Coldfire Reread 2021: Black Sun Rising - Chapter 28

[alice_montrose]

Feeling better and energized by the lure of new fandom, let's get back on track with the BSR reread, shall we?

I updated the Discussion Schedule with the new dates, if you find any errors let me know.

Without further ado, let us accompany our valiant heroes and undead sorcerer across the Canopy! This is a long one...

Plot Summary

Our intrepid foursome travels up the coast towards the Canopy, with plenty of bickering and snarking along the way. Ciani and Gerald share a moment and strike a deal, and they all head out to pass through the Canopy. Which is done with much awe and angsting, and almost dissolves Tarrant into nothing. But since we're still at the beginning of the story, they all make it through safely. Damien gets to show off his veterinarian skills, and Senzei finds his sea legs while Tarrant grows progressively more wobbly. As a result of that, Damien strikes a pact with the proverbial devil and offers to feed Tarrant by whatever means necessary.

Quotes

• With a thousand years of leisure time on his hands and the nearly unlimited potential of the Forest’s fae, the Neocount of Merentha had completed his most ambitious task. Erna now had true horses.


• When a man thinks of killing the Hunter’s servant - or even disobeying him - he must take into account what the master’s reaction will be. Which is very different from how he will act if he imagines that he might, through the luck of a single kill, dispense with the master altogether.” And he added dryly, “It spares me the inconvenience of killing every time I travel. Surely you find that appealing.”
  Through gritted teeth, Damien muttered. “Surely.”


• Research in the castle’s library had revealed that the Forest was once a fairly normal place, unique only in that it was located near a natural focus of the Earth-fae. The Hunter had changed that.


• What kind of a mind did it take to think on that scale? To take on such a project and then succeed with it, rather than making the Forest into a lifeless wasteland, whose survival was compromised by the lack of one special insect, or one minute step in the food chain ladder? The sheer scope of the project was staggering. But with a thousand years of spare time on his hands, a very special man could succeed. A man like the Neocount of Merentha, who had spent his last living years redefining man and God, evolving human society with the same precise attention to detail that he gave to horses and Forest flora...


• “You said I was safe.”
  For a moment he said nothing. Then, very quietly, he told her, “You understand that it’s somewhat jarring for me to hear a woman refer to my presence as safe.”


• He shook his head. “You misunderstand me. I can see the Canopy quite clearly from here. There’s no mistaking it. It’s as if the world ends suddenly at that point, as if there’s a line beyond which nothing exists. Oh, I can see the water beyond, and mountains in the distance . . . but those forces which are visible only to the adept’s eye come to a halt in midair, and beyond it is - nothing. Absolute nothingness. A wall of nonexistence, beneath which the water flows.”
  “And you think it’ll kill you.”


• She met his eyes - and drank in the pain, the power, all of it. “What would you say,” she asked him, “if, when you were dying, someone offered you life? Would you question the terms - or simply grasp at the bargain with all your strength, and live each moment as it came?”
  “That’s a loaded simile,” he warned her. “And I don’t think I have to tell you what my own answer would be. What it was, when I had to make that choice.”
  “Then you know my response.”


• “They can swim,” Tarrant said coldly.
  “You sure of that?”
  The pale eyes fixed on him with clear, if tired, disdain. “You mean, am I sure they were born with that instinct? I made certain of it.”
  He left the captain standing there openmouthed - not unlike a beached fish - as he went to the bow to watch their progress. And Damien thought - somewhat guilt¬ily - that it was nice to see Tarrant’s arrogance directed at someone else for a change.


• When he was safely out of hearing, Damien said to Tarrant, “I know heads of state who would give their lives to have half your influence.”
  The Hunter smiled - and for the first time since the Canopy there was life in his eyes, and a hint of genuine humor.
  “If they truly gave their lives,” he said, “they might have it all.”


• “You all right?” Damien asked softly.
  The adept stiffened - but if there was a curt response on his lips, he failed to voice it. After a moment the tension bled out of his frame; his shoulders slumped against the rock.
  “No,” he said. “No, I’m not.” His voice was little more than a whisper. “Does it matter to you, priest?”
  “If it didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”


• “You trust me?”
  “No,” he said bluntly. “But I don’t think you want me dead just now. Or incapacitated. And I don’t see that you’re much good to us, the way you’re going.”


