Kabloona by Gontran de Poncins

Another old book I picked up completely on a whim at one of my favorite used book stores. It was another one of those blank covers, but something about the spine spoke to me -- the title and the author’s name (both unfamiliar to my eyes and tongue) and a simple sketch of an Eskimo standing in profile.

Turns out it is a Book-of-the-Month Club selection from 1941, a true story, a kind of travel narrative, about a Frenchman who goes to live with Canadian Eskimos for a year.

Even in the most sophisticated of us there is a deposit of human naivete that is ineradicable. “To think,” a man will say to himself as he lies on a sub-tropical beach in February, “to think that three days ago I was fighting my way against a snowstorm at home!” My own reflections were often of this simpleminded order, but with a higher degree of intensity. I, a child of civilization, had wandered in the course of a few weeks into the stone age. This was I who squatted beside a stone vessel in which seal-oil burned and gave off its warmth and light. I who had so lately been surrounded by Paris, by all that Paris means, sat here clad in the skins and furs of animals in a shelter built of snow, in a land and season where a temperature of forty degrees below zero was the normal thing -- and I was relaxed, content, happy. I was at peace with myself; and surely of all things in the world the rarest is a civilized man at peace with himself. Grant that it was simple. Say it was as simple as getting from Boston to Nassau, or from London to Cannes, in February (which it was not). Still, it was no less strange for that. If this was I, where was that other I that belonged to France, loved ease and warmth, read and argued and was the prey of intellectual restlessness? And if that other was I, who was this that sat chatting and laughing with the Eskimos in the igloo?

For him, for de Poncins, this travel takes place not only in physical space, but, as reflected in this passage from his foreword, in mind and spirit as well. And that is what makes Kabloona such an interesting read, as through his adventures we see some small fraction of the universal truths that our narrator must have experienced, must have been both surprised by but, then, slowly, been able to grow comfortable and equanimous with.

A good part of this book, therefore, becomes of itself the story of the encounter of two mentalities, and of the gradual substitution of the Eskimo mentality for the European mentality within myself.

And through these reflections, it is a delight to find such philosophical and observational wonders as:

I had not even made plans, for I had long ago discovered -- in India, in China, in the South Seas -- that Life abhors our plans and knows better ones than we can imagine.

And this, about the lonely radio operator that lived at the last outpost before the snowy wastes of the Arctic:

Sturrock had accomplished marvels with his toy, feats proper to rouse the jealousy of a power station. For the ether is like a woman: it is not enough to have instruments of price and power: you must amuse it, cajole it, invoke it in your dreams. Anyone who has seen an amateur radio-operator retire to a corner of a room and dream for hours with that shy preoccupied air they all have, knows how true this is. Living in the solitude of the Post, Sturrock had prayed to the goddess of the radio tenderly and with respect, and she had come to him and stayed with him. Elsewhere she had come and fled, or had not come at all; but she had never deserted Sturrock. Thus the young man had grown famous in the Arctic, and it was to him that the whole of the North had sent forth its appeals. With his sensitive hands -- there are hands in the world that confer grace, and he had them -- Sturrock would rescue messages that were dying in the air; he would revive them and relay them to their destination.

It was such a delight to find these rhetorical gems, hidden from my eyes for eighty years or more between the covers of this forgotten book!

The contrast between the Eskimo mentality and the European mentality is a primary focus of de Poncins’s writing.

Everything about the Eskimo astonishes the white man, and everything about the white man is a subject of bewilderment for the Eskimo. Our least gesture seems to him pure madness, and our most casual and insignificant act may have incalculable results for him. Let but a Post Manager say to an Eskimo, “Here is a package of needles for your wife,” and he will have started in that obscure consciousness which I hesitate to call a mind, a train of questions and ruminations that may lead anywhere. The free gift is unknown among the Eskimos: better yet, it is incomprehensible to them. Had the white man said, “Lend me your wife in exchange,” the Eskimo would have understood. An exchange is normal; a gift passes his understanding. It sets his thoughts going. It is amoral. He will not thank the white man. He will go back to his igloo and ruminate. “Since the white man has given me these needles,” he will in effect say to himself, “it must be that he does not want them; and if he does not want his treasures, why should not I have them?” From that day forth, this Eskimo will be a different man. He will begin by despising the white man, and soon he will plan cunningly to exploit him. Since the white man has proved himself a fool, why not? So the Eskimo becomes a liar and a cheat. A single generous impulse on the part of the white man has started the moral disintegration of a native.

This strikes me very much as the prompt for a possible story -- a kind of morality play -- in which the unintended actions of one corrupts the mind of another and causes ruin for both.

But more to the point for Kabloona -- which is the name the Eskimos give de Poncins, meaning “white man” in their language -- as we hear more and more stories about the Eskimos, as we meet them as individuals through de Poncins’s expert pen, we come to understand that they, like us, come in all the fabrics that make of the temperamental tapestry of man, replete with quirks, sure, but always imbued with universal drives and universal stories.

