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i_read_whatSorry about the delay on this one. It's been a really hectic week, as mentioned. Yep, that's a good excuse right? :-D
Anyway, last time, we had some sibling dialogue and Rory was kind of a dick.
So this chapter starts with a panting, laughing Keely. She's having a sword match with Rory, who she credits as being at least as good as Griffon and certainly better than Brennan. She thinks that now she'll give her brother a much better match.
...after one match? I'm going to assume there was more extensive training between chapters.
Anyway, as they enjoy the aftermath of a good fight, Rory decides to ask Keely what it's like to shapechange.
This question, directed toward a Cheysuli, always gets a dramatic response and Keely delivers:
Rory was behind me, sheathing his own sword. I swung back to face him. "You had best know what you are asking."
He was taken aback by my attitude. "Why, lass? 'Tis not a thing, I'm thinking, no one has asked before."
No, it was not. But no one had ever asked me.
I told myself it was a perfectly natural question, particularly from a foreigner who had no firsthand knowledge. But I found myself strangely defensive about my lir-gifts, oddly reluctant to readily admit to him just how different I was. Always before I had known nothing but pride in my blood, but now I felt something else. Something very much like foreboding.
She starts thinking that if she tells him the truth, he'll think she's unnatural and "born of beasts." "The unblessed always do."
I kind of like the use of "unblessed" here. I THINK it's the first time we've heard the term (which is a bit ridiculous, given that we're SIX BOOK INTO THE SERIES), but the Cheysuli would have a term for non-Cheysuli, and I like the evocative elements "unblessed".
And it's worth remembering that "Shapechanger" in this universe is a racial slur. We're only a few generations out from the qu'mahlin. Keely's grandfather was a child when it ended, after all. And, as we saw last book, there are still fanatics happy to hurt whatever Cheysuli they come across. Even royal ones.
So the fear makes sense.
Interestingly, Keely uses the word "unblessed" outloud. And we get an exchange about that:
Accordingly, I was brusque. "I doubt you could understand, Erinnish. Take no offense—but you are an unblessed man."
"Unblessed! Unblessed?" He shook his head. "Lass, I am Erinnish, born of the House of Eagles . . . 'tis more in the way of blessing than many things I know."
"No, no—that is not what I meant." Irritably I kicked a stone away, aiming it toward the clearing. "Aye, you have the right of it: people have asked before. People will always ask, being horrified by the truth while fascinated by the horror."
"Lass," he said patiently, "I'm not a man to take fright. I'm not a man to scoff. Aileen married a mountain cat, Deirdre lives with a wolf . . . and I have seen you change."
I mean, that's a pretty fair point there. And I don't know why, but "Aileen married a mountain cat" is a turn of phrase that makes me laugh pretty hard.
I looked at him levelly. "No one can understand. They hear stories, trade tales, foster untruths, all the while making ward-signs against us." I shook my head grimly. "Not all, of course, but more than enough. There are still those who prefer to hear the darker side of the magic because it makes a better tale."
"Darker side," he echoed.
Ooo, this should be interesting. I'm always kind of interested in when the "darker side" stuff comes in, because it's consistently inconsistent in a way.
Keely explains:
I stared hard into the clearing, not looking at him. "There is a story, a tale of a man who lost control. . . a warrior who lost himself. There is always the risk, of course; lir-shape is seductive." I glanced at him intently. "He stayed too long and lost himself, forsaking his human form. Caught in lir-shape forever, but now was something in between. He lost the sense of either side, becoming a little of both."
Rory frowned. "I thought you told me there was this thing of the death-ritual."
"He was no longer human, no longer truly Cheysuli. Such things only bind those who are willing to be bound. He was not. He was beast, abomination .. . man and wolf in one."
"Wolf," he said involuntarily, recalling traditional fear.
Hm. I wonder if THIS is the ultimate root of where the Homanan fear of Cheysuli comes from. And indeed, per Keely, the Homanans use that story to frighten children.
Anyway, as I was saying, I find it interesting when the idea of a Cheysuli losing themselves in lir shape comes up. Alix never seems to have much of an issue with that. Donal maybe had a moment once, in one of the early racist attacks in Legacy. Carillon feared it in Finn, but Niall never seemed to express any issue when he had his lir.
