Sword Citadel

Sword & Citadel is an omnibus collecting the third and fourth volumes of Gene Wolfe's science fantasy epic, The Book of the New Sun. The story is set on Urth, a far-future Earth where the sun is slowly dying and civilization has declined into a mixture of feudal customs and half-understood ancient technology. The narrator, Severian, is a journeyman of the guild of torturers who was exiled for showing mercy to a prisoner, the noblewoman Thecla. Through a ritual drug called alzabo, Severian absorbed Thecla's memories and personality. He also carries the Claw of the Conciliator, a relic of sacred power that he unknowingly took from the Pelerines, an order of red-robed priestesses.

The narrative opens with Severian serving as lictor, or chief executioner, of the mountain city of Thrax. His companion Dorcas, a woman he inadvertently raised from the dead, has grown despondent, horrified by the prisoners chained in the Vincula, the underground prison beneath their quarters. Their partnership has deteriorated into silence. The Claw weighs on Severian, but he cannot locate the Pelerines to return it.

Abdiesus, Thrax's governor, invites Severian to a masked party. He obliquely instructs Severian to execute Cyriaca, the wife of a minor nobleman and a former Pelerine postulant, whose affairs have embarrassed Abdiesus's political allies. At the party, Severian mistakes Cyriaca for a real Pelerine and learns from her a legend about lost archives sealed beneath Nessus, which he recognizes as describing the library of the Citadel, the ancient fortress in Nessus that is his guild's home and where he grew up. Alone with Cyriaca later, Severian cannot bring himself to kill her. Thecla's memories stir within him, and he sees Cyriaca as another woman trapped by circumstance. He lets her escape by boat. Cyriaca reveals that the Pelerines are near the front lines of the war against the Ascians, a northern empire whose people are enslaved by Erebus and his allies.

Having defied the governor, Severian must flee. He first returns to a cliff-side hovel where he earlier found a dying girl and her brother Jader. Pressing the Claw to the girl's forehead, he heals her. He visits Dorcas at the Duck's Nest inn. She has vomited lead sling-stones, the kind used to weight corpses in water, and now believes she was dead for decades before the Claw restored her. She tells Severian she must travel south to discover who she once was. They part, and Severian escapes the city by flooding the Vincula through a sluice gate.

Alone in the mountains, Severian shelters with a woman named Casdoe, who lives with her young son, her elderly father, and a dog. Her daughter has been taken by an alzabo, a beast that absorbs the memories and voices of those it devours. Severian's old enemy Agia is hiding in the loft; she commands Hethor, a former sailor who controls alien creatures. That night the alzabo attacks, speaking in the voices of the dead. Severian fights it to a stalemate and it withdraws. The next day, zoanthrops, feral humans whose capacity for reason has been surgically removed, attack the family on the road. Casdoe and her father are killed. Severian rescues the surviving child, a boy also named Severian, and adopts him.

They ascend a colossal mountain carved in the likeness of an ancient ruler. At the summit the boy touches a gold ring on the carved figure's hand and is killed instantly by an energy discharge. The Claw fails to revive him. That night, a desiccated two-headed corpse found in a domed building revives from moisture. The figure, Typhon, claims to have once ruled Urth and many worlds. His second head belongs to Piaton, a slave whose body Typhon grafted himself onto for immortality, though Piaton's will never yielded. Typhon offers Severian rulership of Urth in exchange for an oath sworn on the Claw. Severian refuses, and after Typhon dangles him from the mountain's eye socket, he kills Piaton with a blow that stops the shared heart. Typhon's body falls from the mountain.

At Lake Diuturna, a village chief drugs Severian and imprisons him, sending the Claw to a nearby castle. Rescued by islanders, Severian leads them against the castle. Inside, he finds Dr. Talos, a former traveling companion who serves as physician to the giant Baldanders. Baldanders is conferring with three Hierodules, alien beings wearing human masks. One Hierodule, Famulimus, explains that they wear monstrous disguises so humans will fear and reject them, preserving humanity's self-governance. Baldanders hurls the Claw from the parapet. In the ensuing battle, Severian's great sword Terminus Est shatters against Baldanders's energy mace. Baldanders leaps into the lake and vanishes. Severian finds the Claw's sapphire casing shattered but discovers the true Claw wedged between two stones: a tiny, polished black hook shining with white light.

Traveling north, Severian revives a dead soldier with the Claw and names him Miles. They reach a Pelerine field hospital, where Severian collapses from fever. During his recovery he befriends fellow patients and judges a storytelling contest. He suspects Miles carries the personality of his lost friend Jonas, who once vanished into the interdimensional mirrors of Father Inire, a powerful court official. In the chapel, Severian hides the Claw beneath the altar stone. The Pelerine leader sends him to retrieve Master Ash from the Last House, a hermitage whose upper stories extend into distant futures. From the upper windows, Severian sees a world buried in ice. Master Ash explains that the sun is dying. When Severian forces Ash to leave, the anchorite fades from existence, unable to sustain himself outside the house.

Severian returns to find the lazaret destroyed by bombardment. He joins a ragged cavalry unit and fights in a major battle. Wounded and unhorsed, he is rescued by the Autarch, the supreme ruler of the Commonwealth, riding a mammoth. The Autarch reveals he is a composite of hundreds of prior rulers, each absorbed through the same drug that gave Severian Thecla's memories. He tells Severian he was chosen as successor. Their flier is shot down. The dying Autarch instructs Severian to consume the living cells of his forebrain. Severian obeys, absorbing the consciousness of all his predecessors. He becomes the new Autarch, understanding at last why the title means "self-ruler."

Severian is captured by Ascians but rescued by the green man, a time-displaced traveler from Urth's far future whom he once freed from chains, and by Agia, who wants Severian alive for future torment. He is then visited by Master Malrubius, who had been his teacher at the Citadel, and his childhood dog Triskele. They are aquastors, projections created by alien machines from Severian's memories. They explain the cosmic stakes: Beings from a higher universe called Yesod are judging humanity. If Severian passes their test, a White Fountain will be created in the heart of the old sun, restoring it.

Walking along a beach, Severian discovers a rosebush with thorns identical to the Claw and realizes the sacred power may reside in all things. He sails up the river Gyoll to Nessus, stopping briefly to glimpse Dorcas kneeling beside the body of her long-dead husband. At the Citadel, Severian reveals the words of authority to the castellan, the gate commander, who kneels in homage. He visits Master Palaemon, his old teacher, and declares he intends to reform the torturer's guild, granting even the worst criminals a quick death. He conceives the idea of writing his account as The Book of the New Sun. Acknowledging that beings who traverse the corridors of time witnessed an earlier version of himself gain the throne, Severian prepares to leave Urth for the stars, where he will be judged on behalf of his race.