• He hesitated. “Tell me what it would entail.”
  “What any channel does. A path of least resistance for the fae, that any Working might draw upon. Such a thing could never be banished, priest. Not by either of us.”
  “But if it wasn’t used?”
  “It has no power of its own, if that’s the question. Nor would it fade with time. Only death can sever that kind of link - and sometimes not even that.”


• “It’s been a long time since I’ve tasted a cleric’s blood,” he mused.

Thoughts

• Gerald obviously had a lot of spare time on his hands to evolve not just the Forest, but horses. And he is damn well proud of those horses. *chuckles* He also likes to show off that he evolved them, the smug bastard!


• Now that everyone knows who he is, he also makes free use of coldfire. So we can at last see the force that gave the trilogy its name in action. (Given the amount of pop culture that appeared in the past few years, I shall avoid drawing any parallels between Gerald and Elsa from Frozen. Must... avoid... at ... all... costs...)


• Sheva seems like a very welcoming town to all sorts, including fae constructs. Blood on the menu again. And one of my favourite quotes, “I doubt that witnessing my appetite would do much for yours.” I still randomly throw this one in conversation at odd times, after all these years. XD


• The port they sail from is called Settin. *cough cough* And it has tabloids.


• Gerald is teaching Ciani how to Work, and I feel this is somewhat of a milestone in their relationship. The fact he even offers to feed her hunger is telling of his own. And the fact that she accepts is telling us there's more to her Character than we (or Damien) thought. Loremaster neutrality and moral ambiguity, indeed.


• Gerald's trip across the Canopy is not the best, and Damien's protective instincts kick in. Subconsciously, at this point, as caring for a member of their travel party. But hey, the banter is also beginning to emerge ("You need help?"/"What would you do - Heal me?" and they work together to save the horse.


• At last, Damien offers and Gerald accepts, and we get the mind link. Let us all squee and rejoice at the mind link, because this marks the beginning of much fangirling to come (at least on my end).

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

Comments

[lunabee34]

Oh, man. That link between them. I love it so hard. It is so deliciously tropey.

[rekishi]

How do you even work that into conversation?

I need to review the chapter again before posting coherently. Although Damien should realize it I wonder if he knows he's well and truly caught

[prettyarbitrary]

I love that, trapped in the Hunter's power in his keep, Damien takes the opportunity to hit up the world-class library. Nerd.

And Damien knows heads of state. Apparently enough to speak in the plural about them. Our boy rubs elbows in some pretty high circles apparently. (How many human nations are there on the western continent? Are they city-states? Broader nations? We know more about the governance of the eastern continent than the western one.)

SOULBOND. SOULBOND. I enjoy the hell out of how rational Damien and Tarrant both are, and how much they rely on each other's rationality. I mean it's reasonable. They've both gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to be here, have made a lot of sacrifices for the opportunity to risk their lives to an almost insane degree. Clearly they aren't about to go around shanking party members just on grounds of finding them obnoxious. But it just stands out so much.

I guess it's the streak of rationality built into the Church's morality, the idea of "Use evil to do good if you get the opportunity." It's such a wildly different take from the usual "Part of doing/being good is purging evil" approach you see in most stories.

But a thing I have wondered about is, why build the channel this way? "What any channel does," Tarrant says. Which seems to imply there are other approaches? More than once on their trip, we're going to see Tarrant form temporary connections with people to feed on their panic. He'll even do it to his teammates, including Damien more than once. So I remain curious about the underpinnings of why this way.

[prettyarbitrary]

Meanwhile, yet again Ciani. And increasingly explicit parallels between her and Tarrant and the way they see the world. Maybe we ought to take this as her being a kind of window on Tarrant's youth? Everyone goes on about the Prophet having been honorable and virtuous, but...was that because those were the core of his nature, or were they more secondary traits growing from a fundamentally practical, rational nature?

Either way, Ciani is faced with a small taste of the same choice Tarrant had, and she goes in the same direction he did. She seems to be well aware she's trading something here, a part of herself. The fact that she doesn't see the world the way Damien does doesn't blind her to the fact that there'll be a cost. Damien never quite seems to grasp that fully, always putting it in terms of her 'blindness' or 'inability to understand,' but that's really doing her a disservice. She just doesn't put the same priority on it that he does, and after all she knows more about what she can live with than anyone.

