Summary: The Shadow of the Torturer

Overview:

The book opens with the protagonist, Severian, barely surviving a swim in the River Gyoll. Severian is an apprentice in the torturers' guild. On his way back home to the Citadel, where the guild makes its home, Severian and several other apprentices sneak into a necropolis. This is where Severian first encounters Vodalus, the legendary revolutionary. Vodalus, along with two others, including a woman named Thea, are robbing a grave. Vodalus and his companions are confronted by volunteer guards and a fight ensues. Severian saves Vodalus's life, earning his trust and the reward of a single gold coin.

Shortly thereafter, Severian is elevated to journeyman on the Feast of Holy Katherine. He next encounters and falls in love with Thecla, a beautiful aristocratic prisoner. Her status permits her some luxuries, including the books that Severian is sent to obtain from the Master Ultan, the librarian.

When finally Thecla is put to torture, Severian takes pity on her and helps her commit suicide, by smuggling a knife into her cell, thus breaking an oath to his guild. Though Severian expects to be tortured and executed, instead he is dispatched to Thrax, a distant city which has need of an executioner. Master Palaemon gives Severian a letter of introduction to the archon of the city and Terminus Est, a magnificent executioner's sword. He departs the guild headquarters, traveling through the city of Nessus.

He comes to an inn, where he first meets Baldanders and Dr. Talos. The are travelling mountebanks, who invite Severian to join them in a play to be performed the same day. During breakfast, Dr. Talos manages to recruit the waitress for his play and they set out into the streets.

Not intending to participate, Severian parts with the group and stops at a rag shop to purchase a mantle to hide his fuligin cloak (the uniform of his guild, which inspires terror in common folk). The shop is owned by a twin brother and sister, and the brother immediately takes interest in Terminus Est. Severian refuses to sell the sword, shortly after which a masked and armoured hipparch enters the shop and challenges Severian to a duel. Severian is forced to accept, and he departs with the sister, Agia, to secure an avern, a deadly plant that is used for dueling. While on their way, urged by Agia's bet to a passing fiacre, their driver crashes into and destroys the altar of a religious order, where Agia is accused of stealing a precious artifact. After Agia is searched and released, they continue their journey to the Botanic Gardens, a large landmark of Nessus created by the mysterious Father Inire, right hand to the Autarch.

Inside, they visit several engrossing gardens. Severian falls into a lake used to inter the dead, and while emerging finds a young woman named Dorcas to have come up from the lake as well. Dazed and confused, the woman follows Severian and Agia. Severian secures the avern and the group proceeds to an inn near the dueling grounds. While eating dinner, Severian receives a mysterious note warning about one of the women. After dinner, Severian meets with his challenger, and though stabbed by the avern he miraculously survives and finds that his challenger was the male owner of the rag shop, Agia's brother Agilus. Severian wins the duel amid some confusion. The next day, he is requested to perform an execution. The client is his challenger, Agia's brother, whom he executes.

Severian and Dorcas return to their travels and encounter Dr. Talos and Baldanders, who are almost ready to perform the play they had invited Severian to that morning. Severian assists in the play, and the next day the group sets out toward The Piteous Gate leading out through the great wall of Nessus. When they are in the gate, there is suddenly a commotion and the volume abruptly ends.

An appendix follows.

The Shadow of the Torturer

Chapter I: Resurrection and Death

Severian, an apprentice of the Torturer's Guild, is returning late to the guild with his fellows after a swim (described in Chapter 2). To save time they decide to cut through the necropolis. A citizen guard finds them, nervous of corpse-takers, but lets them go. Vodalus, a famous rebel/bandit, appears and a fight ensues. Severian aids Vodalus, claiming to be his supporter, and is rewarded with a coin.

Chapter II: Severian

Severian briefly describes the necropolis, then how the torturers recruit boys so they do not know their ancestry. He describes one mausoleum he "adopted" as his own hiding place. He then goes back to describe how he had nearly drowned while swimming on the afternoon of the evening described in Chapter 1, trapped in the roots of the nenuphar plants; had a vision of the late Master Malrubius; and was propelled from the water as if thrown.

Chapter III: The Autarch's Face

Severian describes the layout of the Matachin Tower (where the Torturers live and work). Master Palaemon brings Severian and other apprentcies to see some work done the night before, a woman who moans that "She's with Vodalus of the Wood." Severian looks at the coin Vodalus gave him and is surprised to find it a gold chrisos, stamped with the Autarch's androgynous face on one side and, on the other, a symbol (a flying ship) he recognizes from "his" mausoleum. He brings it to the mausoleum and hides it with a spell. A friend tells him of the Autarch's House Absolute, hidden far outside the Citadel (where the Tower stands) and even the vast City (where the Citadel stands, half-forgotten).

Chapter IV: Triskele

One winter, Severian found and secretly nursed a large dog that had lost a leg at the Bear Tower. A week later, the dog, Triskele, vanished into the tunnels under the Citadel, which connect to the dungeons. Looking for him, Severian became lost in the tunnels and arrived at the gardens of the Atrium of Time, where he met Valeria, a young woman whose family is in decline, she says. Triskele appears again a few times, and then vanishes in the spring.

Chapter V: The Picture-Cleaner and Others

As his friends Drotte and Roche are promoted to journeyman, Severian becomes the senior apprentice. He is given better food and more interesting work. Master Gurloes sends him to bring a message to the archivist. He meets an old man cleaning pictures, Rudesind the Curator who, after some discussion of art, directs him to the archivist.

Chapter VI: The Master of the Curators

Severian finds Master Ultan the curator, and finds he is blind and cannot read the message. Ultan tells Severian of the Book of Gold: if a child finds and reads this book, he is inducted into the Guild of Curators. Ultan's apprentice, Cyby, reads the letter, which is a request for four books, and is sent to fetch them. One of the four books is Wonders of Urth and Sky, from which Severian will read at later times.

Chapter VII: The Traitress

The books are intended for the Chatelaine Thecla, a new "client" who is to be treated with some courtesy while awaiting her fate. Severian meets her while distributing food to the prisoners, and delivers the books, slightly bending the rules to do so. They converse about her presence in the cell. Two days later, Master Gurloes summons Seerian and assigns him to converse with Thecla - as a courtesy. Gurloes also promises to send Severian to learn the ways of the flesh with a woman, as a precaution against his doing so with Thecla.

Chapter VIII: The Conversationalist

Severian begins holding nightly conversations with Thecla. She expects to be released at any time and speaks of founding a new religion. Master Gurloes keeps his promise: Severian's immediate senior in the Guild, Roche, a new journeyman, takes him to the Echopraxia, a district of bordellos.

Chapter IX: The House Azure

Roche takes Severian to The House Azure, a bordello ran by an unnamed host with a beardless and unlined face, wearing a yellow robe. The allure of the House Azure is that their escorts all take on the appearance of the noble "beauties of the court" and are transported nightly from the House Absolute. The host offers Chatelaine Barbea, Chatelaine Gracia and finally Chatelaine Thecla who Severian chooses since she appears almost identical to the real Thecla when first presented. However the illusion fades once Severian is behind closed doors with her. The woman says that she can be Thecla for him if Severian will only be "strong enough to master reality, even for a little while." Severian asks what she means and she replies, "Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real. What is the Autarch but a man who believes himself Autarch and makes others believe by the strength of it?" While pressing herself upon him, she further argues that even the real Chatelaine Thecla is not the same as the Chatelaine Thecla of his mind. Severian allows himself to be convinced and while undressing, philosophizes, "Nevertheless we all seek to discover what is real. Why is it? Perhaps we are drawn to the theocenter. That's what the hierophants say, that only that is true." Knowing she has won, she concludes that one must be "clothed in favor" to discover the truth.

