Gratuitous Gene Wolfe

From 'Citadel of the Autarch', p283.  Severian has attained the Autarchy, and is exploring the accumulated treasure of the  Autarch's rooms in Nessus.

... the most interesting of which was a mandragora in spirits.
The curcurbit in which it floated was about seven spans in height and half as wide; the homoncule itself no more than two spans tall.  When I tapped the glass it turned eyes like clouded beads toward me, eyes blinder far in appearance than Master Palaemon's.  I heard no sound when its lips twitched, yet I knew at once what words they shaped - and in some inexorable sense I felt the pale fluid in which the mandragora was immersed had become my own blood-tinged urine.
    'Why have you called me Autarch, from the contemplation of your world?'
   I asked 'Is it truly mine? I know now that there are seven continents, and none but a part of this are obedient to the hallowed phrases.'
  'You are the heir' the wizened thing said and turned, I could not tell if by accident or design, until it no longer faced me.
  I tapped the curcurbit again. 'And who are you?'
  'A being without parents, whose life is passed immersed in blood.'
  'Why such have I been!  We should be friends then, you and I, as two of similar backgrounds usually are.'
 'You jest.'
 'Not at all.  I feel a real sympathy for you, and I think we are more alike than you believe.'
  The tiny figure turned again until its little face looked up into my own. 'I wish that I might credit you, Autarch.'
 'I mean it. No one has ever accused me of being an honest man, and I've told lies enough when I thought they would serve my turn, but I'm quite sincere. If I can do anything for you, tell me what it is.'
 'Break the glass.'
 I hesitated. 'Won't you die?'
 'I have never lived. I will cease thinking. Break the glass.'
 'You do live.'
 'I neither grow, nor move, nor respond to any stimulus save thought, which is counted no response. I am incapable of propagating my kind, or any other. Break the glass.'
 'If you are indeed unliving, I would rather find some way to stir you to life.'
 'So much for brotherhood. When you were imprisoned here, Thecla, and that boy brought you the knife, why did you not look for more life then?'
 The blood burned in my cheek, and I lifted the ebony baculus, but I did not strike. 'Alive or dead, you have a penetrating intelligence. Thecla is the part of me most prone to anger.'
 'If you had inherited her glands with her memories, I would have succeeded.'
 'And you know that. How can you know so much, who are blind?'
 'The acts of coarse minds create minute vibrations that stir the waters of this bottle. I hear your thoughts.'
 'I notice that I hear yours. How is it that I hear them, and not others?'
 Looking now directly at the pinched face, which was lit by the sun's last shaft penetrating a dusty port, I could not be sure the lips moved at all. 'You hear yourself, as ever. You cannot hear others because your mind shrieks always, like an infant crying in a basket. Ah, I see you remember that.'
 'I remember a time long ago, when I was cold and hungry.  I lay upon my back, encircled by brown walls, and heard the sound of my own screams. Yes, I must have been an infant. Not old enough to crawl, I think. What am I thinking now?'
 'That I am but an unconscious exercise of your own power, as the Claw was. It is true, of course.  I was deformed, and died before birth, and have been kept here since in white brandy. Break the glass.'