“I've never gone so deeply into this garden. You were the one who wanted to come.”
“Answer my questions,” I said, and took her by the shoulder.
“If this path is like the others — I mean, in the other gardens — it runs in a wide loop that will eventually return us to the door by which we came in. There's no reason to be afraid.”
“The door vanished when I shut it.”
“Only trickery. Haven't you seen those pictures in which a pietist exhibits a meditating face when you're on one side of the room, but stares at you when you cross to the opposite wall? We'll see the door when we approach it from the other direction.”
A snake with camelian eyes came gliding onto the path, lifted a venomous head to look at us, then slipped away. I heard Agia's gasp and said, “Who's afraid now?
Will that snake flee you as quickly as you would flee it? Now answer my question about the smilodon. Is it really far away? And if so, how can that be?”
“I don't know. Do you think there are answers to everything here? Is that true in the place you come from?”
I recalled the Citadel and the age-old usages of the guilds. “No,” I said.
“There are inexplicable offices and customs in my home, though in these decadent times they are falling out of use. There are towers no one has ever entered, too, and lost rooms, and tunnels whose entrances have not been seen.”
“Then can't you understand that it's the same way here? When we were at the top of the steps and you looked down and saw these gardens, could you make out the entire building?”
“No,” I admitted. “There were pylons and spires in the way, and the corner of the embankment.”
“And even so, could you delimit what you saw?”
I shrugged. “The glass made it difficult to tell where the edges of the building were.”
“Then how can you ask the questions you do? Or if you have to ask them, can't you understand that I don't necessarily have the answers? From the sound of the smilodon's roar, I knew he was far off. Perhaps he is not here at all, or perhaps the distance is of time.”
“When I looked down on this building, I saw a faceted dome. Now when I look up, I see only the sky between the leaves and vines.”
“The surfaces of the facets are large. It may be that their edges are concealed by the limbs,” Agia said.
We walked on, wading a trickle of water in which a reptile with evil teeth and a finned back soaked himself. I unsheathed Terminus Est, fearing he would dart at our feet. “I grant,” I told her, “that the trees grow too thickly here to permit me to see far to either side. But look here, through the opening where this freshet runs. Upstream I can see only more jungle. Downstream there is the gleam of water, as though it empties into a lake.”
“I warned you that the rooms open out, and that you might find that disturbing. It is also said that the walls of these places are specula, whose reflective power creates the appearance of vast space.”
“I once knew a woman who had met Father Inire. She told me a tale about him. Would you like to hear it?”
“Suit yourself.”
Actually it was I who wanted to hear the story, and I did suit myself: I told it to myself in the recesses of my mind, hearing it there hardly less than I had heard it first when Thecla's hands, white and cold as lilies taken from a grave filled with rain, lay clasped between my own.
“I was thirteen, Severian, and I had a friend named Domnina. She was a pretty girl who looked several years younger than she really was. Perhaps that's why he took a fancy to her.
“I know you know nothing of the House Absolute. You must take my word for it that at one place in the Hall of Meaning there are two mirrors. Each is three or four ells wide, and each extends to the ceiling. There's nothing between the two except a few dozen strides of marble floor. In other words, anyone who walks down the Hall of Meaning sees himself infinitely multiplied there. Each mirror reflects the images in its twin.
“Naturally, it's an attractive spot when you're a girl and fancy yourself something of a beauty. Domnina and I were playing there one night, turning around and around to show off new camisias. We had moved a couple of big candelabra so one was on the left of one mirror and the other on the left of the facing one — at opposite corners if you see what I mean.
“We were so busy looking at ourselves that we didn't notice Father Inire until he was only a step away. Ordinarily, you understand, we would have run and hidden when we saw him coming, though he was scarcely taller than we. He wore iridescent robes that seemed to fade into gray when I looked at them, as if they had been dyed in mist. ‘You must be wary, children, of looking at yourselves like that,’ he said. ‘There's an imp who waits in silvered glass and creeps into the eyes of those who look into it.’
“I knew what he meant, and blushed. But Domnina said, ‘I think I've seen him. Is he shaped like a tear, all gleaming?’
“Father Inire did not hesitate before he answered her, or even blink — still, I understood that he was startled. He said, ‘No, that is someone else, dulcinea. Can you see him plainly? No? Then come into my presence chamber tomorrow a little after Nones, and I'll show him to you.’
“We were frightened when he left. Domnina swore a hundred times that she would not go. I applauded her resolution and tried to strengthen her in it. More to the point, we arranged that she should stay with me that night and the next day.
“It was all for nothing. A little before the appointed time, a servant in a livery neither of us had ever seen came for poor Domnina.
“A few days before I had been given a set of paper figures. There were soubrettes, columbines, coryphees, harlequinas, figurantes, and so on — the usual thing. I remember that I waited on the window seat all afternoon for Domnina, toying with these little people, coloring their costumes with wax pencils, arranging them in various
