CALDE OF THE LONG SUN botls-3

by Gene Wolfe

  presence of divinity.

  "You did wonderfully, sib. Just wonderfully!" Maytera Marble had

  followed Maytera Mint out of the manteion; now she laid a hand

  upon her shoulder. "Taking everything outside for a viaggiatory!

  However did you think of it?"

  "I don't know. It was just that they were still in the street, most of

  them, and we were in there. And we couldnn't let them in as we

  usually do. Besides," Maytera Mint smiled impishly, "think of all the

  blood, sib. It would've taken us days to clean up the manteion

  afterward."

  There were far too many victims to pen in Maytera Marble's little

  garden. Their presenters had been told very firmly that they would

  have to hold them until it was time to lead them in, with the result

  that Sun Street looked rather like the beast-sellers quarter in the

  market. How many would be here, Maytera Mint wondered, if it

  hadn't been for the rain? She shuddered. As it was, the victims and

  their presenters looked soaked but cheerful, steaming in the sunshine

  of Sun Street.

  "You're going to need something to stand on," Maytera Marble

  warned her, "or they'll never hear you."

  "Why not here on the steps?" Maytera Mint inquired.

  "Friends..." To her own ears, her voice sounded weaker than

  ever here in the open air; she tried to imagine herself a trumpeter1

  then a trumpet. "Friends! I won't repeat what I said inside. This is

  Maytera Rose's last sacrifice. I know that she knows what you've

  done for her, and is glad.

  "Now my sib and her helpers are going to build a sacred fire on the

  altar. We will need a big one today--"

  They cheered, surprising her.

  "We'll need a big one, and some of the wood will be wet. But the

  whole sky is going to be our god gate this afternoon, letting in Lord

  Pas's fire from the sun."

  Like so many brightly-colored ants, a straggling line of little girls

  had already begun to carry pieces of split cedar to the altar, where

  Maytera Marble broke the smallest pieces.

  "It is Patera Silk's custom to consult the Writings before sacrificing.

  Let us do so too." Maytera Mint held up the book and opened it at random.

 

  Whatever it is we are, it is a little flesh, breath, and the ruiing

  part. As if you were dying, despise the flesh; it is blood, bones, and

  network, a tissue of nerves and veins. See the breath also, what

  kind of thing it is: air, and never the same, but at every moment sent

  Out and drawn in. The third is the ruling part. No longer let this part

  be enslaved, no longer let it be pulled by its strings like a

  marionette. No longer complain of your lot, nor shrink from the future.

 

 

  "Patera Silk has told us often that each passage in the Writings

  holds two meanings at least." The words slipped out before she

  realized that she could see only one in this one. Her mind groped

  frantically for a second interpretation.

  "The first seems so clear that I feel foolish explaining it, though it

  is my duty to explain it. All of you have seen it already, I'm sure. A

  part, two parts as the Chrasmologic writer would have it, of our dear

  Maytera Rose has perished. We must not forget that it was the baser

  part, the part that neither she nor we had reason to value. The

  better part, the part beloved by the gods and by us who knew her,

  will never perish. This, then, is the message for those who mourn

  her. For my dear sib and me, particularly."

  Help me! Hierax, Kypris, Sphigx, please help!

  She had touched the sword of the officer who had come to arrest

  Silk; her hand itched for it, and something deep within her, denied

  until this moment, scanned the crowd.

  "I see a man with a sword." She did not, but there were scores of

  such men. "A fine one. Will you come forward, sir? Will you lend

  me your sword? It will be for only a moment."

  A swaggering bully who presumably believed that she had been

  addressing him shouldered a path through the crowd. It was a

  hunting sword, almost certainly stolen, with a shell guard, a stag

  grip, and a sweeping double-edged blade.

  "Thank you." She held it up, the polished steel dazzling in the hot

  sunshine. "Today is Hieraxday. It is a fitting day for final rites. I

  think it's a measure of the regard in which the gods held Maytera

  Rose that her eyes were darkened on a Tarsday, and that her last

  sacrifice takes place on Hieraxday. But what of us? Don't the

  Writings speak to us, too? Isn't it Hieraxday for us, as well as for

  Maytera? We know they do. We know it is.

  "You see this sword?" The denied self spoke through her, so that

  she--the little Maytera Mint who had, for so many years, thought

  herself the only Maytera Mint--listened with as much amazement as

  the crowd, as ignorant as they of what her next word might be. "You

  carry these, many of you. And knives and needlers, and those little

  lead clubs that nobody sees that strike so hard. And only Hierax

  himself knows what else. But are you ready to pay the price?"

  She brandished the hunting sword above her head. There was a

  white stallion among the victims; a flash of the blade or some note in

  her voice made him rear and paw the air, catching his presenter by

  surprise and lifting him off his feet.

  "For the price is death. Not death thirty or forty years from now,

  but death now! Death today! These things say, _I will not cower to

  you! Jam no slave, no ox to be led to the butcher! Wrong me, wrong

  the gods, and you die! For I fear not death or you!_"

  The roar of the crowd seemed to shake the street.

