The Shadow of the Torturer

by Gene Wolfe

Page 17

 

  Her motion changed as a luggers does when the sailors make it to come about on the opposite tack. One pinion dipped, the other rose until it pointed toward the sky, and I scrabbled at the scaled hide and plummeted into the sea.

  The shock of the impact woke me. I twitched in every joint, and heard the giant mutter in his sleep. In much the same way I murmured too, and groped to find if my sword still lay at my side, and slept again.

  The water closed over me, yet I did not drown. I felt I might breathe water, yet I did not breathe. Everything was so clear that I felt I fell through an emptiness more translucent than air.

  Far off loomed great shapes - things hundreds of times larger than a man. Some seemed ships, and some clouds; one was a living head without a body; one had a hundred heads. A blue haze obscured them, and I saw below me a country of sand, carved by the currents. A palace stood there that was greater than our Citadel, but it was ruinous, its halls as unroofed as its gardens; through it moved immense figures, white as leprosy.

  Nearer I fell, and they turned up their faces to me, faces such as I had seen once beneath Gyoll; they were women, naked, with hair of sea-foam green and eyes of coral. Laughing, they watched me fall, and their laughter came bubbling up to me. Their teeth were white and pointed, each a fingers length.

  I fell nearer. Their hands reached up to me and stroked me as a mother strokes her child. The gardens of the palace held sponges and sea anemones and countless other beauties to which I could put no name. The great women circled me round, and I was only a doll before them. "Who are you?" I asked. "And what do you do here?"

  "We are the brides of Abaia. The sweethearts and playthings, the toys and valentines of Abaia. The land could not hold us. Our breasts are battering rams, our buttocks would break the backs of bulls. Here we feed, floating and growing, until we are great enough to mate with Abaia, who will one day devour the continents. "

  "And who am I?"

  Then they laughed all together, and their laughter was like surf upon a beach of glass. "We will show you," they said. "We will show you!" One took me by each hand, as sisters take their sisters child, and lifted me up, and swam with me through the garden. Their fingers were webbed, and as long as my arm from shoulder to elbow.

  They halted, settling through the water like carracks sinking, until their feet and mine touched the strand. There stood before us a low wall, and on it a little stage and curtain, such as are used for childrens entertainments. Our roiling of the water seemed to flutter the kerchief-sized cloth. It rippled and swayed, and began to draw back as though teased by an unseen hand. At once there appeared the tiny figure of a man of sticks. His limbs were twigs, still showing bark and green bud. His body was a quarter-span of branch, big through as my thumb, and his head a knot whose whorls formed his eyes and mouth. He carried a club (which he brandished at us) and moved as if he were alive.

  When the wooden man had jumped for us, and struck the little stage with his weapon to show his ferocity, there appeared the figure of a boy armed with a sword. This marionette was as finely finished as the other was crude - it might have been a real child reduced to the size of a mouse.

  After both had bowed to us, the tiny figures fought. The wooden man performed prodigious leaps and seemed to fill the stage with the blows of his cudgel; the boy danced like a dust mote in a sunbeam to avoid it, darting at the wooden man to slash with his pin-sized blade.

  At last the wooden figure collapsed. The boy strode over as if to set his foot upon its chest; but before he could do so, the wooden figure floated from the stage, and turning limply and lazily rose until it vanished from sight, leaving behind the boy, and the cudgel and the sword - both broken. I seemed to hear (no doubt it was really the squeaking of cartwheels on the street outside) a flourish of toy trumpets.

  I woke because a third person had come into the room. He was a small, brisk man with fiery red hair, well and even foppishly dressed. When he saw me awake, he threw back the shutters that had covered the window, bringing red sunlight streaming in.

  "My partner," he said, "sleeps soundly always. His snoring didnt deafen you?"

  "I slept well myself," I told him. "And if he snored, I didnt hear him. "

  That seemed to please the small man, who showed a good many gold teeth when he smiled. "He does. He snores to shake Urth, I assure you. Happy you got your rest anyway. " He extended a delicate, well-cared-for hand. "I am Dr. Talos. "

  "The Journeyman Severian. " I threw off the thin coverings and stood up to take it.

  "You wear black, I see. What guild is that?"

