Read the previous entry in the series here.
Read the next entry in the series here.

And hooray for 1600 posts to this webspace!

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After lyrics from Hap Gladheart, “The Fool’s Tale” begins with Fitz returning to Chade’s old hidden rooms, where he inadvertently wakes the Fool into a trauma response. The two confer for a time together, the Fool asking about Bee and relating some of the circumstances of his imprisonment and abuse before resuming his account of his life since his ragged parting from Fitz. Passing through Skill-pillars to Kelsingra and beyond, the Fool and Prilkop made for Clerres, and the Fool interrupts his account to muse on one moment in his torment and the arrival of one of his messengers to Fitz.

Conversation pivots to the Fool’s encounter with Bee, which he had misunderstood, and falters in favor of Fitz’s medical attentions to the Fool. His Skill reaches into the Fool, and the extent of his injuries and underlying illness is made clear to him once again. He bends his magic to the task of healing, only to find himself roused out of a stupor by a frantic Chade and Nettle. Discussion of events ensues, and Fitz is given additional assignments; after Nettle leaves, Chade and Fitz confer more closely, including about Ash. Once Chade leaves, Fitz makes to see to himself, noting strange wounds whose source confuses him. Setting the matter aside, he retires for what sleep he can get.

The lyrics that introduce the chapter draw my attention, as might be expected for an old English major. I reproduce them here to facilitate discussion (they’re on pg. 57 of the edition of the text I’m reading, the first edition hardcover from 2015); the words, of course, are not my own:

When winter’s clutch is cold and dark
And game is scarce and forest stark,
This songster to the hearth retreats
To warm his cheeks and icy feet.

But on the hill and in the glen
Are hunters hardier than men.
With lolling tongues and eyes that gleam
They surge through snow with breath like steam.

For in the hunt there is no morrow,
Time does not wait. There is no sorrow
As blood spills black and snarls are rife.
For life is meat, and death brings life.

The lyrics given are in iambic tetrameter couplets, which would “normally” indicate some light or satiric thrust due to the long-standing association with Hudibras. The subject matter belies the association, however, particularly in the final line presented (which, it must be noted, may not be the final line of the song); it does call to mind–appropriately, given the generic associations–some of the verse penned by JRR Tolkien and included in, say, The Silmarillion. (The Lay of Leithian is an example.) The line-structure suggests, further, that the kind of minstrelsy in which Hap is trained follows a common 4/4 pattern; each line suggests a measure of music, with each stanza being a single verse in a song, such that a brief musical refrain can be imagined easily between the stanzas. In the former case, the association with generic standards reinforces the notion that, despite Hobb’s divergences from it, she remains rooted in the Tolkienian fantasy tradition (which she acknowledges); the reinforcement helps keep her work accessible to readers. Similarly, the implied musical structure at work in Hap’s song is one likely to be familiar to Hobb’s presumed primary readership; its inclusion, then, helps with accessibility. Her readers are presented with something new that is also familiar, allowing them to more easily engage with the text–something about which Hobb has expressed concern. That concern would appear to be addressed in the introductory material to the present chapter, as elsewhere in the Elderlings corpus.

There’s also a lovely bit of additive foreshadowing at work. The messenger that had reached Fitz at Withywoods, whose body he had burned, had reported being infected in such a way as to make contact with her a peril. In the present chapter, Fitz has had prolonged physical contact with a gravely injured and long-ill Fool. He also shows up with strange wounds whose source he cannot recall, and he makes an assumption about them he does not pursue. Hobb being Hobb, and Fitz being Fitz, it is clear that he is in another poor position, and once again through a lack of vigilance that may be understandable in the situation but which still does not argue in his favor.

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