Severian

( Severian realizes he is an eidolon. )

Chapter XLVI

The Runaway

---

 

FOR A LONG while I stood there in the bow, sifting the sentinels of the night as Ushas's swift motion revealed them. Our ancient Commonwealth had drowned; but the starlight that touched my eyes was more ancient still, had been old when the first woman nursed the first child. I wondered if the stars would weep, when Ushas herself was old, to learn of the death of our Commonwealth.

Certainly I, who had once been such a star, wept then.

From this I was taken by a touch at my elbow. It was the old sailor, the captain of our boat; he who had seemed so aloof before now stood with his shoulder next to mine, staring across the floodwaters as I did. It struck me that I had never learned his name.

I was about to ask it when he said, "Think I don't know you?"

"Possibly you do," I told him. "But if so, you have the advantage of me."

"The cacogens, they can call up a man's thought and show it to him. I know that."

"You think I'm an eidolon. I've met them, but I'm not one of them; I'm a man like you."

He might not have heard me. "All day I been watching you. I been lying awake watching you ever since we laid down. They say they can't cry, but it's not true, and I saw you crying and remembered what they said and how it's wrong. Then I thought, how bad can they be? But it's bad luck to have them on a ship, bad luck to think too much."

"I'm sure that's true. But those who think too much cannot help it."

He nodded. "That's so, I suppose."

The tongues of men are older than our drowned land; and it seems strange that in so great a time no words have been found for the pauses in speech, which have each their own quality, as well as a certain length. Our silence endured while a hundred waves slapped the hull, and it held the rocking of the boat, the sigh of the night wind in the rigging, and pensive expectation.

"I wanted to say there's nothing you can do to her that'll hurt me. Sink her or run her aground, I don't care."

I told him I supposed I might do both, but that I would not do them intentionally.

"You never did me much harm when you were real," the sailor said after another long pause. "I wouldn't have met Maxellindis if it hadn't been for you—maybe that was bad. Maybe it wasn't. We'd some good years together, Maxellindis and me."

I examined him from a corner of my eye as he stared blindly over the restless waves. His nose had been broken, perhaps more than once. In my mind I straightened it again and filled in his lined cheeks.

"There was that time you pounded me. Remember, Severian? They'd just made you the captain. When it came my turn I did the same to Timon."

"Eata!" Before I knew what I was doing, I had grabbed him and picked him up just as I used to when we had been apprentices together. "Eata, you little snot-nose, I thought I'd never see you again!" I spoke so loudly that Odilo moaned and stirred in his sleep.

Eata looked startled. His hand went toward the knife at his belt, then drew away.

I put him down. "When I reformed the guild you were gone. They said you'd run away."

"I did." He tried to swallow, or perhaps only to catch his breath. "It's good to hear you, Severian, even if you're just a bad dream. What did you call them?"

"Eidolons."

"A eidolon. If the cacogens are going to show me somebody out of my head, I might have had worse company."

"Eata, do you remember the time we were locked out of the necropolis?"

He nodded. "And Drotte made me try to squeeze through the bars, but I couldn't do it. Then when the volunteers opened it, I ran off and left you and him and Roche to the crows. None of you seemed much afraid of Master Gurloes, but I was, back then."

"We were too, but we didn't want to show it in front of you."

"I suppose." He was grinning; I could see his teeth flash in the green moonlight, and the black smudge where one had been knocked out. "That's what boys are like, like the skipper said when he showed his daughter."

Wildly and momentarily it occurred to me that if Eata had not run, it might have been he who saved Vodalus, he who did and saw all the things that I had seen and done. It may be that in some other sphere it happened so. Pushing away the thought, I asked, "But what have you been doing all this time? Tell me."

"Not much to tell. When I was captain of apprentices it was easy enough to slip away and see Maxellindis whenever her uncle's boat was docked somewhere around the Algedonic Quarter. I had talked to the sailors and learned to sail a bit myself; and so when it came feast time, I couldn't go through with it, couldn't put on fuligin."

I said, "I did it only because I couldn't imagine living in any place except the Matachin Tower."

Eata nodded. "But I could, see? I'd thought all that year about living on the boat and helping Maxellindis and her uncle. He was getting stiff, and they needed somebody spry and stronger than her. I didn't wait for the masters to call me in to choose. I just ran off."

"And after that?"

"Forgot the torturers as fast as I could and as much as I could. Only lately I've started trying to remember what it was like, living in the Matachin Tower when I was young. You won't believe this, Severian, but for years I couldn't look at Citadel Hill when we went up or down that reach. I used to keep my eyes turned away."

