Gene Wolfe - The Shadow of the Torturer

He waited for me to comment, and I said, “But for what I have done…”

“The sentence would be just. Yes. Still, we have no right in law to take life on our own authority. Those who have that right are properly jealous of it. If we were to go to them, the verdict would be sure. But were we to go, the repute of the guild would be publicly and irrevocably stained. Much of the trust now reposed in us would be gone, and permanently. We might confidently expect our affairs to be supervised by others in the future. Would you enjoy seeing our clients guarded by soldiers, Severian?”

The vision I had in Gyoll when I had so nearly drowned rose before me, and it possessed (as it had then) a sullen yet strong attraction. “I would rather take my own life,” I said. “I will feign to swim, and die in mid-channel, far from help.”

The shadow of a sour smile crossed Master Palaemon’s ruined face. “I am glad you made that offer only to me. Master Gurloes would have taken far too much pleasure in pointing out that at least a month must pass before swimming can be made credible.”

“I am sincere. I sought a painless death, but it was death I sought, and not an extension of life.”

“Even if it were midsummer, what you propose could not be permitted. An Inquisitor might still conclude that we contrived your death. Fortunately for you, we have agreed upon a less incriminating solution. Do you know anything of the condition of our mystery in the provincial towns?” I shook my head.

“It is but low. Nowhere but in Nessus—nowhere but here in the Citadel—is there a chapter of our guild. Lesser places have no more than a carnifex, who takes life and performs such excruciations as the judicators there decree. Such a man is universally hated and feared. Do you understand?”

“Such a position,” I answered, “is too high for me.” There was no falsehood in what I said; I despised myself, at that moment, far more than I did the guild. Since then I have recalled those words often, though they were but my own, and they have been a comfort to me in many troubles.

“There is a town called Thrax, the City of Windowless Rooms,” Master Palaemon continued. “The archon there—his name is Abdiesus—has written the House Absolute. A marshall there has transmitted the letter to the Castellar, and from him I have it. They are in sore need in Thrax of the functionary I have described. In the past they have pardoned condemned men on the condition that they accept the post. Now the countryside is rotten with treachery, and since the position entails a certain degree of trust, they are reluctant to do so again.”

I said, “I understand.”

“Twice before members of the guild have been dispatched to outlying towns, though whether those were such cases as this the chronicles do not say. Nevertheless, they furnish a precedent now, and an escape from the maze. You are to go to Thrax, Severian. I have prepared a letter that will introduce you to the archon and his magistrates. It describes you as highly skilled in our mystery. For such a place, it will not be a falsehood.” I nodded, being already resigned to what I was to do. Yet while I sat there, maintaining the expressionless face of a journeyman whose only will is to obey, a new shame burned in me. Though it was not so hot as the one for the disgrace I had brought upon the guild, still it was fresher, and hurt the more because I had not yet grown accustomed to the sickness of it as I had the other. It was this: that I was glad to go—that my feet already longed for the feel of grass, my eyes for strange sights, my lungs for the new, clear air of far, unmanned places.

I asked Master Palaemon where the town of Thrax might be. “Down Gyoll,” he said. “Near the sea.” Then he stopped as old men will, and said, “No, no, what am I thinking of? Up Gyoll, of course,” and for me hundreds of leagues of marching waves, and the sand, and the seabirds’ crying all faded away. Master Palaemon took a map from his cabinet and unrolled it for me, bending over it until the lens by which he saw such things nearly touched the parchment. “There,” he said, and showed me a dot on the margin of the young river, at the lower cataracts. “If you had funds you might travel by boat. As it is, you must walk.”

“I understand,” I said, and though I remembered the thin piece of gold Vodalus had given me, safe in its hiding place, I knew I could not take advantage of whatever wealth it might represent. It was the guild’s will to cast me out with no more money than a young journeyman might be expected to possess, and for prudence’s sake as well as honor’s, so I must go.

Yet I knew it was unfair. If I had not glimpsed the woman with the heart-shaped face and earned that small gold coin, it is more than possible I would never have carried the knife to Thecla and forfeited my place in the guild. In a sense, that coin had bought my life.

Very well—I would leave my old life behind me… “Severian!” Master Palaemon exclaimed. “You are not listening to me. You were never an inattentive pupil in our classes.”

“I’m sorry. I was thinking about a great many things.”

“No doubt.” For the first time he really smiled, and for an instant looked his old self, the Master Palaemon of my boyhood. “Yet I was giving you such good advice for your journey. Now you must do without it, but doubtless you would have forgotten every-thing anyway. You know of the roads?”

“I know they must not be used. Nothing more.”

“The Autarch Maruthas closed them. That was when I was your age. Travel encouraged sedition, and he wished goods to enter and leave the city by the river, where they might be easily taxed. The law has remained in force since, and there is a redoubt, so I’ve heard, every fifty leagues. Still the roads remain. Though they are in poor repair, it is said some use them by night.”

“I see,” I said. Closed or not, the roads might make for an easier passage than traveling across the countryside as the law demanded. “I doubt you do. I mean to warn you against them. They are patrolled by uhlans under orders to kill anyone found upon them, and since they have permission to loot the bodies of those they slay, they are not much inclined to ask excuses.”

“I understand,” I told him, and in private wondered how he came to know so much of travel.

“Good. The day is half spent now. If you like, you may sleep here tonight and depart in the morning.”

“Sleep in my cell, you mean.”

He nodded. Though I knew he could scarcely see my face, I felt that something in him was studying me.

“I will leave now, then.” I tried to think of what I would have to do before I turned my back on our tower forever; nothing came to me, yet it seemed there must surely be something. “May I have a watch in which to prepare? When the time is up, I will go.”

“That’s easily granted. But before you leave, I want you to return here—I have something to give you. Will you do it?”

“Of course, Master, if you want me to.”

“And Severian, be careful. There are many in the guild who are your friends—who wish this had never happened. But there are others who feel you have betrayed our trust and deserve agony and death.”

“Thank you, Master,” I said. “The second group is correct.”

My few possessions were already in my cell. I bundled them together and found the whole bundle so small I could put it in the sabretache hanging from my belt. Moved by love, and regret for what had been, I went to Thecla’s cell. It was empty still. Her blood had been scrubbed from the floor, but a wide, dark spot of blood-rust had etched the metal. Her clothing was gone, and her cosmetics. The four books I had carried to her a year before remained, stacked with others on the littIe table. I could not resist the temptation to take one; there were so many in the library that they would never miss a single volume. My hand had stretched forth before I realized I did not know which to choose. The book of heraldry was the most beautiful, but it was too large by far to carry about the country. The book of theology was the smallest of all, but the brown book was hardly larger. In the end it was that I took, with its tales from vanished worlds.