Tag Archives: Fourteen

Moonphase

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In which Priscilla Mendoza is cast out.

There’s a lot more in this story than I noticed the first time I read it, and much of it I’m not sure I have a solid grip on yet.

One thing I do feel confident saying is that the arc of the Moonhawk and Lute stories, from “Where the Goddess Sends” to here (and beyond, to the extent that Moonhawk and the Goddess continue to be mentioned) is a lot clearer to me after this re-read, and particularly with the addition of “Moon’s Honor”, which did a lot to clarify which details are recurring themes.

The tendency Moonhawk talks to Priscilla about in this story, of the Circle’s purpose being waylaid by the greed of power and personal importance, is one of those recurring themes. The impression I get is that Lute and Moonhawk have been acting as a counter to that tendency; one thing Moonhawk’s travels with Lute achieve, in both versions we’ve seen, is to remind her to think about the Temple’s role and its effects on the other people of the world (with the result, not shown but implied by Moonhawk’s nature, that having realised the Temple is out of line she’ll do what she can to put things right).

So it’s worrying that Moonhawk says here that the Circle having been keeping her apart from Lute, and keeping her in check by limiting the tools she has to work with. That means the power-hungry have had centuries to get hungrier and less thoughtful, and to bend the workings of the Temple toward their purposes. (I wonder who first starting restricting Moonhawk’s actions, and how much they understood of what they were doing.)

(A second thing I wonder about is the Names. It’s mentioned that there are fourteen living Names, which is the same number of Names who bound themselves to the Goddess’ path in Crystal Dragon — except that one of those was Lute, so they can’t be exactly the same fourteen. And the two Names Priscilla calls out during the climactic confrontation are modern-sounding names, not like “Moonhawk” or “Oatflower”. Added to something that was mentioned in “A Matter of Dreams”, the impression I get is that these days there are more than fourteen Names being reincarnated in the service of the Goddess, with perhaps a restriction that only fourteen may be incarnated at any one time. And that makes me wonder if there’s any deck-stacking going on, so that the Names who might want to resist the Temple’s slide from grace are being edged out by Names who support it.)

One of the later novels indicates that there is a Lute to go with this Moonhawk, who would be at this time still a halfling boy only a couple of years older than Priscilla. No wonder Moonhawk warns Priscilla that he can’t yet stand against the Circle directly. (A third thing I wonder is whether that means he will stand against the Circle some day. I can’t imagine Moonhawk and Lute letting them go on getting away with this forever.)

Tomorrow, we round off the tale of Priscilla’s departure with the Prologue to Conflict of Honors. If you’re not wanting to split things up, you can skip it until next week when we return and do the rest of Conflict of Honors, and we’ll see you in a couple of days.

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 35

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In which we’re leaving together, but still it’s farewell.

This is the only chapter in the duology that doesn’t have a caption saying, however ambiguously, where it takes place.

I think the mention of Dancer, “singing sweet seduction to her makers”, must be where I got the idea that she was sent off to act as a decoy; whether that was Cantra’s intention, it’s what she’s doing. (And I love the image of the seedling adding its own insulting messages.)

Hands up, anyone who thinks the Iloheen’s being honest in its offer to promote Rool Tiazan’s lady if she comes quietly. Nobody? Didn’t think so.

I was right about Rool Tiazan’s bargain with the ambitious dramliza, it looks like. (Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are twelve kinds of twisty.)

The “vast and implacable greenness” is interesting. A last-ditch attempt by the ssussdriad? Or … something else? (Do they have Turtles in this universe?)

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 28

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Solcintra

In which certain negotiations take place.

The two Solcintran negotiators both have names that recur in the Liaden Universe – which is perhaps only to be expected. Some of Nalli Olanek’s descendants will find themselves in dispute with some of Tor An’s descendants in Conflict of Honors, and Clan Hedrede is mentioned a couple of times in Scout’s Progress and Mouse and Dragon, with a Dath jo’Bern of that clan being an incidental character in the latter. (With thanks to the Liaden Wiki – my memory for obscure details is not that good.)

The Enemy have taken out High Command in its withdrawn and reinforced position, without having to pass through any of the intervening space, which just shows how much good that did.

We see the origin of Cantra’s logbook, which will become a tradition upheld by her successors; that answers something I’d been wondering aloud a while back.

Another thing I’d been wondering, though it never quite got to aloud, was about Moonhawk and Lute’s colleagues in the Great Weaving. It’s pretty obvious that Moonhawk is the same Moonhawk who is Priscilla’s guiding spirit when she’s a priestess of the Goddess, and seems clear therefore that the other guiding spirits from Priscilla’s religion are this Moonhawk’s sisters in the Great Weaving (I don’t recall that any of their names are ever given, in either context). What I’d been wondering was whether, since they’re presumably all a dramliza pairing like Moonhawk and Lute, all the guiding spirits have masculine sidekicks like Lute and it was just that somehow we’d never heard about them. The scene in this chapter where Lute learns that Moonhawk has made an independent space for him in the Weaving suggests that no, it’s just Lute.

(I think where I went wrong was at “dramliza pairing like Moonhawk and Lute”; there’s probably no other dramliza pairing that’s quite like Moonhawk and Lute. One of the other things I’ve been realising on this re-read is that my understanding of the dramliz from the first time through had been weighted too much toward taking Rool Tiazan and Lute as typical of their station, when as two of the few – or even, for all it’s said, the only two – free zaliata to have accepted the yoke, they’re each blazingly unique.)