Annals of Klepsis

by R. A. Lafferty

  This slave girl was too broad in the beam, if I may use an ancient seaman’s term for it. Her eyes were set too far apart, also. Her hair was much too orange-red in color. This was counted a vulgar color on most worlds. The girl had the “Thorn” sign on her magnesium-steel collar. Did this mean that she belonged to the Thorn clan? Or that she might be done to death by thorns? How historically curious that this sign of the “th” sound in Old English should have reappeared on Klepsis World! I thought this might be the first sound of her name.

  “Seventy-one thousand thalers,” Sparaticus was bidding for his brother-in-chains. That was big money even in this slave market.

  “Ah, he can have the big fellow,” the gruff man said when the auctioneer turned to him to see whether he had another bid. “I’ll go no higher on him.”

  So, to the great joy of all of us, Sparaticus and his brother were united. Sparaticus and his brother were absolutely identical when they stood together after the brother had been unchained. But for the difference in clothing, you’d never have been able to tell them apart.

  “You’ll find that your friend Sparaticus has blue eyes and his brother has green eyes. That’s the way you tell them apart,” the slave girl I had been bidding for said in a low and pleasant voice. It was almost as if she had been reading my mind.

  “You gave to Sparaticus twenty thousand thalers to help him buy his brother, did you not? This was the money that you had already bid for me. Now how will you buy me? That was almost all the money you had, and my price will go somewhat higher. But the auctioneer knows when money has gone out of a man. They have a device to read what money a man has in his pocket, and what credit. You have no credit and not much money left. Do you not feel his eyes upon you? Now they will hang you up by your thumbs and whip you. And what will happen to me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said glumly. I had gone to this slave girl to look at the roots of her hair. I wanted to see whether they were of the same flaming orange-yellow-red color as the rest of her hair. They were.

  “Even my soul is of that same flaming orange-yellow-red color,” the girl said as if reading my mind again. “This flaming color is accounted a vulgar color and persons afflicted with it may not ascend to the nobility. I will tell you a secret, though. Some persons fake it and hide it. They go about with their hair an acceptable color. Here’s Princess Angela; ask to see the roots of her hair. Ah, poor man, you’ll be hanging by the thumbs now.”

  The auctioneer turned back to my slave girl. “I believe that the penultimate twenty-thousand thaler bid for this girl was a false bid,” he said. “Young man, it is officially doubted that you had that sum. If you did not have it, then you’ll be hung up by your thumbs and whipped to death. That’s to keep the cheap-shotters out. Did you have it?”

  “I had it when I bid,” I said truthfully. “I do not have it now.”

  “Then, out of compassion, we’ll give you a hundred lashes only.”

  Four strong men came and hanged me up by my thumbs, and the strongest began to lash me with a horrifying cat-of-nine-tails whip. I’d be dead by fifty such blows, and my clay would be desecrated by the last fifty. Doomsday Lightning had begun, and three bolts of it killed three different persons within ten seconds.

  “Oh, this is wonderful, Long John,” the voice of Terpsichore Callagy was suddenly at my side. “This is raw art, primitive art, art with all the hair on it! It was to find this that I came to Klepsis. It was to find such as this that I was born. Oh, you are wonderful with your pain-racked face and the bright blood running down your withers. Dying people often show these flashes of art. And Doomsday Lightning coming now is a stroke of genius. Oh, what an inspiring piece of art you are, Long John!”

  “Any more bids for this carrot-topped slave girl?” the auctioneer called.

  “Yes, yes,” a musical voice chimed. “The young man being whipped bids thirty thousand thalers for the girl.” It was the voice of Princess Angela Gilmartin-Ravel, who was now standing beside my girl slave.

  “If the young man didn’t have twenty thousand thalers before, he can hardly have thirty thousand thalers now,” the auctioneer said. “And my instruments indicate that he does not have it.”

  “Nevertheless, he wishes to bid thirty thousand thalers for her,” Princess Angela insisted. “Your business is to take the bids. Take his.”

