appeared to me that they were intended to be rung by the wind; yet it seemed impossible that any wind should ever reach them. So I thought, at least, until one of the praetorians opened a heavy door of bronze and worm- scarred wood in one of the dark stone walls. Then a draft of cold, dry air blew through that doorway and set the gongs to swaying and clashing, so well tuned that their chiming seemed the purposeful composition of some musician, whose thoughts were now in exile here. In looking up at the gongs (which the praetorians did not prevent me from doing) I saw the statues, forty at least, who had followed us all the way across the gardens. They now rimmed the pit, motionless at last, and looked down on us like a frieze of cenotaphs.
I had expected to be the only occupant of a small cell, I suppose because I unconsciously transferred the practices of our own oubliette to this unknown place. Nothing more different from the actual arrangement could have been imagined. The entrance opened on no corridor of narrow doors, but to a spacious and carpeted one with a second entrance opposite. Hastarii with flaming spears stood as sentries before this second set of doors. At a word from one of the praetorians, they swung them open; beyond lay a vast, shadowy, bare room with a very low ceiling. Several dozen persons, men and women and a few children, were scattered in diverse parts of it — most singly, but some in couples or groups. Families occupied alcoves, and in some places screens of rags had been erected to provide privacy. Into this we were thrust. Or rather, I was thrust and the unfortunate Jonas was thrown. I tried to catch him as he fell, and I at least prevented his head from striking the floor; as I did so, I heard the doors slam shut behind me.
Fool's Fire
I was ringed by faces. Two women took Jonas from me, and promising to care for him carried him away. The rest began to ply me with questions. What was my name? What clothes were those I wore?
Where had I come from? Did I know such a one, or such a one, or such a one? Had I ever been to this town or that? Was I of the House Absolute? Of Nessus? From the east bank of Gyoll or the west? What quarter? Did the Autarch still live? What of Father Inire? Who was archon in the city? How went the war? Had I news of so-and-so, a commander? Of so-and-so, a trooper? Of so-and-so, a chiliarch?
Could I sing, recite, play an instrument? As may be imagined, in such a welter of inquiries I was able to answer almost none. When the first flurry was spent, an old, gray-bearded man and a woman who seemed almost equally old silenced the others and drove them away. Their method, which would surely have succeeded nowhere but here, was to clap each by the shoulder, point to the most remote part of the room, and say distinctly, “Plenty of time.” Gradually the others fell silent and walked to what seemed the limits of hearing, until at last the low room was as still as it had been when the doors opened.
“I am Lomer,” the old man said. He cleared his throat noisily. “This is Nicarete.” I told him my name, and Jonas's.
The old woman must have heard the concern in my voice. “He will be safe, rest assured. Those girls will treat him as well as they can, in the hope that he'll soon be able to talk to them.” She laughed, and something in the way she threw back her well-shaped head told me she had once been beautiful. I began to question them in my turn, but the old man interrupted me. “Come with us,” he said, “to our corner. We will be able to sit at ease there, and I can offer you a cup of water.” As soon as he pronounced the word, I realized that I was terribly thirsty. He led us behind the rag screen nearest the doors and poured water for me from an earthenware jug into a delicate porcelain cup. There were cushions there, and a little table not more than a span high.
“Question for question,” he said. “That's the old rule. We have told you our names and you have told us yours, and so we begin again. Why were you taken?” I explained that I did not know, unless it were merely for violating the grounds.
Lomer nodded. His skin was of that pale color peculiar to those who never see the sun; with his straggling beard and uneven teeth, he would have been repulsive in any other setting; but he belonged here as much as the half-obliterated tiles of the floor did. “I am here by the malice of the Chatelaine Leocadia. I was seneschal to her rival the Chatelaine Nympha, and when she brought me here to the House Absolute with her in order that we might review the accounts of the estate while she attended the rites of the philomath Phocas, the Chatelaine Leocadia entrapped me by the aid of Sancha, who —” The old woman, Nicarete, interrupted him. “Look!” she exclaimed. “He knows her.” And so I did. A chamber of pink and ivory had risen in my mind, a room of which two walls were clear glass exquisitely framed. Fires burned there on marble hearths, dimmed by the sunbeams streaming through the glass but filling the room with a dry heat and the odor of sandalwood. An old woman wrapped in many shawls sat in a chair that was like a throne; a decanter of cut crystal and several brown phials stood on an inlaid table at her side.
“An elderly woman with a hooked nose,” I said. “The Dowager of Fors.”
“You do know her then.” Lomer's head nodded slowly, as though it were answering the question put by its own mouth. “You are the first in many years.”
“Let us say that I remember her.”
“Yes.” The old man nodded. “They say she is dead now. But in my day she was a fine, healthy young woman. The Chatelaine Leocadia persuaded her to it, then caused us to be discovered, as Sancha knew she would. She was but fourteen, and no crime was charged to her. We had done nothing in any case; she had only begun to undress me.”
I said, “You must have been quite a young man yourself.”
He did not answer, so Nicarete replied for him. “He was twenty-eight.”
“And you,” I asked. “Why are you here?”
“I am a volunteer.”
I looked at her in some surprise.
“Someone must make amends for the evil of Urth, or the New Sun will never come. And someone must call attention to this place and the others like it. I am of an armiger family that may yet remember me, and so the guards must be careful of me, and of all the others while I remain here.”
“Do you mean that you can leave, and will not?”
“No,” she said, and shook her head. Her hair was white, but she wore it flowing about her shoulders as young women do. “I will leave, but only on my own terms, which are that all those who have been here so long that they have forgotten their crimes be set free as well.” I remembered the kitchen knife I had stolen for Thecla, and the ribbon of crimson that had crept from under the door of her cell in our oubliette, and I said, “Is it true that prisoners really forget their crimes here?”