  "It is the fuligin of the torturers. "

  "Ah!" He cocked his head to one side like a thrush, and hopped about to look at me from various angles. "Youre a tall fellow - thats a shame - but all that sooty stuff is very impressive. "

  "We find it practical," I said. "The oubliette is a dirty place, and fuligin doesnt show bloodstains. "

  "You have humor! Thats excellent! There are few advantages, Ill tell you, that profit a man more than humor. Humor will draw a crowd. Humor will calm a mob or reassure a nursery school. Humor will get you on and get you off, and pull in asimis like a magnet. "

  I had only the vaguest idea of what he was saying, but seeing that he was in an affable mood, I ventured, "I hope I didnt discommode you? The landlord said I was to sleep here, and there was room for another person in the bed. "

  "No, no, not at all! I never came back - found a better place to pass the night. I sleep very little, I may as well tell you, and Im a light sleeper too. But I had a good night of it, an excellent night. Where are you going this morning, optimate?"

  I was fumbling under the bed for my boots. "First to look for some breakfast, I suppose. After that, out of the city, to the north. "

  "Excellent! No doubt my partner would appreciate a breakfast - it will do him a world of good. And were traveling north. After a most successful tour of the city, you know. Going back home now. Played the east bank down, and playing the west up. Perhaps well stop at the House Absolute on our way north. Thats the dream, you know, in the profession. Play the Autarchs palace. Or come back, if youve already played there. Chrisos by the hatful. "

  "Ive met one other person, at least, who dreamed of going back. "

  "Dont put on that long face - you must tell me about him sometime. But now, if were to go to breakfast - Baldanders! Wake up! Come, Baldanders, come! Wake up!" He danced to the foot of the bed and grasped the giant by an ankle.

  "Baldanders! Dont take him by the shoulder, optimate!" (I had made no motion to do so. ) "He thrashes about sometimes. BALDANDERS!"

  The giant murmured and stirred.

  "A new day, Baldanders! Still alive! Time to eat and defecate and make love - all that! Up now, or well never get home. "

  There was no sign that the giant had heard him. It was as if the murmur of the moment before had been only a protest voiced in a dream, or his death rattle. Dr. Talos seized the foul blankets with both hands and swept them back.

  The monstrous shape of his partner lay revealed. He was even taller than I had supposed, nearly too tall for the bed, though he slept with his knees drawn almost to his chin. His shoulders were an ell across, high and hunched. His face I could not see; it lay buried in his pillow. There were strange scars about his neck and ears.

  "Baldanders!"

  His hair was grizzled, and despite the innkeepers pretended error, very thick.

  "Baldanders! Your pardon, optimate, but may I borrow that sword?"

  "No," I said. "You may not. "

  "Oh, Im not going to kill him, or anything of that sort. I only want to use the flat of it. "

  I shook my head, and when Dr. Talos saw I was still adamant, he began to rummage about the room. "Left my stick downstairs. Vile custom, theyll thieve it. I should learn to limp, I really should. Theres nothing here at all. "

  He darted out the door, and was back in a moment carrying an ironwood walking stic
k with a gilt-brass knob. "Now then! Baldanders!" The strokes fell upon the giants broad back like the big raindrops that precede a thunderstorm.

  Quite suddenly, the giant sat up. "Im awake, Doctor. " His face was large and coarse, but sensitive and sad as well. "Have you decided to kill me at last?"

  "What are you talking about, Baldanders? Oh, you mean the optimate here. Hes not going to do you any hurt - he shared the bed with you, and now hes going to join us at breakfast. "

  "He slept here, Doctor?"

  Dr. Talos and I both nodded.

  "Then I know whence my dreams rose. "

  I was still saturated with the sight of the huge women beneath the monstered sea, and so I asked what his dreams had been, though I was somewhat in awe of him.

  "Of caverns below, where stone teeth dripped blood . . . Of arms dismembered found on sanded paths, and things that shook chains in the dark. " He sat at the edge of the bed, cleaning sparse and surprisingly small teeth with one great finger.

  Dr. Talos said, "Come on, both of you. If were to eat and talk and get anything done today - why, we must be at it. Much to say and much to do. " Baldanders spat into the corner.

