I said, “Sometimes a man is broken by losing such an office.”

“Nothing’s ever broken me,” he replied. “This won’t, either.”

I think that was the first time I looked at him as a human being. His face was hard and cold, but full of intelligence and resolution. “You’re right,” I told him. “Sometimes indeed — but not this time. You must flee and take these men with you. I put them under your orders.”

He nodded again. “Can you release my hands, Conciliator?”

The vingtner said, “I can, sieur.” He stepped forward with the key, and the smilodon voiced no protest. When the manacles fell to the rock upon which we sat, the chiliarch picked them up and tossed them over the edge.

“Keep your hands clasped behind you,” I told him. “Cover them with your cape. Have these men march you to the flier. Everyone will think you’re being taken elsewhere for further punishment. You’ll know where you can land with safety better than I.”

“We’ll join the rebels. They should be glad to get us.” He rose and saluted, and I rose too and returned his salute, having been habituated to it during my time as Autarch.

The vingtner asked, “Conciliator, can’t you free Urth from Typhon?”

“I could, but I won’t unless I must. It’s easy — very easy — to slay a ruler. But it’s very difficult to prevent a worse one from coming to his place.”

“Rule us yourself!”

I shook my head. “If I say I have a mission of greater importance, you’ll think I’m joking. Yet it’s the truth.”

They nodded, clearly without comprehension.

“I’ll tell you this. This morning I’ve been studying this mountain and the speed with which the work here is going forward. From those things, I know Typhon has only a short time to live. He’ll die on the red couch where he lies now; and without his word, no one will dare to draw aside the curtain. One after another will creep away. The machines that dig like men will return for fresh instructions, but they won’t receive them, and in time the curtain itself will fall to dust.”

They were staring at me openmouthed. I said, “There will never be another ruler like Typhon — a monarch over many worlds. But the lesser ones who will follow him, of whom the best and greatest will be named Ymar, will imitate him until every peak you see around us wears a crown. That’s all I’ll tell you now, and all I can tell you. You must go.”

The chiliarch said, “We’ll stay here and die with you, Conciliator, if you desire it.”

“I don’t,” I told them. “And I won’t die.” I tried to reveal the workings of Time to them, though I do not understand them myself. “Everyone who has lived is still alive, somewhen. But you are in great danger. Go!”

The guardsmen backed away. Their chiliarch said, “Won’t you give us some token, Conciliator, some proof that we once encountered you? I know my hands are profaned with your blood, and so are Gaudentius’s; but these men never harmed you.”

The word he had used suggested the token he received. I took off the thong and the little sack of manskin Dorcas had sewn for the Claw, which now held the thorn I had plucked from my arm beside unresting Ocean, the thorn upon which my fingers had closed aboard Tzadkiel’s ship. “This has been drenched in my blood,” I told them.

With one hand on the smilodon’s head, I watched them walk the promontory that held my shelter, their shadows still long in the morning light. When they reached the mass of rock that was fast becoming Typhon’s sleeve, the chiliarch concealed his wrists under his cape as I had suggested. The vingtner drew his pistol, and two soldiers aimed their weapons at the chiliarch’s back.

Thus disposed, prisoner and guard, they descended the stair on the farther side and were lost to me in the bustling roadways of that place I had not yet named the Accursed Town . I had sent them away lightly enough; but now that they were gone, I knew once more what it was to lose a friend — for the chiliarch too had become my friend — and my heart, though it may be (as some have said) as hard as metal, felt ready to crack at last.

“And now I must lose you too,” I told the smilodon. “In fact, I should have sent you away while it was still dark.”

It made a deep rumbling that must have been its purr, surely a sound seldom heard by man and woman. That thunderous purr was echoed faintly from the sky.

Far across the lap of the colossal statue, a flier lifted into the air, rising slowly at first (as those vessels always do when they rely upon the repulsion of Urth alone), then streaking away. I recalled the flier I had seen when I had parted from Vodalus, after the occurrence I placed at the very beginning of the manuscript I cast into the ever-changing universes. And I resolved then that if ever leisure should come to me again, I would pen a new account, beginning as I have with the casting away of the old.

Whence comes this unslakable thirst to leave behind me a wandering trail of ink, I cannot say; but once I referred to a certain incident in the life of Ymar. Now I have spoken with Ymar himself, yet that incident remains as inexplicable as the desire. I would prefer that similar incidents in my own life not suffer a similar obscurity.

The thunder that had been so distant sounded again, nearer now, the voice of a column of night-black cloud that outreached even the arm of Typhon’s colossal figure. The Praetorians had laid down the food and drink they had brought at some distance from my little shelter. (Such service is the price of undying loyalty; those who profess it seldom labor quite so diligently as a common servant whose loyalty is to his task.) I went out, the smilodon with me, to carry it back to whatever protection we could give it. The wind had already begun her storm song, and a few raindrops splattered the rock before us, as big as plums and icy cold.

“This is as good a chance as you’ll ever have,” I told the smilodon. “They’re running for shelter already. Go now!”

It leaped away as though it had been awaiting my consent, clearing ten cubits at every bound. In a moment it had vanished over the edge of the arm. In a moment more it reappeared, a tawny streak darkening to rain-wet brown from which workers and soldiers fled like coneys. I was glad to see that, for all the weapons of beasts, no matter how terrible they seem, are merely toys compared to the weapons of men.

Whether it returned safely to its hunting grounds, I am unable to say, though I trust it did. As for myself, I sat under my shelter for a time listening to the storm and munching bread and fruit, until at last the wild wind snatched the canvas from over my head.

I rose; when I looked through the curtains of the downpour, I saw a party of soldiers cresting the arm.

Astonishingly I also saw places without rain or soldiers. I do not mean that these newly seen places now spread themselves where the abyss had stretched. Its aching emptiness remained, rock dropping a league at least like a cataract, with the dark green of the high jungle far below — the jungle that would hold the village of sorcerers through which the boy Severian and I would pass.

Rather it seemed to me that the familiar directions of up and down, forward and back, left and right, had opened like a blossom, revealing petals unguessed, new Sefiroth whose existence had been hidden from me until now.

One of the soldiers fired. The bolt struck the rock at my feet, splitting it like a chisel. Then I knew they had been sent to kill me, I suppose because one of the men who had gone with the chiliarch had rebelled against his fate and reported what had transpired, though too late to prevent the departure of the rest.

Another leveled his weapon. To escape it, I stepped from the rain-swept rock into a new place.