Where are they then, the bright players? How long will the torches burn?
The f-f-freezing hands grope toward them, but the torch bowls are colder than any ice, colder than the moons of Verthandi, colder than the dead eyes! Where is the strength then that heats the lake to foam? Where is the empire, where the Armies of the Sun, long-lanced and goldenbannered? Where are the silken-haired women we loved only l-l-last night?”
“You were in our audience, I take it,” said Dr. Talos. “I can well sympathize with your desire to see the performance again. But we won't be able to oblige you until evening, and by then we hope to be some distance from here.” Hethor, whom I had met outside Agilus's prison with the fat man, the hungry-eyed woman and the others, did not seem to have heard him. He was staring at me, with occasional glances toward Baldanders and Dorcas.
“He hurt you, didn't he? Writhing, writhing. I saw you with the blood running, red as pentecost. Wh-wh-what honor for you! You serve him too, and your calling is higher than mine.”
Dorcas shook her head and turned her face away. The giant only stared. Dr. Talos said, “Surely you understand that what you saw was a theatrical performance.” (I remember thinking that if most of the audience had had a firmer grip on that idea, we would have found ourselves in an embarrassing dilemma when Baldanders jumped from the stage.)
“I u-understand more than you think, I the old captain, the old lieutenant, the old c-c-cook in his old kitchen, cooking soup, cooking broth for the dying pets!
My master is real, but where are your armies? Real, and where are your empires?
Sh-shall false blood run from a true wound? Were is your strength when the b-b-blood is gone, where is the luster of the silken hair? I w-will catch it in a cup of glass, I, the old c-captain of the old limping sh-ship, with its crew black against the silver sails, and the C-c-coalstack behind it.”
Perhaps I should say here that at the time I paid little attention to the rush and stumble of Hethor's words, though my ineradicable memory enables me to recreate them on paper now. He spoke a gobbling singsong, with a fine spray of spittle flying through the gaps in his teeth. In his slow way, Baldanders may have understood him. Dorcas, I feel sure, was too repelled by him to hear much of what he said. She turned aside as one turns from the mutterings and cracking bones when an alzabo savages a carcass, and Jolenta listened to nothing that did not concern herself.
“You can see for yourself that the young woman is unharmed.” Dr. Talos rose and put away his money box. “It's always a pleasure to speak to someone who has appreciated our performance, but I'm afraid we've work to do. We must pack. If you'll excuse us?”
Now that his conversation had become one with Dr. Talos exclusively, Hethor put his cap on again, pulling it down until it nearly covered his eyes.
“Stowage? There's no one better for it than I, the old s-supercargo, the old chandler and steward, the old st- stevedore. Who else shall put the kernels back on the cob, fit the f-fledgling into the egg again? Who shall fold the solemn-winged m-moth with w-wings each like stuns'ls, into the broken cocoon left h-hanging like a s-s- sarcophagus? And for the love of the M-master, I'll do it, for the sake of the M-master, I'll do it. And f-f-f-follow anywhere, anywhere he goes.” I nodded, not knowing what to say. Just at the moment, Baldanders — who had apparently caught the references to packing if he had caught nothing else scooped a backdrop from the stage and began to wind it on its pole. Hethor vaulted up with unexpected agility to fold the set for the Inquisitor's chamber and reel in the projector wires. Dr. Talos turned to me as if to say, He's your responsibility after all, just as Baldanders is mine.
“There are a good many of them,” I told him. “They find pleasure in pain, and want to associate with us just as a normal man might want to be around Dorcas and Jolenta.”
The doctor nodded. “I wondered. One can imagine an ideal servent who serves out of pure love for his master, just as one can an ideal rustic who remains a ditcher from a love of nature, or an ideal fricatrice who spreads her legs a dozen times a night from a love of copulation. But one never encounters these fabulous creatures in reality.”
In about a watch we were on the road. Our small theater packed itself quite neatly into a huge barrow formed from parts of the stage, and Baldanders, who wheeled this contraption, also carried a few odds and ends on his back. Dr. Talos, with Dorcas, Jolenta, and me behind him, led the way, and Hethor followed Baldanders at a distance of perhaps a hundred paces.
“He's like me,” Dorcas said, glancing back. “And the doctor is like Agia, only not as bad. Do you remember? She couldn't make me go away, and eventually you made her stop trying.”
I did remember, and asked why she had followed us with such determination.
“You were the only people I knew. I was more afraid of being alone than I was of Agia.”
“Then you were afraid of Agia.”
“Yes, very much. I still am. But... I don't know where I've been, but I think I've been alone, wherever I was. For a long time. I didn't want to do that anymore. You won't understand this — or like it — but...”
“Yes?”
“If you had hated me as much as Agia did, I would have followed you anyway.
“I don't think Agia hated you.”
Dorcas stared up at me, and I can see that piquant face now as well as if it were reflected in the quiet well of vermillion ink. It was, perhaps, a trifle pinched and pale, too childlike for great beauty; but the eyes were bits of the azure firmament of some hidden world waiting for Man; they could have vied with Jolenta's own. “She hated me,” Dorcas said softly. “She hates me more now. Do you remember how dazed you were after the fight? You never looked back when I led you away. I did, and I saw her face.”
Jolenta had been complaining to Dr. Talos because she had to walk. Baldanders's deep, dull voice came from behind us now. “I will carry you.” She glanced back at him. “What? On top of all the rest?” He did not reply.
“When I say I want to ride, I don't mean, as you seem to think, like a fool at a flogging.”
In my imagination, I saw the giant's sad nod.
Jolenta was afraid of looking foolish, and what I am going to write now will sound foolish indeed, though it is
