CALDE OF THE LONG SUN botls-3

by Gene Wolfe

  a door. Its tessera is known to me, though I may not reveal it."

  "Thetis sounds like a god's name. Is it? I don't really know very

  much about any of the gods except the Nine. And the Outsider.

  Patera Silk told me a little about him."

  "It is _indeed_." Incus glowed with satisfaction. "In the _Writings_, my

  daughter, the mechanism by which we augurs are chosen is

  described in _beautiful_ though _picturesque_ terms. It is there said..."

  He paused. "I regret that I cannot _quote_ the passage. I must

  paraphrase it, I'm afraid. But it is written there that _each_ new year

  Pas brings is like a _fleet_. You are familiar with boats, my daughter.

  You were upon that _wretched_ little fishing boat with _me_, after all."

  "Sure."

  "Each year, as I have indicated, is likened to a fleet of boats that

  are its days, _gallant_ craft loaded with the _young men_ of that year.

  Each of these day-boats is _obliged_ to pass _Scylla_ on its voyage to

  _infinity_. Some sail very near to her, while others remain at a greater

  _distance_, their youthful crews crowding the side _most distant_ from

  her loving embrace. None of which _signifies_. From each of these

  boats, she selects the young men who most _please_ her."

  "I don't see--"

  "_But_," Incus continued impressively, "how is it that these _boats_

  pass her at all? Why do they not remain safe in harbor? Or sail

  _someplace else?_ It is because there is a minor goddess whose

  function it is to direct them to her. _Thetis_ is that goddess, and thus a

  most suitable _tessera_ for us. A _key_, as you said. A _ticket_ or _inscribed

  tile_ that will admit _us_ to the Juzgado, and incidentally _release_ us from

  the cold and dark of these _horrid_ tunnels."

  "You think we might be close to the Juzgado now, Patera?"

  Incus shook his head. "I do not know, my daughter. We traveled

  _some distance_ on that _unfortunate_ talus, and he went

  _very_ fast. I dare _hope_ we are beneath the city now."

  "I doubt if we're much past Limna," Chenille told him.

  Auk's head ached. Sometimes it seemed to him that a wedge had

  been pounded into it, sometimes it felt more like a spike; in either

  case, it hurt so much at times that he could think of nothing else,

  forcing himself to take one step forward like an automaton, one

  more weary step in a progression of weary steps that would never be

  over. When the ache subsided, as it did now and then, he became

  aware that he was as sick as he had ever been in his life and might

  vomit at any moment.

  Hammerstone stalked beside him, his big, rubber-shod feet

  making less noise than Auk's boots as they padded over the damp

  shiprock of the tunnel floor. Hammerstone had his needler, and

  when the pain in his head subsided, Auk schemed to recover it,

  illusory schemes that were more like nightmares. He would push

  Hammerstone from a cliff into the lake, snatching his needler as

  Hammerstone fell, trip him as they scaled a roof, break into

  Hammerstone's house, find him asleep, and take his needler from

  Hammerstone's strong room... Hammerstone falling headlong,

  somersaulting, rolling down the roof as he, Auk, fired needle after

  needle at him, viscous black fluid spurting from every wound to

  paint the snowy sheets and turn the water of the lake to black blood

  in which they drowned.

  No, Incus had his needler, had it under his black robe; but

  Hammerstone had a slug gun, and even soldiers could be killed with

  slugs, which could and often did penetrate the mud-brick walls of

  houses, the thick bodies of horses and oxen as well as men, slugs

  that left horrible wounds.

  Oreb fluttered on his shoulders, climbing with talon and crimson

  beak from one to the other. Peering though his ears Oreb glimpsed

  his thoughts; but Oreb could not know, no more than he himself

  knew, what those thoughts portended. Oreb was only a bird, and

  Incus could not take him from him, no more than his hanger, no

  more than his knife.

  Dace had a knife as well. Under his tunic Dace had the old

  thick-bladed spear-pointed knife he had used to gut and fillet the

  fish they had caught from his boat, the knife that had worked so

  quickly, so surely, though it looked so unsuited to its task. Dace was

  not an old man at all, but a flunky and a toady to that old knife, a

  thing that carried it as Dace's old boat had carried them all when

  there was nothing inside it to make it go, carrying them as they

  might have been carried by a child's toy, toys that can shoot or fly

  because they are the right shape though hollow and empty as Dace's

  boat, as crank as the boat or solid as a potato; but Bustard would see

  to Dace.

  His brother Bustard had taken his sling because he had slung

  stones at cats with it, and had refused to give it back. Nothing about

  Bustard had ever been fair, not his being born first though his name

  began with _B_ and Auk's with _A_, not his dying first either. Bustard

  had cheated to the end and past the end, cheating Auk as he always

  did and cheating himself of himself. That was the way life was, the

  way death was. A man lived as long as you hated him and died on

  you as soon as you began to like him. No one but Bustard had been

  able to hurt him when Bustard was around; it was a privilege that

  Bustard reserved for himself, and Bustard was back and carrying

  him, carrying him in his arms again, though he had forgotten that

  Bastard had ever carried him. Bustard was only three years older,

  four in winter. Had Bustard himself been the mother that he,

  Bustard, professed to remember, that he, Auk, could not? Never

  could, never quite, Bustard with this big black bird bobbing on his

  head like a bird upon a woman's hat, its eyes jet beads, twitching

  and bobbing with every movement of his head, a stuffed bird

  mocking life and cheating death.

