(urth) Bee Wrangler

[Roy C. Lackey]

Dan'l wrote:
>How long was the Predecessor gone?
>
>More accurately: how much time passed for him, and how much
>time passed on Urth, between his departure and his return? We
>know that Severian's journey didn't take too much subjective time,
>but he returned years after his departure.
>
>Such considerations make it plausible to me that the Autarch
>has reigned longer than it seems, looking at him, he could possibly
>have done.

There is not the least hint in the text that the Old Autarch was absent from
Urth for any significant length of time, whether measured subjectively or
objectively. Whether he was in his fifties or his eighties doesn't change
the fact that 50 years before his death he was being trained by Paeon and
messing with bees. And that was 12 years after Autarch Appian let Sancha
move south. I seriously doubt that the Old Autarch was autarch when he first
knew Paeon, or that he would be learning all about bees at least a dozen
years after coming to the throne.

And Maruthas closing the roads when Palaemon was 25 still has to be
accounted for.

-Roy