"I do believe you," I told him.

"Maxellindis's uncle died. There was a tap he used to go to, way down south in the delta in a place called Liti. You've probably never heard of it. Maxellindis and me came to get him one night, and he was sitting there with his bottle and glass, with one arm on the table and his head down on his arm; but when I tried to shake his shoulder he fell out of the chair, and he was cold already."

"'Men to whom wine had brought death long before lay by springs of wine and drank still, too stupefied to know their lives were past.'"

"What's that?" Eata asked.

"Just an old story," I said. "Never mind, go on."

"After that, just her and me worked the boat. The two of us could do it about as well as the three of us had before. We never really got married. When we both wanted to we never had the money, somehow. And when we had the money, there was always some kind of quarrel. After a couple of years everybody thought we were married anyway." He blew his nose, flinging the mucus over the side.

"Go on," I said again.

"We did some smuggling, and one night we got stopped by a cutter. Eight or ten leagues south of Citadel Hill, that was. Maxellindis jumped—I heard the splash—and I would have too, but one of the taxmen threw a achico at my feet and tripped me up. You know what they are, I suppose."

I nodded. "Was I Autarch still? You might have appealed to me."

"No. I thought about it, but I was sure you'd send me back to the guild."

"I wouldn't have," I told him, "but would that have been worse than what the law did to you?"

"It would have been for the rest of my life. That's what I kept thinking about. Anyway, they took me upriver with our boat in tow. I was held till the assize, and then the judge ordered me flogged and made me sign on a carrack. They kept me in irons till we were out of sight of the coast, and they worked me like a slave, but I got to see the Xanthic Lands and I went over the side there and stayed for two years. It's not such a bad place if you've got some money."

I said, "But you came back."

"There was a riot and this girl that I'd been living with got killed in it. They have them there every couple years over the price of food in the market. The soldiers break heads, and I guess they broke hers. There was a caravel anchored off Blue Flower Island right then, and I went to see the captain and he gave me a berth. A man can be a terrible fool when he's young, and I thought maybe Maxellindis had got us another boat. But when I came back she wasn't on the river. I've never seen her again. She died, I guess, the night the cutter got its grapple on us."

He paused chin in hand. "Maxellindis was almost as good a swimmer as I ever was. You remember I could swim almost as well as you and Drotte, but maybe a nixie pulled her down. That used to happen, sometimes, specially on the lower reaches."

I said, "I know," remembering Juturna's huge face as I had glimpsed it as a boy, when I had almost drowned in Gyoll.

"Not much more to tell I'd brought back a bit of money in a silk cestus I'd had a man make for me over there, and I got a little more when the caravel paid off. I bought this boat here on shares and here I am. But I can still speak a little of the Xanthic tongue, and more will come to my mouth when I hear it in another one. Or it would if we had more water and a little more food."

I told him "There are many isles in that sea. I saw them on a chart in the Hypotherm Classis once."

He nodded "I guess a couple hundred, and a lot more that don't show on any chart I've seen. You'd think a ship couldn't miss them all but it can. Unless you're pretty lucky, you can pass right between them without ever knowing they're there. A lot depends on when it's night and when it's day, and a lot more on how high up your lookout stands—if he's in the maintop of a carrack or the bow of my little boat."

I shrugged. "We can only hope."

"That's like the frog said when he seen the stork. But his mouth was dry, and he couldn't quite get the word out."

Eata paused for a moment, studying me instead of the waves. "Severian, do you know what's happened to you? Even if you're just a dream from the cacogens?"

"Yes," I said. "But I'm not a phantom. Or if I am, it's Tzadkiel the Hierogrammate you should blame for me."

"Then tell me what happened to you, just like I told you everything that's happened to me."

"All right, but I want to ask you something first. What took place here on Urth after I left?"

Eata sat down on a locker from which he could look up at me without turning his head. "That's right," he said. "You sailed off to bring the New Sun, didn't you? Did you ever find him?"

"Yes and no. I'll tell you all about that as soon as you tell me what happened on Urth."

"I don't know much about what you'd probably like to hear." He rubbed his jaw. "Anyway, I'm not so sure I can remember just what went on or just when it was. All the while Maxellindis and me were together you were Autarch, but mostly they said you were off fighting the Ascians. Then, when I got back from the Xanthic Lands, you were gone."

I said, "If you stayed two years, you must have been eight with Maxellindis."

