Coldfire Reread 2021: Black Sun Rising - Chapter 15

[alice_montrose]

Sorry for the delay on this, guys - I was drained and peopled-out last night and wanted to do this chapter justice. Let us return to our regular schedule and watch our Mysterious Stranger #1 making friends. *hides under desk from Damien's wrath*

Plot summary

We start the chapter with a soul being hunted down and killed by something evil. Unaware of that, Damien, Senzei and Ciani choose this very place to stop for the night and Damien ends up offering his assistance to the mother of the killed soul (who turns out to be a teenage boy who's been in a coma for over a day). But something blocks him from seeing what is wrong, and he has to rejoin Senzei and Ciani without accomplishing anything. Dinner then brings the moment we've all waited for - Tarrant finally meets our group of intrepid travelers. While Damien tries to be sneaky about finding out more about the stranger, Ciani takes the direct approach and brings him to their table for some small-talk. Tarrant eventually offers to assist Damien with the unconscious boy, and is permitted to do so despite Damien's suspicions and jealousy. They discover that the boy's soul has been taken, and that all that is left is a mindless body. Tarrant prepares a Working to slowly kill the body, and while Damien initially protests, he lets it happen. They admit to each other that they are hunting the creature that has done this to the boy, but no more than that. Tarrant leaves the daes and heads out into the night, and Damien returns to his companions.


Quotes

• For every faeborn consultant that sold legitimate Workings, there would be at least a dozen con artists imitating the trade. And knowing that, to be sure, a dae such as Briand must buy twelve times as much protection.


• Damien looked about at the thick timber walls, the heavily plastered ceiling, and shook his head. “Do they really think this will stop a demon?”
  “If the guests believe it,” Senzei countered, “doesn’t that give it some power?”
  “Enough to matter?”


• Sometimes, hungering for a symbol, followers of the One God would carry an earth-disk. Sometimes the need for a material symbol of their faith was simply too great, and their understanding of the Church’s goals too limited . . . and that was the most acceptable option. The Church had learned to tolerate it.


• He tried to explain to her. About firearms, and how dangerous they were. About technology in general, and the power of human fear, and how sometimes when there was a physical process that a man couldn’t watch happen - because it was too small, or happened too fast, or was simply out of his sight - his fears could foul it up, and cause it to backfire. So that such a gun might well blow up in its owner’s hand at the moment he most needed it to function. Which meant that no man would carry such a thing, unless he’d had it Worked for safety. Or unless he was a total fool, who thrived on senseless risk. Or unless . . .
  Unless he was an adept.


• Slowly, calmly, in response to Damien’s fleeting touch, the stranger turned toward him. Across the length of the common room their eyes met. The man’s clear, steady gaze was more informative than any Working could have been - and much more discerning. Damien felt his own space invaded, the chill touch of a strange mind sorting out who and what he was - and then as quickly it was gone, and the space between them was impenetrable once more.


• “I don’t kill innocents,” he said coldly.
  The death-fae halted in its progress. Gerald Tarrant looked up at him.
  “There are no innocents,” he said quietly.


• And there are so many little things that are wrong, with him. Like the Earth medallion. His supposed allegiance to a Church that rejects his kind. No adept has made peace with my faith since the Prophet died.


• “We’re better off without him,” he told her. Working the fae into his words. Trying to make himself sound convincing.
  He wished he truly believed it himself.

Thoughts

• The drug-filled dream was lovely, before it turned into a nightmare. Wouldn't blame the poor kid for wanting to escape that dae, based on the description.


• I didn't remember the suspended bridges in Briand... the imagery they evoke is pretty, if dark.


• We get a glimpse at what Damien can do in terms of Healing. Bless you, Reverend, for following your feelings about the dae's keeper.


• At last, they meet! This chapter always makes me giggle like the biggest, silliest fangirl ever. I might even squee.


• Damien and Senzei's jealousy towards Gerald is always interesting to read. Also, Damien struggling between jealousy, suspicion and disbelief.