Like Tarrant, Ciani is a survivor. She'll fight through whatever it takes to get out of a situation alive. That's what got her away from Lema the first time even when she was in tatters (the thought of how mentally shredded she must have been the first time they took her prisoner is just...holy crap, and yet she escaped by herself and somehow got back to safety), and that's what has her heading back into that this time, despite it seeming like it'd be total madness to head back TOWARD that kind of danger and horror. But she'll do that if that's what it takes to be whole in a way that she can live with, very similar to how Tarrant is willing to throw himself down a desperate path of near-certain death if that's his least-certain-death option.

And that's the difference between him and them, I guess? Ciani and Tarrant are both willing to do whatever it takes to survive (and they both try to explain, repeatedly, that an overwhelming drive to survive is what got them to adulthood in the first place, in the face of what it meant to grow up as adepts), while Damien has the kind of belief in his cause that makes him willing to lay down his life for it.

Also: hey, Damien, you really have a type.

[prettyarbitrary]

I went back into the old post to reread what we all had to say there, and carmentalis asked an additional great question about Ciani: "It's also an interesting perspective on Ciani. She knows who she is dealing with and she knows that she could just as easily get Damien or Senzei to teach her to use the fae. But she accepts it from Tarrant instead. Is it because he offered, or do you think she had other reasons?"

I think, after a couple of rereads and a decade or so more life experience, it's partly because Tarrant doesn't condescend to her. Damien and Senzei are so protective. But the way Ciani thinks, she'd see that--and I think she'd be right--as getting in the way of the quality of what they'd teach her. Would they try to choose 'safe' things for her to learn? Would they treat her like she was breakable, like she needed to be coddled in her education? Would they maybe even see her as their lesser or inferior, not to be taken too seriously in her power because she's only just learning while they're experienced?

Damien certainly wouldn't intend to treat her that way, but the perspective we get from him after he does find out she's learning sorcery has a startled, indulgent and concerned tang that leaves me thinking she'd have gotten some of that from him whether he meant to or not.

She will never get that treatment from Tarrant. If he offers, it's because he thinks she can handle it and whatever sacrifices learning from him would require. The very offer in itself is a sign of his willingness NOT to coddle or shelter her.

[rekishi]

The heads of state line also struck me as...well. Mildly odd. He could, of course, also simply have meant he knows them in terms like we know Pres. Biden but... Somehow I don't think so?

But yes: So far we have not heard of them actually crossing any state borders. Towns, sure, but not actually national borders? How does this work?

What really strikes me is: Gerald is putting his own existence in danger for a promise no one is holding him to. For some reason, I think Damien recognizes and acknowledges this.

[rekishi]

Gerald utilizes the Erik Lehnsherr approach to teaching: Throw them off because you know they'll fly.

Damien and Zen...not sure much. But they've also seen her at her worst when she was probably wishing she were dead rather than alive, so it's understandably they tread more carefully.

[rekishi]

Gawd. Gerald.

You know these bottle gardens that you close up and once a year you mayyyyybe give it a tiny bit of water, but if it's too much it grows mouldy and starts to smell and you throw it out and if you give it too little then everything withers and dies?

That's what Gerald did but ON A MASSIVE SCALE.

What strikes me is that Damien recognizes this. And that he goes looking for it. (Did Gerald let him look into his notebooks= I can't believe he would.)

But gawd, Gerald. I'd have a crush on him of he weren't fictional and a sadistic bastard. Evolving horses is one thing but this whole Forest that thrives in light on top but in the dark down below... And then what happens when new species wander in, do they adapt, does Gerald adapt them or do they die???

Srsly, this man.

[prettyarbitrary]

That's a good point! She seems to want the throwing-off though. Which makes sense because once one gets done being that much of a fragile mess, it's pretty typical to swing back the other way--sometimes to a reckless degree.

[prettyarbitrary]

I think you're right about Damien recognizing that. And I think he's conflicted about it, because on the one hand it's hard not to respect that kind of honor. On the other hand, it's insane, stupid and not altruistic in the least.

But then Tarrant seems to feel the same way about Damien's own brand of recklessly heroic commitment.

ARE there national borders? It seems mostly like we're dealing with city-states.