[New Sun 04] The Citadel of the Autarch

“I have never lived. I will cease thinking. Break the glass.”

“You do live.”

“I neither grow, nor move, nor respond to any stimulus save thought, which is counted no response. I am incapable of propagating my kind, or any other. Break the glass.”

“If you are indeed unliving, I would rather find someway to stir you to life.”

“So much for brotherhood. When you were imprisoned here, Thecla, and that boy brought you the knife, why did not you look for more life then?”

The blood burned in my cheek, and I lifted the ebony baculus, but I did not strike. “Alive or dead, you have a penetrating intelligence. Thecla is that part of me most prone to anger.”

“If you had inherited her glands with her memories, I would have succeeded.”

“And you know that. How can you know so much, who are Mind?”

“The acts of coarse minds create minute vibrations that stir the waters of this bottle. I hear your thoughts.”

“I notice that I hear yours. How is it that I can hear them, and not others?”

Looking now directly into the pinched face, which was lit by the sun’s last shaft penetrating a dusty port, I could not be sure the lips moved at all. “You hear yourself, as ever. You cannot hear others because your mind shrieks always, like an infant crying in a basket. Ah, I see you remember that.”

“I remember a time very long ago when I was cold and hungry. I lay upon my back, encircled by brown walls, and heard the sound of my own screams. Yes, I must have been an infant Not old enough to crawl, I think. You are very clever. What am I thinking now?”

“That I am but an unconscious exercise of your own power, as the Claw was. It is true, of course. I was deformed, and died before birth, and have been kept here since in white brandy. Break the glass.”

“I would question you first,” I said.

“Brother, there is an old man with a letter at your door.”

I listened. It was strange, after having listened only to his words in my mind, to hear real noises again—the calling of the sleepy blackbirds among the towers and the tapping at the door.

The messenger was old Rudesind, who had guided me to the picture-room of the House Absolute. I motioned him in (to the surprise, I think, of the sentries) because I wanted to talk to him and knew that with him I had no need to stand upon my dignity.

“Never been in here in all my years,” he said. “How can I help you. Autarch?”

“We’re served already, just by the sight of you. You know who we are, don’t you? You recognized us when we met before.”

“If I didn’t know your face. Autarch, I’d know a couple dozen times over anyhow. I’ve been told that often. Nobody here talks about anything else, seems like. How you was licked to shape right here.

How they seen you this time and that time. How you looked, and what you said to them. There ain’t one cook that didn’t treat you to a pastry often. All them soldiers told you stories. Been a while now since I met a woman didn’t kiss you and sew up a hole in your pants. You had a dog—”

“That’s true enough,” I said. “We did.”

“And a cat and a bird and a coti that stole apples. And you climbed every wall in this place. And jumped off after, or else swung on a rope, or else hid and pretended you’d jumped. You’re every boy that’s ever been here, and I’ve heard stories put on you that belong to men that was old when I was just a boy, and I’ve heard about things I did myself, seventy years ago.”

“We’ve already learned that the Autarch’s face is always concealed behind the mask the people weave for him. No doubt it’s a good thing; you can’t become too proud once you understand how different you really are from the thing they bow to. But we want to hear about you. The old Autarch told us you were his sentinel in the House Absolute, and now we know you’re a servant of Father Inire’s.”

“I am,” the old man said. “I have that honour, and it’s his letter I carry.” He held up a small and somewhat smudged envelope.

“And we are Father Inire’s master.”

He made a countrified bow. “I know so. Autarch.”

“Then we order you to sit down, and rest yourself. We’ve questions to ask you, and we don’t want to keep a man your age standing. When we were that boy you say everyone’s talking of, or at least not much older, you directed us to Master Ultan’s stacks. Why did you do that?”

“Not because I knew something others didn’t. Not because my master ordered it, either, if that’s what you’re thinking. Won’t you read his letter?”

“In a moment. After an honest answer, in a few words.”

The old man hung his head and pulled at his thin beard. I could see the dry skin of his face rise in hollow-sided, tiny cones as it sought to follow the white hairs. “Autarch, you think I guessed at something back then. Perhaps some did. Perhaps my master did, I don’t know.” His rheumy eyes rolled up under his brows to look at me then fell again. “You were young, and seemed a likely-looking boy, so I wanted you to see.”

“To see what?”

“I’m an old man. An old man then, and an old man now. You’ve grown up since. I see it in your face. I’m hardly any older because that much time isn’t anything to me. If you counted all the time I’ve spent just going up and down my ladder, it’d be longer than that. I wanted you to see there has been a lot come before you. That there was thousands and thousands that lived and died before you was ever thought of, some better than you. I mean. Autarch, the way you was then. You’d think anybody growing up here in the old Citadel would be born knowing all that, but I’ve found they’re not. Being around it all the time, they don’t see it. But going down there to Master Ultan brings it home to the cleverer ones.”

“You are the advocate of the dead.”

The old man nodded. “I am. People talk about being fair to this one and that one, but nobody I ever heard talks about doing right by them. We take everything they had, which is all right. And spit, most often, on their opinions, which I suppose is all right too. But we ought to remember now and then how much or what we have we got from them. I figure while I’m still here I ought to put a word in for them.—And now, if you don’t mind. Autarch, I’ll just lay the letter here on this funny table—”

“Rudesind ...”

“Yes, Autarch?”

“Are you going to clean your paintings?”

He nodded again. “That’s one reason I’m eager to be gone, Autarch. I was at the House Absolute until my master—” here he paused and seemed to swallow, as men do when they fed they have perhaps said too much “—went away north. Got a Fechin to dean, and I’m behind.”

“Rudesind, we already know the answers to the question you think we are going to ask. We know your master is what the people call a cacogen, and that for whatever reason, he is one of those few who have chosen to cast their lots entirely with humanity, remaining on Urth as a human being. The Cumaean is another such, though perhaps you did not know that. We even know that your master was with us in the jungles of the north, where he tried until it was too late to rescue my predecessor. We only want to say that if a young man with an errand comes past again while you are on your ladder, you are to send him to Master Ultan. That is our order.”