by Gene Wolfe
That was the final window. The shadowy corridor had ended, and a second arch, brilliant with sunlight, rose in front of me. Seeing it, I knew with a sickening certainty only another who had grown up in the guild could understand, that I had lost my client.
I bolted through it and saw him standing bewildered in the portico of the Hall of Justice, surrounded by a surging crowd. At the same instant, he saw me and sought to push through them toward the principal entrance.
I called out for someone to stop him, but the crowd moved aside for him and seemed purposely to obstruct me. I felt as though I were in one of the nightmares I had suffered as Lictor of Thrax and that I would wake in a moment gasping for breath with the Claw pressing my chest.
A little woman dashed from the crowd and caught Zak by one arm, and he shook himself as a bull shakes to dislodge the darts in its hide. She fell, but grasped his ankle.
It was enough. I laid hold of him, and though I was lame once more here, where the greedy pull of Yesod was Urth’s or nearly, I was still strong and he still manacled. With an arm at his throat I bent him back like a bow. At once he relaxed; and I knew, in the mysterious way we sense another’s intent at times by a touch, that he would resist me no longer. I released him.
“Won’t fight,” he said. “No more run.”
“All right,” I told him, and stooped to raise the woman who had helped me. I recognized her then, and without much thought glanced down at her leg. It was perfectly normal, which is to say perfectly healed.
“Thank you,” I muttered. “Thank you, Hunna.”
She was staring. “I thought you were my mistress. I don’t know why.”
Often I have to make an effort to prevent Thecla’s voice from issuing from my lips. Now I permitted it. We said, “Thank you,” again, adding, “You were not mistaken,” and smiling at her confusion.
Shaking her head, she backed into the crowd, and I caught sight of a tall woman with dark, curling hair entering the arch through which I had taken Zak. Even after so many years, there could be no doubt, no doubt at all. We tried to call her name. It remained in our throat, leaving us sick and silent.
“Don’t cry,” Zak said, his deep voice somehow child-like. “Please don’t. I think it will be all right.”
I turned to tell him I was not, and realized I was. If I had ever wept before, it was when I was so small I can scarcely remember it — apprentices learn not to, and those who do not are tormented by the rest until death takes them. Thecla had cried at times, and had wept often in her cell; but I had just seen Thecla.
I said, “I’m crying because I want so much to follow her, and we must go inside.”
He nodded, and at once I took him by the arm and brought him into the Examination Chamber. The corridor along which the lady Apheta had sent me merely circled it, and I led Zak down a wide aisle, while the sailors watched from the banked benches on either side. There were many more places on the benches than sailors, however, so that the sailors occupied only the ones nearest the aisle.
Before us was the Seat of Justice, a seat far grander and more austere than any judge I had ever seen had occupied upon Urth. The Phoenix Throne was — or is, if it yet exists beneath the waters — a great, gilt armchair upon whose back is displayed an image of that bird, the symbol of immortality, worked in gold, jade, carnelian, and lapis lazuli; upon its seat (which would have been murderously uncomfortable without it) was a cushion of velvet, with golden tassels.
This Seat of Justice of the Hierogrammate Tzadkiel was as different as could be imagined, and indeed was hardly a chair at all, but only a colossal boulder of white stone, shaped by time and chance to resemble one about as much as the clouds in which we profess to see a lover’s face or the head of some paladin resemble the persons themselves.
Apheta had told me only that I would find a ring in the chamber, and for a moment or two, while Zak and I walked slowly down that long aisle, I searched for it with my eyes. It was what I had at first supposed to be the sole decoration of the Seat of Justice: a wrought circle of iron held by a great iron staple driven into the stone at the termination of one armrest. I looked then for the sliding link she had mentioned; there was none, but I led Zak toward the ring anyway, certain that when we reached it someone would step forward to assist me.
No one did, but when I looked at the manacle I understood as Apheta had said I would. The link was there; when I opened it, it seemed to me it slipped back so easily that Zak himself might have loosed it with a finger. It united loops of chain that held each wrist, so that when I removed it the whole affair dropped from him. I picked it up, put the chains about my own wrists, lifted my arms above my head so that I could put the ring into the link, and awaited my examination.
None took place. The sailors sat gaping at me. I had supposed that someone would take Zak, or he would flee. No one approached him. He seated himself on the floor at my feet, not cross-legged (as I would have sat in his place) but squatting in a way that reminded me at first of a dog, then of an atrox or some other great cat.
“I am the Epitome of Urth and all her peoples,” I told the sailors. It was the same speech the old Autarch had made, as I realized only after I had begun it, though his examination had been so different. “I am here because I hold them in me — men, women, and children too, poor and rich, old and young, those who would save our world if they could, and those who would rape its last life for gain.”
Unbidden, the words rose to the surface of my mind. “I am here also because I am by right the ruler of Urth. We have many nations, some larger than our Commonwealth and stronger; but we Autarchs, and we alone, think not merely of our own lands, but know our winds blow every tree and our tides wash every shore. This I have proved, because I stand here. And because I stand here, I prove it is my right.”
