Epiphany of the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  "There are ancient tunnels under the city. Some of you can confirm that because you've come upon them while digging foundations. They reach Lake Limna-I know that, because I've been in them. If we can break through near the lake-and I'm sure we can-we can use them to carry water to the farms. Then we'll all have plenty of food, cheaply, for a long time." He wanted to say, until it's time for us to leave this whorl behind us, but he bit the words back, pausing instead to watch the gray drapes sway in the breeze and listen to his own voice through the open window.

  "If you have been fighting for me, don't use your weapons again unless you're attacked. If you're a Guardsman, you have sworn that you'll obey your officers." (He could not be sure of that, but it was so probable that he asserted it boldly.) "Ultimately, that means Generalissimo Oosik, who commands both the Guard and the Army. You've already heard what he has to say. He's for peace. So am I."

  Oosik pointed to himself, then to the ear; and Silk added, "You'll hear him again, very soon."

  He felt that the shade should be up by now-indeed that it was past that time, the hour of first light, and time for the morning prayer to Thelxiepeia; yet the city beyond the gray drapes was still twilit. "To you whose loyalty is to the Ayuntamiento, I have two things to say. The first is that you're fighting-dying, many of you-for an institution that needs no defense. Neither I nor Generalissimo Oosik nor General Mint desires to destroy it. So why shouldn't there be peace? Help us make peace!

  "The second is that the Ayuntamiento was created by our Charter. Were it not for our Charter, it would have no right to exist, and wouldn't exist. Our Charter grants to you-to you, the people of Viron, and not to any official-the right to choose a new Caldé whenever the position is vacant. It then makes the Ayuntamiento subject to the Caldé you have chosen. I need not tell you that our Charter proceeds from the immortal gods. All of you know that. Generalissimo Oosik and I have been consulting His Cognizance the Prolocutor on this matter of the Caldé and the Ayuntamiento. He is here with us, and if I have misinformed you he will correct me, I feel certain."

  With his left hand Quetzal accepted the ear; his right traced a trembling sign of addition. "Blessed be you in the Most Sacred Name of Pas, the Father of the Gods, in that of Gracious Echidna, His consort, in those of the Sons and their Daughters alike, this day and forever, in the name of their eldest child, Scylla, Patroness of this-"

  He continued to speak, but Silk's attention deserted him; the door of the dressing room had opened. Hyacinth stepped through it, radiantly lovely in a flowing gown of scarlet silk. In a low voice she said, "The glass in there just told me the Ayuntamiento's offering ten thousand to anybody who kills you and two thousand each for Oosie and His Cognizance. I thought you should know."

  Silk nodded and thanked her; Oosik muttered, "It was only to be expected."

  "Consider, my children," Quetzal was saying, "how painful it must be to Succoring Scylla to see the sons and daughters of the city that she founded clawing one another's eyes. She has provided everything we require. First of all our Charter, the foundation of peace and justice. If we wish to regain her favor we need only return to it. If we wish to reclaim the peace we have lost, again we need only return to her Charter. We wish justice, I know. I wish it myself, and the wish for it has been planted in every bosom by Great Pas. Even the worst of us wish to live in holiness, too. Perhaps there are a few ingrates who don't, but they are very few. We wish all these things, and we can make them ours by one simple act. Let us return to our Charter. That is what the gods desire. Let us accept this anointed augur, Patera Caldé Silk. The gods desire that, too. To conform to Sustaining Scylla's Charter, we must have a Caldé, and the smallest of our children know on whom the choice has fallen. If you have any doubts on these topics, my children, I beg you to consult the anointed augur into whose care you are given. There is one, you know, in every quarter. Or you may consult the next you see, or any holy sibyl. They will tell you that the path of duty is not difficult but simple and plain."

  Quetzal paused, exhaling with a slight hiss. "Now, my children, a most painful matter. Word has come to me that devils in human shape are seeking our destruction. Falsely and evilly. they promise money they have not got and will not pay, for our blood. Do not believe their lies. Their lies offend the gods. Anyone who slays good men for money is worse than a devil, and anyone who slays for money he will never see is a fool. Worse than a fool, a dupe."

  Oosik reached for the ear, but Quetzal shook his head.

