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i_read_whatSo I've been thinking hard about how to introduce this part. I feel like I owe you a warning of some kind, but I'm not really sure what to say.
Maybe just this: I'm sorry Alix, you deserved better.
We last left off at the oubliette. Carillon had his life changing experience here. I'm not sure Donal really needs it, seeing as how he's Cheysuli already. But I do like the parallels. Duncan brought Carillon here for his test, and Carillon brings Donal.
In a way, this whole thing recontextualizes Carillon's own test. Duncan wasn't Mujhar, but he could have been. If the Cheysuli hadn't left Homana to its own governance. Carillon's predecessor was a monster, so Duncan acts in his place. (In a better version of Shapechangers, we'd have explored this more.)
Anyway, Donal's alone in the darkness. He can feel the door, and he thinks about its beauty. In another palace, it would be a monument for all to admire; in Homana-Mujhar, it was a place of subtle secrets.
I'm not sure I'd go so far as "subtle", but I do love the emphasis that the palace predates the realm as we know it.
Donal stands at the edge of the pit, says the Cheysuli mantra (Tahlmorra lujhala mei wiccan, cheysu) and is about to leap when the vault suddenly fills with light, and a slender cloaked figure raises a torch to strike him down. It has slender, delicate hands.
In silence, he thrust up his bare left arm. He felt the heat of the flames as they scorched his flesh; he smelled the stench of the charnelhouse. Pain blossomed. He heard himself cry out.
Again the torch thrust for his face; again he thrust it away. He felt the burned flesh of his arm crack, and the sticky wetness of blood.
The attack had done its work. Off-balance, teetering on the brink, Donal reached out to catch the assassin’s arm and caught the flames instead. He fell backward into darkness.
With a muted scream, he stretched out his arms and tried to catch the rim.
It's a nice sequence with an eerie sense of silence. Anyway, Donal ends up striking his head as he falls in. Things get surreal, though it seems like he does manage to take falcon shape. Unfortunately the change in mass and weight disorient him, and he ends up crashing into the side, damaging his wing. But he does seem to escape the pit. It's all very visceral:
Sound filled up the vault. He heard it clearly: a husky, raspy, throaty sobbing, as if it came from a man with no breath left to cry aloud.
He was wet with sweat. His leathers were soaked, rank with the smell of his fear. He lay belly-down on the floor of the vault and pressed his face into the stone, compressing flesh against the bone.
No light.
The torch was gone. He lay in total darkness. But for the moment he did not care; all he wanted was to know he was alive.
No birth symbolism for Donal. Also, his arm is broken. An injury to lir form translates to the same in human form. And it's not a simple fracture either. The bone may have shattered, and there are the burns from earlier. He calls for his lir and makes a strained quip about how if this was the test for acceptance, he'd prefer not to repeat it.
He wakes later, in a bedroom. Carillon is there. So is Finn. This isn't Donal's first awakening from the sound of it as he immediately pleads with Finn not to let them take his arm.
Carillon and Finn have different perspectives:
Carillon looked at Finn compassionately, but tension was in his tone. “The bones are badly broken. And the burns—they could poison him in three days.”
“You cannot take his arm.” Finn moved toward the bed with Storr padding at his side. “You know better, Carillon.”
“What do I know? That foolishness about a maimed warrior not being a useful man?” Carillon thrust out his twisted hands. “See you these? I am crippled, Finn—but I rule Homana still!”
Finn bent over his nephew. “A maimed warrior cannot fight. He cannot hunt. He cannot tend his pavilion. He cannot protect his woman or his children. He cannot protect himself.” He felt Donal’s burning brow. “You know all this, Carillon—I was the one who told you. A maimed warrior cannot serve his clan, nor can he serve the prophecy. He is useless to his people.”
Carillon may have had a mind altering experience, but he isn't Cheysuli. And here is a major difference.
There's this weird idea that I saw a lot in bad 80s-90s sci-fi that "primitive" cultures necessitate being ableist as fuck. (See, for example, the Earth Final Conflict episode where Maiya admits to Doctor Sparrow that her people would have left him to die.) And that's always irritated me because, while Native and nomadic cultures aren't monolithic, there's plenty of evidence of care and concern for disability. People adapt!
Unsurprisingly, along with being utterly horrid to women, the Cheysuli culture is also ableist as fuck, going so far as to essentially excommunicate disabled warriors. You'd think, given that they're one generation past a purge, they could get over that. But it is what it is. Donal is fortunate. Finn is here to heal him. (After some bickering with Carillon of course.)
The plot thread won't go much farther in this book, as I recall. But the Cheysuli attitude toward disability will come up again in later books, without the easy solution we have here. Niall's missing eye, Brennan's claustrophobia, Hart's amputated hand, and Aidan's not quite defined non-neurotypicality will all make this plot point very relevant again.
So they ask Donal what happened, and he relays exactly what we just read. Finn does the healing, and Donal recovers for three days. Then he goes to see Carillon. Carillon isn't alone:
Alix sat on a three-legged stool before the fireplace, indigo skirts spread around her feet as she nursed a goblet of hot wine; Donal could see the faintest breath of steam rising from the surface. Finn sat in a deep-silled casement, silhouetted against the sunlight and framed by chiseled stone. At his feet lay Storr, eyes shut. Carillon filled a tooled leather chair with his legs stretched out before him. From the tight-drawn look of the flesh around the Mujhar’s eyes, Donal knew he was in pain.
“One good thing has come of this….” Donal shut the heavy door. “It brought my su’fali back to Homana-Mujhar.”
Donal's a shipper too.
Finn does remind him that he'd already decided to come to the wedding. But they've more important things to discuss, mainly what happened.
