Gene Wolfe - The Shadow of the Torturer

After a time the dark seemed to thicken with each step I took, and somewhere I must have taken the wrong turning. Unwilling to retrace my way, I tried to maintain a generally northerly route, comforting myself with the thought that though I might be lost, each stride carried me nearer Thrax. At last I discovered a small inn. I saw no sign and perhaps it had none, but I smelled cooking and heard the clink of tumblers, and I went in, throwing open the door and dropping into an old chair that stood near it without paying much attention to where I had come or whose company I had entered. When I had been sitting there long enough to get my breath and was wishing for a place where I could take off my boots (though I was far from ready to get up to look for one), three men who had been drinking in a corner got up and left; and an old man, seeing, I suppose, that I was going to be bad for his business, came over and asked what I wanted. I told him I required a room. “We have none.”

I said, “That’s just as well—I have no money to pay anyway.”

“Then you will have to leave.”

I shook my head. “Not yet. I’m too tired.” (Other journeymen had told me of playing this trick in the city.)

“You’re the carnifex, ain’t you? You take their heads off.”

“Bring me two of those fish I smell and you won’t have anything but the heads left.”

“I can call the City Guard. They’ll have you out.”

I knew from his tone that he did not believe what he said, so I told him to call away, but to bring me the fish in the meantime, and he went off grumbling. I sat up straighter then, with Terminus Est (which I had had to take from my shoulder to sit down) upright between my knees. There were five men still in the room with me, but none of them would meet my eye, and two soon left. The old man returned with a small fish that had expired upon a slice of coarse bread, and said, “Eat this and go.”

He stood and watched me while I had my supper. When I had finished it, I asked where I could sleep.

“No rooms. I told you.”

If a palace had stood with open doors half a chain away, I do not think I could have driven myself to leave that inn to go to it. I said, “I’ll sleep in this chair, then. You’re not likely to have more trade tonight anyway.”

“Wait,” he said, and left me. I heard him talking to a woman in another room.

When I woke, he was shaking me by the shoulder. “Will you sleep three in a bed?”

“With whom?”

“Two optimates, I swear to you. Very nice men, traveling together.”

The woman in the kitchen shouted something I could not understand.

“Did you hear that?” the old man continued. “One of them’s not even come in yet. This time of night, he probably won’t come at all. There’ll be just the two of you.”

“If these men have rented a bedchamber—”

“They won’t object, I promise. Truth is, Carnifex, they’re behind. Three nights here, and only paid for the first.”

So I was to be used as an eviction notice. That did not disturb me much, and in fact it seemed somewhat promising—if the man sleeping there tonight left, I would have the room to myself. I clambered to my feet and followed the old man up a crooked stair.

The room we entered was not locked, but it was as dark as a tomb. I could hear heavy breathing. “Goodman!” the old fellow bawled, forgetting he had said his tenant was an optimate. “What-do-you-call-yourself? Baldy? Baldanders? I brought company for you. If you won’t pay your rate, you got to take in boarders.” There was no reply.

“Here, Master Carnifex,” the old man said to me, “I’ll make you a light.” He puffed at a bit of punk until it was bright enough to ignite a stub of candle. The room was small, and held no furniture but a bed. In it, asleep on his side (as it appeared) with his back toward us and his legs drawn up, was the largest man I had ever seen—a man who might fairly have been called a giant. “Aren’t you going to wake, Goodman Baldanders, and see who your lodgemate might be?”

I wanted to go to bed and told the old man to leave us. He objected, but I pushed him out of the room and as soon as he was gone sat down on the unoccupied side of the bed and pulled off my boots and stockings. The weak light of the candle confirmed that I had developed several blisters. I took off my cloak and spread it on the worn counterpane. For a moment I considered whether I should take off my belt and trousers or sleep in them; prudence and weariness together urged the latter, and I noticed that the giant seemed fully dressed. With a feeling of inexpressible fatigue and relief I blew out the candle and lay down to spend the first night outside the Matachin Tower that I could recall.

“Never.”

The tone was so deep and resonant (almost like the lowest notes of an organ) that I was not certain at first what the meaning of the word had been, or even if it had been a word at all. I mumbled, “What did you say?”

“Baldanders.”

“I know—the innkeeper told me. I’m Severian.” I was lying on my back, with Terminus Est (which I had brought into the bed for safekeeping) between us. In the dark, I could not tell whether my companion had rolled to face me or not, yet I was certain I would have felt any motion of that enormous frame. “You—strike off.”

“You heard us when we came in then. I thought you were asleep.” My lips shaped themselves to say I was no carnifex, but a journeyman of the torturers’ guild. Then I recalled my disgrace, and that Thrax has sent for an executioner. I said, “Yes, I’m a headsman, but you need not fear me. I only do what I am feed to do.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

“Yes, tomorrow will be time enough for us to meet and talk.”

And then I dreamed, though it may have been that Baldanders’ words, too, were a dream. Yet I do not think so, and if they were, it was a different dream. I bestrode a great, leather-winged being under a lowering sky. Just equipoised between the rack of cloud and a twilit land we slid down a hill of air. Hardly once, it seemed to me, the finger-winged soarer flapped her long pinions. The dying sun was before us, and it seemed we matched the speed of Urth, for it stood unmoving at the horizon, though we flew on and on. At last I saw a change in the land, and at first I thought it a desert. Far off, no cities or farms or woods or fields appeared, but only a level waste, a blackened purple in color, featureless and nearly static. The leathern-winged one observed it as well, or perhaps snatched some odor from the air. I felt iron muscles beneath me grow tense, and there were three wing strokes together. The purple waste showed flecks of white. After a time I became aware that its seeming stillness was a sham born of uniformity—it was the same everywhere, but everywhere in motion—the sea—the World-River Uroboros—cradling Urth. Then for the first time I looked behind me, seeing all the country of humankind swallowed in the night.

When it was gone, and there was everywhere beneath us the waste of rolling water and nothing more, the beast turned her head to regard me. Her beak was the beak of an ibis, her face the face of a hag; on her head was a miter of bone. For an instant we regarded each other, and I seemed to know her thought: You dream; but were you to wake from your waking, I would be there. Her motion changed as a lugger’s does when the sailors make it to come about on the opposite tack. One pinion dipped, the other rose until it pointed toward the sky, and I scrabbled at the scaled hide and plummeted into the sea.

The shock of the impact woke me. I twitched in every joint, and heard the giant mutter in his sleep. In much the same way I murmured too, and groped to find if my sword still lay at my side, and slept again.