Chapter X: The Last Year

When he leaves House Azzure, the host catches Severian's eye and withdraws a phallus-shaped vial from his robe; his smile frightens Severian. Over the next year, Severian often spends time with Thecla, reading the four books, conversing and making love. Thecla tells Severian that the Vatic Fountain prophesied that Thecla would sit on a throne, that members of the court disputed who truly ruled the House Absolute -- the Autarch or Father Inire -- and of her belief that she will be released and she then dreams of building a villa in the most remote part of the Commonwealth. Thecla believes she was taken prisoner because her half-sister Thea is with Vodalus but Thea will never betray Vodalus to save Thecla. Severian tells her that he saw Thea once -- in the necropolis -- and Thecla asks him to remind Thea when he sees her "of the time we sewed Josepha's doll."

Severian is brought before Master Gurloes and Master Palaemon who ask him if he plans to be a torturer or leave the guild. Severian tells them he never considered leaving but that is a lie. Although he loves the guild he also hates it "because it seemed to me inefficient and ineffectual, serving a power that was not only ineffectual but also remote. I do not know how better to express my feelings about it than by saying that I hated it for starving and humiliating me and loved it because it was my home, hated and loved it because it was the exemplar of old things, because it was weak, and because it seemed indestructible." The Masters then revealed to Severian "the final secret" at the heart of the guild and which he vowed never to reveal to anyone outside the guild. Severian does not disclose it here but reveals, "I have since broken that oath, as I have many others."

Chapter XI: The Feast

The Feast of Holy Katherine, the patroness of the torturers, is when apprentices are elevated to journeyman and journeymen are elevated to masters. The founding of the guild is told via story and a performance involving a great spiked wheel, a maid (hired for the occasion) and a sword (actually a wooden batten). As part of his elevation to journeyman, Severian performs a ceremony in which he has the maid symbolically tortured on the wheel and then "beheads" her with the aid of a false wax head. It was a key moment for Severian: "In memory it seems to me I stand always so, in gray shirt and ragged trousers, with the blade poised above my head. While I raised it, I was an apprentice; when it descended, I would be a journeyman of the Order of the Seekers of Truth and Penitence."

Severian drinks heavily, goes to bed and awakes in a small cell (presumably carried there by his comrades). He feels that a woman had been in the cell with him, smells Thecla's perfume and believes that the false Thecla from House Azure had been there. He sleeps again and dreams of a time when the chapel was whole and not the current ruin it is. "Behind the altar rose a wonderful mosaic of blue; but it was blank, as if a fragment of sky without cloud or star had been torn away and spread upon the curving wall.” Severian is struck by "how much lighter it was than the true sky, whose blue is nearly black even on the brightest day.”

Severian awakes and hears quiet footsteps in the passageway. The door opens and Master Malrubius looks in on him to make certain Severian is all right. It is only some time later that Severian recalls that Master Malrubius died when he was a boy.

Chapter XII: The Traitor

Severian accompanies a new prisoner (Marcellina) to a cell adjoining Thecla’s, who still hopes to be released soon. However in Master Gurloes’ study, Severian finds an order for Thecla’s excruciation. The next morning Master Gurloes orders Severian to assist him so he must take Thecla to the examination room where Master Gurloes shows her various torture devices (the kite, the apparatus, the old post for scourging, Aladdin’s necklace and finally the revolutionary. The revolutionary runs on lightning and Master Gurloes applies it to Thecla, bathing her in white light and resulting in the worst screams Severian has heard. Thecla awakens when Severian takes her back to her cell and she describes the pain she suffered. She asks how long it will take her to die and Severian says, “A month, perhaps. The thing in you that hates you will weaken as you weaken. The revolutionary brought it to life but its energy is your energy, and in the end you will die together.” Knowing of the pain she faced, Severian has brought her a knife and leaves her with it. He leaves her cell and waits outside until he sees a crimson rivulet creep from under the door. He then goes to Master Gurloes and tells him what has done.

Chapter XIII: The Lictor of Thrax

Severian is imprisoned in a cell for ten days and then brought before Master Palaemon, who says most in the guild believe he is deserving of death. However they cannot take his life without judicial order; and if they bringn charges publicly, the reputation of the guild would be irrevocably stained. It has been decided that Severian will be sent to Thrax, the City of Windowless Rooms. Abdiesus, the local archon, has requested a carnifex – someone “who takes life and performs such excruciations as the judicators there decree” and who “is universally hated and feared.”

Master Palaemon notes that Severian will have to walk the long distance to Thrax since he has no funds. The mention of money causes Severian to remember the coin that Vodalus gave him and he reflects, “If I had not glimpsed the woman with the heart-shaped face and earned that small gold coin, it is more than possible I would never have carried the knife to Thecla and forfeited my place in the guild. In a sense, that coin had bought my life.”

Master Palaemon tells Severian that although the roads are closed – to force goods to travel by river for taxation purposes – people still travel by night. He warns Severian that the roads are patrolled by uhlans under orders to kill anyone found upon them and with permission to loot the bodies. He grants Severian a watch (75 minutes) to prepare for departure but tells him to return because Palaemon has something to give him.

Severian gathers his few possessions into his sabretache (leather pouch attached to his belt) and then visits Thecla’s cell, where he decides to take the brown book “with its tales from vanished worlds.” He then visits the tower to take a final look at the Citadel and the surrounding city. He sees a vessel on the river Gyoll traveling to the South, where lies “the flashing sea where the great beast Abaia, carried from the farther shores of the universe in anteglacial days, wallows until the moment comes for him and his kind to devour the continents.” To the North lies the House Absolute, forest and jungles, and Thrax, the City of Windowless Rooms.

Chapter XIV: Terminus Est

Master Palaemon gifts Severian with a sword nearly as long as a coffin, its traveling sheath and a baldric (a leather belt worn over the shoulder to support the sword). Although Severian says he deserves no gifts, the Master says that he deserves it because he has had no better scholar since Master Gurloes rose to journeyman. The words Terminus Est are beautifully engraved on the sword, which means This is the Line of Division. When Severian poises the sword above his head, its weight shifts and Master Palaemon explains, “There is a channel in the spine of her blade, and in it runs a river of hydrargyrum – a metal heavier than iron, though it flows like water. The balance is shifted toward the hands when the blade is high, but to the tip when it falls.”

Severian departs on his journey and his heart lifts as he leaves the Citadel. Years later, while writing this account, he comments, “Wrongly I thought I would perish on the way. Wrongly I thought I should never return to the Citadel and our tower; but wrongly too I believed that there were many more days to come, and I smiled.”

As Severian attempts to cross westward on a bridge across the Gyoll, he is stopped by guards who tell him it is a crime to wear the “costume” (his fuligin, the guild cloak) he has on. Severian explains he is a carnifex and they bring him to their lochage, or commanding officer. The lochage confirms Severian’s knowledge of the Citadel and then tells him that the only way to keep the peace amongst the ever-growing population of Nessus is to extinguish all disturbances. He then tells Severan that he must wear more conventional clothing.

When a peltast (light infantry soldier) doubts Severian’s identity still further, the lochage asks what odors accompanied Severian when he entered and then answers his own question: “Rusting iron, cold sweat, putrescent blood.” The peltast begins to again protest and the lochage tells Severian to demonstrate he is of the torturers’ guild. As Severian describes, “The peltast was relaxed, so there was no great difficulty. I knocked his shield aside with my right arm, putting my left foot on his right to pin him while I crushed that nerve in the neck that induces convulsions.”

