The Duel of
Magic
The chamber beyond the one in which I had been
imprisoned seemed much like it, though its floor was higher. It
was, of course, utterly dark; but now that I was confident I was no
longer being observed, I took the Claw from its sack and looked
about me by its light, which was, though not bright,
sufficient.
There was no ladder, but a narrow door
gave access to what I assumed was a third subterranean room.
Concealing the Claw again, I stepped through it, but found myself
instead in a tunnel no wider than the doorway, which turned and
turned again before I had taken half a dozen strides. At first I
supposed it was simply a baffled passage to prevent light from
betraying the opening in the wall of the room where I had been
confined. But no more than three turns should have been necessary.
The walls seemed to bend and divide; yet I remained in impenetrable
darkness. I took out the Claw once more.
Perhaps because of the confined space
in which I stood, it seemed somewhat brighter; but there was
nothing to see beyond what my hands had already told me. I was
alone. I stood in a maze with earthen walls and a ceiling (now just
above my head) of rough poles; its narrow turnings quickly defeated
the light.
I was about to thrust the Claw away
again when I detected an odor at once pungent and alien. My nose is
by no means the sensitive one of the he-wolf in the tale—if
anything, have rather a poorer sense of smell than most people. I
thought I recognized the scent, but it was several moments before I
placed it as the one I had experienced in the antechamber on the
morning of our escape, when I returned for Jonas after talking to
the little girl. She had said that something, some nameless seeker,
had been snuffling among the prisoners there; and I had found a
viscous substance on the floor and wall where Jonas
lay.
I did not put the Claw back in its sack
after that; but though I crossed a fetid trail several times as I
wandered in the maze, I never glimpsed the creature that left it.
After what must have been a watch or more of wandering, I reached a
ladder that led up a short, open shaft. The square of daylight at
its top was at once blinding and delightful. For a time I basked in
it
without even setting foot on the ladder. If I were to climb it, it
seemed almost certain I would be recaptured at once; and yet I was
so hungry and thirsty by then that I could hardly keep myself from
doing so, and the thought of the foul thing that sought for me—it
was surely one of Hethor’s pets—made me want to bolt up it at
once.
At last I climbed cautiously up and
thrust my head above the level of the ground. I was not (as I had
supposed) in the village I had seen; the windings of the maze had
carried me beyond it to some secret exit. The great, silent trees
stood closer here, and the light that had appeared so brilliant to
me was the filtered green shade of their leaves. I emerged and
found that I had left a hole between two roots, a place so obscure
that I might have walked within a pace of it and yet not seen it.
If I could, I would have blocked it with some weight to prevent or
at least delay the escape of the creature that hunted me; but there
was no stone or other object to hand that would serve such a
purpose.
By the old trick of observing the slope
of the ground and in so far as possible always walking downhill, I
soon discovered a small stream. There was a little open sky above
it, and as nearly as I could judge, the day appeared eight or nine
watches over. Guessing that the village would not lie far from the
source of the good water I had found, I soon found that as well.
Wrapped in my fuligin cloak and standing in the deepest shade, I
observed it for some time. Once a man—not painted like the two who
had stopped us on the path—crossed the clearing. Once another left
the suspended hut, went to the spring and drank, then returned to
the hut.
It grew darker, and the strange village
woke. A dozen men left the suspended hut and began to pile wood in
the center of the clearing. Three more, robed and bearing forked
staffs, emerged from the house of the tree. Still others, who must
have been watching the jungle paths, slipped out of the shadows
soon after the fire was kindled and spread a cloth before
it.
One of the robed men stood with his
back to the fire while the other two crouched at his feet; there
was something extraordinary about them all, but I was reminded of
the bearing of exultants, rather than of the Hierodules I had seen
in the gardens of the House Absolute—it was the carriage that the
consciousness of leadership confers, even as it severs the leader
from common humanity. Painted and unpainted men sat cross-legged on
the ground, facing the three. I heard the murmur of voices and the
strong speech of the standing man, but I was too far to understand
what was said. After a time the crouching men rose. One opened his
robe like a tent, and Becan’s son, whom I had made my own, stepped
forth. The other produced Terminus Est in
the same manner and drew her, displaying her bright blade and the
black opal in her hilt to the crowd. Then one of the painted men
rose, came some distance toward me (so that I feared he was about
to see me, though I had covered my face with my mask) and lifted a
door set into the ground. Soon afterward he emerged from another
nearer the fire, and moving somewhat more rapidly went to the robed
men to report.