  “But his means and fortune will be checked immediately,” the auctioneer said. “And if he doesn’t have the money, he will immediately be whipped to death.”

  “I know,” the Princess said. “That is the fate of so many young men on Klepsis. Enter his bid.”

  The auctioneer entered my bid. The Princess came and stood by me where I was being whipped, being whipped out of my mortal body, as I thought.

  “Tharrala says that you wish to see the color of the roots of my hair,” she said. Then she put her head so close to mine that the whip of the whipper opened her cheek and brought a rush of red blood from it. She parted her hair, and I saw that the roots of it were indeed that flaming orange-yellow-red color that is accounted vulgar and ignoble on so many of the worlds. She put something in the inner pocket of my tunic. Then she kissed me—the first time I had ever been kissed by a Princess. “That is for your simplicity and your suffering. Those whips really tear one apart, don’t they?” she said.

  “Who is Tharrala?” I asked her.

  “The slave girl, of course, the object of your bidding. Tharrala or ‘Courage’ is her name. She has a lot of it, to come back here even as a slave after committing the unspeakable sin. I love her, but I do not approve of persons committing unspeakable sins.”

  “What is her unspeakable sin?” I asked, but the Princess had left me.

  Men came to me. “Have you the money to support your bid of thirty thousand thalers?” one of them asked me.

  “Yes, in the inner pocket of my tunic,” I said, hoping it was so. It was. The men took the money back to the auctioneer.

  “I put the money in escrow,” the auctioneer said. “The bid is valid. Thirty thousand thalers. Are there any other bids?”

  “Thirty-one thousand thalers,” said the man who had bid the twenty-one thousand thalers.

  “We will come back to this merchandise,” the auctioneer said. “Give the thumb-hung young man a whip stroke now and then for his past misconduct, but let him not die. He seems to be a person who has swallowed the golden goose, as the old nursery rhyme has it. When we come back to this item, we will see whether he regurgitates any further gold certificates. But do not kill him. What, what? You say that a Resuscitating Man from Broxley Continent is here at the sale and gala? Well, go ahead and kill him then, if you wish. The Resuscitating Man can always bring him back to life.”

  FOURTH CANTO

  The Slaves at the Sale

  The slaves at the sale are the best slaves ever.

  (Listen, my soul, to the sound of the seas.)

  I’ll buy me a wife, a more beautiful never,

  Sound in the noggin and sound in the knees.

  Klepsis Slave-Sale Song

  Somebody put a piece of hot-roasted whale fat in my mouth, and I was very thankful for it. It was good. It was elevating to my spirits. Then somebody invisible put a piece of barbecued cork-island heifer in my mouth. I knew by his aura that he was Prince Franco the Outcast, still vague and invisible. I recognized him though I could not see him.

  “Be of good hope,” he said quite clearly. Of course I was of good hope. The roiling of the crowds was stimulating to my spirits. The calliope music would have heartened anybody, especially when it went into the rousing “Second Moon Rising.” One hundred calliopes goes over the line of the critical mass needed for stimulation and excitement. And if they did overdo it and kill me with their whips, there was still the practitioner from Broxley Continent who was able to bring persons back from the dead.

  “I’ll bring you whatever you need,” the invisible Prince Franco said.

  “I need to be freed from this thumb-stringi
ng,” I told him. “It chokes my breathing, and I’ll likely die just from hanging like this.”

  “Be very easy with this person,” Prince Franco told the strongmen who had control of me. “Ease him till the time of his release. It will be soon.”

  “Yes, Prince Franco,” said the strongest of the strongmen, he who had been whipping me to death. “We have already been going rather easy on him. Now we will go still easier.” This man then raised me up so that there was no weight on my tortured thumbs and so that my chest was not constricted. He could not see Prince Franco either, no more than I could—I was sure of that—but he seemed to belong to the Prince Franco Faction. And when, now and then for the sake of appearances only, one of the other men gave me a stroke with the horrible whip, it was almost like a caress in its gentleness. Somebody gave me some “My God What Grapes!” grapes to eat. I heard talk that there were twenty metric tons of these grapes for the gala, and they did make me feel very good.

