(urth) Abaia and the undines

[David Duffy]

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008, David Stockhoff wrote:

> And now that I understand that he did not move into a new body on the 
> starsailship but was recreated by Tzadkiel, I don't understand why his face 
> was changed when he returned from Yesod. Valeria recognized him for the first 
> time then. 
> ...I asked the chiliarch whether he had been a junior officer when I sat the 
> Phoenix Throne.
> "No, Autarch. I was only a boy."
> "Yet clearly you recall me."
> "It's my duty to know the House Absolute, Autarch. There are pictures and 
> busts of you in some parts of it."
> "They..."
> The voice was so weak I scarcely heard it. I turned to make sure it was 
> indeed Valeria who spoke.
> "They don't really look as you did. They look the way I thought---"
> I waited, wondering.
> She waved a hand. It was a weak old woman's gesture. "As I thought you might 
> when you came back to me, back to our family tower in the Old Citadel. They 
> look the way you do now." She laughed, and began to sob.
>
> It couldn't be age. Severian has been gone for weeks or months at most.

He looks younger/less damaged, I assume.

David Duffy.