Gene Wolfe - The Urth of the New Sun

I had been walking a half step behind her; and she, as a consequence, had spoken to me more or less across her shoulder. Now with her smile grown wider, she dropped behind the others to link her arm in mine. “So many questions. How am I to remember them all, much less to answer them?”

I was ashamed and tried to mumble some apology; but I was so unnerved by the touch of her hand, warm and seeking as it slipped into my own, that I could only stammer.

“Nevertheless, for your sake I will try. Tzadkiel will be here tomorrow. Were you afraid you would be unable to return to your mopping and carrying soon enough?”

“No, my lady,” I managed. “I would remain forever, if I could.”

Her smile faded at that. “You will remain on this isle for less than a day all told. You — we, if you wish it — must do what we can with that.”

“I do wish it,” I told her, and in fact I did. I have said she was an ordinary-looking woman of middle age, and so she was: not tall, a few wrinkles apparent at her eyes and mouth, her hair touched at the temples with frost. Yet there was something I could not resist. Perhaps it was only the aura of the isle — so some common men find all exultant women attractive. Perhaps it was her eyes, which were large and luminous and of the deep, deep blue of her sea, unfaded by age. Perhaps it was some third thing, sensed unconsciously; but I felt again as I had when, so much younger, I had encountered Agia — a desire so strong that it seemed more spiritual than any faith, its flesh burned away in the heat of its own yearning.

“…after the preliminary examination,” she said.

“Of course,” I answered. “Of course. I am my lady’s slave.” I hardly knew to what I had agreed.

A wide flight of white stone steps flanked by fountains rose before us with the airy lightness of a cloud bank. She looked up with a bantering smile I found infinitely attractive. “If you were truly my slave, I would have you carry me up this stair, halt leg or none.”

“I will do it gladly,” I said, and I stooped as though to pick her up.

“No, no.” She had begun to climb, and as lightly as any girl. “What would your shipmates think?”

“That I had been signally honored, my lady.”

Still smiling, she whispered, “Not that you had deserted Urth for us? But we have a moment before we reach the court, and I will answer your questions as well as I can. We are not all Hierogrammates. On Urth, are the children of sannyasins holy men and women themselves? I do not speak with your tongue, nor do any of us. Neither do you speak as we do.”

“My lady…”

“You do not understand.”

“No.” I sought for something more to say, but what she had told me seemed so absurd that no reply was possible.

“I will explain after the examination. But now I must require a small service of you.”

“Anything, my lady.”

“Thank you. Then you will lead the Epitome into the dock for us.”

I looked at her in bewilderment.

“We try him — we will examine him now — with the consent of the peoples of Urth, who have sent him to Yesod in their stead. To show it, a man or woman of Urth, who will represent his world just as he does though in a less significant way, must conduct him.”

I nodded. “I’ll do it for you, my lady, if you’ll show me where I must take him.”

“Good.” She turned to the man and the other woman, saying, “We have a custodian.” They nodded, and she took the prisoner by the arm and pulled him over (although he could easily have resisted her) to where I waited. “We will bring your shipmates into the Hall of Justice, where I will explain what is to take place. I doubt that you need that. You — what is your name?”

I hesitated, wondering whether she knew what the Epitome’s name ought to be.

“Come, is it so great a secret?”

Soon I should have to confess in any case, although I had hoped I would be able to hear the preliminary examination first, so that I would better equipped to succeed when my own turn came. As we paused at the portico I said, “It’s Severian, my lady. Is it permitted that I ask yours?”

Her smile was as irresistible as when I had first seen it. “We have no need of such things among ourselves, but now that I am known to someone who does, I will be called Apheta.” She saw my doubt and added, “Never fear, those to whom you say my name will know of whom you speak.”

“Thank you, my lady.”

“Now take him. The arch is to your right.” She pointed. “Go through there. You will find a long, elliptical corridor from which you cannot stray, since it is without doors to either side. Convey him to the end, then out and into the Examination Chamber. Look at his hands; do you see how they are fettered?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“In the Chamber you will see the ring to which his fetter is to be fastened. Lead him there and chain him — there is a sliding link, you will understand it at once — and take your place among the witnesses. When the examination is complete, wait for me. I will show you all the wonders of our isle.”

Her tone made clear what she meant. I bowed and said, “My lady, I’m wholly unworthy.”

“Of that I shall judge. Go now. Do as I told you, and you shall have your reward.”

Bowing again, I turned and took the giant’s arm. I have said already that he was taller than any exultant, and so he was, nearly as tall as Baldanders. He was not so heavy, but young and vigorous (as young as I had been, I thought, on the day when I had left the Citadel through the Corpse Door bearing Terminus Est ). He had to stoop to pass beneath the arch, but he followed me as one sees a yearling ram in the market follow the shepherd boy who has made a pet of him and now means to sell him to some family who will wether him to fatten for a feast.

The corridor was of the shape of the egg conjurors stand on end upon the table, having a high, almost pointed arch overhead, widely curved sides, and a flattened walkway. The lady Apheta had said that no doors opened from it, and she had been correct, but there were windows on both sides. These puzzled me, because I had supposed it to wind about a courtroom in the center of the building.

I looked out of them to right and left as we walked, at first with some curiosity about the Isle of Yesod, then with wonder to see it so like Urth, and at last with astonishment. For snow-capped mountains and level pampas gave way to strange interiors, as though I looked from each window into a different structure. There was a wide, empty hall lined with mirrors, another even wider where standing shelves held disordered books, a narrow cell with a high, barred window and a straw-strewn floor, and a dark and narrow corridor lined with metal doors.

Turning to the client, I said, “They were expecting me, that seems clear enough. I see Agilus’s cell, the oubliette under the Matachin Tower , and so on. But they think you’re me, Zak.”

As though my speaking of his name had broken a spell, he whirled on me, tossing his long hair back to reveal his blazing eyes. The muscles of his arms stood out as though they would burst the skin as he strained against his manacles. Almost automatically, I stepped past his leg and threw him across my hip as Master Gurloes had taught me so long ago.

He fell to the white stone as a bull falls in the arena, and the crash seemed to shake that solid building; but he was on his feet again in a moment, manacled or not, and running down the corridor.

I RAN after him, and soon saw that, though long, his strides were clumsy — Baldanders had run better — and he was handicapped by having his arms pinioned at his back.

His was not the only handicap. My lame leg seemed to have a weight tied to its ankle, and I am sure our race gave me more pain than his fall had given him. The windows — charmed, perhaps, or perhaps merely cunning — crept by as I hobbled along. A few I looked through consciously, most I did not; yet they remain with me still, hidden in the dusty chamber that lies behind, or perhaps beneath, my mind. The scaffold where I once branded and decapitated a woman was there, a dark river bank, and the roof of a certain tomb.