Free The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe Page A

direction we had come. Since the aisle was too narrow for us to pass one another, I now carried the candelabrum before him, and a stranger, seeing us, would surely have thought I lighted his way. "But Master," I said, "how can that be? By the same argument, the life must reside in each joint of every finger, and surely that is impossible."
    "How big is a man's life?" asked Ultan.
    "I have no way of knowing, but isn't it larger than that?"
    "You see it from the beginning, and anticipate much. I, recollecting it from its termination, know how little there has been. I suppose that is why the depraved creatures who devour the bodies of the dead seek more. Let me ask you this - are you aware that a son often strikingly resembles his father?"
    "I have heard it said, yes. And I believe it," I answered. I could not help thinking as I did of the parents I would never know.
    "Then it is possible, you will agree, since each son may resemble his father, for a face to endure through many generations. That is, if the son resembles the father, and his son resembles him, and that son's son resembles him, then the fourth in lint, the great-grandson, resembles his great-grandfather."
    "Yes," I said.
    "Yet the seed of all of them was contained in a drachm of sticky fluid. If they did not come from there, from where did they come?"
    I could make no answer to that, and walked along in puzzlement until we reached the door through which I had entered this lowest level of the great library.
    Here we met Cyby carrying the other books mentioned in Master Gurloes's letter.
    I took them from him, bade goodbye to Master Ultan, and very gratefully left the stifling atmosphere of the library stacks. To the upper levels of that place I returned several times; but I never again entered that tomblike cellar, or ever wished to.
    One of the three volumes Cyby bad brought was as large as the top of a small table, a cubit in width and a scant ell in height; from the arms impressed upon its saffian cover, I supposed it to be the history of some old noble family. The others were much smaller. A green book hardly larger than my hand and no thicker than my index finger appeared to be a collection of devotions, full of enameled pictures of ascetic pantocrators and hypostases with black halos and gemlike robes. I stopped for a time to look at them, sharing a little, forgotten garden full of winter sunshine with a dry fountain.
    Before I had so much as opened any of the other volumes, I felt that pressure of time that is perhaps the surest indication we have left childhood behind. I had already been two watches at least on a simple errand, and soon the light would fade. I gathered up the books and hurried along, though I did not know it, to meet my destiny and eventually myself in the Chatelaine Thecla.

07 THE TRAITRESS
    It was already time for me to carry their meals to the journeymen on duty in the oubliette. Drotte was in charge of the first level, and I brought his last because I wanted to talk to him before I went up again. The truth was that my head was still swimming with thoughts engendered by my visit to the archivist, and I wanted to tell him about them.
    He was nowhere to be seen. I put his tray and the four books on his table and shouted for him. A moment later I heard his answering call from a cell not far off. I ran there and looked through the grilled window set at eye level in the door; the client, a wasted-looking woman of middle age, was stretched on her cot. Drotte leaned over her, and there was blood on the floor.

    He was too occupied to turn his head. "Is that you, Severian?"
    "Yes. I've got your supper, and books for the Chatelaine Thecla. Can I do anything to help?"
    "She'll be all right. Tore her dressings off and tried to bleed her-self to death, but I got her in time. Leave my tray on my table, will you? And you might finish shoving their food at the rest for me, if you've got a moment."
    I hesitated. Apprentices were not supposed to deal with