Coldfire reread: Black Sun Rising - Chapters 13&14

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

We've completed the first book! It's chapters 13 and 14 today - time to collect blessed fae weaponry and pack the bags for the great adventure. And a second mysterious stranger, this time of the female persuasion, joins our characters.


Plot summary

Chapter 13

Damien sees the Patriarch to request a leave of absence and explains the situation with Ciani to him. In response, the Patriarch leads him down into the cathedral's catacombs, where relics of the war against the Forest are stored. The Patriarch lets Damien have a good look, then gives him a bottle of water-bound solar fae in support of his mission.

Chapter 14
Our intrepid travelers check one last time that they've brought everything they wanted to bring, and that they have made all possible preparations. At the same time, a nonhuman stranger picks up on Senzei's Calling and, after hours of deliberation, decides to follow it.



Quotes

• “I swore an oath, your Holiness. To give the Prophet’s dream precedence over my own life. To serve the patterns which he declared were necessary . . . in¬cluding the hierarchy of my Church. If you’re asking me if I understand my duty, that’s my answer. If you mean to use this situation to test me . . .” He felt his hands tighten on the chair’s wooden arms, forced them to relax. Forced the anger out of his voice. It is his right. In some ways, his duty. “Please don’t. I implore you. As a man, and as your servant.”


• “Light was, of course, their primary weapon. Their tool of invasion. There are other things bound into each item here . . . but always light. They thought they could conquer the Forest with it.” The Patriarch reached out to the wall beside him, fingered the edge of a rotting tapestry. “Sometimes, I think, that’s what was responsi¬ble for our defeat. When we play by the rules of the enemy, we inherit his weaknesses.”


• . “Solar fae,” he explained. “Bound well enough to survive even in this place, where no sun ever shines. No single adept could have managed it; only the prayer of thousands has that kind of power. Imagine a time when that kind of unity was possible . . .” His voice trailed off into silence, but Damien continued the thought: When our dream was that close to completion. When consummation of our Purpose was still within sight.


• “They meant to seed the Forest with it. They meant to give it to the ground and let every living thing that took root there suck it up for nourishment. In time, it would have infected the entire ecosystem. In time, it might have defeated even that great Darkness.”


• “Who knows? No one ever returned from that expedition. In the battle that followed, our armies were slaughtered. The tide of the War turned against us.” He looked at the priest, his eyes feline-green in the golden light. “God alone knows what happened to the rest of it. This is all that remains.”


• In the foothills of the Worldsend Mountains, a figure stood very still. She had been still like that for hours since the call had first come to her. Since her sleep had first been disturbed by human sorcery, in a manner un¬precedented among her kind.

Thoughts

• Time to surrender my protests about the Holy War having been fought against the Forest, it seems. :-)


• The Church's history when it comes to fae use is becoming murkier and murkier. They used fae-enforced weapons during the Holy War, and were, at the very least, pragmatically enough to reason that fae is needed to fight against an enemy wielding that power. From what the Church still has stored and from what the Patriarch says, they relied on sorcery to a degree that is far larger than what even the Western Autarchy allows at present time. But after their defeat, the official line seems to have become "we lost because we used the tools of the enemy".


• The idea of using fae-containing water to bring down the Forest - Erna's variation of salting enemy land? And while we're at it, just why is the Patriarch giving something like the Fire to Damien? Shouldn't this be absolutely anathema to him?


• I'm having difficulties to decide how much time has passed since Damien's arrival in Jaggonath. A few days, a week, a month, more than that? What puzzles me is that we get the first Tarrant chapter almost immediately after Damien's arrival chapter, and he's still in the city when Ciani is attacked. Would he have left the Forest for so long?


• I wish we knew more about Damien's background. Just how much time has he spent on the road? And what, exactly, is his role in the Western Autarchy? We're getting hints again, but I'm missing actual answers.


• Was Hesseth the only rakh to respond to Senzei's Calling in any way? And if so, why her?

You know what comes now - enjoy yourselves! And on Monday we'll look back at book 1 of BSR, so there's no reading homework for you this time. ;-)

Comments

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

So the Patriarch is against sorcery, but all for a single priest-knight crusading off into the wilderness on behalf of a random lady in distress. How very medieval. :)

As for the solar fae, remember: the Church never declared that the fae was automatically evil. They understood that it was a natural phenomenon. I'm pretty sure I remember Gerald later explaining to Damien that way back when, the Church declared that wielding sorcery outside the causes of church and king was anathema (and this was King Gannon's declaration, if I remember, not directly the Church's). Which of course meant that adepts were automatically targeted, because they're pretty much incapable of not Working. And once that was done, the common imagination began to shift to equate excommunication due to practice of freelance sorcery with damnation.

But it sounds like nobody particularly minded Working for god and country until after the Holy War, which from the sounds of it was such a massive, embarrassing devastation that everybody wanted nothing to do with any of its causes or tools after the fact.

As for who the Holy War was against, check out the Patriarch's sentence again: “Who knows? No one ever returned from that expedition. In the battle that followed, our armies were slaughtered. The tide of the War turned against us.”

So there was an expedition to the Forest, and then a massive battle after that, and then the war turned against them--implying that the War had been ongoing before that. I think the Holy War was probably against any of the faeborn the Church could find. At the height of it, the Church's best probably decided to take on the Forest, which after all was pretty much the heart of darkness...and they failed. Which left the Church bereft of its finest warriors, with morale and confidence broken (which doesn't do a lot of good when your fae-binding is based on faith), and then the forces they were fighting against took the upper hand.

My theory, anyway. It seems like toward the end, I can remember that more details come up with Andrys, but I can't remember them and I don't want to skip ahead.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

So the Patriarch is against sorcery, but all for a single priest-knight crusading off into the wilderness on behalf of a random lady in distress. How very medieval. :)

Or incredibly clever. After all, if an entire expedition armed with solar fae got eaten by the Forest, who knows what might happen to a single knight with some civilians in tow? It would be soooo sad if something happened to Reverend Vryce. I'm sure the condolence letter to the Matriarch would have been absolutely sincere.

The Holy War makes more sense to me the way you explain it. If it wasn't purely against the Forest, but the Forest was simply the moment when they bit off more than they could chew, it sounds reasonable. It would also explain why the Western Autarchy isn't viewing the Forest as the ultimate evil. To them it's a battleground of many, to the Easterners it's the reason why they still have demons around.

The Andrys chapters are more and more turning out to be the ones with a lot of background info. It's going to be interesting to re-read them.