Epiphany of the Long Sun (29 page)

A dark little hallway beyond the kitchen door led to the stair, and the door by which they had entered the house. He steadied himself against the newel post, half hoping to hear the old man on the floor above or even to see him descending again, but the old house could not have been more silent if he and Oreb had been alone in it; it puzzled him until he recalled the canvas mats on the floor of the salon.

Unbolting the door, he stepped into the empty, skylit street. The tunnels through which he had trudged for so many weary hours presumably underlay the Palatine, as they seemed to underlie everything; but they would almost certainly be patrolled by soldiers like the one from whom he had escaped. He knew of no entrance except Scylla's lakeshore shrine in any case, and was glad at that moment that he did not. A big hole, Oreb had said. Was it possible that Oreb, also, had wandered in those dread-filled tunnels?

Shuddering at the memories he had awakened, Silk limped away toward the Palatine with renewed determination, telling himself that his ankle did not really hurt half so much as he believed it did. His gaze was on the rutted potholed street, for he knew that despite what he might tell himself, twisting his ankle would put an end to walking; but regardless of all the self-discipline he brought to bear, his thoughts threaded the tunnels once more, and hand-in-hand with Mamelta reentered that curious structure (not unlike a tower, but a tower thrust into the ground instead of rising into the air) that she had called a ship, and again beheld below it emptiness darker than any night and gleaming points of light that the Outsider-at his enlightenment!-had indicated were whorls, whorls outside the whorl, to which dead Pas and deathless Echidna, Scylla and her siblings had never penetrated.

You was goin' to get me out. Said you would. Promised.

Auk, who could not quite see Gelada, heard him crying in the wind that filled the pitch-black tunnel, while Gelada's tears dripped from the rock overhead. The two-card boots he had always kept well greased were sodden above the ankle now. "Bustard?" he called hopefully. "Bustard?"

Bustard did not reply.

You had the word, you said. Get me out O' here. "I saw you that time, off to one side." Unable to remember when or where he had said it last, Auk repeated, "I got eyes like a cat."

It was not quite true because Gelada had vanished when he had turned his head, yet it seemed a good thing to say. Gelada might walk wide if he thought he was being watched.

Auk? That your name? Auk? "Sure. I told you." Where's the Juzgado, Auk? Lot o' doors down here. Which 'uns that 'un, Auk? "I dunno. Maybe the same word opens 'em all."

This was the widest tunnel he had seen, except he couldn't see it. The walls to either side were lost in the dark, and he might, for all he knew, be walking at a slant, might run into the wall slantwise with any step. From time to time he waved his arms, touching nothing. Oreb flapped ahead, or maybe it was a bat, or nothing.

(Far away a woman's voice called, "
Auk? Auk?
")

The tunnel wall was aglow now, but still dark, dark with a peculiar sense of light-a luminous blackness. The toe of one boot kicked something solid, but his groping fingers found nothing.

"Auk, my noctolater, are you lost?"

The voice was near yet remote, a man's, deep and laden with sorrow.

"No, I ain't. Who's that?"

"Where are you going, Auk? Truthfully."

"Looking for Bustard." Auk waited for another question, but none came. The thing he had kicked was a little higher than his knees, flat on top, large and solid feeling. He sat on it facing the luminous dark, drew up his legs, and untied his boots. "Bustard's my brother, older than me. He's dead now, took on a couple Hoppies and they killed him. Only he's been down here with me a lot, giving me advice and telling me stuff, I guess because this is under the ground and it's where he lives on account of being dead."

"He left you."

"Yeah, he did. He generally does that if I start talking to somebody else." Auk pulled off his right boot; his foot felt colder than Dace had after Gelada killed him. "What's a noctolater?"

"One who worships by night, as you worship me."

Auk looked up, startled. "You a god?"

"I am Tartaros, Auk, the god of darkness. I have heard you invoke me many times, always by night."

Auk traced the sign of addition in the air. "Are you standing over there in the dark talking to me?"

"It is always dark where I stand, Auk. I am blind."

"I didn't know that." Black rams and lambs, the gray ram when Patera Silk got home safely, once a black goat, first of all the pair of bats he'd caught himself, surprised by day in the dark, dusty attic of the palaestra and brought to Patera Pike, all for this blind god. "You're a god. Can't you make yourself see?"

