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

There is discussion of cannibalism in the present chapter.

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After a brief excerpt from Tom Badgerlock’s journals, “Silver Secrets” begins with Fitz joining the others from the Six Duchies aboard the Paragon in mourning the death of Chade Fallstar. There is some disagreement about the amount of hair that should be shorn from Fitz’s head, and he muses on his not having done so at Burrich’s death, as well as on the length of his association with the old man. Report arrives that the Paragon has reached the vicinity of Clerres, and Fitz considers the tasks awaiting him and the dangers to Bee that can be found among them. Plans for how to proceed are voiced, and Fitz confers with Brashen and Althea.

In the wake of the conference, Amber proposes a plan for infiltrating Clerres. Having none better, Fitz reluctantly accedes to it. Argument briefly emerges about Fitz’s retention of the Silver given him by Rapskal, but it soon fades against continued exposition of plans to retrieve Bee and enact revenge against Clerres. Fitz excuses himself from the planning for a time and finds himself conferring with the liveship about his death.

Afterward, Fitz observes as the liveship relates experiences in Clerres, and he makes his preparations as the ship approaches within sight of the city. He and the Fool confer, the Fool relating some regrets and some of the circumstances of his imprisonment in Clerres with Prilkop. They range to extreme depredation on the part of the Four and the Fool’s unwitting participation in the same. Fitz offers such comfort as he can and urges him to preserve Bee at all costs.

Discussion is interrupted by Spark arriving with water for tea. The Fool contributes herbs to brew, and Fitz is eased by them and the memories they spur, leaving Spark and Fool as they fall into sleep.

To deal with the big issue: the presentation of evil in the present chapter, the discussion of the Fool being induced towards cannibalism while imprisoned in Clerres, seems to me to be another instantiation of the almost cartoonish we-need-the-capital-letter-Evil at work in some of the later Realm of the Elderlings works. I discuss it previously here and as linked, and I find I’m not sure of the effect of the particular ponerology at present. Given the other descriptions of Clerres and its inhabitants in the novels, the motion towards cannibalism is, if unexpected on an initial reading, not out of place even in one. After all, Clerres is filled with Bad People, and cannibalism is, at least for the presumed primary readership of the Realm of the Elderlings corpus, a Bad Thing; Bad People tend to do Bad Things–and to try to get others to do them, too.

But that’s where the confusion is for me. What does Clerres gain from the Fool eating the flesh and blood of those who attempt to help him? He is already their captive, and he has demonstrated that, despite both cozening and torture, he will not turn to their ends; is it mere amusement for them in Clerres that they act so? Is it simply a demonstration of just how Evil (and, again the capital letter seems needed) they are?

As I think on it some more, the thought occurs that it might be a back-handed anti-Messianic image. That is, the Fool is constrained or impelled to drink the blood and eat the flesh of those who are sacrificed for their support of him, something of an inversion of Christian Communion and one deepened by the fact of their failure. That he is yet imprisoned when he partakes is an indication that their sacrifices have not availed. Clerres is highlighted as being yet more Evil to Hobb’s presumed primary readership–a high-selling author in the United States can be presumed to be writing to a predominantly United-States-based audience, and that country says an awful lot about its putative Christian underpinnings; if Clerres inverts what is perhaps the principal ritual of a religion, it is being figured as antithetical thereto, thus more emphatically Evil…and I think I may have to rework a paper once again.

You know you want someone to write for you; have that someone be me!

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