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i_read_whatSo last time, Niall managed to have some issues with both siblings. He's also suddenly run off, feeling empty.
Well, even half out of his mind to the point of being incredibly cruel to his brother, Niall still manages to be dramatic.
I fled Homana-Mujhar on fleet horse and fleeter need to escape the blackness in my soul. That I had a demon in me I did not doubt; I could feel it within me, clawing, gnawing, shredding the interior of my belly. I shouted orders to the guard and clattered out of the cobbled outer bailey and through the wide front gates even as they were shoved open. Free of the outer curtain wall, I spurred through winding alleys and streets, ignoring the shouts of passers-by. Never an indifferent horseman, I took negligent care to avoid trampling anyone, and therefore no one went down beneath my stallion’s iron-shod hooves.
Aw, at least your demon doesn't want to kill innocent people?
Anyway, Niall's freaking out about everything right now. He's remembering his encounter with Strahan and how Strahan promised to take his sons. Gisella could give birth at any moment!
The "emptiness" definitely seems like more than standard depression though:
It is difficult to describe how overwhelming emptiness can be, how utterly encompassing, until even the thought of death becomes less important than the driving need to be filled. It is worse than melancholy; worse than the depths of despair. It is a complete cessation of functioning. A man simply ceases to be, and yet he knows that physically he still exists. It is only his spirit that has been torn asunder.
The need burned away the liquor in my blood. I was not drunk, though a part of me longed to be. Nor was I made ill by the poison I had poured so liberally into my body. I was simply empty.
Now that he's outside, horseback, there's a question of where to go. He rules out Clankeep, since Ceinn and the a'saii are there. Wise. Eventually he starts to search for some kind of shelter and tries to rest.
In the morning, his head does seem to be a little clearer.
Finally I rose and went to the horse. With both hands I brushed his back free of the debris remaining from the night before, placed blankets across his spine and prepared to hoist the saddle up and settle it on top of the blankets. I had every intention of going back to Homana-Mujhar. Every intention: no doubt my brother and father worried—I knew my mother worried—and I had left Gisella as well. Poor, sad Gisella, deprived of the ordering in her wits that would have made her worthy of any man.
And yet, I thought she was worthy of me.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. I think maybe, Gisella needs help. Not to be a wife, mother or queen, until she can get some kind of decent medical and psychiatric attention. Which doesn't really exist here.
The thing is, while Niall is clearer headed, the problem still remains. He still feels strangely empty and naked, and like he needs something very badly that he can't describe.
But at least now, he has the wherewithal to hunt for food. He and his horse go deeper into the woods, for enough days that his beard starts to grow in and his horse starts growing his winter coat.
...and no one's actually LOOKING for him? Donal? What are you doing?
Niall tells us that every morning, he wakes up intending to go home. He thinks of Gisella, very pregnant, Ian, who he'd sent from him "with cruel temper and crueler tongue." Of Donal, deprived yet again of legitimate heir, and his mother, who must be worried.
But he does seem to be kind of enjoying the freedom, even as the emptiness increases. He still can't go back.
Then, one morning, things change when a bear comes to camp. Specifically a rock bear. And it's intent on attacking Niall:
I was up before I could speak, running before I could walk, caught before I could pray. I felt the spread paw slap at my ankle, catch, jerk, and then I was down, rolling, trying to yank my knife free of its sheath even as the bear slapped my hand. The knife went flying. With unexpected precision, the bear used only one claw against the back of my hand. The stripe turned white, pink, red; opening, it spilled blood down through my fingers.
I sprawled on my buttocks, braced against one rigid elbow even as my booted feet scraped rotting leaves, searching for purchase in drifting debris. The bear sat back on his haunches. I saw the yellow eyes; the eyes of a Cheysuli.
Ceinn, of course. He's decided that it's time for him and Niall to "discuss". He's not alone either.
As he spoke the others came out of the thinning darkness, gliding from trees and shadowed pockets, all in human form, except for the lir. That hurt most of all, more than anything I had expected; that there were lir in the world who would join the a’saii in attempting to replace me.
