by Gene Wolfe
The black man and I went to a different market after we had eaten the first meal and rested, to the agora, in the center of the city. Here jewelry and gold and silver cups are sold, and not just bread and wine, fish and figs. There are many fine buildings with pillars of marble; and there is a floor of stone over the earth, as though one stood in such a building already.
In the midst of all this and the thronging buyers and sellers, there is a fountain, and in the midst of the fountain, pouring forth its waters, an image of the Swift God worked in marble.
Having read of him in this scroll, I rushed to it, thinking the image to be the Swift God himself and calling out to him. A hundred people at least crowded around us then, some soldiers of the Great King like ourselves, but most citizens of Hill. They shouted many questions, and I answered as well as I could. The black man came too, asking by signs for money. Copper, bronze, and silver rained into his hands, so many coins that he had to stop at last and put them into the bag in which he carries his possessions.
That had a bad effect, and little more was given; but men with many rings came and said I must go to the House of the Sun, and when the black man said we would not, said the Sun is the healer and called upon some soldiers of Hill to help them.
Thus we were taken into one of the finest buildings, with columns and many wide steps, where I was made to kneel before the prophetess, who sat upon a bronze tripod. There was much talk between the men with rings and a lean priest, who said many times and in many different ways that the prophetess would not speak for their god until an offering was made.
At last one of the men with many rings sent his slave away, and when we had waited longer still, and all the men with many rings had spoken of the gods and what they knew of them, and what their fathers and grandfathers and uncles had told them of them, this slave returned, bringing with him a little slave girl no taller than my waist.
Then her owner spoke of her most highly, pointing to her comely face and swearing she could read and that she had never known a man. I wondered to hear it, for from the looks she gave the slave who had brought her she knew him and did not like him; but I soon saw the lean priest believed the man with many rings hardly more than I, and perhaps less.
When he had heard him out, he drew the slave girl to one side and showed her letters cut in the walls. These were not all such letters as I make now, and yet I saw they were writing indeed. "Read me the words of the god who makes the future plain, child," the lean priest commanded her. "Read aloud of the god who heals and lets fly the swift arrows of death."
Smoothly and skillfully the slave girl read:
"Here Leto's son, who strikes the lyre Makes clear our days with golden fire, Heals all wounds, gives hope divine, To those who kneel at his shrine."
Her voice was clear and sweet, and though it was not like the shouting on the drill field, it seemed to rise above the clamor of the marketplace outside.
The priest nodded with satisfaction, motioned the little slave girl to silence, and nodded to the prophetess, who was at once seized by the god they served, so that she writhed and shrieked upon her tripod.
Soon her screams stopped, and she began to speak as quickly as the rattling of pebbles in a jar, in a voice like no woman's; but I paid little heed to her because my eyes were on a golden man, larger than any man should be, who had stepped silently from an alcove.
He motioned to me, and I came.
He was young and formed like a soldier, but he bore no scars. A bow and a shepherd's staff, both of gold, were clasped in his left hand, and a quiver of golden arrows was slung upon his back. He crouched before me as I might have crouched to speak with a child.
I bowed, and as I did I looked around at the others; they heard the prophetess in attitudes of reverence and did not see the golden giant.
"For them I am not here," he said, answering a question I had not asked. His words were fair and smooth, like those of a seller who tells his customer that his goods have been reserved for him alone.
"How can that be?" Even as he spoke, the others murmured and nodded, their eyes still on the prophetess.
"Only the solitary may see the gods," the giant told me. "For the rest, every god is the Unknown God."
"Am I alone then?" I asked him.
"Do you behold me?"
I nodded.
"Prayers to me are sometimes granted," he said. "You have come with no petition. Have you one to make now?"
Unable to speak or think, I shook my head.
