machine that the rhythms of his mind demanded.
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 running feet in the corridor outside my door and occasionally a few shouted words.
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 bodies repose in caskets, in sarcophagi, beneath arches of rude stone, everywhere under the earth. Their spirits haunt 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 odor of my wounds. Even now I cannot see the vague green darkness that is diffused moonlight without imagining I see the bat crawling there like a big spider, then springing into the air.
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 ax. 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.'