I like the idea of the a'saii. But I can't get over how blatantly stupid they are. Donal is the first Cheysuli Mujhar in four hundred years. They're only about thirty years forward from a genocide. There's a civil war brewing already among Homanans who think Donal's family isn't Homanan enough.
What the fuck do they think will happen?! Do they seriously think the Homanans, who still very much outnumber the Cheysuli and once drove them almost to extinction as a people, will except anyone else on the throne?
The a'saii are both more plentiful and not as plentiful as I thought. Basically there's two or three from each clan. Every clan though, even the ones from the Northern Wastes. Niall knows of thirty clans in Homana.
...shit. We were down to one in Shapechangers, before Finn went looking. Clearly Duncan was fucking incompetent.
I feel a little better about this though, because I can buy two or three people in every major group being this stupid.
I did not bother to look at the others, though I addressed them as well. I looked only at Ceinn. “How much of this is personal?”
“None of it,” he answered instantly, so sincerely that I believed him even as I desired not to. “There were a’saii in Homana before Isolde and I ever lay down together.”
It was a shock as well as an unpleasant realization. “And now?”
“Now?” He nodded thoughtfully. “I admit I enjoy the idea more.”
I do rather like this bit. Niall reminds them of the Homanans and the rival claimant. And Ceinn...doesn't really answer.
“Ian may not agree while you are alive,” Ceinn told me, “but what happens when you are dead? The Queen is barren. Donal has no other sons. Who else will succeed him?”
“Carillon’s bastard.”
Something flickered in his eyes.
I smiled, albeit unamused. “If I am dead, it gives the Homanan a’saii more chance than ever to put the bastard on the throne. They are every bit as loyal and fanatical as you are; do you think they will suffer Ian to hold the Lion? You are a fool, Ceinn—you and the others. You will bring domestic rebellion to Homana again, and destroy all hope of fulfilling the prophecy.”
“Eloquent,” he said, “but our decision has been made.”
Fucking morons.
But I have to admit, Ceinn's tactic is very clever. And one that fits magnificently with what was done to Ian in Atvia. They use Cheysuli mind-magic to make Niall believe that, rather than never having a lir, that he lost one. So that Niall, will give himself over to the death ritual.
“Rujho,” —how he mocked me, in his inexpressibly gentle tone— “for Isolde’s sake, I promise we will not hurt you.”
--
So the chapter ends here, but this and the next are pretty short so I'm combining them.
Chapter Eight starts us with Niall in the midst of a "my lir is dead" freakout. And to be fair, it sounds pretty fucking awful. We get a clearer idea, I think, what both Duncan and Ian lived with during their respective captivities:
Fists dug holes in the crumbling leaves; digging, digging, until they touched the cool dampness of soil beneath; the humid, sweaty soil, the consistency of clay; the clay that is used to seal the eyes of a dead man closed.
—my lir—
I have known grief in my life, much grief; I recalled how it was when I had believed my brother dead, but I have never known, have never imagined what it would be like to lose a lir. It was as if a man had thrust a hand through flesh and gristle and bone to grasp my heart; grasping it, he wrenches it from my chest and throws it aside, leaving me both alive and dead. Alive because I do not die; dead because everything within the fragile shell of human flesh is dead, so infinitely dead. How does a man live like this?
How can a man survive?
He does not.
Niall runs, mindlessly, in despair. Ian was saved from this when Gisella gave Tasha back to him. But Niall doesn't have a lir.
Something is running behind me. I can hear it. I can hear it coming; hear it slipping through the path I break as I run; running more quickly than I can run as I try to leave it behind.
I can hear it. I can hear it tearing through the vines and creepers and bracken, unhindered by the thorns, the roots, the traps that plants will lay for a man, seeking to bring him down.
I can hear it. I can hear it breathing, breathing; I can hear its heavy panting.
I can hear it—
The hallucinations sound pretty awful. Niall starts to try to give himself over to the Gods, but then, a voice keeps saying no.
I slow. I stop. I turn. But all I can see is the grayness of finality; the grayness turning black, so black, it promises relief. It promises an end to all the pain and grief and wretched emptiness—
No, the new voice tells me. Firmly, as if I am a child. And I think: perhaps I am one.
