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

---

A chapter titled “The Wit and the Skill” follows. It opens with a musing on the place of minstrels in the Six Duchies. It then pivots to Fitz parting from the minstrel family after seeing them to an inn in a small town. After refusing another invitation to join them, Fitz heads off, reflexively noting the state of the town and the gossip to be heard in it. He also watches as a drunk is rebuked forcefully for speaking against the current regime.

As Fitz makes to leave, he is approached by another through the Wit, and he offers help to the man–Black Rolf. Fitz and Nighteyes accompany the Witted man and his own bear companion–Hilda–to Rolf’s home, which he shares with another Witted one–Holly–and her hawk, Sleet. The Witted ones–who express a preference for the term “Old Blood”–welcome them hospitably. They do, however, express concern tending toward disgust at Fitz and Nighteyes, not for their bond but for their youth in building it, and with Fitz’s gaps in memory and prior bondings. They set it aside as done in ignorance and invite Fitz and Nighteyes to stay and learn from them. They also note the current state of affairs to Fitz, cautioning him in his work to kill Regal. And they press him to teach them how the Wit may be used against the Skilled.

Fitz refuses each offer, not to Rolf’s pleasure. Rolf notes that Fitz will return, and Fitz realizes the truth of it as Rolf and Holly speed him on his way.

I am once again struck by the desire to read the novel against current circumstances; it has been something of a refrain in my comments in this reading series, I know, and it is a legitimate area of inquiry to ask what an earlier work continues to say. I am also struck again by the idea of the Wit as a metaphor for homosexuality, as a number of others have been (see here for examples), though I maintain that the metaphor breaks down in later parts of the Elderlings corpus. (It might be argued that the metaphor instantiates the queerness it represents in refusing to remain stable as the narrative progresses, though that is perhaps more metacritical than is necessarily good for me to pursue. I am no longer in academe, after all.)

Strangely, I am struck perhaps most by the names in the chapter, particularly that of the bear, Hilda. Hobb is typically deliberate with naming in the Six Duchies, favoring emblematic names that speak to the character of those who bear them. “Hilda” seems such an oddity in that regard; the resonances that seem to associate with the name, except perhaps for being of a certain size and physical power (though “Bertha” and others work just as well for those), do not seem to line up well. I am perhaps paying too much attention to so minor a character, but, though I am not an academic, I still think as I was trained to, and the out-of-place detail nags at me. A bit.

Pennies for a poor scholar?

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

---

A chapter titled “Confrontations” follows. It begins with a brief rumination on the reciprocal nature of the Wit before moving to Fitz describing fretful sleep and uncomfortable dreams. He wakes to an offer from one of the minstrels of intimate company, which he rejects; Fitz returns to sleep and dreams of being watched by Will, then of being the victim of Red-Ship raids in progress. Verity joins him in the dream and sends Fitz back to himself.

Fitz wakes in pain from his Skill exertions and sets about brewing elfbark tea to ease himself; the work occasions rebuke from the minstrels, who note its use in suppressing slaves in other countries. At length, the group heads out, failing to make the next town before nightfall. They make an uneasy camp that is soon relaxed as Fitz cannot help but betray some of his skill-set once again. The betrayal earns an invitation to join the group more permanently, which Fitz ineptly refuses.

The next day, the group sets out again. Through the Wit, Nighteyes warns Fitz of Forged Ones nearby. There is little time to brace for the attack that comes, and Fitz has trouble defending himself, as do his companions. Nighteyes takes injury, as do the minstrels, though the Forged Ones are defeated. In the wake of the battle, however, Fitz is rebuked for what appears to have been his cowardice, since he had moved off to engage Nighteyes’s opponent amid the fight.

Fitz sleeps and dreams again, and in those dreams, Will assails him through the Skill. Through the Wit, Nighteyes defends Fitz, and Fitz wakes in a sweat from what he explains as a nightmare. Through the Wit, Nighteyes signals his understanding that they must kill Regal and his inner circle, lest they be forever pursued.

