Gene Wolfe - The Urth of the New Sun

He and some of the rest nodded as though they understood, and perhaps they did. Or perhaps they at least understood some part of what I had said.

There was a disturbance at the back of the crowd, shouts and the sounds of rejoicing and weeping. Those who had sat leaped up, though I was too tired to do so. After more yelling and confused talk, the sick man was led forward, still naked except for a cloth (a length of homespun I recognized as one of his coverings) knotted around his waist.

“This is Declan,” someone announced. “Declan, explain to the sieur how you came to be well.”

He tried to speak, but I could not hear him. I gestured to the rest to be quiet.

“While I lay in my bed, my lord, a seraph appeared, clothed all in light.” There were chuckles from the peons, who nudged one another as he spoke. “He asked me whether I desired to die. I told him I wished to live, and I slept; and when I woke again I was as you see me now.”

The peons laughed, and several said, “It was the sieur here who cured you,” and the like.

I shouted at them. “This man was there, and you were not! You make yourselves fools when you claim to know more than a witness!” It was the fruit of the long days I had spent in Thrax listening to the proceedings of the archon’s court, and still more of those spent sitting in judgment as Autarch, I fear.

Though Burgundofara wanted to continue to Os, I was too fatigued to go farther that day, and I had no desire to sleep in a stuffy hut again. I told the villagers of Gurgustii that Burgundofara and I would sleep under their council tree, and that they should find places in their homes for those who had come with me from Vici. They did so; but when I woke in the watches of the night, it was to find that Herena lay with us.

WHEN we left Gurgusth many of its peons would have come with us, as would a few of those who had brought us from Vici. I forbade them, not wanting to be carted about like a relic.

They objected at first; but when they saw I was adamant, contented themselves with lengthy (often repetitious) speeches of thanks and the presentation of gifts: a tangled staff for me, the frantic work of the two best wood-carvers in the place; a shawl embroidered with colored wool for Burgundofara that must have been the richest item of feminine apparel there; and a basket of food for us both. We ate the food on the road and threw the basket into the stream; but we kept the other things, I liking the staff for walking and she delighted with her shawl, which relieved the masculine severity of her slop-chest clothes. At twilight, just before the gates were shut, we entered the little town of Os .

It was here that the stream we had followed emptied into Gyoll, and here there were xebecs, carracks, and feluccas tied up along the riverfront. We asked for their captains, but all had gone ashore on missions of business or pleasure, and the sullen watchmen left to guard their vessels assured us we would have to return in the morning. One recommended the Chowder Pot; we were on our way there when we happened upon a man robed in tyrian and green, who stood upon an inverted tub addressing an audience of a hundred or so:

“—buried treasure! Everything hidden revealed! If there are three birds in a bush, the third may not know of the first, but I know. There is a ring — even as I speak — beneath the pillow of our ruler, the wise, the transcendent — Thank you, my good woman. What is it you wish to know? I know it, to be sure, but allow these good folk to hear it. Then I shall reveal it.”

A fat townswoman had handed him a few aes. Burgundofara said, “Come on. I’d like to sit down and get something to eat.”

“Wait,” I told her.

I stayed in part because the mountebank’s patter reminded me of Dr. Tabs, and in larger part because something in his eyes recalled Abundantius. Yet there was another thing more fundamental than either, though I am not certain I can explain it. I sensed that this stranger had traveled as I had, that we had gone far and returned in a way that even Burgundofara had not; and that though we had not gone to the same place or returned with the same gain, we had both known strange roads.

The fat woman muttered something; the mountebank announced, “She begs to be informed as to whether her husband will find a new site for his stew, and whether the venture will succeed.”

He threw his arms above his head, clasping a long wand with both hands. His eyes remained open, rolling upward until the whites showed like the skins of two boiled eggs. I smiled, expecting the crowd to laugh; yet there was something terrible about his blind, invocatory figure, and no one did. We heard the lapping of the river and the sigh of the evening breeze, though it blew too gently to stir my hair.

Abruptly his arms fell and his snapping black eyes were back in place. “The answers are: Yes! And yes! The new bathhouse will stand not half a league from where we are now.”

“Easy enough,” Burgundofara whispered. “The whole town can’t be a league across.”

“And you shall have more from it than you ever had from the old,” the mountebank promised. “But now, my dear friends, before the next question I wish to tell you something more. You think I prophesied for the money this good woman gave me.” He had retained the aes in his hand. Now he tossed them up in a dark little column against the darkening sky. “Well, you’re wrong, my friends! Here!”

He flung them to the crowd, a good deal more than he had received from the woman, I think. There was a wild scramble.

I said, “All right, let’s go.”

Burgundofara shook her head. “I want to listen to this.”

“These are bad times, friends! You are hungry for wonders. For thaumaturgical cures and apples from pine trees! Why, only this afternoon I learned that some quack-salver has been touring the villages up the Fluminis, and was headed our way.” His gaze locked with mine. “I know that he is here now. I dare him to step forward. We shall hold a competition for you, friends — a trial of magic! Come, fellow. Come to Ceryx!”

The crowd stirred and murmured. I smiled and shook my head.

“You, my good man.” He leveled a finger at me. “Do you know what it is to train your will until it’s like a bar of iron? To drive your spirit before you like a slave? To toil ceaselessly for an end that may never come, a prize so remote that it seems it will never come?”

I shook my head.

“Answer! Let them hear you!”

“No,” I said. “I haven’t done those things.”

“Yet they are what must be done, if you would seize the scepter of the Increate!”

I said, “I know nothing of seizing that scepter. To tell the truth, I’m certain it could not be done. If you wish to be as the Increate is, I question whether you can do it by acting as the Increate does not.”

I took Burgundofara by the arm and drew her away. We had passed one narrow side street when the staff I had been given in Gurgustii snapped with a loud report. I tossed the half that had remained in my hand into the gutter, and we continued up the steep slope that led from the embankment to the Chowder Pot.

It seemed a decent enough inn; I noticed that those who had gathered in its public room seemed to be eating almost as much as drinking, which was ever a favorable sign. When the host leaned across his bar to speak to us, I asked whether he could provide us with supper and a quiet room.

“Indeed I can, sieur. Not equal to your station, sieur, but as good as you’ll find in Os.”

I got out one of Idas’s chrisos. He took it, stared at it for a moment as though surprised, and said, “Of course, sieur. Yes, of course. See me in the morning, sieur, and I’ll have your change for you. Perhaps you’d like your supper served in your room?”