Not a child. No. But a man. A man. A warrior. A Cheysuli.
It takes Niall a long time to get it. The reader probably gets it a little sooner than that. The emptiness we saw, it wasn't part of Gisella's magic. If it were, it wouldn't have gotten stronger the longer he was away from her.
It's something we'd never seen before, of course. Because Alix was a woman. Because Carillon was Homanan. Because Donal is the fucking chosen one, and had bonded at the age of eight.
Niall...is maybe a bit of a late-bloomer.
Slay me and you slay yourself. The tone, unaccountably, gentled. Lir—be not so witless. Have they made you deaf as well as blind?
A wolf. Male. Silver-gray, with green-gold eyes, and a mask of deepest charcoal.
He sat down. He sat. And his tongue lolled out of his mouth.
“You are a—lir?” I croaked aloud.
I am Serri. I am yours. I have been empty so long, so long— Suddenly he rose, approached, butted his head into my shoulder before I could scramble away. I am filled—I am filled—my spirit and soul are complete—
Well, now. Maybe Niall can finally stop fucking whining about it.
But this is sweet, very emotional, and of COURSE, Roberson has to make it a little fucking creepy:
“Serri?” This time, aloud; it was a croak, not a word, but the sound brought tears to my eyes.
Tears of joy, of disbelief; of relief and exultation. But also tears of an absolute completion I had known before only in a woman.
Sul’harai, Serri said. That is what the Cheysuli call it. But do not judge it too soon.
Apprehension lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. “Too soon?”
Too soon. You will see. It is often better than this.
Please stop making it sound like bestiality, Ms. Roberson.
One thing I appreciate though is that, for the first time since Shapechangers, we're really getting a sense of a lir as its own separate character. And even then, Storr wasn't so much a character as a rape apologist in furry form.
But, and it occurs to me that Donal was perhaps robbed a bit by having TWO lirs. As a Cheysuli point of view character, we could have and ought to have gotten more of a sense of Lorn and Taj as characters in their own right. But I think the split focus took away from that. They were never drawn very distinctly from one another, and Donal was too busy running from one human disaster to another to really take them into account either.
Who knows. Who cares. Niall has a lir now!
He asks Serri if he's not a bit too old. Serri does the wolf equivalent of shrugging. Donal was too young, Niall's too old, some people say. But it's about being ready. NOW, Niall is ready.
But, then, suddenly Serri starts freaking out. There's something Ihlini on Niall! Niall eventually realizes it's that gift Lillith gave him - the tooth. He throws it away. And everything starts coming back at once.
I stared at the tooth. “Lillith,” I said aloud. “Lillith, Alaric—Gisella—” And I knew what they had done.
What they had made me do.
My hand spasmed. Fingers shut over the tooth. Tightly, so tightly; the tooth bit into my flesh. “Oh gods—Deirdre…they have made me slay them all!”
Ouch. It had looked like that, of course, but Niall hadn't been clear-headed enough to tell us what was going on. Ian likely knew, but he had no way of knowing what emotional significance the House of Erinn had for Niall.
And then, of course, there's Gisella:
Gisella: who had spun a web within my mind and bound me to her will.
At her own instigation? Perhaps not. Perhaps she, as much as I, was a puppet caught in the tangle of strings pulled by Lillith and Alaric. I thought she lacked the wits and concentration to make or carry out such plans.
And yet it had been Gisella who had ensorcelled a lirless man.
A man who was lirless no longer.
Cheysuli magic and Ihlini magic (even Ihlini magic borrowed by/translated through a Cheysuli woman) are naturally opposed. And with a lir, Niall now has access to the other powers too. He realizes that he has to learn them now: healing, compelling, and shapechange.
Serri, seeming to sigh, decides to begin with the shapechange. And the chapter ends here.
Well now. I have to say that I'm not displeased by this. Niall's lack of lir/powers made him an interesting contrast to Donal, who had everything handed to him, but there's a lot of potential here now. And honestly, with the rough time he's been having, Niall deserves a bit of happiness. Even if it's been marred by the revelation of what happened to Deirdre and her family.