I’ve not hidden that I work in addiction treatment at the moment (and am likely to do so for some time), although I am not a counselor. Inexpert though I am in such matters, and suspect as any diagnosis of a literary character must be, it does seem that Fitz is indeed addicted to elfbark; his swift recourse to that remedy is but one sign of it. The US NIH, among others, notes that fatigue and depression are observed aftereffects of certain illicit stimulants. While it is the case that elfbark is a fictional plant, it does bear some superficial similarities to the coca plant; it is not an exact analogue, but it is evocative. And it does have some explanatory power, offering another layer of verisimilitude to Hobb’s work; the fictional stimulant acts much like observed real ones, making it more believable for readers who do not have access to it. In a world that admits of magic, having a touchstone, even an unfortunate one, to the reader’s world is an aid to understanding and engagement, as Hobb herself notes.

I still continue to appreciate any support you can offer.

 

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

---

The next chapter, “The River Road,” opens with a brief statement about the economic importance of the Buck River. It moves thence to Fitz waking from a drunken stupor at Nighteyes’s insistence. Hung over, he makes more preparations for departure; upon returning from getting water, he finds Forged Ones in the small hut where he had been staying.

Melee ensues as the Forged Ones attack Fitz–“Dreams too loud!” says one of him–and Fitz panics, fleeing as soon as he is able. The change from previous behavior gives Nighteyes concern, and Fitz mulls over the difference, trying to convince himself that he acted wisely and not from fear.

It is only much later, and coaxed by Nighteyes, that Fitz approaches the hut again. After nervously gathering–again–provisions, Fitz and Nighteyes set out. It becomes a pattern that they travel by night, resting by day, though the lingering effects of repeated trauma make Fitz less able to sleep than is ideal. And Fitz sorrows over the visible effects of the depredations the Six Duchies have suffered.

They come to a town, which Fitz investigates over Nighteyes’s objections. When assessing his available resources, Fitz, realizes he has lost the pin Shrewd had given him as a marker of his service; it was taken by a Forged One Fitz had killed as he fled. He resolves to keep the earring he had from Patience, that had been Burrich’s, and proceeds into the town. Therein, he finds food and news–the former better than the latter–and the company of a minstrel family that sympathizes with him over his evident ill-treatment. Reluctantly, Fitz agrees to fall in with them; he and Nighteyes both know that it is a bad thing for him to do.

The chapter is not the introduction of minstrels to the Farseer novels; they are mentioned before. But it is an early indication of the minstrels’ social function in the Six Duchies, not only as bearers of news (as in the medieval life Hobb’s Six Duchies evokes to some degree–with my usual caveat), but also as witnesses. As emerges later in the corpus, a minstrel’s sworn testimony is authoritative in Six Duchies legal proceedings. For Fitz to fall in with a group of them foreshadows their importance to come–and the Elderlings corpus as a whole makes much of predestination and glimpsing the future.

Also foreshadowed is that Fitz’s sloppiness will cause problems for him. He notes his errors with the minstrel group, and that much self-awareness might well help him as he proceeds. If he has already been so lackadaisical, though, the question has to arise of what else he has missed–and what others have seen. For it was noted to him that others watch, and even in the present chapter, it is remarked that there are informants about…

I continue to appreciate any support you can offer.

 

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

---

The next chapter, “The Quest,” opens with a brief passage on the powers and perils of the Skill before moving into Burrich’s preparations to leave Fitz behind. Burrich leaves, and Fitz considers his next actions.

He confers with Nighteyes, who surveys the cabin where Fitz had been living with Burrich as he returned to humanity, and he considers the wolf. The wolf naps, and Fitz assesses his situation for the start of the journey. Over the following days, he makes preparations for his own departure, and the two linger near the cabin as Fitz convalesces a bit further amid his preparations.

After a traumatic dream, Fitz realizes that he has completely lost his sense of time; weeks have passed that he had thought days, and he understands the truth of Burrich’s fears for him. He does what he can to return from it and renews himself to his purpose against Regal, if with some misgivings as other ideas come to him. Considering some of them leads him to Skill to Verity; he makes contact and affirms that he will join Verity after he concludes an errand. In the wake of it, he reflects on the Six Duchies and his former life in the kingdom.

I am struck as I read the chapter again by how Fitz seems to waffle in his decision, realizing in part that the words Burrich and Chade had spoken to him had merit, realizing in part that he is bound to Verity through a kinship incompletely concluded but that is compelling, even so. He seems ever to vacillate between certainty and doubt, and I once again find myself reading with affect; I doubt myself often, possibly more than I do not, and I am not in nearly so straitened a set of circumstances as those in which Fitz finds himself. No, I have a regular job with regular duties and common expectations, things I have repeatedly addressed before–but I still doubt myself and my abilities. So I sympathize with a character who similarly doubts his strong intent.