Chapter XV: Baldanders

Exhausted by his day’s travels, Severian finds an inn and asks for a room. The innkeeper says none are left but Severian insists and the innkeeper says he can share a bed with two others who he assured Severian are optimates (“good men”). He brings Severian to a room where Baldanders – “the largest man I had ever seen; a man who might fairly have been called a giant” -- is asleep. Severian joins him in bed with Terminus Est between them and they mumble greetings to each other.

Severian then dreams that he is flying astride a large leather-winged being on a long journey over land before coming to a featureless and blackened purple waste. He then recognizes it as the World-River Uroboros that cradles Urth. When they were surrounded by water, the hag-faced beast turns its head to regard Severian who believes he can read its thoughts – “You dream; but were you to wake from your waking, I would be there.” The beast then drops Severian into the sea.

Severian does not drown but instead sees gigantic non-human figures (e.g., some like ships or clouds or a living head without a body), a huge ruined palace and then huge naked leprous-white women “with hair of sea-foam green and eyes of coral.” They encircle Severian and identify themselves as brides of Abaia, explaining that, “The land could not hold us. Our breasts are battering rams, our buttocks would break the backs of bulls. Here we feed, floating and growing, until we are great enough to mate with Abaia, who will one day devour the continents.” Severian asks, “And who am I?” and they take him to a small stage to show him. What follows is a puppet show featuring a tiny figure of a man made of sticks who carries a club as well as a figure of a boy armed with a sword. They fight until the boy vanquishes the wooden man, which then floats away from the stage leaving the boy, the cudgel and the sword – both broken.

Severian awakes when a small energetic and foppishly-dressed man with fiery red hair enters the bedroom and introduces himself as Dr. Talos. He says he and his partner Baldanders have just concluded a successful tour and are headed north, possibly to the House Absolute. He wakens Baldanders to go to breakfast by beating him with a wooden walking stick and Severian notices strange scars about Baldanders neck and ears. When Baldanders realizes Severian has slept with him, he says, “Then I know whence my dreams rose” and describes them as “Of caverns below, where stone teeth dripped blood. . .Of arms dismembered found on sanded paths, and things that shook chains in the dark.”

Chapter XVI: The Rag Shop

At breakfast at a nearby café, Dr. Talos explains that he and Baldanders (who has amazing strength) have been travelling and raising money by entertaining crowds in order to restore their home in Lake Diuturna which burned – although Baldanders notes some vaults escaped. He proposes that Severian join them in performing a play since they are all heading north. Dr. Talos also invites their waitress, “a thin young woman with straggling hair”, to join them and promises, “I will make you beautiful because we require you as an actress.” (As he makes this offer, Severian comments that Dr. Talos’ face is like that of a stuffed fox which gives an “amazing and realistic appearance of vivacity.”) She hesitates but Baldanders assures her, “You may trust him. The doctor has his own way of looking at the world, but he lies less than people believe.”

They leave the café without paying and separate – Dr. Talos to “devote my time to the enhancement of this sylph” and Baldanders to return to the inn to get their theatrical props – and Dr. Talos asks Severian to meet them to perform at Ctesiphon’s Cross. Severian agrees to do so but has no intention of rejoining them. As Severian travels northward through the city, he notices the multiple and unique colors and originality of the closely-set buildings. Many have shops in their lower levels but the architecture varied widely since they had originally been built for “guildhalls, basilicas, arenas, conservatories, treasuries, oratories, artellos, asylums, manufacturies, conventicles, hospices, lazarets, mills, refectories, deadhouses, abattoirs, and playhouses.” Remembering his promise to avoid causing a disturbance as well as his limited funds, Severian decides the best plan would be to purchase a voluminous mantle to cover his guild cloak.

While searching for a suitable shop, he sees “a slender young woman of twenty or little more came out of one of the dark shops to unfasten the gratings. She wore a pavonine brocade gown of amazing richness and raggedness, and as I watched her, the sun touched a rent just below her waist, turning the skin there to palest gold. I cannot explain the desire I felt for her, then and afterward. Of the many women I have known, she was, perhaps, the least beautiful – less graceful than her I have loved most, less voluptuous than another, less reginal far than Thecla. She was of average height, with a short nose, wide cheekbones, and the elongated brown eyes that often accompany them. I saw her lift the grating and I loved her with a love that was deadly and yet not serious. Of course I went to her. I could no more have resisted her than I could have resisted the blind greed of Urth if I had tumbled over a cliff.”

Severian asks her if she knows where he can buy a mantle. She feels his guild cloak and marvels at how dark it is, that one cannot see the folds and her hand appears to disappear within it. She then gestures to the used clothing shop behind her. Severian enters the dim shop and sees that “the man behind the counter was more frightening than any torturer. His face was a skeleton’s or nearly so, a face with dark pits for eyes, shrunken cheeks, and a lipless mouth. If it had not moved and spoken, I would not have believed he was a living man at all, but a corpse left erect behind the counter in fulfillment of the morbid wish of some past owner.”

Chapter XVII: The Challenge

The shopkeeper inspects and offers to buy Terminus Est, upping his offer several times. Severian tells him the sword is not for sale and then notices the counterman has a mask on. He asks him to take it off and his real face is remarkably like that of the young woman outside the store. Someone else enters the store – a youth whose face is hidden in an inlaid close helmet – and silently gives Severian a small black seed and then departs. The shopkeeper gasps and explains that Severian has been challenged to a monomachy (duel) by an officer of the Household Guards. If Severian does not show up at twilight, he will be assassinated.

After selling Severian a mantle the color of dead leaves, the shopkeeper says he will send his sister to help Severian get the avern (poisoned flower) he must duel with. He offers to hold Terminus Est for Severian since swords are prohibited but that is immediately declined.

Severian the future narrator pauses in his recitation to wonder aloud if he is providing too much detail for these scenes. But he has “spent weary days in reading the histories of my predecessors” (prior Autarchs) and they consist of abridged accounts which are open to multiple interpretations of motivations and causes. He philosophizes that one’s actions are influenced by both external and internal forces. The external is embodied in “those figures who wait beyond the void of death…Rightly we feel our lives guided by them, and rightly too we feel how little we matter to them, the builders of the unimaginable, the fighters of wars beyond the totality of existence.” However there are forces within us equally great – like Severian’s unexplainable desire for the shopkeeper’s daughter. Those forces “waken within us and we are ridden like beasts, though the rider is but some hitherto unguessed part of ourselves.”

Severian then departs with the shopkeeper’s sister, wearing the mantle over his guild cloak and carrying Terminus Est like a staff. Severian muses that such mantles were previously worn by religious pilgrims, but religion has fallen into disuse and he never sees another mantle in his journeys. He concludes, “So I became, in appearance at least, a pilgrim bound for some vague northern shrine. Have I said that time turns our lies into truths?”

Chapter XVIII: The Destruction of the Altar

The shopkeeper’s sister introduces herself as Agia and they proceed to the Botanic Gardens in a hired carriage (fiacre) to cut an avern. Agia says she will have time to teach Severian how to fight with it before his late afternoon duel in Sanguinary Fields but Severian is sure to be killed. When he does not appear overly concerned about his fate, Agia says, “You have the face of someone who stands to inherit two palitinates (territories) and an isle somewhere I never heard of, and the manners of a shoemaker, and when you say you’re not afraid to die, you think you mean it, and under that you believe you don’t. But you do, at the very bottom. It wouldn’t bother you a bit to chop off my head either, would it?”

Before Severian can answer, Agia challenges another fiacre to a race to the Garden Landing. Severian recognizes Sieur Racho in the fiacre (who he encountered in Chapter V) and because he wishes to humble Racho and he feels reckless since his death appears imminent, spurs the onegars (wild asses) by making shallow cuts in their flanks with Terminus Est. The fiacre driver tries to take a shortcut, loses control and crashes into a cavernous tent-building and destroying the wooden altar inside.