Well, even half out of his mind to the point of being incredibly cruel to his brother, Niall still manages to be dramatic.
I fled Homana-Mujhar on fleet horse and fleeter need to escape the blackness in my soul. That I had a demon in me I did not doubt; I could feel it within me, clawing, gnawing, shredding the interior of my belly. I shouted orders to the guard and clattered out of the cobbled outer bailey and through the wide front gates even as they were shoved open. Free of the outer curtain wall, I spurred through winding alleys and streets, ignoring the shouts of passers-by. Never an indifferent horseman, I took negligent care to avoid trampling anyone, and therefore no one went down beneath my stallion’s iron-shod hooves.
Aw, at least your demon doesn't want to kill innocent people?
Anyway, Niall's freaking out about everything right now. He's remembering his encounter with Strahan and how Strahan promised to take his sons. Gisella could give birth at any moment!
The "emptiness" definitely seems like more than standard depression though:
It is difficult to describe how overwhelming emptiness can be, how utterly encompassing, until even the thought of death becomes less important than the driving need to be filled. It is worse than melancholy; worse than the depths of despair. It is a complete cessation of functioning. A man simply ceases to be, and yet he knows that physically he still exists. It is only his spirit that has been torn asunder.
The need burned away the liquor in my blood. I was not drunk, though a part of me longed to be. Nor was I made ill by the poison I had poured so liberally into my body. I was simply empty.
Now that he's outside, horseback, there's a question of where to go. He rules out Clankeep, since Ceinn and the a'saii are there. Wise. Eventually he starts to search for some kind of shelter and tries to rest.
In the morning, his head does seem to be a little clearer.
Finally I rose and went to the horse. With both hands I brushed his back free of the debris remaining from the night before, placed blankets across his spine and prepared to hoist the saddle up and settle it on top of the blankets. I had every intention of going back to Homana-Mujhar. Every intention: no doubt my brother and father worried—I knew my mother worried—and I had left Gisella as well. Poor, sad Gisella, deprived of the ordering in her wits that would have made her worthy of any man.
And yet, I thought she was worthy of me.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. I think maybe, Gisella needs help. Not to be a wife, mother or queen, until she can get some kind of decent medical and psychiatric attention. Which doesn't really exist here.
The thing is, while Niall is clearer headed, the problem still remains. He still feels strangely empty and naked, and like he needs something very badly that he can't describe.
But at least now, he has the wherewithal to hunt for food. He and his horse go deeper into the woods, for enough days that his beard starts to grow in and his horse starts growing his winter coat.
...and no one's actually LOOKING for him? Donal? What are you doing?
Niall tells us that every morning, he wakes up intending to go home. He thinks of Gisella, very pregnant, Ian, who he'd sent from him "with cruel temper and crueler tongue." Of Donal, deprived yet again of legitimate heir, and his mother, who must be worried.
But he does seem to be kind of enjoying the freedom, even as the emptiness increases. He still can't go back.
Then, one morning, things change when a bear comes to camp. Specifically a rock bear. And it's intent on attacking Niall:
I was up before I could speak, running before I could walk, caught before I could pray. I felt the spread paw slap at my ankle, catch, jerk, and then I was down, rolling, trying to yank my knife free of its sheath even as the bear slapped my hand. The knife went flying. With unexpected precision, the bear used only one claw against the back of my hand. The stripe turned white, pink, red; opening, it spilled blood down through my fingers.
I sprawled on my buttocks, braced against one rigid elbow even as my booted feet scraped rotting leaves, searching for purchase in drifting debris. The bear sat back on his haunches. I saw the yellow eyes; the eyes of a Cheysuli.
Ceinn, of course. He's decided that it's time for him and Niall to "discuss". He's not alone either.
As he spoke the others came out of the thinning darkness, gliding from trees and shadowed pockets, all in human form, except for the lir. That hurt most of all, more than anything I had expected; that there were lir in the world who would join the a’saii in attempting to replace me.
