Things That Go Bump in the Night

In which several people pass a restless night.

Anthora and Ren Zel together always fill me with fond amusement, or amused fondness, which I think I might now be sufficiently old enough to carry off successfully, though it’s been there even since the first time I read I Dare, when I was about the same age as Anthora. I think there’s something about the way Anthora presents herself that encourages one to think of her as a precocious youngster whatever her actual age. Sober Ren Zel, on the other hand, sometimes seems older than his years, but I’ve always had a few years on him because he’s actually younger than Anthora.

The interesting thing about Anthora’s encounter with Ren Zel is that it’s not just a case of her bumping into him when she goes to follow up her vision of the Passage under attack: her nightmare of battle is almost certainly an echo of his nightmare memory. (When Anthora talks in her sleep, what she says is Ren Zel’s dialogue from a particularly harrowing moment in the battle.) Which suggests that there was already some kind of connection between them, a suggestion reinforced by the fact that Ren Zel finds her presence somehow familiar.