  "My children, it will soon be shadeup. A new day. Let it be a day of peace. Let us stand together. Let us stand by the gods, by their Charter, and by the Caldé they have chosen for us. I bid you farewell for the present, but soon I hope to talk to you face-to-face and bless you for the peace you've given our city. Now I believe Generalissimo Oosik wants to speak to you again."

  Oosik cleared his throat. "This is the Generalissimo. Operations against the rebels are canceled, effective at once. Every officer will be held responsible for his obedience to my order and for the actions of his troopers or soldiers, as the case may be. Caldé Silk and His Cognizance are going through the city on one of our floaters. I expect every officer, every trooper, and every soldier to receive them in a manner fully in accordance with loyalty and good discipline.

  "My Caldé, have you anything further to say?"

  "Yes, I do." Silk leaned toward him, speaking into the ear. "Please stop fighting. It was needful, as I said; but it's become senseless. Stop them if you can, Maytera Mint. General Mint, please stop them. Peace is within our grasp-from the moment we accept it, all of us have won."

  He straightened up, savoring the wonder of the ear. It really does look like a black flower, he thought, a flower meant to bloom at night; and because it's bloomed, shadeup is on the way, even if the night looks nearly as dark as ever.

  To the ear he added, "We'll be with you in a few minutes, on the floater Generalissimo Oosik told you about. Don't shoot us, please. We certainly won't shoot you. No one will." He turned to Oosik for confirmation, and Oosik nodded vigorously.

  "Not even if you shoot me. I'll stand up if I can, so you can see me." He paused. Was there more to say?

  Attenuated like distant thunder, his words flew back to him through the window, an ebbing storm: "Can see me."

  "Those who fought for Viron will be rewarded, regardless of the side on which they fought. Maytera Marble, if you can hear this, please come to the floater. I need you badly, so please come. Auk, too, and Chenille." Had Kypris possessed Hyacinth, rendering her irresistible? Could she possess two women simultaneously? For a second he pondered the question among the remembered faces of his teachers at the schola. He ought to end this, he thought, by invoking the gods; but the time-worn honorifics caught in his throat.

  "Until I see you," he said at last, "please pray for me-for our city, and for all of us. Pray to Kind Kypris, who is love. Pray especially to the Outsider, because he is the god whose time is coming and I am the help he's sent us."

  He let the hand that held the ear fall, and Oosik took it from him. "For which we all give thanks," Oosik said, and Oreb muttered, "Watch out."

  No one spoke after that. Although Oosik and his surgeon, Xiphias, and Quetzal were all present, the bedroom felt empty. Beyond the window, a hush hung over the Palatine. No street vendor hawked his wares and no gun spoke.

  Peace.

  Peace here, at least; for those on the Palatine and those surrounding it, there was peace. Incredible as it seemed, hundreds-thousands-had ceased fighting, merely because he, Silk, had told them to.

  He felt better; perhaps peace, like blood, made one feel better. He was stronger, though he was still not strong. The surgeon had poured blood-more blood-into him while he slept, and that sleep must have been something akin to a coma, because the needle had not awakened him. Another's blood-another's life-had let him live, though he had been certain the night before that he would die that night. Premonitions born of weakness could be frustrated, clearly
; he would have to remember that. With friends to help, a man could make his own fate.

  Chapter 9

  Victory

  Xiphias, it transpired, had gone to the Palace, bringing back one of Remora's fine robes. It fit Silk surprisingly well, although it carried in its soft fabric a suggestion of somber luxury he found detestable. "They won't know you outside of this, lad," Xiphias said. He, shaking his head, wondered how they could possibly know him in it.

  Oosik returned. "I have had more lights mounted on your floater, Caldé. There will be a flag on its antenna as well. Most will be on you, two on the flag." Without waiting for a reply, he asked the surgeon, "Is he ready?"

  "He shouldn't walk far," the surgeon said.

  "I can walk around the city if need be," Silk told them.

  Hyacinth declared, "He should lie down again till it's time to go," and to please her, he did.

