by Gene Wolfe
Something black and scarlet landed with a thump upon his sopping shoulder. "Bad boat! Sink."
It had not, as he saw when the talus heaved itself up onto the quay again; Dace's boat lay on its side, the mast unshipped and tossing like driftwood in the turbulent water.
Huge as a boulder, the talus's head swiveled around to glare at them, revolving until it seemed its neck must snap. "Five ride! The small may go!"
Auk glanced from the augur to the fisherman, and from him to the hysterical Chenille, before he realized who was meant. "You can beat the hoof if you want to, bird. He says he won't hurt you if you do."
"Bird stay," Oreb muttered. "Find Silk."
The talus's head completed its revolution, and the talus lunged forward. Yellow light glared back at them, reflected from the curved white side of the last tank, leaving the Sacred Window empty and dead looking behind them. Sallow green lights winked into being just above the talus's helmeted head, and the still-tossing waters of the channel congealed to rough stone as the cavern dwindled to a dim tunnel.
Auk put his arm around Chenille's waist. "Fancy a bit of company, Jugs?"
She wept on, sobs lost in the wind of their passage.
He released her, got out his needler, and pushed back the sideplate; a trickle of gritty water ran onto his fingers, and he blew into the mechanism. "Should be all right," he told Oreb, "soon as it dries out. I ought to put a couple drops of oil on the needles, though."
"Good girl," Oreb informed him nervously. "No shoot."
"Bad girl," Auk explained. "Bad man, too. No shoot. No go away, either."
"Bad bird!"
"Lily." Gently, he kissed Chenille's inflamed back. "Lie down if you want to. Lay your head in my lap. Maybe you can get a little sleep."
As he pronounced the words, he sensed that they came too late. The talus was descending, the tunnel angling downward, if only slightly. The mouths of other tunnels flashed past to left and right, darker even than the damp shiprock walls. Drops of water clinging to the unchanging ceiling gleamed like diamonds, vanishing as they passed.
The talus slowed, and something struck its great bronze head, ringing it like a gong. Its buzz guns rattled and it spat a tongue of blue fire.
Chapter 2
Silk's Back!
"It would be better," Maytera Marble murmured to Maytera Mint, "if you did it, sib."
Maytera Mint's small mouth fell open, then firmly closed. Obedience meant obeying, as she had told herself thousands of times; obedience was more than setting the table or fetching a plate of cookies. "If you wish it, Maytera. High Hierax knows I have no voice, but I suppose I must."
Maytera Marble sighed to herself with satisfaction, a hish from the speaker behind her lips so soft that no ears but hers could hear it.
Maytera Mint stood, her cheeks aflame already, and studied the congregation. Half or more were certainly thieves; briefly she wondered whether even the images of the gods were safe.
She mounted the steps to the ambion, acutely conscious of the murmur of talk filling the manteion and the steady drum of rain on its roof; for the first time since early spring, fresh smelling rain was stabbing through the god gate to spatter the blackened altartop-though there was less now than there had been earlier.
Molpe, she prayed, Marvelous Molpe, for once let me have a voice. "Some-" Deep breath. "Some of you do not know me…"
Few so much as looked at her, and it was apparent that those who did could not hear her. How ashamed that gallant captain who had showed her his sword would be of her now!
Please Kypris! Sabered Sphigx, great goddess of war.
There was a strange swelling beneath her ribs; through her mind a swirl of sounds she had never heard and sights she had not seen: the rumbling hoofbeats of cavalry and the booming of big guns. the terrifying roars of Sphigx's lions, the silver voices of trumpets, and the sharp crotaline clatter of a buzz gun. A woman with a bloodstained rag about her head steadied the line: Form up! Form Up! Forward now! Forward! Follow me!
With a wide gesture, little Maytera Mint drew a sword not even she could see. "Friends!" Her voice broke in the middle of the word.
Louder, girl! Shake these rafters!
"Friends, some of you don't know who I am. I am Maytera Mint, a. sibyl of this manteion." She swept the congregation with her eyes, and saw Maytera Marble applauding silently; the babble of several hundred voices had stilled altogether.
"The laws of the Chapter permit sacrifice by a sibyl when no augur is present. Regrettably, that is the case today at our manteion. Few of you, we realize, will wish to remain. There is another manteion on Hat Street, a manteion well loved by all the gods, I'm sure, where a holy augur is preparing to sacrifice as I speak. Toward the market, and turn left. It's not far."
