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Quite suddenly it was over The volunteer whose bloodied weapon I held was dead The leader of the volunteers rithing at our feet The pikeone; his pike lay harmlessly across the path Vodalus retrieved a black wand frorass nearby and sheathed his sword in it "Who are you?"

"Severian I am a torturer Or rather, I ae Of the Order of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence" I drew a deep breath "I am a Vodalarius One of the thousands of Vodalani of whose existence you are unaware" It was a ter in reased

I rerave and watched hi before he reached the rim, and a few moments later a silver flier as sharp as a dart screamed overhead

The knife had somehow fallen froony When I bent to pick it up, I discovered that the coin was still in my hand and thrust it into my pocket

We believe that we invent symbols The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges When soldiers take their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile of the Autarch Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the special duties and burdens of h they ement of arms I did not know that then, but it is a profound s to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to believe in the ic The would-be sorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge; rational people know that things act of the, as the coin dropped into mas of the movement Vodalus led, but I soon learned them all, for they were in the air

With hiht replace it

With hiainst the Autarch and bound the fairest of their daughters to hie With him I detested the people for their lack of discipline and a common purpose Of those values that Master Malrubius (who had been master of apprentices when I was a boy) had tried to teach me, and that Master Palaemon still tried to iuild In that I was quite correct - it was, as I sensed, perfectly feasible for me to serve Vodalus and re journey by which I have backed into the throne

Chapter 2

SEVERIAN

Me the torturers, I have never known my father or my mother No more did my brother apprentices know theirs From time to time, but most particularly inter draws on, poor wretches co to be adale Brother Porter with accounts of the torly inflict in payment for warmth and food; occasionally they fetch animals as samples of their work

All are turned away Traditions froe, and the one before it, and the one before that, an age whose name is hardly remembered now by scholars, forbid recruitment from such as they

Even at the tiuild had shrunk to two masters and less than a score of journeymen, those traditions were honored

From my earliestpebbles in the Old Yard It lies south and west of the Witches' Keep, and is separated frouild was to help defend was ruinous even then, with a wide gap between the Red Tower and the Bear, where I used to cliray metal to look out over the necropolis that descends that side of Citadel Hill

When I was older, it beca daylight hours, but the sentries were largely concerned for the fresher graves on the lower ground, and knowing us to belong to the torturers, they seldo places in the cypress groves

Our necropolis is said to be the oldest in Nessus That is certainly false, but the very existence of the error testifies to a real antiquity, though the autarchs were not buried there even when the Citadel was their stronghold, and the great fa-liers and optihest slopes, near the Citadel wall; and the poorer commons lay below theainst the tenements that came to line Gyoll, held potter's fields As a boy I seldom went so far alone, or half so far

There were always the three of us - Drotte, Roche, and I Later Eata, the next oldest a the torturers, for none are It is said that in ancient tiuild, and that sons and daughters were born to the the lauilds But Y how cruel the women were and how often they exceeded the punish the torturers no more