The Shadow of the Torturer botns-1

by Gene Wolfe

  Throwing the leaves was easier than I had supposed. Their surfaces were glossy, like the leaves of many of the plants I had seen in the Jungle Garden, so that they left the fingers readily, and they were heavy enough to fly far and true. They could be thrown point-foremost like any knife, or made to spin in flight to cut down anything in their path with their deadly edges. I was eager, of course, to question Hildegrin about Vodalus; but no opportunity to do so came until he had rowed us back across the silent lake. Then for a moment Agia became so intent on driving Dorcas away that I was able to draw him to one side and whisper that I, too, was a friend to Vodalus. “You’ve mistaken me, young sieur, for somebody else—do you refer to Vodalus the outlaw?”

  “I never forget a voice,” I told him, “or anything else.” And then in my eagerness, I impulsively added what was perhaps the worst thing I could have said: “You tried to brain me with your shovel.” His face became masklike at once, and he stepped back into his boat and rowed out onto the brown water.

  When Agia and I left the Botanic Gardens, Dorcas was still with us. Agia was anxious to make her go away, and for a time I permitted her to try. I was moved in part by the fear that with Dorcas near it would be impossible for me to persuade Agia to lie with me; but even more by a vague appreciation of the pain Dorcas would feel, lost and dismayed as she was already, if she should see me die. Only a short time before, I had poured out to Agia all my sorrow at the death of Thecla. Now these new concerns had replaced it, and I found I had poured it out indeed, as a man might spill sour wine on the ground. By the use of the Ianguage of sorrow I had for the time being obliterated my sorrow—so powerful is the charm of words, which for us reduces to manageable entities all the passions that would otherwise madden and destroy us. Whatever my motives may have been, and whatever Agia’s may have been, and whatever Dorcas’s may have been for following us, nothing Agia did succeeded. And in the end, I threatened to strike her if she did not desist, and called to Dorcas, who was then fifty paces or so behind us.

  After that we three trudged along in silence, drawing many strange looks. I was soaked to soddenness, and no longer cared whether my mantle covered my fuligin torturer’s cloak. Agia in her torn brocade must have looked nearly as strange as I. Dorcas was still smeared with mud—it dried on her in the warm spring wind that now wrapped the city, caking in her golden hair and leaving smears of powdery brown on her pale skin. Above us the avern brooded like a gonfalon; from it there drifted a myrrhic perfume. The half-closed flower still shone as white as bone, but its leaves looked nearly black in the sunlight.

  25. THE INN OF LOST LOVES

  It has been my good fortune—or evil fortune, as it may be—that the places with which my life has been largely associated have been, with very few exceptions, of the most permanent character. I might tomorrow, if I wished, return to the Citadel and (I think) to the very cot on which I slept as an apprentice. Gyoll still rolls past my city of Nessus; the Botanic Gardens still glitter in the sun, faceted with those strange enclosures wherein a single mood is preserved for all time. When I think of the ephemera of my life, they are likely to be men and women. But there are a few houses as well, and first among these stands the inn at the margin of the Sanguinary Field. We had walked away the afternoon, down broad avenues and up narrow byways, and always the buildings that hemmed us round were of stone and brick. At last we came to grounds that seemed no grounds at all, for there was no exalted villa at their center. I remember I warned Agia that a storm was brewing—I could feel the closeness of the air, and I saw a line of bitter black along the horizon. She laughed at me. “What you see and what you feel too is nothing more than the City Wall. It’s always like this here. The Wall impedes the movement of the air.”

  “That line of dark? It goes halfway to the sky.”

  Agia laughed again, but Dorcas pressed herself against me. “I am afraid, Severian.”

  Agia heard her. “Of the Wall? It won’t hurt you unless it falls on you, and it has stood through a dozen ages.” I looked questioningly at her, and she added, “At least it looks that old, and it may be older. Who knows?”

  “It could wall out the world. Does it stretch completely around the city?”

  “By definition. The city is what is enclosed, though there’s open country to the north, so I’ve heard, and leagues and leagues of ruins in the south, where no one lives. But now, look between those poplars. Do you see the inn?” I did not, and said so.

  “Under the tree. You’ve promised me a meal, and that’s where I want it. We should just have time to eat before you have to meet the Septentrion.”

  “Not now,” I said. “I’ll be happy to feed you when my duel is over. I’ll make the arrangements now, if you like.” I could still find no building, but I had come to see that there was something strange about the tree: a stair of rustic wood twined up the trunk.

  “Do so. If you’re killed, I’ll invite the Septentrion—or if he won’t come, that broken sailor who is forever inviting me. We’ll drink to you.” A light kindled high in the branches of the tree, and now I saw that a path led up to the stair. Before it, a painted sign showed a weeping woman dragging a bloody sword. A monstrously fat man in an apron stepped out of the shadow and stood beside it, rubbing his hands while he waited our coming. Faintly now, I could hear the clinking of pots.

  “Abban at your command,” said the fat man when we reached him. “What is your wish?” I noticed he kept a nervous eye on my avern. “We’ll have dinner for two, to be served at…” I looked at Agia.

