Luck in the Shadows - Chapter Forty-One

[kalinara]

So last time, we had the climactic confrontation, a daring escape, and a second climactic confrontation! Not too bad at all.



I really do like how Flewelling used Alec's squeamishness as a means to save the day last chapter. I wasn't expecting that at all. Very clever!

So anyway, we rejoin our heroes as Seregil, Alec and Micum ride back to the city with Nysander. Conveniently, Thero stays behind to assist in the search for lost documents and weapons. Thero gets a lot of the shit work, I think. But that's what happens when you're the apprentice. Shit work and an irritating older sibling/predecessor.

Anyway, there's much rejoicing! They talk a bit about the transformation-escape. Seregil liked it. He hasn't been a bird in years, and never an owl. Alec also enjoyed it. It was very different from the stag transformation earlier. Nysander gives a complicated explanation about "intrinsic nature" vs. "metastatic spells" that basically just amounts to "the plot worked better this way."

Hey, I'm not judging. Magic is useful for that kind of things.

Micum notes that there are still some lingering questions: such as who the Lerans had been planning to put in place of Idrilain. Honestly, I figured Kassarie intended to crown herself. She's got that pure noble blood, after all, and she's female. But it's true that she probably wasn't the only Leran. Seregil had gotten a look at some of the papers before she burned them, so he has a few leads to follow up on.

For their part, Seregil and Alec are planning to go back to the Cockerel and rest up. Their noble alter egos are still out of town, but will be back for the Sakor Festival later, and Nysander will keep their names out of it.

But there is something mysterious that Nysander intends to take care of. And the segment ends with Alec looking thoughtfully at a smoothed circle of healed flesh on his own left palm.

Interesting.

But of course, the attention is on Seregil's scar. Since this is the first book in a duology (with more books that follow), its actual significance is yet to be revealed. It's visible again though, and has been since Seregil turned back from being a bird.

There's a pretty funny moment when Seregil asks why the sigil hadn't reappeared after he'd been transformed into the old man, Dakus, earlier:

Nysander shook his head. “That was a lesser transformation. I simply altered your existing appearance.”

“You mean I could end up looking like that someday?”

“Do be quiet, Seregil! I must concentrate.”

I'm actually not sure how Seregil came to that conclusion, but vanity is always funny. Especially when it's an elf.

They compare the sigil to Alec's new scar. Alec's scar is smooth, from the other side of the disk, where the carvings are becoming clearer in Seregil's. There doesn't seem to be as much residual magic or whatever either. I'd make a crack about Alec not being as special as Seregil, but that actually isn't fair. Alec's got his own mysteries that will become more significant in later books.

Anyway, because another book is forthcoming, Nysander won't let Seregil get the damned thing healed away. And instead goes off to have cryptic teaser visions that will lead us into the sequel.

There's some nice horror imagery here, the gist of course being everything crumbled and destroyed, the "dyrmagos" or lich whose hands Seregil had used to scare Alec with during his tour of the Wizard House is alive and gloating. And of course, there's a vision of dead folk:

It was Seregil.

Half of his face had been cruelly gnawed. Both hands were gone and the skin had been flayed from his chest.

A moan rose in Nysander’s throat as grief paralyzed him.

“Devour him,” the specter invited, reaching again into the pile.

Micum was next, chest torn open, both strong arms gone at the shoulder.

Then Alec, robbed of hands and eyes. Blood streaked his face like tears, and matted his soft yellow hair.

Others followed, faster and faster. Friends, lords, servants, strangers, thrown about like cord wood until he was ringed in with an ever heightening wall of bodies. Another moment and he would be immured in a tower of dead flesh.

I am vaguely offended that Thero doesn't get his own mention here. I know Nysander said that they don't vibe on a personal level, but that's just cold man. No wonder your apprentice doesn't like you. You don't even care enough about him to have a vision of him horribly mutilated.

The book ends with Nysander whining about being the one to "see the end of it."