The Urth of the New Sun

Chapter XVIII — The Examination

I RAN after him, and soon saw that, though long, his strides were clumsy — Baldanders had run better — and he was handicapped by having his arms pinioned at his back.

His was not the only handicap. My lame leg seemed to have a weight tied to its ankle, and I am sure our race gave me more pain than his fall had given him. The windows — charmed, perhaps, or perhaps merely cunning — crept by as I hobbled along. A few I looked through consciously, most I did not; yet they remain with me still, hidden in the dusty chamber that lies behind, or perhaps beneath, my mind. The scaffold where I once branded and decapitated a woman was there, a dark river bank, and the roof of a certain tomb.

I would have laughed at those windows, if I had not been laughing at myself already so that I would not weep. These Hierogrammates who ruled the universe and what lay beyond had not merely mistaken another for me, but now sought to remind me, who could forget nothing, of the scenes of my life; and did so (so it seemed to me) less skillfully than my own memories could have. For though every detail was present, there was something subtly mistaken about each view.

I could not stop, or at least I felt I could not; but at last I turned my head as I limped past one of these windows and truly studied it as I had not any of the others. It opened into the summerhouse on Abdiesus’s pleasure grounds where I had questioned and at last freed Cyriaca and in that single, long glance I understood at last that I saw these places not as I had seen them and remembered them but as Cyriaca, Jolenta, Agia and so on had perceived them. I was aware for example when I looked into the summer house, of a horrible yet benign presence just beyond the view framed by the window — myself.

That was the final window. The shadowy corridor had ended, and a second arch, brilliant with sunlight, rose in front of me. Seeing it, I knew with a sickening certainty only another who had grown up in the guild could understand, that I had lost my client.

I bolted through it and saw him standing bewildered in the portico of the Hall of Justice, surrounded by a surging crowd. At the same instant, he saw me and sought to push through them toward the principal entrance.

I called out for someone to stop him, but the crowd moved aside for him and seemed purposely to obstruct me. I felt as though I were in one of the nightmares I had suffered as Lictor of Thrax and that I would wake in a moment gasping for breath with the Claw pressing my chest.

A little woman dashed from the crowd and caught Zak by one arm, and he shook himself as a bull shakes to dislodge the darts in its hide. She fell, but grasped his ankle.

It was enough. I laid hold of him, and though I was lame once more here, where the greedy pull of Yesod was Urth’s or nearly, I was still strong and he still manacled. With an arm at his throat I bent him back like a bow. At once he relaxed; and I knew, in the mysterious way we sense another’s intent at times by a touch, that he would resist me no longer. I released him.

“Won’t fight,” he said. “No more run.”

“All right,” I told him, and stooped to raise the woman who had helped me. I recognized her then, and without much thought glanced down at her leg. It was perfectly normal, which is to say perfectly healed.

“Thank you,” I muttered. “Thank you, Hunna.”

She was staring. “I thought you were my mistress. I don’t know why.”

Often I have to make an effort to prevent Thecla’s voice from issuing from my lips. Now I permitted it. We said, “Thank you,” again, adding, “You were not mistaken,” and smiling at her confusion.

Shaking her head, she backed into the crowd, and I caught sight of a tall woman with dark, curling hair entering the arch through which I had taken Zak. Even after so many years, there could be no doubt, no doubt at all. We tried to call her name. It remained in our throat, leaving us sick and silent.

“Don’t cry,” Zak said, his deep voice somehow child-like. “Please don’t. I think it will be all right.”

I turned to tell him I was not, and realized I was. If I had ever wept before, it was when I was so small I can scarcely remember it — apprentices learn not to, and those who do not are tormented by the rest until death takes them. Thecla had cried at times, and had wept often in her cell; but I had just seen Thecla.

I said, “I’m crying because I want so much to follow her, and we must go inside.”

He nodded, and at once I took him by the arm and brought him into the Examination Chamber. The corridor along which the lady Apheta had sent me merely circled it, and I led Zak down a wide aisle, while the sailors watched from the banked benches on either side. There were many more places on the benches than sailors, however, so that the sailors occupied only the ones nearest the aisle.

Before us was the Seat of Justice, a seat far grander and more austere than any judge I had ever seen had occupied upon Urth. The Phoenix Throne was — or is, if it yet exists beneath the waters — a great, gilt armchair upon whose back is displayed an image of that bird, the symbol of immortality, worked in gold, jade, carnelian, and lapis lazuli; upon its seat (which would have been murderously uncomfortable without it) was a cushion of velvet, with golden tassels.

This Seat of Justice of the Hierogrammate Tzadkiel was as different as could be imagined, and indeed was hardly a chair at all, but only a colossal boulder of white stone, shaped by time and chance to resemble one about as much as the clouds in which we profess to see a lover’s face or the head of some paladin resemble the persons themselves.

