Epiphany of the Long Sun

by Gene Wolfe

  "Tell me what happened, please."

  Slowly, Quetzal's hairless head swung from side to side. "It would be better, Patera Caldé, for you to tell me. You've been very near death. I need to know what you've forgotten."

  "There's water in these tunnels. I was in them before, Your Cognizance. In places there was a great deal."

  "This is not one of those places. If you have recovered enough to grasp how ill you are and keep a promise, I'll find some. Do you remember blessing the crowds with me? Tell me about that."

  "We were trying to bring peace-peace to Viron. Blood had bought it-Musk, but Musk was only a tool of Blood's."

  "Had bought the city, Patera Caldé?"

  Silk's mouth opened and closed again.

  "What is it, Patera Caldé?"

  "Yes, Your Cognizance, he has. He, and others like him. I hadn't thought of that until you asked. I'd been confusing the things."

  "What things, Patera Caldé?"

  "Peace and saving my manteion. The Outsider asked me to save it, and then the insurrection broke out, and I thought I would have saved it if only I could bring peace, because the people made me Caldé, and I would save it by an order." For a second or two, Silk lay silent, his eyes half closed. "Blood-men like Blood-have stolen the city, every part of it except the Chapter, and the Chapter has resisted only because you are at its head, Your Cognizance. When you're gone…"

  "When I die, Patera Caldé?"

  "If you were to die, Your Cognizance, they'd have it all. Musk actually signed the papers. Musk was the owner of record-the man whose body we burned on the altar, Your Cognizance. I remember thinking how horrible it would be if Musk were the real owner and clenching my teeth-puffing myself up with courage I've never really had and telling myself over and over that I couldn't allow it to happen."

  "You're the only man in Viron who doubts your courage, Patera Caldé."

  Silk scarcely heard him. "I was wrong. Badly mistaken. Musk wasn't the danger, was never the danger, really. There are scores of Musks in the Orilla, and Musk loved birds. Did I tell you that, Your Cognizance?"

  "No, Patera Caldé. Tell me now, if you wish."

  "He did. Mucor told me he liked birds, and he'd brought her a book about the cats she carried for Blood. When he saw Oreb, he said I'd gotten him because I wanted to be friends, which wasn't true, and threw his knife at him. He missed, and I believe he intended to miss. Blood, with his money and his greed for more, has done Viron more harm than all the Musks. Everything I've done has been trying to pry bits of the city from Blood. I was trying to save my manteion, I said; but you can't save just one manteion-I can't save our quarter and nothing else. I see that now. And yet I like Blood, or at least I would like to like him."

  "I understand, Patera Caldé."

  "Little pieces-the manteion, and Hyacinth and Orchid, and Auk, because Auk matters so much to Maytera Mint. Auk…"

  "Yes, Patera Caldé?"

  "Auk pushed me, Your Cognizance. We had been together in the floater, Hyacinth and I. Your Cognizance, too, and-and others. We were coming down, and Colonel Oosik-"

  "You've made him Generalissimo Oosik," Quetzal reminded Silk gently.

  "Yes. Yes, I did. He passed me the ear, and I talked to the convicts, telling them they were free, and then we hit the ground. We opened a hatch and Hyacinth and I climbed out-"

  "I'm satisfied, Patera Caldé. Promise me you won't try to stand until I come back, and I'll look for water."

  Silk detained him, clasping one boneless, bloodless hand. "You can't tell me what's happened to her, Your Cognizance?"

  Again Quetzal's head swung from side to side, a slow and almost hypnotic motion.

  "Then Auk has her, I don't know why, and I must get her back from him. What happened to me, Your Cognizance?"

  "You were buried alive, Patera Caldé. When the floater crashed, some of us climbed out. I did, as you see, and you and your young woman, as you say. The fencing master, too, and your physician. I'm sure of those. The convicts were running to a hole in the ground to escape the shooting and explosions. Do you remember them?"

  This time Silk was able to nod without much difficulty, although his neck was stiff and painful.

  "There was a ramp down the side of the hole, and a break in this tunnel at the bottom. The fencing master and I ducked through. Almost at once there was another explosion, and the hole fell in behind us. We were lucky to have gotten in. Do you know my coadjutor's prothonotary, Patera Caldé?"