Carillon remembers the way Taj and Lorn panicked, and wonders how anyone could have known Donal was down there.
Finn points out that the Womb isn't completely secret. But there are very few Homanans who'd know of it. He asks a pointed question:
“Still—I doubt any Homanans would know of it, save yourself. Who else is in this palace?”
“Oh Finn, you cannot expect us to believe someone from Carillon’s household did this!” Alix shook her head. “They are too loyal to Carillon.”
“Loyal to Carillon and Homana,” Finn said evenly. “Rank aside, there is a fundamental difference between Carillon and Donal.”
Finn's is a man who watched his lover die, because no one would help a Cheysuli's lover, even though she was a princess. He knows exactly what he's talking about.
We get another bit that's just weird:
Alix looked back at him levelly. The sunlight lay full on her face, leaching shadows from planes and angles to give her youth again. Donal could almost see the seventeen-year-old girl Finn had stolen from Carillon, then lost to his older brother.
But the moment was fleeting; Donal, looking from his mother to his uncle, saw only a warrior and a woman, kin to one another through their father. Hale was in their faces.
And had it not been for that jehan and Carillon’s foolish cousin, none of us would be here.
a) This is weird even if I didn't read Shapechangers. Please stop reminding us that Finn wanted to bang his sister.
b) The fact that this is immediately followed by their shared resemblance makes it weirder.
c) Also, I see we're back to victim blaming Lindir. I think Finn is the only character who appropriately places blame on Hale instead. We're probably supposed to read that as daddy issues. But he's right.
Anyway, Carillon considers foreigners. Gryffth comes up, which delights me. I hope he and Rowan are still exchanging weird foreign pet names. Carillon trusts Gryffth with both of their lives, and Finn agrees.
Donal brings up the elephant in the room, the one Finn was getting at earlier: it could be a Homanan who wants to see someone else as Carillon's heir. He can't imagine one that would wish him DEAD, but he remembers his reception in Hondarth. (Carillon hadn't known and demands to be filled in.)
This conversation is important:
“I am not surprised,” Finn went on calmly. “I think there are many Homanans who care little enough that we exist—there is nothing they can do about that, short of starting another qu’mahlin—but I also think they would actively resist a Cheysuli as Mujhar. And you are next in line.”
Donal frowned. “But would they try to have me slain?”
Alix’s mouth was grim as she looked at Finn. “Would they?”
He shrugged. “It is possible. Shaine’s qu’mahlin was a powerful thing. It bred hatred and fear upon hatred and fear, and fed off violence and ignorance.” He glanced at the Mujhar. “I remember what it was like when Carillon and I came back from Caledon. The purge was over, but there were many Homanans who desired to see me dead.” For the first time a trace of bleakness entered his tone. “We would be wise not to discount the possibility that the qu’mahlin still exists for those who wish it to.”
“Even now?” Donal demanded. “You and Carillon came back nearly twenty years ago. Time has passed. Things change. People get older and less inclined to violence.” He shrugged. “Perhaps there are some bigots left, but surely not enough to do Homana harm.”
Finn eyed him. “I am fifty. Old, to your way of thinking, harani. And would you consider me a nonviolent man?”
a) This is a fascinating group of characters to have this conversation: the king who ended the purge, the woman born of the illicit relationship, the Cheysuli who will be king, and Finn.
b) At the same time, Finn is the only one of the four to have directly experienced the horror of the qu'mahlin both during Shaine's reign and after Carillon ended it. This is real to him in a way that it can't be to the others.
c) I notice that Roberson's gone back to the Shapechangers timeline. Song's modified timeline would make Finn forty-seven rather than fifty. It probably doesn't matter much anymore though.
Carillon wonders if it will ever end, and what will happen when he's dead. Finn points out that it'll be Donal's problem.
Alix has a new topic though: who tried to murder her son.
They ask Donal what he remembers, and eventually he gets a few details:
Donal was conscious of their waiting faces, reflecting expectations. He frowned in concentration, summoning up the memory in vivid recollection. “Much shorter than I—even you, su’fali. Slender. The cloak was not a large one. And I remember hands.” He sat up so rigidly he nearly overturned the table. “Hands! The hands upon the torch!” He stared blindly at Finn, seeing only the hands upon the torch. “Slim, pale, delicate hands, clutching a torch that seemed too heavy, too awkward for a man—” He stopped short. Stunned, he turned to Carillon. “My lord—it was a woman—”
...Is Finn short?
I mean, I never really thought about it. He didn't seem so in Shapechangers, but that was Alix's point of view, and Alix is a small woman. Carillon is a giant, so Finn's size was relative. I'm not sure why, but the idea that Finn might be short delights me, but also causes me to re-imagine everything!
But anyway, back to the plot. No, I'm not stalling. Why do you ask?
Anyway, Carillon begs him to say it wasn't Electra. Finn negates that, he would sense her. Apparently the trap-link she'd sprung on him in Song has "bound" them forever.
That's a little fascinating. Can we explore that a bit more? Can you do Ihlini magic?
Aislinn is a suggestion: which Carillon refutes emphatically. And even poor Bronwyn is mentioned, which Alix denies passionately.
They can't rule either girl out though. Finn tested Aislinn, and thought he'd rid her of Tynstar's resonance, but he can't be sure. And Bronwyn is Tynstar's daughter.
Their speculation is interrupted by a message from Sorcha at the Keep, delivered by Sef: Bronwyn is gone. Finn, Alix and Donal leave immediately.
--
Five wolves and a falcon run. Storr is silver, Finn is ruddy, Lorn is also ruddy, while Donal is grey. Interestingly, Alix has changed color from what we saw in Shapechangers: she's now pale silver with a black tipped tail.
