Coldfire re-read: When True Night Falls - chapters 16-19

[trobadora]

Four chapters ahead of us today! Better get started. :-)

Plot summary

Chapter 16
Our intrepid heroes are travelling south, away from Mercia. Somewhere along the way, Damien comes to the shocking realisation that he might, just might actually *gasp* trust Tarrant a tiny little bit. You know, possibly. *g* Sadly, he has no further realisations of that kind. Eventually, our heroes' daily routine is rudely interrupted by a horde of demons stampeding past them - and on following them back to where they were born, our heroes come upon the scene of a massacre. To Hesseth's horror, they discover the perpetrators were rakh. They salvage supplies from the village and move on.

Chapter 17
The fake Protector Iseldas and one of the rakh who participated in the massacre discuss the tracks left by our heroes. A party is sent out after them. And they are also still searching for Jenseny, even though Iseldas believes she's probably dead already.

Chapter 18
Our heroes divide their scavenged supplies. Damien is shocked to discover that Tarrant's inability to Work fire also covers firing a gun. They continue their journey south. The Hunter realises they're being followed by someone with information. He suggests crossing the mountains.

Chapter 19
An image of the Undying Prince visits the fake Kierstaad and gives him information on our heroes, telling him to trap them during a quake.

Quotes

• Damien tried to ignore the twisting in his gut in those hours. It was hard to forget what had happened in the rakhlands, when Tarrant's failure to join them on time had resulted in days of torturous travel and nights of pain and fear. But there were no caves along their path, Tarrant had told them, which meant that he didn't have the option of taking shelter with them. For once Damien didn't question him. They seemed to have grown past petty questions of trust and annoyance into a relationship that was firmly rooted in their common need.
  I trust him, Damien thought, studying the Hunter's lean profile. Under the right circumstances I would trust him with my life. It was a new and not wholly comfortable feeling.


• Sometimes he Worked his vision and tried to See as the Hunter did, but though he could observe the silver-blue currents he could not decipher their mysteries. As Tarrant explained when he voiced his frustration, a man who looked at the sky once a longmonth, and then only for a moment, might see that it was blue, but the man whose eyes were open twenty-four hours a day for a lifetime could distinguish a thousand hues in the very same heavens.


• Southward to where the continent that sheltered them pointed like a slender finger to the islands beyond. On one of those - an immense land, the size of three landbound nations combined - Mercia's enemies were said to shelter. An unholy army, gaining strength against the day when it would be ready to attack at last. The Church folk feared them enough to fortify the length of the coast with citadels, so that even in the most dismal, inhospitable reaches some Protector was waiting with his guards.


• He pictured the Hunter soaring comfortably overhead while the creatures attacked them and glared. "You could have helped."
  "It's no easy thing to Work the fae while in a nonhuman form, Reverend Vryce. Nor is there much earth-power to manipulate at that height. But rest assured, if your own defense had failed, I would have attempted . . . something."


• "You've seen this kind of thing before?"
  The Hunter nodded. "Several times. Ulandra comes to mind, right after the tsunami broke through her sea wall and drowned the entire city. And the fields of Yor, when Hasting's fortress fell at last and the invading army slaughtered everyone within. And I seem to recall a particularly nasty horde being created when the Neoduke of Moray snapped under siege and slaughtered his entire court for the cookpot." He smiled darkly. "Unfortunately, his Grace had no idea that the constructs birthed by his victims' dying screams devoured every soldier outside his gates, and he killed himself in the morning. Which rather negated the point of the whole exercise."
  For a moment Damien just stared at him. He struggled to find his voice. "Mass murder?"
  "That, or some natural disaster. Just as the terminal terror of one man can give birth to a demonling, so can the anguish of a thousand souls give birth to . . . what you saw. And you were very fortunate," he added. "They weren't yet crazed with hunger, as they will be in a few nights. Nor have they developed real intelligence yet, as the faeborn are wont to do."


• "That's a good question, isn't it? A demon might feed on that kind of hatred, or on the pain it engendered, or on any other emotion that was a consequence of the system . . . but only with humans, not the rakh. Why corrupt a native species? No demon could gain strength from that."
  "Are you sure?" Damien asked.
  "Absolutely. The faeborn draw their strength from man because he creates them; they rely on him for sustenance. What good is a rakhene soul to them? Its nature is as alien to demonkind as we are to Erna. They can't digest it."


• Ah, the village. He savored the memory with glee. So much of their life was spent pretending to be human, pretending to be civilized, that it was good to let one's animal soul rear its head at last. The Prince would not understand, perhaps, nor condone such wholesale slaughter - on grounds of efficiency, of course, rather than compassion - but these creatures here who made the rules, these men of his own race who lived and breathed the lives of humans, they understood. They knew that the price of such a grand subterfuge was an occasional indulgence.


