Shadow & Claw (The Book of the New Sun #1-2 ) - Gene Wolfe Page 0,34
me—”
Just at that moment, a man I had not seen previously came running up to the table with a look that indicated he bore urgent news. Vodalus rose and walked a few paces away with him, looking very much, I thought, like a handsome schoolmaster with a boy, for the messenger’s head was no higher than his shoulder.
I ate, thinking he would soon return; but after a long questioning of the messenger he walked away with him, disappearing among the broad trunks of the trees. One by one the others rose too, until no one remained but the beautiful Thea, Jonas and me, and one other man.
“You are to join us,” Thea said at last in her cooing voice. “Yet you do not know our Ways. Have you need of money?”
I hesitated, but Jonas said, “That’s something that’s always welcome, Chatelaine, like the misfortunes of an older brother.”
“Shares will be set aside for you, from this day, of all we take. When you return to us, they will be given to you. Meanwhile I have a purse for each of you to speed you on your way.”
“We are going, then?” I asked.
“Were you not told so? Vodalus will instruct you at the supper.”
I had supposed the meal we were eating would be the final one of the day, and the thought must have been reflected in my face.
“There will be a supper tonight, when the moon is bright,” Thea said. “Someone will be sent to fetch you.” Then she quoted a scrap of verse:
“Dine at dawn to open your eyes,
Dine at noon that you be strong.
Dine at eve, and then talk long,
Dine by night, if you’d be wise …
But now my servant Chuniald will take you to a place where you can rest for your journey.”
The man, who had been silent until now, stood and said, “Come with me.”
I told Thea, “I would speak with you, Chatelaine, when we have more leisure. I know something that concerns your schoolmate.”
She saw that I was serious in what I said, and I saw that she had seen. Then we followed Chuniald through the trees for a distance, I suppose, of a league or more, and at length reached a grassy bank beside a stream. “Wait here,” he said. “Sleep if you can. No one will come until after dark.”
I asked, “What if we were to leave?”
“There are those all through this wood who know our liege’s will concerning you,” he said, and turning on his heel, walked away.
Then I told Jonas what I had seen beside the opened grave, just as I have written it here.
“I see,” he remarked when I was finished, “why you will join this Vodalus. But you must realize that I am your friend, not his. What I desire is to find the woman you call Jolenta. You want to serve Vodalus, and to go to Thrax and begin a new life in exile, and to wipe out the stain you say you have made on the honor of your guild—though I confess I don’t understand how such a thing can be stained—and to find the woman called Dorcas, and to make peace with the woman called Agia while returning something we both know of to the women called Pelerines.”
He was smiling by the time he finished this list, and I was laughing.
“And though you remind me of the old man’s kestrel, that sat on a perch for twenty years and then flew off in all directions, I hope you achieve these things. But I trust you realize that it is possible—just barely possible, perhaps, but possible—that one or two of them may get in the way of four or five of the others.”
“What you’re saying is very true,” I admitted. “I’m striving to do all those things, and although you won’t credit it, I am giving all my strength and as much of my attention as can be of any benefit to all of them. Yet I have to admit things aren’t going as well as they might. My divided ambitions have landed me in no better place than the shade of this tree, where I am a homeless wanderer. While you, with your single-minded pursuit of one all-powerful objective … look where you are.”
In such talk we passed the watches of late afternoon. Birds twittered overhead, and it was very pleasant to have such a friend as Jonas, loyal, reasonable, tactful, and filled with wisdom, humor, and prudence. At that time I had no hint of