Gene Wolfe - The Shadow of the Torturer

The water closed over me, yet I did not drown. I felt I might breathe water, yet I did not breathe. Everything was so clear that I felt I fell through an emptiness more translucent than air.

Far off loomed great shapes—things hundreds of times larger than a man. Some seemed ships, and some clouds; one was a living head without a body; one had a hundred heads. A blue haze obscured them, and I saw below me a country of sand, carved by the currents. A palace stood there that was greater than our Citadel, but it was ruinous, its halls as unroofed as its gardens; through it moved immense figures, white as leprosy.

Nearer I fell, and they turned up their faces to me, faces such as I had seen once beneath Gyoll; they were women, naked, with hair of sea-foam green and eyes of coral. Laughing, they watched me fall, and their laughter came bubbling up to me. Their teeth were white and pointed, each a finger’s length. I fell nearer. Their hands reached up to me and stroked me as a mother strokes her child. The gardens of the palace held sponges and sea anemones and countless other beauties to which I could put no name. The great women circled me round, and I was only a doll before them. “Who are you?” I asked. “And what do you do here?”

“We are the brides of Abaia. The sweethearts and playthings, the toys and valentines of Abaia. The land could not hold us. Our breasts are battering rams, our buttocks would break the backs of bulls. Here we feed, floating and growing, until we are great enough to mate with Abaia, who will one day devour the continents.”

“And who am I?”

Then they laughed all together, and their laughter was like surf upon a beach of glass. “We will show you,” they said. “We will show you!” One took me by each hand, as sisters take their sister’s child, and lifted me up, and swam with me through the garden. Their fingers were webbed, and as long as my arm from shoulder to elbow.

They halted, settling through the water like carracks sinking, until their feet and mine touched the strand. There stood before us a low wall, and on it a little stage and curtain, such as are used for children’s entertainments. Our roiling of the water seemed to flutter the kerchief-sized cloth. It rippled and swayed, and began to draw back as though teased by an unseen hand. At once there appeared the tiny figure of a man of sticks. His limbs were twigs, still showing bark and green bud. His body was a quarter-span of branch, big through as my thumb, and his head a knot whose whorls formed his eyes and mouth. He carried a club (which he brandished at us) and moved as if he were alive. When the wooden man had jumped for us, and struck the little stage with his weapon to show his ferocity, there appeared the figure of a boy armed with a sword. This marionette was as finely finished as the other was crude—it might have been a real child reduced to the size of a mouse. After both had bowed to us, the tiny figures fought. The wooden man performed prodigious leaps and seemed to fill the stage with the blows of his cudgel; the boy danced like a dust mote in a sunbeam to avoid it, darting at the wooden man to slash with his pin-sized blade.

At last the wooden figure collapsed. The boy strode over as if to set his foot upon its chest; but before he could do so, the wooden figure floated from the stage, and turning limply and lazily rose until it vanished from sight, leaving behind the boy, and the cudgel and the sword—both broken. I seemed to hear (no doubt it was really the squeaking of cartwheels on the street outside) a flourish of toy trumpets.

I woke because a third person had come into the room. He was a small, brisk man with fiery red hair, well and even foppishly dressed. When he saw me awake, he threw back the shutters that had covered the window, bringing red sunlight streaming in.

“My partner,” he said, “sleeps soundly always. His snoring didn’t deafen you?”

“I slept well myself,” I told him. “And if he snored, I didn’t hear him,” That seemed to please the small man, who showed a good many gold teeth when he smiled. “He does. He snores to shake Urth, I assure you. Happy you got your rest anyway.” He extended a delicate, well-cared-for hand. “I am Dr. Talos.”

“The Journeyman Severian.” I threw off the thin coverings and stood up to take it.

“You wear black, I see. What guild is that?”

“It is the fuligin of the torturers.”

“Ah!” He cocked his head to one side like a thrush, and hopped about to look at me from various angles. “You’re a tall fellow—that’s a shame—but all that sooty stuff is very impressive.”

“We find it practical,” I said. “The oubliette is a dirty place, and fuligin doesn’t show bloodstains.”

“You have humor! That’s excellent! There are few advantages, I’ll tell you, that profit a man more than humor. Humor will draw a crowd. Humor will calm a mob or reassure a nursery school. Humor will get you on and get you off, and pull in asimis like a magnet.”

I had only the vaguest idea of what he was saying, but seeing that he was in an affable mood, I ventured, “I hope I didn’t discommode you? The landlord said I was to sleep here, and there was room for another person in the bed.”

“No, no, not at all! I never came back—found a better place to pass the night. I sleep very little, I may as well tell you, and I’m a light sleeper too. But I had a good night of it, an excellent night. Where are you going this morning, optirnate?”

I was fumbling under the bed for my boots. “First to look for some breakfast, I suppose. After that, out of the city, to the north.”

“Excellent! No doubt my partner would appreciate a breakfast—it will do him a world of good. And we’re traveling north. After a most successful tour of the city, you know. Going back home now. Played the east bank down, and playing the west up. Perhaps we’ll stop at the House Absolute on our way north. That’s the dream, you know, in the profession. Play the Autarch’s palace. Or come back, if you’ve already played there. Chrisos by the hatful.”

“I’ve met one other person, at least, who dreamed of going back,”

“Don’t put on that long face—you must tell me about him sometime. But now, if we’re to go to breakfast—Baldanders! Wake up! Come, Baldanders, come! Wake up!” He danced to the foot of the bed and grasped the giant by an ankle. “Baldanders! Don’t take him by the shoulder, optimate!” (I had made no motion to do so.) “He thrashes about sometimes. BALDANDERS!” The giant murmured and stirred.

“A new day, Baldanders! Still alive! Time to eat and defecate and make love—all that! Up now, or we’ll never get home.”

There was no sign that the giant had heard him. It was as if the murmur of the moment before had been only a protest voiced in a dream, or his death rattle. Dr. Talos seized the foul blankets with both hands and swept them back. The monstrous shape of his partner lay revealed. He was even taller than I had supposed, nearly too tall for the bed, though he slept with his knees drawn almost to his chin. His shoulders were an ell across, high and hunched. His face I could not see; it lay buried in his pillow. There were strange scars about his neck and ears.

“Baldanders!”

His hair was grizzled, and despite the innkeeper’s pretended error, very thick.

“Baldanders! Your pardon, optimate, but may I borrow that sword?”

“No,” I said. “You may not.”

“Oh, I’m not going to kill him, or anything of that sort. I only want to use the flat of it.”

I shook my head, and when Dr. Talos saw I was still adamant, he began to rummage about the room. “Left my stick downstairs. Vile custom, they’ll thieve it. I should learn to limp, I really should. There’s nothing here at all.” He darted out the door, and was back in a moment carrying an ironwood walking stick with a gilt-brass knob. “Now then! Baldanders! “ The strokes fell upon the giant’s broad back like the big raindrops that precede a thunderstorm. Quite suddenly, the giant sat up. “I’m awake, Doctor.” His face was large and coarse, but sensitive and sad as well. “Have you decided to kill me at last?”