• What an incredible concept! That this man who could move mountains, who could and did shift whole weather systems in an instant - who had redefined the very parameters of death, at least as they related to his own person - could not assure that a simple mechanical instrument would function as it should, any more than your average man in the street.


• Practice and knowledge. Only there were so many other things to see and learn and do at the same time, and besides, he liked the sword. It was a pleasing sensation to launch an attack at an enemy and feel the heavy swing carry through like an extension of his arm, the sharp steel resonating with triumph as it cut through living flesh, blood dripping along its edge . . . or so he imagined. The truth was that he'd been just fifteen at the time, and the most he'd done was batter a jousting block with hardwood blades, and once - just once - helped dispatch a low-order, ghoul that was cruising the visitor's dormitory. Which he'd done with a knife, not with a sword, but the theory was much the same. The point was, steel he understood. Steel he trusted. Black powder was more like . . . well, like magic.


• Hesseth's voice was low. "He can handle demons. And most of them won't care about me. Besides-"
  "And I'm lunch. Thanks. Thanks a lot."
  "We'll protect you," she promised. Smiling just a little.
  He looked at her, then at Tarrant. Surely it was his own imagination that perceived an expression of smugness on that aristocratic visage. Or was it challenge?"

Thoughts

• Damien's realisation that he might actually trust Tarrant - does this strike you as coming a bit late? Or does it only seem that way if you know where the two of them will end up?


• Damien almost sounds pouty that Tarrant didn't do anything to help them when they were caught in the demon stampede. Cute, isn't it? *g*


• We're getting quite a bit more info about the fae here. The difference between an adept's Seeing and someone who's merely Worked his sight is very well explained here! And the description of how the fae responds to large groups of people ... this is the opposite of the Church's strategy, isn't it? Focussed group faith on the one side, and uncontrolled panic on the other. Either way, it's about magnifying effects. You can see how Gerald could have got his idea. (Bunny, anyone? *g*)
  Also, we get it hammered home again that the faeborn can't feed on rakh. In BSR, that was a hint that the Dark Ones weren't, in fact, demons - and here, it's about Calesta, of course. Interesting that the same kind of misdirection can actually work twice even though we should know better. At least, I certainly fell for it! How about you?


• I admit it, I'm not sure I'm getting the full picture of Mercia's relationship with its enemies. Manipulation by the Matrias aside, how much do they even know about them?


• The massacre of the village is quite ... graphic. Of course there isn't just fantasy and SF in the trilogy's genre mix, but also horror. Quite a bit of it, in fact. And yet most of the time it's a more subtle terror, not this kind of graphic display. How do you feel about that?


• The description of the rakh here and the whole "letting out your inner animal" thing makes me deeply uncomfortable.


• What did you think of the Undying Prince's appearance here?

On Thursday, we'll be continuing with chapters 20 and 21 - and our heroes find themselves in a trap ...

Comments

[shadowystar.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, if only they would end up where I wish them to! (evil grin) And yes, Damien's too busy denying the fact he'd already trusted Tarrant to realize it sooner...

Agree with you, the description of fae is explained here very well. But does the fae's response really that different? It still responds to a individual not to a group as such and this is where humans differ from the rakh. The latter work as one (Hesseth explained it somewhere, 'when the tribe needs rain, it'll rain' or something along the line). Whether a group of humans focuses on faith or on fear, doesn't really matter. You said it yourself: it's about magnifying effects. Collective fear produces more fear, collective anger produces more anger until it's no longer a group of individuals but a mob that acts as one. And thinks as one. Works as one?
Bunnies? OMG, no, I really don't know where to hide ... too late! Plot bunny, go away!

As for the massacre... I read worse but still, I think it quite doesn't fit in here. I expected hints of that horror where one's imagination does complete the picture, so I was a bit disappointed.

Inner animal... I think you have to know your dark sides so you won't fear them. And is fear, in last consequence, not what the books are all about? The Hunter feeds on it, Damien faces it, Calesta lives on it... (and I wrote something like that somewhere here, didn't I?)

Last but not least, the Undying Prince's appearance. Made me curious of him meeting Tarrant. Antagonist against antagonist? What more could the protagonist wish for? They finish off each other, problem solved, you can go home. ;-) When, of course, you don't consider one of the bad guys friend... Oh, sounds familiar? 'Poor Damien!' that was what I thought.

[trobadora]

Woohoo, bunnies! :D

I read worse but still, I think it quite doesn't fit in here.

I'm inclined to agree, but fallintosanity has a good point below that the graphic description is effective here precisely because it's so different from the way terror is evoked elsewhere in the trilogy.

Made me curious of him meeting Tarrant. Antagonist against antagonist?