"That would be about right. Four or five with her and her uncle, and two or three after, just us two on the boat. Anyway, your autarchia, she was Autarch. People talked about it because of her being a woman, and they said she didn't have the words.

"So when I traded my extern gold for chrisos, some had your face on them and some hers, or anyway some woman's. She married Dux Caesidius. They had a big celebration all up and down Iubar Street, meat and wine for everybody. I got drunk, and I didn't get back to my boat for three days. People said their marrying was good—she could stay in the House Absolute and take care of the Commonwealth while he took care of the Ascians."

"I remember him," I said. "He was a fine commander." It was strange to summon up that hawk face and imagine its fierce, surly owner lying with Valeria.

"Some said she did it because he looked like you," Eata told me. "But he was handsomer, I think, and maybe a little taller."

I tried to remember. Handsomer, certainly, than I had been with my scarred face. It seemed to me that Caesidius had been a bit below me in height, though every man is taller when everyone kneels to him, to be sure.

"And then he died," Eata continued. "That was last year."

"I see," I said.

For a long while I stood with my back against the gunwale, thinking. The rising moon, now almost overhead, cast the shadow of the mast like a black bar between us. From its farther side, Eata sounded strangely youthful. "Now what about the New Sun, Severian? You promised you'd tell me all about him."

I began, but while I spoke of stabbing Idas I saw that Eata was asleep.

---

Chapter XLVII

The Sunken City

---

 

I TOO should have slept, but I did not. For a watch or more I remained standing in the bow, looking sometimes at the sleepers and sometimes at the water. Thais lay as I have so often lain, face down, her head cradled in her folded arms. Pega had curled her plump body into a ball, so that I might have believed her a kitten turned into a woman; her spine was pushed against Odilo's side. He lay upon his back with his belly rising into the air, his arms above his head.

Eata sprawled, still more than half sitting, his cheek to the gunwale; I thought he must be exhausted. As I studied him, I wondered whether he would still believe me an eidolon when he woke.

Yet who was I to call him mistaken? The true Severian—and I felt sure there had once been a true Severian—had disappeared among the stars long ago. I stared up at them, trying to find him.

At length I realized I could not, not because he was not there (for he was), but because Ushas had turned away from him, hiding him, with many others, behind her horizon. For our New Sun is only one star among myriads, though perhaps now, when none but he can be seen by day, men will forget that.

No doubt our sun is as fair as all the rest from the deck of Tzadkiel's ship. I winnowed them still, even when I knew I would never discover that Severian who was no dream of Eata's; and at last I understood that I searched for the ship. I did not find it, but the stars were so lovely I did not grudge the effort.

The brown book that I no longer carry with me, a book that has no doubt been destroyed with a thousand millions of others in what was the library of Master Ultan, had spun a tale of a great sanctuary, a place veiled by a diamond-sprinkled curtain lest men see the face of the Increate and die. After ages of Urth, a bold man forced his way into that temple, slew all its guardians, and tore down the curtain for the sake of the many diamonds sewn into it. The small chamber he found beyond the curtain was empty, or so the tale says; but when he walked out and into the night, he looked at the sky and was consumed by flames. How terrible it is that we know our stories only when we have lived them!

Perhaps it was the memory of this tale. Perhaps it was no more than the thought of the drowned library, of which Cyby, I feel sure, had been the final master—and in which Cyby, I feel certain, must have died. However it may be, the knowledge that Urth had been destroyed came to me with a clarity and horror it had not had before, not even when I had seen the ruined cottage with its chimney still standing, though that had filled me with so much dread. The forests where I had hunted were gone, every tree and every stick. The million little freeholdings that had nourished a million Melitos and sent them north armed with so much ingenuity and humble courage, the broad pampas from which Foila had ridden at the gallop with her lance and her high heart—all were gone, every turnip and every blade of grass.

A dead child, rocked by the waves, seemed to gesture to me. When I saw him, I understood that there was but one way in which I might expiate what I had done. A wave beckoned, the dead boy beckoned, and even as I told myself I lacked the will to take my own life, I felt the gunwale slipping from my hands.

Water closed over me, yet I did not drown. I felt I might breathe that water, yet I did not breathe. Illuminated by Lune, which flamed now like an emerald, the flood spread about me like green glass. Slowly I sank through an abyss that seemed clearer than air.

Far off, great shapes loomed—things a hundred times larger than a man. Some seemed ships and some clouds; one was a living head without a body; another had a hundred heads. In time they were lost in the green haze, and I saw below me a plain of muck and silt, where stood a palace greater than our House Absolute, though it lay in ruins.

