CALDE OF THE LONG SUN botls-3 Page 4
by Gene Wolfe
presence of divinity.
"You did wonderfully, sib. Just wonderfully!" Maytera Marble had
followed Maytera Mint out of the manteion; now she laid a hand
upon her shoulder. "Taking everything outside for a viaggiatory!
However did you think of it?"
"I don't know. It was just that they were still in the street, most of
them, and we were in there. And we couldnn't let them in as we
usually do. Besides," Maytera Mint smiled impishly, "think of all the
blood, sib. It would've taken us days to clean up the manteion
afterward."
There were far too many victims to pen in Maytera Marble's little
garden. Their presenters had been told very firmly that they would
have to hold them until it was time to lead them in, with the result
that Sun Street looked rather like the beast-sellers quarter in the
market. How many would be here, Maytera Mint wondered, if it
hadn't been for the rain? She shuddered. As it was, the victims and
their presenters looked soaked but cheerful, steaming in the sunshine
of Sun Street.
"You're going to need something to stand on," Maytera Marble
warned her, "or they'll never hear you."
"Why not here on the steps?" Maytera Mint inquired.
"Friends..." To her own ears, her voice sounded weaker than
ever here in the open air; she tried to imagine herself a trumpeter1
then a trumpet. "Friends! I won't repeat what I said inside. This is
Maytera Rose's last sacrifice. I know that she knows what you've
done for her, and is glad.
"Now my sib and her helpers are going to build a sacred fire on the
altar. We will need a big one today--"
They cheered, surprising her.
"We'll need a big one, and some of the wood will be wet. But the
whole sky is going to be our god gate this afternoon, letting in Lord
Pas's fire from the sun."
Like so many brightly-colored ants, a straggling line of little girls
had already begun to carry pieces of split cedar to the altar, where
Maytera Marble broke the smallest pieces.
"It is Patera Silk's custom to consult the Writings before sacrificing.
Let us do so too." Maytera Mint held up the book and opened it at random.
Whatever it is we are, it is a little flesh, breath, and the ruiing
part. As if you were dying, despise the flesh; it is blood, bones, and
network, a tissue of nerves and veins. See the breath also, what
kind of thing it is: air, and never the same, but at every moment sent
Out and drawn in. The third is the ruling part. No longer let this part
be enslaved, no longer let it be pulled by its strings like a
marionette. No longer complain of your lot, nor shrink from the future.
"Patera Silk has told us often that each passage in the Writings
holds two meanings at least." The words slipped out before she
realized that she could see only one in this one. Her mind groped
frantically for a second interpretation.
"The first seems so clear that I feel foolish explaining it, though it
is my duty to explain it. All of you have seen it already, I'm sure. A
part, two parts as the Chrasmologic writer would have it, of our dear
Maytera Rose has perished. We must not forget that it was the baser
part, the part that neither she nor we had reason to value. The
better part, the part beloved by the gods and by us who knew her,
will never perish. This, then, is the message for those who mourn
her. For my dear sib and me, particularly."
Help me! Hierax, Kypris, Sphigx, please help!
She had touched the sword of the officer who had come to arrest
Silk; her hand itched for it, and something deep within her, denied
until this moment, scanned the crowd.
"I see a man with a sword." She did not, but there were scores of
such men. "A fine one. Will you come forward, sir? Will you lend
me your sword? It will be for only a moment."
A swaggering bully who presumably believed that she had been
addressing him shouldered a path through the crowd. It was a
hunting sword, almost certainly stolen, with a shell guard, a stag
grip, and a sweeping double-edged blade.
"Thank you." She held it up, the polished steel dazzling in the hot
sunshine. "Today is Hieraxday. It is a fitting day for final rites. I
think it's a measure of the regard in which the gods held Maytera
Rose that her eyes were darkened on a Tarsday, and that her last
sacrifice takes place on Hieraxday. But what of us? Don't the
Writings speak to us, too? Isn't it Hieraxday for us, as well as for
Maytera? We know they do. We know it is.
"You see this sword?" The denied self spoke through her, so that
she--the little Maytera Mint who had, for so many years, thought
herself the only Maytera Mint--listened with as much amazement as
the crowd, as ignorant as they of what her next word might be. "You
carry these, many of you. And knives and needlers, and those little
lead clubs that nobody sees that strike so hard. And only Hierax
himself knows what else. But are you ready to pay the price?"
She brandished the hunting sword above her head. There was a
white stallion among the victims; a flash of the blade or some note in
her voice made him rear and paw the air, catching his presenter by
surprise and lifting him off his feet.
"For the price is death. Not death thirty or forty years from now,
but death now! Death today! These things say, _I will not cower to
you! Jam no slave, no ox to be led to the butcher! Wrong me, wrong
the gods, and you die! For I fear not death or you!_"
The roar of the crowd seemed to shake the street.