In Pride of Princes, it comes up a few times for Brennan, but not for Hart or Corin.
It does occur to me that there's a bit of a pattern here. Finn and Donal are survivors of the qu'mahlin, after all. While Alix suffered her share of trauma, it mostly came about after a reasonably healthy childhood upbringing. Niall and Brennan have much better childhoods than Donal, Duncan or Finn, but Brennan at least has one major childhood trauma that he wasn't dealing with and a generally avoidant personality in general.
I wonder if Ian's got any experience with this?
I think what I'm getting at is that the Cheysuli really ought to look into inventing therapists.
Anyway, when Keely says that lir shape is more of a feeling, Rory asks her to make him feel it. Sadly, this doesn't lead to Carillon's college drug trip at Burning Man (or the oubliette experience that made him feel Cheysuli). Instead:
"Power," I repeated, "unlike any you have known And at your call, it answers, binding flesh, blood, bone: giving back other things. Flesh. Blood. Bone. But of a different shape."
Rory's mouth slackened.
"There is a moment," I said, "when you are neither being. Neither man nor animal, nothing more than formlessness, waiting for the shape. But it comes, it always comes, and you are free, freed, to be what you must be, dictated by the gods. Mountain cat, fox, hawk; wolf, owl, bear. Whatever you must be, dictated by the blood." I tightened my fingers on his. "You are an eagle, Rory—a bright, bold eagle born of Erinn's Aerie, above the cliffs of Kilore. Below you the Dragon's Tail, smashing against the shoreline . . . below you the fishing boats, coming home on the tide . . . below you the House of Eagles, perched atop white chalk cliffs . . . below, forever below—you are the lord of the air, the sovereign of the skies . . . there is magic in your blood and power in your bones—the hard, bright knowledge that you are different from men, that you are better than men: higher than they can go, freer than they can be, able to ride the wind even as they are bound to the earth, to ships, to legs, to horses—" I gripped his hands in my own. "So much freedom, Rory—so many fetters broken—so much power loosed to fill your wings with wind . .. and you fly, you fly, where no one else can go ... being what no one else can be: born of the earth but not bound to it, because it lives in your soul, your heart, your flesh, locked inside your bones. Burning in your blood." I drew in a trembling breath, as lost in the moment as he was. "Sul'harai, Rory: a perfect and binding union." I paused. "And like all of them, it ends."
There's a bit more to the speech, but that's the best bit. It's very evocative, and makes me mad again on Maeve's behalf that just because she's missing one spot of incest, she doesn't get the cool powers too.
Rory is pretty bespelled. He asks why it has to end. Keely says that there must always be an ending, or he can lose what makes him human.
Rory asks: what if he preferred the other. He'd be an abomination.
Oh, good, time for Roberson to ruin this for me.
I drew in a very deep breath and gave him my innermost truth. The thing that made me different from any other woman, from any other Cheysuli, because with my gifts came a sacrifice I had acknowledged long ago. "Do you see now," I said clearly, "why I have no need of a man?"
His eyes sharpened at once. Plainly, he understood. "Oh—gods—lass—"
"What man can give me that? What man would even try?"
WHY MUST YOU DO THIS, ROBERSON?
Why isn't it enough that Keely is a woman who wants the same privileges that a man has? Why isn't it enough that Keely doesn't want to get married or have children? Why does this need to be about this special magic power that ONLY Keely has?
Are we saying that no other woman in this series deserves these things that Keely wants?
(Also, I have no idea what Keely means by sacrifice, here. She got this powers because of cousin fucking, and thus getting a double dose of Alix's magic genes. There's never been any indication that the women suffer through anything particular to get these powers. It doesn't even sound like they get the "lir sickness" that the boys get. So what-the-fuck-ever Keely.)
Anyway, this is a good opportunity for Rory to declare that HE would try. Why does she think he asked.
Rather understandably, Keely freaks out a little by this, and decides it's time to go back to Homana. Rory offers her knife back. This surprises her, because she remembered the "hearth-friend" exchange. But Rory decides there's more between them now, whether she knows or not.
Helplessness welled up. "Ku'reshtin," I muttered.
"And other things, I'm thinking. So are you, my lass."