  “The new watch.”

  “Good, good. But it cannot be so soon, sieur. It will take longer to prepare.

  Unless you’ll settle for cold meats, a salad, and a bottle of wine?”

  Agia looked impatient. “We’ll have a roast fowl—a young one.”

  “As you wish. I’ll have the cook begin his preparations now, and you can amuse yourselves with baked stuff after the sieur’s victory until the bird is done.” Agia nodded, and a look flashed between the two that made me feel certain they had met previously. “Meanwhile,” the innkeeper continued, “if you’ve yet time, I could provide a basin of warm water and a sponge for this other young lady, and perhaps you might all enjoy a glass of Medoc and some biscuits?” I was suddenly conscious of having fasted since my breakfast at dawn with Baldanders and Dr. Talos, and conscious too that Agia and Dorcas might have had nothing all day. When I nodded, the innkeeper conducted us up the broad, rustic stair; the trunk it circled was a full ten paces around. “Have you visited us before, sieur?”

  I shook my head. “I was about to ask you what manner of inn this is. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Nor will you, sieur, except here. But you ought to have come before—we keep a famous kitchen, and dining in the open air gives one the best appetite.” I thought that it must indeed if he maintained such a girth in a place where every room was reached by steps, but I kept the reflection to myself. “The law, you see, sieur, forbids all buildings so near the Wall. We are permitted, having neither walls nor a roof. Those who attend the Sanguinary Field come here, the famous combatants and heroes, the spectators and physicians, even the ephors. Here’s your chamber now.” It was a circular and perfectly level platform. Around and above it, pale green foliage shut out sight and sound. Agia sat in a canvas chair, and I (very tired, I confess) threw myself down beside Dorcas on a couch made of leather and the linked horns of lechwes and waterbucks. When I had laid the avern behind it, I drew Terminus Est and began to clean her blade. A scullion brought water and a sponge for Doreas and, when she saw what I was doing, rags and oil for me. I was soon tapping at the pommel so I could strip the blade from its furniture for a real cleaning.

  “Can’t you wash yourself?” Agia asked Doreas.

  “I’d like a bath, yes, but not with you watching me.”

  “Severian will turn his head if you ask him. He did very well in a place where we were this morning.”

  “And you, madame,”
Dorcas said softly. “I’d rather you didn’t watch. I’d like a private place, if I might have one.”

  Agia smiled at that, but I called the scullion again and gave her an orichalk to bring a folding screen. When it was set up, I told Dorcas I would buy her a gown if there were one to be had at the inn.

  “No,” she said. In a whisper, I asked Agia what she thought was the matter with her.

  “She likes what she has, clearly. I must walk with a hand up to hold my bodice if I wouldn’t be shamed for life.” She let her hand fall, so that her high breasts gleamed in the dying sunlight. “But those rags let her show lust leg and chest enough. There’s a rent at the groin too, though I dare say you haven’t noticed it.”

  The innkeeper interrupted us, leading in a waiter who carried a plate of pastries, a bottle, and glasses. I explained that my clothing was wet, and he had a brazier brought in—then proceeded to warm himself by it, for all the world as if he stood in his private apartment. “Feels good, this time of year,” he said. “The sun’s dead and don’t know it yet, but we do. If you’re killed, you’ll get to miss next winter, and if you’re hurt bad, you’ll get to stay inside. That’s what I always tell them. Of course, most of the fights are around midsummer’s eve, so it’s more appropriate then, so to speak. I don’t know if it comforts them or not, but it does no harm.”

  I took off the brown mantle and my guild cloak, put my boots on a stool near the brazier, and stood beside him to dry my breeches and hose, asking if all those who came this way on monomachy stopped to refresh themselves with him. Like every man who feels himself likely to die, I would have been happy to know that I was taking part in some established tradition.

  “All? Oh, no,” he said. “May moderation and St. Amand bless you, sieur. If everyone who came tarried at my inn, why it wouldn’t be my inn—I’d have sold it, and be living comfortable in a big, stone house with atroxes at the door and a few young fellows with knives hanging about me to settle my enemies. No, there’s many a one goes by here without a glance, never thinking that when he comes past next time, it may be too late to drink my wine. “Speaking of which,” said Agia, and handed me a glass. It was full to the brim with a dark, crimson vintage. Not a good wine, perhaps—it made my tongue prickle, and carried with its delicious taste something of harshness. But a wonderful wine, a wine better than good, in the mouth of someone as fatigued and cold as I. Agia held a full glass of her own, but I saw by her flaming cheeks and sparkling eyes that she had already downed one other at least. I told her to save something for Dorcas, and she said, “That milk and water virgin? She won’t drink it, and it’s you who’ll need courage—not she.” Not quite honestly, I said I was not afraid.

  The innkeeper exclaimed, “That’s the way! Don’t you be feared, and don’t fill your head with no noble thoughts about death and last days and all that. The ones that do is the ones that never come back, you may be sure. Now you was going to order a meal, I think, for you and your two young women afterward?”

