by Gene Wolfe
brushed with drab. And for a moment it seemed to Auk that he
glimpsed the sneering features of a girl a year or two from
womanhood.
Chenille trembled violently and went limp, slumping to the altar
top and roiling off to fall to the dark and slimy stone of the quay.
Oreb fluttered over to her. "God go?"
The girl's face--if it had been a face--vanished into a wall of
green water, like an onrushing wave. The Holy Hues returned, first
as sun-sparkles on the wave, then claiming the entire Window and
filling it with their whirling ballet before fading back to luminescent
gray.
"I think so," Auk said. He rose, and discovered that his needler
was still in his hand; he thrust it beneath his tunic, and asked
tentatively, "You all right, Jugs?"
Chenille moaned.
He lifted her into a sitting position. "You banged your head on the
rock, Jugs, but you're going to be all right." Eager to do something
for her, but unsure what he should do, he called, "You! Patera! Get
some water."
"She throw?"
Auk swung at Oreb, who hopped agilely to one side.
"Hackum?"
"Yeah, Jugs. Right here." He squeezed her gently with the arm
that supponed her, conscious of the febrile heat of her sunburned skin.
"You came back. Hackum, I'm so glad."
The old fisherman coughed, striving to keep his eyes from
Chenille's breasts. "Mebbe it'd be better if me an' him stayed on the
boat awhile?"
"We're all going on your boat," Auk told him. He picked up
Chenille.
Incus, a battered tin cup of water in his hand, asked, "You intend
to _disobey?_"
Auk dodged. "She said to go to the Juzgado. We got to get back to
Limna, then there's wagons to the city."
"She was sending someone, sending her slave she said, to take us
there." Incus raised the cup and sipped. "She also said _I_ was to be
_Prolocutor_."
The old fisherman scowled. "This feller she's sendin', he'll have a
boat o' his own. Have ter, ter git out here. What becomes o' mine if
we go off with him? She said fer me ter fetch the rest back ter see
them councillors, didn't she? How'm I s'posed ter do that if I ain't
got my boat?"
Oreb fluttered onto Auk's shoulder. "Find Silk?"
"You got it." Carrying Chenille, Auk strode across the quay to eye
the open water between it and the boat; it was one thing to spring
from the gunnel to the quay, another to jump from the quay to the
boat while carrying a woman taller than most. "Get that rope," he
snapped to Incus. "Pull it closer. You left too much slack."
Incus pursed his lips. "We cannot _possibly_ disobey the instructions
of the goddess."
"You can stay here and wait for whoever she's sending. Tell him
we'll meet up with him in Limna. Me and Jugs are going in Dace's
boat."
The old fisherman nodded emphatically.
"If _you_ wish to disobey, my son, _I_ will not attempt to prevent
you. However--"
Something in the darkness beyond the last tank fell with a crash,
and the scream of metal on stone echoed from the walls of the
cavern. A new voice, deeper and louder than any merely human
voice, roared, "_I bring her! Give her to me!_"
It was that of a talus larger than the largest Auk had ever seen; its
virescent bronze face was cast in a grimace of hate, blinding yellow
light glared from its eyes, and the oily black barrels of a flamer and a
pair of buzz guns jutted from its open mouth. Behind it, the black
dark at the back of the cavern had been replaced by a sickly greenish
glow.
"_I bring her! All of you! Give her to me!_" The talus extended a
lengthening arm as it rolled toward them. A steel hand the size of
the altar from which she had fallen closed about Chenille and
plucked her from Auk's grasp; so a child might have snatched a
small and unloved doll from the arms of another doll. "_Get on my
back! Scylla commands it!_"
A half dozen widely spaced rungs of bent rod laddered the talus's
metal flank. Auk scrambled up with the night chough flapping
ahead of him; as he gained the top, the talus's huge hand deposited
Chenille on the sloping black metal before him.
"Hang on!"
Two rows of bent rods much like the steps of the ladder ran the
length of the talus's back. Auk grasped one with his left hand and
Chenille with his right. Her eyelids fluttered. "Hackum?"
"Still here."
Incus's head appeared as he clambered up; his sly face looked sick
in the watery light. "By--by _Hierax!_"
Auk chuckled.
"You--You--Help me _up_."
"Help yourself, Patera. You were the one that wanted to wait for
him. You won. He's here."
Before Auk had finished speaking, Incus sprang onto the talus's
back with astonishing alacrity, apparently impelled by the muscular
arm of the fisherman, who clambered up a moment later. "You'd
make a dimber burglar, old man," Auk told him.
"Hackum, where are we?"
"In a cave on the west side of the lake."
The talus turned in place, one wide black belt crawling, the other
locked. Auk felt the thump of machinery under him.
Puffs of black smoke escaped from the joint between the upright
thorax and long wagon-like abdomen to which they clung. It rocked,
jerked, and skewed backward. A sickening sidewise skid ended in a
geyser of icy water as one belt slipped off the quay. Incus clutched at
Auk's tunic as their side of the talus went under, and for a dizzying
second Auk saw the boat tossed higher than their heads.
The wave that had lifted it broke over them like a blow, a
suffocating, freezing whorl that at once drained away; when Auk
opened his eyes again Chenille was sitting up screaming, her
dripping face blank with terror.
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. "_Fr_iends!" 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&151"
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 spirit 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
