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While I amused myself with these speculations, I became increasingly aware of the impermanent nature of Vodalus’s occupation of the ancient building. Though the leech came no more, as I have said, and Agia never visited me again, I frequently heard the sound of ru
Whenever such sounds came, I put my unbandaged ear to the planks; and in fact I often anticipated them, sitting that way for long periods in the hope of overhearing some snatch of conversation that would tell me something of Vodalus’s plans. I could not help but think then, as I listened in vain, of the hundreds in our oubliette who must have listened to me when I carried their food to Drotte, and how they must have strained to overhear the fragments of conversation that drifted from Thecla’s cell into the corridor, and thus into their own cells, when I visited her.
And what of the dead? I own that I thought of myself, at times, almost as dead. Are they not locked below ground in chambers smaller than mine was, in their millions of millions? There is no category of human activity in which the dead do not outnumber the living many times over. Most beautiful children are dead. Most soldiers, most cowards. The fairest women and the most learned men—all are dead. Their repose in caskets, in sarcophagi, beneath arches Of rude stone, everywhere under the earth. Their spirits it our minds, ears pressed to the bones of our foreheads. Who can say how intently they listen as we speak, or for what word?
XXVII. Before Vodalus
ON THE MORNING of the sixth day, two women came for me. I had slept very little the night before. One of the blood bats common in those northern jungles had entered my room by the window, and though I had succeeded in driving it out and staunching the blood, it had returned again and again, attracted, I suppose, by the odour of my wounds. Even now I ca
The women were as surprised to find me awake as I was to see them; it was just dawn. They made me stand, and one bound my hands while the other held her dirk to my throat. She asked how my cheek was healing, however, and added that she had been told I was a handsome fellow when I was brought in.
“I was almost as near to death then as I am now,” I said to her. The truth was that though the concussion I had suffered when the flier crashed had healed, my leg, as well as my face, was still, giving me considerable pain.
The women brought me to Vodalus; not, as I had more or less expected, somewhere in the ziggurat or on the ledge where he had sat in state with Thea, but in a clearing embraced on three sides by slow green water. It was a moment or two—I had to stand waiting while some other business was conducted—before I realized that the course of this river was fundamentally to the north and east, and that I had never seen northeastward-flowing water before; all streams, in my previous experience, ran south or southwest to join southwestern flowing Gyoll.
At last Vodalus inclined his head toward me, and I was brought forward. When he saw that I could scarcely stand, he ordered my guards to seat me at his feet, then waved them back out of hearing distance. “Your entrance is somewhat less impressive than that you made in the forest beyond Nessus,”
he said.
I agreed. “But, Liege, I come now, as I did then, as your Servant. Just as I was the first time you met me, when I saved your neck from the axe. If I appear before you in bloody rags and with bound hands, it is because you treat your servants so.”
“Certainly I would agree that securing your wrists seems a trifle excessive in your condition.” He smiled faintly. “Is it painful?”
“No. The feeling is gone.”
“Still, the cords aren’t needed.” Vodalus stood and drew a slender blade, and leaning over me, flicked my bonds with the point.
I flexed my shoulders and the last strands parted. A thousand needles seemed to pierce my hands.
When he had taken his seat again, Vodalus asked if I were not going to thank him.
“You never thanked me. Liege. You gave me a coin instead. I think I have one here somewhere.” I fumbled in my sabretache for the money I had been paid by Guasacht.
“You may keep your coin. I’m going to ask you for much more than that. Are you ready to tell me who you are?”
“I’ve always been ready to do that. Liege. I’m Severian, formerly a journeyman of the guild of torturers.”
“But are you nothing else besides a former journeyman of that guild?”
“No.”
Vodalus sighed and smiled, then leaned back in his chair and sighed again. “My servant Hildegrin always insisted you were important. When I asked him why, he had any number of speculations, none of which I found convincing. I thought he was trying to get silver from me for a little easy spying. Yet he was right.”
“I have only been important once to you. Liege.”
“Each time we meet, you remind me that you saved my life once. Did you know that Hildegrin once saved yours? It was he who shouted ‘Run!’ to your opponent when you dueled in the city. You had fallen, and he might have stabbed you.”
“Is Agia here?” I asked. “She’ll try to kill you if she hears that”
“No one can hear you but myself. You may tell her later, if you like. She will never believe you.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
He smiled more broadly. “Very well, I’ll turn you over to her. You can then test your theory against mine.”
“As you wish.”
He brushed my acquiescence aside with an elegant motion of one hand. “You think you can stalemate me with your willingness to die. Actually you’re offering me an easy exit from a dilemma. Your Agia came to me with a very valuable thaumaturgist in her train, and asked as the price of his service and her own only that you, Severian of the Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence, should be put into her hands. Now you say you are that Severian the Torturer and no one else, and it is with great embarrassment that I resist her demands.”
“And whom do you wish me to be?” I asked.
“I have, or I should say I had, a most excellent servant in the House Absolute. You know him, of course, since it was to him that you gave my message.” Vodalus paused and smiled again. “A week or so ago we received one from him. It was not to be sure, openly addressed to me, but I had seen to it not long before that he was aware of our location, and we were not far from him. Do you know what he said?” I shook my head. “That’s odd, because you must have been with him at the time. He said he was in a wrecked flier—and that the Autarch was on the flier with him. He would have been an idiot to have sent such a message in the ordinary course of things, because he gave his location—and he was behind our lines, as he must have known.”
“You are a part of the Ascian army, then?”
“We serve them in certain scouting capacities, yes. I see you are troubled by the knowledge that Agia and the thaumaturgist killed a few of their soldiers to take you. You need not be. Their masters value them even less than I do, and it was not the time for negotiation.”
“But they did not capture the Autarch.” I am not a good liar, but I was too exhausted, I think, for Vodalus to read my face easily.
He leaned forward, and for a moment his eyes glowed as though candles burned in their depths. “He was there, then. How wonderful. You have seen him. You have ridden in the royal flier with him.” I nodded once more. “You see, ridiculous though it sounds, I feared you were he. One never knows. An Autarch dies and another takes his place, and the new Autarch may be there for half a century or a fortnight. There were three of you then? No more?”
“No.”
“What did the Autarch look like? Let me have every detail.” I did as he asked, describing Dr. Talos as he had appeared in the part. “Did he escape both the thaumaturgists creatures and the Ascians? Or do the Ascians have him? Perhaps the woman and her paramour are holding him for themselves.”