I like the idea of the a'saii. But I can't get over how blatantly stupid they are. Donal is the first Cheysuli Mujhar in four hundred years. They're only about thirty years forward from a genocide. There's a civil war brewing already among Homanans who think Donal's family isn't Homanan enough.
What the fuck do they think will happen?! Do they seriously think the Homanans, who still very much outnumber the Cheysuli and once drove them almost to extinction as a people, will except anyone else on the throne?
The a'saii are both more plentiful and not as plentiful as I thought. Basically there's two or three from each clan. Every clan though, even the ones from the Northern Wastes. Niall knows of thirty clans in Homana.
...shit. We were down to one in Shapechangers, before Finn went looking. Clearly Duncan was fucking incompetent.
I feel a little better about this though, because I can buy two or three people in every major group being this stupid.
I did not bother to look at the others, though I addressed them as well. I looked only at Ceinn. “How much of this is personal?”
“None of it,” he answered instantly, so sincerely that I believed him even as I desired not to. “There were a’saii in Homana before Isolde and I ever lay down together.”
It was a shock as well as an unpleasant realization. “And now?”
“Now?” He nodded thoughtfully. “I admit I enjoy the idea more.”
I do rather like this bit. Niall reminds them of the Homanans and the rival claimant. And Ceinn...doesn't really answer.
“Ian may not agree while you are alive,” Ceinn told me, “but what happens when you are dead? The Queen is barren. Donal has no other sons. Who else will succeed him?”
“Carillon’s bastard.”
Something flickered in his eyes.
I smiled, albeit unamused. “If I am dead, it gives the Homanan a’saii more chance than ever to put the bastard on the throne. They are every bit as loyal and fanatical as you are; do you think they will suffer Ian to hold the Lion? You are a fool, Ceinn—you and the others. You will bring domestic rebellion to Homana again, and destroy all hope of fulfilling the prophecy.”
“Eloquent,” he said, “but our decision has been made.”
Fucking morons.
But I have to admit, Ceinn's tactic is very clever. And one that fits magnificently with what was done to Ian in Atvia. They use Cheysuli mind-magic to make Niall believe that, rather than never having a lir, that he lost one. So that Niall, will give himself over to the death ritual.
“Rujho,” —how he mocked me, in his inexpressibly gentle tone— “for Isolde’s sake, I promise we will not hurt you.”
--
So the chapter ends here, but this and the next are pretty short so I'm combining them.
Chapter Eight starts us with Niall in the midst of a "my lir is dead" freakout. And to be fair, it sounds pretty fucking awful. We get a clearer idea, I think, what both Duncan and Ian lived with during their respective captivities:
Fists dug holes in the crumbling leaves; digging, digging, until they touched the cool dampness of soil beneath; the humid, sweaty soil, the consistency of clay; the clay that is used to seal the eyes of a dead man closed.
—my lir—
I have known grief in my life, much grief; I recalled how it was when I had believed my brother dead, but I have never known, have never imagined what it would be like to lose a lir. It was as if a man had thrust a hand through flesh and gristle and bone to grasp my heart; grasping it, he wrenches it from my chest and throws it aside, leaving me both alive and dead. Alive because I do not die; dead because everything within the fragile shell of human flesh is dead, so infinitely dead. How does a man live like this?
How can a man survive?
He does not.
Niall runs, mindlessly, in despair. Ian was saved from this when Gisella gave Tasha back to him. But Niall doesn't have a lir.
Something is running behind me. I can hear it. I can hear it coming; hear it slipping through the path I break as I run; running more quickly than I can run as I try to leave it behind.
I can hear it. I can hear it tearing through the vines and creepers and bracken, unhindered by the thorns, the roots, the traps that plants will lay for a man, seeking to bring him down.
I can hear it. I can hear it breathing, breathing; I can hear its heavy panting.
I can hear it—
The hallucinations sound pretty awful. Niall starts to try to give himself over to the Gods, but then, a voice keeps saying no.
I slow. I stop. I turn. But all I can see is the grayness of finality; the grayness turning black, so black, it promises relief. It promises an end to all the pain and grief and wretched emptiness—
No, the new voice tells me. Firmly, as if I am a child. And I think: perhaps I am one.