  Chapter 16

  THE RAG SHOP

  It was on that walk through the streets of still-slumbering Nessus that my grief, which was to obsess me so often, first gripped me with all its force.

  When I had been imprisoned in our oubliette, the enormity of what I had done, and the enormity of the redress I felt sure I would make soon under Master Gurloess hands, had dulled it. The day before, when I had swung down the Water Way, the joy of freedom and the poignancy of exile had driven it away. Now it seemed to me that there was no fact in all the world beyond the fact of Theclas death. Each patch of darkness among the shadows reminded me of her hair; every glint of white recalled her skin. I could hardly restrain myself from rushing back to the Citadel to see if she might not still be sitting in her cell, reading by the light of the silver lamp.

  We found a cafe whose tables were set along the margin of the street. It was still sufficiently early that there was very little traffic. A dead man (he had, I think, been suffocated with a lambrequin, there being those who practice that art) lay at the corner. Dr. Talos went through his pockets, but came back with empty hands.

  "Now then," he said. "We must think. We must contrive a plan. "

  A waitress brought mugs of mocha, and Baldanders pushed one toward him. He stirred it with his forefinger.

  "Friend Severian, perhaps I should elucidate our situation. Baldanders - he is my only patient - and I hail from the region about Lake Diuturna. Our home burned, and needing a trifle of money to set it right again we decided to venture abroad. My friend is a man of amazing strength. I assemble a crowd, he breaks some timbers and lifts ten men at once, and I sell my cures. Little enough, you will say. But theres more. Ive a play, and weve assembled properties. When the situation is favorable, he and I enact certain scenes and even invite the participation of some of the audience. Now, friend, you say you are going north, and from your bed last night I take it you are not in funds. May I propose a joint venture?"

  Baldanders, who appeared to have understood only the first part of his companions speech, said slowly, "It is not entirely destroyed. The walls are stone, very thick. Some of the vaults escaped. "

  "Quite correct. We plan to restore the dear old place. But see our dilemma - were now halfway on the return leg of our tour, and our accumulated capital is still far from sufficient. What I propose - "

  The waitress, a thin young woman with straggling hair, came carrying a bowl of gruel for Baldanders, bread and fruit for me, and a pastry for Dr. Talos. "What an attractive girl!" he said.

  She smiled at him.

  "Can you sit down? We seem to be your only customers. "

  After glancing in the direction of the kitchen, she shrugged and pulled over a chair.

  "You might enjoy a bit of this - Ill be too busy talking to eat such a dry concoction. And a sip of mocha, if you dont object to drinking after me. "

  She said, "Youd think hed let us eat for nothing, wouldnt you? But he wont. Charges everything at full price. "

  "Ah! Youre not the owners daughter, then. I feared you were. Or his wife. How can he have allowed such a blossom to flourish unplucked?"

  "Ive only worked here about a month. The money they leave on the tables all I get. Take you three, now. If you dont give me anything, I will have served you for nothing. "

  "Quite so, quite so! But what about this? What if we attempt to render you a rich gift, and you refuse it?" Dr. Talos leaned toward her as he said this, and it struck me that his face was not only that of a fox (a comparison that was perhaps too easy to make because his bristling reddish eyebrows and sharp nose suggested it at once) but that of a stuffed fox. I have heard those who dig for their livelihood say there is no land anywhere in which they can trench without turning up the shards of the past. No matter where the spade turns the soil, it uncovers broken pavements and corroding metal; and scholars write that the kind of sand that artists call polychrome (because flecks of every color are mixed with its whiteness) is actually not sand at all, but the glass of the past, now pounded to powder by eons of tumbling in the clamorous sea. If there are layers of reality beneath the reality we see, even as there are layers of history beneath the ground we walk upon, then in one of those more profound realities, Dr. Taloss face was a foxs mask on a wall, and I marveled to see it turn and bend now toward the woman, achieving by those motions, which made expression and thought appear to play across it with the shadows of the nose and brows, an amazing and realistic appearance of vivacity. "Would you refuse it?" he asked again, and I shook myself as though waking.

  "What do you mean?" the woman wanted to know. "One of you is a carnifex. Are you talking about the gift of death? The Autarch, whose pores outshine the stars themselves, protects the lives of his subjects. "