  “We have ordered it,” I said.

  “Ordered, but not paid nothing toward, that was my meaning. Also there’s the wine and these here gateaux secs. Those must be paid for here and now as they’re eaten here and now, and drank up too. For the dinner I’ll require a deposit of three orichalks, with two more to be paid when you come to eat it.”

  “And if I don’t come?”

  “Then there’s no more charge, sieur. That’s how I’m able to offer my dinners at such low prices.”

  The man’s complete insensibility disarmed me; I handed over the money and he left us. Agia peeped around the side of the screen behind which Doreas was cleansing herself with the aid of the scullion, and I sat down again on the couch and took a pastry to go with what remained of my wine. “If we could make the hinges in this thing lock, Severian, we might enjoy ourselves for a few moments without interruption. We could put a chair against it, but no doubt those two would choose the worst possible moment to squall and knock everything over.”

  I was about to make some bantering reply when I noticed a scrap of paper, folded many times, that had been put beneath the waiter’s tray in such a fashion that it could be seen only by someone sitting where I was. “This is really too much,” I said. “A challenge, and now the mysterious note.” Agia came to look. “What are you talking about? Are you drunk already?” I put my hand on the rounded fullness of her hip, and when she made no objection, used that pleasant handle to draw her toward me until she could see the paper. “What do you suppose it says? ‘The Commonwealth has need of you—ride at once…’ ‘Your friend is he who shall say to you, camarilla…’

  ‘Beware of the man with pink hair…’ “

  Falling in with the joke, Agia offered, “ ‘Come when you hear three pebbles tap the window…’ The leaves, I should say here. ‘The rose hath stabbed the iris, who nectar affords…’ That’s your avern killing me, clearly. ‘You will know your true love by her red pagne…” She bent to kiss me, then sat in my lap. “Aren’t you going to look?”

  “I am looking.” Her torn bodice had fallen again.

  “Not there. Cover that with your hand, and then you can look at the note.” I did as she told me, but left the note where it was. “It’s really too much, as I said a moment ago. The mysterious Septentrion and his challenge, then Hildegrin, and now this. Have I mentioned the Chatelaine Thecla to you?”

  “More than once, while we were walking.”

  “I loved her. She read a great deal—there was really nothing for her to do when I was gone but read and sew and sleep—and when I was with her we used to laugh at the plots of some of the stories. This sort of thing was always happening to the people in them, and they were incessantly involved in high and melodramatic affairs for which they had no qualifications.” Agia laughed with me and kissed me again, a lingering kiss. When our lips parted, she said, “What’s this about Hildegrin? He seemed ordinary enough.” I took another pastry, touched the note with it, then put a corner into her mouth. “Some time ago I saved the life of a man called Vodalus—” Agia pulled away from me, spewing crumbs. “Vodalus? You’re joking!”

  “Not at all. That’s what his friend called him. I was still hardly more than a boy, but I held back the haft of an ax for a moment. The blow would have killed him, and he gave me a chrisos.”

  “Wait. What has this to do with Hildegrin?”

  “When I first saw Vodalus, he had a man and a woman with him. Enemies came upon them, and Vodalus remained behind to fight while the other man took the woman to safety.” (I had decided it was wiser to say nothing about the corpse, or my killing of the axman.)

  “I’d have fought myself—then there’d have been three fighters instead of one.

  Go on.”

  “Hildegrin was the man with Vodalus, that’s all. If we had met him first, I would have had some idea, or thought I had some idea, of why a hipparch of the Septentrion Guard would want to fight me. And for that matter why someone has chosen to send me some sort of furtive message. You know, all the things the Chatelaine Thecla and I used to laugh about, spies and intrigue, masked trysts, lost heirs. What’s the matter, Agia?”

  “Do I revolt you? Am I so ugly?”

  “You’re beautiful, but you look as if you’re about to be sick. I think you drank too fast.”

  “Here.” A quick twist took Agia out of her pavonine gown; it lay about her brown, dusty feet like a heap of precious stones. I had seen her naked in the cathedral of the Pelerines, but now (whether because of the wine I had drunk or the wine she had drunk, because the light was dimmer now, or brighter, or only because she had been frightened and shamed then, covering her breasts and hiding her womanhood between her thighs) she drew me far more. I felt stupid with desire, thick-headed and thick-tongued as I pressed her warmth against my own cold flesh.

  “Severian, wait. I’m not a strumpet, whatever you may think. But there’s a price.”

  “What?”

  “You must promise me you won’t
read that note. Throw it into the brazier.”

  I let go of her and stepped back.

  Tears appeared in her eyes, rising as springs do among rocks. “I wish you could see the way you’re looking at me now, Severian. No, I don’t know what it says. It’s just that—have you never heard of some women having supernatural knowledge? Premonitions? Knowing things they could not possibly have learned?” The longing I had felt was nearly gone. I was frightened as well as angry, though I did not know why. I said, “We have a guild of such women, our sisters, in the Citadel. Neither their faces nor their bodies are like yours.”