Coldfire re-read: Black Sun Rising - chapters 22 & 23

[trobadora]

Today I'm posting for alighiera because she can't be here at the usual time - but the post is all hers. :-)

Welcome once more to our re-read! Today it's time to regroup, patch up some wounds, and meet suspicious villagers last seen in Dracula movies.

Plot Summary

Chapter 22
Senzei digs out Damien and they recap the situation. As an afterthought they admit they've both been injured, but move on soon to the fact that the mysterious woman has helped them while Tarrant has made off with Ciani towards the Forest. In true heroic demon-hunting fashion fashion they ignore their condition, patch together demon-killing bullets, and are on the road again. They come upon a scenic view of the Forest, then encounter a group of men who think it is a very bad idea to enter the Forest to try and get a woman back from the Hunter.

Chapter 23
The creatures who harmed Ciani are regrouping after their run-in with our intrepid travelers. Backup has arrived for them, and their leader decides to wait until their prey comes out of the Forest again.

Quotes

• “I’ve been a Worker all my life, you know. Moved the toys near my crib without touching them, and all that. Now . . .” He wrapped his arms about himself and shiv¬ered. “It almost killed me in Kale. It’d be a thousand times worse here, this close to the Forest. I think I’d rather bleed.”


• “What a woman,” he breathed. “Give me ten like that, and I could take an empire.”


• In the distance were trees. They began suddenly, a solid wall of brown and black and beige trunks jutting up from the half-frozen ground, overlaid by jagged branches and brown, dying leaves. The Forest. From their vantage point Senzei and Damien could see far into the distance, over the treetops to the mountains beyond. The Forest’s canopy stretched out for miles upon miles, a thick tangle of treetops and dead leaves and parasitic vines that smothered the entire region like some vast, rotting blanket. Here and there an evergreen peeked out, a hint of somber green struggling for sunlight. Yellow-green light washed over it all, sculpting the canopy with light and shadow so that it seemed like a second land¬scape, with hills and valleys and even meandering river beds all its own.


• There was a murmur at that, and several glares, passed between the men. One voice spoke up, openly hostile. “Yeah, we’ve seen one. A Lord of the Forest, that one. Came through like fire - untouchable, y’know? We don’t look, we don’t ask. Them’s the rules.”


• “Save your money,” he said. “It’s one thing in the Hunter’s eyes to trade a little gossip - and quite another sell His secrets for profit.” He glanced toward the ringe of the Forest and added soberly, “He reminds us that distinction, every now and then.”


• But mind over matter - or any other conscious control of the flesh - required the fae. And for the first time in his life, Senzei was beginning to understand what it meant to do without that.

Thoughts

• It may be due to re-reading Lord of the Rings recently, but the Forest strongly reminds me of Fangorn.


• Damien in lone traveler with a mission mode - I don't think there is much he wouldn't be willing to sacrifice if it got him more speed. Despite the injuries and the difficult situation, he seems a lot more at ease to me here than he did during the Jaggonath chapters.


• We already touched on the interaction between the Forest and the surrounding settlements, and it's shown again here. What I find interesting is how it almost sounds like no women are taken from their group, but that it's usually outsiders. Why would the Hunter go to such lengths? He didn't seem all that comfortable being away from the Forest.


• Senzei's final thought is odd (it's the last of the quotes). It's like to him, determination and fae control are the same thing. Any thoughts on that?


• What keeps the dark ones out of the Forest? They seemed to mindlessly go on at first, but now they're deciding to wait until the opportune moment.

On Monday it's chapter 24 - we'll enter the Forest!

Comments

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

I love the fact how clear it is Damien is a man of action and the wilds. This is his territory and he's familiar here. He's dealt with demons and things before, and give him a mission, some purpose to direct his strength and belief at and he's a happy bunny :) It's so rare to find a good character (ie. good-intentions, decent-wise) who still manages to remain interesting, rather than seeming to stiff and goodie-too-shoes.

[trobadora]

It's so rare to find a good character (ie. good-intentions, decent-wise) who still manages to remain interesting, rather than seeming to stiff and goodie-too-shoes.

Yes, exactly! Damien's a fantastic character, and he's never just "the good guy". It's amazing how vividly alive Friedman's characters are.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

I know I mentioned Crocodile Dundee before, but really... same approach to cities and wildlife. Just different hats.

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to escape the mental image of Damien calming a water buffalo type beastie by stroking its nose. It's really not working :P

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

That's because Damien would</> calm water buffalo beasties by petting their noses if he thought it works. ;-)

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

Technically, he does it with Jen, I s'pose...

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

it almost sounds like no women are taken from their group, but that it's usually outsiders

That would make sense with the Hunter's pragmatism. Taking women from the neighbors might undermine their loyalty. This way they have both a negative and a positive (or a negative and a slightly less negative) reason to keep the Hunter's secrets.

It also keeps them from having any temptation to enlist in militias and posses that go into the forest--if there's a symbiotic relationship between Jahanna and the surrounding villages, then the Hunter doesn't want people from those villages dying in great numbers because it would discourage other settlement, and it would depopulate them.

[trobadora]

You know, I never thought of it like this before. But that makes perfect sense to me.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

You're right, it is an approach that would be typical of him. Keeping them in check with fear alone would probably work, but it is a) more efficient and b) more elegant to catch them in a web of fear, loyalty, and threat of favours withdrawn. And if they're economically dependent on him as well for all the things they take out of the Forest, then they really have no incentive of cutting off their own livelihood. Scary as that particular neighbour might be.

