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THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN
BOOK 1 - THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER
Gene Wolfe
01 RESURRECTION AND DEATH
It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future. The locked and
rusted gate that stood before us, with wisps of river fog threading its spikes
like the mountain paths, remains in my mind now as the symbol of my exile. That
is why I have begun this account of it with the aftermath of our swim, in which
I, the torturer's apprentice Severian, had so nearly drowned.
"The guard has gone." Thus my friend Roche spoke to Drotte, who had already seen
it for himself.
Doubtfully, the boy Eata suggested that we go around. A lift of his thin,
freckled arm indicated the thousands of paces of wall stretching across the slum
and sweeping up the hill until at last they met the high curtain wall of the
Citadel. It was a walk I would take, much later.
"And try to get through the barbican without a safe-conduct? They'd send to
Master Gurloes."
"But why would the guard leave?"
"It doesn't matter." Drotte rattled the gate. "Eata, see if you can slip between
the bars."
Drotte was our captain, and Eata put an arm and a leg through the iron palings,
but it was immediately clear that there was no hope of his getting his body to
follow.
"Someone's coming," Roche whispered. Drotte jerked Eata out. I looked down the
street. Lanterns swung there among the fog-muffled sounds of feet and voices. I
would have hidden, but Roche held me, saying, "Wait, I see pikes."
"Do you think it's the guard returning?"
He shook his head. "Too many."
"A dozen men at least," Drotte said.
Still wet from Gyoll we waited. In the recesses of my mind we stand shivering
there even now. Just as all that appears imperishable tends toward its own
destruction, those moments that at the time seem the most fleeting recreate
themselves - not only in my memory (which in the final accounting loses nothing)
but in the throbbing of my heart and the prickling of my hair, making themselves
new just as our Commonwealth reconstitutes itself each morning in the shrill
tones of its own clarions.
The men had no armor, as I could soon see by the sickly yellow light of the
lanterns; but they had pikes, as Drotte had said, and staves and hatchets. Their
leader wore a long, double-edged knife in his belt. What interested me more was
the massive key threaded on a cord around his neck; it looked as if it might fit
the lock of the gate.
Little Eata fidgeted with nervousness, and the leader saw us and lifted his
lantern over his head. "We're waiting to get in, good-man," Drotte called. He
was the taller, but he made his dark face humble and respectful.
"Not until dawn," the leader said gruffly. "You young fellows had better get
home."
"Goodman, the guard was supposed to let us in, but he's not here,"
"You won't be getting in tonight." The leader put his hand on the hilt of his
knife before taking a step closer. For a moment I was afraid he knew who we
were.
Drotte moved away, and the rest of us stayed behind him. "Who are you, goodman?
You're not soldiers."
"We're the volunteers," one of the others said. "We come to protect our own
dead."
"Then you can let us in."
The leader had turned away. "We let no one inside but ourselves." His key
squealed in the lock, and the gate creaked back.
Before anyone could stop him Eata darted through. Someone cursed, and the leader
and two others sprinted after Eata, but he was too fleet for them. We saw his
tow-colored hair and patched shirt zigzag among the sunken graves of paupers,
then disappear in the thicket of statuary higher up. Drotte tried to pursue him,
but two men grabbed his arms.
"We have to find him. We won't rob you of your dead."
"Why do you want to go in, then?" one volunteer asked.
"To gather herbs," Drotte told him. "We are physicians' gallipots. Don't you
want the sick healed?"
The volunteer stared at him. The man with the key had dropped his lantern when
he ran after Eata, and there were only two left. In their dim light the
volunteer looked stupid and innccent; I suppose he was a laborer of some kind.
Drotte continued, "You must know that for certain simples to attain their
highest virtues they must be pulled from grave soil by moonlight. It will frost
soon and kill everything, but our masters require supplies for the winter. The
three of them arranged for us to enter tonight, and I borrowed that lad from his
father to help me."
"You don't have anything to put simples in."
I still admire Drotte for what he did next. He said, "We are to bind them in
sheaves to dry," and without the least hesitation drew a length of common string
from his pocket.
"I see," the volunteer said. It was plain he did not. Roche and I edged nearer
the gate.
Drotte actually stepped back from it. "If you won't let us gather the herbs,
we'd better go. I don't think we could ever find that boy in there now."
"No you don't. We have to get him out."
"All right," Drotte said reluctantly, and we stepped through, the volunteers
following. Certain mystes aver that the real world has been constructed by the
human mind, since our ways are governed by the artificial categories into which
we place essentially undifferentiated things, things weaker than our words for
them. I understood the principle intuitively that night as I heard the last
volunteer swing the gate closed behind us.
A man who had not spoken before said, "I'm going to watch over my mother. We've
wasted too much time already. They could have her a league off by now."
Several of the others muttered agreement, and the group began to scatter, one
lantern moving to the left and the other to the right. We went up the center
path (the one we always took in returning to the fallen section of the Citadel
wall) with the remaining volunteers.