  My mind and my ears and my eyes had become quite sharp. I garnered a multitude of details from the rich scene. It was like the rotation of hundreds of interlocking kaleidoscopes: the crowds and the activities of them. There were these tumbling vistas of sight and sound and smell, ever changing, ever brilliant. Now all I needed to get the true picture of what was going on around Ravel-Brannagan Castle was to fit the several million evolving details together correctly; for the true picture of the castle and its environs would be a jigsaw-puzzle picture all of whose pieces were in the state of high-speed change.

  The bid came to me again and again for the girl slave named Tharrala or Courage. “Sixty thousand thalers,” I bid excitedly once, and immediately I felt the invisible hand of Prince Franco put something into the inner pocket of my tunic.

  “I will verify this bid before we go on,” the auctioneer said crisply, and he came over and took something out of the inner pocket of my tunic. “Ah yes, this will bring it to sixty thousand thalers,” he said. “I’ll put this in escrow with the rest of it. This lad has indeed swallowed the golden goose. The bid is valid. Are there any other bids?”

  “Sixty-one thousand thalers,” called the voice that had been bidding against me. We went up and up, with intervals in it when the auctioneer was bidding other slaves in.

  “Ninety thousand thalers,” I bid sometime later, and I felt the unseen hand of Prince Franco add the sum to the inner pocket of my tunic that would cover my latest raise. The auctioneer came and took the increment out of my pocket. But why were two members of the royal family aiding me in bidding for this slave girl whom I had never seen till a half hour before?

  “Ninety thousand thalers,” the auctioneer said. “The bid is validated. The golden goose that the lad swallowed still yields gold notes. Any more bids?”

  “Ninety—” began the voice that had been bidding against me; and then that voice was cut off with a gurgle and a moan.

  “What ails that bidder?” the auctioneer asked. “Oh, dead is he? Yes, it is almost as if he were strangled to death by invisible hands. The neck is broken and the throat is bruised with livid marks of fingers and thumbs. Well, I cannot accept a bid that is incomplete, and I am not sure that I can accept a bid from a dead man anyhow. The bid of the young man hanging by his thumbs is therefore accepted. Let him down. And unchain the girl also. What, you want to keep the magnesium-steel collar that is around your neck, girl? All right. Unfasten her collar from the running chain, then, slave-master. She is yours, young man. You yourself look a little bit the worse for the wear. I trust there are no hard feelings for the treatment you have received. An auction must be run on firm lines.”

  “Yes, I hold very hard feelings against you because of this,” I said honestly.

  “However you want it, boy. I can get harder than you can.”

  I wondered: Could Prince Franco have killed the other man as thoroughly and convincingly as that? Had he such power in his invisible hands?

  I went to Tharrala or Courage or Thorn to take possession of her, but I had the most curious feeling that she was taking possession of me. I looked at the magnesium-steel collar still around her neck, and at the Thorn sign on it. She could not be strangled while wearing that. It was too broad and snug fitting. Had the sight of the strangled man induced her to keep her collar on? I wished that I had such a collar myself.

  “Come,” this slave girl said to me. “You seem to be in terrible shape. I will have to fix you up. I do not like to have such damaged merchandise on my hands if there is any way to make it better.” She led me away from the throng then, to a quiet corner in the monumental garden. She put unguent on my thumbs and back. She had kind and healing hands.

  “Now that I have bought you,” she said, “I will tell you my few simple rules that you must live under. We will get along very well if only you learn primary obedience. If not, well then it will be hard with you.”

  “But it was myself who bought you,” I interrupted.

  “Keep that little fiction if you wish. I guess it can do no harm. We will see, we will see about it,” Tharrala or Thorn said with a strange smile. But now there were droll things that had taken place in Tharrala herself. She was no longer too broad in the beam; it had simply become the case that most other women were too narrow. Her eyes were no longer set too far apart. It was that the eyes of most other women were now set too close together. Her hair was still that flaming orange-yellow-red color, and so was her soul. But now that color did not seem as vulgar as it had seemed before. It was possible that it had all been a moronic prejudice.

