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

---

Following Dwalia’s comments about Prilkop, “Aftermath” begins with Fitz considering the fallout from the fight with Ellik and his few surviving subordinates. Fitz issues orders to Foxglove and his own guards, and a search for Bee and Shine ensues. As Fitz goes about his part of it, Riddle assists him and confronts him about Lant and about his own inclusion in the drugged group Fitz had left behind, and, after some discussion, the two are accorded.

The results of Fitz’s and Riddle’s search are noted, and they are unhelpful. The pair call at nearby Ringhill Keep, which is described as they receive accommodations. Fitz, drug-addled, muddles through the meal, after which he and Riddle are taken aside by the resident Skill-user and informed that they are to return to Buckkeep with all due haste. Fitz apologizes to Riddle for having led to his rebuke, which apology Riddle sets aside, and the pair prepare to return to face Nettle and Dufitul.

The next morning, Fitz, Riddle, Lant, and Perseverance set out for Buckkeep, Fitz’s guard in tow. Reports of the previous night are offered, and Lant voices his complaints to Fitz for ill-treatment. As they proceed, Fitz and Riddle confer, and discord breaks out among the guard. They also find Shine along the way, and Fitz learns to his sorrow that Bee has been taken through a Skill-pillar.

The introductory material to the chapter once again attracts my attention. I find it interesting that Dwalia describes Prilkop as “the Black Prophet,” a description echoing that under which he was introduced to the Realm of the Elderlings corpus (see here and here). I find it also interesting that the description comes amid commentary that casts some aspersion onto Prilkop: “Since he was discovered as a natural-born rather than bred at Clerres, his time at our school was too short to be certain of his loyalty” (523). Both lead me once again to think about Manichean allegory at work, as well as the ways in which portions of the Realm of the Elderlings seem to me to refigure early US experience (about which some comments are here). I imagine that some additional updates to my earlier work will be in order, and I imagine also that I may have to review some of my older notes to reground myself in some of the prevailing theoretical discourses in which I’d need to work to follow up on this particular set of scholarly somedays.

There’s some there there.

In any event, the text of the main chapter is relatively brief, some thirteen pages in the printing I have (I really need to sit down for a while with a cohesive print-run of the Elderlings novels; there’s something in the chapter-lengths). It reads to me as being a pivot, separated out from other materials for sense and to allow greater focus on other events but still needing more development than a simple gloss would permit. Fitz’s recognition of his errors, his faults, and the ways in which those faults impact both others and the regard others have for him deserves attention, certainly, and I am put in mind of “filler episodes” in a number of television series. I note that many such episodes become some of the most favorite, though, as they tend to permit the kind of character development that receives much approval and that, frankly, many “literary” novels focus on.

I’m not upset to see it.

I’m happy to write for you; fill out the form below to get your piece started!

Or you can send your support along directly!

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

Another content warning for the chapter: discussion of child abuse / neglect, torture.

---

After a Servant’s commentary about the Fool, one noting his youthful intransigence and certain measures attempted and suggested to address the same, “The Glove” returns to Bee and Shun as they flee the fracas between the Servants and their Chalcedean hirelings. Shun directs Bee as they flee, and they come at last to take a tentative rest. A cold night passes for them.

In the morning, Bee and Shun press on after some disagreement about what path to take and why. They proceed with difficulty and in cold hunger, and Shun divulges some of her personal history. Bee ruminates on it as she takes a turn breaking trail for Shun, and they come at last to a place to rest for the evening.

Bee wakes in the night, prompted by the echo of Nighteyes within her. One of the Chalcedean hirelings, Kerf, approaches in seeming kindness, offering escort and food. Kerf relates some of his own history and makes to attend to Bee and Shun, and they sleep.

The next day dawns with Kerf providing more food for Bee and Shun, and the trio set out again. Reluctantly, Bee and Shun follow Kerf as he leads them along, and they realize that he has led them back to Dwalia under Vindeliar’s power. Dwalia takes them in hand, noting the end of Bee’s deception, and she bids them be taken through a Skill-pillar. Bee acts, allowing Shun to slip free before she is dragged into the stone of the portal.

The present chapter does quite a bit. For one thing, in its prefatory materials, it brings back to mind the ways in which the Fool had been marked by those in Clerres, tattooed in his youth. In the earlier discussion of those marks, the Fool reports them as inflicted in an attempt to render him not-White. (As I write the words, I recall some earlier comments that motion towards Hobb’s use of tattooing as a trope, and I have to wonder about Manichean allegory and race politics–more scholarly somedays, I think.) While he might well have recalled them as thus inspired, the broader issues of control that are reported in the prefatory materials remain…chilling.

