Nightside the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe Read Free Book Online Page A

various gods and hoped to win it by gifts.” Silk glanced at the Sacred Window behind him. “I offered the first lamb to Pas and the second to Scylla, the patroness of our city. Those, so I thought, were all that I had funds for—a single white lamb for All-powerful Pas, and another for Scylla. And I asked, as I should tell you, for a particular favor—I asked that they appear to us again, as they did of old. I longed for assurances of their love, not thinking how needless they would be when ample assurances are found throughout the Chrasmologic Writings.” He tapped the worn book before him on the ambion.
    â€œLate one evening, as I read the Writings, I came to understand that. I’d read them from boyhood—and never learned in all that time how much the gods love us, though they had told me over and over. Of what use was it, in that case, for me to have a copy of my own? I sold it, but the twenty bits it brought would not have bought another white lamb, or even a black lamb for Phaea, whose day this is. I bought a gray lamb instead, and offered it to all the gods, and the entrails of the gray lamb held the same messages of hope that I had read in the white lambs. Then I should have known, though I did not, that it was not one of the Nine who was speaking to us through the lambs. Today I learned the identity of that god, but I won’t tell you that today; there is still too much I have not understood.” Silk picked up the Writings and stared at the binding for a moment before he spoke again.
    â€œThis is the manteion’s copy. It’s the one that I read now, and it’s a better one—a better printed copy, with more extensive notes—than my old one, the one I sold so that I might make a gift to all the gods. There are lessons there, and I hope that every one of you will master them. Wrestle with them a while, if they seem too difficult for you at first, and never forget that it was to teach you these wrestlings that our palaestra was founded long ago.
    â€œYes, Kit? What is it?”
    â€œPatera, is a god really going to come.”
    Some of the older students laughed. Silk waited until they were quiet again before he replied. “Yes, Kit. A god will come to our Sacred Window, though we may have to wait a very long time. But we need not wait—we have their love and their wisdom here. Open these Writings at any point, Kit, and you’ll find a passage applicable to your present condition—to the problems you have today, or to the ones you’ll have to deal with tomorrow. How is this possible? Who will tell me?” Silk studied the blank faces before him before calling on one of the girls who had laughed loudest. “Answer, Ginger.”
    She rose reluctantly, smoothing her skirt. “Because everything’s connected to everything else, Patera?” It was one of his own favorite sayings.
    â€œDon’t you know, Ginger?”
    â€œBecause everything’s connected.”
    Silk shook his head. “That everything in the whorl is dependent on every other thing is unquestionably true. But if that were the answer to my question, we ought to find any passage from any book as appropriate to our condition as one from the Chrasmologic Writings. You need only look into any other book at random to prove that it isn’t so. But,” he tapped the shabby cover again, “when I open this book, what will we find?”
    He did so, dramatically, and read the line at the top of the page aloud: “‘Are ten birds to be had for a song?’”
    The clarity of this reference to his recent transaction in the market stunned him, afrighting his thoughts like so many birds. He swallowed and continued. “‘You have daubed Oreb the raven, but can you make him sing?’
    â€œI’ll interpret that for you in a moment,” he promised. “First I wish to explain to you that the authors of these Writings knew not only the