  Within half a minute, it seemed, Xiphias and the surgeon were lowering him into a litter. Hyacinth walked beside him as she had when the waiters had carried him out of the Glasshouse, and it seemed to him that his mother's garden walked with her; from the other side, Quetzal asperged him with benedictions, his robe of mulberry velvet contributing the mingled smells of frankincense and something else to the cool and windy dark. At his ears, the frou-frou-frou of Hyacinth's skirt and the whish-shish of Quetzal's robe sounded louder than the snap of Oosik's flag. Troopers saluted, clicking their heels. One knelt for Quetzal's blessing.

  "It would be better," Oosik said, "if you did not have to be carried into the floater, Caldé. Can you do it?"

  He could, of course, rising from the litter with the help of Xiphias's cane. A volley of shots crackled in the distance; it was followed by a faint scream, rarefied and unreal. "Men fight," Oreb commented.

  "Some do," Silk told him. "That's why we're going."

  The entry port let spill a sallow light; the surgeon was crouching inside to help him in. "Blood's floater was open," Silk remarked, remembering. "There was a transparent canopy-a top that you could see through almost as well as air-but when it was down, you could stand up."

  "You can stand in this, too," the surgeon said, "right here." He steered Silk toward the spot. "See? You're under the turret here."

  Straightening up, Silk nodded. "I rode in one of these yesterday-on the outside, when the rain stopped. It wasn't nearly as roomy as this." Corpses, including Doctor Crane's, had taken up most of the space inside.

  "We took out a lot of ammo, Caldé," the trooper at the controls told him.

  Silk nearly nodded again, although the trooper could not see his head. He had found the ladder he recalled, a spidery affair of metal rods, and was climbing cautiously but steadily toward the open hatch at the top of the turret.

  "Bad thing," Oreb informed him nervously. "Thing shine."

  To his own astonishment Silk smiled. "This buzz gun, you mean?" It was dull black, but the open breech revealed bright steel. "They won't shoot us with it, Oreb. They won't shoot anyone, I hope."

  The surgeon's voice floated up from below. "There's a saddle for the gunner, Caldé, and things to put your feet in."

  "Stirrups." That voice had been Oosik's, surely.

  Silk swung himself onto the leather-covered seat, almost but not quite losing his grip on Xiphias's cane. There were officers on horseback around the floater, and what seemed to be a full company of troopers standing at ease half a street behind it. The footman who had admitted him to Ermine's was watching everything from his station by the door; Silk waved to him with the cane, and he waved in return, his grin a touch of white in the darkness.

  It's going to rain again, Silk thought. I don't believe we've had a morning this dark since spring.

  Quetzal's head rose at his elbow. "I'm going to be besides you, Patera Caldé. They're finding a box for me to stand on."

  With as much firmness as he could muster, Silk said, "I can't possibly sit while your Cognizance stands."

  A hatch opened at the front of the floater; Oosik's head and shoulders emerged, and he spoke to someone inside.

  Quetzal touched Silk's hand with cold, dry fingers that might have been boneless. "You're wounded, Patera Caldé, and weaker than you think. Stay seated. That is my wish." His head rose to the level of Silk's own.

  "As Your Cognizance desires." With both hands on the rim of the hatch, Silk heaved up his unwontedly uncooperative body. For an instant the effort seemed too great; his heart pounded and his arms shook; then one foot found a corner of the box on which Quetzal stood, and he was able to hoist himself up enough to sit on the coaming of the open turret hatch. "The gunner's seat remains for Your Cognizance," he said.

  The floater lifted beneath them, gliding forward. Louder than the roar of its engine, Oosik's voice seemed to reach into every street in the city: "People of Viron! Our new Caldé is coming among you as we promised. At his side is His Cognizance the Prolocutor, who has confirmed that Caldé Silk has the favor of all the gods. Hail him! Follow him!"

  Brilliant white lights glared to left and right, less than an arm's length away, more than half blinding him.

  "Girl come!" Oreb exclaimed.

  A black civilian floater had nosed between their floater and the troopers, and was pushing through the mounted officers. Hyacinth stood on its front seat beside the driver; and while Silk watched open mouthed, she stepped over what seemed to be a low invisible barrier, and onto the waxed and rounded foredeck. "Your stick!" she called.

  Silk tightened the handle, leaned as far back as he dared, and held it out to her; the civilian floater advanced until its cowling touched the back of the floater upon which he rode.

