Agia said, “I'm leaving, Severian,” and stepped through the doorway behind us.
“If you want to stay and watch this, you can. But you'll have to get your avern yourself, and find your way to the Sanguinary Fields. Do you know what will happen if you fail to appear?”
“They'll employ assassins, you said.”
“And the assassins will employ the snake called yellowbeard. Not on you, at first. On your family, if you have any, and your friends. Since I've been with you all over our quarter of the city, that probably means me.”
The chant continued, but the chanter knew we were going: his singsong held a note of triumph. I waited until Agia had reached the ground, then followed her. She said, “I thought you'd never leave. Now that you're here, do you really like this place so much?” The metallic colors of her torn gown seemed as angry as she herself against the cool green of the unnaturally dark leaves.
“No,” I said. “But I find it interesting. Did you see their flier?”
“When you and the inmate looked out the windows? I wasn't such a fool.”
“It was like no other I've ever seen. I should have been looking at the roof facets of this building, but instead I saw the flier he expected to see. At least, that's what it seemed like. Something from somewhere else. A little while ago I wanted to tell you about a friend of a friend of mine who was caught in Father Inire's mirrors. She found herself in another world, and even when she returned to Thecla — that was my friend's name — she wasn't quite sure she had found her way back to her real point of origin. I wonder if we aren't still in the world those people left, instead of them in ours.” Agia had already started down the path. Flecks of sunlight seemed to turn her brown hair to dark gold as she looked over her shoulder to say, “I told you certain visitors are attracted to certain bioscapes.” I trotted to catch up with her.
“As time goes on, their minds bend to conform to their surroundings, and it may be they bend ours as well. It was probably an ordinary flier you saw.”
“He saw us. So did the savage.”
“From what I've heard, the further an inhabitant's consciousness must be warped, the more residual perceptions are likely to remain. When I meet monsters, wild men, and so forth in these gardens, I find they're a lot more likely to be at least partially aware of me than the others are.
“Explain the man,” I said.
“I didn't build this place, Severian. All I know is that if you turn around on the path now, that last place we saw probably won't be there. Listen, I want you to promise me that when we get out of here, you'll let me take you straight to the Garden of Endless Sleep. We don't have time left for anything else, not even the Garden of Delectation. And you're not really the kind of person who ought to go sightseeing in here.”
“Because I wanted to stay in the Sand Garden?”
“Partly, yes. You're going to make trouble for me here sooner or later, I think.”
As she said that, we rounded one of the path's seemingly endless sinuosities. A log tagged with a small white rectangle that could only be a species sign lay across the path, and through the crowding leaves on our left I could see the wall, its greenish glass forming an unobtrusive backdrop for the foliage. Agia had already taken a step past the door when I shifted Terminus Est to the other hand and opened it for her.
Dorcas
I had first heard of the flower, I had imagined averns would be grown on benches, in rows like those in the conservatory of the Citadel. Later, when Agia had told me more about the Botanic Gardens, I conceived of a place like the necropolis where I had frolicked as a boy, with trees and crumbling tombs, and walkways paved with bones.
The reality was very different — a dark lake in an infinite fen. Our feet sank in sedge, and a cold wind whistled past with nothing, as it seemed, to stop it before it reached the sea. Rushes grew beside the track on which we walked, and once or twice a water bird passed overhead, black against a misted sky. I had been telling Agia about Thecla. Now she touched my arm. “You can see them from here, though we'll have to go half around the lake to pluck one. Look where I'm pointing... that smudge of white.”
“They don't look dangerous from here.”
“They've done for a great many people, I can assure you. Some of them are interred in this garden, I imagine.”
So there were graves after all. I asked where the mausoleums stood.
“There aren't any. No coffins either, or mortuary urns, or any of that clutter. Look at the water slopping at your boots.”
I did. It was as brown as tea.