Apheta had told me only that I would find a ring in the chamber, and for a moment or two, while Zak and I walked slowly down that long aisle, I searched for it with my eyes. It was what I had at first supposed to be the sole decoration of the Seat of Justice: a wrought circle of iron held by a great iron staple driven into the stone at the termination of one armrest. I looked then for the sliding link she had mentioned; there was none, but I led Zak toward the ring anyway, certain that when we reached it someone would step forward to assist me.

No one did, but when I looked at the manacle I understood as Apheta had said I would. The link was there; when I opened it, it seemed to me it slipped back so easily that Zak himself might have loosed it with a finger. It united loops of chain that held each wrist, so that when I removed it the whole affair dropped from him. I picked it up, put the chains about my own wrists, lifted my arms above my head so that I could put the ring into the link, and awaited my examination.

None took place. The sailors sat gaping at me. I had supposed that someone would take Zak, or he would flee. No one approached him. He seated himself on the floor at my feet, not cross-legged (as I would have sat in his place) but squatting in a way that reminded me at first of a dog, then of an atrox or some other great cat.

“I am the Epitome of Urth and all her peoples,” I told the sailors. It was the same speech the old Autarch had made, as I realized only after I had begun it, though his examination had been so different. “I am here because I hold them in me — men, women, and children too, poor and rich, old and young, those who would save our world if they could, and those who would rape its last life for gain.”

Unbidden, the words rose to the surface of my mind. “I am here also because I am by right the ruler of Urth. We have many nations, some larger than our Commonwealth and stronger; but we Autarchs, and we alone, think not merely of our own lands, but know our winds blow every tree and our tides wash every shore. This I have proved, because I stand here. And because I stand here, I prove it is my right.”

The sailors listened in silence to all this; but even as I spoke I looked past them for the others, for the lady Apheta and her companions, at least. They were not to be seen.

Yet there were other hearers. The crowd from the portico now stood in the doorway through which Zak and I had come; when I had finished they filed slowly into the Examination Chamber, coming not down the central aisle as we had, and as the sailors doubtless had, but dividing their column, left and right, into two that crept between the benches and the walls.

I caught my breath then, for Thecla was among them, and in her eyes I saw such pity and such sorrow as wrung my heart. I have not often been afraid, but I knew the pity and sorrow were for me, and I was frightened by the depth of them.

At last she turned from me, and I from her. That was when I saw Agilus in the crowd, and Morwenna, with her black hair and branded cheeks.

With them were a hundred more, prisoners from our oubliette and the Vincula of Thrax, felons I had scourged for provincial magistrates and murderers I had killed for them. And a hundred more besides: Ascians, tall Idas, and grim-mouthed Casdoe with little Severian in her arms; Guasacht and Erblon with our green battle flag.

I bent my head, staring at the floor while I awaited the first question.

No questions came. Not for a very long time — if I were to write here how long that time seemed to me, or even how long it actually was, I would not be believed. Before anyone spoke, the sun was low in the bright sky of Yesod, and Night had put long, dark fingers across the isle.

With Night came another. I heard the scrabble of its claws on the stone floor, then a child’s voice: “Can’t we go now?” The alzabo had come, and its eyes burned in the blackness that had entered through the doorway of the Examination Chamber.

“Are you held here?” I asked. “It is not I who hold you.”

Hundreds of voices cried out, saying, “Yes, we are held!”

I knew then that they were not to question me, but I to question them. Still I hoped it might not be so. I said, “Then go.” But not one moved.

“What is it I must ask you?” I asked. There was no reply.

Night came indeed. Because that building was all of white stone, with an aperture at the summit of its soaring dome, I had scarcely realized it was unlit. As the horizon rose higher than the sun, the Examination Chamber grew as dark as those rooms the Increate builds beneath the boughs of great trees. The faces blurred and went out, like the flames of candles; only the eyes of the alzabo caught the fading light and shone like two red embers.

I heard the sailors whispering among themselves with fear in their voices, and the soft sighing of knife blades clearing well-oiled sheaths. I called to them that there was no reason to be afraid, that these were my ghosts, and not theirs.

The voice of the child Severa cried, “We’re not ghosts!” with childish scorn. The red eyes came closer, and again there was the scrape of terrible claws on the stone floor. All the rest fidgeted in their places, so that the chamber echoed with the rustlings of their garments.

I wrenched futilely at the manacles, then fumbled for the sliding link and shouted to Zak not to try to stop the alzabo without a weapon.

Gunnie called (for I recognized her voice), “She’s only a child, Severian.”

I answered, “She’s dead! The beast speaks through her.”

“She’s riding on its back. They’re here by me.”

My numb fingers had found the link, but I did not open it, knowing with a sudden certainty that could not be denied that if I were to free myself now and hide among the sailors, as I had planned, I would surely have failed.

“Justice!” I shouted to them. “I tried to act justly, and you know that! You may hate me, but can you say I harmed you without cause?”

A dark figure sprang up. Steel gleamed like the alzabo’s eyes. Zak sprang too, and I heard the clatter of the weapon as it struck the stone floor.