I think also that the waffling humanizes Fitz, moving him away from being the kind of archetypal hero commonly perceived as being at work in fantasy literature (though I will note that Tolkien’s Aragorn expresses doubt, as does his Frodo; others can speak more to the matter than I, and more eloquently). For someone who has been uprooted–much less metaphorically than most who self-describe thus–it is only sensible that there would be doubt as to what to do now. Conversely, someone who focused utterly on the one thing would make for a more difficult read for many readers, or would come off to many readers as far less enfleshed a character than Hobb has given readers to expect. It might line up more neatly with best-selling popular novels, but I do not think it would make for as engaging a read. Certainly, it has not for me.

New year, new you; help me be a new me?

 

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

---

The next chapter, “The Parting,” opens with a reasonably detailed overview of the Six Duchies’ political situation in the wake of Shrewd’s death. It moves to Fitz and Chade conversing, with Chade voicing his surprise that Fitz is as ready to leave things behind as he is. Chade pushes Fitz to Skill to Verity, but he cannot, and he flees.

Along with Nighteyes, Fitz considers himself, his shame at having suffered as he did, and the course of action he feels he must take. He steels himself to it, and, over dinner that night, he excoriates Burrich in singularly harsh terms. Burrich leaves, and Chade presses Fitz, returning to the idea of Fitz’s long-simmering anger. Before matters can devolve, though, Chade departs.

Burrich returns in the night, speaking with Fitz about his own history. In the wake of it, Fitz turns to his resolution to kill Regal.

The present chapter makes much of the power of words; Fitz strikes with and in stricken by the words of others. (Not without justification on any side; Fitz’s return to life was far from pleasant, while Burrich’s sacrifices for him had been many, and Chade was not wrong in pointing out the ways in which Fitz had acted with far less deliberation than ought to have been the case.) That an author, whose work necessarily relies on the power of words, would present such a scenario is to be expected–and it is something of a theme in Hobb’s work, as I have motioned towards. Ill-considered words have the potential to cause great harm in Hobb’s milieu, as in life.

The present chapter is another part of the series I find it difficult not to read with affect. As might be thought, I’ve said a great many things in my life. As might be expected, a great many of those things have been hateful; I have not always been in a position to defend myself with fists and feet, but my tongue has always leapt free and quickly. It has not always been at those who have earned rebuke or scorn, either; too often, I have spoken to those I claim to love most unkindly. It has hurt them, I know, and in my better moments, I am astonished that they remain in my life after some of the things I have said to them. Some of them have been as harsh as what Fitz says to Burrich; some of them have been worse.

Far worse.

I am grateful that I have not been left, even if I have deserved it, and from many more people than have left me behind. I continue to work on improving, even if I never do so well as I hope to–and not even close to so well as those around me deserve.

Did you resolve to be more giving? Can I help you meet that goal?

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

---

The first chapter in the novel, “Gravebirth,” opens with comments about slavery in the Six Duchies’ neighboring nation of Chalced and a reported story Fitz asserts Burrich latched onto as a way to save him from the dungeons. It moves into Fitz’s nascent return to humanity from the experiences of death and wolfhood. It is not an easy transition for him–or for Burrich, who is haltingly coaching his return.

Amid the recovery, Fitz’s seizures continue. Chade checks in on him and Burrich from time to time, carrying news and occasional supplies. Burrich also goes out at odd times, returning with what Fitz identifies as a feminine smell. Old traumas continue to resurface for Fitz, and his account grows more focused and lucid as memories of his life before death reassert themselves. And amid some of Chade’s efforts to restore Fitz, Verity makes contact through the Skill, announcing that he yet lives. Fitz flees after delivering the message.

In the wake of the revelation, Fitz’s old personality and memories reassert themselves fully. He and Burrich confer about the events leading up to Fitz’s death and Regal’s usurpation of power. The various traumas continue to tell upon Fitz, as well, and Burrich grows restive in his inability to act effectively and in his enforced withdrawal from alcohol. Chade is overjoyed to see Fitz restored, though, even if Fitz is far from pleased at having been restored to life.

The shape of the chapter reminds me of the earlier parts of Daniel Keyes’s “Flowers for Algernon,” which I read in short story form and which has remained with me for years. The increasing lucidity and focus of Fitz’s narration as he rehearses his return from a semi-feral state to something near the sharp-minded young man he had been seems to me to work along the same lines as Charlie Gordon’s experience of enhancement before it begins to falter. Even knowing what comes, I find myself recalling that Hobb has no problems killing her protagonist (though, clearly, death does not necessarily stick in the Six Duchies), and I tremble at the thought that Fitz will also suffer again.

