The Urth of the New Sun

Chapter XV — Yesod

BY ALL logic, I ought to have climbed down that cable to the ship, but I did not. I had caught it at a point near enough to the ship that the jibsails somewhat blocked my view, and I (whether thinking myself indestructible or already destroyed, I cannot say) climbed instead until I reached the detached mast itself, and then out upon a tilted yard to the end; and there I clung and watched.

What I saw cannot truly be described, though I will attempt it. The blue star was already a disk of clear azure. I have said it was not so distant as the ghost stars. But it was truly there, as they were not; so who is to say which was farthest? As I stared at it, I became more aware of their falsity — not merely that they were not where they appeared to be, but that they did not exist at all, that they were not merely phantoms, but, like most phantoms, lies. The azure disk widened until at last I saw it streaked with wisps of cloud. Then I laughed to myself, and in laughing was suddenly aware of my danger, aware that I might perish at any moment for having done as I had done. Yet I remained where I was for some time more.

Into the center of that disk we plunged, so that for a moment there was a ring of ebony set with ghostly stars all around our ship, the Diadem of Briah.

Then we were through and seemed suspended in azure light; behind us, where once I had seen the corona lucis of the young suns, I now saw our universe, a circle no larger than an ebon moon in the sky of Yesod, a moon that soon shrank to a solitary mote, then vanished.

If you who may someday read this retain the least respect for me despite the manifold follies I have recounted, you must lose it now, for I am about to tell you how I started as a baby does to see a turnip ghost. When Jonas and I rode to the House Absolute, we were attacked by Hethor’s notules, mirror-fetched creatures that fly like so many scraps of scorched parchment up a chimney, but for all their insubstantiality can kill. Now I, looking aft toward the vanishing of Briah, thought to see such creatures again, but of silver, not fuligin as the notules were.

And I was struck by terror and sought to hide myself behind the yard. A moment later I realized what they were, as you have no doubt realized already — mere tatters torn from the gossamer burden of the ruined mast and whipped to frenzy by a wind. Yet that meant there was an atmosphere here, however thin, and not the void. I looked at the ship and saw it in all its vastness bare, all its sails vanished, ten thousand masts and a hundred thousand spars standing like a wood in winter.

How strange it was to cling there, breathing my own already outworn atmosphere, knowing but never feeling the mighty tempest that raged around me. I pulled both necklaces from my neck, and at once I was nearly torn from my perch, my ears filled with the roaring of a hurricane.

And I drank in that air! Words cannot do it justice save by saying that it was the air of Yesod, icy cold and golden with life. Never before had I tasted such air, and yet I seemed to know it.

It stripped my torn shirt from my back and sent it flapping off to join the scraps of the ruined sails, and in that instant I knew it indeed. On the evening I departed the Old Citadel for exile, I walked the Water Way, seeing the argosies and carracks that plied the wide river-road of Gyoll, and a wind had sprung up that sent my guild cloak billowing behind me and told me of the north; now that wind blew again, chanting loud of new years and singing all the songs of a new world.

But where? Beneath our ship, I saw nothing but an azure bowl and such wisps of cloud as I had beheld while we were yet in the old and soiled universe standing before this. After a moment or two (for it was an agony to remain inactive in that air) I gave up the puzzle and began the climb down to the ship.

And then I saw it — not below, where I had looked, but over my head, a vast and noble curve stretching away to either side, with white cloud flying between ourselves and it, a world all speckled over with blue and green like the egg of a wild bird.

And I saw a thing stranger still — the coming of Night to that new world. Like a brother of the guild, she wore a cloak of fuligin, spreading it over all that fair world as I watched, so that I recalled she had been the mother of Noctua in the tale I had once read Jonas from the brown book, that dire-wolves had frisked about her heels like puppies, and she had passed behind Hesperus and Sirus; and I wondered what made the ship fly on as it did, outracing the night, when its sails were furled and no light could urge it forward.

In the air of Urth, the ships of the Hierodules went where they would, and even the ship that had carried me (with Idas and Purn, though I had not known it) to this ship had initially made use of other means. Clearly this ship commanded them too, but it seemed strange her captain urged her straight on in such a way. As I climbed down, I considered these things — finding it easier to consider them than to come to any conclusion.