• Bonus points for Ciani just getting up and sitting down with the unknown adept. “Knowing. [...] In the old Earth sense.”, indeed. Would this have happened before her memories were stolen, or would she have been more circumspect of the pretty unknown Adept who walked in at night? I'd think the latter, if only that she seems more interested to recover. Then again, she was flirting with Damien the first time they met, so maybe she'd have still done it.


• Why is Gerald wearing the Earth medallion, do you think? He seems like the type to be in the non-symbol camp. I personally think it's for the very practical reason of manipulating people.


• Gerald has a pistol, guys! And Damien tells us how technology tends to malfunction on Erna, unless one is an adept. (I for one dread living without the internet, so the first settlers must not have been happy at the idea of no/limited tech.)


• Behold one of my favourite quotes. Ever. "There are no innocents." Indeed, Gerald, you are lucky that Damien does not share your cynicism.

Link to the previous discussion post (imported from LiveJournal).

How do you guys feel about this chapter? Should we feel sorry or hopeful for our valiant heroes now that they have met the fourth member of their party? Or should we feel sorry for Gerald, for having caused himself to get his biggest headache yet?

Comments

[prettyarbitrary]

And there are so many little things that are wrong, with him. Like the Earth medallion. His supposed allegiance to a Church that rejects his kind. No adept has made peace with my faith since the Prophet died.

This line makes me drum my heels on the floor every time I read it. INDEED, Damien. INDEED.

Or should we feel sorry for Gerald, for having caused himself to get his biggest headache yet?
Never. Every bit of headache he gets from Damien is well-earned. :D Not to mention fun to watch.

I remember, the first time I read these books, this chapter was the one where I sat up and took notice. It was interesting till this point, but the moment these two meet...the currents of dark temptation and seduction into tainted choices, the two-way tug of enemies/fascination....hhhhhh baby me imprinted on these books so hard, and it all begins here.

I always wonder: is Tarrant's interest (even if hostile) in Damien as piqued from the get-go as Damien's is? I feel like reasonably speaking, it would be Ciani he'd gravitate toward. Her lively mind, the intellectual curiosity they share, the shared background of adeptitude...Tarrant evinces a taste for these traits throughout the books. She's the one who fits his aesthetic.

His initial read on Damien certainly includes things like 'thick-skulled, stubborn, brash, likely to be annoyingly determined to kill me once he realizes who I am.' None of which is untrue. But I always wonder what else his first impressions and private reactions to the priest might involve...

And I remain fascinated by the fact that Damien doesn't try to stop him, when he starts to kill the boy. Damien's got so many things going on in his head there. So many reasons. But I can't tell which ones are the ones that really stay his hand--and of course he can't either.

[prettyarbitrary]

Giving this a separate post to give these two room, because it's so easy to overlook Ciani and Senzei when we hit this point, and like you said they're both being interesting and awesome in their own right in this chapter. Ciani's "fuck it" move is just fabulous. And Zen's jealousy here stands out but so does his very intelligent caution, and the fact that he's picking up a lot of the same cues, realizations and vibes as Damien. (Smart lads.)

I would so love to know what Ciani's reaction to Tarrant would have been if she'd been in possession of all her knowledge. Damien and Senzei interpret quite a lot from the details of Tarrant's kit and comportment, but I think she would have seen even more. Would she have recognized he was from the Forest? Would she have been able to guess who he really was? What would she have made of him walking in right under one of her own wards? And what kinds of conversation would they have had if they'd sat down together?

A while later, she's going to tell Damien she primarily sees the Hunter not as a thing of objective, innate evil (though certainly dangerous and morally upsetting), but as Tarrant's adaptation for survival. Would that have held true for the Ciani we meet at the beginning of this book, or has she changed as a person by the end?

[rekishi]

Hm.

Damien is such an alpha male, isn't he? This is, I think, the first time we really see his jealousy this much but it won't be the last and it's not just directed at Gerald either.

Which is pretty interesting when we get to the rakh later, who have a much more instinctual response to life. Damien sees it and Damien displays a lot of what I would consider xenophobia (even after travelling with Hesseth for months we still see that, I'm not sure if I'm more sensitive to it now or if I interpreted it differently before), and we see him analyze a lot if the rakh behaviours in terms of animal instinct but he also fails to see it in himself. Of course he's the POV character and we're always blind to our own deepest faults, but he's such a blustering Guy.