The final line of the chapter–“I was kind to the old man. I did not tell him that they had” done something worse to him than let him die–is telling. It seems to follow an earlier comment of mine, that Hobb subverts what would normally be an event worth celebrating. Chade is certainly happy to have Fitz back, and Burrich seems to be; both reactions seem to proceed from love or what might be described as love, even if, as I think on it now, they seem more selfish than that. It is only that they evidently believed Fitz to be alive as they had understood being alive–not in sharing a body with a bonded soul, which has to be a different thing, somehow–that it is not an utterly horrifying tragedy. If it is not.

I am not a clever enough theologian to untangle all the resonances that apply here, nor yet a literary scholar. Clearly. But I can at least see the knots in the tapestry, and I can wonder what picking at them would reveal.

Help me continue to indulge bad habits?

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

---

The novel opens with a prologue titled “The Unremembered,” in which Fitz muses about the need for purpose and the purposes of his own writing–the framing device of the trilogy of Farseer novels. It serves both to document the history of the Six Duchies as a whole and to distract him from the pangs of lingering addiction, both to the Skill and to the chemicals used to combat the aftereffects of indulging in the Skill.

Fitz moves on to relate, in brief, his recollections of the events at the end of the previous novel, those of his torture and death. They beset him in dreams and waking. So does the lack of connection to his former life; having died to the world, he cannot make contact again with those he had known before. This includes the Patience and Lacey who tended his corpse and, alone, mourned him.

Fitz also notes the strain of his regard for Burrich and Chade, who exhumed him and forced him to live again. They returned him to life and humanity, but they also returned him to the burdens of obligation; not even the end of his life occasioned the end of his service to the Six Duchies.

That last is a strange idea and a compelling one. Typically, debts and vows end with the death of the one who has incurred them or sworn them. This is the case with the student loan debt that plagues me and many, many others in the United States, and it is the case with marriage vows, as traditionally framed in US English. It is also true in Hobb’s fantasy antecedents; Pippin’s vow to Denethor in Lord of the Rings (about which my friend, Luke Shelton, could say more and more eloquently) stands out as perhaps the easiest example to find.

When they do not, when they pass beyond the end of a life, they usually devolve to the obligated’s next of kin. They do not, in such cases, return to the one who incurs the obligation; indeed, dying is usually considered to be the discharge of such, at least on the individual level. For Fitz, then, to be called back from a death he incurred in service to the Farseers, only to be put back to the service of those same Farseers, seems cruel. It seems cruel even for one such as he, whose work as an assassin would seem to invite disdain and opprobrium. And though I know how matters turn out–there’s a reason it’s a reread–I still find myself wondering how much worse it can get for Fitz.

There’s also something to be made of the connection between Skill and addiction, and I ought to be able to do more of that making, given where I work. I have the sensation, though, that doing it will take more space than I can give it here–and I am trying to leave academe further behind me…

Help me celebrate New Year’s Eve?

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

---

The final chapter, “Wolf Days,” opens with a comment on a centering exercise before moving into what Fitz recalls of his experiences as a wolf, inhabiting Nighteyes’s body beside him, as well as his musings about the life of a wolf, generally. He resists being summoned back to his body by Burrich, who has exhumed him and cradles the now-barely-living thing in his arms.

In the brief epilogue, Fitz rehearses his situation at that point. Only Burrich and Chade know he lives. What else would have been his life is in ruins. Regal is crowned and ascends to power, and Fitz purposes to head inland, following Verity and Kettricken even as he chafes against the structures of fealty that compel him so.

It is clear that the book sets up for a sequel, as should be no surprise; a person isn’t brought back from the dead for nothing, after all. In the specifics, though, Hobb takes what would normally be a joyous event and twists it to be the traditional ending of a trilogy’s second part; the protagonist is in a terrible position, one that could be argued is worse than being dead. Then again, such a position leaves much room for improvement of circumstances. Whether the next volume offers such resolution, though, remains to be seen–at least in the reread. The book’s been out for a while, and it makes for good reading…

Given the time of year, too, there is a bit of obvious symbolism here. Fitz is presented as being something like a messiah, but not quite one. The whole dying and coming back bit is one clear motion towards that point. The resurrection being associated with the chapter number, 33, does, too. So, too, does Patience’s claiming Fitz’s body, as related in the epilogue, which echoes the Biblical report of how Jesus’s corpse is treated after crucifixion. Like many other tropes, though, the messianic one is altered and nuanced as it applies to Fitz; he is not the product of a virgin birth, nor is he yet a shining exemplar of conduct, though he does seem to be persecuted. How effective a savior he is or can be can also be argued.

