Tag Archives: Scholar ven’Orlud

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 14

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Osabei Tower
Landomist

In which Cantra renews an old acquaintance.

Though Scholar tay’Nordif experiences the revelation that tay’Welford is aelantaza as a spur-of-the-moment inspiration, I suspect this is just an opportune occasion for it to come out and the actual recognition occurred some time ago. At least as far back, say, as the evening when she found vel’Anbrek’s suspicions of tay’Welford worth mentioning in Jela’s hearing. (Conversely, he probably recognised her on day one, since his skills and experience don’t have years of dust on them and it’s implied he’s seen Cantra more recently than Cantra has seen him.) I wonder if researching his rise to the Prime Chair was one of the ways she passed the time in her office when she was supposedly progressing her life’s work.

It’s interesting that we’re getting so much backstory for Maelyn tay’Nordif as she fights against losing herself. It shows how much detail needs to go into constructing a person. (And I’m intrigued that she puts her succession of “patrons” in quotation marks; it might just be that she doesn’t consider them all proper patron material, given that she adds that some of them were no better than bandits, but I do wonder if it also means that some of them were interested in her for reasons other than her mathematical ability — which is, I admit, a thought that had already occurred to me back when her last patron’s cover letter was calling her things like “the most precious sister of my soul”.)

Jela is finally able to ask about the world-shield of somebody who can answer. It’s not physically present at the Tower, just that the Tower has a record of its location. And has apparently been unable to secure a grant to study it, which seems typical; saving entire populations is all very well in its way, but where’s the money to be made in it?

Oracle Odd Lots, the supplier of the “shortcut”, was also the merchant who sold Cantra the three learning toys. I don’t know if that’s significant; Cantra did say to Jela that there’s a lot of odd-job traders on the Rim who have sheriekas tech pass through their hands.

Veralt has only himself to blame for ending up with a knife in his throat. Taunting the hero with her parent’s death right when you have her at your mercy and she’s on the point of giving up is one of the classic blunders, and I should have thought they’d teach better than that at genetically-engineered-assassin school.

Crystal Dragon – Chapter 13

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Osabei Tower
Landomist

In which we’re all mad, here.

Well, what do you know. Score one for the reasonable motivation.

Speaking of reasonable and unreasonable motivations, we were having a discussion in one of the comment threads about High Command’s decision to draw back to the Inner Worlds, and whether it made any sense. Given Jela’s explanation to Tor An in this chapter, I’d call it… well, not reasonable, but maybe “comprehensible”?

(What it still isn’t, of course, is the least bit honorable or admirable.)

Cantra is starting to leak through now, to the confusion and distress of the Scholar as she prepares to draw fire and give Jela and Master Liad an opportunity to slip away unnoticed.

(And as someone who’s read this book before, I note that the memory of Garen’s death is, apart from being the kind of powerful memory one might expect to slip through, an instance of the authors sneakily refreshing the reader’s memory about something that’s going to become relevant again shortly.)

It occurs to me that what she’s doing now is the same thing, on a different plane, that Rool Tiazan and his lady were doing last chapter (which might, for all the indications we got, be simultaneous with this one): playing the target to keep the enemy occupied. I don’t know if that means that the sheriekas do have an interest in what’s happening at the Tower, or just that the dramliza wanted to make sure that now of all times wasn’t the moment they started.