Donal keeps thinking about Bronwyn. He also feels like he's starting to get lost in his lir shape, and starts to panic that he'll get trapped in that shape. He ends up telling them, through Lorn that they have to stop.
They all stop to rest.
Alix is frantically worried. Finn reassures her. There's a point where he calls her meijha, which actually wouldn't be so creepy if Donal didn't make it so:
Donal nearly smiled at Finn’s use of the inaccurate term. Alix had never been Finn’s meijha, but that had not stopped him from wishing she would someday change her mind.
Honestly, Roberson, if Donal hadn't said that, I'd have just read it as a private joke. Also, they're STILL SIBLINGS.
Anyway, Alix and Finn, both being parents, do understand each other. Donal starts to hit on an epiphany: that whatever else Bronwyn is, as far as she knows, Duncan is her father. But they're interrupted.
Here we go.
But it was not Bronwyn. It was not a woman. It was a man. A man who had once been Cheysuli.
He was a shadow within shadows, a wraith among the trees. There was no sound, only silence; the silence born of the passing of a spirit on its way to the afterworld. Insubstantiality, Donal thought; yet it had substance. It was not a wraith, but a man. Not a shadow: a man who was once a warrior.
A warrior without a lir.
Out of the shadows a man stepped into the luminescence of the moon, and they saw his face clearly: old/young; human/inhuman; of sorrow and bittersweet joy. And his face, in the moonlight, was Donal’s, but carved of older, harder wood.
“Forgive me,” he said; two words, but filled with an agony of need.
The spectre of lir loss has been present since the very beginning of the series. In one of the first battles, Borrs lost his lir and left to die, a decision Alix didn't understand. In Song of Homana, Carillon almost lost Finn, and would have, had they not saved Storr too. And of course, Duncan lost Cai.
But we've always been Alix, or Carillon, knowing the rule: that a Cheysuli must die when his lir does, without completely understanding why.
But now, maybe, just maybe, we start to understand.
Because this is Duncan.
Interestingly, there's almost no description of Duncan himself at first. Instead, the focus is entirely on the other characters' reactions:
Donal:
Donal felt his senses waver. For an instant, the ground seemed to move beneath his feet. He put out a hand to steady himself, and when his fingers touched the trunk of the nearest tree he found himself turning to press against it. Clinging to it. Clinging, as if he could not stand up.
And he knew, as he clung, he could not. He could only press his face against the bark and let it bite into his flesh.
Alix:
It was Alix who moved first. Donal expected her to run to Duncan. To grab him, kiss him, hold him. To cry out his name and her love. But she did none of those things.
Instead, she turned her back.
Her face, Donal saw, was ravaged. “If I look—if I look—he will be gone…gone…again. If I look—he will be gone.”
Finn:
Slowly Finn reached out and closed a hand around one of Alix’s arms. Donal saw how the fingers pressed against the fabric of her gown—pressing, pressing—until Donal thought she would cry out because of the pain.
But Alix did not.
It was Finn who cried.
“No,” Duncan said. “Oh no…”
“You.” Finn’s voice was ragged. “You stoop to apostasy—”
And those reactions hit so hard.
Alix of course argues with Finn, how can he call a miracle apostasy. But Duncan agrees with him. And Alix FINALLY gets a chance to demand answers:
“Because you are alive?” Alix shook her head. Donal saw how she trembled. “I begged you not to go. Why waste a life? But you denied me. You said you had to go because your lir was slain.” She tried to steady her voice. “How can you come back now? Why did you stay away—if the death-ritual could be left unheeded?”
Finn keeps her from running to Duncan, and we finally see:
Duncan moved a single step closer to all of them. And his face was free of shadow, open to them all.
It was in the eyes. Donal saw it even as Finn and Alix did. Emptiness, aye. Sorrow: an abundance of it. Such pain as a man, left sane, could never know.
But there was no sanity left in Duncan.
I'm not going to lie, this scene is very well done. I want to excerpt the whole thing.
Donal can see it: his father is back, but this isn't his father. Alix doesn't comprehend. And Finn...Finn is angry, in the way that only a truly scared person can be.
Duncan stopped. His head twisted quickly, faintly, oddly to one side, jerking his chin toward his shoulder. Twice; no more. A nervous tic, Donal thought dazedly. He knew other men who had them. But—this was something more.
“I need you,” Duncan said. “I need you all.”
Finn wants to know what a dead man could want. And Roberson is legitimately phenomenal here:
“Finn—” That from Alix, in horror, but he cut her off again.
“A lirless man is a dead man, of no value to his clan. He is half a man, and empty, lacking spirit, lacking soul.” Finn’s chant sounded almost bitter. “Is that not what we believe?”
Remember how the clans feel about disability. This doesn't sound that much different. Maybe...maybe Finn is wrong.
Duncan pleads with them for help. They can find the magic and make him whole again. And it's...so wretched:
“Finn!” Duncan cried. “Would you have me beg for this?”
Do not beg, do not beg—not you—not Duncan of the Cheysuli—that man does not beg—
Without waiting for an answer, Duncan dropped to his knees. His head, tilted up, exposed the look of mute appeal. He was a supplicant to his brother. To his wife. And to his son. “Can you not see why I come to be here?”
Now, they could. Clearly. It showed in the eyes; in altered pupils, altered shape. It showed in the set of his shoulders, almost hunched upon themselves. It showed in the mottled skin of his arms, bare and naked of lir-gold. It showed in the bones of his hands: fragile, brittle bones, rising up beneath the flesh to fuse themselves together and turn the fingers into talons.
Not a man. But neither a hawk. Some place between the two.
...maybe it's different after all.
Tynstar had taken Cai's body. Duncan couldn't give him passage to the gods.