"No." The hopeless negative seemed to fill the tunnel, hanging in the blackness long after its sound had faded. "I am an unwilling god, Auk. The only unwilling god. My father made me do this. If, as a god, I might have healed myself, I would have obeyed very willingly, I believe."

"I asked my mother… Asked Maytera to bring a god down here to walk with us. I guess she brought you."

"No," Tartaros said again; then, "I come here often, Auk. It is the oldest altar we have."

"This I'm sitting on? I'll get off."

(Again the woman's voice: "
Auk? Auk?
")

"You may remain. I am also the sole humble god, Auk, or nearly."

"If it's sacred…"

"Wood was heaped upon it, and the carcasses of animals. You profane it no more than they. When the first people came, Auk, they were shown how we desired to be worshiped. Soon, they were made to forget. They did, but because they had seen what they had seen, a part of them remembered, and when they found our altars on the inner surface, they sacrificed as we had taught them. First of all, here."

"I haven't got anything," Auk explained. "I used to have a bird, but he's gone. I thought I heard a bat a little while ago. I'll try to catch one, if you'd like that."

"You think me thirsty for blood, like my sister Scylla."

"I guess. I was with her awhile." Auk tried to remember when that had been; although he recalled incidents-seeing her naked on a white stone and cooking fish for her-the days and the minutes slipped and slid.

"What is it you wish, Auk?"

Suddenly he was frightened. "Nothing really, Terrible Tartaros."

"Those who offer us sacrifice always wish something, Auk. Often, many things. Rain, in your city and many others."

"It's raining down here already, Terrible Tartaros."

"I know, Auk."

"If you're blind…"

"Can you see it, Auk?"

He shook his head. "It's too shaggy dark."

"But you hear it. Hear the slow splash of the falling drops kissing the drops that fell."

"I feel it, too," Auk told the god. "Every once in a while one goes down the back of my neck."

"What is it you wish, Auk?"

"Nothing, Terrible Tartaros." Shivering, Auk wrapped himself in his own arms.

"All men wish for something, Auk. Most of all, those who say they wish for nothing."

"I don't, Terrible Tartaros. Only if you want me to, I'll wish for something for you. I'd like something to eat."

Silence answered him.

"Tartaros? Listen, if this's a altar I'm sitting on and you're here talking to me, shouldn't there be a Sacred Window around here someplace?"

"There is, Auk. You are addressing it. I am here."

Auk took off his left boot. "I got to think about that."

Maytera Mint had taught him all about the gods, but it seemed to him that there were really two kinds, the ones she had told about, the gods in his copybook, and the real ones like Scylla when she'd been inside Chenille, and this Tartaros. The real kind were a lot bigger, but the ones in his copybook had been better, and stronger somehow, even if they were not real.

"Terrible Tartaros?"

"Yes, Auk, my noctolater, what is it you wish?"

"The answers to a couple questions, if that's all right. Lots of times you gods answer questions for augurs. I know I'm not no augur. So is it all right for me to ask you, 'cause we haven't got one here?"

Silence, save for the ever-present splashings, and the woman's voice, sad and hoarse and very far away.

"How come I can't see your Window, Terrible Tartaros? That's my first one, if that's all right. I mean, usually they're sort of gray, but they shine in the dark. So am I blind, too?"

Silence fell again. Auk chafed his freezing feet with his hands. Those hands had glowed like molten gold, not long ago; now they were not even warm.

"I guess you're waiting for the other question? Well, what I wanted to know is how come I hear words and everything? At this palaestra I went to, Maytera said when we got bigger we wouldn't be able to make sense out of the words if a god ever came to our Sacred Window, just sort of know what he meant and maybe catch a couple of words once in a while. Then when Kypris came, it was just like what Maytera'd said it was going to be. Sometimes I felt like I could practically see her, and there was a couple words she said that I heard just as clear as I ever heard anybody, Terrible Tartaros. She said
love
and
robbery,
and I knew it. I knew both those words. And I knew she was telling us it was all right, she loved us and she'd protect us, only we had to believe in her. But when you talk, it's like you were a man just like me or Bustard, standing right here with me."

