Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolfe

Author:Gene Wolfe
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

CHAPTER XXIII

In the Village

I am writing this in the courtyard of the inn. Eutaktos had been so eager to leave Thought that he did not buy provisions for the return to Redface Island. I think perhaps he believed also that he could get them more cheaply away from the city, and in that I suppose he was right. Anyway, we have halted here, and Eutaktos and some others are bargaining for food in the market. I am writing because I have not yet forgotten what took place last night, though I do not remember how I came to be among these Rope Makers.

The Milesian came to me when we halted here and said, “Let’s find a wineshop. I’ll repay you for what you gave me last night.” I pretended to have forgotten, but he pressed me to go anyway, saying, “Basias can come with us. Then they can’t say we were trying to get away.”

Soon the Milesian, Basias, Io, and I were sitting very comfortably at a table in the shade; there was a jar of old wine and one of cold well water in the center of the table, and each of us had a cup before him. “You will recall that we were discussing the Triple Goddess last evening,” the Milesian said to me. “At least, I hope you will. That hasn’t gone yet, has it?”

I shook my head. “I can remember our camping outside this village late last night, and everything that came after that.”

Io asked, “Where are we, anyway? Is this far from Advent?”

“This is Acharnae,” the Milesian told her. “We’re about fifty stades from Advent, which will be our next stop. It would have been a little shorter along the Sacred Way, but I suppose Eutaktos felt there was too much danger of incurring a charge of impiety.” He looked at Basias for confirmation, but the Rope Maker only shrugged and put his cup to his lips.

“I’ve been to Advent before,” Io told the Milesian. “With Latro and Pindaros and Hilaeira. Latro slept in the temple.”

“Really? And did he learn anything?”

“That the goddess would soon restore him to his friends.”

I asked Io to tell me about that.

“I don’t know much, because you didn’t tell me much. I think you told Pindaros more than me, and you probably wrote more than you told Pindaros. All you said to me was that you saw the goddess, and she gave you a flower and promised you’d see your friends soon. We were your friends, Hilaeira and Pindaros and me, but I don’t think she meant us. I think she meant the friends you lost when you were hurt.”

Basias was looking at me narrowly. “She gave you a flower in a dream?”

I said, “I don’t know.”

Io told him. “He just said she gave him one.”

The Milesian spun an owl on the table as if hoping for an omen. “You can never tell about goddesses. Or gods either. Possibly a dream with a goddess in it is more real than a day without one.

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