Sev as the avatar of Abaia

thalassocrat at nym.hush.com · 05 Apr 2006, 04:05 · from 2006-April.txt.gz

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From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com (thalassocrat at nym.hush.com)
Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2006 14:05:20 +1000
Subject: (urth) Sev as the avatar of Abaia
Message-ID: <20060405040524.05641DA825 at mailserver6.hushmail.com>

Well, not really. But I continue to obsess about the apparent 
reconciliation with the pelagic foe at the end of UOTNS.

Don't have the book handy but most of this occurs in the last few 
pages. 

With the arrival of the New Sun, Sev loses his connection to it, 
feeling like a man who has lost a leg. No more stellar power for 
him. But nevertheless, he is able to swim for most of a day and a 
night, survive underwater, explore the ancient sunken city etc etc. 

In fact, pretty much all the stuff Juturna had promised him at the 
sand-bar, back when he was travelling to Thrax with Dorcas after 
leaving the House Absolute. 

I'm pretty sure that this is a gift from Abaia etc. Not long after, 

he encounters Juturna, who gives him the power to travel through 
time and space again. Another pelagic gift.

When he returns from being Apu Panchu, he finds he has become the 
"Oannes" of his people. Not a solar deity, as you might expect, but 

a sea god. He indicates earlier in the book that he is still able 
now, at the time of writing, to travel through time (musing on 
returning to Os, for example), so I assume that pelagic powers' 
gifts are permanent. One of he first things he does on meeting his 
"priest" is to make an offering to her.

If he is a minor-deity at the end of the book, it seems to by grace 

of Abaia et al, at least to some degree.

Coupled with this, you have the switch in perspective over Abaia's 
motivation. Rather than being an agent of unalloyed evil, it 
becomes apparent that intentions for the existing inhabitants of 
Urth were to a large extent *benign*, at least by comaprison to the 

intentions of the Hierogrammates. They were bent on almost total 
genocide; he wished for preservation. 

The telling scenes are Juturna's appearance before Severia just 
before the flood, but perhaps more significantly, Sev's realization 

when he meets her eating fish after the Flood: "It was because I 
could not bear to watch Thecla in her death agony, wasn't it?" - or 

words to that effect. That is: You saved me from drowning, because 
you believed I'd wimp out on destroying Urth at the end. 

All along, we had been half-led to believe that Abaia welcomed the 
idea of a torturer as autarch and epitome. In fact, the reverse is 
true: the Hierogrammates are the ones who needed somebody ruthless 
enough to countenance the death of millions (to clear a path for 
the coming of the Hieros). Abaia wanted somebody with a softer 
heart.

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