“You looked fearful of it, and tried… as it appeared to me — to keep your face from it when you carried it.” He threw back the cover as he spoke. The first page, thus revealed, was written in red in a character I did not know.
“This is a warning to the seekers of the path,” he said. “Shall I read it to you?”
I blurted, “It seemed to me that I saw a dead man in the leather, and that he was myself.”
He closed the cover again and ran his hand over it. “These pavonine dyeings are but the work of craftsmen long gone — the lines and swirls beneath them, only the scars of the suffering animals’ backs, the marks of ticks and whips. But if you are fearful, you need not go.”
“Open it,” I said. “Show me the map.”
“There is no map. This is the thing itself,” he said, and with that he threw back the cover and the first page as well.
-The Autarch Appian to Severian the Cruel
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