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Another brief excerpt from Bee’s dream journals precedes “Beggar.” The chapter begins with Bee considering her isolation in Chalced as she continues to hide from Dwalia and her company. Wolf-Father continues to advise her as she reconnoiters her surroundings and assesses her own condition, but the advice he can give is limited by geography.

As the area stirs to daily life, Bee reflects on what she knows of Chalcedean events, including the overthrow of the previous rulership. Bee plots to present herself as a mute beggar and sets about securing funds and food. There is some success at that task, and Bee finds some comfort briefly before recalling her encounter with the Fool and its ending.

Bee rests, waking late and retreating to where she had previously reconnoitered. She takes stock of her situation and moves to address it, sleeping again to wake in tears in the night. To Wolf-Father’s comments, Bee responds angrily, and the next day sees her venture out into Chalced for food once again. Danger presents itself to her, and Bee observes the work of other beggars and thieves in the local market. At Wolf-Father’s insistence, she rejects an offer of seeming kindness made to her, and she withdraws once again to where she had hidden before.

The following day, Bee ventures out again and is robbed of what few coins she has. Thus reduced, she seeks out a target for theft and makes an attempt at stealing bread to feed herself, securing a loaf but being apprehended for doing so. Bee is made to give some account for herself and is taken into custody awaiting sale as a slave to offset the damage her theft has caused. The captivity is not as bad as could be, as Bee is fed decently and not otherwise accosted, and she confers with Wolf-Father, who urges her to rest and heal as she can.

Bee wakes still in captivity and recovers somewhat. Another day passes with her imprisoned until Dwalia arrives to claim her. Bee realizes again the effect Vindeliar has on people and shuts herself against it, although at the cost of closing out Wolf-Father, as well.

There is some humor early in the chapter. The exchange between Bee and Wolf-Father–Bee’s “They have no forest” being met by Wolf-Father’s “This explains much about the Chalcedeans”–brought a chuckle to my lips as I read it again. There’s a long tradition of forests in fantasy literature, of course, and while the woods often offer danger, the danger they offer is of an easily understood sort; the lack of it is a separation from “the normal,” of regard for and connection to life and the natural world, which does speak to the caricature of evil that Chalced has been presented as being. That’s not the humor, though; the joke is in the flatness of the response, the assignment of so much wrong to such a simple thing. The juxtaposition jars, and the jarring prompts laughter, easing acceptance of the idea–which is one of the things humor is apt to do.

On the topic of Chalcedean evil, the present chapter does seem to indicate that some reforms are underway, although the country cannot be called “good” even in the wake of Chassim’s accession. Slavery still remains an accepted practice, and kidnapping seems still to be prevalent. But it is at least not the case that Bee faces assault while awaiting sale, as other volumes in the Realm of the Elderlings corpus make clear is a likelihood, or that she finds herself possibly the next meal for the rulers of the area. Chalced remains evil under Chassim, but it is less evil than it had been under Andronicus, and there is something that resembles hope for its further development even in the changes already clear from the text.

If Chalced’s evil might be mitigated (although, again, not erased; it is still a bad place), that of Dwalia is assuredly not so. She continues to resort to outright domination, via Vindeliar (who cannot be said to be in full possession of his faculties despite his power, and I am put in mind of parallels to Thick; there might be something in reading the characters against one another), as well as selling off others in her company to secure her own convenience. To be certain, even the “good guys” in the Realm of the Elderlings will use their powers to relieve others of their free will; the Skilling Verity does against the Red-Ship raiders offers no few examples, and Fitz himself is not always or even necessarily kind with his powers. (What Nettle does can only be dimly guessed at, even if her king has a distaste for disreputable methods; what an interquel such things might present!) I find myself asking if Dwalia is more evil only in that she demands another do such work for her…but that I am obliged to ask such questions only deepens my engagement with the text and the corpus of which it is part, and that is something that speaks well of them to me.

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Following a brief excerpt from Prilkop’s writings, “Revelations” begins with Fitz recuperating slowly from his exertions in the Skill. Residents of Kelsingra continue to ply him for healing that he dares not open himself to perform, and Amber joins Fitz in his chambers for brandy one evening, resuming the identity of the Fool when the pair are in private. They confer about Fitz’s unwillingness to resume Skilling while in Kelsingra, surrounded by the memory stone, and Fitz guides conversation toward the Fool’s experience of Clerres. Prilkop’s ancientry is noted along the way, as are tendencies of Kelsingrans and Rain Wilders to become lost in the memories that are stored in the stones of the Elderling cities. Parallels are drawn to August and Verity Farseer, and the pair discuss the Fool’s resumption of being marked by Skill.