No voice replied. Auk let out his breath with a whoosh, and put his freezing fingers in armpits for a moment or two, and then began to wring out his stockings.

"You yourself have never seen a god in a Window, Auk my noctolater?"

Auk shook his head. "Not real clear, Terrible Tartaros. I sort of saw Kindly Kypris just a little, though, and that's good enough for me."

"Your humility becomes you, Auk."

"Thanks." Lost in thought, Auk reflected on his own life and character, the limp stocking still in his hand. At length he said, "It's never done me a lot of good, Terrible Tartaros, only I guess I never really had much."

"If an augur sees the face and hears the words of a god, Auk, he sees and hears because he has never known Woman. A sibyl, also, may see and hear a god, provided that she has not known Man. Children who have never known either may see us as well. That is the law fixed by my mother, the price that she demanded for accepting the gift my father offered. And though her law does not function as she intended in every instance, for the most part it functions well enough."

"All right," Auk said.

"The faces we had as mortals have rotted to dust, and the voices we once possessed have been still for a thousand years. No augur, no sibyl in the
Whorl,
has ever seen or heard them. What your augurs and sibyls see, if they see anything, is the self-image of the god who chooses to be seen. You say that you could nearly make out the face of my father's concubine. The face you nearly saw was her own image of herself, her self as she imagines that self to appear. I feel confident that it was a beautiful face. I have never met any woman more secure in her own vanity. In the same fashion, we sound to them as we conceive our voices to sound. Have I made myself clear to you, Auk?"

"No, Terrible Tartaros, 'cause I can't see you."

"What you see, Auk, is that part of me which can be seen. That is to say, nothing. I came blind from the womb, Auk, and because of it I am incapable of formulating a visual image for you. Nor can I show you the Holy Hues, which are my brother's and my sisters' thoughts before they have coalesced. Nor can I exhibit to you any face at all, whether lovely or terrible. You see the face I envision when I think upon my own. That is to say, nothing. When I depart, you will behold once more the luminous gray you mention."

"I'd rather you stayed around awhile, Terrible Tartaros. If Bustard ain't going to come back, I like having you with me." Auk licked his lips. "Probably I oughtn't to say this, but I don't mean any harm by it."

"Speak, Auk, my noctolater."

"Well, if I could scheme out some way to help you, I'd do it."

There was silence again, a silence that endured so long that Auk feared that the god had returned to Mainframe; even the distant woman's voice was silent.

"You asked by what power you hear my words as words, Auk, my noctolater."

He breathed a sigh of relief. "Yeah, I guess I did."

"It is not uncommon. My mother's law has lost its hold on you, because there is something amiss with your mind."

Auk nodded. "Yeah, I know. I fell off our tall ass when he got hit with a rocket, and I guess I must've landed on my head. Like, it don't bother me that Bustard's dead, only he's down here talking to me. Only I know it would've in the old days. I don't worry about Jugs, either, like I ought to. I love her, and maybe that cull Urus's trying to jump her right now, but she's a whore anyhow." Auk shrugged. "I just hope he don't hurt her."

"You cannot live in these tunnels, Auk, my noctolater. There is no food for you here."

"Me and Bustard'll try to get out, soon as I find him," Auk promised.

"If I were to possess you, I might be able to heal you, Auk."

"Go ahead, then."

"We would be blind, Auk. As blind as I. Because I have never had eyes of my own, I could not look out through yours. But I shall go with you, and guide you, and use your body to heal you, if I can. Look upon me, Auk."

"There's nothing to see," Auk protested.

But there was: a stammering light so filled with hope and pleasure and wonder that Auk would willingly have seen nothing else, if only he could have watched it forever.

"If you're actually Patera Silk," the young woman at the barricade told him, "they'll kill you the minute you step out there."

"No step," Oreb muttered. And again, "No step."

"Very possibly they would," Silk conceded. "As in fact they almost certainly will-unless you're willing to help."

"If you're Silk you wouldn't have to ask me or my people for anything." Uneasily she studied the thin, ascetic face revealed by the bright skylight. "If you're Silk, you are our commander and even General Mint must answer to you. You could just tell us, and we'd have to do whatever you said."