  Bustards were birds, but bustards could fly--that was the Lily

  truth, for Bustard's mother had been Auk's mother had been Lily

  whose name had meant truth, Lily who had in truth flown away with

  Hierax and left them both; therefore he never prayed to Hierax, to

  Death or the God of Death, or anyhow very seldom and never in his

  heart, though Dace had said that he belonged to Hierax and

  therefore Hierax had snatched Bustard, the brother who had been a

  father to him, who had cheated him of his sling and of nothing else

  that he could remember.

  "How you feelin', big feller?"

  "Fine. I'm fine," he told Dace. And then, "I'm afraid I'm going to

  puke."

  "Figure you might walk some?"

  "It's all right, I'll carry him," Bustard declared, and by the timbre

  of his harsh baritone revealed Hammerstone the soldier. "Patera

  said I could."

  "I don't want to get it on your clothes," Auk said, and Hammerstone

  laughed, his big metal body shaking hardly at all, the slug gun

  slung behind his shoulder rattling just a little against his metal back.

  "Where's Jugs?"

  "Up there. Up ahead with Patera."

  Auk raised his head an
d tried to see, but saw only a flash of fire, a

  thread of red fire through the green distance, and the flare of the

  exploding rocket.

  The white bull fell, scarlet arterial blood spilling from its immaculate

  neck to spatter its gilded hooves. Now, Silk thought, watching

  the garlands of hothouse orchids slide from the gold leaf that

  covered its horns.

  He knelt beside its fallen head. Now if at all.

  She came with the thought. The point of his knife had begun the

  first cut around the bull's right eye when his own glimpsed the Holy

  Hues in the Sacred Window: vivid tawny yellow iridescent with

  scales, now azure, now dove gray, now rose and red and thunderous

  black. And words, words that at first he could not quite distinguish,

  words in a voice that might almost have been a crone's, had it been

  less resonant, less vibrant, less young.

  "Hear me. You who are pure."

  He had assumed that if any god favored them it would be Kypris.

  This goddess's unfamiliar features overfilled the Window, her

  burning eyes just below its top, her meager lower lip disappearing

  into its base when she spoke.

  "Whose city is this, augur?" There was a rustle as all who heard her

  knelt.

  Already on his knees beside the bull, Silk contrived to bow. "Your

  eldest daughter's, Great Queen." The serpents around her face--thicker

  than a man's wrist but scarcely larger than hairs in proportion

  to her mouth, nose, and eyes, and pallid, hollow cheeks--identified

  her at once. "Viron is Scalding Scylla's city."

  "Remember, all of you. You most of all, Prolocutor."

  Silk was so startled that he nearly turned his head. Was it possible

  that the Prolocutor was in fact here, somewhere in this crowd of

  thousands?

  "I have watched you," Echidna said. "I have listened."

  Even the few remaining animals were silent.

  "This city must remain my daughter's. Such was the will of her

  father. I speak everywhere for him. Such is my will. Your remaining

  sacrifices must be for her. For no one else. Disobedience invites

  destruction."

  Silk bowed again. "It shall be as you have said, Great Queen."

  Momentarily he felt that he was not so much honoring a deity as

  surrendering to the threat of force; but there was no time to analyze

  the feeling.

  "There is one here fit to lead. She shall be your leader. Let her

  step forth."

  Echidna's eyes, hard and black as opals, had fastened on Maytera

  Mint. She rose and walked with small, almost mincing steps toward

  the awful presence in the Window, her head bowed. When she

  stood beside Silk, that head was scarcely higher than his own,

  though he was on his knees.

  "You long for a sword."

  If Maytera Mint nodded, her nod was too slight to be seen.

  "You are a sword. Mine. Scylla's. You are the sword of the Eight

  Great Gods."

  Of the thousands present, it was doubtful if five hundred had

  been able to hear most of what Maytera Marble, or Patera Gulo, or

  Silk himself had said; but everyone--from men so near the canted

  altar that their trouser legs were speckled with blood, to children

  held up by mothers themselves scarcely taller than children--could

  hear the goddess, could hear the peal of her voice and to a limited

  degree understand her, Great Echidna, the Queen of the Gods, the

  highest and most proximal representative of Twice-Headed Pas. As

  she spoke they stirred like a wheatfield that feels the coming storm.

  "The allegiance of this city must be restored. Those who have

  suborned it must be cast out. This ruling council. Kill them. Restore

  my daughter's Charter. The strongest place in the city. The prison

  you call the Alambrera. Pull it down."

  Maytera Mint knelt, and again the silver trumpet sounded. "I will,

  Great Queen!" Silk could hardly believe that it had emanated from

  the small, shy sibyl he had known.

