Crystal Dragon – Chapter 33

Spiral Dance
Solcintra

In which the leave-takings begin.

Jela’s Troop are shipping out with the rest of Captain Wellik’s soldier boys – and have received an official troop designation, so henceforth they are an actual Troop and not just a bunch of people united by shared experiences and a nickname.

Cantra sends Spiral Dance off on autopilot, with a seedling from the tree as passenger or crew. I’d got the idea somewhere that this was a distraction mission, in case the Enemy were looking for Dancer, but that’s not the impression I’m getting this reading. The way Cantra talks, it’s so they both have a chance of survival: Dancer has a better chance of survival on the move than sitting on the ground on a planet that’s about to be attacked, and the seedling’s there to give Jela’s legacy another chance if Quick Passage perishes, and Cantra and the tree along with it. You pay your debts, as best you can.

12 thoughts on “Crystal Dragon – Chapter 33

  1. H in W

    With no one to care for the seedling, how will it survive? But maybe it can look after itself? There is water on Dancer, for its crew, so maybe that is sufficient for the seedling. Who knows all of what one of those trees can do. And there are dramliz about, who respect the tree.

    Farewell to Dancer. That goodbye hit Cantra hard. Fortunately, they’ll keep her too busy to eat her heart out over might-have-beens. Not that she’d approve of pining. Very practical sort, is Cantra.

  2. Jelala Alone

    I always thought Sprial Dance was sent off to distract and seduce the enemy, too. Now, I think it might be that your new take is more like it.

    I wonder how Jela’s / Wellick’s Troop made it into the new Liaden Universe? We know some of that troop made it, because of Nelirrik. Or, maybe the Yxtrang that were assigned to provide duty on board Quick Passage are his predecessors. I never understood how any other ships made it safely into the new universe, since only Quick Passage had the latest and newest coords.

    As H in W said, I wondered how baby tree survived for so long, too. I figured Cantra rigged up a drip system, but who knows… Now, knowing what happens in Dragon Ship, I wonder other things. That tree is too small to be 1400 years old. Unless it can restrict its own growth, to fit in the cockpit.

  3. Paul A. Post author

    I remember being really puzzled how everyone else got into the new universe, too, the first time I read it.

    The way I understand it now – mostly from things the authors have said in interviews, rather than what’s explicit in the books – is that the dramliz (Rool Tiazan and his lady, and the sisters involved in the Great Weaving) somehow arranged matters so that when the Enemy’s decrystallization wave hit, instead of being destroyed outright, people and things were transferred into the new universe. Quick Passage, by being in transition at the moment the wave hit, somehow acted as a navigator, so that they all ended up in the universe Liad dea’Syl’s calculations had determined. (I’m still fuzzy on the details of how it all worked, I admit.)

    Another thing the authors have said in interviews is that people didn’t arrive in the universe in the same relative positions they’d been in when they left – in space or in time. Some of the people and things arrived years, decades or centuries before Quick Passage; others (as we see in Dragon Ship) are still arriving centuries after. From the seedling’s point of view, it’s been only a few days since it left Solcintra.

  4. Linda Shoun

    Another small addition to the ideas, don’t recall it being specifically mentioned. Since the Tree protected its planet from the Enemy —– no reason to assume that ability has disappeared. And seems reasonable that the seedling would inherit the ability. So mini-Tree helps protect Spiral Dance survive.

  5. Jelala Alone or just Jami

    Linda, yes. I think that’s very likely about Spiral Dance and baby tree. And recall how Tree on Quick Passage gave pause to the Enemy, sending out “a vast, green, implacable rage of life” ???

  6. Ed8r

    @Jami (and others): Even at third reading, I see the seedling and Spiral Dance as being sent off to distract the Enemy, even for a very short time.

    In place of a pilot, Dancer is put into the “wounded-pilot protocol,” with the nav-brain given leave to do anything it liked to pursue the coordinates given. Meanwhile, the seedling is helping complete the illusion by providing the presence of a ssussdriad, which…in the next chapter…is sending insults of dragons while the Elder Tree is sitting silent, its essence folded close.

  7. Othin

    @decoy or second chance of survival
    Why can’t it be both? I always thought Cantra to be layered enough to use Dancer for both motives, especially since the decoy enhances her chances of survival. And since she also knows that tree held back the enemy, putting baby tree on dancer was part decoy as well as helping Dancer survive. I suspect tree to fight the enemy with an ability similar to Rools. Influencing chance. And that neatly explains the autopilot setting.

  8. Dr. Dredd

    Ever since I read the book, I’ve wondered what an “insult of dragons” would look like. A flaming Bronx Cheer?

  9. Ed8r

    Except that the purpose of a Bronx cheer is merely to express derision; whereas I always feel that the “insult of dragons” is a flurry of darts flung out mostly with the purpose to distract purely by their multiplicity, even though they do not have the power to do real damage. The insult being in their very powerlessness.

  10. Dr. Dredd

    I was mostly speaking tongue in cheek, but you bring up an interesting point. The Iloheen would surely perceive anything that distracted them and slowed down their “perfection” as the ultimate insult.

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