I knew then that I was dead, and that for me death held no release. A moment later I knew also that I was dreaming, that with the crowing of the cock (whose bright black eyes would not again be pierced by the magicians) I would wake to find myself sharing the bed with Baldanders. Dr. Talos would beat him, and we would go forth in search of Agia and Jolenta. I gave myself to the dream; but almost, I think, I had rent the Veil of Maya, that glorious spinning of appearances hiding the last reality.  

Content (opt-out):

There is lots of gross stuff in the Book of the New Sun! Including:

- Torture and public executions. Severian was raised by the Guild of Torturers and this is his trade up to the point when he becomes Autarch.

- Casual misogyny. (Women are prohibited from becoming professional torturers because women are too cruel, you see. This was decreed by the first Autarch, Ymar the Almost Just. I am not making his name up.)

- Ritual cannibalism. To be (sort of) fair, this is not a common practice and everyone is pretty grossed out by it. Nonetheless it is a thing which Severian is induced to do. More than once.

- A giant bird that eats people and can mimic its prey after consuming it, because a chemical in its brain shares their memories with it.

- That giant bird is called an alzabo, and from its brain juices there is made a drug called the analeptic alzabo. Combine that with aforementioned ritual cannibalism and you get:

- Severian carrying around in his head the memories/personality/etc of a lady he used to know, Thecla who incidentally used to be a "client" of his guild -- i.e., she was tortured.

- Suicide of Thecla. This was a mercy, as Severian gave her a knife to put an end to herself. He got kicked out of the guild for it, sort of.

- So you may want to pretty much opt out of all Thecla-related content if any of that bothers you.

At the same time, I have to say, this all sounds very splatterpunk when I describe it thusly, but the narrative is actually incredibly cerebral and distant. Severian expresses scorn for "algophilists", pain-lovers who derive perverse enjoyment from viewing the mysteries of his guild. The torturers view themselves as professionals and take their work very seriously. No one who enjoys inflicting pain is considered suitable to become a torturer.

There is far more metaphysical rambling than gore in the Book of the New Sun. You may also opt out of metaphysical rambling if you choose.

Player
Name: gazebo
Preferred Pronoun: lady pronouns
Contact: PM journal or pplurk violentgazebo

Character
Name: Severian
Canon: Gene Wolfe's New Sun tetralogy + 1 (the Book of the New Sun generally is considered to include books 1-4; the fifth book, The Urth of the New Sun, follows directly upon the tetralogy)
AU: n/a

Pull-point: Two-thirds of the way through book 5, after Severian is returned to Urth from his voyage to Yesod.

Power Opt-in post link: here

Content Opt-out post link: here

Age: 32 years old at the point he leaves Urth on a spaceship. Undertakes some interstellar travel, some intergalactic travel, and an ominous ordeal in a different universe before returning to Urth about 40 years after his departure, then skips around back and forth through time a fair amount. Also, dies and gets reconstituted as an eidolon without realizing it.

(All of which is to say: physically, the guy's still 32, according to the chronology in Lexicon Urthus (pp. 177-179, Fragmentary Timeline of Posthistory, under "History of Urth"), but he's been around.)

Gender/Sex: Male; see below in regard to Thecla and the analeptic alzabo, however.

Appearance: Quoting the Lexicon Urthus, a secondary reference work:

He is 6'1", and weighs 175 pounds. He is pale, with dark eyes, dark straight hair, and good teeth. His face is long and rather bony: high, square forehead, moderately high cheek-bones [sic]; strong chin. He is muscular; his hands are a little larger than average. (318)

History: Urth is a Dying Earth. The sun is dimming and losing its power. Religion teaches of a Conciliator who will reconcile mankind with the Increate (i.e., God) and bring a New Sun. A nomadic order of nuns, the Pelerines, carry a sacred gem called the Claw of the Conciliator. Severian is an apprentice torturer who gets kicked out of his Guild, goes walkabout, and ends up with the Claw of the Conciliator in his luggage (he didn't steal it, and spends a good amount of effort trying to find the Pelerines to give it back, occasionally using it to heal people along the way). He gets involved in a revolutionary movement to overthrow the Autarch who rules Urth, ends up becoming Autarch himself by complete coincidence, and embarks on a space voyage to a new universe where he as Autarch must defend Urth in a courtroom trial. If he succeeds, a New Sun will be sent to Urth. If he fails, Urth will perish with the old sun, faltering in a future of Ice which Severian has been shown; also incidentally Severian will be castrated, like the failed Autarch who preceded him. En route to the higher universe, on the spaceship, Severian writes the Book of the New Sun tetralogy in first person.

