Coldfire Reread 2021: Black Sun Rising - Chapters 16, 17 and 18

[alice_montrose]

Our other mysterious stranger is making progress on her journey - and meets a friend. Damien and Senzei still try to make heads or tails of just what happened.

Plot summary

Chapter 16

A Xandu responds to a stranger's Calling.

Chapter 17

Senzei can't manage to track Ciani's assailants through the fae. He attempts to track Tarrant instead, but discovers the trail suddenly ends. Ciani suggests he might have transformed into something else. Senzei explains that shapechanging isn't possible for a human, but Ciani thinks he might not even be human. Meanwhile, Damien starts to question everything Tarrant told him, realises he's been manipulated, and worries he's been tricked into being complicit in a murder. They decide to stop bothering with tracking, and go straight to Kale.

Chapter 18

The female stranger with her Xandu finds a boat to take her to Morgot.

Quotes

• Its only concern now, beyond that of safety, was food - and it sent that need out, echoing across the foothills of the Worldsend and into the lowlands, without ever knowing that it did so.
  And it was answered. Not with a scent, exactly. Not with anything the xandu could have defined, or anything it knew how to respond to. Call it ... a certainty. A sense of direction, and definition. It was hungry, and there was food, and if it traveled in a certain direction, at a certain pace, the twin paths of need and supply would converge. It knew this as it knew the rhythms of its own body, the taste of highgrass just coming into bloom, the smell of winter. Without doubt. Without words.


• "I was going to Work. You can Share it, if you’d like."
  In her eyes: Elation. Fear. Hunger. He fought the instinct to turn away, knowing how much that would hurt her.
  My gods. Did I look like that to her? Has fate done no more than reverse our roles?


• He sent his will questing along the fae-currents, noting the distinct northward pull that seemed to affect everything in this region. That would be the Forest, exerting its malevolent influence. Soon it would be difficult to Work in any other direction. How could an adept bear to live in such a place, where every thought was dragged toward that single point? Didn’t Tarrant claim to come from somewhere north of here?


• "Shapechanging is ... technically feasible, I suppose. And there are legends. But no one I ever knew could manage it, or had ever seen it done." He met her eyes. "You couldn't do it," he said. Gently. "I asked you why. You said it would require total submission to the fae. The kind of submission that the human mind can't accept. Maybe native sorcerors could manage it, you said. If there ever were any native sorcerors."


• "I've gone over it in my mind again and again since we left the dae this morning. And each time it comes to the same thing. I trusted his word. Not willingly - not even knowingly - but like an animal trusts its trainer. Like a laboratory rat trusts the men who feed it when it finally runs the way they want it to. Gerald Tarrant said that something had devoured the boy's memory, and I accepted it. God knows, I had good reason not to test him then. If I'd let myself be drawn into his Working, there's no telling what might have happened. So I didn't. You understand what that means? I didn't Know for myself. I took his word for it that what he said was the truth, when I should have Seen for myself -"

Thoughts

• The xandu POV is quite something. I really like the undertones of how the fae brings it all together, for Ernan native species. It just felt right for the xandu and Hesseth to go together.
  In opposition, we get human greed in chapter 18.
  And I still wish we'd get more Gerald POV, though.


• Ciani might not be an adept any more, but her instincts are still sharp and she's not far from the mark. And she also still yearns for the fae, as it is clear from her reaction to Senzei Sharing his Working.


• Damien is now beating himself up for being manipulated *feeds him a cookie* and not noticing this sooner. Truth is, I was also distracted by Gerald's villainous charms.

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

On Thursday we continue with chapters 19 and 20.

Comments

[trobadora]

The xandu chapter really left an impression on me. It's such a fascinating perspective.

Ciani might not be an adept any more, but her instincts are still sharp and he's not far from the mark.

Yeah, she doesn't know the first thing about how any of it works, but she still gets very closse to the truth.

Damien is now beating himself up for being manipulated *feeds him a cookie* and not noticing this sooner.

Ha, yeah, he shouldn't blame himself - he never stood a chance. *g* I really love Tarrant's brand of manipulation, because it doesn't even matter whether he told the truth or not, either way Damien went along with it, and so the damage is done. Flawless.

[shadaras]

"technically feasible" for a native sorcerer, mhmm, I love how the seeds of this idea are already planted. :3

I love how mad and unsettled Senzei and Damien are about Tarrant. He's not even trying to fuck with them that much; he's just supremely powerful and confident in that power, and his attractiveness just adds fuel to that fire.

The way Tarrant's footprints appear in Senzei's Working is so striking: "a raw scar upon the earth, which the sun's rays worried at."

Damien's right, though, that Tarrant could have fucked up the boy if he'd wanted to. He has the power.

"He's setting up some kind of game," Damien suggests about Tarrant, which—not precisely wrong, but in this case Tarrant's going to be as trapped as the rest of them by the consequences of where this leads.

In other topics:

I love the xandu's POV! It's so cool seeing nonhuman perspectives, just in general.

Seeing Hesseth from an ordinary person's POV is fascinating, because there are hints of her inhumanity but he doesn't want to see it so he doesn't. She doesn't want him to see it either, of course, which no doubt helps.

The idea that humans think the xandu are extinct is interesting, because it in some ways suggests that the Rakhlands are one big wilderness preserve. Hard to know what is or isn't in there, and endangered species can rebuild and thrive there in ways that are difficult in human-controlled lands.

[rekishi]

Aren't the xandu (presumably) extinct in the humans lands because Gerald made them into (un)horses?

[shadaras]

I believe that's at the very least strongly implied, yeah. :) It's just that Ernan evolutionary logic is strange enough that to me "Gerald made unhorses" doesn't necessarily mean "(un)horses completely replaced the original stock", but—now that I'm thinking about it—it is a very Ernan logic to have that happen (within all the regions psychically influenced by majority-human thought).

[rekishi]

Yes, the impression of the human psyche would do that, wouldn't it.

Gerald's influence on human society is really not to be underestimated, is it? Even aside from the Church.

[rekishi]

The xandu chapter! I love the xandu chapter!

(I will make a more qualified comment at a later stage)

[trobadora]

I love that we all love the xandu chapter. :D

[rekishi]

The xandu chapter is awesome. I wish we got a true horse chapter as well.

[rekishi]

Okay I feel less like death warmed over today.

The xandu chapter! We get some more ideas of how Erna works:

Wordlessly, effortlessly, it absorbed the stranger’s need. Inside its body, unseen, molecules shifted their allegiance from one chemical pattern to another; instincts which had been merely dormant before this moment quickened with new life, and others—which had previously ruled its actions—subsided into half-sleep. And it knew, without understanding how, that the strange creature had also changed. And that the change was natural, and correct.

Erna, Erna, this is just amazing. We can be pretty sure that Hesseth Called, how much of that is intentional and how much of it is instinct on her part as well? Later, we get an intro into Rakh Work both by Damien and Hesseth, but this really displays it pretty well.

One creature has a need and the fae make another creature respond to it and changes both creatures in the process. Ngh. I have so many questions. Also where humans are concerned. But mostly the native species. I mean it goes with the whole no famine no drought thing but....this is soooo big.


Damien is so conflicted. Which I understand, but considering that he will never be this conflicted again....well. He does have quite complex thoughts about Gerald, doesn't he.

Also, question: What do you think the ramifications of the Church are for killing fellow man? It has to make an impression on the fae, doesn't it? And a negative one? Even considering the boy was beyond saving, shouldn't Damien also have issues with that considering Gerald wears a Church medaillon?

(I'm probably projecting my own Catholic upbringing here, so I'd really value anyone else's opinion.)