Wall of Nessus

Roy C. Lackey · 09 Jun 2010, 19:47 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2010 14:47:40 -0500
Subject: (urth) Wall of Nessus
Message-ID: <000901cb080c$a24bd6a0$3dd14a0c@rclackey>

Despite my recent musings about when and why the Wall of Nessus may have
been built, upon further reflection I think I can establish from the text
that it antedates both the autarchy and Typhon.

Jonas came from an earlier time period and knew far more than Severian about
the past. Sev questioned him, when they were in Saltus, about the strange,
man-like creatures they had seen when they passed through the Wall. He
asked: "When we were going through the Wall, you said the things we saw in
there were soldiers, and you implied they had been stationed there to resist
Abaia and the others." (CLAW, chap. VIII)

Sev wanted to know if the man-apes he saw in the mine were also hybrids like
those in the Wall and why the autarchs had not used human soldiers. There
follows some debate about that, but it is not germane to my point. Jonas
said: "The old autarchs, who were not autarchs or called so, did use human
soldiers. But the warriors they had created by humanizing animals, and
perhaps, in secret by bestializing men, were more loyal. They had to be,
since the populace - who hated their rulers - hated these inhuman servitors
more still. Thus the servitors could be made to endure things that human
soldiers would not. That may have been why they were used in the Wall. Or
there may be some other explanation entirely."

Regardless of why hybrids were used in the Wall rather than humans, the
point is that rulers (plural), before the autarchy, stationed defenders in
the Wall. Typhon was the last ruler before the first autarch, Ymar, and
those two were contemporaries. So, if Jonas is to be believed, the Wall was
there before Typhon. That section of text also strongly suggests that the
purpose of the Wall was to resist the mountain-sized monsters in the oceans.

That latter detail may be somewhat at odds with Cyriaca's story, and after
Typhon was revived on the mountain he speaks as if the monsters in the
oceans were news to him ("There are powers in the seas now who would rule."
[SWORD, chap. XXVI] ), but that's the way it goes.

-Roy

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