The Claw of the Conciliator botns-2 Read online

  Long after I had seen the last balustrade, I feared the soldiers of the Autarch; but after some time, when I had not so much as glimpsed a distant patrol, I grew contemptuous of them, believing their ineffectiveness to be a part of that general disorganization I had observed in the Commonwealth so often. With or without my help, Vodalus, I felt, would surely destroy such bunglers indeed, could do so now, if he would only strike.

  And yet the androgyne in the yellow robe, who had known Vodalus’s password and received his message as if expecting it, was unquestionably the Autarch, the master of those soldiers and in fact of the entire Commonwealth insofar as it recognized a master. Thecla had seen him often; those memories of Thecla’s were now my own, and it was he. If Vodalus had won already, why did he remain in hiding? Or was Vodalus merely a creature of the Autarch’s? (If so, why did Vodalus refer to the Autarch as though he were a servitor?) I tried to persuade myself that everything that had passed in the chamber of the picture and the rest of the Second House had been a dream; but I knew it was not so, and the steel was gone.

  Thinking of Vodalus reminded me of the Claw, which the Autarch himself had urged me to return to the order of priestesses called Pelerines. I drew it out. Its light was soft now, neither flashing as it had been in the mine of the man-apes nor dull as it had been when Jonas and I had examined it in the antechamber. Though it lay upon the palm of my hand, it seemed to me now a great pool of blue water, purer than the cistern, purer far than Gyoll, into which I might dive… though in doing so I should in some incomprehensible fashion be diving up. It was at once comforting and disquieting, and I pushed it into my boot-top again and walked on.

  Dawn found me on a narrow path that straggled through a forest more sumptuous in its decay even than that outside the Wall of Nessus. The cool fern arches I had seen there were absent here, but fleshy-fingered vines clung to the great mahoganies and rain-trees like hetaerae, turning their long limbs to clouds of floating green and lowering rich curtains spangled with flowers. Birds unknown to me called overhead, and once a monkey who might, save for his four hands, have been a wizened, red-bearded man in fur, spied on me from a fork as high as a spire. When I could walk no farther, I found a dry, well-shaded spot between pillar-thick roots and wrapped myself in my cloak.

  Often I have had to hunt down sleep as though it were the most elusive of chimeras, half legend and half air. Now it sprang upon me. I had no sooner closed my eyes than I faced the maddened giant again. This time I held Terminus Est, but she seemed no more than a wand. Instead of the stage, we stood upon a narrow parapet. To one side flamed the torches of an army. On the other a sheer drop terminated in a spreading lake that at once was and was not the azure pool of the Claw. Baldanders lifted his terrible flambeau, and I had somehow become the childish figure I had seen beneath the sea. The gigantic women, I felt, could not be far away. The mace crashed down.

  It was broad afternoon, and flame-colored ants were making a caravan across my chest. After two or three watches spent in walking among the pale leaves of that noble yet doomed forest, I struck a broader path, and in another watch (when the shadows were lengthening) I halted, sniffed the air, and found that the odor I had detected was indeed the reek of smoke. I was wracked with hunger by that time, and I hurried forward.

  Chapter 26

  PARTING

  Where the path crossed another, four people sat on the ground around a tiny fire. I recognized Jolenta first — her aura of beauty made the clearing seem a paradise. At almost the same moment, Dorcas recognized me and came running to kiss me, and I glimpsed Dr. Talos’s fox-like face over Baldanders’s massive shoulder.

  The giant, whom I ought to have known at once, was changed almost out of recognition. His head was swathed in dirty bandages, and in place of the baggy black coat he had worn, his wide back was covered with a sticky ointment that resembled clay and smelled like stagnant water.

  “Well met, well met,” Dr. Talos called. “We’ve all been wondering what became of you.” Baldanders indicated with a slight inclination of his head that it was actually Dorcas who had been wondering, which I think I might have guessed without the hint.

