Light Wing
Transitioning to the Ringstars
In which there is a calm before the storm.
The part with Rool Tiazan and his lady is packed with vague foreboding, isn’t it.
And the part with homesick young Tor An yos’Galan is packed with dramatic irony. Poor Tor An.
Maybe this chapter is less sad to read if you hadn’t read the books before.
But even if you hadn’t, I don’t think that you would say anything other than “Poor Tor An”, who is clearly set up to not get what he is yearning for.
Once again Rool speaks of “diminishing” (as he did at the end of the previous book) but he reminds himself and his Lady, presumably, that he has already experienced a diminishing…when he was bound to his biologic form. And he is willing to diminish rather than be utterly annihilated. In reference to the Prologue, perhaps a zaliata is conscious of being diminished in a way the tumzaliat are not?
It is interesting, in retrospect, to realize that we never really get a comparison of the difference between zaliata versus tumzaliat following their binding to a biologic form. Is Rool significantly more powerful, or rather is the dramliza he forms with his lady significantly more powerful, than the dramliza formed from tumzaliat with their dominants? We do know that, because of his willfulness in choosing either independence or total annihilation for himself, that he was allowed to retain a sense of self that is apparently missing in most other pairings. Except, then we’ve got Lute and Moonhawk, who also seem to be able to distinguish between the two parts of a single unit and work independently of each other, right? Do we have a clear picture of their history with each other in the old universe? And while I can understand the Tiazen blood as providing the capability for Daav and Aeliana and then Val Con and Miri to form a similar kind of unit, it does not really explain why Lute and Moonhawk would be reincarnated in that genetic line, rather than founding their own, does it?
I don’t think we really have a clear picture of Lute’s and Moonhawk’s history in the Old Universe. The question that immediately comes to mind is whether Lute was also a zaliata instead of a tumzaliat. Maybe it’s the wild nature of zaliata in general that allows the independence, not just something peculiar to Rool Tiazan.
My answers to these questions are in the comments on the post for chapter 8.
I must have missed where it said that Lute was a zaliata. I wasn’t sure if he was that or a tumzaliat.