Before I reached the deck, the ship herself was plunged in darkness. The wind blew unabated, as though to sweep me away. It seemed to me that I should now feel the attraction of Yesod, but there was only the slight pull of the holds, as it had been in the void. At last I was so foolish as to try a short leap. The hurricane breath of Yesod caught me like a windblown leaf, and my leap sent me tumbling down the deck like a gymnast; I was fortunate that it did not send me crashing into a mast.

Bruised and bewildered, I groped along the deck in search of a hatch. I found none, and I had reconciled myself to waiting for day when day came, as sudden as the voice of a trumpet. The sun of Yesod was of purest white-hot gold, and it lifted itself above a dark horizon as sharply curved as the top of a buckler.

For an instant it seemed to me that I heard the voices of the Gandharvas, the singers before the throne of the Pancreator. Then I saw far ahead of the ship (for my wanderings in search of a hatch had taken me nearly to the bow) the far-spreading wings of a great bird. We rushed toward it like an avalanche, but it saw us, and with a single beat of those mighty wings rose above us, singing still. Its wings were white, its breast like frost; and if a lark of Urth may be likened to a flute, the voice of this bird of Yesod was an orchestra, for it seemed to have many voices that sang all together, some high and piercingly sweet, some deeper than any drum.

Cold though I was — and I felt nearly frozen — I could not but stop and listen to it; and when it was astern and out of hearing, and I could see it no longer because of the thronging masts, I looked forward again for another.

There was none, but the sky was not empty. A ship of a kind new to me sailed there on wings wider than the bird’s and as slender as sword blades. We passed beneath it as we had passed beneath the bird; when we did, it folded its long wings and dove at us, so that I thought for a moment it must crash into us and perish, for it had not a thousandth part of our bulk.

It passed above the top of the masts as a dart flies over the spears of an army, drew ahead of us once more, and settled on our bowsprit until it lay there as a pard stretches itself upon some slender branch to watch a trail for deer, or to bask in the sun.

I waited for the crew of the smaller ship to appear, but they did not. After a moment, it seemed their ship held ours more closely than I had supposed; and after a moment more, as I watched wondering — that I had been mistaken to think it a ship at all and surely wrong to believe I had seen it hanging alone, argent against that cerulean world, or soaring above the forest of our masts. Rather it seemed a part of our own ship, of the ship on which I had now sailed (as it seemed to me) for so long, an oddly thickened bowsprit or beakhead, its wings no more than flying braces to hold it the more firmly to the bow.

Soon I recalled that when the old Autarch had been brought to Yesod, just such a ship had come for him. Glorying, I raced over the deck searching for a hatch; and it was good to run in that cold and in that air, though every limping stride stung my feet; and at last I leaped up, and the wind took me again as I had known it would and bore me far down that immense hull before I could seize hold of a backstay that nearly tore my arms from their sockets.

It was enough. In my wild flight I had caught sight of the rent through which my little command had climbed to the deck. I ran to it and plunged into the familiar warmth and errant gleams of the interior.

That voice which could never be distinctly heard and yet could always be understood thundered in every corridor, calling for the Epitome of Urth; and I ran on, happy for the warmth, feeling the pure air of Yesod penetrate even here, sure that my time of testing was at last at hand, or nearly so.

Parties of sailors were searching the ship, but for a long while I could not make contact with them, though I could hear them all about me, and sometimes catch a glimpse of one. At last, opening a shadowy door, I stepped through onto a grillwork platform and saw in the dim radiance from overhead a vast plain of jumbled lumber and machinery, where papers spilled like banks of dirty snow and scented dust lay in pools like water. If it were not the spot from which Sidero had thrown me, it was very like it.

Toward me across this space moved a small procession, and after a moment I realized it was a triumphal one. Many of the sailors carried lights, and slashed the dimness with their beams to create fantastic patterns, while others capered or danced. Some were singing:

And so on.

Not all those in this procession were sailors, however. I saw several beings of polished metal, and indeed after a moment I realized that one was Sidero himself, easily identified because his arm had not been repaired.

A little separated from all these were three figures new to me, a man and two women in cloaks; and ahead of them, leading the column as it seemed, a naked man taller than any of the rest, who walked with his head bowed and his long, fair hair falling over his face. At first I believed him deep in thought, for his hands seemed clasped at his back, and I had often walked so myself, pondering the manifold difficulties that beset our Commonwealth; then I saw that his wrists were bound behind him.