“You are a magus then,” Abundantius said.
“I, who took the archon’s prey from out of his hands and passed invisible through the midst of his army? Yes, I have been called so.”
“Prove then that you are a magus and we will hail you as a brother. But if you fail the test or refuse it — we are many, and you have but one sword.”
“I will fail no fair assay,” I said. “Though neither you nor your followers have authority to make one.”
He was too clever to be drawn into such a debate. “The test is known to all here except yourself, and known, too, to be just. Everyone you see about you has succeeded in it, or hopes to.”
They took me to a hall I had not seen before, a place substantially built of logs, and hidden among the trees. It had no windows, and only a single entrance. When torches were carried inside, I saw that its one chamber was unfurnished but for a carpet of woven grass, and so long in proportion to its width that it seemed almost a corridor.
Abundantius said, “Here you will have your combat with Decuman.” He indicated the man whose arm I had numbed, who was, perhaps, a trifle surprised at being thus singled out. “You bested him by the fire. Now he must best you, if he can. You may sit here, nearest the door, so that you may be assured we cannot enter to give him aid. He will sit at the farther end. You shall not approach one another, or touch one another as you touched him by the fire. You must weave your spells, and in the morning we shall come to see who has mastered.”
Taking little Severian by the hand, I led him to the blind end of that dark place. “I’ll sit here,” I said. “I have every confidence that you will not come to Decuman’s aid, but you have no way of knowing whether I have confederates in the jungle outside. You have offered to trust me, and so I shall trust you.”
“It would be better,” Abundantius said, “if you were to leave the child in our keeping.”
I shook my head. “I must have him with me. He is mine, and when you robbed me of him on the path, you robbed me too of half my power. I will not be separated from him again.”
After a moment, Abundantius nodded. “As you wish. We but desired that he might come to no harm:”
“No harm will come to him,” I said.
There were iron brackets on the walls, and four of the naked men thrust their torches into them before they left. Decuman seated himself cross-legged near the door, his staff upon his lap. I sat too, and drew the boy to me. “I’m scared,” he said; he buried his little face in my cloak.
“You have every right to be. The past three days have been bad ones for you.”
Decuman had begun a slow, rhythmic chant.
“Little Severian, I want you to tell me what happened to you on the path. I looked around and you were gone.”
It took some comforting and coaxing, but at last his sobs ceased. “They came out — the three-colored men with claws, and I was afraid and ran away.”
“Is that all?”
“And then more three-colored men came out and caught me, and they made me go into a hole in the ground, where it was dark. And then they woke me and lifted me up, and I was inside a man’s coat, and then you came and got me.”
“Didn’t anyone ask you questions?”
“A man in the dark.”
“I see. Little Severian, you mustn’t ever run away again, the way you did on the path — do you understand? Only run if I run too. If you hadn’t run away when we met the three-colored men, we wouldn’t be here.”
The boy nodded.
“Decuman,” I called. “Decuman, can we talk?”
He ignored me, save perhaps that his murmured chant grew a trifle louder. His face was lifted so that he appeared to be staring at the roof poles, but his eyes were closed.
“What is he doing?” the boy asked.
“He is weaving an enchantment.”
“Will it hurt us?”
“No,” I said. “Such magic is mostly fakery — like lifting you up through a hole so it would look as if the other one had made you appear under his robe.”
Yet even as I spoke, I was conscious there was something more. Decuman was concentrating his mind on me as few minds can be concentrated, and I felt I was naked in some brightly lit place where a thousand eyes watched. One of the torches flickered, guttered, and went out. As the light in the hall dimmed, the light I could not see seemed to grow brighter.
I rose. There are ways of killing that leave no mark, and I reviewed them mentally as I stepped forward.
At once, pikes sprang from the walls, an ell on either side. They were not such spears as soldiers have, energy weapons whose heads strike bolts of fire, but simple poles of wood tipped with iron, like the pilets the villagers of Saltus had used. Nevertheless, they could kill at close range, and I sat down again. The boy said, “I think they’re outside watching us through the cracks between the logs.”
“Yes, I know that now too.”
“What can we do?” he asked. And then when I did not reply, “Who are these people, Father?”
It was the first time he had called me that. I drew him closer, and it seemed to weaken the net Decuman was knotting about my mind. I said, “I’m only guessing, but I would say this is an academy of magicians — of those cultists who practice what they believe are secret arts. They are supposed to have followers everywhere — though I choose to doubt that — and they are very cruel. Have you heard of the New Sun, little Severian? He is the man who prophets say will come and drive back the ice and set the world right.”
“He will kill Abaia,” the boy answered, surprising me.
“Yes, he is supposed to do that as well, and many other things. He is said to have come once before, long ago. Did you know that?”
He shook his head.
“Then his task was to forge a peace between humanity and the Increate, and he was called the Conciliator. He left behind a famous relic, a gem called the Claw.” My hand went to it as I spoke, and though I did not loosen the drawstrings of the little sack of human skin that held it, I could feel it through the soft leather. As soon as I touched it, the invisible glare Decuman had created in my mind fell almost to nothing. I cannot say now just why I had presumed for so long that it was necessary for the Claw to be taken from its place of concealment for it to be effective. I learned that night that it was not so, and I laughed.
For a moment Decuman halted his chant, and his eyes opened. Little Severian clutched me more tightly. “Aren’t you afraid anymore?”
“No,” I said. “Could you see that I was frightened?”
He nodded solemnly.
“What I was going to tell you was that the existence of that relic seems to have given some people the idea that the Conciliator used claws as weapons. I have sometimes doubted that he existed; but if such a person ever lived, I’m sure that he used his weapons largely against himself. Do you understand what I am saying?”
I doubt that he did, but he nodded.
“When we were on the path, we found a charm against the coming of the New Sun. The three-colored men, who I think are the ones who have passed this test, use claws of steel. I think they must want to hold back the coming of the New Sun so they can take his place and perhaps usurp his powers. If—”
Outside, someone screamed.
XXII
The Skirts of the Mountain
MY LAUGH HAD broken Decuman’s concentration, if only for a moment. The scream from outside did not. His net, so much of which had fallen in ruins when I gripped the Claw, was being knotted again, more slowly but more tightly.
It is always a temptation to say that such feelings are indescribable, though they seldom are. I felt that I hung naked between two sentient suns, and I was somehow aware that these suns were the hemispheres of Decuman’s brain. I was bathed in light, but it was the glare of furnaces, consuming and somehow immobilizing. In that light, nothing seemed worthwhile; and I myself infinitely small and contemptible.