There could be little doubt of what he
was saying. I squared my shoulders and walked into the firelight.
“I am not there,” I said. “I am here.”
There was an inrush of many breaths,
and though I knew I might soon die, it was good to
hear.
The midmost of the robed men said, “As
you see, you cannot escape us. You were free, yet we drew you
back.” It was the voice that had interrogated me in my underground
cell.
I said, “If you have walked far in The
Way, you know you have less authority over me than the ignorant may
believe.” (It is not difficult to ape the way such people talk, for
it is itself an aping of the speech of ascetics, and such
priestesses as the Pelerines.) “You stole my son, who is also son
to The Beast Who Speaks, as you must know by this time if you have
much questioned him. To gain his return, I surrendered my sword to
your slaves, and for a time submitted myself to you. I will take it
up again now.”
There is a place in the shoulder that,
when pressed firmly with the thumb, paralyzes the entire arm. I
laid my hand on the shoulder of the robed man who held Terminus Est, and he dropped it at my feet. With more
presence of mind than I would have credited in a child, the boy
Severian picked it up and handed it to me. The midmost robed man
lifted his staff and shouted, “Arms!” and his followers rose as one
man. Many had the talons I have described, and many of the others
drew knives.
I fastened Terminus
Est over my shoulder in her accustomed place and said, “You
surely do not suppose that I require this ancient sword as a
weapon? She has higher properties, as you of all people should
know.”
The robed man who had produced little
Severian said hurriedly, “So Abundantius has just told us.” The
other man was still rubbing his arm.
I looked at the midmost robed man, who
was clearly the one referred to. His eyes were clever, and as hard
as stones. “Abundantius is wise,” I said. I was trying to think of
some way in which I could kill him without drawing the others down
on us. “He knows too, I think, of the curse that afflicts those who
harm the person of a magus.”
“You are a magus then,” Abundantius
said.
“I, who took the archon’s prey from out
of his hands and passed invisible through the midst of his army?
Yes, I have been called so.”
“Prove then that you are a magus and we
will hail you as a brother. But if you fail the test or refuse
it—we are many, and you have but one sword.”
“I will fail no fair assay,” I said.
“Though neither you nor your followers have authority to make
one.”
He was too clever to be drawn into such
a debate. “The test is known to all here except yourself, and
known, too, to be just. Everyone you see about you has succeeded in
it, or hopes to.”
They took me to a hall I had not seen before,
a place substantially built of logs, and hidden among the trees. It
had no windows, and only a single entrance. When torches were
carried inside, I saw that its one chamber was
unfurnished but for a carpet of woven grass, and so long in
proportion to its width that it seemed almost a
corridor.
Abundantius said, “Here you will have
your combat with Decuman.” He indicated the man whose arm I had
numbed, who was, perhaps, a trifle surprised at being thus singled
out. “You bested him by the fire. Now he must best you, if he can.
You may sit here, nearest the door, so that you may be assured we
cannot enter to give him aid. He will sit at the farther end. You
shall not approach one another, or touch one another as you touched
him by the fire. You must weave your spells, and in the morning we
shall come to see who has mastered.”
Taking little Severian by the hand, I
led him to the blind end of that dark place. “I’ll sit here,” I
said. “I have every confidence that you will not come to Decuman’s
aid, but you have no way of knowing whether I have confederates in
the jungle outside. You have offered to trust me, and so I shall
trust you.”
“It would be better,” Abundantius said,
“if you were to leave the child in our keeping.”
I shook my head. “I must have him with
me. He is mine, and when you robbed me of him on the path, you
robbed me too of half my power. I will not be separated from him
again.”
After a moment, Abundantius nodded. “As
you wish. We but desired that he might come to no
harm.”
“No harm will come to him,” I
said.
There were iron brackets on the walls,
and four of the naked men thrust their torches into them before
they left. Decuman seated himself cross-legged near the door, his
staff upon his lap. I sat too, and drew the boy to me. “I’m
scared,” he said; he buried his little face in my
cloak.