Hee! Yes, that's exactly the perfect thought at this point. :D

[shadowystar.livejournal.com]

Have to agree with fallintosanity (do I need to be a community member to edit text the way I want and put links into my comment or is there something I missed while creating my account?) the description is intended to give an immediate feeling. Still, one's own imagination can supply individual fears to a scene and thus increase the horror. But then again, it's Dark Fantasy we're talking about...
And as for the subtle fears... I think, on a much, much lesser scale, we all know something similar. Well, one's very existence might not depend on a code of honor, but sometimes a lie can cost you something you value much. Those are very human problems, only magnified almost beyond recognition.

[trobadora]

do I need to be a community member to edit text the way I want and put links into my comment or is there something I missed while creating my account?

No, you don't need to be a member, and links and such have nothing to do with account creation. What exactly is it you're trying to do? Keep in mind there is no Rich Text Editor for comments; you have to format via html.

[shadowystar.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm trying to get text into italics f.e. like you did with my line. And I don't seem to have the option html to choose... BTW, I don't know much about LJ, so I'd like to ask questions but I know that's not the topic here, so ... sorry!

[trobadora]

No problem! :-)

You need to manually type the html tags. For italics, it's [i] to start the italics and [/i] to end them, only with angle brackets instead of square ones. LJ has a guide here.

[shadowystar.livejournal.com]

Thank you so very much! I don't have enough time to read all the FAQs but I'm trying... and I created a LJ mostly to avoid commenting anonymously and to have a place for update posts for those who read my ff. BTW, that plot bunny you caused with your question is quite busy... ;-)

[fallintosanity.livejournal.com]

I actually kind of liked the graphic display of horror in this section - not because of the graphic horror, but because so much of the rest of the books' horror is psychological and subtle. It was jarring, yes, but it was meant to be. This is the first time that we as readers really see the ugly, gritty, bloody terror that will befall all Erna should Calesta succeed in his plans. It's a lot easier to ignore or rationalize psychological horror through the distance of words on a page, but there's something gut-wrenching about seeing the bloody bodies of a mother and her children, slain by her hand to save them from gruesome torture, that brings front and center the danger Calesta poses. Up till now, we've had the abstract or individual horror - getting your memories stolen (hard to really understand as it's probably never happened to the reader), being tricked into breaking your word which is the only thing keeping your human soul intact (ditto), long-term and subtle corruption of a grand and beneficent dream into something twisted and terrible (again, hard for the reader to relate). The scene in the slaughtered village, with the vivid descriptions of blood, gore, and torture, appeals to the reader on a very different, immediate, and visceral level that brings into sharp focus the nature of the enemy.

Why does the "letting out your inner animal" thing make you deeply uncomfortable? It's a little sick, from a human POV, but at the same time it underscores powerfully the difference between Hesseth and the corrupted Dark Ones the Undying Prince has created. Come to think of it, it seems to run counter to what Hesseth said in book 1 about how a rakh's brain works in harmony, whereas a human's pulls in different directions. It almost sounds like the Dark Ones have developed a "human" brain, with at least two separate levels which no longer work in harmony - one that is capable of the civilized masquerade, and one which requires the "indulgence" of wholesale slaughter.

[trobadora]

That's a good point about the contrast in the evocation of horrors here. I'll need to give that some more thought.

Why does the "letting out your inner animal" thing make you deeply uncomfortable?

Maybe because the entire rakh species is described in very animalistic terms throughout the trilogy, which makes sense given the context but is still uncomfortable considering we're talking about a sentient alien species.

but at the same time it underscores powerfully the difference between Hesseth and the corrupted Dark Ones the Undying Prince has created

That's something else that bothers me; corrupted humans never seem to be portrayed in such a dehumanising manner.

[shadowystar.livejournal.com]

'Maybe because the entire rakh species is described in very animalistic terms throughout the trilogy, which makes sense given the context but is still uncomfortable considering we're talking about a sentient alien species.'
The word to stress here is 'alien'. I don't think an alien species will think or feel like humans do despite being sentient - beyond basic feelings, of course, (pain, fear etc.). So much will be species specific... So what we have here is an approximation, made even more possible by the fact humanity influenced -and does still- rakhene development.

Alien descriptions (or descriptions of aliens? (grin)) are, BTW, something Mrs. Friedman does often. Has anyone read her 'Madness Season'?

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

I have. I thought it was pretty neat. She has a way of...not humanizing, but rendering accessible the alien mindset, even while leaving you aware that this is nothing human. It can be a bit disturbing, but I suppose it probably should be.

I see what trobadora means about the rakh here, though. It's not just disturbing on an alien level; it feels like a corruption of what we see in Hesseth and can assume is how a clean, healthy rakh mind should be functioning.

Though is Hesseth what the rakh might consider quite sane? She, after all, has proven herself capable of human-type deviancies when the situation demanded it. How much humanity have the rakh partaken of, and how much of it is "pollution" in her?

