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“Wait,” she called. Then, coming nearer, “I am afraid I frightened you.”

Her face was a smooth oval that seemed almost sexless. She was young, I thought, though not so young as Ava and a good two heads taller—a true exultant, as tall as Thecla had been.

I said, “When one has lived long with danger ...”

“I understand. I know nothing of war, but much of the men and women who have seen it.”

“And now how may I serve you. Chatelaine?”

“First I must know if you are well. Are you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I will leave this place tomorrow.”

“You were in the chapel giving thanks, then, for your recovery.”

I hesitated. “I had much to say. Chatelaine. That was a part of it, yes.”

“May I walk with you?”

“Of course. Chatelaine.”

I have heard it said that a tall woman seems taller than any man, and perhaps it is true. This woman was far less in stature than Baldanders had been, yet walking beside her made me feel almost dwarfish. I recalled too how Thecla had bent over me when we embraced, and how I had kissed her breasts.

When we had taken two score steps or so, the Pelerine said, “You walk—well. Your legs are long, and I think they have covered many leagues. You are not a cavalry trooper?”

“I have ridden a bit, but not with the cavalry. I came through the mountains on foot, if that’s what you mean, Chatelaine.”

“That is well, for I have no mount for you. But I do not believe I have told you my name. I am Ma

“I am Severian of Nessus, a wanderer. I wish that I could give you a thousand chrisos to help carry out your good work, but I can only thank you for the kindness I have received here.”

“When I spoke of a mount, Severian of Nessus, I was neither offering to sell you one nor offering to give you one in the hope of thus earning your gratitude. If we do not have your gratitude now, we shall not get it.”

“You have it,” I told her, “as I’ve said. As I’ve also said, I will not linger here presuming on your kindness.’

Ma

In calmer days I would send a party of our slaves, but they are trained in the care of the sick, and we have need of every one of them and more. Yet it is said, ‘He sends the beggar a stick and to the hunter a spear.’ “

“I have no wish to insult you. Chatelaine, but I think that if you trust me because I went to your chapel you trust me for a bad reason. For all you know, I could have been stealing gems from the altar.”

“You mean that thieves and liars often come to pray. By the blessing of the Conciliator they do.



Believe me, Severian, wanderer from Nessus, no one else does—in the order or out of it. But you molested nothing. We have not half the power ignorant people suppose—nevertheless, those who think us without power are more ignorant still. Will you go on an errand for me? I’ll give you a safe-conduct so you will not be taken up as a deserter.”

“If the errand is within my powers. Chatelaine.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. It was the first time she had touched me, and I felt a slight shock, as though I had been brushed unexpectedly by the wing of a bird.

“About twenty leagues from here,” she said, “is the hermitage of a certain wise and holy anchorite.

Until now he has been safe, but all this summer the Autarch has been driven back, and soon the fury of the war will roll over that place. Someone must go to him and persuade him to come to us—or if he ca

“I’m no diplomatist,” I told her. “But for the other business, I can honestly say I have received long training.”

XV. The Last House

MANNEA HAD GIVEN me a rough map showing the location of the anchorite’s retreat, emphasizing that if I failed to follow the course indicated on it precisely, I would almost certainly be unable to locate it.

In what direction that house lay from the lazaret I ca

On the earliest leg of my journey, I saw a great many soldiers once a double column lining both sides of the road while mules carried back the wounded down the centre. Twice I was stopped, but each time the display of my safeconduct permitted me to proceed. It was written on creamcoloured parchment, the finest I had then seen, and bore the narthex sigil of the order stamped in gold. It read: To Those Who Serve—

The letter you read shall identify our servant Severian of Nessus, a young man dark of hair and eye, pale of face, thin and well above the middle height. As you honor the memory we guard, and yourselves may wish in time for succour and if need be an honourable interment, we beg you not hinder this Severian as he prosecutes the business we have entrusted to him, but rather provide him such aid as he may require and you can supply.

For the Order of the Journeying Monials of the Conciliator, called Pelerines, I am The Chatelaine Ma

Instructress and Directress

Once I had entered the narrow canyon, however, all the armies of the world seemed to vanish. I saw no more soldiers, and the rushing water drowned the distant thundering of the Autarch’s sacars and culverins—if indeed they could have been heard in that place at all.

The anchorite’s house had been described to me and the description augmented by a sketch on the map I carried; moreover, I had been told that two days would be required for me to reach it. I was considerably surprised, therefore, when, at sunset, I looked up and saw it perched atop the cliff looming over me.

There was no mistaking it. Ma

In the mountains I had climbed many cliffs; some had been much higher than this one, and some—at least in appearance more sheer. I had by no means been looking forward to camping among the rocks, and as soon as I saw the anchorite’s house, I decided I would sleep in it that night.

The first third of the climb was easy. I scaled the rock face like a cat and was more than halfway up the whole of it before the fading of the light.

I have always had good night vision; I told myself the moon would soon be out and continued. In that I was wrong. The old moon had died while I lay in the lazaret, and the new would not be born for several days. The stars shed some light, though they were crossed and recrossed by bands of hurrying clouds; but it was a deceptive light that seemed worse than none, save when I did not have it. I found myself recalling then how Agia had waited with her assassins for me to emerge from the underground realm of the man-apes. The skin of my back crawled as though in anticipation of the arbalests’ blazing bolts.

Soon a worse difficulty overtook me: I lost my sense of balance. I do not mean that I was entirely at the mercy of vertigo. I knew, in a general way, that down was in the direction of my feet and up in the direction of the stars; but I could be no more precise than that, and because I could not, I could judge only poorly how far I might lean out to search for each new handhold.

Just when this feeling was at its worst, the hurrying clouds closed their ranks, and I was left in total darkness. Sometimes it seemed to me that the cliff face had assumed a more gentle slope, so that I might almost have stood erect and walked up it Sometimes I felt that it was beetling out—I must ding to the underside or fall. Often I felt certain I had not been climbing at all, but edging long distances to the left or right. Once I found myself almost head downward.