Severian finds Agia, who is limping, and supports her as she identifies this as the Cathedral of the Pelerines (travelling priestesses). Agia says they must leave immediately because flames are starting to appear amidst the widely-strewn straw. A group of scarlet-clad people approach them and a tall and forbiddingly beautiful woman gives Severian his sword which went flying in the crash. She then asks if they have found anything of value which they should return. Both deny taking anything. The woman takes Severian’s wrists in her hands, looks into his eyes and declares, “There is no guilt in him.” She does the same to Agia but then has Agia’s clothes removed but her swordsmen find nothing. The woman (called Mother by her men) declares, “I think this the day foretold….The Claw has not vanished in living memory, but it does so at will and it would neither possible nor permissible for us to stop it.” The swordsmen suggest that Severian and Agia be killed but the Mother silently departs and her retinue follows.

Chapter XIX: The Botanic Gardens

As they descend to the boat landing, Agia explains that the Pelerines are “professional virgins” who travel the country setting up their tent-cathedral. They dress in red to represent the descending light of the New Sun and claim to possess the most valuable relic in existence: a gem called the Claw of the Conciliator. The Conciliator was the Master of Power who could transcend reality, negate time and thus could appear at any time in history or the present. It is impossible to confirm or deny if the Conciliator was in contact with the human race but the Claw allegedly “forgives injuries, raises the dead, draws new races of beings from the soil, purifies lust, and so on. All the things he is supposed to have done himself.”

In the clear sunshine, Severian sees the imperfections in Agia’s face but he finds them appealing and “rejoices in the flaws that made her more real to me.” Conversely, Agia says that Severian looks like “an armiger and probably the bastard of an exultant”. She then presses herself against him and kisses him, saying she may give him more after supper.

Agia then points out an island in the distance with a building made entirely of glass which enclose the Botanic Gardens. The Gardens consist of bioscapes of surprising depth in chambers. An aging but familiar-looking curator recommends that Severian see the Garden of Antiquities but he first chooses the nearby Garden of Sand which is being rebuilt. They step into a seemingly unlimited space dotted with boulders and the door becomes concealed behind stone cliffs. Severian asks, “The door is open behind us -- why is it I feel I can’t leave this place?” Agia says the chambers have that effect on people, although usually not so quickly, and suggests they leave. Severian seems to hear the faroff sound of the surf but then Agia pulls Severian out of the room. He is surprised when Agia tells him that more than a watch (75 minutes) has elapsed and he accuses her of lying. Agia angrily says, “Severian, you argued and argued, and in the end I had to drag you out. The gardens affect people like that – certain suggestible people. They say the Autarch wants some people to remain in each to accent the reality of the scene, and so his archimage, Father Inire, has invested them with a conjuration. But since you were so drawn to that one, it’s not likely that any of the others will affect you as much.” Severian replies, “I felt I belonged there….and that a certain woman was there, nearby, but concealed from sight.

They pass a door entitled The Jungle Garden and Severian insists on entering. They see a rotted tree fallen across the path which is identified as Caesalpinia sappan, which is a small thorny tree known for yielding a valuable red dye. Agia comments, “The real sun is dying in the north as the sun cools. A man I know says it has been dying so for many centuries. Here, the old jungle stands preserved as it was when the sun was young. Come in. You wanted to see this place.”

Chapter XX: Father Inire’s Mirrors

As they wander deep into the Jungle Garden, Severian hears a screaming “from some red world still unconquered by thought” and asks what it is. Agia believes it is a distant smilodon (saber-toothed cat), either far off in the garden or “perhaps the distance is of time.” Although she cannot explain it and says some things are unanswerable, the chambers appear open to the sky and are much larger on the inside than they appear at first. “I warned you that the rooms open out, and that you might find that disturbing. It is also said that the walls of these places are specula, whose reflective power creates the appearance of vast space.”

This occasions Severian to recall a tale of Father Inire he heard from Thecla. When she was 13, she had a friend Domnina who looked several years younger. She says that there are two large mirrors in the Hall of Meaning which are 3-4 ells wide (10 to 13 feet) and extend to the ceiling. Thecla and Domnina enjoyed playing there because their images were infinitely multiplied. One day Father Inire approached them; he was wearing iridescent robes (having colors like the rainbow) that faded into gray and was only slightly taller than them. He told them to be wary because there was an imp hiding in the mirror who creeps into the eyes of those who look at it. Domnina asked if he was shaped like a gleaming tear and Father Inire said that was someone else. But he offered to take her to his “presence chamber” tomorrow to show him to Domnina. Domnina later vowed she would not go but a servant in a livery came for her the next day. When she returned hours later she was very upset. The servant had taken her down halls she did not know existed in the House Absolute, which alone was frightening. The presence chamber itself was a large room with solid red hangings and empty except for two vases taller than a man and several feet wide. “In the center was what she at first took to be a room within the room. The walls were octagonal and painted with labyrinths. Over it, just visible from where she stood at the entrance to the presence chamber burned the brightest lamp she had ever seen. It was blue-white, she said, and so brilliant an eagle could not have kept his eyes on it.” One of the eight walls painted with labyrinths opened and Father Inire stepped out. Behind him she saw a bottomless hole filled with light. He said, “You’ve come just in time. Child, the fish is nearly caught. You can watch the setting of the hook, and learn by what means his golden scales are to be meshed in our landing net.” He then led her into the octagonal enclosure.

In the center, Domnina sees a constantly-flickering yellow light in a cubic space of 4 spans high and 4 spans long (i.e. 32” x 32”). Domnina realizes she is surrounded by mirrored surfaces that reflect her and Father Inire and the fishlike light. Father Inire explains, “The ancients, who knew this process at least as well as we and perhaps better, considered the Fish the least important and most common of the inhabitants of the specula. With their false belief that the creatures they summoned were ever present in the depths of the glass, we need not concern ourselves. In time they turned to a more serious question: By what means may travel be effected when the point of departure is at an astronomical distance from the place of arrival?”

Father Inire gives Domnina instruction in some basics of physics – (1) that if something moves very, very fast, it grows heavy and is attracted to Urth or other worlds, becoming a source of attraction itself if it travels fast enough; and (2) although light is weightless, it presses against what if falls on like a wind pushes the arms of a mill. He explains that the mirrors are used to travel between the stars, saying “if the light is from a coherent source, and forms the image reflected from an optically exact mirror, the orientation of the wave fronts is the same because the image is the same. Since nothing can exceed the speed of light in our universe, the accelerated light leaves it and enters another. When it slows again, it reenters ours – naturally at another place…. Eventually it will be a real being, if we do not darken the lamp or shift the mirrors. For a reflected image to exist without an object to originate it violates the laws of our universe, and therefore an object will be brought into existence.”

Agia puts an end to Severian’s recollections by pointing out a hut on stilts in the jungle. When Severian takes off his mantle and thus displays his guild cloak, a man in front of the hut flees into the hut in terror.

Chapter XXI: The Hut in the Jungle

Severian and Agia climb up the ladder to the hut and find it inhabited by, as it turns out, the man who fled and now looks out a window (Robert), a woman reading aloud in a corner (his wife Marie) and a naked man crouching at her feet (Isangoma). Isangoma appears to be a local tribesman who speaks of Numen, the Proud One, and says “Everything found beneath leaves is his, the storms are carried in his arms, the poison holds no death unless his curse is pronounced over it!” Isangoma says he loves the Preceptress (Marie) and would save her if he could from the tokoloshe (dwarf-like mischievous evil spirits from South American myth). Robert turns from the window, looks at Severian and Agia and tells Marie, “As Isangoma says, the tokoloshe are here. Not his, I think, but ours. Death and the Lady.” It becomes obvious that Marie cannot see them and Robert says in frustration, “Don’t you see that they are the results of what we do? They are the spirits of the future, and we make them ourselves.” A faint humming is then heard and Marie says it is the mail plane. Severian joins Robert at the window and sees the strangest flier he has ever seen - - it has silver bulges on its wings and at the front of its hull and light seems to glimmer in front of these bulges. Marie tells Robert that they could be at the landing strip in three days when it next arrives. Isangoma starts a chant to drive away the tokoloshe. Agia then demands that they leave or Severian will be on his own for the duel, so they depart while Isangoma continues chanting in triumph.