She waited hopefully, listening to the pattering rain; but not one of the five hundred or so lucky enough to have seats stood, and none of the several hundred standers in the aisles turned to go.
"Patera Silk did not return to the manse last night. As many of you know, Guardsmen came here to arrest him-"
The angry mutter from her listeners was like the growl of some enormous beast.
"That was yesterday, when Kind Kypris, in whose debt we shall always be, honored us for a second time. All of us feel certain that there has been a foolish enor. But until Patera Silk comes back, we can only assume that he is under arrest. Patera Cub, the worthy augur His Cognizance the Prolocutor sent to assist Patera Silk, seems to have left the manse early this morning, no doubt in the hope of freeing him."
Maytera Mint paused, her fingers nervously exploring the chipped stone of the ancient ambion, and glanced down at the attentive worshipers crouched on the floor in front of the foremost bench, and at the patchy curtain of watching faces that filled the narthex arch.
"Thus the duty of sacrifice devolves upon Maytera Marble and me. There are dozens of victims today. There is even an unspotted white bull for Great Pas, such a sacrifice as the Grand Manteion cannot often see." She paused again to listen to the rain, and for a glance at the altar.
"Before we begin, I have other news to give you, and most particularly to those among you who have come to honor the gods not only today but on Scylsday every week for years. Many of you will be saddened by what I tell you, but it is joyful news.
"Our beloved Maytera Rose has gone to the gods. in whose service she spent her long life. For reasons we deem good and proper, we have chosen not to display her mortal remains. That is her casket there, in front of the altar.
"We may be certain that the immortal gods are aware of her exemplary piety. I have heard it said that she was the oldest biochemical person in this quarter, and it may well have been true. She belonged to the last of those fortunate generations for which prosthetic devices remained, devices whose principles are lost even to our wisest. They sustained her life beyond the lives of the children of many she had taught as children, but they could not sustain it indefinitely. Nor would she have wished them to. Yester day they failed at last, and our beloved sib was freed from the sufferings that old age had brought her, and the toil that was her only solace."
Some men standing in the aisles were opening the windows there; little rain if any seemed to be blowing in. The storm was over, Maytera Mint decided, or nearly over.
"So our sacrifice this morning is not merely that which we offer to the undying gods each day at this time if a victim is granted us. It is our dear Maytera Rose's last sacrifice, by which I mean that it is not just that of the white bull and the other beasts outside, but the sacrifice of Maytera herself.
"Sacrifices are of two kinds. In the first, we send a gift. In the second, we share a meal. Thus my dear sib and I dare hope it will not shock you when I tell you that my dear sib has taken for her use some of the marvelous devices that sustained our beloved Maytera Rose. Even if we were disposed to forget her, as I assure you we are not, we could never do so now. They will remind us both of her life of service. Though I know that her sp
irit treads the Aureate Path, I shall always feel that something of her lives on in my sib."
Now, or never.
"We are delighted that so many of you have come to honor her, as it is only right you should. But there are many more outside, men and women, children too, who would honor her if they could, but were unable to find places in our manteion. It seems a shame, for her sake and for the gods' as well.
"There is an expedient, as some of you must stirely know, that can be adopted on such occasions as this. It is to move the casket, the altar, and the Sacred Window itself out into the street temporarily."
They would lose their precious seats. She half expected them to riot, but they did not.
She was about to say, "I propose-" but caught herself in time; the decision was hers, the responsibility for it and its execution hers. "That is what we will do today." The thick, leather-bound Chrasmologic Writings lay on the ambion before her; she picked it up. "Horn? Horn, are you here?"
He waved his hand, then stood so she could see him.
"Horn was one of Maytera's students. Horn, I want you to choose five other boys to help you with her casket. The altar and the Sacred Window are both very heavy, I imagine. We will need volunteers to move those."
Inspiration struck. "Only the very strongest men, please. Will twenty or thirty of the strongest men present please come forward? My sib and I will direct you."
Their rush nearly overwhelmed her. Half a minute later, the altar was afloat upon a surging stream of hands and arms, bobbing and rocking like a box in the lake as a human current bore it down the aisle toward the door.
The Sacred Window was more difficult, not because it was heavier, but because the three-hundred-year-old clamps that held it to the sanctuary floor had rusted shut and bad to be hammered. Its sacred cables trailed behind it as it, too, was carried out the door, at times spitting the crackling violet fire that vouched for the immanent 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 t
he 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.
