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

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After a brief excerpt from Bee’s dream-journal, “The Bargain” returns to Fitz as he readies himself for a meeting with the people of Kelsingra. He finds himself pleased with preparations undertaken by Spark and others. Perseverance asks Fitz after Spark and the Fool and their fluid identities, the boy enheartened by the man’s considered answer and behavior. The Fool and Lant join the group, and, after a few comments about Lady Thyme that confuse Lant, the group moves to meet with the leading Traders in the city.

Fitz, the Fool, and their company are conducted to a meeting of the dragon keepers, who are named and described as some introduce themselves. Others join, and dinner is served, over which conversation commences. Discussion is made of Fitz and the Fool’s errand to Clerres, and Reyn and Malta, grateful for the death of Ellik for his treatment of Selden, offer their aid to the group, and it is fulsome. It does not extend to a gift of the dragons’ Silver, however, despite Amber’s request for the same; it does, though, take in the conveyance of messages to Dutiful, which bespeak the prospect of Skilled healers and open trade, as Fitz and Amber remark as they retire for the evening.

Fitz spends long composing his letter to Dutiful with circumspection, after which he and the rest await the Tarman for conduct down the river. As they wait, Rapskal repeatedly attempts to press them, and Fitz realizes he must press the Fool for details of Clerres. Perseverance and Motley have an encounter with a dragon that the boy relates with some delight, and Fitz finally has an encounter with Rapskal in which the latter apologizes, convinced by Heeby of his intentions towards Clerres. Rapskal also offers Fitz advice about dealing with the memories that speak from the stones of Kelsingra before conducting him back to his chambers.

In Fitz’s chambers, he and Rapskal confer about the dragons and their memories. Hearing Rapskal’s yearning for something to enhance Heeby’s memories, Fitz recognizes an avenue through which he can find more information about what he will face, and he moves along it, learning more about the bond between keeper and dragon as well as about earlier depredations of Clerres and its people. The possibility of other populations of dragons and their systematic elimination is raised, and Rapskal notes continued doubts of Fitz and his party. But he, having been urged to do so by Heeby, gifts Fitz vials of Silver. As others arrive, he takes his leave with ominous words, and Fitz secures the gift.

Fitz’s group regathers and exchanges news. The theory that the Servants had systematically destroyed dragons is voiced and discussed, and new dangers begin to present themselves to Fitz’s mind as he purposes again to press the Fool for details about Clerres.

The conversation between Perseverance and Fitz early in the chapter regarding the fluid presentations of Spark and the Fool attracts attention for me, as might be expected. After all, I’ve commented no few times on how the issue of gender presentation pops up and confounds characters, including some who probably ought to know better (perhaps most recently here, with reference to any number of earlier portions of the Realm of the Elderlings corpus). That Fitz seems finally to have accorded himself to the Fool’s fluidity is a good thing, although I have to wonder at his arrival at it–but then, he did recently have some transformative experiences, so perhaps something shook loose in him to bring him around. Perseverance’s easy faith in the prince he serves…if I was ever so trusting, it has been a long time, indeed.

The related joke about Chade as Lady Thyme, playing on Lant’s ignorance, comes off as being a bit mean-spirited, the more so because it juxtaposes with the aforementioned acceptances. I like a good joke, and the timing of the humor is not out of line, but it is pointed in a way I’m not entirely sure Lant has coming this time. Other times, yes, because Lant has been and can be a pompous ass, but not this time.

(The thought occurs, or reoccurs, that Rosemary becomes an excellent name for someone trained by Chade, and the question of whether there had been a Parsley and a Sage before rises for me. Hobb is of an age to have access to the reference…)

The theory Rapskal motions towards and that Fitz and the Fool discuss openly, that the Servants in Clerres purposefully destroyed the dragons, perhaps as a self-protective measure, intrigues. In retrospect, it does seem odd that a people as demonstrably widespread as the Elderlings were–consider the map-rooms in Kelsingra and Aslevjal–would be undone so suddenly even by a cataclysm that reshapes the coastlines; a more spatially restricted dragonkind and Elderling civilization might well be undone by a volcano, but even a supervolcano would struggle to completely kill off what seems an intercontinental body. Even with the clearly large passage of time involved–remember that the Elderlings are attested in early Six Duchies materials, and there is enough language change between those materials and Fitz’s present that translation is an issue–there should be more evidence of the Elderlings and the dragons that made them available than seems to have been the case. Armed with foreknowledge, however, a dedicated and malevolent group might well be able to seize upon the opportunity presented by a massive natural disaster to enact a genocide and work towards something like a damnatio memoriæ–and the Servants, as has been repeatedly demonstrated, are a dedicated and malevolent group.

While I still contend that Hobb moves in many ways away from the Tolkienian fantasy literature tradition, I do think that there is some motion towards the bones in his soup in this–and I remember that Hobb grounds herself in having read Tolkien, too…

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