  “I ran,” I said. “So did Dorcas, I know. I’m surprised the rest of you weren’t killed.”

  “We very nearly were,” the doctor admitted, nodding.

  Jolenta shrugged, making the simple movement seem an exquisite ceremony. “I ran away too.” She cupped her huge breasts in her hands. “But I don’t think I’m well suited to running, do you? Anyway, in the dark I soon bumped against an exultant who told me I would have to run no farther, that he would protect me. But then some spahis came — I would like to have their animals harnessed to my carriage someday, they were very fine — and they had with them a high official of the sort that cares nothing for women. I hoped then that I would be taken to the Autarch whose pores outshine the stars themselves — the way it nearly happens in the play. But they made my exultant leave, and instead it was back to the theater where he,” she gestured toward Baldanders, “and the doctor were. The doctor was putting salve on him, and the soldiers were going to kill us, although I could see they didn’t really want to kill me. Then they let us go, and here we are.”

  Dr. Talos added, “We found Dorcas at daybreak. Or rather, she found us, and we have been traveling slowly toward the mountains ever since. Slowly, because ill though he is, Baldanders is the only one of us with the strength to carry our baggage, and though we have discarded much of it, there remain certain items we must keep.”

  I said I was surprised to hear Baldanders was merely ill, since I had been certain he was dead.

  “Dr. Talos stopped him,” Dorcas said. “Isn’t that right, Doctor? That’s how he was captured. It’s surprising that both of them weren’t killed.”

  “Yet as you see,” Dr. Talos said, smiling, “we yet walk among the living. And though we are somewhat the worse for wear, we are rich. Show Severian our money, Baldanders.”

  Painfully, the giant shifted his position and took out a bulging leather purse. After looking at the doctor as though for additional instructions, he loosened the strings and poured into his huge hand a shower of new-minted chrisos. Dr. Talos took one of the coins and held it up so it caught the light. “How long do you think a man from one of the fishing villages about Lake Diuturna would build walls for that?”

  I said, “At least a year, I should imagine.”

  “Two! Every day, winter and summer, rain or shine, provided we dole it out in bits of copper, as we shall. We’ll have fifty such men to help rebuild our home. Wait until you see it next!”

  Baldanders added in his heavy voice, “If they will work.”

  The red-haired doctor whirled on him. “They’ll work! I’ve learned something since last time, let me tell you!”

  I interposed. “I assume that a part of that money is mine, and that a part belongs to these women — does it not?”

  Dr. Talos relaxed. “Oh, yes. I had forgotten. The women have already had their shares. Half of this is yours. After all, we wouldn’t have had it without you.” He scooped the coins out of the giant’s hand and began to create two stacks on the ground before him.

  I supposed that he meant only that I had contributed to the success of his play, such as it was. But Dorcas, who must have sensed that something more lay behind the credit he had given me, asked, “Why do you say that, Doctor?”

  The fox-face smiled. “Severian has friends in high places. I own I have thought so for some time — a torturer wandering the roads like a vagrant was a bit too much even for Baldanders to swallow, and I have, I fear, an excessively narrow throat.”

  “If I have such friends,” I said, “I am unaware of them.”

  The stacks were level now, and the doctor pushed one toward me and the other back to the giant. “At first, when I found you abed with Baldanders, I thought you might have been sent to warn us against performing my play — in some respects it is, as you may have observed, at least in appearance cr
itical of the Autarchy.”

  “Somewhat,” Jolenta lisped sarcastically.

  “Yet surely, to send a torturer from the Citadel to frighten a couple of strolling mountebanks would be an absurd overreaction. Then I realized that we, by the very fact that we were staging the play, served to conceal you. Few would suspect that a servant of the Autarch would associate himself with such an enterprise. I wrote in the Familiar’s part so that we should hide you better by giving your habit a reason for existence.”

  “I know nothing of this,” I said.