As they leave, Severian reflects on the flier he saw: “It was like no other I’ve ever seen. I should have been looking at the roof facets of this building, but instead I saw the flier he expected to see. At least, that’s what it seemed like. Something from somewhere else. A little while ago I wanted to tell you about a friend of a friend of mine who was caught in Father Inire’s mirrors. She found herself in another world, and even when she returned to Thecla – that was my friend’s name – she wasn’t quite sure she had found her way back to her real point of origin. I wonder if we aren’t still in the world those people left, instead of them in ours.”

Agia reminds him that she told him that certain visitors are attracted to bioscapes and as time goes on, their minds conform to their surroundings. Perhaps Severian merely saw an ordinary flier but interpreted it to conform to Henry’s expectation. Severian points out that it wasn’t just his perception that was affected -- both Henry and Isangoma actually saw Agia and him. She says her understanding is that the more deeply a bioscape’s inhabitants must be adjusted so they believe they are still in their native surroundings, the more likely they are to have at least a fragmentary awareness of visitors to the gardens. As she put it, “From what I’ve heard, the further an inhabitant’s consciousness must be warped, the more residual perceptions are likely to remain. When I meet monsters, wild men, and so forth in these gardens, I find they’re a lot more likely to be at least partially aware of me than the others are.” When Severian presses her again, she exasperatedly says, “I didn’t build this place, Severian. All I know is that if you turn around on the path now, the last place we saw probably won’t be there.”

Chapter XXII: Dorcas

They enter the Garden of Endless Sleep which consists of a dark lake in an endless fen. Agia explains that the lake water can preserve corpses so they are weighted down with lead to reside there and their locations noted so they can found later. An old man paddling a skiff approaches and disputes this – although he has a marked diagram, he cannot locate the body of his wife. He further explains that the deadly averns were planted here by Father Inire to kill the manatees which came through the conduit. Agia is not interested and proceeds forward but Severian slowly walks along the shore in time with the old man’s paddling while the two converse.

The old man tells Severian that he cannot find his wife because the bodies move due to an underwater conduit; indeed, some have been seen out in the distant sea. He has been searching for his wife’s body for over 15 years and is convinced she is now wandering and may return to him because he has pulled up all the bodies in the lake in that time. He has been looking for her because when she was put under the water, her eyes opened and he dreams of it every night. He needs to find her end the dream and his belief that she may return.

Severian begins running to catch up with Agia and in doing so, “I made one of those missteps that seem disastrous and enormously humiliating at the time, though one laughs at them afterward; and in doing so I set in motion one of the strangest incidents of my admittedly strange careers.” Severian flounders in the spring grass along the shore and falls into the icy water, losing Terminus Est in the process. He finds the sword caught up in reeds 13 to 16 feet below. “At the same instant, my other hand touched an object of a completely different kind. It was another human hand, and its grasp (for it had seized my hand the moment I touched it) coincided so perfectly with the recovery of Terminus Est that it seemed the hand’s owner was returning my property to me, like the tall mistress of the Pelerines. I felt a surge of lunatic gratitude, then fear returned tenfold: the hand was pulling my own, drawing me down.”

Chapter XXIII: Hildegrin

Severian manages to throw Terminus Est onto the grassy marsh and would have sunk again but a young blonde woman pulls him onto the marsh. He is then hauled ashore by a big beef-faced man who asks all of them who they are and why they are there. Agia explains herself and Severian, but the blonde girl seems at a loss until she finally replies, “Dorcas”. She cannot remember how she got there; Agia thinks she is mad and wandered into the garden. The beefy man speculates that a thief may have cracked her on the head and threw her in the water, thinking she was dead; or that someone had brought her in to be sunk when she was only in a coma, since “They can stay under a long time in a com’er, so I’ve heard.”

He then introduces himself as “Hildegrin the Badger” and gives them his calling card which states he does “excavations of all kinds”. He offers to ferry them across the lake. While walking to his boat, Agia insists that Dorcas will not be coming with them while Severian encourages her to find a curator or to go to the Sand Garden to warm up. Hildegrin is worried that Dorcas might start “friskin’ around” while on the boat and Dorcas surprises them by saying, “I’m not mad. It’s just. . . I feel as if I’ve just wakened.”

As they cross the Lake of Birds, Hildegrin says that some call it that because many birds are found dead in the water. However he thinks it’s just because there are so many birds found at the Garden of Everlasting Sleep. He comments, “But she’s a good friend to birds, Death is. Wherever there’s dead men and quiet, you’ll find a good many birds, that’s been my experience.” Severian agrees, recalling the thrushes in the necropolis.

Hildegrin points out that the land rises behind the approaching shore and says this garden is supposed to look like the mouth of a dead volcano. He then points out a black spot halfway up the rim and says that is the “Cave of the Cumaean – the woman that knows the future and the past and everything else. There’s some that say this whole place was built only for her, though I don’t believe it. . . .The Autarch wants her here, so they say, so he can come and talk without travelin’ to the other side of the world. . . . People come sometimes hopin’ to know when they’ll be married, or about success in trade. But I’ve observed they don’t often come back.”

At the center of the lake, the garden rose about them like the sides of a vast bowl, which seemed to confirm Hildegrin’s dead volcano theory. They proceeded in silence, and Severian feels they are all held by the spell around them. “A spell there was, surely, in this garden. I could almost hear it humming over the water, voices chanting in a language I did not know but understood.”

Chapter XXIV: The Flower of Dissolution

Dorcas finds a water hyacinth, the only one of its kind that Severian sees on the lake. This and Hildegrin’s implication that although the seeress’ cave was on the other side of the world, it was accessible in the garden, results in speculative musings by Severian on philosophy, physics and the nature of light and darkness.

Hildegrin comments that he can see by Severian’s expression that he is going to the Sanguinary Fields to duel and that he will die there but he says he need not, he could just decline to go. Dorcas asks if this is true and when Severian denies he was thinking about the duel, she says, “The world is filled half with evil and half with good. We can tilt it forward so that more good runs into our minds, or back, so that more runs into this (glancing at the lake). But the quantities are the same, we change only their proportion here or there. Severian replies, “I would tilt it as far back as I can, until at least the evil runs out altogether.” Dorcas says, “It might be the good that would run out. But I am like you; I would bend time backward if I could.”

They arrive at the far shore and walk toward the averns, Severian wondering aloud, “They are not from here, are they? Not from Urth.” But no one answers him. The averns have sharp dagger-like leaves and Agia tells him to snap a plant off at the stem to avoid touching the poisoned leaves. As Severian approaches the averns, Hildegrin states, “I’ll take the females to safety”. This statement reminds Severian where he has met Hildegrin before – in the Citadel cemetary when he made a similar statement to Vodalus about taking Thea to safety.

