Where the Goddess Sends

In which Moonhawk and Lute meet and decide to travel together across the world.

If I was right yesterday, then this is the first time we’ve seen Moonhawk and Lute since the Great Migration – and my, how they’ve changed.

This Moonhawk is human, a priestess of the Goddess. This Lute is human, as well, and though he is a Master of prestidigitation, in contrast to his former self he can wield only enough actual magic to summon a small light, and even that costs him a great deal of effort.

It has to be said that this Lute is much more entertaining than the old one. (Perhaps that’s only to be expected of a man who makes his living as an entertainer.) Moonhawk has something of a dry sense of humor as well. So, come to that, does the narrator, particularly when it comes to people being knocked on the head.

This is also the first time we’ve heard of the Goddess, and won’t be the last. She comes in somewhere in every story set on Sintia, and more remarkably in several stories that aren’t; the Goddess seems to have a presence on many planets. (For those who might find an active Goddess an incongruous thing to find in a space opera, the account of the Great Weaving in Crystal Dragon implicitly provides a context.)

The world they’re travelling through is a bit of a mixture. It seems to be generally sort of medieval, but there are stories about “the ship that brought our foremothers here”, and lingering bits of technology.

Lute mentions Huntress City, famous for its electric lights. In “Moon’s Honor”, we see Dyan City, with its electric lights; I’m not sure whether these are the same city at different points in its history or if there’s more than one city with electric lights. (Dyan is said in “Moon’s Honor” to be one of “the Three Cities”, which perhaps suggests the latter.) Either way, juxtaposing the two names brings to mind the Romans’ Diana, a noted huntress and goddess of the moon. I bet the authors had her in mind, but I don’t know if the Sintians knew enough Roman mythology to be using it for place names.

The part about the two things which must without fail be said is striking, and I have always remembered it. (And since reading “Moonphase”, I have often wondered if the version of this story Priscilla learned included the two things – assuming that her teachers told this story at all.)

6 thoughts on “Where the Goddess Sends

  1. H in W

    When I read this story, I always wonder how safe the “blue tube” will be in Huntress City. Corruption reaches into everywhere eventually — and we know that lies are acceptable to Mendoza’s superiors on her home world. Perhaps in this Lute and Moonhawk’s time, the blue tube will be safe.

  2. Late to the party

    This particular story makes me think that the authors owe a debt to the influence of Andre Norton – save that Norton never wrote a such a gay cavalier as Lute is.

  3. Ed8r

    Coming back to this story, I don’t have much to say. But I’ll add my agreement with Late to the party, that the mixture of medieval-level society with old tech reminds me also of many Norton novels. Whether the blue tube will actually be safe, I also have my doubts. But possibly safe-er than it was where it was!

  4. Ed8r

    And coming back again after just finishing the duology, I find myself really confused about why Lute and Moonhawk ended up as they have, as reincarnating personas. I wish the authors would work out some kind of rationale for what happened to them in the New Universe that made them like this rather than being reproducing humans, as seems to have happened with Rool Tiazen. Was it merely a matter of choice? Weren’t the created vessels for all of those coming along into the New Universe the same? There is a definite gap here that leaves me very curious.

  5. Paul A. Post author

    I’m pretty confident that the authors have worked out a rationale for this; just because they haven’t chosen to share it explicitly with the readers doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. (We might get the full explanation when we get the story of Priscilla and Shan fulfilling their destinies as this era’s Moonhawk and Lute, if we ever get that story.)

    In the mean time, there are a few hints in the duology’s scenes involving Lute and Moonhawk in Crystal Dragon, one big one being this: that Moonhawk and Lute are involved in a project called the Great Weaving, as part of a group of dramliz whose number is the same as the number of Names in Priscilla’s religion. And Rool Tiazan isn’t.

  6. Ed8r

    Thanks Paul. Somehow I never connected the point that Rool is not involved in this weaving project. I had thought it was structured for all the dominant-submissive entities who were traveling on the energy wave into the New Universe.

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