Gene Wolfe - On Blue's waters

We must win this war.

Then I will go home.

After writing those words, “Then I will go home,” I threw away the last of Oreb’s quills. I am writing with the gray feather of a goose now, like other men. And there is so much to write about before the great day comes-the day when I can leave this place-that I hardly know how to begin.

That small boy, the gardener’s grandson, said I was the Decider. One of the things I must decide (one of the smallest and least important) is how much I should set down before I go. Since I fully intend to carry this account away with me, you may say that it makes very little difference what I decide; but I enjoy a certain rounding out in such things, a sense of completion. Clearly I cannot set down everything, but I hope to carry it to the point at which the lander left Blue. There were many days on the lander that I would far rather forget. Surely the best way is to end before I reach those; and after that I will write no more.

Before I begin, however, I ought to write about what the three of us did last night. That, at least, will not take long. Everything went as planned-Evensong bringing the note, and so on. The head gardener was there to meet us, leading a scrawny, docile old cow. Off we splashed through the warm rain. Prying up the stone was a good deal more difficult than I had anticipated, I having seen four workmen handle those stones without much trouble. I do not think the gardener and I could have managed without Evensong’s help. With it, we scarcely got it up. He dug. He has been digging all his life, and he knows his business.

I had half expected to find no more than the corpse, a thing like a dried jellystar, of someone like Krait. It was an inhuma, and seemed more nearly the mummified remains of a child. Possibly she tried to make me think she was human, as they commonly do, even as I lifted her from her grave. If she did, she succeeded horribly.

Evensong and I tried to talk to her. (I had meant for Evensong to keep watch, but it was raining so hard that I could scarcely see the cow. She could not have seen someone coming until he bumped into her.) It was hopeless; the inhuma was too weak to speak a word. I put her on the cow’s back and pressed her mouth to the unlucky cow’s neck. I have washed my hands a dozen times since.

She fed for what seemed to us, soaked and steaming as all three of us were, a very long time. She became somewhat larger, and perhaps somewhat lighter in color, although it was not easy to tell by the light of Mehman’s sputtering lantern; but that was all.

Then…

I doubt that I can set it down in ink in any meaningful way-I wish I could make you see it as we did. Two things happened at once, but I cannot write about them both at once; one must be first and the other second. Nettle, will you ever read this? What will you think of me?

The rain stopped in an instant, the way rain often does here. At one moment it was pouring. At the next the only drops that fell were those that trickled from the roofs of the shops around the market square. At that instant the inhuma slipped off the old cow’s back, and when her feet touched stone there was no inhuma. In her place stood a woman a little taller than Evensong, an emaciated woman with burning eyes whose hairless skull somehow conveyed the impression of lank reddish hair. I put my chain around her neck and snapped the lock, and for an instant felt something quite different.

I said, “You must be wondering why we released you.”

“No.” She looked down into the grave in which she had been imprisoned. “Don’t you want to fill that up before someone sees it?”

We did, and before the work was complete Evensong and I were ready to jump out of our skins when Mehman dropped his spade. I had intended to talk to the inhuma there, but had assumed that the rain would continue; it would have been madness to do it when the rain had stopped. After a little discussion we decided to go to Mehman’s cottage, at the farther end of my garden.

The cow made everything much more difficult; she was almost too weak to stand. Mehman would have left her where she was, but I would not hear of it, wanting nothing left behind that would draw attention to the spot. Our prisoner offered to return a little of the blood she had taken; but however deceived by her appearance I may have been, her eyes told me what she intended, and I would not permit it.

Eventually we got the cow into my garden, shut the gate, and let her lie down. This morning Mehman was to take her to the stables and tell the stableman that I have decided to take her in and care for her. It is a thing that pious people here do occasionally.

He and Evensong waited outside while I explained what I had learned from Krait on Green. I tapped the window when I had finished, and they came in again. “Will you do whatever we tell you, if I release you?” I asked the inhuma. “Or shall I make good on my threat?”

She said nothing in reply, her face buried in her hands-a naked, hairless, reptilian thing in woman’s shape, stripped for the moment of all her pride. Mehman and Evensong positioned their chairs a half step behind mine and sat in silence, watching her.

“I warn you, if you will not I am going to spread my knowledge everywhere. I will be believed, because I am ruler here.”

The face she lifted was a woman’s once more, beautiful and depraved. “What do you want from me?” Her eyes were green, or if they were not, they appeared so.

“You are quick.” I sat too, drew my sword, and laid it across my lap.

“I used to be. Tolerably so.” Her bony shoulders rose and fell, much narrower shoulders than Seawrack’s, and thinner than hers had ever been. Skeletal.

Mehman stood, having remembered his duties as host. “You will honor me by drinking tea, Rajan?”

Seeing that it would please him, I nodded and asked him to bring me a bowl of warm water, soap, and a clean towel as well.

“Tea for the rani?” He bowed to Evensong; when I was newly come it never occurred to me that my wives would be awarded the title of the ruler of Trivigaunte.

Evensong nodded and smiled, and Mehman bowed again and bustled away.

“I’d ask you how long you were in the ground under that stone, if I thought you knew,” I told our prisoner, “but I don’t see how you could.”

She shook her head. “Years, I think.”

“So do I. Is your word good?”

“Freely given to you? Yes.”

“Then give me your word that you will do exactly as I order you.”

She shook her head more vigorously, so much so that the chain clanked and rattled. “It would be worth nothing at all as long as I have to wear this. Take it away, and my oath will bind me.”

I got out the key, but Evensong caught my hand.

The inhuma began, “You were surprised that I didn’t want to know why you had-had…”

Her emotion may have been feigned, although I doubt it.

“I wasn’t free. You had locked this thing around my neck. Take it away.”

Motioning for Evensong to remain where she was, I did.

“I will obey you in all things, Rajan,” the inhuma declared. She rubbed her neck as if the chain had chafed it, and although they were faint I could see scales where pores should have been. I glanced at the window, and found that it was gray now instead of black.

I said, “You give me your word for that?”

“Yes.” Even knowing that her empty jade eyes and hollow cheeks were more than half illusion, I pitied the face I saw. “You have my word, unless you command me to go back into that place of living death.”

“I won’t. And when you have completed the task I’ll give you, I’m going to let you go.”

Evensong made a little sound of displeasure. “I don’t like it either,” I said, “but what else can I do? Kill her after she’s fought for us?”