Coldfire re-read: Black Sun Rising - chapter 44

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

We're nearing the end! Some of the characters meet it a little sooner than others, and once more we see that madness is not a good character trait if you want to be a villain and live to tell the tale.

Plot Summary
In the manner of heroes on the last fifty pages of books everywhere, Damien risks it all by sneaking into the Master of Lema's citadel. He's just getting into the spirit of things when he's intercepted by the Dark Ones, who get somewhat upset that Tarrant's Workings keep them from being able to eat this tasty morsel. They take Damien up to the Master of Lema, who is not at all interested in Damien himself, but in his knowledge of the whereabouts of Ciani and Tarrant. Damien does a pretty convincing interpretation of 'helpless, clueless, not dangerous at all, I promise!' while she literally picks his mind for what she wants to know. He finally convinces her that the barrier Tarrant has put up needs to be dismantled by a Working, and spends some tense moments hoping that on the other end of the lines and connections going through his mind, Tarrant gets the message. Tarrant, of course, does get the message. The Master of Lema does a careless working, an earthquake is triggered because Tarrant (and presumably some others) have destroyed the quake wards. The Master of Lema fries, Calesta realizes he'd better disappear for now, and Damien, in a new reaction to earthquakes, races down into the underground tunnels for safely, where he gets promptly buried.


Quotes

• He felt naked, thus weaponless. But also exhilarated. Because for the first time since leaving Jaggonath, he was on his own.


• I only hope he’s right, I only hope he understands her as well as he thinks he does. And then he added, somewhat dryly, The ruthless, analyzing the mad . . .


• The citadel was a jewel, a prism, a multifaceted crystalline structure that divided up the night into a thousand glittering bits, turning the sky and the landscape beneath into a cubist’s nightmare of disjointed angles and broken curves.


• She opened her hands and let the precious medallions slip through her fingers like so much refuse. “I think you underestimate me.” And a smile, faint and unpleasant, wrinkled her lips. “I know that he did.”


• And then, suddenly, the sea turned cold. The lust became darkness, and ice shot through his veins. His body shook as the essence of the Hunter filled him - unclean, inhuman, but oh, so welcome! - forcing out the foreign influence, chilling his burning flesh. His stomach spasmed as the force of Tarrant’s unlife filled it and he vomited suddenly, as if by casting out the bitter liquids within him he might also cast out that influence. Never before was the Hunter’s essence so alien, so physically intolerable. And never before was it so welcome.


• “I’m telling you that mere force won’t succeed here. You’ll have to dismantle it, step by step. Reversing the process he used to erect it in the first place. Assuming you can,” he added.


• “I can do anything,” she said acidly.


• This wasn’t just a hunger for vision, like Senzei had known, or even an obsession with power. It had gone beyond that - far beyond that - into realms so utterly corrupted that barely a fragment of her human soul remained, clinging to the flesh that housed it as if somehow the two could be reunited. Could mere hunger do that to a woman? Or would it take something more - some outside influence, that fed on the soul’s dissolution? He thought of the obsidian figure standing beside her and wondered at its source. At their relationship.

Thoughts

• Damien's so much happier now that he can do something dangerous by himself. And it looks as though with his latest escapade, Tarrant has earned himself a spot on Damien's "people to keep out of trouble" list.


• Why build a citadel out of glass and crstal? The sheer effort of cleaning it aside, I imagine it to be incredibly impractical. It's something of a disappointment - another aspect of the Master of Lema that is clumsy compared to what else we get to see in the books. This is standard supervillain behaviour - a structure that serves no real purpose beyond being unusual. What do you think? Why all this crystal-ness?


• That little snippet of dialogue between Calesta and the Master of Lema made me wonder - was he goading her into Working at that point? And could that mean that he knew something was going on?


• I'll echo Damien's thoughts on the mental state of the Master of Lema. Did that just build over time, or was someone helping the madness along? And how long has this been building up?


• The way the Master of Lema is dealt with feels like a bit of a let-down to me. This is the main villain, and yet it is all done and over with very quickly. How do you feel about it?


• How can Friedman put in bits like Damien shivering at getting filled with the Hunter's essence, and then still wonder why we think them slashy? I mean, really...

Join us again on Monday for chapters 45 and 46, to see daring escapes, victory celebrations, and Damien's admission to himself that he could get used to having Tarrant around.

Comments

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, we haven't gotten to the thing about being possessed by an adept yet. All we know is that she's not an adept (Tarrant confirms that), and that she really, really wants to be one.

I guess I differ on that. I did feel like Damien was in danger. Lema's kind of screwing off here, not taking Damien seriously (he's not an adept, after all), but the moment she decided there was something up, she started reading as a menace to me. Luckily for him, that was right about when the wards blew...but considering what she did to him while she only thought of him as an interesting puzzle with a gooey informative center, I felt there was legitimate threat if the situation had played out for a couple more minutes.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Mind you, she's still so insane that I didn't read her as a sustainable threat, but once you wander into her sphere of influence, she can be pretty badass.

[carmentalis.livejournal.com]

All we know is that she's not an adept (Tarrant confirms that), and that she really, really wants to be one.

*g* I was really starting to be convinced it had already come up somewhere.

It's that disregard for Damien that makes me relax. If it had been Ciani or Gerald instead of him, I'd have worried because we know she wants them. But Damien is of no importance, so the worst I could imagine is that she sent him off with the Dark Ones. No danger in this chapter - she doesn't strike me as someone to do her own dirty work if she can at all avoid it.