  “Of course. I have no desire to force you to violate your trust. But as we were setting up our theater yesterday, a highly placed servant from the House Absolute — an agamite, I think, and they are always close to the ear of authority — came asking if our troupe was the one in which you performed, and if you were with us. You and Jolenta had absented yourselves, but I answered in the affirmative. He asked then how great a share you had of what we made, and when I told him, said that he was instructed to pay us now for the night’s performance. Very fortunate that proved since this great ninny went charging out into our audience.”

  It was one of the few times I saw Baldanders appear hurt by his physician’s jibes. Though it clearly cost him pain to do so, he swung his big body about until he faced away from us.

  Dorcas had told me that when I had slept in Dr. Talos’s tent, I had slept alone. Now I sensed that the giant felt so; that for him the clearing held only himself and certain small animals, pets of whom he was tiring.

  “He has paid for his rashness,” I said. “He looks badly burned.”

  The doctor nodded. “Actually, Baldanders was fortunate. The Hierodules dialed down their beams and tried to turn him back instead of killing him. He lives now through their forbearance, and will regenerate.”

  Dorcas murmured, “Heal, you mean? I trust so. I feel more pity for him than I can say.”

  “Yours is a tender heart. Too tender, perhaps. But Baldanders is still growing, and growing children have great recuperative powers.”

  “Still growing?” I asked. “His hair is partly gray.”

  The doctor laughed. “Then perhaps he is growing grayer. But now, dear friends,” he rose and dusted his trousers, “now we have come, as some poet aptly puts it, to the place where men are pulled apart by their destinations. We had halted here, Severian, not only because we were fatigued, but because it is here that the route toward Thrax, where you are going, and that toward Lake Diuturna and our own country diverge. I was loath to pass this point, the last at which I had hopes of seeing you, without making a fair division of our gains — but that is accomplished now. Should you communicate again with your benefactors in the House Absolute, will you own that you have been equitably dealt with?” The stack of chrisos was still on the ground before me.

  “There is a hundred times more here than I ever expected to receive,” I said. “Yes. Certainly.” I picked up the coins and put them into my sabretache.

  A glance passed between Dorcas and Jolenta, and Dorcas said, “I am going to Thrax with Severian, if that is where Severian is going.”

  Jolenta held up a hand to the doctor, obviously expecting that he would help her to rise.

  “Baldanders and I will be traveling alone,” he said, “and we will walk all night. We will miss all of you, but the time of parting is upon us. Dorcas, my child, I am delighted that you will have a protector.” (Jolenta’s hand was by this time on his thigh.) “Come, Baldanders, we must be away.”

  The giant lumbered to his feet, and though he made no moan, I could see how much he suffered. His bandages were wet with mingled sweat and blood. I knew what I had to do, and said, “Baldanders and I must speak privately for a moment. Could I ask the rest of you to move off a hundred paces or so?”

  The women began to do as I had asked, Dorcas walking down one path and Jolenta (whom Dorcas had helped up) down another; but Dr. Talos remained where he was until I repeated my request that he go.

  “You wish me to leave as well? It’s quite useless. Baldanders will tell me anything you tell him as soon as we are together again. Jolenta! Come here, dear.”

  “She is leaving at my request, just as I asked you to.”

  “Yes, but she’s going the wrong way, and I cannot have it. Jolenta!”

  “Doctor, I only wish to help your friend — or your slave, or whatever he is.”

  Quite unexpectedly, Baldanders’s deep voice issued from beneath his swirl of bandages. “I am his master.”

  “Exactly so,” said the doctor, as taking up the stack of chrisos he had pushed toward Baldanders, he dropped it into the giant’s trousers pocket.

  Jolenta had hobbled back to us with tears streaking her lovely face. “Doctor, can’t I go with you?”

  “Of course not,” he said as coolly as if a child had asked for a second slice of cake. Jolenta collapsed at his feet.

  I looked up at the giant. “Baldanders, I can help you. A friend of mine was burned as much as you are not long ago, and I was able to help him. But I won’t do it while Dr. Talos and Jolenta look on. Will you come with me, only a short way, back down the path toward the House Absolute?”