The sailors listened in silence to all this; but even as I spoke I looked past them for the others, for the lady Apheta and her companions, at least. They were not to be seen.
Yet there were other hearers. The crowd from the portico now stood in the doorway through which Zak and I had come; when I had finished they filed slowly into the Examination Chamber, coming not down the central aisle as we had, and as the sailors doubtless had, but dividing their column, left and right, into two that crept between the benches and the walls.
I caught my breath then, for Thecla was among them, and in her eyes I saw such pity and such sorrow as wrung my heart. I have not often been afraid, but I knew the pity and sorrow were for me, and I was frightened by the depth of them.
At last she turned from me, and I from her. That was when I saw Agilus in the crowd, and Morwenna, with her black hair and branded cheeks.
With them were a hundred more, prisoners from our oubliette and the Vincula of Thrax, felons I had scourged for provincial magistrates and murderers I had killed for them. And a hundred more besides: Ascians, tall Idas, and grim-mouthed Casdoe with little Severian in her arms; Guasacht and Erblon with our green battle flag.
I bent my head, staring at the floor while I awaited the first question.
No questions came. Not for a very long time — if I were to write here how long that time seemed to me, or even how long it actually was, I would not be believed. Before anyone spoke, the sun was low in the bright sky of Yesod, and Night had put long, dark fingers across the isle.
With Night came another. I heard the scrabble of its claws on the stone floor, then a child’s voice: “Can’t we go now?” The alzabo had come, and its eyes burned in the blackness that had entered through the doorway of the Examination Chamber.
“Are you held here?” I asked. “It is not I who hold you.”
Hundreds of voices cried out, saying, “Yes, we are held!”
I knew then that they were not to question me, but I to question them. Still I hoped it might not be so. I said, “Then go.” But not one moved.
“What is it I must ask you?” I asked. There was no reply.
Night came indeed. Because that building wa
s all of white stone, with an aperture at the summit of its soaring dome, I had scarcely realized it was unlit. As the horizon rose higher than the sun, the Examination Chamber grew as dark as those rooms the Increate builds beneath the boughs of great trees. The faces blurred and went out, like the flames of candles; only the eyes of the alzabo caught the fading light and shone like two red embers.
I heard the sailors whispering among themselves with fear in their voices, and the soft sighing of knife blades clearing well-oiled sheaths. I called to them that there was no reason to be afraid, that these were my ghosts, and not theirs.
The voice of the child Severa cried, “We’re not ghosts!” with childish scorn. The red eyes came closer, and again there was the scrape of terrible claws on the stone floor. All the rest fidgeted in their places, so that the chamber echoed with the rustlings of their garments.
I wrenched futilely at the manacles, then fumbled for the sliding link and shouted to Zak not to try to stop the alzabo without a weapon.
Gunnie called (for I recognized her voice), “She’s only a child, Severian.”
I answered, “She’s dead! The beast speaks through her.”
“She’s riding on its back. They’re here by me.”
My numb fingers had found the link, but I did not open it, knowing with a sudden certainty that could not be denied that if I were to free myself now and hide among the sailors, as I had planned, I would surely have failed.
“Justice!” I shouted to them. “I tried to act justly, and you know that! You may hate me, but can you say I harmed you without cause?”
A dark figure sprang up. Steel gleamed like the alzabo’s eyes. Zak sprang too, and I heard the clatter of the weapon as it struck the stone floor.
Chapter XIX — Silence
IN THE confusion I could not tell at first who had freed me. I only knew that they were two, one to either side, and that they took my arms when I was free and led me quickly around the Seat of Justice and down a narrow stair. Behind us was pandemonium, the sailors shouting and scuffling, the alzabo baying.
The stair was long and steep, but it had been constructed in line with the aperture at the apex of the dome; faint light spilled down it, the final glimmer of a twilight yet reflected from a scattering of cloud, though Yesod’s sun would appear no more until morning.
At the bottom we emerged into darkness so intense that I did not realize we were outdoors until I felt grass beneath my feet and wind on my cheek.
“Thank you,” I said. “But who are you?”
A few paces away, Apheta answered, “They are my friends. You saw them on the craft that brought you here from your ship.”
As she spoke, the two released me. I am tempted to write that they vanished at once, because that is how it seemed to me; but I do not think they did. Rather, perhaps, they walked away into the night without a word.
Apheta slipped her hand into mine as she had before. “I pledged myself to show you wonders.”
I drew her farther from the building. “I’m not ready to see wonders. Yours, or any other woman’s.”
She laughed. Nothing is more frequently false in women than their laughter, a merely social sound like the belching of autochthons at a feast; but it seemed to me that this laughter held real merriment.
“I mean what I say.” The aftermath of fear had left me weak and sweating, but the wild bewilderment I felt had little or nothing to do with that; and if I knew anything at all (though I was not certain I did), it was that I did not want to begin some casual amour.
“Then we will walk — away from this place you wish so much to leave — and talk together. This afternoon you had a great many questions.”
“I have none now,” I told her. “I must think.”
“Why, so must we all,” she said sweetly. “All the time, or nearly.”
