understood it, the death that is in our minds when we say
Dorcas made no reply. I could not even be sure she was listening.
“You mentioned Hildegrin,” I said, “and the time he rowed us across the lake in his boat, to pick the avern. Do you remember what he said of death? It was that she was a good friend to the birds. Perhaps we ought to have known then that such a death could not be death as we imagine it.”
“If I say I believe all that, will you let me hold the Claw?” I shook my head again.
Dorcas was not looking at me, but she must have seen the motion of my shadow; or perhaps it was only that her mental Severian on the ceiling shook his head as well. “You are right, then — I was going to destroy it if I could. Shall I tell you what I really believe? I believe I have been dead — not sleeping, but dead. That all my life took place a long, long time ago when I lived with my husband above a little shop, and took care of our child. That this Conciliator of yours who came so long ago was an adventurer from one of the ancient races who outlived the universal death.” Her hands clutched the blanket.
“I ask you, Severian, when he comes again, isn't he to be called the New Sun? Doesn't that sound like it? And I believe that when he came he brought with him something that had the same power over time that Father Inire's mirrors are said to have over distance. It is that gem of yours.”
She stopped and turned her head to look at me defiantly; when I said nothing, she continued. “Severian, when you brought the uhlan back to life it was because the Claw twisted time for him to the point at which he still lived. When you half healed your friend's wounds, it was because it bent the moment to one when they would be nearly healed. And when you fell into the fen in the Garden of Endless Sleep, it must have touched me or nearly touched me, and for me it became the time in which I had lived, so that I lived again. But I have been dead. For a long, long time I was dead, a shrunken corpse preserved in the brown water. And there is something in me that is dead still.”
“There is something in all of us that has always been dead,” I said.
“If only because we know that eventually we will die. All of us except the smallest children.”
“I'm going to go back, Severian. I know that now, and that's what I've been trying to tell you. I have to go back and find out who I was and where I lived and what happened to me. I know you can't go with me...” I nodded.
“And I'm not asking you to. I don't even want you to. I love you, but you are another death, a death that has stayed with me and befriended me as the old death in the lake did, but death all the same. I don't want to take death with me when I go to look for my life.”
“I understand,” I said.
“My child may still be alive — an old man, perhaps, but still alive. I have to know.”
“Yes,” I said. But I could not help adding, “There was a time when you told me I was not death. That I must not let others persuade me to think of myself in that way. It was behind the orchard on the grounds of the House Absolute. Do you remember?”
“You have been death to me,” she said. “I have succumbed to the trap I warned you of, if you like. Perhaps you are not death, but you will remain what you are, a torturer and a carnifex, and your hands will run with blood. Since you remember that time at the House Absolute so well, perhaps you... I can't say it. The Conciliator, or the Claw, or the Increate, has done this to me. Not you.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Dr. Talos gave us both money afterward, in the clearing. The money he had got from some court official for our play. When we were traveling, I gave everything to you. May I have it back? I'll need it. If not all of it, at least some of it.” I emptied the money in my sabretache onto the table. It was as much as I had received from her, or a trifle more.
“Thank you,” she said. “You won't need it?”
“Not as badly as you will. Besides, it is yours.”
“I'm going to leave tomorrow, if I feel strong enough. The day after tomorrow whether I feel strong or not. I don't suppose you know how often the boats put out, going downriver?”
“As often as you want them to. You push them in, and the river does the rest.”
“That's not like you, Severian, or at least not much. More the sort of thing your friend Jonas would have said, from what you've told me. Which reminds me that you're not the first visitor I've had today. Our friend — your friend, at least — Hethor was here. That's not funny to you, is it? I'm sorry, I just wanted to change the subject.”
“He enjoys it. Enjoys watching me.”
“Thousands of people do when you perform in public, and you enjoy doing it yourself.”
“They come to be horrified, so they can congratulate themselves later on being alive. And because they like the excitement, and the suspense of not knowing whether the condemned will break down, or if some macabre accident will occur. I enjoy exercising my skill, the only real skill I have — enjoy making things go perfectly. Hethor wants something else.”
“The pain?”
“Yes, the pain, but something more too.” Dorcas said, “He worships you, you know. He talked with me for some time, and I think he would walk into a fire if you told him to.” I must have winced at that, because she continued, “All this about Hethor is making you ill, isn't it? One sick person is enough. Let's speak of something else.”
“Not ill as you are, no. But I can't think of Hethor except as I saw him once from the scaffold, with his mouth open and his eyes...” She stirred uncomfortably. “Yes, those eyes — I saw them tonight. Dead eyes, though I suppose I shouldn't be the one to say that. A corpse's eyes. You have the feeling that if you touched them they would be as dry as stones, and never move under your finger.”
“That isn't it at all. When I was on the scaffold in Saltus and looked down and saw him, his eyes danced. You