  At her reply the theophany was complete. The white bull lay dead

  beside him, one ear touching his hand; the Window was empty

  again, though Sun Street was still filled with kneeling worshippers,

  their faces blank or dazed or ecstatic. Far away--so distant that he,

  standing, could not see her--a woman screamed in an agony of rapture.

  He raised his hands as he had when he had stood upon the

  floater's deck. "People of Viron!"

  Half, perhaps, showed some sign of having heard.

  "We have been honored by the Queen of the Whorl! Echidna

  herself--"

  The words he had planned died in his throat as a searing

  incandescence smashed down upon the city like a ruinous wall. His

  shadow, blurred and diffused as shadows had always been under the

  beneficent radiance of the long sun, solidified to a pitch-black

  silhouette as sharp as one cut from paper.

  He blinked and staggered beneath the weight of the white-hot

  glare; and when he opened his eyes again, it was no more. The dying

  fig (whose upper branches could be seen above the garden wall) was

  on fire, its dry leaves snapping and crackling and sending up a

  column of sooty smoke.

  A gust fanned the flames, twisting and dissolving their smoke

  column. Nothing else seemed to have changed. A brutal-looking

  man, still on his knees by the casket before the altar, inquired,

  "W-was that more word from the gods, Patera?"

  Silk took a deep breath. "Yes, it was. That was word from a god

  who is not Echidna, and I understand him."

  Maytera Mint sprang to her feet--and with her a hundred or

  more; Silk recognized Gayfeather, Cavy, Quill, Aloe, Zoril, Horn

  and Nettle, Holly, Hart, Oont, Aster, Macaque, and scores of

  others. The silver trumpet that Maytera Mint's voice had become

  summoned all to battle. "Echidna has spoken! We have felt the

  wrath of Pas! To the Alambrera!"

  The congregation became a mob.

  Everyone was standing now, and it seemed that everyone was

  talking and shouting. The floater's engine roared. Guardsmen,

  some mounted, most on foot, called, "To me, everyone!" "To me!"

  "To the Alambrera!" One fired his slug gun into the air.

  Silk looked for Gulo, intending to send him to put out the burning

  tree; he was already some distance away, at the head of a hundred

  or more. Others led the white stallion to Maytera Mint; a man

  bowed with clasped hands, and she sprang onto its back in a way

  Silk would not have thought possible. It reared, pawing the wind, at

  the touch of her heels.

  And he felt an overwhelming sense of relief. "Maytera! _Maytera!_"

  Shifting the sacrificial knife to his left hand and forsaking the dignity

  augurs were expected to exhibit, he ran to her, his black robe

  billowing in the wind. "Take this!"

  Silver, spring-green, and blood-red, the azoth Crane had given

  him flashed through the air as he flung it over the heads of the mob.

  The throw was high and two cubits to her left--yet she caught it, as

  he had somehow known she would.

  "Press the bloodstone," he shouted, "when you want the blade!"

  A moment later that e
ndless aching blade tore reality as it swept

  the sky. She called, "Join us, Patera! As soon as you've completed

  the sacrifices!"

  He nodded, and forced himself to smile.

  The right eye first. It seemed to Silk that a lifetime had passed

  between the moment he had first knelt to extract the eye from its

  socket and the moment that he laid it in the fire, murmuring Scylla's

  short litany. By the time he had completed it, the congregation had

  dwindled to a few old men and a gaggle of small children watched by

  elderly women, perhaps a hundred persons in all.

  In a low and toneless voice, Maytera Marble announced, "The

  tongue for Echidna. Echidna has spoken to us."

  Echidna herself had indicated that the remaining victims were to

  be Scylla's, but Silk complied. "Behold us, Great Echidna, Mother

  of the Gods, Incomparable Echidna, Queen of this Whorl--" (Were

  there others, where Echidna was not Queen? All that he had

  learned in the schola argued against it, yet he had altered her

  conventional compliment because he felt that it might be so.)

  "Nurture us, Echidna. By fire set us free."

  The bull's head was so heavy that he could lift it only with

  difficulty; he had expected Maytera Marble to help, but she did not.

  Vaguely he wondered whether the gold leaf on the horns would

  merely melt, or be destroyed by the flames in some way. It did not

  seem likely, and he made a mental note to make certain it was

  salvaged; thin though gold leaf was, it would be worth something. A

  few days before, he had been planning to have Horn and some of

  the others repaint the front of the palaestra, and that would mean

  buying paint and brushes.

  Now Horn, the captain, and the toughs and decent family men of

  the quarter were assaulting the Alambrera with Maytera Mint,

  together with boys whose beards had not yet sprouted, girls no

  older, and young mothers who had never held a weapon; but if they

  lived...

  He amended the thought to: if some lived.

  "Behold us, lovely Scylla, wonderful of waters, behold our love

  and our need for thee. Cleanse us, O Scylla. By fire set us free."

  Every god claimed that final line, even Tartaros, the god of

  night, and Scylla, the goddess of water. While he heaved the

  bull's head onto the altar and positioned it securely, he reflected