  “Heal quickly,” she said. “I hate people who dawdle about things like that. I want you to be pleasant and powerful and alert so that you can enjoy the executions that will begin in about an hour. We will have to learn to enjoy things together. I want to be proud of your appearance. I believe that what you need now is the wine treatment.”

  “Yes, a glass of wine would be nice now,” I agreed.

  “If one glass is good, a hundred thousand will be better,” Thorn said as if she were teaching a class in logic. “So, now I will see to it that you will be saturated and healed in one hundred thousand glasses of the common but holy wine of Klepsis. ’Twill be in bulk, though. Oh come, come! If you are to belong to me, you must move faster and react faster.”

  “Where are we going, droll girl?” I asked her.

  “Oh, into the Ravel-Brannagan Castle. Into a cellar of it.”

  “I have already been in a very dismal cellar of that Castle.”

  “Yes. Where we will go now will not be very far from the Whispering Room where you were held for a while. We will take a cut through this trashy courtyard here.”

  “Do you know the Castle, Thorny Person?”

  “Yes, I was born in this Castle, Long John Tong Tyrone. We cut through this corner of the Sleeping Beauty Courtyard. Isn’t it trashy though! And that is the Sleeping Beauty Door to the Castle. Really it is named the Sleeper’s Door and the courtyard is named the Sleeper’s Courtyard. But we will not use that way in, not now. We will pass through only this corner of the courtyard. Is it not fun to walk on matted weeds and on cobwebs that are a meter thick! And we will go in by the Wine Door here. You didn’t even see the Wine Door, did you? And yet it’s large and heavy and ornate. It is said that persons very deep in their cups can find it, but others will pass right by.”

  “Is there a sleeping beauty in the Castle, Thorn?”

  “Yes, I think so, a sleeping person anyhow. Quasimodo is its name.”

  “In a Gaea-Earth Roman-Grotesque, Quasimodo was a male, a dwarf, a hunchback, and no beauty.”

  “So, he was almost the same here. But on Klepsis the deformities are not so noticeable. Many of us here are of a funny shape. He is a dwarf, he is a hunchback, and he is my friend. And all my friends are beautiful. He is a beauty in mind and in disposition. Long ago, he was the closest thing that the Brannagan ever had to an executive officer; that was in the years when the Brannagan was the monarch of this world.”

  “B
ut, Thorn, that was two hundred years ago, when Brannagan was the ruler of Klepsis.”

  “Oh, you the historian, you know the history of Klepsis which has none? It was even said that Quasimodo was with Brannagan during at least part of the seven years of his exile or marooning. It was said that some transfer of occult power from Brannagan to Quasimodo was made during the marooning. And after that Quasimodo was not seen. It was said that he was on a special mission. It’s almost two hundred years that he’s been on ‘special mission.’ But some persons believe that he is The Sleeper in the Castle. I know that he is. Oddly, the code name of the sleeper in this Castle is Horseshoe Nail.”

  The courtyard where we had stopped to talk for a moment was the most overgrown place that I had ever seen. It was several meters deep in what I can only call disuse. The cobwebs, the cobwebs—there must have been a million kilograms of that light stuff scattered about that courtyard and portico and heavy door.

  “It would take a million spiders spinning for a million years to produce such a mass of webs,” I said, but Thorn only pointed to something dark. It was a spider twenty times as big as a house cat, bigger than a large dog, as big as a small pony.

  “It would not take as many spiders as I believed,” I said. “And I see that the strands of the webs, before they are separated, are very, very thick.”

  “They sometimes use them for ships’ cables,” Thorn said. “Oh, the place is trashy, but it’s its business to be so.”

  “The Sleeping Beauty department of the Castle looks to be just about out of business,” I jibed.

  “Yes, just about out of business,” she said seriously. “This may be the last week of it.” We entered the Castle by the camouflaged Wine Door.