I'm not sure, though, about the reasons for the Hunter to not simply depopulate the surroundings of the Forest. Can it simply be because it is more interesting for him to do it the way he does?

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

Can it simply be because it is more interesting for him to do it the way he does?

That makes a lot of sense. Until Damien and Ciani enter his life, Tarrant is pretty well tied to the Forest. It is the thing that keeps him interested through the centuries, building his ecosystem, evolving his animals. It makes sense that he'd want to include human societies in that ecosystem.

The way he jumps at the adventure that tracking the memory theives provides makes me think that boredom was starting to take its toll.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

He's certainly someone who can keep himself busy with theories for literally centuries. But the memory thieves are a chance to put some of his theoretical demonology to practical use. And besides he gets to tease Damien, which really seems to be one of his favourite pastimes from their first meeting onwards.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Probably because depopulating an area rich with natural resources is easier said than done. He could kill everybody there, and then either have to deal with the people who moved in after them or, if people got scared enough, another army.

Besides, this way he's got convenient access to services when he wants them. Somebody needs to go fetch the critters for his breeding projects and operate the ferry when he wants to go hunt down a rare tome, after all. :)

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

The quotes in this chapter interest me.

"I’ve been a Worker all my life, you know. Moved the toys near my crib without touching them, and all that..."

So apparently there is such a thing as being a natural sorceror without being an adept. That had confused me, what with the Patriarch and all. I wonder what it is about a person that makes them suited to tap into the fae so instinctively.

“What a woman,” he breathed. “Give me ten like that, and I could take an empire.”

And here we see how instinctively Damien thinks like a warrior or soldier. He is, in many ways, the most archetypal of the characters in this whole story--the paladin figure, compassionate warrior for the cause. He is probably the single driving reason why these books read so much like fantasy.

I wouldn't be all that surprised if the Hunter doesn't tend to go after the women living around the Forest, for a few reasons. First, I think we've seen enough of the region that I'm comfortable supposing a more pioneer/rogue-type outlook in the people here, which means these women are tough and capable of taking care of themselves. While I'm sure he could quite capably terrify them out of their minds, they'd be missing that...how does he put it, finely wrought edge to it that he finds so attractive.

Second, stealing Forest women wouldn't be conducive to a convenient working relationship. Tarrant seems to have gone to fairly extensive lengths to forge a good rapport with the people living around his realm. He's set up guidelines for them to live by, so everyone knows the lines not to cross. He pays exorbitantly well, to ensure good service when he wants it, and beyond that he returns favors for that service (like the fine wind he conjured for the crossing to Morgot). All this ensures that he has people around when he wants them, and they stay out of his way when he doesn't...and that they never feel motivated to grab some torches and pitchforks and charge after him in an angry mob. Tarrant has obviously read the Evil Overlord's List (http://www.proft.org/tips/evil.html).

The dark ones stay out of the Forest because they don't want the Hunter to eat them. I think they recognize the bigger evil when they come across it. As Gerald will say to Damien in a couple of chapters, "It'd save us all a great deal of trouble if they'd cross my borders."

[trobadora]

So apparently there is such a thing as being a natural sorceror without being an adept.

Yes, that's fascinating, isn't it? I'm not quite sure how it works - how you learn to do something like that, since apparently you do need keys and the like for Working. Maybe Zen was a sorceror's child and picked it up from his parents?

And you make an excellent case for why the Hunter would leave the people living close to the Forest alone for the most part! (Yes - if ever there was a villain who read the Evil Overlord List, it's Tarrant.)

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Senzei's final thought is pretty odd, isn't it? I keep looking for clues to shed light on the different cultures and mindsets of the pagans and the, uh, One Churchians, and I wonder if there's anything here.

On Erna, the fae is essentially their technology. Just like us, they need tools in order to enact their desires, and for them that means sorcery. I assume that that's what Zen means here: the weapon of the will is the fae.

But to be so steeped in it that the thought of what it's like to go without access to it is intriguing. I wonder what pagans like Senzei make of Damien's Church, if they know enough about it to understand that the Church's goal is to tame or eradicate the fae--and if they do, what they think of that.

There is a certain amount of sense to Senzei's rather holistic way of thinking about the fae. Ironically in some ways it's close to Tarrant's desire for humanity to find their harmony with the planet. Only Tarrant's creed adds, "without losing their humanity." His obsession aside, if Senzei's reliance on the fae is a good example of how many pagans operate, I can see how that would become a concern. The way the fae works, the kind of reliance he expresses here eventually becomes a symbiosis, until humans literally wouldn't be able to function without the fae, and would possibly never be able to leave Erna.

The Church, on the other hand, just by refusing to allow the fae an unquestioned foothold in the everyday lives of its congregation, acts as a bulwark against wholesale change on that level, even if only a minority of Erna's colonists adhere to it.

[trobadora]

Only Tarrant's creed adds, "without losing their humanity." His obsession aside, if Senzei's reliance on the fae is a good example of how many pagans operate, I can see how that would become a concern.

Yes, his worry makes a lot more sense looking at Senzei, doesn't it? Hmmm. We don't really get a very good idea what the pagans think of the Church, do we? *thinks*

Although this kind of reliance on the fae does seem to be unique to the Eastern Autarchy - in Damien's homelands there's far less sorcery, after all, so people wouldn't be nearly as reliant on it, and being assimilated too thoroughly by the fae wouldn't be a danger.