Alix, Homanan Alix, vows to help. Finn is muttering oaths to the gods. Donal has a realization though. There are three of them. More than enough to help. They can do this.
Alix stroked Duncan’s silver hair. “Do you see? Your son is much like you. He will be a wise Mujhar.”
“Donal—” Finn began, and then he shut his eyes.
“Make me whole again,” Duncan begged.
The pain, all of their pain, permeates the scene.
The lir say it's dangerous. But...
There is much power in the earth, Taj said from a nearby tree. With three of you to summon it, augmented by three lir, you can call upon powerful sources. But there is danger in it.
And worth it, Donal said. This man is my jehan!
Slowly, Finn knelt down. He bowed his head in acquiescence.
Dangerous, Lorn said.
There's something about the moment Finn gives in that makes this hit so very hard.
(And are we SURE Alix's old blood came from her mother, because it kinda sorta looks like Finn is following that conversation?)
Finn takes the lead:
“Join hands,” Finn said. “The link must be physical as well as emotional and mental. What we do now will stretch the boundaries of the power; if those boundaries break, all will be unleashed. The magic will be wild.”
Donal, kneeling between father and uncle, looked at Finn sharply. “Wild—?”
“Before there were men and women in the world, there was magic in abundance. And all of it was wild. It made the world what it is. But it must be held in check if we are to live in the world.”
“Then—this could destroy the world….”
“Duncan would never risk that,” Alix said suddenly. She looked at the silver-haired man. “Would you? That much risk?”
His malformed hands trembled in hers; in Donal’s. “I am abomination. Make me whole again.”
Finn says it: Duncan would not risk it. But this isn't Duncan. Alix hesitates then, wondering if what they're doing is wrong. Finn asks Donal: is it wrong?
Donal has a pretty good speech here:
Deliberately, Donal looked into the eyes of the raptor who had once been his father. “It is not wrong if we can control the magic. Stretching the boundaries is not evil, if we learn from what we do. A risk not taken means nothing of consequence is ever learned.” Donal drew in an unsteady breath. “I say it must be done.”
“Down,” Finn whispered. “Down…and down…and down….”
So now, the void. Lots of surreal imagery of course. Donal calls out for his father as the void reaches out and grabs him. He feels a sword pierce his chest. He hears Alix scream that it's an Ihlini trap-link amidst the pain.
And then he wakes up. Finn is calling for him, looking rough:
Finn’s voice. Hoarse. Donal allowed the hand to drag him up from the ground. He flopped over onto his back.
Through slitted lids and merging lashes he saw Finn’s face. In the moonlight the scar was a black ditch dug into the flesh; the other side of his face was dirty. Scraped. As if he had been hurled bodily against the ground. His leathers were littered with dirt and leaves.
And Alix?
Alix was clearly dead. She lay sprawled on her back, arms and legs awry, spilling awkwardly from her clothing in the obscenity of death. Blood still crawled sluggishly from nose, ears, mouth. Her amber eyes were closed.
Son of a bitch.
Finn tells Donal, and us, that she saved them. There was enough power in the trap to kill four hundred Cheysuli, but Alix had thrown them out of the link and let it swallow her.
As for Duncan...
Transfixed, Donal looked slowly from mother to father. Like Alix, Duncan was sprawled in the dirt. The silent shadows lay across him, hiding malformed hands, hunching shoulders, the predatory eyes.
But not the fact that Duncan was not—quite—dead.
Donal begs to know if they made him whole:
“A toy,” Duncan said thickly, and there was—briefly—sanity in his eyes; his human, Cheysuli eyes. “Tynstar—made me—a toy—”
“Jehan—?”
“For fifteen years—a toy—”
Almost frenziedly, Donal dragged Duncan’s head and shoulders into his lap. Tentative hands stroked his father’s silvered hair. “Jehan,” he begged, “do not go—I have only just found you again—”
And in his arms, his father died.
And there we have it. Duncan returning from the dead to fuck over Alix one more time.
When I'm feeling up to it, I might talk more about Duncan. And how I honestly wonder if Roberson hated him as much as I do. Because his death in Song of Homana had been reasonably dignified, except for violating Alix's autonomy of course. But that's Duncan. Here, though.
Fifteen years of torture. He's physically transformed to the point of losing his humanity (and does this happen to every warrior who loses a lir, or is that Tynstar's doing?!), he's used as a weapon against his people, and he dies ignobly, without dignity, whimpering in his son's arms.
On the other hand, the story is still apt to lionize Duncan, so maybe we're just meant to be horrified. I am. I absolutely am.
But right now. Right now, for me. It's all about Alix.
I know this is a generational saga, and therefore the old guard has to die. But Alix was only thirty-nine years old!
She was the one saving grace of a truly terrible book. She spent most of that book getting manipulated and abused. She discovered her strength and power, only to have her narrative significance abruptly reduced to the product of her womb.
Song of Homana was a better book, but Alix didn't benefit. She was mostly off screen until her diabolus ex machina kidnap and rape. And sudden widowhood. But I guess there's always a silver lining. Then she had fifteen years in which to make her own life. I hope she was happy.
Alix's death was quick, at least, and she got to go out saving people that she loved, but I will never not be bitter about this. Alix deserved better.
Maybe just this: I'm sorry Alix, you deserved better.
We last left off at the oubliette. Carillon had his life changing experience here. I'm not sure Donal really needs it, seeing as how he's Cheysuli already. But I do like the parallels. Duncan brought Carillon here for his test, and Carillon brings Donal.
In a way, this whole thing recontextualizes Carillon's own test. Duncan wasn't Mujhar, but he could have been. If the Cheysuli hadn't left Homana to its own governance. Carillon's predecessor was a monster, so Duncan acts in his place. (In a better version of Shapechangers, we'd have explored this more.)
