“You are real, then,” I said.

“No. We are almost what you think us—powers from above the stage. Only not quite deities. You are an actor, I believe.”

I shook my head. “Don’t you know me. Master? You taught me when I was a boy, and I have become a journeyman of the guild.”

“Yet you are an actor too. You have as much right to think of yourself in that way as the other. You had been performing when we spoke to you in the field near the Wall, and the next time we saw you, at the House Absolute, you were acting again. It was a good play; I should have liked to see the end.”

“You were in our audience?”

Master Malrubius nodded. “As an actor, Severian, you surely know the phrase I hinted at a moment ago. It refers to some supernatural force, personified and brought onto the stage in the last act in order that the play may end well. None but poor playwrights do it, they say, but those who say so forget that it is better to have a power lowered on a rope, and a play that ends well, than to have nothing, and a play that ends badly. Here is our rope—many ropes, and a stout ship too. Will you come aboard?”

I said, “Is that why you are as you are? In order that I will trust you?”

“Yes, if you like.” Master Malrubius nodded, and Triskele, who had been sitting at my feet and looking up into my face, ran with his bumping, three-legged gallop halfway up the pont and fumed to look back at me, his stump tail wagging and his eyes pleading as a dog’s eyes do.

“I know you can’t be what you seem. Perhaps Triskele is, but I saw you buried. Master. Your face is no mask, but there’s a mask somewhere, and under that mask you’re what the common people call a cacogen, although Dr. Talos explained to me once that you prefer to be called Hierodules.”

Again Malrubius laid his hand on mine. “We would not deceive you if we could. But I hope that you will deceive yourself, to your good and all Urth’s. Some drug now dulls your mind—more than you realize—just as you were under the sway of sleep when we spoke to you in that meadow near the Wall.

If you were undrugged now, perhaps you would lack the courage to come with us, even if you saw us, even if your reason convinced you that you should.”

I said, “So far it hasn’t convinced me of that, or of anything else. Where do you want to take me, and why do you want to take me there? Are you Master Malrubius or a Hierodule?” As I spoke I became more conscious of the trees, standing as soldiers stand while the officers of the staff discuss some point of strategy. Night was upon us still, but it had become a thinner darkness, even here.

“Do you know the meaning of that word Hierodule you use? I am Malrubius, and no Hierodule.

Rather I serve those the Hierodules serve. Hierodule means, holy slave. Do you think there can be slaves without masters?”

“And you take me—” ‘

“To Ocean, to preserve your life.” As if he had read my thought, he continued, “No, we do not take you to the paramours of Abaia, those who spared and succoured you because you had been a torturer and would be Autarch. In any event, you have much worse to fear. Soon the slaves of Erebus, who held you captive here, will discover you have escaped; and Erebus would hurl that army, and many others like it, into the abyss to capture you. Come.” He drew me onto the pont.

XXXI. The Sand Garden

THAT SHIP WAS worked by hands I could not see. I had supposed we would float up as the flier had or vanish like the green man down some corridor in time. Instead we rose so quickly I felt sick; alongside I heard the crashing of great limbs.

“You are the Autarch now,” Malrubius told me. “Do you know it?” His voice seemed to blend with the whistle of the wind in the rigging.

“Yes. My predecessor, whose mind is now one of mine, came to office as I have. I know the secrets, the words of authority, though I haven’t had time yet to think about them. Are you returning me to the House Absolute?”

He shook his head. “You are not ready. You believe that all the old Autarch knew is available to you now. You are correct—but it is not yet in your grasp, and when the tests come, you will encounter many who will slay you should you falter. You were nurtured in the Citadel of Nessus—what are the words for its castellan? How are the man-apes of the treasure mine to be commanded? What phrases unlock the vaults of the Secret House? You need not tell me, because these things are the arcana of your state, and I know them in any case. But do you yourself know them, without thinking long?”

The phrases I required were present in my mind, yet I failed when I sought to pronounce them to myself. Like little fish, they slipped aside, and in the end I could only lift my shoulders.

“And there is one thing more for you to do. One adventure more, beside the waters.”

“What is it?”

“If I were to tell you, it would not come to pass. Do not be alarmed. It is a simple thing, over in a breath. But I must explain a great deal, and I have not much time in which to doit. Have you faith in the coming of the New Sun?”