Sword & Citadel by Gene Wolfe

except the sun?”
    I knew then what it was she meant, though something in me could not accept it.
    â€œWhen that man—Hildegrin, the man we met a second time on top of the tomb in the ruined stone town—was ferrying us across the Lake of Birds, he talked of millions of dead people, people whose bodies had been sunk in that water. How were they made to sink, Severian? Bodies float. How do they weight them? I don’t know. Do you?”
    I did. “They force lead shot down the throats.”
    â€œI thought so.” Her voice was so weak now that I could scarcely hear her, even in that silent little room. “No, I knew so. I knew it when I saw them.”
    â€œYou think that the Claw brought you back.”
    Dorcas nodded.
    â€œIt has acted, sometimes, I’ll admit that. But only when I took it out, and not always then. When you pulled me out of the water in the Garden of Endless Sleep, it was in my sabretache and I didn’t even know I had it.”
    â€œSeverian, you allowed me to hold it once before. Could I see it again now?”
    I pulled it from its soft pouch and held it up. The blue fires seemed sleepy, but I could see the cruel-looking hook at the center of the gem that had given it its name. Dorcas extended her hand, but I shook my head, remembering the wineglass.
    â€œYou think I will do it some harm, don’t you? I won’t. It would be a sacrilege.”
    â€œIf you believe what you say, and I think you do, then you must hate it for drawing you back …”
    â€œFrom death.” She was watching the ceiling again, now smiling as if she shared some deep and ludicrous secret with it. “Go ahead and say it. It won’t hurt you.”
    â€œFrom sleep,” I said. “Since if one can be recalled from it, it is not
death—not death as we have always understood it, the death that is in our minds when we say death . Although I have to confess it is still almost impossible for me to believe that the Conciliator, dead now for so many thousands of years, should act through this stone to raise others.”
    Dorcas made no reply. I could not even be sure she was listening.
    â€œYou mentioned Hildegrin,” I said, “and the time he rowed us across the lake in his boat, to pick the avern. Do you remember what he said of death? It was that she was a good friend to the birds. Perhaps we ought to have known then that such a death could not be death as we imagine it.”
    â€œIf I say I believe all that, will you let me hold the Claw?”
    I shook my head again.
    Dorcas was not looking at me, but she must have seen the motion of my shadow; or perhaps it was only that her mental Severian on the ceiling shook his head as well. “You are right, then—I was going to destroy it if I could. Shall I tell you what I really believe? I believe I have been dead—not sleeping, but dead. That all my life took place a long, long time ago when I lived with my husband above a little shop, and took care of our child. That this Conciliator of yours who came so long ago was an adventurer from one of the ancient races who outlived the universal death.” Her hands clutched the blanket. “I ask you, Severian, when he comes again, isn’t he to be called the New Sun? Doesn’t that sound like it? And I believe that when he came he brought with him something that had the same power over time that Father Inire’s mirrors are said to have over distance. It is that gem of yours.”
    She stopped and turned her head to look at me defiantly; when I said nothing, she continued. “Severian, when you brought the uhlan back to life it was because the Claw twisted time for him to the point at which he still lived. When you half healed your friend’s wounds, it was because it bent the moment to one when they would be nearly healed. And when you fell into the fen in the Garden of Endless Sleep, it must have touched me or nearly touched me, and