And at the same time honestly, he has way more complex feelings about Gerald than he has about the various women he sleeps with, even before he knows his name.

[rekishi]

A few more things:

The Jaggonath drugs are interesting. Jaggonath's drug market being regulated (I'm laughing so much you guys) makes for a fascinating subject, but what I'm more interested in: Why? Is it because things like Blackout stop your mind from affecting the fae and that's why they were developed? Gerald knows the taste, obviously, and we do have that drug dream, but I wonder if maybe there was a drug-drug-interaction.

Gerald has a pistol, guys! And Damien tells us how technology tends to malfunction on Erna, unless one is an adept.

Well, unless one knows exactly how the mechanism works, because the fae will fuck with the mechanism and manifest the user's fears. If one is an adept, of course, this is less of an issue because Gerald can....feel, see, whatever the fae. (It feels very synaesthetic to me from what he and Ciani describe throughout the book.)

Which makes me wonder: What other mechanisms or machines could adepts build? They have steam engines in general, which are pretty basic, but why hasn't Gerald engineered himself an actual generator?

As for the Earth medallion... Do we know when they switched to something tangible in the faith? Gerald may use it as a concession to other people's feelings. After all, you see how the dae's keeper react to the 'Pagan masses'. It doesn't even need to be manipulation as such but more an easy shorthand.

More interesting about the medallion: What do people make of the fact that the Hunter's sigil is engraved on a Church emblem?? Shouldn't that be anathema?

[trobadora]

I had forgotten that we got a section from the POV of the boy with the drug addiction! One of the things I really love about these books is what they do with POV, how many different and sometimes exotic ones (the xandu!) they smoothly integrate.

For every faeborn consultant that sold legitimate Workings, there would be at least a dozen con artists imitating the trade. And knowing that, to be sure, a dae such as Briand must buy twelve times as much protection.

That is such a fascinating tidbit! Something so crucial, yet you can't rely on it. And I wonder if the (necessary) distrust diminishes the efficacy of the actually functional ones?

Why is Gerald wearing the Earth medallion, do you think?

Yeah, manipulation, mostly. Because people trust the Church, and because it will work on exactly the people the Forest's symbol wouldn't work on. But a little bit also because it’s true – it's the symbol of his faith.

The problems with technology are awful. Once something fails – and everything always fails eventually, nothing lasts forever – if you can't put it out of your mind immediately, that'll just make it keep failing. :(

I love that Ciani's personality comes through so vividly here. She's lost her memories and her abilities, but she’s still curious and willing to put herself out there, making contact, acquiring knowledge.

I’m always fascinated by Gerald's claim of a mercy killing here. He's obviously testing and provoking and tempting Damien – but is there a level on which it's also true? He can't admit it even to himself, if it is, but he's not entirely immune to such things, in the end.

And Gerald is hinting heavily here, with his "the hunter must move on" ... Is that just a private joke, or is he laying a seed? Is there part of him that wants Damien to figure it out? Hmmm.

[shadaras]

My first, gut-level, reaction to the drug-dream was to think about the aniq in This Alien Shore—Friedman pulls from a lot of similar-feeling imagery there, chaotic and beautiful and full of the need to run away from the big-scary-unknown-predator.

There's so much worldbuilding wrapped up in the descriptions of the dae. It's a delight.

and then there's Tarrant, the one we all love and were waiting for.

The way he's described as he enters says so much: Darkness poured in—and with it a man whose movement was so fluid, so graceful, that it was hard to believe he couldn't have simply flowed in through cracks in the door, had he wanted to.

All the key-words about Tarrant: grace and power and darkness and beauty, compelling as the night and as full of the thrill of potential danger.

I also love how Damien feels a need to say "attractive to women" specifically while thinking about how Tarrant looks. He's right, but also he's noticing and having some feelings about Tarrant's looks himself.

I'm so excited that Tarrant's around, and I don't know if feeling hopeful or sorry for our protagonists; I think there's more of an adrenaline thrill as the danger (known and otherwise) begins to creep closer alongside their own crew slowly forming.