Anyway, Donal's alone in the darkness. He can feel the door, and he thinks about its beauty. In another palace, it would be a monument for all to admire; in Homana-Mujhar, it was a place of subtle secrets.
I'm not sure I'd go so far as "subtle", but I do love the emphasis that the palace predates the realm as we know it.
Donal stands at the edge of the pit, says the Cheysuli mantra (Tahlmorra lujhala mei wiccan, cheysu) and is about to leap when the vault suddenly fills with light, and a slender cloaked figure raises a torch to strike him down. It has slender, delicate hands.
In silence, he thrust up his bare left arm. He felt the heat of the flames as they scorched his flesh; he smelled the stench of the charnelhouse. Pain blossomed. He heard himself cry out.
Again the torch thrust for his face; again he thrust it away. He felt the burned flesh of his arm crack, and the sticky wetness of blood.
The attack had done its work. Off-balance, teetering on the brink, Donal reached out to catch the assassin’s arm and caught the flames instead. He fell backward into darkness.
With a muted scream, he stretched out his arms and tried to catch the rim.
It's a nice sequence with an eerie sense of silence. Anyway, Donal ends up striking his head as he falls in. Things get surreal, though it seems like he does manage to take falcon shape. Unfortunately the change in mass and weight disorient him, and he ends up crashing into the side, damaging his wing. But he does seem to escape the pit. It's all very visceral:
Sound filled up the vault. He heard it clearly: a husky, raspy, throaty sobbing, as if it came from a man with no breath left to cry aloud.
He was wet with sweat. His leathers were soaked, rank with the smell of his fear. He lay belly-down on the floor of the vault and pressed his face into the stone, compressing flesh against the bone.
No light.
The torch was gone. He lay in total darkness. But for the moment he did not care; all he wanted was to know he was alive.
No birth symbolism for Donal. Also, his arm is broken. An injury to lir form translates to the same in human form. And it's not a simple fracture either. The bone may have shattered, and there are the burns from earlier. He calls for his lir and makes a strained quip about how if this was the test for acceptance, he'd prefer not to repeat it.
He wakes later, in a bedroom. Carillon is there. So is Finn. This isn't Donal's first awakening from the sound of it as he immediately pleads with Finn not to let them take his arm.
Carillon and Finn have different perspectives:
Carillon looked at Finn compassionately, but tension was in his tone. “The bones are badly broken. And the burns—they could poison him in three days.”
“You cannot take his arm.” Finn moved toward the bed with Storr padding at his side. “You know better, Carillon.”
“What do I know? That foolishness about a maimed warrior not being a useful man?” Carillon thrust out his twisted hands. “See you these? I am crippled, Finn—but I rule Homana still!”
Finn bent over his nephew. “A maimed warrior cannot fight. He cannot hunt. He cannot tend his pavilion. He cannot protect his woman or his children. He cannot protect himself.” He felt Donal’s burning brow. “You know all this, Carillon—I was the one who told you. A maimed warrior cannot serve his clan, nor can he serve the prophecy. He is useless to his people.”
Carillon may have had a mind altering experience, but he isn't Cheysuli. And here is a major difference.
There's this weird idea that I saw a lot in bad 80s-90s sci-fi that "primitive" cultures necessitate being ableist as fuck. (See, for example, the Earth Final Conflict episode where Maiya admits to Doctor Sparrow that her people would have left him to die.) And that's always irritated me because, while Native and nomadic cultures aren't monolithic, there's plenty of evidence of care and concern for disability. People adapt!
Unsurprisingly, along with being utterly horrid to women, the Cheysuli culture is also ableist as fuck, going so far as to essentially excommunicate disabled warriors. You'd think, given that they're one generation past a purge, they could get over that. But it is what it is. Donal is fortunate. Finn is here to heal him. (After some bickering with Carillon of course.)
The plot thread won't go much farther in this book, as I recall. But the Cheysuli attitude toward disability will come up again in later books, without the easy solution we have here. Niall's missing eye, Brennan's claustrophobia, Hart's amputated hand, and Aidan's not quite defined non-neurotypicality will all make this plot point very relevant again.
So they ask Donal what happened, and he relays exactly what we just read. Finn does the healing, and Donal recovers for three days. Then he goes to see Carillon. Carillon isn't alone:
Alix sat on a three-legged stool before the fireplace, indigo skirts spread around her feet as she nursed a goblet of hot wine; Donal could see the faintest breath of steam rising from the surface. Finn sat in a deep-silled casement, silhouetted against the sunlight and framed by chiseled stone. At his feet lay Storr, eyes shut. Carillon filled a tooled leather chair with his legs stretched out before him. From the tight-drawn look of the flesh around the Mujhar’s eyes, Donal knew he was in pain.
“One good thing has come of this….” Donal shut the heavy door. “It brought my su’fali back to Homana-Mujhar.”
Donal's a shipper too.
Finn does remind him that he'd already decided to come to the wedding. But they've more important things to discuss, mainly what happened.
Carillon remembers the way Taj and Lorn panicked, and wonders how anyone could have known Donal was down there.
Finn points out that the Womb isn't completely secret. But there are very few Homanans who'd know of it. He asks a pointed question:
“Still—I doubt any Homanans would know of it, save yourself. Who else is in this palace?”
“Oh Finn, you cannot expect us to believe someone from Carillon’s household did this!” Alix shook her head. “They are too loyal to Carillon.”
“Loyal to Carillon and Homana,” Finn said evenly. “Rank aside, there is a fundamental difference between Carillon and Donal.”
Finn's is a man who watched his lover die, because no one would help a Cheysuli's lover, even though she was a princess. He knows exactly what he's talking about.