He's keeping the colt though. So Keely takes eagle shape, to show Rory what he misses.
Then, near Mujhara, she suddenly loses the lir shape:
Abruptly, unexpectedly. Full of shock and outrage I tumbled toward the ground, using wings to break my fall even as the eagle-form turned itself inside out.
Eek. And suddenly, the power is gone. She lands, unpleasantly and painfully, as a human woman. But thankfully not hard enough for serious injury. (And is very grateful she's wearing leggings instead of skirts.)
There's a rider. She confronts him, as there's only one explanation for this: Ihlini.
I expected some manner of reaction, some expression of his feelings, even if only in posture. Instead, he inclined his head politely in a courtesy that rankled. "My apologies," he said quietly, still soothing the spotted horse. "When the gods created their children, they might have thought of this. It is a bit disconcerting."
Hah, fair point.
And as it turns out, we know this guy!
'No Ihlini—" I stopped. Looked more closely at him: white-haired, blue-eyed, exceedingly fair of face. Ancient in the eyes, young in his demeanor. Anger spilled away, replaced with realization. "You are Taliesin." Heat crept into my face as shame stung my breasts. "Oh, gods, of course you are . . . they told me what you were like. Brennan, Hart, Corin . . . even our jehan." Distractedly, I took my hand from the knife hilt. "I am Keely, Niall's daughter . . . I apologize for my rudeness."
"I know very well who you are, regardless of your lir-shape—though that, I agree, is eloquent proof of identity." Taliesin smiled. "You are very much like Corin in ways other than coloring ... he has a tongue in his mouth, and wit enough to wag it. You, I see, do also, if in a prettier mouth."
Hi, Taliesin!
She accuses him of having a glib tongue, and he acknowledges that he's had little occasion to flatter a woman. He accepts her apology too, acknowledging that she could have been killed or seriously injured, so the rudeness is understandable. He apologizes as well.
They exchange some pleasantries, before Taliesin admits that he came with news. Keely realizes that it must be big if Taliesin's come down from Solinde, alone. She asks about Caro.
"Caro is dead," he said. "Strahan is loose on the land."
Well that sucks. And the chapter ends here.
Anyway, last time, we had some sibling dialogue and Rory was kind of a dick.
So this chapter starts with a panting, laughing Keely. She's having a sword match with Rory, who she credits as being at least as good as Griffon and certainly better than Brennan. She thinks that now she'll give her brother a much better match.
...after one match? I'm going to assume there was more extensive training between chapters.
Anyway, as they enjoy the aftermath of a good fight, Rory decides to ask Keely what it's like to shapechange.
This question, directed toward a Cheysuli, always gets a dramatic response and Keely delivers:
Rory was behind me, sheathing his own sword. I swung back to face him. "You had best know what you are asking."
He was taken aback by my attitude. "Why, lass? 'Tis not a thing, I'm thinking, no one has asked before."
No, it was not. But no one had ever asked me.
I told myself it was a perfectly natural question, particularly from a foreigner who had no firsthand knowledge. But I found myself strangely defensive about my lir-gifts, oddly reluctant to readily admit to him just how different I was. Always before I had known nothing but pride in my blood, but now I felt something else. Something very much like foreboding.
She starts thinking that if she tells him the truth, he'll think she's unnatural and "born of beasts." "The unblessed always do."
I kind of like the use of "unblessed" here. I THINK it's the first time we've heard the term (which is a bit ridiculous, given that we're SIX BOOK INTO THE SERIES), but the Cheysuli would have a term for non-Cheysuli, and I like the evocative elements "unblessed".
And it's worth remembering that "Shapechanger" in this universe is a racial slur. We're only a few generations out from the qu'mahlin. Keely's grandfather was a child when it ended, after all. And, as we saw last book, there are still fanatics happy to hurt whatever Cheysuli they come across. Even royal ones.
So the fear makes sense.
Interestingly, Keely uses the word "unblessed" outloud. And we get an exchange about that:
Accordingly, I was brusque. "I doubt you could understand, Erinnish. Take no offense—but you are an unblessed man."
"Unblessed! Unblessed?" He shook his head. "Lass, I am Erinnish, born of the House of Eagles . . . 'tis more in the way of blessing than many things I know."