“You have every right to be. The past
three days have been bad ones for you.”
Decuman had begun a slow, rhythmic
chant.
“Little Severian, I want you to tell me
what happened to you on the path. I looked around and you were
gone.”
It took some comforting and coaxing,
but at last his sobs ceased. “They came out—the three-colored men
with claws, and I was afraid and ran away.”
“Is that all?”
“And then more three-colored men came
out and caught me, and they made me go into a hole in the ground,
where it was dark. And then they woke me and lifted me up, and I
was inside a man’s coat, and then you came and got
me.”
“Didn’t anyone ask you
questions?”
“A man in the dark.”
“I see. Little Severian, you mustn’t
ever run away again, the way you did on the path—do you understand?
Only run if I run too. If you hadn’t run away when we met the
three-colored men, we wouldn’t be here.”
The boy nodded.
“Decuman,” I called. “Decuman, can we
talk?”
He ignored me, save perhaps that his
murmured chant grew a trifle louder. His face was lifted so that he
appeared to be staring at the roof poles, but his eyes were
closed.
“What is he doing?” the boy
asked.
“He is weaving an
enchantment.”
“Will it hurt us?”
“No,” I said. “Such magic is mostly
fakery—like lifting you up through a hole so it would look as if
the other one had made you appear under his robe.”
Yet even as I spoke, I was conscious
there was something more. Decuman was concentrating his mind on me
as few minds can be concentrated, and I felt I was naked in some
brightly lit place where a thousand eyes watched. One of the
torches flickered, guttered, and went out. As the light in the hall
dimmed, the light I could not see seemed to grow
brighter.
I rose. There are ways of killing that
leave no mark, and I reviewed them mentally as I stepped
forward.
At once, pikes sprang from the walls,
an ell on either side. They were not such spears as soldiers have,
energy weapons whose heads strike bolts of fire, but simple poles
of wood tipped with iron, like the pilets the villagers of Saltus
had used. Nevertheless, they could kill at close range, and I sat
down again. The boy said, “I think they’re outside watching us
through the cracks between the logs.”
“Yes, I know that now
too.”
“What can we do?” he asked. And then
when I did not reply, “Who are these people, Father?”
It was the first time he had called me
that. I drew him closer, and it seemed to weaken the net Decuman
was knotting about my mind. I said, “I’m only guessing, but I would
say this is an academy of magicians—of those cultists who practice
what they believe are secret arts. They are supposed to have
followers everywhere—though I choose to doubt that—and they are
very cruel. Have you heard of the New Sun, little Severian? He is
the man who prophets say will come and drive back the ice and set
the world right.”
“He will kill Abaia,” the boy answered,
surprising me.
“Yes, he is supposed to do that as
well, and many other things. He is said to have come once before,
long ago. Did you know that?”
He shook his head.
“Then his task was to forge a peace
between humanity and the Increate, and he was called the
Conciliator. He left behind a famous relic, a gem called the Claw.”
My hand went to it as I spoke, and though I did not loosen the
drawstrings of the little sack of human skin that held it, I could
feel it through the soft leather. As soon as I touched it, the
invisible glare Decuman had created in my mind fell almost to
nothing. I cannot say now just why I had presumed for so long that
it was necessary for the Claw to be
taken from its place of concealment for it to be effective. I
learned that night that it was not so, and I laughed.
For a moment Decuman halted his chant,
and his eyes opened. Little Severian clutched me more tightly.
“Aren’t you afraid anymore?”
“No,” I said. “Could you see that I was
frightened?”
He nodded solemnly.
“What I was going to tell you was that
the existence of that relic seems to have given some people the
idea that the Conciliator used claws as weapons. I have sometimes
doubted that he existed; but if such a person ever lived, I’m sure
that he used his weapons largely against himself. Do you understand
what I am saying?”
I doubt that he did, but he
nodded.
“When we were on the path, we found a
charm against the coming of the New Sun. The three-colored men, who
I think are the ones who have passed this test, use claws of steel.
I think they must want to hold back the coming of the New Sun so
they can take his place and perhaps usurp his powers.
If—”
Outside, someone screamed.