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

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Following an excerpt from Bee’s dream journals, “In the Mountains” opens with Bee waking to find her efforts at escape noticed. Dwalia rebukes the others in her group and orders Bee secured more stringently, which orders are carried out with complaint. Dwalia, angry at needing to remain in place for another night, commands the others to seek out wood, and while they do, Bee finds evidence of her father’s presence and the bear attack he suffered. Dwalia also notices and retrieves some of what Fitz had carried.

Dwalia considers her findings, snapping angrily at the others in her group as she does, and Bee considers them. Wolf-Father speaks within her, offering counsel for how to proceed. In the night, she hears dissension brewing among Dwalia’s group as they lay out details of how their mission began and how Dwalia came to lead it. Bee notes not understanding all of what is said, but she takes from their conversation what she can, and not only about Clerres. At the group’s discussion of dreams, Bee considers her own, her captivity-enforced inability to record them, and the increasing urgency of the dreams as they go unrecorded. Pretending to write eases her somewhat.

More days pass, and matters among Dwalia’s party deteriorate. The one Bee had injured, Reppin, suffers the effects of the injury, and the others question Dwalia. Bee, advised by Wolf-Father, notes the nearby presence of a bear, and she finds herself confronted by Kerf, who is much taken by the Skill-visions that pervade their location. Strangely sympathetic, Kerf does offer her some ease, and she makes another attempt at escape that Dwalia violently interdicts. In the wake thereof, Kerf speaks to Bee again, and Dwalia arrives at an understanding of her location. Prompted, Kerf offers information about where he has seen one of the runes the local Skill-pillars display, although he hesitates to tender more assistance. Bee makes another unsuccessful attempt at escape, and Reppin is abandoned as Dwalia compels the group through another Skill-pillar.

The present chapter does fill in a bit of lore hinted at but not, to my recollection, presented before: the name of the Pale Woman. So far as I recall or have notes of (and I will acknowledge that my memory is not what it used to be, as well as that my notes may well not be complete), the Pale Woman was only referred to by that epithet or addressed directly previously. To have confirmation of her name as Ilistore does not necessarily change any previous reading, but it is nice to have a bit more information, a bit more depth and detail in an already well-built narrative world. It’s something I appreciate.

The present chapter also speaks to something I’ve noticed in Hobb’s work before: a focus on writing as writing. There’s a lot to say on the topic of how Hobb presents writing, even outside the present series that makes as much of both Fitz’s and Bee’s writing as it does–it’s probably another scholarly someday to trace it out. I will note, though, that there are times Hobb gets fairly heavy-handed about her thoughts about writing; Words like Coins, a minor entry in the Realm of the Elderlings corpus, and one I will eventually treat in this reread, offers an example, as I’ve noted before. Bee’s need to record her dreams, the way the dreams press upon her consciousness until she does so, seems another such comment. It’s not necessarily revelatory, admittedly; among others, Asimov quips about the demands of writing for a writer, and I, myself, have made comments about it (here and here, if not also elsewhere). But that something is not new or unique does not mean it does not merit attention; indeed, how much work done to understand literature (or any art), and how much of the enjoyment of the same, inheres in finding what a given piece pulls from and references?

I also note with some joy the ponerological thrust of the chapter (not least because I delight in the opportunity to use the word). The nature of evil has been a topic in the Realm of the Elderlings novels before, of course (here, for example), and I have written about the cartoonishness of some of the later iterations (here, here, and here, by that term). Dwalia’s readiness to abandon her companions and their plotting against her, with reference to higher-level plotting and infighting, seems to align with that, and I’m unsure how I feel about it. Part of what I like about Hobb is her nuancing of tropes; this seems less in that line than I have been used to seeing, although it may be that my reading has shifted as I have gotten older. Like I note above, my memory isn’t what it used to be.

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