"So say the Writings to us, friends, at this manteion. That is the
second meaning." Maytera Mint returned the sword to its owner.
"Thank you, sir. It's a beautiful weapon."
He bowed. "It's yours anytime you need it, Maytera, and a hard
hand to hold it."
At the altar, Maytera Marble had poised the shallow bowl of
polished brass that caught falling light from the sun. A curl of smoke
arose from the splintered cedar, and as Maytera Mint watched, the
first pale, almost invisible flame.
Holding up her long skirt, she trotted down the steps to face the
Sacred Window with outstretched arms. "Accept, all you gods, the
sacrifice of this holy sibyl. Though our hearts are torn, we, her
siblings and her friends, consent. But speak to us, we beg, of times
to come, hers as well as ours. What are we to do? Your lightest word
will be treasured."
Maytera Mint's mind went blank--a dramatic pause until she
recalled the sense, though not the sanctioned wording, of the rest of
the invocation. "If it is not your will to speak. we consent to that,
too." Her arms fell to her sides.
From her place beside the altar, Maytera Marble signaled the first
presenter.
"This fine white he-goat is presented to..." Once again, Maytera
Mint's memory failed her.
"Kypris," Maytera Marble supplied.
To Kypris, of course. The first three
sacrifices were all for Kypris.
who had electrified the city by her theophany on Scylsday. But what
was the name of the presenter?
Maytera Mint looked toward Maytera Marble, but Maytera
Marble was, strangely, waving to someone in the crowd.
"To Captivating Kypris, goddess of love, by her devout
supplicant--?"
"Bream," the presenter said.
"By her devout supplicant Bream." It had come at last, the
moment she had dreaded most of all. "Please, Maytera, if you'd do
it, please...?" But the sacrificial knife was in her hand, and
Maytera Marble raising the ancient wail, metal limbs slapping the
heavy bombazine of her habit as she danced.
He-goats were supposed to be contumacious, and this one had
long, curved horns that looked dangerous; yet it stood as quietly as
any sheep, regarding her through sleepy eyes. It had been a pet, no
doubt, or had been raised like one.
Maytera Marble knelt beside it, the earthenware chalice that had
been the best the manteion could afford beneath its neck.
I'll shut my eyes, Maytera Mint promised herself, and did not.
The blade slipped into the white goat's neck as easily as it might
have penetrated a bale of white straw. For one horrid moment the
goat stared at her, betrayed by the humans it had trusted all its life;
it bucked, spraying both sibyls with its lifeblood, stumbled, and
rolled onto its side.
"Beautiful," Maytera Marble whispered. "Why, Patera Pike
couldn't have done it better himself."
Maytera Mint whispered back, "I think I'm going to be sick," and
Maytera Marble rose to splash the contents of her chalice onto the
fire roaring on the altar, as Maytera Mint herself had so often.
The head first, with its impotent horns. Find the joint between the
skull and the spine, she reminded herself. Good though it was, the
knife could not cut bone.
Next the hooves, gay with gold paint. Faster! Faster! They would
be all afternoon at this rate; she wished that she had done more of
the cooking, though they had seldom had much meat to cut up. She
hissed, "You must take the next one, sib. Really, you must!"
"We can't change off now!"
She threw the last hoof into the fire, leaving the poor goat's legs
ragged, bloody stumps. Still grasping the knife, she faced the
Window as before. "Accept, O Kind Kypris, the sacrifice of this fine
goat. And speak to us, we beg, of the days that are to come. What
are we to do? Your lightest word will be treasured." She offered a
silent prayer to Kypris, a goddess who seemed to her since Scylsday
almost a larger self. "Should you, however, choose otherwise..."
She let her arms fall. "We consent. Speak to us, we beg, through
this sacrifice."
On Scylsday, the sacrifices at Orpine's funeral had been
ill-omened to say the least. Maytera Mint hoped fervently for better
indicants today as she slit the belly of the he-goat.
"Kypris blesses..." Louder. They were straining to hear her.
"Kypris blesses the spirit of our departed sib." She straightened up
and threw back her shoulders. "She assures us that such evil as
Maytera did has been forgiven her."
The goat's head bunt in the fire, scattering coals: a presage of
violence. Maytera Mint bent over the carcass once more, struggling
frantically to recall what litfie she knew of augury--remarks
dropped at odd moments by Patera Pike and Patera Silk, half-hearted
lessons at table from Maytera Rose, who had spoken as
much to disgust as to teach her.
The right side of the beast concerned the presenter and the augur
who presided, the giver and the performer of the sacrifice; the left
the congregation and the whole city. This red liver foretold deeds of
blood, and here among its tangled veins was a knife, indicating the
augur--though she was no augur--and pointing to a square, the
square stem of mint almost certainly, and the hilt of a sword. Was
she to die by the sword? No, the blade was away from her. She was
to hold the sword, but she had already done that, hadn't she?