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Good point about the horror. Also I think the slaughter is one of the few times the blood and gore gets bad enough to break through the protection of the POV. We largely come to the books through the eyes of two men who habitually live in a world of violence, so to see it escalated to the point where even they can't remain unaffected is powerful.

We spend most of the series getting treated to Damien's personal flavor of horror. He's freaked out by the subtle psychological stuff, whereas he's done the violence-and-bloodspray thing. While he's still empathic to it, it doesn't bother him on a visceral level anymore, thus he doesn't dwell on it and, since we're reading mainly from Damien's POV, we don't hear a lot about it. In contrast, remember the scene in the Forest with Senzei and the Ciani-demon? Damien's lack of discomfort was actually part of the focus of Senzei's horror there (and it was Senzei's POV--quite deliberately so, I now think).

Meanwhile Tarrant, being what he is (and maybe a lot like Damien regarding what sorts of things bother him: he's been in war, and he's been graphically killing people for hundreds of years), responds to Damien's fears, so when they're together, which is most of the time, he's playing to that rather than splashing blood everywhere (which would only piss Damien off rather than unnerve him).

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Wooooow, I'm behind on these. Got way too busy to keep up for a couple of weeks.

Our heroes divide their scavenged supplies. Damien is shocked to discover that Tarrant's inability to Work fire also covers firing a gun.

But he had a Worked pistol on his person when Damien met him? How...?

I trust him, Damien thought, studying the Hunter's lean profile. Under the right circumstances I would trust him with my life. It was a new and not wholly comfortable feeling.

Says the man a year after handing the Hunter his soul and then feeding him for six months in an enclosed space! You're not surprising anybody but yourself here, Damien. Yes, definitely late. And, I'm pretty sure, not the first time he's realized it. Didn't he have similar thoughts in the first book when they planned their assault on the Citadel of Storms?

As for this:
Hesseth's voice was low. "He can handle demons. And most of them won't care about me. Besides-"
"And I'm lunch. Thanks. Thanks a lot."
"We'll protect you," she promised. Smiling just a little.
He looked at her, then at Tarrant. Surely it was his own imagination that perceived an expression of smugness on that aristocratic visage. Or was it challenge?

AH hahahahahahaha! Oh, it's definitely smugness, Damien. He's laughing on the inside.

Interesting that the same kind of misdirection can actually work twice even though we should know better. At least, I certainly fell for it! How about you?

Yep, me too. It didn't occur to me that the writer would be so cunning as to pull the same trick twice! Or sneak the theme in in puzzle form. Every time I reread these, I still think that was tricky of her.

[trobadora]

Wooooow, I'm behind on these. Got way too busy to keep up for a couple of weeks.

The posts are not going anywhere. :-) It'll take me a while to get through all your comments and answer them properly, though!

But he had a Worked pistol on his person when Damien met him? How...?

You're misremembering - he had an unWorked pistol:

. . . and the pistol tucked into his belt. Damien worked a minor Knowing - and hissed in surprise. In disbelief.

“UnWorked,” he whispered.

That was the shock for Damien at the time, that he didn't need it to be Worked for it to function properly. It told him Tarrant must be an adept.

Also, he did Work parts of the gun here, he just couldn't Work it to prevent a misfiring.

Says the man a year after handing the Hunter his soul and then feeding him for six months in an enclosed space! You're not surprising anybody but yourself here, Damien. Yes, definitely late. And, I'm pretty sure, not the first time he's realized it. Didn't he have similar thoughts in the first book when they planned their assault on the Citadel of Storms?

*laughs* Yes, it is rather late for him to be surprised! And yes, oh yes, he keeps having these strange and new realisations every couple chapters. He obviously just can't wrap his mind around it, poor boy. *g*

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Ohhhhhhh, yes. Well, I got that completely backwards. :)

It may be that Damien keeps discovering how much more he trusts the Hunter than the last time he realized it. He was a lot more methodical about it in the first book, where he tended to choose to trust Tarrant as a calculated risk. Here, he's actually freaking out, so it's apparently progressed beyond anything he expected or has control over.

It's kind of sneaky, though! I'd never quite noticed it before, but it is a pretty big leap between where they are at the end of BSR and where they are here. I always wondered how Tarrant's trick in WTNF could surprise me so much, but apparently I've just been rolling along and trusting Damein's opinion. Poor Damien.

[trobadora]

He was a lot more methodical about it in the first book, where he tended to choose to trust Tarrant as a calculated risk.

Or at least kept justifying it to himself that way. And he's holding on to that justification, but it's becoming more and more abstract, more and more big picture instead of immediate risks for immediate benefits, and Gerald-the-person is more and more taking front and centre in Damien's thoughts. It's a very cool progression - just, as you say, not particularly surprising to anyone but Damien. *g* If you basically start out with a soul bond - well, where else is there to go? :D