Shadow & Claw (The Book of the New Sun #1-2 ) - Gene Wolfe Page 0,44

eyes was half open. I had seen corpses often before, but I could not escape the eerie feeling that he was in some sense watching me, the man who had killed him to save himself. To turn my mind to other things, I said, “After I cut the first one, it seemed to fly more slowly.”

Jonas had placed the horror he had drawn out in the vasculum and was extracting a second from the right nostril; he murmured, “The speed of any flying thing depends on its wing area. If that weren’t the case, the adepts who use these creatures would tear them into scraps before they sent them forth, I suppose.”

“You sound as though you’ve encountered them before.”

“We docked once at a port where they’re used in ritual murders. I suppose it was inevitable that someone would bring them home, but these are the first I’ve seen here.” He opened the brass lid and laid the second fuligin thing on the first, which stirred sluggishly. “They’ll recombine in there—this is what the adepts do to get them back together. I doubt if you noticed it, but they were torn somewhat in going through the wood and healed themselves in flight.”

“There’s one more,” I said.

He nodded and used his steel hand to force open the dead man’s mouth; instead of holding teeth and livid tongue and gums it appeared to be a bottomless gulf, and for a moment my stomach churned. Jonas drew out the third creature, streaked with the dead man’s saliva.

“Wouldn’t he have had a nostril open, or his mouth, if I hadn’t cut the thing a second time?”

“Until they worked their way into his lungs. We’re lucky, actually, to have been able to get to him so quickly. Otherwise you would have had to slice the body open to get them out.”

A wisp of smoke called to mind the burning cedar. “If it was heat they wanted …”

“They prefer life’s heat, though they can sometimes be distracted by a fire of living vegetable matter. It’s something more than heat, I think, really. Perhaps some radiant energy characteristic of growing cells.” Jonas stuffed the third creature into the vasculum and snapped it shut. “We called them notules, because they usually came after dark, when they could not be seen, and the first warning we had was a breath of warmth; but I have no idea what the natives call them.”

“Where is this island?”

He looked at me curiously.

“Is it far from the coast? I’ve always wanted to see Uroboros, though I suppose it is dangerous.”

“Very far,” Jonas said in a flat voice. “Very far indeed. Wait a moment.”

I waited, watching, as he strode to the riverbank. He threw the vasculum hard—it had almost reached midstream when it dropped into the water. When he returned I asked, “Couldn’t we have used those things ourselves? It doesn’t seem likely that whoever sent them is going to give up now, and we might have need of them.”

“‘They would not obey us, and the world is better without them anyway,’ as the butcher’s wife told him when she cut away his manhood. Now we’d best be going. There’s somebody coming down the road.”

I looked where Jonas had pointed, and saw two figures on foot. He had caught his destrier by the halter as it drank and was ready to climb into the saddle. “Wait,” I said. “Or go on a chain or two and wait for me there.” I was thinking of the man-ape’s bleeding stump, and I seemed to see the dim votive lights of the cathedral hanging, crimson and magenta, among the trees. I reached into my boot, far down where I had pushed it for safety, and drew out the Claw.

It was the first time I had seen it by full daylight. It caught the sun and flashed like a New Sun itself, not blue only but with every color from violet to cyan. I laid it on the uhlan’s forehead, and for an instant tried to will him alive.

“Come on,” Jonas called. “What are you doing?”

I did not know how to answer him.

“He’s not quite dead,” Jonas called. “Get off the road before he finds his lance!” He lashed his mount.

Faintly, a voice I seemed to recognize called, “Master!” I turned my head to look down at the grass-grown highway.

“Master!” One of the travelers waved an arm, and both began to run.

“It’s Hethor,” I said; but Jonas had gone. I looked back at the uhlan. Both his eyes were