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At last the one who had spoken first said, “All persons belong to the populace.” At that the others seemed to relax.
“This man is ill,” Vodalus said, looking toward the Autarch,” and he has been a useful servant to me, though I suppose his usefulness is now ended. The other I have promised to one of my followers.”
“The merit of sacrifice falls on him who without thought to his own convenience offers what he has toward the service of the populace.” The Ascian woman’s tone made it clear that no further argument was possible.
Vodalus looked toward me and shrugged, then turned on his heel and strode out of the dome.
Almost at once a file of Ascian officers entered carrying lashes.
We were imprisoned in an Ascian tent perhaps twice the size of my cell in the ziggurat. There was a fire there but no bedding, and the officers who had carried in the Autarch had merely dropped him on the ground beside it. After working my hands free, I tried to make him comfortable, turning him over on his back as he had been in the palanquin and arranging his arms at his sides.
About us the army lay quiet, or at least as quiet as an Ascian army ever is. From time to time someone far off cried out—in sleep, it seemed—but for the most part there was no sound but the slow pacing of the sentries outside. I ca
“I thought you were—sleeping.”
“I suppose I have been in a coma most of the time. But when I was not, I feigned, so Vodalus would not question me. Are you going to escape?”
“Not without you, Sieur. Not now. I had given you up for dead.”
“You were not far wrong ... certainly not by so much as a day. Yes, I think that is best, you must escape. Father Inire is with the insurgents. He was to bring you what is necessary, then help you get away. But we are no longer there ... are we? He may not be able to aid you. Open my robe. What you first require is thrust into my waistband.”
I did as he asked; the flesh my fingers brushed was as cold as a corpse’s. Near his left hip I saw a hilt of silvery metal no thicker than a woman’s finger. I drew the weapon forth; the mace was not half a span in length, but thick and strong, and of that deadly sharpness I had not felt since Baldanders’s mace had shattered Terminus Est
“You must not go yet,” the Autarch whispered.
“I will not leave you while you live,” I said. “Do you doubt me?”
“We will both live, and both go. You know the abomination.” His hand closed on mine. “The eating of the dead, to devour their dead lives. But there is another way you do not know, and another drug.
You must take it, and swallow the living cells of my forebrain.”
I must have drawn away, for his hand gripped my own harder.
“When you lie with a woman, you thrust your life into hers so that perhaps there will be new life.
When you do as I have commanded you, my life and the lives of all those who live in me will be continued in you. The cells will enter your own nervous system and multiply there. The drug is in the vial I wear at my neck, and that blade will split the bones of my skull like pine. I have had occasion to use it, and I promise it Do you recall how you swore to serve me when I shut the book? Use the knife now, and go as quickly as you can.”
I nodded and promised I would.
“The drug will be stronger than any you have known, and though all but mine will be faint, there will be hundreds of personalities.... We are many lives.”
“I understand,” I said.
“The Ascians march at dawn. Can there be more than a single watch remaining of the night?”
“I hope that you will live it out, Sieur, and many more. That you’ll recover.”
“You must kill me now, before Urth turns to face the sun. Then I will live in you ... never die, I live by mere volition now. I am relinquishing my life as I speak.”
To my utter surprise, my eyes were streaming with tears. “I’ve hated you since I was a boy, Sieur.
I’ve done you no harm, but I would have harmed you if I could, and now I’m sorry.”
His voice had faded until it was softer than the chirping of a cricket. “You were right to hate me, Severian. I stand ... as you will stand ...for so much that is wrong.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why?” I was on my knees beside him.
“Because all else is worse. Until the New Sun comes, we have but a choice of evils. All have been tried, and all have failed. Goods in common, the rule of the people ... everything. You wish for progress?
The Ascians have it. They are deafened by it, crazed by the death of Nature till they are ready to accept Erebus and the rest as gods. We hold human kind stationary ... in barbarism. The Autarch protects the people from the exultants, and the exultants... shelter them from the Autarch. The religious comfort them.
We have closed the roads to paralyse the social order....”
His eyes fell shut. I put my hand upon his chest to feel the faint stirring of his heart.
“Until the New Sun ...”
This was what I had sought to escape, not Agia or Vodalus or the Ascians. As gently as I could, I lifted the chain from his neck, unstoppered the vial and swallowed the drug. Then with that short, stiff blade I did what had to be done.
When it was over, I covered him from head to toe with his own saffron robe and hung the empty vial about my own neck. The effect of the drug was as violent as he had warned me it would be. You that read this, who have never, perhaps, possessed more than a single consciousness, ca
The black fabric of our prison tent faded to a pale dovegrey, and the angles of its top whirled like the prisms of kaleidoscope. I had fallen without being aware of it and lay near the body of my predecessor, where my attempts to rise resulted in nothing more than the beating of my hands upon the ground.
How long I lay there I do not know. I had wiped the knife now, still, my knife—and concealed it as he had. I could vividly picture a self of dozens of superposed images slitting the wall and slipping out into the night. Severian, Thecla, myriad others all escaping. So real was the thought that I often believed I had done it; but always, when I ought to have been ru