papers, and many books, and near the center a narrow bed.
'Here I nap,' Master Ash explained, 'when my work will not let me retire. It is not large for a man of your frame, but I think you will find it comfortable.'
I had slept on stone the night before; it looked very appealing indeed.
After showing me where I could relieve myself and wash, he left. My last glimpse of him before he darkened the light caught the same perfect smile I had seen before.
An instant later, when my eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, I ceased to wonder about it, for outside all those many windows there shone an unbounded pearly radiance. 'We are above the clouds,' I said to myself (I, too, half smiling), 'or rather, some low clouds have come to shroud this hilltop, unnoticed by me in the darkness but known in some fashion to him. Now I see the tops of those clouds, high matters surely, as I saw the tops of clouds from Typhon's eyes.' And I laid myself down to sleep.
XVII
Ragnarok The Final Winter
It seemed strange to wake without a weapon, though for some reason I cannot explain, that was the first morning on which I had felt so. After the destruction of Terminus Est I had slept at the sacking of Baldanders's castle without fear, and later journeyed north without fear. Only the night before, I had slept upon the bare rock of the cliff top weaponless and perhaps only because I had been so tired had not been afraid. I now think that during all those days, and indeed during all the days since I had left Thrax, I had been putting the guild behind me and coming to believe that I was what those who encountered me took me for the sort of would-be adventurer I had mentioned the night before to Master Ash. As a torturer, I had not so much considered my sword a weapon as a tool and a badge of office. Now in retrospect it had become a weapon to me, and I had no weapon. I thought about that as I lay upon my back on Master Ash's comfortable mattress, my hands behind my head. I would have to acquire another sword if I remained in the war-torn lands, and it would be wise to have one even if I turned south again. The question was whether to turn south or not. If I remained where I was, I risked being drawn into the fighting, where I might well be killed. But for me a return to the south would be even more dangerous. Abdiesus, the archon of Thrax, had no doubt posted a reward for my capture, and the guild would almost certainly procure my assassination if they learned I was anywhere near Nessus.
After vacillating over this decision for some time, as one does when only half-awake, I recalled Winnoc and what he had told me of the slaves of the Pelerines. Because it is a disgrace to us if our clients die after torment, we are taught a good deal of leech-craft in the guild; I thought I knew already at least as much as they. When I had cured the girl in the jacal, I had felt suddenly uplifted. The Chatelaine Mannea had a good opinion of me already and would have a better one when I returned with Master Ash.
A few moments before, I had been disturbed because I lacked a weapon. Now I felt I had one resolution and a plan are better than a sword, because a man whets his own edges on them. I threw off the blankets, noticing then for the first time, I think, how soft they were. The big room was cold but filled with sunlight; it was almost as though there were suns on all four sides, as though all the walls were east walls. I walked naked to the nearest window and saw that undulating field of white I had vaguely noted the evening before.
It was not a mass of cloud but a plain of ice. The window would not open, or if it would, I could not solve the puzzle of its mechanism; but I put my face close to the glass and peered downward as well as I could. The Last House rose, as I had seen before, from a high hill of rock. Now this hilltop alone remained above the ice. I went from window to window, and the view from each was the same.
Going back to the bed that had been mine, I pulled on my trousers and boots, and slung my cloak about my shoulders, hardly knowing what it was I did.
Master Ash appeared just as I finished dressing. 'I hope I do not intrude,' he said. 'I heard you walking up here.'
I shook my head.
'I did not want you to become disturbed.'
Without my willing it, my hands had gone to my face. Now some foolish part of me became aware of my bristling beard. I said, 'I meant to shave before putting on my cloak. That was stupid of me. I haven't shaved since I left the lazaret.' It was as though my mind were trudging across the ice, leaving my tongue and lips to get along as best they might.
'There is hot water here, and soap.'
'That's good,' I said. And then, 'If I go downstairs '
That smile again. 'Will it be the same? The ice? No. You are the first to have guessed. May I ask how you did it?'
'A long time ago no, only a few months, actually, though it seems like such a long time now I went to the Botanic Gardens in Nessus. There was a place called the Lake of Birds, where the bodies of the dead seemed to remain fresh forever.
I was told it was some property of the water, but I wondered even then that there should be so much power in water. There was another place too, that they called the Jungle Garden, where the leaves were greener than I have ever known leaves to be not a bright green but dark with greenness, as if the plants could never use all the energy the sun poured down. The people there seemed not of our time, though I could not say if they were of the past, or the future, or some third thing that is neither. They had a little house. It was much smaller than this, but this reminds me of it. I've thought often of the Botanic Gardens since I left them, and sometimes I've wondered if their secret were not that the time never changed in the Lake of Birds, and that one moved forward or backward however it might be when walking the path of the Jungle Garden. Am I perhaps speaking overmuch?'
Master Ash shook his head.
'Then when I was coming here, I saw your house at the top of this hill. But when I climbed to it, it was gone, and the valley below was not as I remembered it.'
I did not know what else to say, and fell silent.
'You are correct,' Master Ash told me. 'I have been put here to observe what you see about you now. The lower stories of my home, however, reach into older periods, of which yours is the oldest.'
'That seems a great wonder.'
He shook his head. 'It is almost more wonderful that this spur of rock has been spared by the glaciers. The tops of peaks far higher are submerged. It is sheltered by a geographic pattern so subtle that it could only be achieved by accident.'
'But it too will be covered at last?' I asked.
