and the big man he called Master hit him across the face. He did not do it like he was angry with him or anything. He did not sneer either. He just did it, the way you would swat a fly. Then Father came up behind him and put his hand on his shoulder. He turned around and saw Father, and his mouth dropped open. He did not say anything, just backed away. I think he must have run after that, but there was so much noise I could not be sure.

  Juganu stayed with the woman with the big eyes, and Father and I and the bird went down to see the dog. It was dark, and there was mud your feet sank into, but a solid floor underneath. The boy said the dog had been hurt and it was better that it was there in the dark because it could rest then and get well. I was not so sure. It was pretty damp.

  The dog had blankets though, old torn blankets and lots of rags, and it had tunneled into them and made a little nest for itself. That was good, because it had short hair that did not look warm. Its head was as big as a bull's without the horns, and its mouth could have held my head and bitten down on it like a cherry. I know because it opened its mouth when we came. I think it was saying it was glad to see us. The boy had bread and meat in his pocket. It did not seem like much, but he gave it to the dog and said he would come back with more. It stood up for a minute when he patted its head. It was so big through the chest that it seemed like there was something wrong with it, but I think it was just strong.

  What was wrong was that its front leg was gone. The boy had bandaged it where it had been cut off, but blood had soaked through. That dog had been hurt in a lot of other places, too. The boy took the bandages off, and he and Father talked about what to do. I could see that the dog was afraid of Father and liked him at the same time. It lay down again and put its head by his feet and looked up at him and trembled a little. Father said the boy knew a lot more about treating wounds than most people did, and they talked about a woman he had known who got her arm cut off. It did not mean anything to me then.

  The boy put new bandages on after that, and we went back. Juganu would not come out of the woman's room, so we went in to talk. Father told him he had to come with us or he would die. Juganu said, "I'm going to stay with Tigridia and free her."

  "Free, she'll have you exorcised," Father told him. He took his arm and Juganu went for him. I think he would have choked him to death if I had not been there. He was ten times stronger than he had been when I had pulled him off the mast back on our boat. The woman got in it, and we had a real fight going until the boy ran off and got the key to her room.

  Then we went back, Father and me, Juganu, and the bird. When we woke up in Capsicum's house, Juganu just fixed his face and went out. He never said a word to us. We watched to see if he really left the house, and he did. I think he was afraid we would kill him, and I would have if Father had not stopped me.

  After that, Hide and Vadsig came with Mother from Lizard for the wedding, so this is everything I have got to write about, the things that I was the only one to see. I will let them and Daisy do the rest. I will criticize like they have been doing to me.

  20. THE WEDDING

  Wijzer gave the bride. Her dress was a simple one of white silk with a white lace veil, but her pearls and her beauty set the manteion buzzing. Gyrfalcon came, with an armed bodyguard of twenty men. If he had not, things would almost certainly have gone very differently, and we would not be writing this.

  Nothing of that was known, of course, when Wijzer led her to the altar. What was known, and to half the town, was that a family that had never been considered prominent other than as the source of The Book of the Long Sun (a chronicle, generally factual, of events prior to the founding of New Viron) was now conceded to be very prominent indeed in politics and religion. Nettle, particularly, was courted by women who had previously scarcely deigned to speak to her; few, if any, dared ask whether the man assisting His Cognizance was in fact her husband.

  He himself seemed happier than anyone had seen him before. At the bride's request, he read the second victim, a waterhorse. Everyone expected the usual platitudes.

  Seconds built minutes, piling up like grains of sand. The whispered conversations fell away, and still he stood staring at the entrails of the snow-white victim he himself had provided.

  "Mysire…?" the bride whispered.

  Startled, he looked up. "I'm sorry. There is a great deal here."

  Another minute passed.

  "His Cognizance was good enough to permit this," he said when his gaze left the carcass of the waterhorse at last. "It may have been a mistake, as such things are commonly counted."

  Everyone present sensed that he was inviting them to silence him, but no one attempted to.

  "I see the hand of a god in it," he told them, "and since this victim was offered to the Outsider, we can assume that it is his. That being the case, I take this opportunity to tell you that he is the god of Blue. Have you never wondered who it is? We have other gods here already. There is a Scylla greater than the one we knew, for example. You should fear and respect-but not worship-her, lest you come to ill."

  One of the wedding guests called out, "Pas!"

  "He is not yet here, or at least, I do not believe he is. He will come, however. You or others like you will bring him, and Silk with him-Silk, whom you sent me to bring and whom I failed to bring."

  He paused, regarding those who heard him through an eye that very few could meet. "They will come. But never forget what I tell you today: you belong to Blue, and to the Outsider."