  "I've met him, Your Cognizance. I don't know him well."

  "He's here. I was surprised to see him, and he to see me. There is a woman with him called Chenille who says she knows you. They went into the tunnel yesterday, at Limna. They had been trying to reach the city."

  "Chenille, Your Cognizance? A tall woman? Red hair?"

  "Exactly so. She's an extraordinary woman. Soon after the explosion, the convicts attacked us. They were friendly at first, but soon demanded we give them Patera and the woman. We refused, and Xiphias killed four. Xiphias is the fencing master. Am I making myself clear?"

  "Perfectly, Your Cognizance."

  "We tried to dig our way out and found you. We thought you were dead, and Patera and I brought you the Peace of Pas. Eventually we stopped digging, having realized that the effort was hopeless. For a dozen men with shovels and barrows, two days might be enough."

  "I understand, Your Cognizance.

  "By then I was exhausted, though I had dug less than the woman. The others left to look for another way out. She and Patera are famished, and they have a tessera that they believe will admit them to the Juzgado. They promised to return for your body and me. I prayed for you after they had gone."

  "Your Cognizance distrusts the gods."

  "I do." Quetzal nodded, his hairless head bobbing on its long neck. "I know them for what they are. But consider. I believe in them. I have faith. You mentioned your quarter. How many there really believe in the gods? Half?"

  "Less than that, I'm afraid, Your Cognizance."

  "What about you, Patera Caldé? Look into your heart."

  Silk was silent.

  "I'll give you my thoughts, Patera Caldé. This young man believes, and he loves the gods even after seeing Echidna. I too believe, though I distrust them. He would want me to pray for him, and that's my office. I've done it often, hoping I wouldn't be heard. This time it's possible one will restore him, to prove she's not at bad as I think."

  Faint yet unmistakable, the crack of a needler echoed down the tunnel.

  "That will be Patera, Patera Caldé. We've been lucky in the matter of weapons. Xiphias has a sword, and had a small needler he said was yours. You left it on your bed, and he took charge of it for you. He gave it to the woman. We found a large one in your waistband. Patera took it, surprising me again. Our clergy have hidden depths."

  In spite of pain and weakness, Silk smiled. "Some do, perhaps, Your Cognizance."

  "Last night before you saw me in the alley, Patera Caldé. I met your acolyte, young Gulo. He is most embarrassed."

  "I'm sorry to hear that, Your Cognizance."

  "You shouldn't be. His uncle is a major in the Second Brigade. One uncle of many. Were you aware of it?"

  "No, Your Cognizance. I don't know much about Patera."

  "Neither do I, though he was one of our copyists until my coadjutor sent him to you. He commands several thousand now. It's a great responsibility for someone so young. More join every hour, he tells me, because they know he's your acolyte."

  Silk managed to swallow. "I hope he won't waste their lives, Your Cognizance."

  "So do I. I asked if it was hard. He said he discussed each operation with those who would have to fight. He finds them sensible, and he knows something of war from his uncle's table talk. He fights in the front rank afterward, he says."

  "Your Cognizance mentioned that he was embarrassed."

  "So he is, Patera Caldé." Quetzal shook himself, lifting one corner of his mouth by the thickness
of a thread. "He has captured his uncle. Our clergy have hidden depths. The older man is humiliated. It's an awkward situation, I'm afraid, but I was amused."

  "So am I, Your Cognizance. Thank you."

  Quetzal rose. "We'll find our own amusing, when we find our way out. May I look for water?"

  "Of course, Your Cognizance."

  "You won't try to stand until I'm back? Give me your word, Patera Caldé."

  Silk sat up.

  "Please, Patera-"

  "I have to go with you, Your Cognizance. I have to find water, wash, and drink, so I can do whatever I can for Viron and Hyacinth. You've got nothing to carry water in, and all four of you couldn't possibly carry me far."

  "You've been suffocated, Patera Caldé," Quetzal bent over him. "We merely thought you dead, and I shouldn't have hinted at a miracle. No god can turn back death, and if they could, no god would to please us. You were still alive when we dug you out. You revived naturally-"

  Unaided, Silk staggered to his feet. "I had a cane, Your Cognizance. Master Xiphias gave it to me. I didn't need it then, or at least not much. Now I do."

