From: "Don Doggett" 
Subject: Re: (urth) Blue as Ushas - long 
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 13:00:31 -0800

 Joe wrote:

But there was one other textual hint that tantalized me.  I am looking
> at p. 203 of the new Tor version.  When Horn is trapped in the pit that
> Krait rescues him from, "Once, as I lay there at the bottom of the pit,
> it seemed to me that a man with a long nose (a tall man or an immense
> spider) stood over me.  I did not move or even open my eyes, knowing
> that if I did he would be gone.  He touched my forehead with something
> he held, and the pit vanished."  To me this sounds like Sev with the
> Claw -- the immense spider look is a result of his fuligin cloak, and he
> typically went about reanimating people by placing the Claw on their
> foreheads.  Horn proceeds to have an hallucination about Nettle cooking
> for him, which is not unexpected -- all of the others Sev reanimates are
> dazed for some time thereafter but, because NS is written from Sev's
> perspective, we do not know if they are basically in a fog or whether
> they hallucinate as Horn did.  But to me this seemed like Severian
> bringing Horn back from the dead, which makes you think that perhaps
> Blue indeed is Ushas.

Don enthusiastically replies:

Yes, yes, yes indeed!  I have always felt that that was Severian with the
claw.  I think Severian is also the creature who climbs in the boat during
the storm. Possibly the eldest Severian in his time line, one who has
evolved with the rest of Ushas.  There are others but I won't mention them
as they are in the later books and you haven't read them.  I think Wolfe
sets up all of these obvious clues that Blue is Ushas and then periodically
tries to kill them with things like Silk's claims of bilocation (he is wrong
and that is obvious by the Grandmother's story set in Grandecitta)  and his
claim that he will show Juganu the red star in Blue's sky (which he never
does, because it's not there).

Don



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