hunters_forest | Coldfire Reread 2021: Black Sun Rising

Today we continue with four short chapters - full of drama. :) The discussion got heated for the previous chapter, let's see if these also spark the same.

Plot summary

Chapter 6
The ship Neoqueen Matilla arrives in the harbour, weeks late. An enraged merchant waiting for his cargo discovers that on the way, the pilot simply forgot the route and all the landmarks. And he's not the only one who seems to have inexplicably forgotten important parts of his life. The ship has acquired three passengers on the way, but the crew all seems to have lost part of themselves.

Chapter 7
The Patriarch remembers his mother. She seems to have been addicted to drugs and alcohol. The doctor had warned her that the drugs and the alcohol would end up eating her brain. Coming home from school one day, he finds her dead – her brain literally eaten by faeborn creatures.

Chapter 8
Damien stays up to observe the true night and only goes to sleep after Domina has risen. Then he is woken again by an explosion. He runs to find the origin – the Fae Shoppe. It's been ripped apart by the explosion: there's been an attack, and a chain reaction in Ciani's wards. Senzei Reese turns up, and Damien realises Ciani must have been in the shop when it hit.

Chapter 9
The mysterious non-human strangers, unhappy that their attack on Ciani didn't go quite as expected, think about going home. Their leader decides that they won't go just yet.

Quotes

"It was like something took a part of you out," the first mate whispered. "While you were sleeping, it'd happen. And then when you woke, that part just wasn't there. It never came back, either. The captain ... it won't do you much good to talk to him, Mr. Jarrom. I say just take your cargo and go, and feel lucky it got here at all. And hope that whatever got us isn't contagious." He looked up again, met Jarrom's gaze with his own. "You catch my drift?"

And Yiles Jarrom would never forget the look in the first mate’s eyes, when the boy’s fiancee embraced him. Never. Though days and weeks and even months might occlude the rest of that awful night in his memory, it could never erase that terrible vision - of a glance which said, in a single instant, what volumes of prose could never have expressed so eloquently. So horribly.
Who is she? the reddened gaze begged him. Who?
Help me!

In the kitchen, dozens of things chittered; dark things, wet things, things with shining claws and sharp teeth that dripped bright crimson on the Everclean tiles. Things that sat on his mother's shoulders, dipping bright claws into her matted hair and bringing up soft, slimy tidbits to eat.
He managed to take a step backward. Heart pounding. Mind reeling.
Two steps. Another.
It'll eat up your brain, the doctor had said.
He ran.

He tried to get some sense of the local currents - to read who might be Working this special darkness, and why - but it was like trying to focus on a single ripple in the midst of white-water rapids. At last, exhausted by the effort, he let his Vision fade. Back home he could have identified every sorceror in town by now, and spotted those few who dared to Work the stuff - but the currents here were so volatile and so complex that his skill was barely more than a child's by comparison.

"You don't know what it's like, seeing something like that happen, feeling like you could stop it if you could just figure out what to do ... and then not being able to. Standing there helplessly, unable to save someone you care about ..."
"I do understand," the Patriarch said quietly. "More than you know."

Thoughts

The memory-eating creatures make an appearance, slinking off a ship. It did not drawn upon me that, in fact, there was hinting at their feline features. Hints on how their power works and what they take: select memories, but not all memories. I wonder how they choose them, is it based on what they found useful, or what they found appealing, or what their master dictates? Do they eat memories, or assimilate them? Do they even care?

It is unclear who summoned the creatures that killed the Patriarch's mother, no doubt on purpose. I still think it was him, subconsciously mulling over what the doctor had told them. What do you think?

we have another clear indication that there are more fae currents in the east than there are in the west. Also, Damien's vigil during true night is mesmerizing.

We get our second, more educated, description of the dark fae. Damien's descripton is different than Narilka's, too; while she focuses on the aesthetics, he focuses on the practical, and on its effects.

Damien's reaction to losing Ciani speaks for itself, so feel free to add anything you feel relevant to this. I'll just say it's odd to see the Patriarch as human, after his initial description. And that Senzei is also a bastard (with ulterior motives). At lest his heart is in a good place? But I really do like the shades of moral ambiguity all of the characters possess.

trobadora

Since this is the first mention of shortmonths - I'm very curious about Erna's calendar. How does it work? Is it ever explained anywhere in detail? There are shortmonths, midmonths and longmonths, presumably going by the three different moons – but which does the official calendar go by? Or is it any of them? We know that they use Earth month names, so they would have twelve months, and it would be rather surprising if that corresponded to one of the moons and to the solar year precisely. Any thoughts? Anyone remember anything said about the calendar elsewhere in the books?