  Quetzal offered him the baculus. "Use this."

  "Never, Your Cognizance. Councillor Lemur called me-No, I won't."

  The tunnel behind them was nearly choked with earth; a trampled path led Silk to an opening in the wall. "Is this where you found me, Your Cognizance? In there?"

  "Yes, Patera Caldé. But if your young woman is in there, she is surely dead by now."

  "I realize that." Silk put his head through the opening, "and I believe she's in the pit with Auk, anyway; but Master Xiphias values that cane, I need it, and it's probably very close to the place where you found me." He began to work his shoulders through.

  "Be careful, Patera Caldé."

  The wall was shiprock, little more than a cubit thick. Beyond it lay a cavity hollowed from the tumbled soil that seemed utterly dark. When Silk tried to stand, he found his head capped by a rough dome; earth and small stones showered him invisibly. "This could collapse any moment," he told the swaying figure in the tunnel.

  "So it could, Patera Caldé. Come out, please."

  His questing fingers had come upon stubby protuberances he assumed were roots. Exploring his pockets, he discovered the cards Remora had given him and used one to scrape away the soil. One root wore a ring. He cleared away more soil until he could get a firm grip on the hand, tugged, dug farther, and tugged again.

  "There are new sounds in this tunnel, Patera Caldé. You had better leave that place."

  "I've found someone, Your Cognizance. Somebody else." Silk hesitated, unwilling to trust his judgement. "I don't think it's Hyacinth. The hand is too big."

  "Then it doesn't matter whose it is. We must go."

  Getting a firm grip on the arm, Silk heaved with all the strength that remained to him, and was rewarded by a cataract of earth and a dead man's embrace.

  I'm robbing a grave, he thought, spitting grit and wiping his eyes. Robbing this man's grave from below-stealing his grave as well as his body.

  It should have been at least as amusing as Gulo's uncle the major, but was not. Holding onto the jagged edge of the opening in the tunnel wall, he succeeded in pulling his own partially buried body free. Back in the tunnel (suddenly very glad of its cold, sighing airs and watery lights) he was able to extract the corpse from the loose soil that had reclaimed it. Quetzal was nowhere to be seen.

  "He's gone to look for water," Silk muttered. "Perhaps water could revive you the way something revived me," but the dead man's ears were stopped with earth. As he cleaned the pitiful face, Silk added, "I'm sorry, Doctor."

  He searched his pockets again; his beads were not there, left behind with his own worn and dirty robe at Ermine's. It seemed a very long time ago.

  He wriggled back into the dark cavity beyond the tunnel wall. Hyacinth had bathed him in their bedroom at Ermine's, undressing him, and scrubbing and drying him bit by bit. He ought to have been embarrassed (he told himself); but he had been too exhausted to feel anything beyond vague satisfaction, a weak pleasure at finding himself the object of so beautiful a woman's attention. Now all her concern had been undone, and Remora's fine robe, scarcely worn, ruined.

  "You returned me to life, Outsider," Silk murmured as he resumed digging, "I wish you'd cleaned me up, too." But the Outsider had doubtless been, as Doctor Crane had maintained, no more than a vein's bursting.

  Or had Doctor Crane-who had thought himself, or at any rate called himself, an agent of the Rani-been in truth an agent of the Outsider? Doctor Crane had made it possible for him to proceed in his attempt to save the manteion despite his broken ankle; and Doctor Crane had freed him when he had been taken by the Ayuntamiento. It was conceivable, even likely, that Doctor Crane's scepticism had been a test of faith.

  Had he passed?

  Weighing that question, he dug harder than ever, making the dark, evil-smelling earth fly. If he had, he would almost certainly be tested again, after this surrender to doubt.

  The card struck something hard. At first he assumed it was a stone, but it was too smooth; another half minute's work bared the new find: a slender hook. As soon as he grasped it to pull it free, he knew that he had found the silver-banded cane Xiphias had brought to Ermine's for him.

  Without warning, brilliant light flooded the cavity. He turned away from it, covering his eyes.

  "I see you in there. Come on out."

  There was something familiar about the harsh voice, but it was not until its owner said, "Put your hands where I can see them," that Silk recognized it as Sergeant Sand's.