It’s not the only thing in the present chapter that is so. Aside from the weather depicted, there is a more to indicate the ruthlessness of the Servants and their ilk in dealing with those who resist them. As Dwalia and her company prepare to take Bee through the Skill-pillar, she produced “a single strange glove. [Bee] could not tell what it was made from. The hand of it was pale and thing, almost translucent, but to three of its fingertips a shriveled silvery button had been attached” (521). Another of the injuries inflicted on the Fool is accounted for in the description; in Fool’s Assassin, Chapter 30, Fitz notes when he surveys the Fool’s injuries after stabbing him that the fingers with which he had touched the Skill had been damaged, the magic-tinged tips taken away. It would seem they found another home–a macabre little touch that I do not think I caught in my earlier readings.

It’s a good sign when a book gives you something new upon rereading.

Another note, and on another topic entirely: I’ve remarked many times before about Hobb’s use of emblematic names in the Elderlings novels, something overtly discussed as at work among the higher social strata of the Six Duchies and seemingly present among other social groups in the milieu, as well. With that, I have to reflect on Kerf, whose name Merriam-Webster reports as meaning either “a slit or notch made by a saw or cutting torch” or “a slit or notch made by a saw or cutting torch.” In either event, the name indicates that something is missing because it has been removed, and I have to think, given the character’s self-report of his personal history and what has been done to him both by his native society and by Vindeliar at Dwalia’s command, it is an apt name.

It’d help me if you’d have me do some writing for you; fill out the form below to get your piece started!

Or you can send your support along directly!

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

Got another content warning on this chapter: torture.

---

Following a report to Chade that discusses the end of Andronicus Kent and the ascent of Chassim, “Red Snow” begins with Fitz and Fleeter proceeding at speed, Fitz detailing their progress through the night and into the dawn. He notes passing “a rare shrine to Eda” (474) as he and his horse move ahead, and Fitz tries to puzzle out his quarry’s path. His thoughts are interrupted by the arrival of the crow, Motley, who croaks out a warning that Fitz heeds, and he is more cautious as he approaches the remnants of violence.

Fitz surveys the scene, searching for Bee and finding no sign of her. Fleeter’s sudden fatigue reaches Fitz through the Wit, and though he sees to her, he still hardens himself as the assassin he had been trained to be, reflecting on the quiet work he did for Shrewd. Fitz skulks through the terrain, considering implications of the evidence that presents itself to his senses, and he finds the results of the fracas that had broken out between the Servants and the Chalcedeans.

Fitz also finds there are survivors, and he watches for a time before advancing with fatal intent. Seeing the spoils of his own home on display, he questions one of them, Ellik, and secures his person before settling in to extract information. It is forthcoming, and it details how the Chalcedeans were hired and brought into the Six Duchies to effect the raid on Withywoods. It also details the lead-up to the violence that had erupted, and the escape Dwalia and Vindeliar had achieved. It does not report on Bee and Shine.

Securing Ellik, Fitz moves to confront another Chalcedean. He is not more merciful with him, and what he learns confirms what Ellik told him. And then he is beset by Ellik, melee ensuing until interrupted by the onrush of fleeing Chalcedeans and Six Duchies soldiers in pursuit. Perseverance is among them, and his untrained efforts save Fitz from death at Ellik’s hand. The general melee is soon concluded, and Fitz commands a search be organized in haste.

The mention of the shrine early in the present chapter brings to mind some work I have done explicating how Hobb works with concepts of medieval religion in the Realm of the Elderlings corpus. (The short answer is “not a whole lot, but not not at all.” The actual answer is more complex, as the paper bears out.) I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I had missed in the paper the mention of the shrine in the present chapter, as well as its description: “The goddess slumbered under a mantle of white snow, her hands open on her lap. Someone had brushed her hands clean and filled them with millet. Small birds perched on her fingers and thumbs” (474). I’m sure there is something to trace out in the description–there’s enough medievalist resonances in the Disney princesses the shrine’s description evoke that something could be plumbed–but I think it would not be something to stand on its own. Perhaps if I were to rework the conference paper into a longer piece…but that’s just another scholarly someday for me.

I note that Hobb returns again to the theme of torture that pervades her work–and not only her Elderlings corpus, as this rereading series will hopefully address at some point; it factors into the Soldier Son series, as well as some of the out-of-series works such as are in the Warriors anthology edited by Martin and Dozois. A quick glance at available scholarship–which reminds me that I need to do more to update the Fedwren Project–suggests that there is some attention being paid to the topic, which I am glad to see (even as I am somewhat jealous that I’m not the person doing the work). I’m not seeing an extended, systematic study, however, although I will concede that that might be simply a matter of my not having / taking the time to look more closely through the available scholarship at this point. I think I have already noted that such a project is among my many scholarly somedays; I should do so if I haven’t already. Perhaps, as things slow down a bit for me in my “real” life and in the more formal scholarly work that I am, somehow, still doing, I will have time to attend to some of them.

I’m happy to write to order for you; fill out the form below to get your piece started!

Or you can send your support along directly!