  "So say the Writings to us, friends, at this manteion. That is the

  second meaning." Maytera Mint returned the sword to its owner.

  "Thank you, sir. It's a beautiful weapon."

  He bowed. "It's yours anytime you need it, Maytera, and a hard

  hand to hold it."

  At the altar, Maytera Marble had poised the shallow bowl of

  polished brass that caught falling light from the sun. A curl of smoke

  arose from the splintered cedar, and as Maytera Mint watched, the

  first pale, almost invisible flame.

  Holding up her long skirt, she trotted down the steps to face the

  Sacred Window with outstretched arms. "Accept, all you gods, the

  sacrifice of this holy sibyl. Though our hearts are torn, we, her

  siblings and her friends, consent. But speak to us, we beg, of times

  to come, hers as well as ours. What are we to do? Your lightest word

  will be treasured."

  Maytera Mint's mind went blank--a dramatic pause until she

  recalled the sense, though not the sanctioned wording, of the rest of

  the invocation. "If it is not your will to speak. we consent to that,

  too." Her arms fell to her sides.

  From her place beside the altar, Maytera Marble signaled the first

  presenter.

  "This fine white he-goat is presented to..." Once again, Maytera

  Mint's memory failed her.

  "Kypris," Maytera Marble supplied.

  To Kypris, of course. The first three
sacrifices were all for Kypris.

  who had electrified the city by her theophany on Scylsday. But what

  was the name of the presenter?

  Maytera Mint looked toward Maytera Marble, but Maytera

  Marble was, strangely, waving to someone in the crowd.

  "To Captivating Kypris, goddess of love, by her devout

  supplicant--?"

  "Bream," the presenter said.

  "By her devout supplicant Bream." It had come at last, the

  moment she had dreaded most of all. "Please, Maytera, if you'd do

  it, please...?" But the sacrificial knife was in her hand, and

  Maytera Marble raising the ancient wail, metal limbs slapping the

  heavy bombazine of her habit as she danced.

  He-goats were supposed to be contumacious, and this one had

  long, curved horns that looked dangerous; yet it stood as quietly as

  any sheep, regarding her through sleepy eyes. It had been a pet, no

  doubt, or had been raised like one.

  Maytera Marble knelt beside it, the earthenware chalice that had

  been the best the manteion could afford beneath its neck.

  I'll shut my eyes, Maytera Mint promised herself, and did not.

  The blade slipped into the white goat's neck as easily as it might

  have penetrated a bale of white straw. For one horrid moment the

  goat stared at her, betrayed by the humans it had trusted all its life;

  it bucked, spraying both sibyls with its lifeblood, stumbled, and

  rolled onto its side.

  "Beautiful," Maytera Marble whispered. "Why, Patera Pike

  couldn't have done it better himself."

  Maytera Mint whispered back, "I think I'm going to be sick," and

  Maytera Marble rose to splash the contents of her chalice onto the

  fire roaring on the altar, as Maytera Mint herself had so often.

  The head first, with its impotent horns. Find the joint between the

  skull and the spine, she reminded herself. Good though it was, the

  knife could not cut bone.

  Next the hooves, gay with gold paint. Faster! Faster! They would

  be all afternoon at this rate; she wished that she had done more of

  the cooking, though they had seldom had much meat to cut up. She

  hissed, "You must take the next one, sib. Really, you must!"

  "We can't change off now!"

  She threw the last hoof into the fire, leaving the poor goat's legs

  ragged, bloody stumps. Still grasping the knife, she faced the

  Window as before. "Accept, O Kind Kypris, the sacrifice of this fine

  goat. And speak to us, we beg, of the days that are to come. What

  are we to do? Your lightest word will be treasured." She offered a

  silent prayer to Kypris, a goddess who seemed to her since Scylsday

  almost a larger self. "Should you, however, choose otherwise..."

  She let her arms fall. "We consent. Speak to us, we beg, through

  this sacrifice."

  On Scylsday, the sacrifices at Orpine's funeral had been

  ill-omened to say the least. Maytera Mint hoped fervently for better

  indicants today as she slit the belly of the he-goat.

  "Kypris blesses..." Louder. They were straining to hear her.

  "Kypris blesses the spirit of our departed sib." She straightened up

  and threw back her shoulders. "She assures us that such evil as

  Maytera did has been forgiven her."

  The goat's head bunt in the fire, scattering coals: a presage of

  violence. Maytera Mint bent over the carcass once more, struggling

  frantically to recall what litfie she knew of augury--remarks

  dropped at odd moments by Patera Pike and Patera Silk, half-hearted

  lessons at table from Maytera Rose, who had spoken as

  much to disgust as to teach her.

  The right side of the beast concerned the presenter and the augur

  who presided, the giver and the performer of the sacrifice; the left

  the congregation and the whole city. This red liver foretold deeds of

  blood, and here among its tangled veins was a knife, indicating the

  augur--though she was no augur--and pointing to a square, the

  square stem of mint almost certainly, and the hilt of a sword. Was

  she to die by the sword? No, the blade was away from her. She was

  to hold the sword, but she had already done that, hadn't she?