  Sitting the white stallion in the middle of Fisc Street, Maytera Mint surveyed the advancing ranks. Every one of those soldiers would be worth three of her best, but they were few. Hearteningly few, and the troopers from Trivigaunte had come. Just a few hundred now, but thousands more were on the way.

  "Fire and fall back," she called softly, adding under her breath, "Gracious Echidna, grant that I be heard by our people but not by those soldiers." Then, a trifle louder, "Not too quickly. But not too slowly, either. This isn't the time to impress me. Don't get yourselves killed."

  The first level metal rank was practically within slug-gun range. She wheeled her stallion and cantered off, hearing the firing break out behind her, the whiz…bang! of missiles and the dull booming of slug guns.

  Someone cried out.

  I told them to, she reminded herself. I emphasized it in the briefing.

  Yet she knew the wound had been real. She reined in the stallion and turned to look again: behind the soldiers, Rook's blocking force was straggling into position. Too early, she thought. Far too early. You never appreciated men like Bison and the captain-men who helped you make plans and carried them out-until you got something like this.

  One long cable had been looped around each pillar of the Corn Exchange; it was not taut yet, nor should it have been. She risked a glance up at the towering facade, another at Wool and his bullock men, motionless in the shadows half a street away. He and they stood ready beside their animals, waiting for her signal.

  The bullock men trusted her. So did the ragged men and women who were shooting and retreating as she had taught them. Shooting and dying, because they had trusted a weak woman-trusted her because Brocket had taught her to ride when she was a child.

  She clapped heels to the stallion's sides. He had been used long and hard yesterday, yet he surged forward, a foaming wave of strength. Patera Silk's azoth was in her hand; she thumbed the demon.

  Seeing its terrible blade split the sky, Wool's bullock men prodded their animals. The cable tightened, a slithering monster of steel and silence, Echidna's greatest serpent.

  The soldiers halted and faced about at a loud command, their officer having seen Rook's force and detected the trap. They would have to attack in earnest now, but her own voice (she told herself) was incapable of launching troops against the enemy. Her voice would not inspire anyone, so her person must. She n
eck-reined the stallion, and the silver trumpet that was her voice in fact echoed from every wall.

  Five chains away, the blade of the azoth wrecked a fusion generator, and the soldier whose heart it had been died.

  Forward! Past her own disorderly line. Another soldier down, and another! Forward!

  The stallion stumbled, crying out like a man in pain.

  A half-dozen soldiers dashed forward. The stallion fell, too weak to stand; it seemed to her that the street itself had struck her, casting all its clods and ridges at her at once. Steel hands laid hold of her, and bios wrestled with chems in a desperate foolish fight. A woman three times her size swung a wrecking bar. The soldier she struck, struck her with the butt of his slug gun; she fell backward and did not rise.

  Maytera Mint struggled in a soldier's grasp. The azoth was gone- No! Was under her shoe. He lifted her, his arms clamping her like tongs; she stamped on the azoth with all her strength, and its lancing point sheared off his foot. Smoking black fluid spurted from the stump of his leg, slippery as so much grease. They fell, and his grip weakened.

  She tore herself away, stooping for the azoth, and ran, nearly falling again, pursued with terrifying speed until the facade of the Corn Exchange frowned above her and she whirled to cut down a soldier whose blazing, arcing halves tumbled at her feet. "Run! Run! Save yourselves!"

  Her people streamed past in full flight, though to her, her voice was a powerless wail.

  "Hierax, accept my spirit." The azoth blade struck the first pillar, and it shattered like glass. Another, and the facade seemed to hang in air, an ominous cloud of grimy brick.

  A soldier leveled his slug gun, firing an instant before her blade split his skullplate. She felt the slug tear her habit, smelled the powder smoke, and fled, slashing wildly at a third pillar without breaking stride-stopped and turned back, hot tears streaming. "You gods, for twenty years! Now let me go!"

  The weightless, endless blade came up. The weightless, endless blade came down. And the facade of the Corn Exchange was coming down too, falling like a picture, nearly whole and almost maintaining its graceless design as it fell, its stone sills falling neither faster nor slower than its tons of brick and timber. Her right hand, still clutching the azoth, had begun the sign of addition when Rock grabbed her from behind and dashed away with her.