Severian carefully detaches a 3-foot-long avern at first, and then selects a second avern (over Agia’s warning objection) so that he can practice breaking off and throwing the deadly leaves. He discovers they can be thrown point-first like a knife or spinning in flight like a shuriken. Severian binds the 3-foot avern to a sapling so that it’s poisonous leaves will be transported (like a “grotesque standard”) several feet away from the group when they reboard the boat. Once across, Agia is so intent on driving Dorcas away that it gives Severian a chance to ask Hildegrin about Vodalus. Hildegrin denies knowing Vodalus and when Severian reminds him that “You tried to brain me with your shovel”, Hildegrin silently departs in his boat.

As the trio trek toward the Sanguinary Fields, Agia continues trying to get Dorcas to leave them. Severian allows her to do so both because he wants to lie with Agia and because it seems Dorcas would be pained by seeing him die. But then he orders Agia to desist or he will strike her, and calls Dorcas (following 50 paces behind) to join them.

Chapter XXV: The Inn of Lost Loves

When they get to the Sanguinary Fields, Severian sees a line of blackness along the horizon and Agia explains that is the City Wall which has stood for a dozen ages and impedes the movement of air. “The city is what is enclosed, though there’s open country to the north, so I’ve heard, and leagues and leagues of ruins in the south, where no one lives.” They proceed to the Inn of Lost Loves for Agia’s promised meal, although it will be after the duel, and she says she’ll invite the Septentrion if he wins. The Inn is an elevated open air restaurant atop a massive tree and they are greeted by the innkeeper Abban, a “monstrously fat man” who appears to know Agia. At Severian’s request, a scullion erects a folding screen so that Dorcas can rid herself of the lake residue away from Agia’s prying eyes. The innkeeper also brings in a brazier and Severian dries his mantle, cloak and boots beside it. Severian and Agia drink wine and eat pastries while Dorcas cleans herself behind the folding screen.

Severian sees a folded note under the waiter tray and he and Agia speculate who has sent him a secret message as they kiss. He tells her of Hildegrin and how he saved Vodalus, and speculates that is perhaps why he was challenged by the Septentrion. Agia looks ill but then discards her gown and offers to lie with Severian as long he destroys the note without reading it. Severian’s desire instantly dies and he steps away, wondering aloud if Agia is trying to betray him in some way. He demands, “Tell me you are acting in my own best interests, and nothing beyond.” Agia does not reply directly but says she has been trying to help him, and then makes a grab for the note which Severian easily stops. She wishes aloud she had either thrown in the fire or, if she had a knife, she would stab Severian. Severian reads the note, which states: “The woman with you has been here before. Trudo says the man is a torturer. You are my mother come again.”

Chapter XXVI: Sennet

A naked Agia grabs the note and tosses it over the side without reading it. Severian, trying to understand who the note was intended for, asks Agia her age (23) and if she has ever had a child (no). He then ponders Dorcas’ age and Agia replies, “I’d say your drab little mystery’s 16 or 17. Hardly more than a child.” Dorcas interrupts this exchange by emerging from behind the folding screen, “no longer the muddy creature we had become accustomed to, but a round-breasted, slender girl of singular grace.”

Agia says they must depart because the descending sun will soon strike the City Wall, which is the signal for the guards to close the gates to the City and for the dueling to commence. If a duellist is not on the fields by the time the sun is fully below the City Wall, he is assumed to have refused satisfaction and can be freely assaulted anywhere by the armiger or hired assassins.

Severian asks the innkeeper for pen and paper and he replicates the message in the note, tucking it into his sabretache. He also asks if the innkeeper knows anyone named Trudo and he says that is the name of his ostler (who cares for the horses). He summons him but learns that Trudo has fled with all of his possessions. Severian sees hundreds of people heading to the Sanguinary Fields, most of whom are merely onlookers. He then sees Agia and Dorcas descending from the inn and his desire for Agia is rekindled despite his disdain mere moments before. Both Agia and Dorcas can see this in his face, but Agia withholds herself from him because she is still angry with Severian. He reflects on the difference in women: “I think it is in this that we find the real difference between those women to whohe bm if we are to remain men we must offer our lives, and those who (again – if we are to remain men) we must overpower and outwit if we can, and use as we never would a beast: that the second will never permit us to give them what we give the first. Agia enjoyed my admiration and would have been moved to ecstasy by my caresses; but even if I were to pour myself into her a hundred times, we would part strangers.” And yet Severian still found himself desiring her.

As they walk toward the fields, Dorcas whispers to Severian, “And I am sorry to have taken your joy from you upstairs. I would not have deprived you. But, Severian, I love you.”

Chapter XXVII: Is He Dead?

As the current narrator and Autarch, Severian ruminates on the purpose of the Sanguinary Fields (sanctioned dueling). “Whether it is good or evil (as I am inclined to think), it is surely ineradicable in a society such as ours, which must for its own survival hold the military virtues higher than any others, and in which so few of the armed retainers of the state can be spared to police the populace.” He compares it to the alternative (unsanctioned murder) and finds legal dueling to be the better choice. He concludes, “And yet how readily this practice lends itself to intrigue.”

Severian meets with the Septentrion in a walled-off circular arena 15 strides across. At Dorcas’ insistence – and with the aid of the ephor (magistrate) – he removes his armor since Severian has none. He insists on keeping his helmet and Severian dons his own torturer’s mask to shock of the onlookers. They throw the deadly leaves at each other until two strike in midair, causing them to writhe and slash against each other. As Severian watches, he feels a presence and then starts to feel cold and distant from the others. Someone asks, “Is he dead” and another responds, “That’s it. Those things always kill.”

The Septentrion declares victory and demands Severian’s sword but then Severian sits up and sees a bloodstained leaf fall from his chest. The Septentrion shouts, “He should be dead” and Agia shouts, “Sacrilege!” but the ephor halts the Septentrion so Severian can regain his avern. Severian picks it up, although it seems to stir in his hand and faces the Septentrion. “His eyes were shadowed by his helmet, but there was terror in every line of his body. For a moment he seemed to look from me to Agia. Then he turned and fled toward the opening in the rails at his end of the arena. The spectators blocked his way and he used his avern like a scourge, striking to right and left. There was a scream, then a crescendo of screams.” Dorcas grabbed Severian’s hand pulling him away while he hears Agia in the distance shriek, “Agilus!”

Chapter XXVIII: Carnifex

Severian first awakes naked in a bed in a lazaret (sickhouse) and sees Dorcas asleep on the floor next to him, holding Terminus Est with his clothing nearby. He dons his guild cloak and wanders, learning from a soldier that he is a government fortress. The soldier recognizes him as a carnifex and invites him to join other soldiers for a meal. They explain that they had been fighting in the north during the summer but were now wintering in Nessus and maintaining order. The soldier mentions that one of the patrols brought in another carnifex who was nearly dead the night before.

Growing uneasy, Severian returns to the sickroom and finds Dorcas awake and overjoyed to see him. He asks what happened and she says that Severian was struck with an avern leaf almost as soon as the duel started and it began to drink his blood. “Then it fell away. I don’t know how to describe it. It was as though everything I had seen had been wrong. But it wasn’t wrong – I remember what I saw. You got up again, and you looked. . . . I don’t know. As if you were lost, or some part of you was far away.” Then when the duel restarted, she saw that Severian’s avern was curling toward him and opening its flower, with a face underneath “like the face poison would have, if poison had a face.” Dorcas says that Severian looked half-awake but the Septentrion ran away in terror with Agia shouting at him. He struck down anyone who got in his way until a woman cut his avern with a braquemard (double edged short sword.) Severian merely stood there and his avern was bending toward his face with Dorcas struck it with Terminus Est and knocked it out of his hand. She then led him back to the city.

Dorcas eats some bread while she is recounting the prior evening and mentions that she thinks this is the first food she has had in a long, long time. She then says they encountered some soldiers and once she told them Severian was a torturer, they created a makeshift stretcher and transported him to the lazaret.

