tongue and gums it appeared to be a bottomless gulf, and for a moment my stomach churned. Jonas drew out the third creature, streaked with the dead man's saliva.
“Wouldn't he have had a nostril open, or his mouth, if I hadn't cut the thing a second time?”
“Until they worked their way into his lungs. We're lucky, actually, to have been able to get to him so quickly. Otherwise you would have had to slice the body open to get them out.” A wisp of smoke called to mind the burning cedar. “If it was heat they wanted...”
“They prefer life's heat, though they can sometimes be distracted by a fire of living vegetable matter. It's something more than heat, I think, really. Perhaps some radiant energy characteristic of growing cells.” Jonas stuffed the third creature into the vasculum and snapped it shut. “We called them notules, because they usually came after dark, when they could not be seen, and the first warning we had was a breath of warmth; but I have no idea what the natives call them.”
“Where is this island?”
He looked at me curiously.
“Is it far from the coast? I've always wanted to see Uroboros, though I suppose it is dangerous.”
“Very far,” Jonas said in a flat voice. “Very far indeed. Wait a moment.” I waited, watching, as he strode to the riverbank. He threw the vasculum hard — it had almost reached midstream when it dropped into the water.
When he returned I asked, “Couldn't we have used those things ourselves? It doesn't seem likely that whoever sent them is going to give up now, and we might have need of them.”
“They would not obey us, and the world is better without them anyway, as the butcher's wife told him when she cut away his manhood. Now we'd best be going. There's somebody coming down the road.”
I looked where Jonas had pointed, and saw two figures on foot. He had caught his destrier by the halter as it drank and was ready to climb into the saddle.
“Wait,” I said. “Or go on a chain or two and wait for me there.” I was thinking of the man-ape's bleeding stump, and I seemed to see the dim votive lights of the cathedral hanging, crimson and magenta, among the trees. I reached into my boot, far down where I had pushed it for safety, and drew out the Claw. It was the first time I had seen it by full daylight. It caught the sun and flashed like a New Sun itself, not blue only but with every color from violet to cyan. I laid it on the uhlan's forehead, and for an instant tried to will him alive.
“Come on,” Jonas called. “What are you doing?”
I did not know how to answer him.
“He's not quite dead,” Jonas called. “Get off the road before he finds his lance!” He lashed his mount.
Faintly, a voice I seemed to recognize called, “Master!” I turned my head to look down the grass-grown highway.
“Master!” One of the travelers waved an arm, and both began to run.
“It's Hethor,” I said; but Jonas had gone. I looked back at the uhlan. Both his eyes were open now, and his chest rose and fell. When I took the Claw from his forehead and thrust it back into my boot-top, he sat up. I shouted to Hethor and his companion to leave the road, but they did not appear to understand.
“Who are you?”
“A friend,” I said.
Though the uhlan was feeble, he tried to rise. I gave him my hand and pulled him up. For a moment he stared at everything — myself, the two men running toward him, the river, and the trees. The destriers appeared to frighten him, even his own, which stood patiently awaiting its rider. “What is this place?”
“Only a stretch of the old road beside Gyoll.”
He shook his head and pressed it with his hands.
Hethor came panting up, like an ill-bred dog that has run when called and now expects a petting for it. His companion, whom he had outreached by a hundred strides or so, wore the gaudy clothes and greasy look of a small trader.
“M-m-master,” Hethor said, “you can have no idea how much t-t-trouble, how much deadly loss and difficulty we have had in overtaking you across the mountains, across the wide-blown seas and c-c-creaking plains of this fair world. What am I, your s-slave, but an abandoned sh-shell, the sport of a thousand tides, cast up here in this lonely place because I cannot r-r-rest without you? H-how could you, the red-clawed master, know of the endless labor you've cost us?”
“Since I left you in Saltus afoot and have been well mounted these past few days, I should think a good deal.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Exactly.” He looked significantly at his companion as if my remark had confirmed something he had told him earlier, and sank down to rest upon the ground. The uhlan said slowly, “I am Cornet Mineas. Who are you?”
Hethor bobbed his head as though he would have bowed. “M-m-master is the noble Severian, servant of the Autarch — whose urine is the wine of his subjects — in the Guild of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence. H-h- hethor is his humble servant. Beuzec is also his humble servant. I suppose the man who rode away is his servant too.”
I gestured for him to be quiet. “We are all only poor travelers, Cornet. We saw you lying here stunned and sought to help you. A moment ago, we thought you dead; it must have been a near thing.”
“What is this place?” the uhlan asked again.
Hethor answered eagerly. “The road north of Quiesco. M-mmaster, we were on a boat, sailing the wide waters of Gyoll in the blind night. We di-d-disembarked at Quiesco. On her deck and at her sails we worked our p-passage, Beuzec and me. So slowly upriver, while the lucky ones whizzed above on their way to the H-h-house Absolute, but she m-m-made h-h-headway whether we woke or slept, and thus we caught up to you.”