"Then you shall have such gifts as are mine to give. Hear my attributes: I am a god of divination, of music, of death, and of healing; I am the slayer of wolves and the master of the sun. I prophesy that though you will wander far in search of your home, you will not find it until you are farthest from it. Once only, you will sing as men sang in the Age of Gold to the playing of the gods. Long after, you will find what you seek in the dead city.
"Though healing is mine, I cannot heal you, nor would I if I could; by the shrine of the Great Mother you fell, to a shrine of hers you must return. Then she will point the way, and in the end the wolf's tooth will return to her who sent it."
Even as this golden man spoke he grew dim in my sight, as though all his substance were being drawn again into the alcove from which he had stepped only a moment before. "Look beneath the sun… "
When he was gone I rose, dusting my chiton with my hands. The black man, the lean priest, the men with many rings, and even the child still stood before the prophetess; but now the men with many rings argued among themselves, some pointing to the youngest of their number, who spoke at length with outspread hands.
When he had finished, the others spoke all together, many telling him how fortunate he was, because he would leave the city; whereupon he began once more. I soon grew tired of hearing him and read what is written here instead, then wrote as I write now-while still they argue, the black man talks of money with his hands, and the youngest of the men with many rings (who is not truly young, for the hair is leaving his head on both sides) backs away as if to fly.
The child looks at me, at him, at the black man, and then at me once more, with wondering eyes.
CHAPTER III-Io
The slave girl woke me before the first light. Our fire was nearly out, and she was breaking sticks across her knee to add to it. "I'm sorry, master," she said. "I tried to do it as quietly as I could."
I felt I knew her, but I could not recall the time or place where we had met. I asked who she was.
"Io. It means io-'happiness'-master."
"And who am I?"
"You're Latro the soldier, master."
She had thrice called me "master." I asked, "Are you a slave, then, Io?" The truth was that I had assumed it already from her tattered peplos.
"I'm your slave, master. The god gave me to you yesterday. Don't you remember?"
I told her I did not.
"They took me to the god's house because he wouldn't tell them anything till somebody brought a present. I was the present, and for me he seized the priestess so she just about went crazy. She said I belonged to you, and I should go with you wherever you went."
A man who had rolled himself in a fine blue cloak threw it off and sat up at that. "Not that I recall," he said. "And I was there."
"This was afterward," Io declared. "After you and the others had left."
He glanced at her skeptically, then said, "I hope you haven't forgotten me as well, Latro." When he saw I had, he continued, "My name is Pindaros, sir, son of Pagondas; and I am a poet. I was one of those who carried you to the temple of our patron."
I said, "I feel I've been dreaming and have just awakened; but I can't tell you what my dream was, or what preceded it."
"Ah!" Reaching in his traveling bag, Pindaros produced a waxed tablet and stylus. "That's really rather good. I hope you won't mind if I write it down? I might be able to make use of it somewhere."
"Write it down?" Something stirred in me, though I could not see it
clearly.
"Yes, so I won't forget. You do the same thing, Latro. Yesterday you showed me your book. Do you still have it?" I looked about and saw this scroll lying where I had slept, with the stylus thrust through the cords.
"It's a good thing you didn't knock it into the fire," Pindaros remarked.
"I wish I had a cloak like yours."
"Why, then, I'll buy you one. I've a little money, having had the good fortune to inherit a bit of land two years ago. Or your friend there can. He collected quite a tidy sum before we took you to the House of the God."
I looked at the black man to whom Pindaros pointed. He was still asleep, or feigning to be; but he would not sleep much longer: even as I looked, horns brayed far off. All around us men were stirring into wakefulness. "Whose army is this?" I asked.
"What? You a soldier in it, and you don't know your strategist?"
I shook my head. "Perhaps I did, once. I no longer remember."
Io said, "He forgets because of what they did to him in that battle south of the city."
"Well, it used to be Mardonius's, but he's dead; I'm not sure who commands now. Artabazus, I think. At least, he seems to be in charge."
I had picked up my scroll. "Perhaps if I read this, I'd remember."
