Subject: (urth) Severian as Conciliator

From: Dan Parmenter <dan at lec.com>
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 12:30:07 +0000

SWORD OF THE LICTOR

Ch. 25 "Typhon and Piaton"

Typhon speaks...

"Then too, a wonder-worker had arisen, as such people do.  He wasn't
really a trrboublemaker, though some of my ministers said he was.  I
had withdrawn here until my treatment should be ocmplete, and since
diseases and deformities seemed to flee from him, I ordered him
brought to me."

"The Conciliator," I said, and a moment later could have cut my own
wrist for it.

"Yes, that was one of his names.  Do you know where he is now?"

"He has been dead for many chiliads."

"And yet he remains, I think?"

*********

Let's give Wolfe the benefit of the doubt and assume that he knew that
Severian would meet Typhon again in URTH, which is of course later in
Severian's life, but it takes place earlier in Typhon's.  Now of
course Typhon could have said "and that wonder-worker was you!" but
that's not his style really.  Perhaps this was his motivation.
Realizing that the Severian in fromt of him hasn't fully come into his
power yet, he seeks to either kill him or enslave him, thus preventing
him from gaining the power that will ultimately serve to Typhon's hold
over his "minions".  Perhaps Piaton remembers as well, which is why he
suggests (in his way) to Severian that he punch him (Piaton) in the
nose.

By the way, getting back to all those "mountain autarchs", I'm
assuming that Ymar may have become autarch because Severian told
Typhon's ex-cronies to be on the lookout for Ymar, just shortly after
he told Ymar that he might well become a new type of ruler called an
autarch.  Found the autarchy AND your own guild AND thumb your nose at
the prevailing monarch whose ass you've already kicked AND do some
righteous healing, all in a week!

I wonder if Ymar's mind is among all the other autarch's in suspension
in the phallus-shaped vial?  Severian says that the older autarchs
minds tend to be somehwat murky to him, though accessible (only Thecla
and the previous autarch are fully represented).  Did Wolfe decide it
would simply be too much to have
Severian-as-all-autarchs-including-Ymar speak *to* Ymar *as* Ymar,
which would be like an Alzabo eating someone and then going for a
time-trip back to speak with the prey's own voice a day earlier.

D

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

---

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 17:33:05 +0000

> suggests (in his way) to Severian that he punch him (Piaton) in the

As I read this (with the hindsight of URTH), Typhon recognizes Severian,
and thinks Severian is playing coy with him.  I doubt Typhon suspects that
the Conciliator he met was a future Severian.  Rather he might think
Severian is some sort of descendant of the Conciliator, or that the
Concilator is somehow very long-lived.  He thinks Severian is either
pretending ignorance of the Concilator, or pretending not to remember
Typhon. 

-Rostrum