"If you think it's something I ought to know."
"I think it's something that everyone ought to know. I know another secret of that kind, but I may not tell it because I gave my word to a dying man that I would not. This one I found out for myself, so it's mine to do with as I choose."
"Go on."
"The Outsider has arranged our whorl in such a way that there is far more balance than at first appears, with gain involving loss, and loss, gain. Your father is rich by the standards of Blanko, and it is a very good thing to be rich; but as a rich man he has certain responsibilities-and is subject to certain temptations-that his poorer neighbors do not. Do you wish to argue?"
"He's a good man, whatever they say."
"He is. I forgot to mention his neighbors' envy, which is one of the chief disadvantages of his wealth, though there are others. I do not mean that he would be better off poor, though many men would. I am merely saying that he and his neighbors are much more nearly at a level in life than either may believe."
"All right, I see that."
"This matter of the interior person is similar. We mourn, we weep, we tear our clothes and our hair when a child dies; but the child's interior person was far superior to ours in most cases. In all, if the child was quite young. The longer you live the more difficulty you will have in keeping your interior person someone you can live with. My own difficulties have been so great that I would hesitate to say that I've succeeded."
"Good Silk!" Oreb assured me, and I smiled. "Good bird, too," I said.
"Is that your real name? Silk? Are you the man in the book?"
"I don't think so."
Mora stared at me, then looked away.
"Before you and your husband came, I called everyone in our party together. It made it too crowded in here. You saw that."
"Sure."
"There's no room in this little house that wouldn't be equally crowded, or worse; and I don't think it would be wise for me to go outside for another day or two. There is an old woman here and a young one. Both may be addressed as Jahlee. Will you do me a favor, Mora?"
"You've done me a lot of them, and I wouldn't want to ugly up my interior person. What is it?"
"I'm merely being curious now. Do you still consider the external one ugly?"
She shook her head. "Eco says I'm beautiful. I know that's not true and won't ever be, but I lost weight while I was away. Did you notice?"
I nodded.
"I need to lose some more. I'm going to try. I know I'll never look like Torda or even come close, but there are things I can do about the way I look and the way I dress," she touched her loose silk blouse, "and I'm going to do them."
"In a year or two, Torda will have to admit ruefully-to herself at least-that she will never be able to look, or act, or speak like you."
"Thanks. What's the favor?"
"I still want to have my meeting, but I am going to have to limit the number present. Bring either of the women called Jahlee, please, but not both."
All right."
"All three of our prisoners, I believe, and we'll have to include the trooper guarding them. In addition, Duko Sfido, Private Cuoio, and your husband. You yourself are welcome to attend as well. You said you wanted to."
"I still do. Thanks."
When she was gone Oreb asked, "Bird come? Good Silk!"
"You know what I'm going to do, clearly-what I'm going to try, at least. Do you approve?"
"Good Silk!" he repeated.
Hide was first to arrive. I explained to him that since there was only one chair it would have to be reserved for General Inclito's daughter, and said that he might sit on my bed, or on the floor if he preferred.
He shook his head. "Is the old lady coming? She was looking for her."
"Perhaps."
"She shouldn't have to stand up in her own house. I'll bring in another chair for her."
Duko Rigoglio, General Morello, and Colonel Terzo arrived, guarded by Inclito's coachman. I told the last that I was glad to see him, since he, as well as Inclito's daughter and son-in-law, could stand in for Inclito himself.
"He wanted me to go back and take care of the place, our livestock and wheat."
"He must be worried about his mother, too, Affito."
"He thought you'd see about them, sir. You know, all those womenfolk."
Cuoio returned with another chair, and a youthful Jahlee. "My aunt is unwell, Master Incanto. Will I make an acceptable substitute?"
I indicated that she would.
"This man you call Incanto has been a friend to me," she told Duko Rigoglio. "Without his friendship I might be dead today, or as good as dead, and buried. I've tried to repay his kindness."
The Duko smiled, and said he wished that he might say the same someday; while he was speaking, Mora, Eco, and Colonel Sfido came in together.