"Perhaps you would," Pindaros agreed. "But wait a moment, and you'll have more light. The sun will be up, and we'll have a grand view across Lake Copais there."
I was thirsty, so I asked if that was where we were going.
"To the morning sun? I suppose that's where this army's going, if Pausanius and his Rope Makers have anything to say about it. Farther, perhaps. But you and I are going to the cave of the Earth Goddess. You don't remember what the sibyl said?"
"I do," Io announced.
"You recite it for him, then." Pindaros sighed. "I have a temperamental aversion to bad verse."
The slave girl drew herself up to her full height, which was small enough, and chanted:
"Look under the sun, if you would see! Sing! Make sacrifice to me! But you must cross the narrow sea. The wolf that howls has wrought you woe! To that dog's mistress you must go! Her hearth burns in the room below. I send you to the God Unseen! Whose temple lies in Death's terrene! There you shall learn why He's not seen. Sing then, and make the hills resound! King, nymph, and priest shall gather round! Wolf, faun, and nymph, spellbound."
Pindar shook his head in dismay. "Isn't that the most awful doggerel you ever heard? They do it much better at the Navel of the World, believe me. This may sound like vanity, but I've often thought the sheer badness of the oracle in our shining city was meant as an admonition to me. 'See, Pindaros,' the god is saying, 'what happens when divine poetry is passed through a heart of clay.' Still, it's certainly clear enough, and you can't always say that when the god speaks at the Navel of the World. Half the time he could mean anything."
"Do you understand it?" I asked in wonder.
"Of course. Most of it, at least. Very likely even this child does."
Io shook her head. "I wasn't listening when the priest explained."
"Actually," Pindaros told her, "I provided more of the explanation than he did, thus drawing this trip upon myself; people suppose that poets have all of time at their disposal, a sort of endless summer."
I said, "I feel I have none, or only today. Then it will be gone."
"Yes, I suppose you do. And I'll have to interpret the god again for you tomorrow."
I shook my head. "I'll write it down."
"Of course. I'd forgotten about your book. Very well then. The first phrase is 'Look under the sun, if you would see.' Do you understand that?"
"I suppose it means I should read my scroll. That's best done by daylight, as you pointed out to me a moment ago."
"No, no! When sun appears in the utterances of the sibyl, it always refers to the god. So that phrase means that the light of understanding comes from him; it's one of his best-known faculties. The next, 'Sing! Make sacrifice to me!' means that you are to please him if you wish for understanding. He's the god of music and poetry, so everyone who writes or recites poetry, for example, thereby sacrifices to him; he only accepts rams and rubbish of that sort from boors and the bourgeois, who have nothing better to offer him. Your sacrifice is to be song, and it would be well for you to keep that in mind."
I told him I would try.
"Then there's 'But you must cross the narrow sea.' He's an eastern god, having come to us from the Tall Cap Country, and he's symbolized by the rising sun. Thus that's where you're to make your sacrifice."
I nodded, feeling relieved that I would not have to sing at once.
"On to the next stanza. 'The wolf that howls has wrought you woe!' The god informs us that you've been injured by one whose symbol is the wolf, and points out that the wolf is one of nature's singers-thus the form of your sacrifice, if you are to be healed. 'To that dog's mistress you must go!' Aha!"
Pindaros pointed a finger dramatically at the sky. "Here, in my humble opinion, is the single most significant line in the whole business. It is a goddess who has injured you-a goddess whose symbol is the wolf. That can only be the Great Mother, whom we worship under so many names, most of which mean mother, or earth, or grain-giver, or something of that sort. Furthermore, you are to visit a temple or shrine of hers. But there are many such shrines-which is it? Very conveniently the god tells us: 'Her hearth burns in the room below.' That can only be the famous oracle at Lebadeia, not far from here, which is in a cavern. Furthermore, since we wouldn't want to use the coast road with the ships of Thought prowling the Gulf, it lies on the safest road to the Empire and the Tall Cap Country, which clinches it. You must go there and beg her forgiveness for the injury you did her that caused her to injure you. Only when you've done that will the god be able to cure you-otherwise he would make an enemy of her by doing so, which he understandably doesn't want."