Dorcas then asks him about the note that he and Agia had been whispering about the night before. Severian explains where he found it and Dorcas says it must have been intended for her since it was placed where she had been sitting. Severian agrees, saying, “So you reminded someone of his mother.” Tears fill Dorcas’ eyes as Severian continues, “You’re not old enough to have had a child who could have written that note.” Dorcas says, “I don’t remember” and buries her face in the mantle.

Chapter XXIX: Agilus

Severian is told to leave the lazaret after the doctor confirms he is healthy because his garb and sword are upsetting the other patients. A magistrate from the Hall of Justice finds Severian and tells his services as carnifex will be needed tomorrow to execute a man who has killed nine people. After securing overnight quarters for himself and Dorcas, Severian visits the prisoner per his guild’s customs. He sees a naked woman (who he is surprised to see is Agia) sobbing beside a chained naked man who she names as Agilus. Their faces are mirrors of each other and does not understand how this can be, until Agilus explains, “It was Agia in the shop. In the Septentrion costume. She came in through the rear entrance while I was speaking to you, and I made a sign to her when you wouldn’t even talk of selling the sword.” Agia then explains that the sword was made by Jovinian and was worth ten times their shop.

Severian realizes that they had probably committed this type of legal murder before and they try to justify it, Agilus going so far as to say it was “fair combat” and invite him to fight tomorrow. Severian then realizes, “You knew that when evening came the warmth of my hands would stimulate the avern, and that it would strike at my face. You wore gloves and you had only to wait. In reality, didn’t even have to do that, because you had thrown the leaves often before.”

Agilus then boldly declares that Severian has wronged him three times and he claims the boon of freedom as payment. He argues he was first wronged by entrapment because Severian unknowingly carried a valuable heirloom and he had a duty to know its value. Second, by refusing his offer to buy which is treason in a commercial society. And third, by having some unknown powers that allowed him to survive and win the combat.

Severian laughs at this twisted logic and says he is not such a fool. Agia drops her gown and clasps Severian, declaring her love for him but then also reaching into his sabretache. Severian forcefully thrusts her away and her head strikes the wall; she slides down the wall weeping. He believes she was trying to steal the letter intended for the archon of Thrax but Agilus says she was after the coins in the sabretache. Severian leads her out into the hall and gives her a coin.

Severian returns to the cell and confirms to Agilus that he will die tomorrow. He then instructs him to eat little, empty his bowels and “I drilled him too in that false routine we teach to all who must die, so they will think the moment is not quite come when in fact it has come, the false routine that lets them die with something less than fear.” He leaves Agilus and find Agia gone from the hallway. However she has scratched a design on the floor. “It might have been the snarling face of Jurupai, or perhaps a map, and it was wreathed with letters I did not know. I rubbed it away with my foot.”

Chapter XXX: Night

Severan finds 3 men and 2 women eagerly waiting to meet the carnifex. Among them is a small gray man with madness in his eyes who speaks of a beautiful doll he had when he was on the Quasar and its subsequent loss. He curses all evildoers and asks Severian, “W-without you, where are their nightmares, where are their restitution, so long promised? Where are their chains, fetters, manacles and cangues?”

Severian and Dorcas walk about the city and then return to their room. Although Dorcas cannot remember being with a man, she knows she is not a virgin and is not hesitant in her desire for Severian. They make love and Dorcas says, “I’m glad. I’m so glad.” Severian falls asleep afterward and again dreams of the great face he has seen in his prior dream of Gyoll, “a portent of coral and white seen in the sky, smiling with needle teeth.”

The narrator Severian recalls that when he was younger, he only desired “high things” like justice and for the Torturers guild to regain the high regard it once had. He then writes, “I am wise now, if not much older, and I know it is better to have all things, high and low, than to have the high only.”

He also ponders the death of Agilus and what happens to a man after death. He has heard of many haunted places in the world but he has also heard that human spirits – unlike those of elemental spirits -- grow infrequent and ultimately cease. He thinks, “Historiographers say that in the remote past men knew only this one world of Urth, and had no fear of such beasts as were on it then, and traveled freely from this continent to the north; but no one has ever seen even the ghosts of such men. It may be that it perishes at once – or that it wanders among the constellations. This Urth, surely, is less than a village in the immensity of the universe. And if a man lives in a village and his neighbors burn his house, he leaves the place if he does not die in it. But then we must ask how he came.”

Chapter XXXI: The Shadow of the Torturer

Per guild custom, a masked and cloaked Severian stands on the scaffold for a long time before Agilus is brought out. Once he is, the execution is swiftly completed. Severian hears Agia’s faraway scream at that moment. After the body is dragged away and Severian is paid a “master’s fee” for his services, he and Dorcas depart after dark per the advice of more experienced guildsmen. It is revealed that Severian was ill after the execution and he attributes that to nerves and concern that something would go wrong.

As they look for an inn, Dorcas asks if he misses Agia and Severian says he hardly knew her and he would be dead if she had had her way. Dorcas wonderingly says, “But the leaf did not kill you” and Severian is forced to confront the thought that he has been avoiding – that he should be dead.

Dorcas asks to read the note that he had copied and Severian reaches into his sabretache for it but instead feels something cold and oddly shaped. He pulls it out and describes it as, “It was larger than an orichalk (brass coin), but not by much, and only a trifle thicker. The cold material (whatever it was) flashed celestine beams at the frigid rays of the moon.” He thrust it back in his sabretache lest others see it and then realizes what it is. “The Claw of the Conciliator. Agia put it there. She must have, when we broke the altar, so it would not be found on her person if she were searched. She and Agilus would have got it again when Agilus claimed victor-right, and when I didn’t die, she tried to steal it in his cell.”

But Dorcas no longer looking at Severian but instead staring at the sky in astonishment. “Hanging over the city like a flying mountain in a dream was an enormous building – a building with towers and buttresses and an arched roof. Crimson light poured from its windows. I tried to speak, to deny the miracle even as I saw it; but before I could frame a syllable, the building had vanished like a bubble in a fountain, leaving only a cascade of sparks.”

Chapter XXXII: The Play

After seeing the suspended building for a brief moment, Severian comes to realize that he loves Dorcas but in a different way than he had loved Thecla. They discuss whether it was a vision and Dorcas says she does not know whether she has ever had a vision because she can recall only brief moments before coming out of the water, including a small dog barking outside a door. Severian then asks if she has heard the idea that the universe has a secret key. He states that the brown book had a section listing all of the alleged keys of the universe, collected from all of the different worlds. One of them is that everything is a sign which has three meanings – its practical meaning, its impact and what it says about the world around it, and its transubstantial meaning which expresses the will of the Pancreator. Dorcas says the third meaning of the building that leaped into the sky seems very clear (although she does not express that meaning) but the first and second meanings are more difficult to interpret.

They come across a clearing with 50 people gathered around a platform holding Dr. Talos, Baldanders and a “sensuously beautiful woman” (Jolenta) that Severian says he has never seen before. Dr. Talos spies them and names them as Death and Innocence to the crowd. They join the troupe and are put to work in a play which ends with Severian presiding over an interrogation room in which the others are chained and manacled by various devices. The giant Baldanders breaks free, knocks Severian down and – now seemingly berserk -- runs amuck into the crowd scattering and dispersing them. Dr. Talos then reveals this was part of the plan and collects the “dropsies” that the panicked crowd left behind in their flight. The group then makes camp on the site for the night and go sleep, watched over by Dr. Talos sitting “in the chair that had been the Autarch’s throne and the Inquisitor’s bench a short time before.”