We went down a long, white street that meandered like a river, so that its slope was never steep. Mansions of pale stone stood beside it like ghosts. Most were silent, but from some there came the sounds of revelry, the clink of glasses, strains of music, and the slap of dancing feet; never a human voice.
When we had passed several I said, “Your people don’t speak as we do. We would say they don’t speak at all.”
“Is that a question?”
“No, it’s an answer, an observation. When we were going into the Examination Chamber, you said you didn’t speak our tongue, nor I yours. No one speaks yours.”
“It was meant metaphorically,” she told me. “We have a means of communication. You do not use it, and we do not use the one you use.”
“You weave paradoxes to warn me,” I said, though my thoughts were elsewhere.
“Not at all. You communicate by sound, we by silence.”
“By gestures, you mean.”
“No, by silence. You make a sound with your larynx and shape it by the action of your palate and lips. You have been doing that for so long that you have almost forgotten you do it; but when you were very young you had to learn to do it, as each child born to your race must. We could do it too, if we wished. Listen.”
I listened and heard a soft gurgling that seemed to proceed not from her, but from the air beside her. It was as though some unseen mute had come to join us, and now made a croaking in his throat. “What was that?” I asked.
“Ah, you see, you have questions after all. What you heard was my voice. We call so, occasionally, when we are injured or in need of help.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Nor do I wish to. I must be alone with my thoughts.”
Between the mansions were many fountains and many trees, trees that seemed to me tall, strange, and lovely even in the darkness. The waters of the fountains were not perfumed as so many of ours were in the gardens of the House Absolute, but the scent of the pure water of Yesod was sweeter than any perfume.
Flowers grew there too, as I had seen when we had left the flier and as I was to see again in the morning. Most had now folded their hearts in the bowers of their petals, and only a pale moonvine blossomed, though there was no moon.
At last, the street ended at the cool sea. There the little boats of Yesod were moored, just as I had seen them from above. Many men and women were there too, men and women who went to and fro among the boats, and between the boats and the shore. Sometimes a boat put out into the dark, lapping water; and at times some new boat appeared, with sails of many colors I could scarcely make out. Only rarely was there a light.
I said, “Once I was so foolish as to believe Thecla alive. It was a trick to draw me to the mine of the man-apes. Agia did it, but I saw her dead brother tonight.”
“You do not comprehend what happened to you,” Apheta told me. She sounded shamed. “That is why I am here — to explain it to you. But I will not explain until you are ready, until you ask me.”
“And if I never ask?”
“Then I will never explain. It may be better, though, for you to know, especially if you are the New Sun.”
“Is Urth really so important to you?”
She shook her head.
“Then why bother with it or me?”
“Because your race is important to us. It would be far less laborious if we could deal with it all at once, but you are sown over tens of thousands of worlds, and we cannot.”
I said nothing.
“The worlds are very far apart. If one of our ships goes from one to another as fast as the starlight, the voyage takes many centuries. It does not seem so to those on the ship, but it does. If the ship goes even faster, tacking in the wind from the suns, time runs backward so that the ship arrives before it sails.”
“That must be very inconvenient for you,” I said. I was staring out over the water.
“For us, not for me personally. If you are thinking that I am in some fashion the queen or guardian of your Urth, dismiss the thought. I am not. But yes, imagine that we desire to play shah mat upon a board whose squares are rafts on that sea. We move, yet even as we move the rafts sti
r and slip into some new combination; and to move, we must paddle from one raft to the next, which takes so long.”
“Against whom do you play?” I asked.
“Entropy.”
I looked around at her. “It is said that game is always lost.”
“We know.”
“Is Thecla really alive? Alive outside myself?”
“Here? Yes.”
“If I took her to Urth, would she be alive there?”
“That will not be permitted.”
“Then I will not ask whether I can stay here with her. You have already answered that. Less than a day all told, you said.”
“Would you stay here with her if it were possible?”
I thought about that for a moment. “Leaving Urth to freeze in the dark? No. Thecla was not a good woman, but…”
“Not good by whose measure?” Apheta asked. When I did not reply, she said, “I am truly inquiring. You may believe there is nothing unknown to me, but it is not so.”
“By her own. What I was going to say, if I could find the words, was that she — that all the exultants except a very few — felt a certain responsibility. It used to astonish me that she who had so much learning cared so little about it. That was when we used to talk together in her cell. A long time afterward, when I had been Autarch for several years, I realized it was because she knew of something better, something she had been learning all her life. It was a rough ethology, but I find I can’t say exactly what I mean.”
“Try, please. I would like to hear it.”
“Thecla would defend to the death anyone who could not help being dependent on her. That was why Hunna held Zak for me this afternoon. Hunna saw something of Thecla in me, though she must have known I was not really Thecla.”
“Yet you said Thecla was not good.”
“Goodness is so much more than that. She knew that too.”
I paused, watching the white flashes the waves made in the darkness beyond the boats while I tried to collect my thoughts. “What I was trying to say was that I learned it from her — that responsibility — or rather I absorbed it when I absorbed her. If I were to betray Urth for her now, I would be worse than she, not better. She wants me to be better, as every lover wants his lover to be better than he.”