Not a child. No. But a man. A man. A warrior. A Cheysuli.
It takes Niall a long time to get it. The reader probably gets it a little sooner than that. The emptiness we saw, it wasn't part of Gisella's magic. If it were, it wouldn't have gotten stronger the longer he was away from her.
It's something we'd never seen before, of course. Because Alix was a woman. Because Carillon was Homanan. Because Donal is the fucking chosen one, and had bonded at the age of eight.
Niall...is maybe a bit of a late-bloomer.
Slay me and you slay yourself. The tone, unaccountably, gentled. Lir—be not so witless. Have they made you deaf as well as blind?
A wolf. Male. Silver-gray, with green-gold eyes, and a mask of deepest charcoal.
He sat down. He sat. And his tongue lolled out of his mouth.
“You are a—lir?” I croaked aloud.
I am Serri. I am yours. I have been empty so long, so long— Suddenly he rose, approached, butted his head into my shoulder before I could scramble away. I am filled—I am filled—my spirit and soul are complete—
Well, now. Maybe Niall can finally stop fucking whining about it.
But this is sweet, very emotional, and of COURSE, Roberson has to make it a little fucking creepy:
“Serri?” This time, aloud; it was a croak, not a word, but the sound brought tears to my eyes.
Tears of joy, of disbelief; of relief and exultation. But also tears of an absolute completion I had known before only in a woman.
Sul’harai, Serri said. That is what the Cheysuli call it. But do not judge it too soon.
Apprehension lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. “Too soon?”
Too soon. You will see. It is often better than this.
Please stop making it sound like bestiality, Ms. Roberson.
One thing I appreciate though is that, for the first time since Shapechangers, we're really getting a sense of a lir as its own separate character. And even then, Storr wasn't so much a character as a rape apologist in furry form.
But, and it occurs to me that Donal was perhaps robbed a bit by having TWO lirs. As a Cheysuli point of view character, we could have and ought to have gotten more of a sense of Lorn and Taj as characters in their own right. But I think the split focus took away from that. They were never drawn very distinctly from one another, and Donal was too busy running from one human disaster to another to really take them into account either.
Who knows. Who cares. Niall has a lir now!
He asks Serri if he's not a bit too old. Serri does the wolf equivalent of shrugging. Donal was too young, Niall's too old, some people say. But it's about being ready. NOW, Niall is ready.
But, then, suddenly Serri starts freaking out. There's something Ihlini on Niall! Niall eventually realizes it's that gift Lillith gave him - the tooth. He throws it away. And everything starts coming back at once.
I stared at the tooth. “Lillith,” I said aloud. “Lillith, Alaric—Gisella—” And I knew what they had done.
What they had made me do.
My hand spasmed. Fingers shut over the tooth. Tightly, so tightly; the tooth bit into my flesh. “Oh gods—Deirdre…they have made me slay them all!”
Ouch. It had looked like that, of course, but Niall hadn't been clear-headed enough to tell us what was going on. Ian likely knew, but he had no way of knowing what emotional significance the House of Erinn had for Niall.
And then, of course, there's Gisella:
Gisella: who had spun a web within my mind and bound me to her will.
At her own instigation? Perhaps not. Perhaps she, as much as I, was a puppet caught in the tangle of strings pulled by Lillith and Alaric. I thought she lacked the wits and concentration to make or carry out such plans.
And yet it had been Gisella who had ensorcelled a lirless man.
A man who was lirless no longer.
Cheysuli magic and Ihlini magic (even Ihlini magic borrowed by/translated through a Cheysuli woman) are naturally opposed. And with a lir, Niall now has access to the other powers too. He realizes that he has to learn them now: healing, compelling, and shapechange.
Serri, seeming to sigh, decides to begin with the shapechange. And the chapter ends here.
Well now. I have to say that I'm not displeased by this. Niall's lack of lir/powers made him an interesting contrast to Donal, who had everything handed to him, but there's a lot of potential here now. And honestly, with the rough time he's been having, Niall deserves a bit of happiness. Even if it's been marred by the revelation of what happened to Deirdre and her family.