It is my nature, my joy and my curse, to forget nothing. Every rattling chain
and whistling wind, every sight, smell, and taste, remains changeless in my
mind, and though I know it is not so with everyone, I cannot imagine what it can
mean to be otherwise, as if one had slept when in fact an experience is merely
remote. Those few steps we took upon the whited path rise before me now: It was
cold and growing colder; we had no light, and fog had begun to roll in from
Gyoll in earnest. A few birds had come to roost in the pines and cypresses, and
flapped uneasily from tree to tree. I remember the feel of my own hands as I
rubbed my arms, and the lantern bobbing among the steles some distance off, and
how the fog brought out the smell of the river water in my shirt, and the
pungency of the new-turned earth. I had almost died that day, choking in the
netted roots; the night was to mark the beginning of my manhood.
There was a shot, a thing I had never seen before, the bolt of violet energy
splitting the darkness like a wedge, so that it closed with a thunderclap.
Somewhere a monument fell with a crash. Silence then . . . in which everything
around me seemed to dissolve. We began to run. Men were shouting, far off. I
heard the ring of steel on stone, as if someone had struck one of the grave
markers with a badelaire. I dashed along a path that was (or at least then
seemed) completely unfamiliar, a ribbon of broken bone just wide enough for two
to walk abreast that wound down into a little dale. In the fog I could see
nothing but the dark bulk of the memorials to either side. Then, as suddenly as
if it had been snatched away, the path was no longer beneath my feet - I suppose
I must have failed to notice some turning. I swerved to dodge an oblesque that
appeared to shoot up before me, and collided full tilt with a man in a black
coat.
He was solid as a tree; the impact took me off my feet and knocked my breath
away. I heard him muttering execrations, then a whispering sound as he swung
some weapon. Another voice called, "What was that?"
"Somebody ran into me. Gone now, whoever he was."
I lay still.
A woman said, "Open the lamp." Her voice was like a dove's call, but there was
urgency in it.
The man I had run against answered, "They would be on us like a pack of dholes,
Madame."
"They will be soon in any case - Vodalus fired. You must have heard it."
"Be more likely to keep them off."
In an accent I was too inexperienced to recognize as an exultant's, the man who
had spoken first said, "I wish I hadn't brought it. We shouldn't need it against
this sort of people." He was much nearer now, and in a moment I could see him
through the fog, very tall, slender, and hatless, standing near the heavier man
I had run into. Muffled in black, a third figure was apparently the woman. In
losing my wind I had also lost the strength of my limbs, but I managed to roll
behind the base of a statue, and once secure there I peered out at them again.
My eyes had grown accustomed to the dark. I could distinguish the woman's
heart-shaped face and note that she was nearly as tall as the slender man she
had called Vodalus. The heavy man had disappeared, but I heard him say, "More
rope." His voice indicated that he was no more than a step or two away from the
spot where I crouched, but he seemed to have vanished like water cast into a
well. Then I saw something dark (it must have been the crown of his hat) move
near the slender man's feet and understood that that was almost precisely what
had become of him - there was a hole there, and he was in it.
The woman asked, "How is she?"
"Fresh as a flower, Madame. Hardly a breath of stink on her, and nothing to
worry about." More agilely than I would have thought possible, he sprang out.
"Now give me one end and you take the other, Liege, and we'll have her out like
a carrot."
The woman said something I could not hear, and the slender man told her, "You
didn't have to come, Thea. How would it look to the others if I took none of the
risks?" He and the heavy man grunted as they pulled, and I saw something white
appear at their feet. They bent to lift it. As though an amschaspand had touched
them with his radiant wand, the fog swirled and parted to let a beam of green
moonlight fall. They had the corpse of a woman. Her hair, which had been dark,
was in some disorder now about her livid face; she wore a long gown of some pale
fabric.
"You see," the heavy man said, "just as I told you, Liege, Madame, nineteen
times of a score there's nothin' to it. We've only to get her over the wall
now."
The words were no sooner out of his mouth than I heard someone shout. Three of
the volunteers were coming down the path over the rim of the dale. "Hold them
off, Liege," the heavy man growled, shouldering the corpse. "I'll take care of
this, and get Madame to safety."
"Take it," Vodalus said. The pistol he handed over caught the moonlight like a
mirror.
The heavy man gaped at it. "I've never used one, Liege . . ."
"Take it, you may need it." Vodalus stooped, then rose holding what appeared to
be a dark stick. There was a rattle of metal on wood, and in place of the stick
a bright and narrow blade. He called, "Guard yourselves! "
As if a dove had momentarily commanded an arctother, the woman took the shining
pistol from the heavy man's hand, and together they backed into the fog.
The three volunteers had hesitated. Now one moved to the right and another to
the left, so as to attack from three sides. The man in the center (still on the
white path of broken bones) had a pike, and one of the others an ax.
The third was the leader Drotte had spoken with outside the gate. "Who are you?"
he called to Vodalus, "and what power of Erebus's gives you the right to come
here and do something like this?"
Vodalus did not reply, but the point of his sword looked from one to another
like an eye.