  He studied the carcass. "No doubt His Cognizance has often said here that one side of the victim represents the givers and performers of the sacrif
ice; the other, the congregation and the community. I repeat it because I know that there are some present who have seldom honored the gods since childhood.

  "The presenters of this fine white waterhorse are my son Hide and my daughter-to-be Vadsig. For them, a long marriage and a largely, though not entirely, happy one."

  There were chuckles.

  "They will have six children."

  He hesitated, and bent lower to see more clearly. "I see a great deal of paper as well."

  Scattered laughter.

  "Quills and ink, and a partnership with another couple.

  "The performers are His Cognizance and myself. We shall soon separate, parting in friendship and regret. One shall be highly favored by a god."

  From the congregation, Gyrfalcon asked, "Which god, Patera?"

  He straightened up, clearing his throat. "Where no other identi fication is made, it is safe to assume that the god to which a prophecy refers is the one to whom the victim is offered. The other augur-if augur is meant-also shall win the favor-"

  At that instant, Oreb flew in through a window. "Watch out! Watch out!"

  "And undertake a long journey, from which he shall not return. Death may be intended."

  "Bad things!"

  Raising a finger to his lips, he gave the bird a stern glance; it settled upon his shoulder, repeating, "Bad things! Things fly!"

  "The god's prophecy concerned with all of us is about to be fulfilled, I believe. Certainly the entrails warn that it is very imminent. Some of you have slug guns, I see. You will need them. Others may have less obvious weapons of other kinds, as I do. You may wish to consider how best to employ them. I remind those of you who are unarmed that no man or woman of courage and resource is ever entirely helpless."

  "Good Silk?" his bird croaked; and then, "Silk fight?"

  He turned to the Prolocutor. "Your Cognizance, I suggest that this victim be offered to the flames entire, and that the remainder of the ceremony proceed as swiftly as possible. We haven't much time."

  As has been said, Captain Wijzer led Vadsig down the aisle, he proud and tearful in crimson velvet tunic and trousers, she radiantly lovely in watered silk dripping with pearls. Her bridal bouquet was of pink-and-white seaspume; its gracious perfume soothed the very smoke of sacrifice. Aunt Oxlip's daughters Sweetbay and Madrone were her train-bearers, and Capsicum's grandson bore the ring on a black silk pillow.

  Everything went normally and even magnificently, until the lovers had exchanged vows, kissed, and started back up the aisle, bathed in the fervent good wishes of their guests, among whom Hoof and I were of course numbered.

  "Watch out!" Oreb croaked. And then with an urgency that few if any had heard before: "Watch out!" A flying shape not quite a man swooped over the pews. It struck Hide with such violence as to knock him off his feet, an apparition of fangs and terrible claws that fell in a welter of blood and slime, cut through the waist.

  The blade of an azoth, a thing more terrible than any inhumi, vanished as swiftly as it had appeared, then darted forth again to spear a second inhumu at an open window.

  No coherent description of that famous fight is possible. Patera Remora (this is widely known) defended himself and his altar with the knife of sacrifice, as was written two hundred years ago of another augur favored by the gods. Capsicum, it is said, stabbed Gyrfalcon in the melee; certainly she herself was shot and killed by a member of his bodyguard. Weasel, her grandson and Marrow's, is said to have killed an inhumi and an inhuma, though he was only a boy. Captain Wijzer, five inhumi, twice strangling one with each hand.

  It would be possible and even easy to multiply such reports to fill a hundred pages. Because they are omitted from all the other accounts, what we must emphasize here are the indescribable noise, the welter of blood, and the wild confusion. Everyone was screaming. Everyone was fighting, even those who would have fled if they could. No count of the numbers of the inhumi was or is possible. It has been said that half the inhumi on Blue at the time took part in the attack, but the assertion rests upon their own testimony, and of what value is that?

  Those skilled in war report that an attacking force will scarcely ever sustain its attack when it has lost a third of its number. The best count of the dead inhumi (that of Legume, who was charged with burning their bodies) is one hundred and ninety-eight. If it is correct, and they fought as crack troopers do, their number was about six hundred. It seems probable, however, that it was considerably larger. We would propose one thousand.

  What seems certain is that without the azoth, Gyrfalcon's needier, and the slug guns of his bodyguard, the subject of this volume would have perished, and the wedding party with him.

  Afterward, he visited Patera Remora, and they sat side by side talking for a time in the little garden between the manse and the manteion. "It is-ah-coming," Patera Remora told him. "In process, hey? If not in my, er, time, then in my acolyte's we will have a working Window, um, Horn."

  He said, "Without Mainframe, no god can come to it, Your Cognizance."

  "Better, hum? Better so. In-ah-Viron, eh? Thirty years? In, um, Old Viron, as we say now."

  He smiled. "No doubt you're right, Your Cognizance."

