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

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A brief excerpt from Bee’s dream journal precedes “Kelsingra.” The chapter opens with Fitz and the rest taking such sleep as they can. When Fitz is woken by Perseverance coming off of watch, his Wit-sense responds to the presence of a larger predator that, upon investigation, proves to be a large bear showing the initial decrepitude of age. Fitz directs his companions to minimize the danger to them and reaches out to the bear through the Wit, but the bear attacks. The Fool and Spark flee through a Skill-pillar, while the rest scramble up trees and look on in anguish as the animal destroys their provisions.

After the bear leaves, Fitz, Lant, and Perseverance take stock of what remains and reestablish their camp as best they can. That done, they prepare to follow the Fool and Spark, Fitz speaking plainly of what might befall them. Steeling themselves, they plunge through the Skill-pillar, emerging to find the Fool and Spark before them and angry dragons in evidence. As Fitz directs Lant and Perseverance to take what little shelter there is, the dragons speak to him. As Elderlings approach, Fitz presents himself formally, beginning to defuse the situation as the arrival of additional forces makes violence an unpleasant option. Arrangements are made to conduct Fitz and his group to Kelsingra’s leadership.

The present chapter is not the first part of the Realm of the Elderlings corpus to bear the name; it follows the fourth chapter of City of Dragons in that. Correspondences between the two chapters are limited, although there are some to be found. I’m not sure that there is enough to make any claims about parallel functions; I rather doubt that there is, although I’ve not done the kind of close reading of the two texts against each other that would reveal whether or not there is in any real sense. It’s another scholarly someday, I suppose, if perhaps a winter day due to the brevity I would expect from such a thing.

There are a couple of other things of interest to me as I reread the chapter. One of them is the reinforcement of the idea, going back to the Tawny Man novels, that the dragons communicate with each other and with their Elderlings through the Skill. The implication that the Skill is some lingering trace of Elderling heritage seems clear to me, although I tend to think that it is something that has grown up as the Realm of the Elderlings corpus has extended rather than something that was planned at the outset–but I’ve made comments about that kind of thing before. And it’s not something with which I find fault; people change, and so the work that they do will also change. Nor yet is it necessary for something to be perfect before it gets going.

The other that stood out was the dragons’ inability to find the Fool, the Elderling blanket serving to conceal him from their sight (although not their sense of smell). The implications of that that emerge for me are significant. That there is a limit to the dragons’ abilities is of import; they are often shown as being super-predators and, while some fight against them seems possible, odds are never good for those who oppose them. That the Elderlings of old seem to have produced materials that thwart draconic senses is also suggestive, prompting questions of factionalism and rebellion among them. There’s not enough in the text, certainly at this point, to do more than make a vague suggestion, and I don’t expect that there is some sort of parallel to The Silmarillion waiting in Hobb’s notes for some future editor or scholar to find that would elaborate on it, but what is fantasy for if not for prompting the imagination?

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