"Silk talk!" Oreb croaked loudly, and they fell silent.
I thanked them all for coming. "I would have liked to speak to everyone," I explained, "but we don't have room for everybody, so those of you who are here will have to tell the rest. I hope that some of you will also tell the people of Blanko, Captain Atteno and his wife especially. I don't want to lay too many duties upon anyone, but I think Duko Sfido may very well want to talk to the troopers that he and I trained there, Adatta and all the others."
Sfido nodded.
"Eco is a mercenary. No doubt some of you learned that while I was talking to Donna Mora. He can convey my farewell to Captain Kupus and his troopers-to Thody and Gorak, particularly."
"I will," Eco said.
"And tell Captain Rimando, please. If you would. I'm very sorry that he's not among us."
I paused to look from face to face. "Donna Mora will tell her father, of course. It was truly providential that she and her husband arrived when they did."
Jahlee said, "You're not dying, I hope."
"Do you really hope I'm not?"
"You know I do! I could have-"
My nod silenced her. "Of course," I said.
"Talk, Silk!" Oreb commanded.
"He means that I've wasted too much time already upon preliminaries, and he's right. I have several things to say to you, and I should get to them.
"First, I've been ill, as you know. I'm better now, and feel that I'll soon be well enough to travel, if the gods permit it. I've decided that there's little point in my returning to Blanko with you-or even to your father's farm, Donna Mora."
There was a buzz of talk.
I tried to clear my throat to silence them, but ended by coughing. "You will have ample time to discuss everything I say in a moment, and I promise to be quiet and let you do it. Please let me finish.
"Since I'm not going to Blanko or to Donna Mora's father's, there's no point in Duko Sfido and his prisoners waiting here for me to recover. Nor, of course, is there any point in Donna Mora and her husband waiting. If either party chooses to leave this afternoon, I wish it good speed. It seems very clear to me that neither should delay beyond tomorrow morning.
"That was my first point, and I have made it. The second concerns my identity, about which certain foolish rumors have circulated. I was born in the Whorl, more often called the Long Sun Whorl. My mother was not Inclito's as well, nor was my father his father. I would have thought that our faces would have ended the speculations of that kind before they began, but they have not, and so I wish to end them now. I will not presume by saying that Inclito and I are brothers in our regard for each other-but we regard each other highly.
"Though I was born in the Long Sun Whorl, my home is in a coastal town to the west called New Viron. Here you think that holy men should not marry, and you may well be right; but I am not a holy man, and I have a wife there, a woman I've loved since we were children. We have been separated, for reasons that are of small importance to you. It should be sufficient for me to say that we have been separated for years, though I have been striving to rejoin her. When I am well enough to travel again-in a very few days, I hope - Cuoio and I will set out for New Viron."
Hide began to protest, but my voice overpowered his. "He is recently come from there, and should be able to guide me. He can continue the errand that brought him to Blanko afterward, if he chooses to and his mother agrees. Cuoio, you see, is my son, the youngest son of three."
I spoke to Mora. "I'm sorry that my wife and I were not blessed with daughters. I have envied my brother Inclito his ever since I met-"
Terzo exclaimed, "She's singing!"
"I know," I told him. "I've been trying to speak in spite of it. I suggest that you try to keep silent in spite of it, for the present at least."
Jahlee asked, "Who is?"
"Someone only Colonel Terzo and I can hear. It doesn't really concern him, and it certainly doesn't concern the rest of you." I fell silent for a moment to listen to Seawrack's song, the beating waves and the cries of the seabirds.
Duko Rigoglio said, "I told you once that you had no magic powers."
"Did you? It's certainly true."
"I know better now. You've put some sort of spell on Terzo here, and I saw the witch sitting in the smoke."
"I know you did."
"Terzo says that you had a baletiger carry your meat, and that he put it down and went away when you told him to. The man who was on guard then says the same thing."
Inclito's coachman nodded.
"Private Cuoio wouldn't tell us anything. I understand that now better than I did the last time I spoke to him. This seems to be the last chance I'll get to talk to either of you, so I'd like to ask you something. Not whether you have those powers, because I know the answer. But how you got them, and what you set out to do with them."