  And Hyacinth leaped, her scarlet skirt billowing about her bare legs in the updraft from the blowers. For an instant he was certain she would fall. Then she had grasped the cane and stood secure on the sloping rear deck of his floater, waving in triumph to the mounted officers, most of whom waved in return or saluted. As the floater in which she had come turned away and vanished into the twilight beyond the lights on their own, Silk recognized the driver who had returned him to his manse Phaesday night.

  Hyacinth gave him a mischievous grin. "You look like you've seen a ghost. You didn't expect company, did you?"

  "I thought you were inside. I should've-I'm sorry, Hyacinth. Terribly sorry."

  "You ought to be." He had to put his ear to her lips to hear her, and she nipped and kissed it. "Oosie sent me away. Don't tell him I'm up here."

  Lost in the wonder of her face, Silk could only gasp. Quetzal raised the baculus to bestow a benison, although Silk could see no one beyond the glare that enveloped the three of them except the mounted officers. The roar of their floater was muted now; an occasional grating hesitation suggested that its cowling was actually scraping the cobbles.

  "You said you took a floater," Silk told Hyacinth. "I thought you meant that you just, well, took it."

  "I wouldn't know how to make one go." Sitting, she edged nearer, grasping the coaming of the turret hatch. "Would you? But that driver's my friend, and I gave him a little money."

  They rounded a corner, and innumerable throats cheered from the dimness beyond the lights. Someone shouted, "We've gone over to Silk!"

  A thrown chrysanthemum brushed his cheek, and he waved. Another voice shouted, "Live the Caldé!" It brought a storm of cheering, and Hyacinth waved and smiled as if she herself were that Caldé, evoking a fresh outburst. "Where are we going? Did Oosie tell you?"

  "To the Alambrera." Silk had to shout to make himself heard. "We'll free the convicts. The Juzgado afterward."

  A jumble of boxes and furniture opened to let them pass-Liana's barricade.

  Beside him, Quetzal invoked the Nine: "In the name of Marvelous Molpe, you are blessed. In the name of Tenebrous Tartaros…" They trust the gods, Silk thought, all these wretched men; and because they do, they have made me their leader. Yet I feel I can't trust any god at all, not even the Outsider.

  As if they had been chatting over l
unch, Quetzal said, "Only a fool would, Patera Caldé."

  Silk stared.

  "Didn't I tell you that I've done everything I could to prevent theophanies? Those we call gods are nothing more than ghosts. Powerful ghosts, but only because they entailed that power to themselves in life."

  "I-" Silk swallowed. "I wasn't aware that I had spoken aloud, Your Cognizance. I apologize; my remark was singularly inappropriate." Oreb stirred apprehensively on his shoulder.

  "You didn't, Patera Caldé. I saw your face, and I've had lots of practice. Don't look at me or your young woman. Look at the people. Wave. Look ahead. Smile."

  Both waved, and Silk tried to smile as well. His eyes had adjusted to the lights well enough now for him to glimpse indistinct figures beyond the mounted officers, many waving slug guns just as he waved the cane. Through clenched teeth he ventured, "Echidna told us Pas was dead. Your Cognizance confirmed it."

  "Dead long ago," Quetzal agreed, "whoever he really was, poor old fellow. Murdered by his family, as was inevitable." Deftly he caught a bouquet. "Blessings on you, my children. Blessings, blessings… May Great Pas and the immortal gods smile upon you and all that you own, forever!"

  "Silk is Caldé! Long live Silk!"

  Hyacinth told him happily, "We're getting a real tour of the city!"

  He nodded, feeling his smile grow warm and real.

  "Look at them, Patera Caldé. This is their moment. They have bled for this."

  "Peace!" Silk called to the shadowy crowds, waving the cane. "Peace!"

  "Peace!" Oreb confirmed, and hopped up onto Silk's head flapping his wings. The day was brightening at last, Silk decided, in spite of the storm-black cloud hanging over the city. How appropriate that shadeup should come now-peace and sunlight together! A cheering woman waved an evergreen bough, the symbol of life. He waved in return, meeting her eyes and smiling, and she seemed ready to swoon with delight.

  "Don't start throwing flowers to yourself," Hyacinth told him with mock severity. "They'll be blaming you soon enough."