We get another bit that's just weird:
Alix looked back at him levelly. The sunlight lay full on her face, leaching shadows from planes and angles to give her youth again. Donal could almost see the seventeen-year-old girl Finn had stolen from Carillon, then lost to his older brother.
But the moment was fleeting; Donal, looking from his mother to his uncle, saw only a warrior and a woman, kin to one another through their father. Hale was in their faces.
And had it not been for that jehan and Carillon’s foolish cousin, none of us would be here.
a) This is weird even if I didn't read Shapechangers. Please stop reminding us that Finn wanted to bang his sister.
b) The fact that this is immediately followed by their shared resemblance makes it weirder.
c) Also, I see we're back to victim blaming Lindir. I think Finn is the only character who appropriately places blame on Hale instead. We're probably supposed to read that as daddy issues. But he's right.
Anyway, Carillon considers foreigners. Gryffth comes up, which delights me. I hope he and Rowan are still exchanging weird foreign pet names. Carillon trusts Gryffth with both of their lives, and Finn agrees.
Donal brings up the elephant in the room, the one Finn was getting at earlier: it could be a Homanan who wants to see someone else as Carillon's heir. He can't imagine one that would wish him DEAD, but he remembers his reception in Hondarth. (Carillon hadn't known and demands to be filled in.)
This conversation is important:
“I am not surprised,” Finn went on calmly. “I think there are many Homanans who care little enough that we exist—there is nothing they can do about that, short of starting another qu’mahlin—but I also think they would actively resist a Cheysuli as Mujhar. And you are next in line.”
Donal frowned. “But would they try to have me slain?”
Alix’s mouth was grim as she looked at Finn. “Would they?”
He shrugged. “It is possible. Shaine’s qu’mahlin was a powerful thing. It bred hatred and fear upon hatred and fear, and fed off violence and ignorance.” He glanced at the Mujhar. “I remember what it was like when Carillon and I came back from Caledon. The purge was over, but there were many Homanans who desired to see me dead.” For the first time a trace of bleakness entered his tone. “We would be wise not to discount the possibility that the qu’mahlin still exists for those who wish it to.”
“Even now?” Donal demanded. “You and Carillon came back nearly twenty years ago. Time has passed. Things change. People get older and less inclined to violence.” He shrugged. “Perhaps there are some bigots left, but surely not enough to do Homana harm.”
Finn eyed him. “I am fifty. Old, to your way of thinking, harani. And would you consider me a nonviolent man?”
a) This is a fascinating group of characters to have this conversation: the king who ended the purge, the woman born of the illicit relationship, the Cheysuli who will be king, and Finn.
b) At the same time, Finn is the only one of the four to have directly experienced the horror of the qu'mahlin both during Shaine's reign and after Carillon ended it. This is real to him in a way that it can't be to the others.
c) I notice that Roberson's gone back to the Shapechangers timeline. Song's modified timeline would make Finn forty-seven rather than fifty. It probably doesn't matter much anymore though.
Carillon wonders if it will ever end, and what will happen when he's dead. Finn points out that it'll be Donal's problem.
Alix has a new topic though: who tried to murder her son.
They ask Donal what he remembers, and eventually he gets a few details:
Donal was conscious of their waiting faces, reflecting expectations. He frowned in concentration, summoning up the memory in vivid recollection. “Much shorter than I—even you, su’fali. Slender. The cloak was not a large one. And I remember hands.” He sat up so rigidly he nearly overturned the table. “Hands! The hands upon the torch!” He stared blindly at Finn, seeing only the hands upon the torch. “Slim, pale, delicate hands, clutching a torch that seemed too heavy, too awkward for a man—” He stopped short. Stunned, he turned to Carillon. “My lord—it was a woman—”
...Is Finn short?
I mean, I never really thought about it. He didn't seem so in Shapechangers, but that was Alix's point of view, and Alix is a small woman. Carillon is a giant, so Finn's size was relative. I'm not sure why, but the idea that Finn might be short delights me, but also causes me to re-imagine everything!
But anyway, back to the plot. No, I'm not stalling. Why do you ask?
Anyway, Carillon begs him to say it wasn't Electra. Finn negates that, he would sense her. Apparently the trap-link she'd sprung on him in Song has "bound" them forever.
That's a little fascinating. Can we explore that a bit more? Can you do Ihlini magic?
Aislinn is a suggestion: which Carillon refutes emphatically. And even poor Bronwyn is mentioned, which Alix denies passionately.
They can't rule either girl out though. Finn tested Aislinn, and thought he'd rid her of Tynstar's resonance, but he can't be sure. And Bronwyn is Tynstar's daughter.
Their speculation is interrupted by a message from Sorcha at the Keep, delivered by Sef: Bronwyn is gone. Finn, Alix and Donal leave immediately.
--
Five wolves and a falcon run. Storr is silver, Finn is ruddy, Lorn is also ruddy, while Donal is grey. Interestingly, Alix has changed color from what we saw in Shapechangers: she's now pale silver with a black tipped tail.
Donal keeps thinking about Bronwyn. He also feels like he's starting to get lost in his lir shape, and starts to panic that he'll get trapped in that shape. He ends up telling them, through Lorn that they have to stop.
They all stop to rest.
Alix is frantically worried. Finn reassures her. There's a point where he calls her meijha, which actually wouldn't be so creepy if Donal didn't make it so:
Donal nearly smiled at Finn’s use of the inaccurate term. Alix had never been Finn’s meijha, but that had not stopped him from wishing she would someday change her mind.
Honestly, Roberson, if Donal hadn't said that, I'd have just read it as a private joke. Also, they're STILL SIBLINGS.