  In the entrails a fat little fish (a bream, presumably) and a jumble

  of circular objects, necklaces or rings, perhaps. Certainly that

  interpretation would be welcomed. They lay close to the bream, one

  actually on top of it, so the time was very near. She mounted the

  first two steps.

  "For the presenter. The goddess favors you. She is well pleased

  with your sacrifice." The goat had been a fine one, and presumably

  Kypris would not have indicated wealth had she not been gratified.

  "You will gain riches, jewels and gold particularly. within a short

  time."

  Grinning from ear to ear, Bream backed away.

  "For all of us and for our city, violence and death, from which

  good will come." She glanced down at the carcass, eager to be

  certain of the sign of addition she had glimpsed there; but it had

  gone, if it had ever existed. "That is all that I can see in this victim,

  though a skilled augur such as Patera Silk could see much more, I'm

  sure."

  Her eyes searched the crowd around the altar for Bream. "The

  presenter has first claim. If he wishes a share in this meal, let him

  come forward."

  Already the poor were struggling to get nearer the altar. Maytera

  Marble whispered, "Burn the entrails and lungs, sib!"

  It was wise and good and customary to cut small pieces when the

  congregation was large, and there were two thousand in this one at

  least; but there were scores of victims, too, and Maytera Mint had

  little confidence in her own skill. She distributed haunches and

  quarters, receiving delighted smiles in return.

  Next a pair of white doves. Did you share out doves or burn them

  whole? They were edible, but she remembered that Silk had burned

  a black cock whole at Orpine's last sacrifice. Birds could be read,

  although they seldom were. Wouldn't the giver be offended,

  however, if she didn't read these?

  "One shall be read and burned," she told him firmly. "The other

  we will share with the goddess. Remain here if you would like it for

  yourself."

  He shook his head.

  The doves fluttered desperately as their throats were cut.

  A deep breath. "Accept, O Kind Kypris, the sacrifice of these fine

  doves. And speak to us, we beg, of the times that are to come. What

  are we to do? Your lightest word will be treasured." Had she really

  killed those doves? She risked a peek at their lifeless bodies. "Should

  you, however, choose otherwise..."

  She let her arms fall, conscious that she was getting more blood

  on her habit. "We consent. Speak to us, we beg, through this

  sacrifice."

  Scraping feathers, skin, and flesh from the first dove's right

  shoulder blade, she scanned the fine lines that covered it. A bird

  with outspread wings; no doubt the giver's name was Swan or

  something of the sort, though she had forgotten it already. Here was

  a fork on a platter. Would the goddess tell a man he was going to eat

  dinner? Impossible!
A minute drop of blood seemed to have seeped

  out of the bone. "Plate gained by violence," she announced to the

  presenter, "but if the goddess has a second message for me, I am too

  ignorant to read it."

  Maytera Marble whispered, "The next presenter will be my son,

  Bloody."

  Who was Bloody? Maytera Mint felt certain that she should

  recognize the name. "The plate will be gained in conjunction with

  the next presenter," she told the giver of the doves. "I hope the

  goddess isn't saying you'll take from him."

  Maytera Marble hissed, "He's bought this manteion, sib."

  She nodded without comprehension. She felt hot and sick,

  crushed by the scorching sunlight and the heat from the blaze on the

  altar, and poisoned by the fumes of so much blood, as she bent to

  consider the dove's left shoulder blade.

  Linked rings, frequently interrupted.

  "Many who are chained in our city shall be set free," she

  announced, and threw the dove into the sacred fire, startling a little

  girl bringing more cedar. An old woman was overjoyed to receive

  the second dove.

  The next presenter was a fleshy man nearing sixty; with him was a

  handsome younger one who hardly came to his shoulder; the

  younger man carried a cage containing two white rabbits. "For

  Maytera Rose," the older man said. "This Kypris is for love, right?"

  He wiped his sweating head with his handkerchief as he spoke,

  releasing a heavy fragrance.

  "She is the goddess of love, yes."

  The younger man smirked, pushing the cage at Maytera Mint.

  "Well, roses stand for love," the older man said, "I think these

  should be all right.

  Maytera Marble sniffed. "Victims in confinement cannot be

  accepted. Bloody, have him open that and hand one to me."

  The older man appeared startled.

  Maytera Marble held up the rabbit, pulling its head back to bare

  its throat. If there were a rule for rabbits, Maytera Mint had

  forgotten it; "We'll treat these as we did the doves," she said as

  firmly as she could.

  The older man nodded.

  Why, they do everything I tell them, she reflected. They accept

  anything I say! She struck off the first rabbit's head, cast it into the

  fire, and opened its belly.

  Its entrails seemed to melt in the hot sunshine, becoming a

  surging line of ragged men with slug guns, swords, and crude pikes.

  The buzz gun rattled once more, somewhere at the edge of