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

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Following a letter regarding the Kendry and the challenges recently besetting the ship’s crew, “Feather to Blade” begins with Bee, imprisoned, regarding the passage of time in her cell and considering her situation. After lamps are lit, Prilkop speaks to her of dreams, particularly prophetic ones, and relates ominous portents. Wolf-Father rebukes her self-pity as her mind turns towards Fitz, and Bee suddenly realizes Symphe stands outside her cell door.

Bee regards Symphe as the latter undoes the locks holding her captive. Symphe offers candy as if Bee is a foolish child, and Bee, urged by Wolf-Father, follows her amid Prilkop’s jeering. Bee is taken to a chamber Wolf-Father recognizes as smelling of blood, in which Dwalia and Vindeliar await. Symphe confers with them about what will be done with and to Bee, and Bee acts in her own defense. A brief melee ensues, with Symphe being burned, her throat slashed, and Bee coming into contact with a vial of serpent spit that Symphe had purloined. Its power adds to her inborn Skill, and she revels in it, accepting the proclamation that she is the feared and foretold Destroyer and killing Dwalia with a word.

Bee returns to her cell to await a better chance for escape. Prilkop recognizes what has happened, and Bee weeps for what she has had to become.

The present chapter is not the first mention of the Destroyer, although I would appear to have failed to mark mention of the figure previously. Said figure is mentioned as an imminent threat to Clerres and the society that centers on it, the coming of which is foretold in an increasing number of recent prophetic dreams. Its approach is certain, especially given the Servants’ hubristic belief in their own correctness; the irony, recognized in the present chapter, that the Servants have brought their Destroyer into their stronghold themselves is delicious in no small part because it does proceed directly from that hubris. Bee points out (540-41), rightly, that she had a life from which she had been torn that would have kept her from Clerres save for the Servants’ need to control every possible bloodline of White Prophet and every possible outcome that could be foretold. Had the Servants been content to leave well enough alone, they would not have invited their own unmaking–but they could not, being as they were and are.

That is, of course, the point of all of it. The Servants, by relying so heavily on prophetic foreknowledge to guide themselves, inevitably place themselves into the position of making their prophecies come true. By not only accepting foretelling, but actively working to enact and guide it, they subject themselves to it, and by exerting the kind of ruthless control over it that they seem to have for generations if not far longer, they have made themselves unable to conceive of their own actions as being potentially in error. They are trapped by the very thing that they have used to accumulate power.

There are political comments to be found therein, I’m sure.

To pivot: the idea of the Destroyer as a figure of imminent menace is hardly new to Hobb, of course. I grew up and again live in the Texas Hill Country, where there were and are an awful lot of people who claim to be convinced that the End Times are a-comin’, and soon; it’s the kind of thing that lends towards apocalyptic figures. It’s not the only one, either; it’s an archetype for a reason. While Hobb does have a tendency to play with tropes and archetypes, this one seems to be pretty straightforward. At least at this point…

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