Anyway, Alix and Finn, both being parents, do understand each other. Donal starts to hit on an epiphany: that whatever else Bronwyn is, as far as she knows, Duncan is her father. But they're interrupted.
Here we go.
But it was not Bronwyn. It was not a woman. It was a man. A man who had once been Cheysuli.
He was a shadow within shadows, a wraith among the trees. There was no sound, only silence; the silence born of the passing of a spirit on its way to the afterworld. Insubstantiality, Donal thought; yet it had substance. It was not a wraith, but a man. Not a shadow: a man who was once a warrior.
A warrior without a lir.
Out of the shadows a man stepped into the luminescence of the moon, and they saw his face clearly: old/young; human/inhuman; of sorrow and bittersweet joy. And his face, in the moonlight, was Donal’s, but carved of older, harder wood.
“Forgive me,” he said; two words, but filled with an agony of need.
The spectre of lir loss has been present since the very beginning of the series. In one of the first battles, Borrs lost his lir and left to die, a decision Alix didn't understand. In Song of Homana, Carillon almost lost Finn, and would have, had they not saved Storr too. And of course, Duncan lost Cai.
But we've always been Alix, or Carillon, knowing the rule: that a Cheysuli must die when his lir does, without completely understanding why.
But now, maybe, just maybe, we start to understand.
Because this is Duncan.
Interestingly, there's almost no description of Duncan himself at first. Instead, the focus is entirely on the other characters' reactions:
Donal:
Donal felt his senses waver. For an instant, the ground seemed to move beneath his feet. He put out a hand to steady himself, and when his fingers touched the trunk of the nearest tree he found himself turning to press against it. Clinging to it. Clinging, as if he could not stand up.
And he knew, as he clung, he could not. He could only press his face against the bark and let it bite into his flesh.
Alix:
It was Alix who moved first. Donal expected her to run to Duncan. To grab him, kiss him, hold him. To cry out his name and her love. But she did none of those things.
Instead, she turned her back.
Her face, Donal saw, was ravaged. “If I look—if I look—he will be gone…gone…again. If I look—he will be gone.”
Finn:
Slowly Finn reached out and closed a hand around one of Alix’s arms. Donal saw how the fingers pressed against the fabric of her gown—pressing, pressing—until Donal thought she would cry out because of the pain.
But Alix did not.
It was Finn who cried.
“No,” Duncan said. “Oh no…”
“You.” Finn’s voice was ragged. “You stoop to apostasy—”
And those reactions hit so hard.
Alix of course argues with Finn, how can he call a miracle apostasy. But Duncan agrees with him. And Alix FINALLY gets a chance to demand answers:
“Because you are alive?” Alix shook her head. Donal saw how she trembled. “I begged you not to go. Why waste a life? But you denied me. You said you had to go because your lir was slain.” She tried to steady her voice. “How can you come back now? Why did you stay away—if the death-ritual could be left unheeded?”
Finn keeps her from running to Duncan, and we finally see:
Duncan moved a single step closer to all of them. And his face was free of shadow, open to them all.
It was in the eyes. Donal saw it even as Finn and Alix did. Emptiness, aye. Sorrow: an abundance of it. Such pain as a man, left sane, could never know.
But there was no sanity left in Duncan.
I'm not going to lie, this scene is very well done. I want to excerpt the whole thing.
Donal can see it: his father is back, but this isn't his father. Alix doesn't comprehend. And Finn...Finn is angry, in the way that only a truly scared person can be.
Duncan stopped. His head twisted quickly, faintly, oddly to one side, jerking his chin toward his shoulder. Twice; no more. A nervous tic, Donal thought dazedly. He knew other men who had them. But—this was something more.
“I need you,” Duncan said. “I need you all.”
Finn wants to know what a dead man could want. And Roberson is legitimately phenomenal here:
“Finn—” That from Alix, in horror, but he cut her off again.
“A lirless man is a dead man, of no value to his clan. He is half a man, and empty, lacking spirit, lacking soul.” Finn’s chant sounded almost bitter. “Is that not what we believe?”
Remember how the clans feel about disability. This doesn't sound that much different. Maybe...maybe Finn is wrong.
Duncan pleads with them for help. They can find the magic and make him whole again. And it's...so wretched:
“Finn!” Duncan cried. “Would you have me beg for this?”
Do not beg, do not beg—not you—not Duncan of the Cheysuli—that man does not beg—
Without waiting for an answer, Duncan dropped to his knees. His head, tilted up, exposed the look of mute appeal. He was a supplicant to his brother. To his wife. And to his son. “Can you not see why I come to be here?”
Now, they could. Clearly. It showed in the eyes; in altered pupils, altered shape. It showed in the set of his shoulders, almost hunched upon themselves. It showed in the mottled skin of his arms, bare and naked of lir-gold. It showed in the bones of his hands: fragile, brittle bones, rising up beneath the flesh to fuse themselves together and turn the fingers into talons.
Not a man. But neither a hawk. Some place between the two.
...maybe it's different after all.
Tynstar had taken Cai's body. Duncan couldn't give him passage to the gods.
Alix, Homanan Alix, vows to help. Finn is muttering oaths to the gods. Donal has a realization though. There are three of them. More than enough to help. They can do this.
Alix stroked Duncan’s silver hair. “Do you see? Your son is much like you. He will be a wise Mujhar.”
“Donal—” Finn began, and then he shut his eyes.
“Make me whole again,” Duncan begged.
The pain, all of their pain, permeates the scene.
The lir say it's dangerous. But...
There is much power in the earth, Taj said from a nearby tree. With three of you to summon it, augmented by three lir, you can call upon powerful sources. But there is danger in it.
And worth it, Donal said. This man is my jehan!
Slowly, Finn knelt down. He bowed his head in acquiescence.
