Gene Wolfe - The Sorcerers House

THE SORCERER'S HOUSE

B Y G ENE W OLFE FROM T OM D OHERTY A SSOCIATES

THE WIZARD KNIGHT

The Knight

The Wizard

THE BOOK OF THE SHORT SUN

On Blue's Waters

In Green's Jungles

Return to the Whorl

THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN

Shadow & Claw

(comprising The Shadow of the Torturer

and The Claw of the Conciliator)

Sword & Citadel

(comprising The Sword of the Lictor and

The Citadel of the Autarch)

THE BOOK OF THE LONG SUN

Litany of the Long Sun

(comprising Nightside of the Long Sun

and Lake of the Long Sun)

Epiphany of the Long Sun

(comprising Calde of the Long Sun

and Exodus from the Long Sun)

NOVELS

The Fifth Head of Cerberus

The Devil in a Forest

Peace

Free Live Free

The Urth of the New Sun Latro in the Mist

(comprising Soldier of the Mist

and Soldier of Arete)

Soldier of Sidon

There Are Doors

Castleview

Pandora by Holly Hollander

Pirate Freedom

An Evil Guest

The Sorcerer's House

NOVELLAS

The Death of Doctor Island

Seven American Nights

COLLECTIONS

Endangered Species

Storeys from the Old Hotel

Castle of Days

The Island of Doctor Death and Other

Stories and Other Stories

Strange Travelers

Innocents Aboard

Starwater Strains

G ENE W OLFE

A T OM D OHERTY A SSOCIATES B OOK
NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this
novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE SORCERER'S HOUSE

Copyright (c) 2010 by Gene Wolfe

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.torforge.com

Tor(r) is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wolfe, Gene.
The sorcerer's house / Gene Wolfe. -- 1st ed.
p. cm.
"A Tom Doherty Associates book."
ISBN 978-0-7653-2458-0
1. Ex-convicts--Fiction. 2. Abandoned houses--Fiction.
3. Supernatural--Fiction. 4. Magic--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3573.O52S67 2010
813'.54--dc22
2009040726

First Edition: March 2010

Printed in the United States of America

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Neil Gaiman,
the best of writers and the best of friends

I would like to express my gratitude to David G. Hartwell, Stacy Hague-Hill, Vaughne Lee Hansen, and Christine Cohen.

Dear Shell:

I promised I would write you after I got out, and I like to keep my word. I am in Medicine Man, at a motel too cheap to supply stationery. Envelopes and this notebook filler from Wal-Mart will have to do. God knows I do not miss the screws or Building 19, but I do miss my friends. You most of all. You and Lou.

No job yet and none in sight. I would try somewhere else, but I cannot afford a bus ticket until my allowance comes. Not that I am flat. Not yet. I am going to try to get my brother to front me some money if I can. He owes me not one damned thing, but he has plenty, and three or four hundred right now would mean the world to me.

Still, I may be able to score some cigarettes if you need them. Anything like that. Let me know. Riverman Inn, 15 Riverpath Road--Room 12. I do not know the zip.

Yours,

Bax

Dear George:

This letter will surprise you, I know. You and I have been e-mailing since my conviction. Twice a year, perhaps, if not less. And sending Christmas cards; or rather, I have sent them. I hear from Millie by phone when somebody dies. Why a letter now?

I know, but I doubt that I can explain in a way you will accept as sense; you have always been the hardheaded practical one, and I have admired you for it much, much more than you can ever have realized.

Yet I, too, can be practical at times. As you shall see. Practical and, in a perverse way, fortunate.

I am living now in my new house, which is in fact a rather old one. It is not large as such houses go, I suppose. Five rooms downstairs, plus bath. Four bedrooms upstairs, plus bath. I got it by being practical, George, and it is quite a story.

I had been staying in an exceedingly run-down motel, the River-man. There I had only one room, although it had a hotplate and a tiny refrigerator. (A room that was always more or less dirty, I might add.) The manager's name was Mutazz something, and he cannot possibly have disliked me half as much as I disliked him. I know he cannot have, because he would infallibly have poisoned or strangled me if he had. He was quite definitely (indeed, definitively) of the poisoning or strangling type. "A thief by instinct, a murderer by heredity and training, and frankly and bestially immoral by all three."

Now you see, I hope, why I chose to write a letter. If I had e-mailed you, you would never have read this far. As it is, you will have already thrown down my poor little missive in disgust at least once. I am not asking, George, because I know it. I understand your character, which is choleric to say the least. If I have been fortunate just this once, you have picked it up again.

Or perhaps your sainted Millie will have fished it out of your waste-basket and read it. Perhaps she is telling you about it now as the two of you lie abed. Like that poor girl in the Arabian Nights, she hopes to keep talking until you fall asleep.

Do you think any of that matters to me? I am tempted to post this to myself.

Now about the house. Please pay attention. It is important to me at least.

It stands half a mile, perhaps, from the Riverman. I had noticed it more than once, a white house in good repair but a house that had clearly been vacant for some time. A few windows were boarded up, and the lawn was full of weeds; a few days ago, I investigated further.

The front door was locked, as I expected. The back door was locked also; but a small side door had been broken open. I went in. A vagrant had certainly camped in the house at one time. He had built a fire in one of the fireplaces, had cooked on it, and had slept, apparently, on a thin pad of newspapers laid before it. The papers were more than a year old.