"No, no—that is not what I meant." Irritably I kicked a stone away, aiming it toward the clearing. "Aye, you have the right of it: people have asked before. People will always ask, being horrified by the truth while fascinated by the horror."
"Lass," he said patiently, "I'm not a man to take fright. I'm not a man to scoff. Aileen married a mountain cat, Deirdre lives with a wolf . . . and I have seen you change."
I mean, that's a pretty fair point there. And I don't know why, but "Aileen married a mountain cat" is a turn of phrase that makes me laugh pretty hard.
I looked at him levelly. "No one can understand. They hear stories, trade tales, foster untruths, all the while making ward-signs against us." I shook my head grimly. "Not all, of course, but more than enough. There are still those who prefer to hear the darker side of the magic because it makes a better tale."
"Darker side," he echoed.
Ooo, this should be interesting. I'm always kind of interested in when the "darker side" stuff comes in, because it's consistently inconsistent in a way.
Keely explains:
I stared hard into the clearing, not looking at him. "There is a story, a tale of a man who lost control. . . a warrior who lost himself. There is always the risk, of course; lir-shape is seductive." I glanced at him intently. "He stayed too long and lost himself, forsaking his human form. Caught in lir-shape forever, but now was something in between. He lost the sense of either side, becoming a little of both."
Rory frowned. "I thought you told me there was this thing of the death-ritual."
"He was no longer human, no longer truly Cheysuli. Such things only bind those who are willing to be bound. He was not. He was beast, abomination .. . man and wolf in one."
"Wolf," he said involuntarily, recalling traditional fear.
Hm. I wonder if THIS is the ultimate root of where the Homanan fear of Cheysuli comes from. And indeed, per Keely, the Homanans use that story to frighten children.
Anyway, as I was saying, I find it interesting when the idea of a Cheysuli losing themselves in lir shape comes up. Alix never seems to have much of an issue with that. Donal maybe had a moment once, in one of the early racist attacks in Legacy. Carillon feared it in Finn, but Niall never seemed to express any issue when he had his lir.
In Pride of Princes, it comes up a few times for Brennan, but not for Hart or Corin.
It does occur to me that there's a bit of a pattern here. Finn and Donal are survivors of the qu'mahlin, after all. While Alix suffered her share of trauma, it mostly came about after a reasonably healthy childhood upbringing. Niall and Brennan have much better childhoods than Donal, Duncan or Finn, but Brennan at least has one major childhood trauma that he wasn't dealing with and a generally avoidant personality in general.
I wonder if Ian's got any experience with this?
I think what I'm getting at is that the Cheysuli really ought to look into inventing therapists.
Anyway, when Keely says that lir shape is more of a feeling, Rory asks her to make him feel it. Sadly, this doesn't lead to Carillon's college drug trip at Burning Man (or the oubliette experience that made him feel Cheysuli). Instead:
"Power," I repeated, "unlike any you have known And at your call, it answers, binding flesh, blood, bone: giving back other things. Flesh. Blood. Bone. But of a different shape."
Rory's mouth slackened.
"There is a moment," I said, "when you are neither being. Neither man nor animal, nothing more than formlessness, waiting for the shape. But it comes, it always comes, and you are free, freed, to be what you must be, dictated by the gods. Mountain cat, fox, hawk; wolf, owl, bear. Whatever you must be, dictated by the blood." I tightened my fingers on his. "You are an eagle, Rory—a bright, bold eagle born of Erinn's Aerie, above the cliffs of Kilore. Below you the Dragon's Tail, smashing against the shoreline . . . below you the fishing boats, coming home on the tide . . . below you the House of Eagles, perched atop white chalk cliffs . . . below, forever below—you are the lord of the air, the sovereign of the skies . . . there is magic in your blood and power in your bones—the hard, bright knowledge that you are different from men, that you are better than men: higher than they can go, freer than they can be, able to ride the wind even as they are bound to the earth, to ships, to legs, to horses—" I gripped his hands in my own. "So much freedom, Rory—so many fetters broken—so much power loosed to fill your wings with wind . .. and you fly, you fly, where no one else can go ... being what no one else can be: born of the earth but not bound to it, because it lives in your soul, your heart, your flesh, locked inside your bones. Burning in your blood." I drew in a trembling breath, as lost in the moment as he was. "Sul'harai, Rory: a perfect and binding union." I paused. "And like all of them, it ends."