Dangerous, Lorn said.
There's something about the moment Finn gives in that makes this hit so very hard.
(And are we SURE Alix's old blood came from her mother, because it kinda sorta looks like Finn is following that conversation?)
Finn takes the lead:
“Join hands,” Finn said. “The link must be physical as well as emotional and mental. What we do now will stretch the boundaries of the power; if those boundaries break, all will be unleashed. The magic will be wild.”
Donal, kneeling between father and uncle, looked at Finn sharply. “Wild—?”
“Before there were men and women in the world, there was magic in abundance. And all of it was wild. It made the world what it is. But it must be held in check if we are to live in the world.”
“Then—this could destroy the world….”
“Duncan would never risk that,” Alix said suddenly. She looked at the silver-haired man. “Would you? That much risk?”
His malformed hands trembled in hers; in Donal’s. “I am abomination. Make me whole again.”
Finn says it: Duncan would not risk it. But this isn't Duncan. Alix hesitates then, wondering if what they're doing is wrong. Finn asks Donal: is it wrong?
Donal has a pretty good speech here:
Deliberately, Donal looked into the eyes of the raptor who had once been his father. “It is not wrong if we can control the magic. Stretching the boundaries is not evil, if we learn from what we do. A risk not taken means nothing of consequence is ever learned.” Donal drew in an unsteady breath. “I say it must be done.”
“Down,” Finn whispered. “Down…and down…and down….”
So now, the void. Lots of surreal imagery of course. Donal calls out for his father as the void reaches out and grabs him. He feels a sword pierce his chest. He hears Alix scream that it's an Ihlini trap-link amidst the pain.
And then he wakes up. Finn is calling for him, looking rough:
Finn’s voice. Hoarse. Donal allowed the hand to drag him up from the ground. He flopped over onto his back.
Through slitted lids and merging lashes he saw Finn’s face. In the moonlight the scar was a black ditch dug into the flesh; the other side of his face was dirty. Scraped. As if he had been hurled bodily against the ground. His leathers were littered with dirt and leaves.
And Alix?
Alix was clearly dead. She lay sprawled on her back, arms and legs awry, spilling awkwardly from her clothing in the obscenity of death. Blood still crawled sluggishly from nose, ears, mouth. Her amber eyes were closed.
Son of a bitch.
Finn tells Donal, and us, that she saved them. There was enough power in the trap to kill four hundred Cheysuli, but Alix had thrown them out of the link and let it swallow her.
As for Duncan...
Transfixed, Donal looked slowly from mother to father. Like Alix, Duncan was sprawled in the dirt. The silent shadows lay across him, hiding malformed hands, hunching shoulders, the predatory eyes.
But not the fact that Duncan was not—quite—dead.
Donal begs to know if they made him whole:
“A toy,” Duncan said thickly, and there was—briefly—sanity in his eyes; his human, Cheysuli eyes. “Tynstar—made me—a toy—”
“Jehan—?”
“For fifteen years—a toy—”
Almost frenziedly, Donal dragged Duncan’s head and shoulders into his lap. Tentative hands stroked his father’s silvered hair. “Jehan,” he begged, “do not go—I have only just found you again—”
And in his arms, his father died.
And there we have it. Duncan returning from the dead to fuck over Alix one more time.
When I'm feeling up to it, I might talk more about Duncan. And how I honestly wonder if Roberson hated him as much as I do. Because his death in Song of Homana had been reasonably dignified, except for violating Alix's autonomy of course. But that's Duncan. Here, though.
Fifteen years of torture. He's physically transformed to the point of losing his humanity (and does this happen to every warrior who loses a lir, or is that Tynstar's doing?!), he's used as a weapon against his people, and he dies ignobly, without dignity, whimpering in his son's arms.
On the other hand, the story is still apt to lionize Duncan, so maybe we're just meant to be horrified. I am. I absolutely am.
But right now. Right now, for me. It's all about Alix.
I know this is a generational saga, and therefore the old guard has to die. But Alix was only thirty-nine years old!
She was the one saving grace of a truly terrible book. She spent most of that book getting manipulated and abused. She discovered her strength and power, only to have her narrative significance abruptly reduced to the product of her womb.
Song of Homana was a better book, but Alix didn't benefit. She was mostly off screen until her diabolus ex machina kidnap and rape. And sudden widowhood. But I guess there's always a silver lining. Then she had fifteen years in which to make her own life. I hope she was happy.
Alix's death was quick, at least, and she got to go out saving people that she loved, but I will never not be bitter about this. Alix deserved better.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-30 06:19 am (UTC)Facts!
“A toy,” Duncan said thickly, and there was—briefly—sanity in his eyes; his human, Cheysuli eyes. “Tynstar—made me—a toy—”
“Jehan—?”
“For fifteen years—a toy—”
Almost frenziedly, Donal dragged Duncan’s head and shoulders into his lap. Tentative hands stroked his father’s silvered hair. “Jehan,” he begged, “do not go—I have only just found you again—”
And in his arms, his father died.
A toy? Like you turned Alix? Ok bb. I honestly can't feel bad about Duncan.
Alix was clearly dead. She lay sprawled on her back, arms and legs awry, spilling awkwardly from her clothing in the obscenity of death. Blood still crawled sluggishly from nose, ears, mouth. Her amber eyes were closed.
Now this is something to feel bad about. She was a hero and died a hero.
And she needed a hug.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-30 07:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-06-30 07:05 am (UTC)Also, out of spite, I wrote this list where Alix basically is more competent.
no subject
Date: 2021-06-30 12:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-10 03:44 am (UTC)I wish more of this book was as effective as that conversation about the qu’mahlin or Duncan's return
no subject
Date: 2021-07-10 03:50 am (UTC)