"What about the next line?" I asked. "Who is the God Unseen?"
Pindaros shook his head. "That I can't tell you. There was a shrine to the Unknown God in Thought, and that's surely Death's Country now that the army's destroyed everything again. But let's wait and see. Very often in these affairs, you have to complete the first step before you really understand the next. My guess is that when you've visited the Great Mother in Trophonius's Cave, everything will be clear. Not that it's possible for a mortal-"
Io shouted, "Look down there!" her child's voice so shrill that the black man sat bolt upright. She was shielding her eyes against the sun, which was now rising above the lake. I rose to look, and many of the other soldiers stopped what they were doing to follow the direction of her eyes, so that our part at least of the whole great encampment fell silent.
Music came, very faintly, from the shores of the lake, and a hundred people or more capered there in a wild dance. Goats were scattered among them, and these skipped like the dancers, made nervous, perhaps, by two tame panthers.
"It's the Kid," Pindaros whispered, and he motioned for me to come with him.
Io caught my hand as we joined the stream of soldiers going to the lake for water. "Are we invited to their party?" I told her I did not know.
Over his shoulder Pindaros said, "You're on a pilgrimage. It wouldn't do to offend him."
And so we trooped down the gentle hillside to the lake shore through sweet spring grass and blooming flowers, Pindaros leading, Io clasping my hand, and the black man scowling as he followed some distance behind us. The rising sun had turned the lake to a sheet of gold, and the dawn wind cast aside her dark garments and decked herself in a hundred perfumes. Behind us, the trumpets of the Great King's army sounded again, but though many of the soldiers hurried back to follow them, we did not.
"You look happy, master," Io said, turning her little face up to mine.
"I am," I told her. "Aren't you?"
"If you are. Oh, yes!"
"You said you were brought to the god's house as an offering. Weren't you happy there?"
"I was afraid," she
admitted. "Afraid they'd cut my neck j like they do the poor animals, and today I've been afraid the god sent me to you to be a sacrifice someplace else. Do they kill little children for this Great Mother the poet is taking us to see?"
"I've no idea, Io; but if they do, I won't let them kill you. No matter how I may have injured her, nothing could justify such a sacrifice."
"But suppose you have to do it to find your home and your friends?"
"Was it because I wanted to find those things so much that I came to the god's house?"
"I don't know," Io said pensively. "My old master and some other men made you come, I think. Anyway, you were there when the steward brought me. But we sat together for a little while, and you talked to me about them."
Her eyes left mine for the line of celebrants that traced the shore. "Latro, look at them dance!"
I did. They leap and whirl, splashing in the shallows, watering the grass with their flying feet and with the wine they drink and pour out even as they dance. The shrilling of the syrinx and the insistent thudding of the tympanon seem louder now. Though masked men leap among them, the dancers are mostly young women, naked or nearly so save for their wild, disordered hair.
Io has joined them, and with her the black man and Pindaros, but I watch only little Io. How gay she is with the vine crown twined round her head, and yet how intent on imitating the frenzy of the hebetic girls, the nation of children left far behind her for so long as the dance lasts.
Pindaros and the black man and I have left it forever, though once long ago it must have been friends and home to them. As for me-though I have left it too, it seems near; and it holds the only home and the only friends I can remember.
CHAPTER IV-Awakened by Moonlight
I tried to read this scroll; but though the moon shone so brightly that my hand cast a sharp shadow on the pale papyrus, I could not make out the shadowy letters. A woman slept beside me, naked as I, and like me wet with dew. I saw her shiver, the swelling of her thigh and the curve of her hip more lovely than I would have thought anything could be; and yet she did not wake.