  Slowly, the giant’s head swung from side to side.

  “He knows the lenitive you offer,” Dr. Talos said, laughing. “He himself has provided it to many, but he loves life too much.”

  “Life is what I offer — not death.”

  “Yes?” The doctor raised an eyebrow.

  “Where is your friend?” The giant had picked up the handles of his barrow.

  “Baldanders,” I said, “do you know who the Conciliator was?”

  “That was long ago,” Baldanders answered. “It does not matter.” He started down the path Dorcas had not taken. Dr. Talos followed him for a few strides, with Jolenta clinging to his arm, then stopped.

  “Severian, you have guarded a good many prisoners, according to what you’ve told me. If Baldanders were to give you another chrisos, would you hold this creature until we are well gone?”

  I was still sick with the thought of the giant’s pain and my own failure; but I managed to say, “As a member of the guild, I can accept commissions only from the legally constituted authorities.”

  “We will kill her then, when we are out of your sight.”

  “That is a matter between you and her,” I said, and started after Dorcas. I had hardly caught up with her before we heard Jolenta’s screams. Dorcas halted and grasped my hand more tightly, asking what the sound was; I told her of the doctor’s threat.

  “And you let her go?”

  “I didn’t believe he meant it.”

  As I said that, we had turned and were already retracing our way. We had not gone a dozen strides before the screams were succeeded by a silence so profound we could hear the rustling of a dying leaf. We hurried on; but by the time we reached the crossing, I felt certain we were too late, and so I was, if the truth be known, only hurrying because I knew Dorcas would be disappointed in me if I did not.

  I was wrong in thinking Jolenta dead. As we rounded a turn in the path we saw her running toward us, her knees together as if her legs were hampered by her generous thighs, her arms crossed over her breasts to steady them. Her glorious red-gold hair fell across her eyes, and the thin organza shift she wore had been slashed to tatters. She fainted when Dorcas embraced her. “Those devils, they’ve beaten her,” Dorcas said.

  “A moment ago we were afraid they would kill her.” I looked at the welts on the beautiful woman’s back. “These are the marks of the doctor’s cane, I think. She’s lucky he didn’t set Baldanders on her.”

  “But what can we do?”

  “We can try this.” I fished the Claw from my boot-top and showed it to her. “Do you remember the thing we found in my sabretache? That you said was no true gem? This is what it was, and it seems to help injured people, sometimes. I wanted to use it on Baldanders, but he wouldn’t let me.”

  I held the Claw over Jolenta’s head,
then ran it along the bruises on her back, but it flamed no brighter and she seemed no better. “It isn’t working,” I said. “I’ll have to carry her.”

  “Put her over your shoulder, or you’ll be holding her just where she’s been hurt worst.”

  Dorcas carried Terminus Est, and I did as she suggested, finding Jolenta nearly as heavy as a man. For a long while we trudged thus beneath the pale green canopy of the leaves before Jolenta’s eyes opened. Even then she could hardly walk or stand without help, however, or so much as comb back that extraordinary hair with her fingers to let us better see the tear-stained oval of her face. “The doctor won’t let me come with him,” she said.

  Dorcas nodded. “It seems not.” She might have been talking to someone far younger than herself.

  “I will be destroyed.”

  I asked why she said that, but she only shook her head. After a time she said, “May I go with you, Severian? I don’t have any money. Baldanders took away what the doctor had given me.” She shot a sidelong glance at Dorcas. “She has money too — more than I got. As much as the doctor gave you.”

  “He knows that,” Dorcas said. “And he knows any money I have is his, if he wants it.”

  I changed the subject. “Perhaps both of you should know that I may not be going to Thrax, or at least, not directly. Not if I can discover the whereabouts of the order of Pelerines.”

  Jolenta looked at me as if I were mad. “I’ve heard they roam the whole world. Besides, they accept only women.”