send two of them to you. And you and I are not yet at a balance, for although I found you captive here, the woman found you also and would have freed you without my help.
So I shall see you again.'
As he said these words, he let go of my arm and stepped in that direction I had never seen until I watched the ship vanish into it from the top of Baldanders's castle and could only see, it seemed, when there was something there.
Immediately he turned and began to run, and despite the dimness of the dawn sky I could see his running figure for a long time, illuminated by intermittent but regular flashes. At last he faded to a point of darkness; but then, just when I expected that point to disappear utterly, it began to grow, so that I had the impression of something huge rushing toward me down that strangely angled tunnel.
It was not the ship I had seen but another and much smaller one. Still, it was so large that when it moved at last entirely into our field of consciousness, its gunwales touched several of the thick trunks at once. The hull dilated, and a pont, much shorter than the steps that had descended from the Autarch's flier, slid out to touch the ground.
Down it came Master Malrubius and my dog, Triskele.
At that moment I regained a command of my personality that I had not truly possessed since I had drunk alzabo with Vodalus and eaten Thecla's flesh. It was not that Thecla was gone (and indeed I could not wish her gone, though I knew that in many respects she had been a cruel and foolish woman) or that my predecessor and the hundred minds that had been enveloped in his had vanished.
The old, simple structure of my single personality was no more; but the new, complex structure no longer dazzled and bewildered me. It was a maze, but I was the owner and even the builder of that maze, with the print of my thumb on every passageway. Malrubius touched me, and then taking my wondering hand in his laid it gently against his own cool cheek.
'You are real, then,' I said.
'No. We are almost what you think us powers from above the stage. Only not quite deities. You are an actor, I believe.'
I shook my head. 'Don't you know me, Master? You taught me when I was a boy, and I have become a journeyman of the guild.'
'Yet you are an actor too. You have as much right to think of yourself in that way as the other. You had been performing when we spoke to you in the field near the Wall, and the next time we saw you, at the House Absolute, you were acting again. It was a good play; I should have liked to see the end.'
'You were in our audience?'
Master Malrubius nodded. 'As an actor, Severian, you surely know the phrase I hinted at a moment ago. It refers to some supernatural force, personified and brought onto the stage in the last act in order that the play may end well. None but poor playwrights do it, they say, but those who say so forget that it is better to have a power lowered on a rope, and a play that ends well, than to have nothing, and a play that ends badly. Here is our rope many ropes, and a stout ship too. Will you come aboard?'
I said, 'Is that why you are as you are? In order that I will trust you?'
'Yes, if you like.' Master Malrubius nodded, and Triskele, who had been sitting at my feet and looking up into my face, ran with his bumping, three-legged gallop halfway up the pont and turned to look back at me, his stump tail wagging and his eyes pleading as a dog's eyes do.
'I know you can't be what you seem. Perhaps Triskele is, but I saw you buried, Master. Your face is no mask, but there's a mask somewhere, and under that mask you're what the common people call a cacogen, although Dr. Talos explained to me once that you prefer to be called Hierodules.'
Again Malrubius laid his hand on mine. 'We would not deceive you if we could.
But I hope that you will deceive yourself, to your good and all Urth's. Some drug now dulls your mind more than you realize just as you were under the sway of sleep when we spoke to you in that meadow near the Wall. If you were undrugged now, perhaps you would lack the courage to come with us, even if you saw us, even if your reason convinced you that you should.'
I said, 'So far it hasn't convinced me of that, or of anything else. Where do you want to take me, and why do you want to take me there? Are you Master Malrubius or a Hiero-dule?' As I spoke I became more conscious of the trees, standing as soldiers stand while the officers of the staff discuss some point of strategy. Night was upon us still, but it had become a thinner darkness, even here.
'Do you know the meaning of that word Hierodule you use? I am Malrubius, and no Hierodule. Rather I serve those the Hierodules serve. Hierodule means holy slave. Do you think there can be slaves without masters?'
'And you take me '
'To Ocean, to preserve your life.' As if he had read my thought, he continued,
'No, we do not take you to the paramours of Abaia, those who spared and succored you because you had been a torturer and would be Autarch. In any event, you have much worse to fear. Soon the slaves of Erebus, who held you captive here, will discover you have escaped; and Erebus would hurl that army, and many others like it, into the abyss to capture you. Come.' He drew me onto the pont.
XXXI
The Sand Garden
That ship was worked by hands I could not see. I had supposed we would float up as the flier had or vanish like the green man down some corridor in time.
Instead we rose so quickly I felt sick; alongside I heard the crashing of great limbs.
'You are the Autarch now,' Malrubius told me. 'Do you know it?' His voice seemed to blend with the whistle of the wind in the rigging.
'Yes. My predecessor, whose mind is now one of mine, came to office as I have. I know the secrets, the words of authority, though I haven't had time yet to think about them. Are you returning me to the House Absolute?'
He shook his head. 'You are not ready. You believe that all the old Autarch knew is available to you now. You