Happily for Severian, he wins the trial, largely through no perceptible effort of his own. Apparently he had the right stuff in him all along, and through a mystical mating with a Hierodule, conceives the New Sun. P.S.: The New Sun is actually a White Fountain stuck in the heart of the old sun. Yes, a semen metaphor. P.P.S.: The White Fountain is actually a white hole. P.P.P.S.: If none of this makes sense to you, you are in good company, since Gene Wolfe's editor found it equally bemusing and this is why a fifth book was requested. In the fifth book we see Severian succeed and the New Sun arrive. So, Severian is not only Autarch, he is also the Conciliator whose blood gives the Claw of the Conciliator its magical healing powers. He has been the Conciliator all along without knowing it. When he's returned from the other universe (Yesod) to his own universe (Briah) which contains his Urth, he ends up skipping back through time to the historical time of the Conciliator, doing miracles with his Conciliator powers and pissing people off. Then he gets to skip forward and see all Urth destroyed with the coming of the New Sun, as ice caps melt and tides rise and everything is drowned. Such is the salvation he earned for his planet. In conclusion: It sucks to be Severian. But since he is Severian, he gives no fucks. And at some point on the spaceship he actually died and got reconstituted as an eidolon, a sort of enfleshed image of himself drawn from his own memory, but he doesn't realize that until much later when he doesn't drown in the Urth flood. So there's that. 500 words exactly, says Microsoft Word.

Personality: Severian goes with the flow. He greets all manner of bizarre eventualities with an equanimity verging on apathy. He professes to feel deep emotions about things, when he thinks his audience will expect it, but he's more inclined to lie about the actual emotions he has felt, and the fallout will become apparent through indirect allusion. Most of the time he just does what seems expected of him. When he acts otherwise, his motives are oblique often even to himself. This is because he is a character in a Gene Wolfe story.

The most noteworthy aspect of his personality is that he shares his headspace with the thought-imprint of a noblewoman named Thecla, whom he assisted in torturing, and whom he loved. Forced by the revolutionary leader Vodalus to partake in a necrophagic ritual, Severian is given a drug called the analeptic alzabo which transmits to the eater the memories of the corpse eaten; Thecla's corpse is the one served up at this banquet, intended to inspire the revolutionaries at the feast with her supposed devotion to Vodalus' cause (a supposed allegiance that got her tortured and killed by the Autarch's government in the first place). Later, he imbibes a similar analeptic at the behest of the dying old Autarch, to receive the memories of the dying Autarch and his predecessors. But that drug is subtly different, and the freight of memories less inflected with personality; Severian can remember things the old Autarch knew, but he never experiences the old Autarch's personality the way he can embody Thecla's. 259 words. I am sorry.

Abilities:
- Torturer and executioner: This is what he was raised and trained to do, from childhood onward. His approach to this is meant to be clinical and artistic. He despises algophilists, people who derive excessive and perverse enjoyment from watching the executions he performs.
- Medical skill: The torturers learn a great deal of anatomy, and they are trained to prolong life and care for the wounds they inflict.
- Veterinary skill: Severian can extrapolate from his medical knowledge of humans to help animals. In the first book, he saves a maimed three-legged dog, treats his wounds, and nurses him back to health.
- Healing power / ~Claw of the Conciliator~: Severian, as the Conciliator, can tap into ambient energy and use it to heal people. (On Urth, this is generally the power of Urth, but in space he taps into the spaceship's energy and causes a serious power outage.) Throughout the first four books, Severian's healing ability is dependent on his possession and use of the Claw. In the fifth book, he learns that the Claw derived its initial power from being soaked in his, Severian's, own blood during the time he walked Urth as the Conciliator. He can now use this power without a physical prop. It is not always effective, however, since he doesn't fully understand what makes it work.

Inventory:
- A fuligin (blacker-than-black) cloak lined with brocade.
- Other black clothes, because Severian wears black, okay.
- His carnificial sword Terminus Est, whose sheath is of human skin.
- An avern, a kind of weapon that consists of the living stalk and blossom of a carnivorous plant. It's horribly unwieldy and tries to bite him.
- A kit of various surgical instruments and dressings for wounds.
- Some unappealing food.
- Water.

Note: The avern is from book 1 and Terminus Est was destroyed in book 3; the fuligin cloak and outfit are Severian's guild garb. I have chosen his inventory to span his lifetime and to be symbolic of his past, because of his eidolon nature. Also because averns are hilarious.