Chapter XXXIII: Five Legs

Severian remains awake and surreptitiously watches Dr. Talos, seeing “sorrow, glee, desire, ennui, resolution, and a score of other emotions that have names flicker across that vulpine mask.” Dr. Talos later wanders away and Severian brings out the Claw to gaze at its fiery glow – and then his consciousness is swept away.

The narrator Severian then sets forth an analysis comparing the act of writing this narrative to that of his guildwork – it must satisfy the spectactors (the readers), the authority in whose name the carnifex acts (Severian’s own impulse to write), those who have paid the carnifex to give the condemned an easy or hard death (the accepted literary traditions) and the carnifex himself. For this latter requirement, “if he is to feel full satisfaction at the moment when Time lifts his own severed head by the hair, he must add to the execution some feature however small that is entirely his own and that he will never repeat. Only thus can he feel himself a free artist.”

Severian then describes an experience “which may have been less or greater than a dream” and in which he may or may not have been partially awake. He is first visited by his dog Triskele who then lays down against him. Next comes Master Malrubius who died when Severian was a child and who asks him to name the seven principles of governance. After incorrectly guessing anarchy (incorrect – it is the lack of governance), Severian properly names them: “Attachment to the person of the monarch. Attachment to a bloodline or other sequence of succession. Attachment to the royal state. Attachment to a code legitimizing the governing state. Attachment to the law only. Attachment to a greater or lesser board of electors, as framers of the law. Attachment to an abstraction conceived as including the board of electors, other bodies giving rise to them, and numerous other elements, largely ideal.” Although the highest principle is the final one, Severian states that his own attachment to the Divine Entity is the first one “because there is no succession”. Severian then awakes alone but his side where Triskele had lain was slightly warm.

Chapter XXXIV: Morning

Severian awakes and speaks to Dr. Talos about seeing Master Malrubius and Triskele, but Dr. Talos says he has been awake and they were not there. Jolenta awakes and Severian admires her beauty but is not attracted to her: “Jolenta’s beauty was perfect. No other woman I had ever seen could approach it – Thecla’s towering stateliness made her seem coarse and mannish in comparison; Dorcas’ blond delicacy as meager and childlike as Valeria, the forgotten girl I had encountered in the Atrium of Time. Yet I was not attracted to Jolenta as I had been attracted to Agia; I did not love her as I had loved Thecla; and I did not desire the intimacy of thought and feeling that had sprung up between Dorcas and me, or think it possible. Like every man who ever saw her I desired her, but I wanted her as one wants a woman in a painting.” Severian also cannot help but notice that her voluptuousness makes her clumsy. When Jolenta returns from getting water at the river, she asks Severian if he remembers her and is not surprised when he says he does not.

The rest of the group starts to awake and Severian agrees to accompany Dr. Talos until they reach the main road, at which time he then plans to return to the city to find the Order of Pelerines. Baldanders comments that he never dreams and then does not seem to recognize Dorcas. Dorcas reminds her of how they were in the play last night and Baldanders praises her wonderful memory (which seems ironic since Dorcas cannot recall anything prior to meeting Severian).

Dr. Talos then divides the money and goods they acquired from the performance equally among the group. However he takes none himself, explaining, “’I take nothing,’ said Dr. Talos slowly. It was the first time I had seen him abashed. ‘It is my pleasure to direct what I may now call the company. I wrote the play we perform, and like . . .’ (he looked around as if at a loss for a simile) ‘. . . that armor there I play my part. These things are my pleasure, and all the reward I require.’”

Chapter XXXV: Hethor

A small man in shabby and dirty old clothes approaches the group and addresses them in a singsong speech, starting with “O lords and mistresses of creation”. He refers to himself as Hethor and says he has come to serve his “dark master” Severian: “I come to serve you, to scrape the mud from your cloak, whet the great sword, c-carry the basket with the eyes of your victims looking up at me, Master, eyes like the dead moons of Verthandi when the sun has gone out.” Dr. Talos thinks is a confused member of last night’s audience and says they must pack and depart. Hethor promptly volunteers to stow the cargo, listing his experience as a steward and stevedore. He intends to follow Severian and will do anything “for the love of the Master”. Not knowing what to say, Severian nods his assent and Hethor jumps to work. Severian explains to Dr. Talos, “There are a good many of them. They find pleasure in pain, and want to associate with us just as a normal man might want to be around Dorcas and Jolenta.” Dr. Talos replies that finding a servant who serves out of pure love for his master can be imagined but does not happen in reality.

As they walk the road, Dorcas talks about Hethor following Severian is like how she followed Severian, despite her fear of Agia’s hatred toward her. Severian expresses surprise but Dorcas says Agia hated her even more when Dorcas assisted the dazed Severian from the Sanguinary Fields after the duel. Severian then reflects on his good fortune since leaving the Citadel. “Dorcas I knew was my friend – more than a lover, a true companion, even though we had been together only a few days. The giant’s heavy tread behind me reminded me of how many men there are who wander Urth utterly alone. I knew then (or thought I did) why Baldanders chose to obey Dr. Talos, bending his mighty strength to whatever task the red-haired man laid on him.”

They round a hill and see the Wall and its opening in the distance. Dr. Talos praises the ancients for their construction of the wall and their foresight in making it so expansive, such that there still remains much room for the growth of Nessus. Baldanders says this open space was not intended for the expansion of the city and Dr. Talos gently mocks him, “Of course, of course. I’m sure you were there and know all about it. Baldanders is older than I, and so believes he knows everything. Sometimes.” Jolenta demands that Dr. Talos get her a cart because walking is uncomfortable for her and he pushes away her complaints, reminding her that he has an available understudy for her role in Dorcas. Jolenta angrily says that Dorcas and Severian are going back to look for the Pelerines. At that moment, a man (Jonas) with a steel hand and riding a small horse hears “Pelerines” and tells them that they passed along the road last night.

Severian then describes the Wall – made of black metal, so high that few birds can pass over it and immensely thick. As they enter the opening, Jolenta joins Jonas and clutches his stirrups to Severian’s astonishment. They then see windows on both sides of the gates with strange creatures inside. “Cacogens, I think, were there, beings to whom the avern was but what a marigold or marguerite was to us. Others seemed beasts with too much of men about them, so that horned heads watched us with eyes too wise, and mouths that appeared to speak showed teeth like nails or hooks.” Dr. Talos explained that these creatures were brutal soldiers of the Autarch who stand ready to defend the Wall.

Jonas offers to provide more information about the Wall and also compliments Jolenta on her beauty. She rebuffs him, saying he appears poor and obviously not young. Jonas hesitates but then continues his tale with dry humor, “In the old times, the lords of this world feared no one but their own people, and to defend themselves against them built a great fortress on a hilltop to the north of the city. It was not called Nessus then, for the river was unpoisoned. Many of the people were angry at the building of that citadel, holding it to be their right to slay their lords without hindrance if they so desired. But others went out in the ships that ply between the stars, returning with treasure and knowledge. In time there returned a woman who had gained nothing among them but a handful of black beans. She displayed the beans to the lords of men, and told them unless she were obeyed she would cast them into the sea and so put an end to the world. They had her seized and torn to bits, for they were a hundred times more complete in their domination than our Autarch.”

Jonas’ tale is interrupted by a disturbance among the vehicles and carriagemen trying to clear their way with whips, one of which strikes Dorcas. Severian seizes the wagoneer who struck her and throws him to the ground, where he fell under the wheels of other carts and was undoubtedly killed. By this time, the crowd is a bedlam of frightened people and animals – and here is where Severian pauses his story. He instead notes that his tale started with entering the gate of the necropolis and thus meeting Vodalus and leading him to this new gate, where his path “was to lie outside the City Imperishable, and among the forests and grasslands, mountains and jungles of the north.” Severian then warns his readers about traveling this path with him: “It is no easy road.”

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