The leader grated, "All together now and we'll have him." But they advanced
hesitantly, and before they could close Vodalus sprang forward. I saw his blade
flash in the faint light and heard it scrape the head of the pike - a metallic
slithering, as though a steel serpent glided across a log of iron. The pikeman
yelled and jumped back; Vodalus leaped backward too (I think for fear the other
two would get behind him), then seemed to lose his balance and fell.
All this took place in dark and fog. I saw it, but for the most part the men
were no more than ambient shadows - as the woman with the heart-shaped face had
been. Yet something touched me. Perhaps it was Vodalus's willingness to die to
protect her that made the woman seem precious to me; certainly it was that
willingness that kindled my admiration for him. Many times since then, when I
have stood upon a shaky platform in some market-town square with Terminus Est at
rest before me and a miserable vagrant kneeling at my feet, when I have heard in
hissing whispers the hate of the crowd and sensed what was far less welcome, the
admiration of those who find an unclean joy in pains and deaths not their own, I
have recalled Vodalus at the graveside, and raised my own blade half pretending
that when it fell I would be striking for him.
He stumbled, as I have said. In that instant I believe my whole life teetered in
the scales with his.
The flanking volunteers ran toward him, but he had held onto his weapon. I saw
the bright blade flash up, though its owner was still on the ground. I remember
thinking what a fine thing it would have been to have had such a sword on the
day Drotte became captain of apprentices, and then likening Vodalus to myself.
The axman, toward whom he had thrust, drew back; the other drove forward with
his long knife. I was on my feet by then, watching the fight over the shoulder
of a chalcedony angel, and I saw the knife come down, missing Vodalus by a
thumb's width as he writhed away and burying itself to the hilt in the ground.
Vodalus slashed at the leader then, but he was too near for the length of his
blade. The leader, instead of backing off, released his weapon and clutched him
like a wrestler. They were at the veryedge of the opened grave - I suppose
Vodalus had tripped over the soil excavated from it.
The second volunteer raised his ax, then hesitated. His leader was nearest him;
he circled to get a clear stroke until he was less than a pace from where I hid.
While he shifted his ground I saw Vodalus wrench the knife free and drive it
into the leader's throat. The ax rose to strike; I grasped the helve just below
the head almost by reflex, and found myself at once in the struggle, kicking,
then striking.
Quite suddenly it was over. The volunteer whose bloodied weapon I held was dead.
The leader of the volunteers was writhing at our feet. The pikeman was gone; his
pike lay harmlessly across the path. Vodalus retrieved a black wand from the
grass nearby and sheathed his sword in it. "Who are you?"
"Severian. I am a torturer. Or rather, I am an apprentice of the torturers,
Liege. Of the Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence." I drew a deep
breath. "I am a Vodalarius. One of the thousands of Vodalani of whose existence
you are unaware." It was a term I had scarcely heard.
"Here." He laid something in my palm: a small coin so smooth it seemed greased.
I remained clutching it beside the violated grave and watched him stride away.
The fog swallowed him long before he reached the rim, and a few moments later a
silver flier as sharp as a dart screamed overhead.
The knife had somehow fallen from the dead man's neck. Perhaps he had pulled it
out in his agony. When I bent to pick it up, I discovered that the coin was
still in my hand and thrust it into my pocket.
We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are
their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers take their
oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch.
Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and
burdens of military life - they are soldiers from that moment, though they may
know nothing of the management of arms. I did not know that then, but it is a
profound mistake to believe that we must know of such things to be influenced by
them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the most debased and
superstitious kind of magic. The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the
efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of themselves
or not at all.
Thus I knew nothing, as the coin dropped into my pocket, of the dogmas of the
movement Vodalus led, but I soon learned them all, for they were in the air.
With him I hated the Autarchy, though I had no notion of what might replace it.
With him I despised the exultants who failed to rise against the Autarch and
bound the fairest of their daughters to him in ceremonial concubinage. With him
I detested the people for their lack of discipline and a common purpose. Of
those values that Master Malrubins (who had been master of apprentices when I
was a boy) had tried to teach me, and that Master Palaemon still tried to
impart, I accepted only one: loyalty to the guild. In that I was quite correct -
it was, as I sensed, perfectly feasible for me to serve Vodalus and remain a
torturer. It was in this fashion that I began the long journey by which I have
backed into the throne.
02 SEVERIAN
Memory oppresses me. Having been reared among the torturers, I have never known
my father or my mother. No more did my brother apprentices know theirs. From
time to time, but most particularly when winter draws on, poor wretches come
clamoring to the Corpse Door, hoping to be admitted to our ancient guild. Often
they regale Brother Porter with accounts of the torments they will willingly
inflict in payment for warmth and food; occasionally they fetch animals as
samples of their work.
All are turned away. Traditions from our days of glory, antedating the present
degenerate age, and the one before it, and the one before that, an age whose
name is hardly remembered now by scholars, forbid recruitment from such as they.
Even at the time I write of, when the guild had shrunk to two masters and less
than a score of journeymen, those traditions were honored.
From my earliest memory I remember all. That first recollection is of piling
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