With some guild, Fitz steers conversation back towards Clerres, and the Fool reminisces about his upbringing and his introduction to Clerres. Details of the island and its inhabitants are provided, and some information about the prophecies that led the Fool to Buckkeep emerges. More details of Clerres are evoked, although to the Fool’s pain, and Fitz learns the Pale Woman’s name, Ilistore. He also learns of how the Fool and Prilkop were treated and won over when they returned to Clerres at length, with the Fool remarking on how he had managed to conceal Fitz even amid his accounts to the Servants. Fitz’s fraught presence in prophecy receives more attention, and the Fool somewhat drunkenly opines on the strangeness of being cared for by Farseers. Still sodden, the Fool tucks up against a willing Fitz who watches as he falls asleep.

The present chapter is not the first in the Realm of the Elderlings novels to bear the title “Revelations.” Indeed, it’s one of the more common, if not the most common, chapter-title Hobb uses; it appears in Assassin’s Apprentice, Golden Fool, and Dragon Haven. Had I the time at the moment to read the four chapters against one another, I think it would prove of interest; I’m not sure there’s any presentation or independent publication potential in such a work, but that hardly stops me from doing much or any of what I do to dabble in literary criticism and interpretation anymore. Time constraints, however, do, so I will add this to the towering pile of scholarly somedays that has grown up as I have worked through my rereading. I really do have a lot to do, and far less time to do it in than I might prefer…but that’s true of all of us, I think.

As might be expected from a chapter titled “Revelations,” there is much exposition in the present chapter. Details of Clerres are welcome, even if they reinforce what seems to me still to be a simplistic ponerological stance as regards the place and its people. More nuanced, perhaps, is the treatment of Prilkop in the present chapter. I believe I’ve commented before about Hobb’s tendency to have characters who are pushed into positions of subservience and opprobrium be marked, to have color and tincture added to them; Jamaillian and Chalcedean enslavement practices come to mind as examples, and I’m sure that skimming my records would point out more. (Another scholarly someday is indexing all of this stuff, which will be a project on its own, to be sure.) Here, Prilkop is a counter-example, the eldest of his people and the most successful in his goals being denoted specifically by his darker skin. It is a neat inversion of the fantasy commonplace of whitening with greater achievement (eg Gandalf’s transformation from the Grey to the White), and I’m sure there’s some reading thereof that will annoy no few people with its putative wokeness. There’s yet another scholarly someday to plumb therein (and if someone’s already done it, I’d love to know).

I seem to collect more and more of them. Ah, to have time for them all!

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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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Read the previous entry in the series here.
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After a commentary from Chade about the decline of the Elderlings and the legendary alliance between them and the early Farseers, “Chalced” begins with Wolf-Father speaking to Bee of his being carried by the scruff of his neck as she emerges from the Skill-pillar into a hollow in the ground. Dwalia and the others–including Reppin–are crammed into the hollow with her, and Reppin finds herself pushed back into the stone as Wolf-Father helps Bee ground herself. She assesses her situation as Dwalia and the others fret and begin to panic.

At Wolf-Father’s urging, Bee attempts to pass back through the Skill-pillar, to no avail; at Wolf-Father’s further urging, Bee sleeps. When she wakes, Bee assesses her situation again, and she is somewhat taken aback by Kerf’s blunt discussion of their prospects and offer to kill her rather than let her suffer through what will come. Bee demurs, and the sounds of life outside the hollow begin to reach the group. Light begins to filter into the hollow, revealing it as the result of a collapse rather than a deliberate construction, and Kerf manages to move the fallen stones enough for Bee to slip out. She hides and watches as the others emerge, and Kerf notes his recognition of their location. Bee takes advantage of the others’ distraction to hide herself better, free from them but in a strange place.

The present chapter is not the first to bear the title “Chalced”; a chapter late in Blood of Dragons does so, as well. It is tempting to read the present chapter against the earlier, the coincidence of titles alone suggesting it as a short project that might well be done; the content of the present chapter, emerging from the content of the earlier, affirms it. I’m not going to do so at this point; it is very much the thing that makes for a decent scholarly someday, perhaps a good thing to take up in a post to this webspace that is not part of the rereading series, proper. I do always need to find outlets for my desire to write, after all, and turning to something resembling literary critical practice provides them in plenty. How the rest of my life will allow for such, though, I am not sure–hence the “someday” bit.

Anyway, the present chapter is relatively brief, only some eleven pages in my copy. (Again, I really need to get a cohesive run of the Realm of the Elderlings novels to see how the page numbers all line up. I really do think there’s something to the chapter-length, although I acknowledge that that might well be me digging deeper to find something than is needful or even useful. Such is life.) It does a good job, I think, of reinforcing something that a number of prior chapters in the Realm of the Elderlings novels point up: the danger of Skill-pillars. Repeatedly throughout the works, mention is made of the perils of traveling to unknown pillars, the thought of what would happen if the destination pillar was submerged (as here), broken, or buried. Bee and her captors–save Reppin–were lucky in the event (although so much could be expected, Bee being a deuteragonist and so needing to be around for the duration), but they need not have been. And the fact of Reppin being pushed back into the pillar…there are some implications there that stand some interrogating, I think.

Perhaps another scholarly someday is in order for that.

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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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