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I said, "It would be dangerous for you to try to ht try to persuade you not to But I wouldn't bind or imprison you, if that's what you mean"

"You told me you'd written out a copy of the note someone left for me in that inn Do you remember? But you never showed it to me I'd like to see it now"

"I told you exactly what it said, and it's not the real note, you know Agia threw that away I'rin, perhaps - was trying to warn rasped the note,cold and strangely shaped

Dorcas saw my expression and asked, "What is it?"

I drew it out It was larger than an orichalk, but not by much, and only a trifle thicker The cold material (whatever it was) flashed celestine beaid rays of the moon I felt I held a beacon that could be seen all over the city, and I thrust it back and dropped the closure of htly that she rooman-sized "What was that?" she whispered

I shook hts "It isn't em, a precious stone"

"It couldn't be Didn't you feel the ware you just took out?"

I looked at the dark opal on the poht, but it was no more like the object I had drawn frolass is like the sun "The Claw of the Conciliator," I said

"Agia put it there She must have, e broke the altar, so it would not be found on her person if she were searched She and Agilus would have got it again when Agilus claiht, and when I didn't die, she tried to steal it in his cell"

Dorcas was no longer staring at me Her face was lifted and turned toward the city and the sky-glow of itsover the city like a flyingwith towers and buttresses and an arched roof Criht poured from its s I tried to speak, to deny the miracle even as I saw it; but before I could fra had vanished like a bubble in a fountain, leaving only a cascade of sparks

Chapter 32

THE PLAY

It was only after the vision of that great building hanging, then vanishing, above the city, that I knew I had come to love Dorcas We walked down the road - for we had found a new road just over the top of the hill - into darkness And because our thoughts were entirely of e had seen, our spirits eh those few seconds of vision as if through a door never previously opened and never to be opened again

I do not know just where it alked I recall a winding road down the hillside, an arched bridge at the bottoabond wooden fence Wherever it ent, I knoe talked about ourselves not at all, but only of e had seen and what itsof that walk I looked on Dorcas as no more than a chance-met companion, however desirable, however to be pitied And at the end of it I loved Dorcas in a way that I have never loved another hu I did not love her because I had co Dorcas I loved Thecla more, because Dorcas was another self (as Thecla was yet to become in a fashion as terrible as the other was beautiful), and if I loved Thecla, Dorcas loved her also

"Do you think," she asked, "that anyone saw it but us?"

I had not considered that, but I said that although the suspension of the building had endured for only a reatest of cities; and that if millions and tens of millions had failed to see it, yet hundreds must still have seen

"Isn't it possible it was only a vision, meant only for us?"

"I have never had a vision, Dorcas"

"And I don't knohether I've had any or not When I try to recall the time before I helped you out of the water, I can only re before that is like a vision shattered to pieces, only sht bits, a thi barking outside a door Nothing like this Nothing like e've seen" What she saidfor when ested the brown book, which lay in the pleat of my sabretache next to it I asked Dorcas if she would not like to see the book that had once been Thecla's, e found a place to stop

"Yes," she said "When we are seated by a fire again, as ere for athat relic - which of course I will have to return before we can leave the city - and e have been saying too, re I read there once Do you know of the key to the universe?"

Dorcas laughed softly "No, Severian, I who scarcely knowabout the key to the universe"

"I didn't say that as well as I should have What I meant was, are you familiar with the idea that the universe has a secret key? A sentence, or a phrase, so from the lips of a certain statue, or read in the firmament, or that an anchorite on a world across the seas teaches his disciples?"