Shadow & Claw (The Book of the New Sun #1-2 ) - Gene Wolfe Page 0,26

ending with the steps I had heard far below ground.

“You’re a strange man,” was all he said.

“You are stranger than I. You don’t want people to know it, but you’re a foreigner of some kind.”

He smiled. “A cacogen?”

“An outlander.”

Jonas shook his head, then nodded. “Yes, I suppose I am. But you—you have this talisman that lets you command nightmares, and you have discovered a hoard of silver. Yet you talk about it to me as someone else might talk about the weather.”

I took a bit of bread. “It is strange, I agree. But the strangeness resides in the Claw, the thing itself, and not in me. As for talking about it to you, why shouldn’t I? If I were to steal your gold, I could sell it and spend the money, but I don’t think things would go well for someone who stole the Claw. I don’t know why I think that, but I do, and of course Agia stole it. As for the silver—”

“And she put it in your pocket?”

“In the sabretache that hangs from my belt. She thought her brother would kill me, remember. Then they were going to claim my body—they had planned that already, so they’d get Terminus Est and my habit. She would have had my sword and clothes and the gem too, and meanwhile, if it were found, I would be blamed and not she. I remember …”

“What?”

“The Pelerines. They stopped us as we were trying to get out. Jonas, do you think it’s true that some people can read the thoughts of others?”

“Of course.”

“Not everyone is so sure. Master Gurloes used to speak favorably of the idea, but Master Palaemon wouldn’t hear of it. Still, I think the chief priestess of the Pelerines could, at least to some degree. She knew Agia had taken something, and that I had not. She made Agia strip so they could search her, but they didn’t search me. Later they destroyed their cathedral, and I think that must have been because of the loss of the Claw—it was the Cathedral of the Claw, after all.”

Jonas nodded thoughtfully.

“But none of this is what I wanted to ask you about. I’d like your opinion of the footsteps. Everyone knows about Erebus and Abaia and the other beings in the sea who will come to land someday. Nevertheless, I think you know more about them than most of the rest of us.”

Jonas’s face, which had been so open before, was closed and guarded now. “And why do you think that?”

“Because you’ve been a sailor, and because of the story about the beans—the story you told at the gate. You must have seen my brown book when I was reading it upstairs. It tells all the secrets of the world, or at least what various mages have said they were. I haven’t read it all or even half of it, though Thecla and I used to read an entry every few days and spend the time between readings arguing about it. But I’ve noticed that all the explanations in that book are simple, and seemingly childish.”

“Like my story.”

I nodded. “Your story might have come out of the book. When I first carried it to Thecla, I supposed it was intended for children, or for adults who enjoyed childish things. But when we had talked about some of the thoughts in it, I understood that they had to be expressed in that way or they couldn’t be expressed at all. If the writer had wanted to describe a new way to make wine or the best way to make love, he could have used complex and accurate language. But in the book he really wrote he had to say, ‘In the beginning was only the hexaemeron,’ or ‘It is not to see the icon standing still, but to see the still standing.’ The thing I heard underground … was that one of them?”

“I didn’t see it.” Jonas rose. “I’m going out now to sell the mace, but before I go I’m going to tell you what all housewives sooner or later tell their husbands: ‘Before you ask more questions, think about whether you really want to know the answers.’”

“One last question,” I said, “and then I promise I won’t ask you anything more. When we were going through the Wall, you said the things we saw in there were soldiers, and you implied they had been stationed there to resist Abaia and the others. Are the man-apes soldiers of the same kind?