we were. “I was happy to hear something now of my half-sister. That house you spoke of is mine now, you know, though I can’t claim it. To recompense you, I warn you of the supper we will soon share. You didn’t seem receptive of the hints Vodalus flung you. Did you understand them?”
When Jonas said nothing, I shook my head.
“If we, and our allies and masters who wait in the countries beneath the tides, are to triumph, we must absorb all that can be learned of the past. Do you know of the analeptic alzabo?”
I said, “No, Chatelaine, but I have heard tales of the animal of that name. It is said it can speak, and that it comes by night to a house where a child has died, and cries to be let in.”
Thea nodded. “That animal was brought from the stars long ago, as were many other things for the benefit of Urth. It is a beast having no more intelligence than a dog, and perhaps less. But it is a devourer of carrion and a clawer at graves, and when it has fed upon human flesh it knows, at least for a time, the speech and ways of human beings. The analeptic alzabo is prepared from a gland at the base of the animal’s skull. Do you understand me?”
When she had gone, Jonas would not look at me, nor I at his face; we both knew what feast it was we were to attend that night.
XI
Thecla
After we had sat, so it seemed to me, for a long time (though it was probably no more than a few moments), I could tolerate what I felt no longer. I went to the margin of the brook, and kneeling there on the soft earth spewed out the dinner I had eaten with Vodalus; and when there was nothing more to come forth, I remained where I was, retching and shivering, and rinsing my face and mouth, while the cold, clear water washed away the wine and half-digested meat I had brought up.
When at last I was able to stand, I returned to Jonas and told him, “We must go.”
He looked at me as though he pitied me, and I suppose he did. “Vodalus’s fighting men are all around us.”
“You were not sick, I see, the way I was. But you heard who their allies are. Perhaps Chuniald was lying.”
“I’ve heard our guards walking among the trees—they’re not as silent as all that. You have your sword, Severian, and I have a knife, but Vodalus’s men will have bows. I noticed that most of those who sat with us at table did. We can try to hide behind the trunks like alouattes …”
I understood what he meant, and said, “Alouattes are shot every day.”
“Still, no one hunts them by night. It would be dark in a watch or less.”
“You will go with me if we wait until then?” I thrust out my hand.
Jonas clasped it. “Severian, my poor friend, you told me of seeing Vodalus—and this Chatelaine Thea and another man—beside a violated grave. Didn’t you know what it was they planned to do with what they got there?”
I had known, of course, but it had been a remote and seemingly irrelevant knowledge then. Now I found I had nothing to say, and indeed almost no thoughts at all outside the hope that night would come quickly.
The men Vodalus sent for us came more quickly still: four burly fellows who might have been peasants and carried berdiches, and a fifth, with something of the armiger about him, who wore an officer’s spadroon. Perhaps these men were in the crowd before the dais who had watched us arrive; at any rate, they seemed determined to take no risks with us and surrounded us with their weapons at the ready even while they hailed us as friends and comrades in arms. Jonas put as brave a face on it as a man could, and chatted with them while they escorted us down the forest paths; I could think of nothing but the ordeal ahead, and walked as I might have to the end of the world.
Urth turned her face from the sun’s as we traveled. No glimmer of starlight seemed to penetrate the thronging leaves, yet our guides knew the way so well they hardly slowed. With each step I took, I wanted to ask if we would be forced to join in the meal to which we were led, but I