In the entrails a fat little fish (a bream, presumably) and a jumble
of circular objects, necklaces or rings, perhaps. Certainly that
interpretation would be welcomed. They lay close to the bream, one
actually on top of it, so the time was very near. She mounted the
first two steps.
"For the presenter. The goddess favors you. She is well pleased
with your sacrifice." The goat had been a fine one, and presumably
Kypris would not have indicated wealth had she not been gratified.
"You will gain riches, jewels and gold particularly. within a short
time."
Grinning from ear to ear, Bream backed away.
"For all of us and for our city, violence and death, from which
good will come." She glanced down at the carcass, eager to be
certain of the sign of addition she had glimpsed there; but it had
gone, if it had ever existed. "That is all that I can see in this victim,
though a skilled augur such as Patera Silk could see much more, I'm
sure."
Her eyes searched the crowd around the altar for Bream. "The
presenter has first claim. If he wishes a share in this meal, let him
come forward."
Already the poor were struggling to get nearer the altar. Maytera
Marble whispered, "Burn the entrails and lungs, sib!"
It was wise and good and customary to cut small pieces when the
congregation was large, and there were two thousand in this one at
least; but there were scores of victims, too, and Maytera Mint had
little confidence in her own skill. She distributed haunches and
quarters, receiving delighted smiles in return.
Next a pair of white doves. Did you share out doves or burn them
whole? They were edible, but she remembered that Silk had burned
a black cock whole at Orpine's last sacrifice. Birds could be read,
although they seldom were. Wouldn't the giver be offended,
however, if she didn't read these?
"One shall be read and burned," she told him firmly. "The other
we will share with the goddess. Remain here if you would like it for
yourself."
He shook his head.
The doves fluttered desperately as their throats were cut.
A deep breath. "Accept, O Kind Kypris, the sacrifice of these fine
doves. And speak to us, we beg, of the times that are to come. What
are we to do? Your lightest word will be treasured." Had she really
killed those doves? She risked a peek at their lifeless bodies. "Should
you, however, choose otherwise..."
She let her arms fall, conscious that she was getting more blood
on her habit. "We consent. Speak to us, we beg, through this
sacrifice."
Scraping feathers, skin, and flesh from the first dove's right
shoulder blade, she scanned the fine lines that covered it. A bird
with outspread wings; no doubt the giver's name was Swan or
something of the sort, though she had forgotten it already. Here was
a fork on a platter. Would the goddess tell a man he was going to eat
dinner? Impossible!
A minute drop of blood seemed to have seeped
out of the bone. "Plate gained by violence," she announced to the
presenter, "but if the goddess has a second message for me, I am too
ignorant to read it."
Maytera Marble whispered, "The next presenter will be my son,
Bloody."
Who was Bloody? Maytera Mint felt certain that she should
recognize the name. "The plate will be gained in conjunction with
the next presenter," she told the giver of the doves. "I hope the
goddess isn't saying you'll take from him."
Maytera Marble hissed, "He's bought this manteion, sib."
She nodded without comprehension. She felt hot and sick,
crushed by the scorching sunlight and the heat from the blaze on the
altar, and poisoned by the fumes of so much blood, as she bent to
consider the dove's left shoulder blade.
Linked rings, frequently interrupted.
"Many who are chained in our city shall be set free," she
announced, and threw the dove into the sacred fire, startling a little
girl bringing more cedar. An old woman was overjoyed to receive
the second dove.
The next presenter was a fleshy man nearing sixty; with him was a
handsome younger one who hardly came to his shoulder; the
younger man carried a cage containing two white rabbits. "For
Maytera Rose," the older man said. "This Kypris is for love, right?"
He wiped his sweating head with his handkerchief as he spoke,
releasing a heavy fragrance.
"She is the goddess of love, yes."
The younger man smirked, pushing the cage at Maytera Mint.
"Well, roses stand for love," the older man said, "I think these
should be all right.
Maytera Marble sniffed. "Victims in confinement cannot be
accepted. Bloody, have him open that and hand one to me."
The older man appeared startled.
Maytera Marble held up the rabbit, pulling its head back to bare
its throat. If there were a rule for rabbits, Maytera Mint had
forgotten it; "We'll treat these as we did the doves," she said as
firmly as she could.
The older man nodded.
Why, they do everything I tell them, she reflected. They accept
anything I say! She struck off the first rabbit's head, cast it into the
fire, and opened its belly.
Its entrails seemed to melt in the hot sunshine, becoming a
surging line of ragged men with slug guns, swords, and crude pikes.
The buzz gun rattled once more, somewhere at the edge of