When I said nothing, Mora declared, "The gods favor him. If you had been a better man, they might have favored you, too."
Jahlee added, "He's on good terms with the Vanished People, they say, and-"
Her voice was lost in a babble of others, including Duko Rigoglio's. I shut my eyes (I was very tired, which may have helped) and while attempting to fix her tones in my memory, I tried to recall Green's jungles and Sinew. Sleep rushed upon me, sending me spinning through an endless night.
Chapter 21
The Red Sun
I tried to sleep after writing those words about sleep, telling myself that it was an appropriate place to do so, and that I could push this account ahead a bit more in the morning. With everyone gone, the house is so quiet! Its silence should lend itself to sleep, but it does not; I am apprehensive, and grateful for the least sound from Oreb, for the small noises Jahlee and Cuoio make.
I want very much to describe the Red Sun Whorl in such a way that you can see it, Nettle-to do it so well that whoever reads this can. Have I made you see Green's jungles? The swamps and their dire inhabitants? The immense trees and the lianas clinging to them like brides? Or the City of the Inhumi, a grove of disintegrating towers like a noble face rotting in the grave?
No, I have given only scattered hints in spite of all my efforts.
What will be the use of trying, in that case?
We stood in an empty street, Nettle. Empty, I say, although it knew a certain traffic of broken stones, which fell from the crumbling houses lining it, rolled into the street, and lay where they had ceased to roll, attended by a guard of rank weeds.
"Look." Mora pointed.
I looked up and saw a shining crimson disk, so large a sun that when I stretched forth my arm, my hand could not cover it all. Stars gleamed all around it, and I felt that the Outsider was trying to convey some message to me by it and them, that this great ember of sun I saw had tumbled from a ruin as the stones had, and that the stars I saw by day here had sprung up around it like the weeds. But I cannot depict the vast city of ruins for you. If I were an artist, I might draw it here, a sketch in my friend the stationer's good black ink upon his thin gray paper. Imagine that I have, and and tell me what would you see in it? What could you? A few hundred ruinous houses, a few hundred dots in a gray sky that is in fact a dreaming purple, and the black sun (for it would have to be black in such a drawing) overlooking everything and seeing nothing.
To understand, you must visualize its sky and hold the vision above you. Not my words. Not my words. Not the smears of ink upon this paper. The sky, a sky purple or blue-black rather than blue, a sky whose skylands were always as visible as those at home, though vastly more remote and colder. It was warm there in the deserted, ruined street; but the dark sky made it seem cold, and I felt sure that it would be cold soon, would turn cold, in fact, before the actual setting of the crimson sun.
"How did we get here?" Hide demanded.
And Mora, "Where are we, Incanto?"
I shook my head and kept my silence.
Inclito's coachman snapped, "Don't do that!" and I turned to see to whom he was speaking. It was to Jahlee, and she was taking off her clothing. "Look!" she exclaimed. "Look at me!" The last worn garment dropped around her feet. She pirouetted, displaying hemispherical breasts, a slender waist, and narrow hips.
Mora muttered, "Is there some madness here?"
"Yes." It was Duko Rigoglio. As he spoke, he fell upon his knees before me. "Free my hands. That's all I ask, free my hands, please, as you love the Increate."
It was a new term to me. I could only peer into his eyes and try to guess what he meant by it.
"I'm a proud man. You know that. I'm begging now. Have I begged you for my life?"
"Your Grandeur-" Morello began.
"I'm begging, Incanto. This is more than life to me. Whoever you are, whatever you are, have pity on me!"
I motioned to Hide. "Cut his bonds."
Sfido exclaimed, "No!"
"Are you afraid he may escape, and remain here?" I asked him. Without waiting for an answer, I told Hide, "Free him, and the others, too. For their sake, I hope they do."
Hide tore his eyes from Jahlee, drew a knife smaller than Sinew's, and cut the cords that had held Rigoglio's hands behind him; Rigoglio rubbed his wrists, muttering thanks.