There's a bit more to the speech, but that's the best bit. It's very evocative, and makes me mad again on Maeve's behalf that just because she's missing one spot of incest, she doesn't get the cool powers too.
Rory is pretty bespelled. He asks why it has to end. Keely says that there must always be an ending, or he can lose what makes him human.
Rory asks: what if he preferred the other. He'd be an abomination.
Oh, good, time for Roberson to ruin this for me.
I drew in a very deep breath and gave him my innermost truth. The thing that made me different from any other woman, from any other Cheysuli, because with my gifts came a sacrifice I had acknowledged long ago. "Do you see now," I said clearly, "why I have no need of a man?"
His eyes sharpened at once. Plainly, he understood. "Oh—gods—lass—"
"What man can give me that? What man would even try?"
WHY MUST YOU DO THIS, ROBERSON?
Why isn't it enough that Keely is a woman who wants the same privileges that a man has? Why isn't it enough that Keely doesn't want to get married or have children? Why does this need to be about this special magic power that ONLY Keely has?
Are we saying that no other woman in this series deserves these things that Keely wants?
(Also, I have no idea what Keely means by sacrifice, here. She got this powers because of cousin fucking, and thus getting a double dose of Alix's magic genes. There's never been any indication that the women suffer through anything particular to get these powers. It doesn't even sound like they get the "lir sickness" that the boys get. So what-the-fuck-ever Keely.)
Anyway, this is a good opportunity for Rory to declare that HE would try. Why does she think he asked.
Rather understandably, Keely freaks out a little by this, and decides it's time to go back to Homana. Rory offers her knife back. This surprises her, because she remembered the "hearth-friend" exchange. But Rory decides there's more between them now, whether she knows or not.
Helplessness welled up. "Ku'reshtin," I muttered.
"And other things, I'm thinking. So are you, my lass."
He's keeping the colt though. So Keely takes eagle shape, to show Rory what he misses.
Then, near Mujhara, she suddenly loses the lir shape:
Abruptly, unexpectedly. Full of shock and outrage I tumbled toward the ground, using wings to break my fall even as the eagle-form turned itself inside out.
Eek. And suddenly, the power is gone. She lands, unpleasantly and painfully, as a human woman. But thankfully not hard enough for serious injury. (And is very grateful she's wearing leggings instead of skirts.)
There's a rider. She confronts him, as there's only one explanation for this: Ihlini.
I expected some manner of reaction, some expression of his feelings, even if only in posture. Instead, he inclined his head politely in a courtesy that rankled. "My apologies," he said quietly, still soothing the spotted horse. "When the gods created their children, they might have thought of this. It is a bit disconcerting."
Hah, fair point.
And as it turns out, we know this guy!
'No Ihlini—" I stopped. Looked more closely at him: white-haired, blue-eyed, exceedingly fair of face. Ancient in the eyes, young in his demeanor. Anger spilled away, replaced with realization. "You are Taliesin." Heat crept into my face as shame stung my breasts. "Oh, gods, of course you are . . . they told me what you were like. Brennan, Hart, Corin . . . even our jehan." Distractedly, I took my hand from the knife hilt. "I am Keely, Niall's daughter . . . I apologize for my rudeness."
"I know very well who you are, regardless of your lir-shape—though that, I agree, is eloquent proof of identity." Taliesin smiled. "You are very much like Corin in ways other than coloring ... he has a tongue in his mouth, and wit enough to wag it. You, I see, do also, if in a prettier mouth."
Hi, Taliesin!
She accuses him of having a glib tongue, and he acknowledges that he's had little occasion to flatter a woman. He accepts her apology too, acknowledging that she could have been killed or seriously injured, so the rudeness is understandable. He apologizes as well.
They exchange some pleasantries, before Taliesin admits that he came with news. Keely realizes that it must be big if Taliesin's come down from Solinde, alone. She asks about Caro.
"Caro is dead," he said. "Strahan is loose on the land."
Well that sucks. And the chapter ends here.