Meeting Father Inire

Dan Rabin · 20 Apr 1999, 21:24 · from urth-v0025.mbox · original

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From: Dan Rabin <danrabin at a.crl.com>
Subject: (urth) Meeting Father Inire
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 21:24:27
Message-ID: <urth-v0025-0106 at digest.urth.net>
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Robert Borski writes:

>As with the oft-mentioned Fechin, we never actually meet
>Inire. He's always offstage or discussed in anecdotal fashion by others
>who've met him (Thecla, Odilio, Hildegrin).
>
>Then again, given the importance of masks in New Sun...

=46rom _Citadel_, ch. 28 "On the March":

>For guides our column had three savages: a pair of young men who might have
>been brothers or even twins, and a much older one, twisted, I thought, by
>deformites as well as age, who perpetually wore a grotesque mask.  Though
>the first two were younger and the third much older, all three of them
>recalled to me the naked man I had once seen in the Jungle Garden.  They
>were as naked as he and had the same dark, metallic-looking skina and
>straight hair. [...]
>....and one night when my guards were chattering among themselves and I sat
>crouched over our little fire, I saw the old guide (his bent figure and the
>impression of an immense head conferred by his mask were unmistakable)
>approach this palanquin [holding the Old Autarch (DR)] and slip beneath it.
>Some time passed before he scuttled away.  This old man was said to be an
>_uturuncu_, a shaman capable of assuming the form of a tiger.

The bent figure meets descriptions of Father Inire elsewhere.  Father Inire
is a Hierodule; Hierodules wear masks.  Father Inire is in the habit of
conferring with the Autarch.

In _Citadel_, ch. 35 "Father Inire's Letter", Rudesind mentions that his
master (Father Inire) "went away north", but is hesitant to dwell on the
point.  In Severian's reply, he says, "We even know that your master was
with us in the jungles of the north, where he tried until it was too late
to rescue my predecessor".  Inire's letter itself alludes to recent events
with Agia and Vodalus that imply that he was nearby.

So, Robert is wrong: we *do* actually meet Father Inire in the main
narrative, and Robert is right, masks have to do with the matter.

Too bad we don't get to see him do the tiger trick, though...

  -- Dan Rabin

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