I look forward to seeing such, and maybe to moving into them as the reread progresses.

It’s not too late to give!

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

This entry needs something of a content warning for torture and suicide. Consider it given.

---

The penultimate chapter, “Executions,” opens with something of an encyclopedia entry regarding Burrich. It moves to Fitz failing to understand Nighteyes’s call to join him.

Understanding breaks upon Fitz as he wakes to pain. He tries to release himself from his own body and into Nighteyes’s, but he cannot. Guards seize him and drag him out before Regal, who watches with mild interest, drink in hand. Will urges Regal to allow him to work on Fitz, and Regal refuses; Fitz provokes Regal, and very nearly poisons him. The toxin takes Will instead, though, and, after more brutality, Fitz is returned to his cell. Rousing himself there, he takes the dose of poison Burrich had prepared for him and lets his consciousness enter the wolf while his body dies.

The chapter is a brief one, indeed, though the death of the narrating protagonist does call for the division. And Fitz does kill himself in the chapter, even if there is some…nuance to it. But it is still suicide, and it necessarily introduces the idea of when such is acceptable. Noting that the milieu is a fictional one, the mores of which differ from those prevailing around the circumstances of composition, it still seems a cold and pragmatic thing for Fitz to end himself as he does–and a mercy for Burrich to offer the specific means. The mercy fits him, though; euthanasia would be an expected duty of a stablemaster, and it is made abundantly clear that Burrich esteems the animals in his care. That he values Fitz at least so much…

Defeat is certain for Fitz in the situation. That he dies as he does, and not as Regal wills, is perhaps the only victory he can claim in the situation. It is hard to begrudge it him.

Any chance for a present?

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

This entry needs something of a content warning for torture. Consider it given.

---

The next chapter, “Torture,” opens with an excerpt from a Six Duchies legend. It moves to Fitz contemplating his end in the Buckkeep dungeons. He reaches out to Nighteyes through the Wit, learning what the wolf can tell him of the events on the night of his capture. Fitz sends Nighteyes to Burrich and settles in to wait.

After a time, Will pays Fitz a visit, working on him with the Skill. Fitz is able to resist the psychic assault, but he is left afraid in its wake, and he considers its implications. Later, after some fitful dozing, he is roused by Regal and his torturers, who begin their grim work upon him. Fitz ends up battered and with a broken nose in the initial session, but Regal does not get what he wants from him.

In the wake of the session, Burrich visits Fitz, seemingly drunk and angry. He reviles Fitz and spits upon him. After Burrich leaves, a hurting Fitz sees what came with the sputum: a gentle poison that Fitz takes. As he considers dying, he joins Nighteyes in the body of the wolf, speeding away over the snows.

A brief note before I go on: the legend of the Piebald Prince is something that comes up more than once in the main line of the Elderlings corpus, and it is treated at length in a novella titled The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince. It will feature in the rereading series, to be sure. But not yet.

As to the present chapter, though: Hobb does well to address the issue of torture in her work, and to address it in the way she does. (Another of her works, a story in an edited collection, addresses it differently. It, too, will get a reread series entry. Later.) Indeed, the present chapter serves as a common reference point for a fair bit of Hobb’s later work; Fitz is never fully free of his experience herein. Those more up on trauma theory than I might have more to say about the matter than I, though.

More, there is something to be noted in the fact that Regal uses the torture both as a bloody entertainment and a means to assess members of his guard; Fitz comments that he “became aware of another thing. Regal’s enjoyment. […] He watched his guard, too, noting, no doubt, which ones turned their eyes away from this sport. He used me to take their measure.” Regal’s sadism has been hinted at before; he certainly takes relish in Fitz’s earlier injuries, and he seems to delight in his late father’s pain earlier in the novel. To have it laid out, and to have it used as a rubric seems particularly depraved, and, once again, I find myself put to it not to read the chapter against the circumstances prevailing during this writing.

May I suggest making a holiday gift?