  "What all men, and most-ah-females, require is not theophany, not the divine, um, palpability. Tangibility. It is the-ha!-possibility."

  "And yet Mainframe, too, will come. Not in your lifetime, I believe. In your acolyte's."

  "He, um, welcome it." The Prolocutor nodded to himself, tossing back the lank gray hair that had fallen over his eyes.

  His visitor gave him a piercing glance. "Not you?"

  "Er, yes. To be sure."

  "It would be presumptuous-very presumptuous-for me to proffer advice, Your Cognizance."

  "Yet I should welcome it, er, Horn."

  Oreb corrected him.

  "Patera Quetzal de-emphasized the worship of Great Pas, Your Cognizance, knowing that Pas was dead. He chose-doubtless wisely-to emphasize that of Scylla instead."

  Patera Remora patted his forehead with a worn and yellowed, but neatly folded, handkerchief. "I remember it well." It was the first warm day of summer.

  "You, Your Cognizance, might choose to emphasize that of the Outsider, for example."

  "I, um."

  "He, at least-"

  "Good god," Oreb remarked.

  "Will not come to your Window, Your Cognizance. I believe I can assure Your Cognizance of that. Not in your time, nor in your acolyte's, nor in his."

  Patera Remora nodded slowly at first, then more rapidly. "I, er, comprehend."

  "Mainframe may reach Blue, Your Cognizance, before the Whorl puts out again; but Mainframe can never have the power here that it had there, the reins of the sun. Meanwhile it might be well for New Viron-for all of Blue-if you were to exercise your discretion."

  "I, um, have. In another matter, hey? But-ah-first, Pat- Er, Horn. May I say that you are most, um, perspicacious? You are correct. I, ah, apprehend it now. I would, um… On my own, eh? Having been given the, er, hint? No, intimation. By you. During the-ah-the ceremony, eh? Your, um, son's nuptials. I would have, um, come wise?" He chuckled.

  "I feel certain you would, Your Cognizance."

  "Was it this? This the, er, topic? Upon which you, eh?"

  "No, Your Cognizance." His visitor sighed. "Or at least, only partially."

  "In that case, um…?"

  "It is wrong to take one's own life."

  He waited for a reply, but none came.

  "Is it also wrong to put oneself in harm's way, in the hope that one's life may be taken?"

  "Poor Silk!" Oreb exclaimed, and fluttered from his shoulder to an overhanging branch.

  "You, um, did. You arranged for the… ah? At the wedding?"

  "Yes, Your Cognizance."

  Remora pushed back his sweat-damp hair with bony fingers. "Not, um, sufficient. Tell me."

  "Your Cognizance will recall the first inhumu, who attacked Hide. His name was Juganu, or at least that is the name
by which I knew him. He was infatuated with a human woman, a murderess. He wanted to free her. She is in a prison, as I ought to have told Your Cognizance."

  "You, um, opposed this? Quite right."

  "I opposed it, Your Cognizance, in such a way as to stir up Juganu's ill will as much as possible." Each hand warred with the other, twisting and tearing. "I didn't-I've searched my conscience on this, Your Cognizance. I didn't imagine that Juganu would enlist hundreds of his kind for a public attack."

  Remora grunted.

  "I believed it most probable that Juganu would come for me alone. I would feign sleep and permit him to drink his fill, which would be much. If I lived, so be it."

  Remora nodded to himself. "But if you, hum?"

  "So be it. Possibly he would bring a companion. I foresaw that. Possibly he would bring two or even three; in either case I would certainly die."

  "So-um-et cetera, Patera?"

  "Yes, exactly, Your Cognizance. It would be what I wanted. I wanted someone else to kill me, so that I would not bear the guilt myself. You know the result of my folly-the deaths of a round dozen people and hundreds of inhumi."

  "Evil, eh? Vile, um, miscreations that deserve to-ah-perish, my son."

  "Yes, Your Cognizance." He straightened up and squared his shoulders. "I have been on friendly terms with three, however. No, four, because I was briefly on such terms with Juganu himself. With two inhumus, Your Cognizance, and two inhumas. I made a covenant with evil, one I bitterly regret, though those I have known have been no worse than we. I wish to be shriven of that, as well. Shall we begin?"

  "No. Urn, no." Remora shook his head. "First, Patera, you must tell me why you wish to-ah-ascend."

  "Isn't it obvious?" His voice was angry, so much so that Oreb fled to a higher branch. "I failed! I gave my life, and still I failed."

  Remora leaned back, his fingers forming a lofty steeple whose apex touched his chin. "My son, you-ah-adverted a moment ago that the, er, our attackers were no, um, not inferior to-ah-morally. I let it pass. Ignored it, hey?"