Reading from pages 29-34 of Shadow & Claw

Triskle

“Urth turns her aged face to the sun and he beams upon her snows; they scintillate and coruscate until each little point of ice hanging over the swelling sides of the towers seems the Claw of the Conciliator, the most precious of gems. Then everyone except the wisest believes that the snow must melt and give way to a protracted summer beyond summer.”

Severian, the dissident ghost, hiding something from everyone he knows, as he becomes a man, finds a maimed fighting dog in a meat chute and nurses the creature to health. The dog is lion size with 5 inch fangs and anchors Severian’s humanity though he denies that this dissident act of kindness, conducted against many of the rules he was governed by, changed anything about him. The boy, becoming a man as the veins in the back of his hands emerge, names the dog Triskle.

More is learned of the Citadel, which is obviously a huge spacefaring vessel grounded for thousands for ages, and also of Nessus and its location, seeming to be in the vicinity of Buenos Aires Argentina, based on geographical and beverage references, with the matte drunk by current Uruguayans spoken of as a product of the north.

Triskle provides a lesson for the aspiring torturer, who realizes the inherently destructive arrangement at every level of civilized society, based as it is on coercion and submission.

Diction of note

-coruscate

-thylacodon, a garbage-eating beast

-carnificial

-fuligin, darker than black

-arctother, a large-fanged beast

-tessellated

-barylamdas, large beasts