To wit:

One day, for example, Utak brought another Eskimo into the Post, a slack and shiftless ne’er-do-well, a man perpetually destitute. He had arrived from ten days off to trade -- a single fox. We were in mid-December and the man had not yet got round to mudding his rudders, so that his wretched sled was next to useless. One mile out from the Post he had dropped a caribou-skin, had not missed it (proving he could not count up to four); and when, later, I told him that I had picked it up, he forgot to come to my quarters to fetch it. Each year this man and his wife had a child; and as his wretched wife had no milk, each year without fail the child died. But they, the man and his wife, did not die. There was always an Eskimo to lend them a snow-knife, another to repair their sled for them on the trail, a third to house them because the man could not build a possible igloo. And never -- it was this that was so admirable -- never would you have heard a single impatient or angry word spoken about these two. Of course they were teased a bit at night in the igloo, and great tales were told of the man’s comical futility; but they were unfailingly taken care of. The others would say, “He couldn’t get here because of his sled”: they would never say, “The man doesn’t know how to get over a trail.” When tools were lent to him and he broke them, nobody complained. He spent a couple of days at the Post and was about to start out again when, at the last minute, Utak arrived running. Could the Post Manager “lend” Utak a snow-knife? The ne’er-do-well had just broken the one Utak had let him have. And this was said without bitterness, indeed with a laugh that showed all Utak’s teeth. It was too bad! Of course he hadn’t done it on purpose, so no one could hold it against him.

Stories like these are building to something -- both intentionally in the pacing of the author and unintentionally in the mind of the reader. As the narrative progresses, de Poncins not only finds himself slipping more and more into the Eskimo mindset with regard to comforts and material expectations:

It wants very little to return to the primitive. Already I had ceased to feel the need of the appurtenances of our civilization; and yet I had been reared in a fair degree of comfort, I was rather more than less sensitive than the average, and I was even, in a manner of speaking, an “intellectual.” After a brief few weeks, all this had dropped away from me. I do not mean that I had stopped yearning for telephones and motor cars, things I should always be able to live without. I mean that the thought of a daily change of linen was gone from my mind; that a joint of beef would not have made my mouth water, and I loved the tastes of frozen fish, particularly if it had frozen instantaneously and retained its pristine savour all through the winter. As a matter of fact, I do not remember being served anything in France as much to my taste.

And also with regard to the simple, universal delights of home and hearth, mediated in an almost Melvillian way through the life-giving seal and its oil:

Evening came. Three of Ittimangnerk’s seals were still whole, standing against the wall like gods about to be overthrown, but gods still, blood-covered and fantastic. The ice glittered in the light of the lamp, and heat and cold dwelt here together in their familiar contrast. I shall never cease to chant the beauty of the seal-oil lamp; and here again I asked myself, How can a length of cotton wick, fashioned into a saw-toothed strip and floating on melted blubber, spread such an astonishing measure of friendliness and companionship? From this glow there emanates the warmth and the security that constitute the true and inner meaning of the word home. Here among these shadows, in these mysterious recesses, the almost incomprehensible Eskimos eat and laugh, live a material existence of inconceivable brutality and at the same time a spiritual life of infinite subtlety, full of shades and gradations, of things senses and unexpressed.

But also with regard to the sense of necessary community on which Eskimo society -- and, indeed human society -- is essentially based:

Poor L. was lost. He was a landlubber on a ship, a dead weight, in everybody’s way. Not only was he no help, he was a hindrance because he had no notion what to do and would have done better to do nothing. In a space so small, every false move creates trouble for some one else. But, like the Ma-i-ke of last autumn, there was another thing wrong, and that was that he thought only of himself. Watching him I discovered once again that Eskimo life strips a man of egoism. L. was a white man, therefore an egoist. “My tea … my tin … my sleep.” But no, Mr. L.! Our tea, our tin, our sleep. Human life in the Arctic would vanish without this solidarity among men. It is the community that remains alive here, not the men; it is the community that has had a poor hunting season or a good one, that is hungry or well-fed, that has reason to rejoice or to despair.

It is this, I think, that really transforms de Poncins, and which has a chance of transforming the reader, as well. The Eskimos teach him something profound -- often, not by speaking, but by being silent.

Together we spend hours like this, reading in the great Book of Silence. He learnt its lessons in childhood; I have come from afar to spell them out with extreme difficulty. They have taught me, above all, to discard things -- haste, worry, rebelliousness, selfishness. It has taken me a year to learn these lessons, and I see suddenly that my year in the north has not been, as I thought it, a year of conquest of the elements, but of conquest of myself. And because of the peculiarity of my conquest, the Arctic is for me no longer a source of suffering but of joy. It is the crucible in which, slowly and patiently, the dross in my nature has to some extent been melted away. In this Arctic have I found my peace, the peace I was never able to find Outside. Except one were a monk, or such extraordinary circumstances as war and danger intervened, there was no way in which one could find this peace Outside, this sense of the brotherhood of man. Yet this sense, the Arctic had given me simply and directly. That which, elsewhere, would demand a sublime degree of abnegation, had been effected here by simple necessity. How was I going to say this sort of thing to the men of my soft world, who sat in offices during the day and played bridge at night?

Like all the best travel narratives, Kabloona is not just about a journey across distances, but also across perceptions and the very sense of knowing that makes us all human. 

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

CHAPTER FOUR

FARCHRIST TALES

BOOK ONE:

STONE TO FLESH

A son was born to Gregorovich Farchrist on the same night that Dalanmire reminded the new regime of the reason for the dragon tax. On that night, the shrieks of labor were drowned out by the shrieks of lightning fire that burned from the mouth of that ancient lizard. The cries of the newborn were overwhelmed by the cries of the dying in the city below. The castle was spared, but the City Below the Castle was destroyed, and the loss of life was horrendous. The Peasant King first named his son Gregorovich Farchrist II, and then reluctantly reinstituted the dragon tax on his unfortunate kingdom.

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They decided to spend another day in Queensburg. Roystnof roused the others early and, as Shortwhiskers went out to buy supplies, Roystnof and Brisbane sat down with the wizard’s slim red book.

Roystnof told his pupil that each spell required an exact sequence of either vocal sounds or hand movements—and that some needed material components as well—to spark the magic into the proper channel. Brisbane had already had some experience with this idea through the few cantrips he could cast, but Roystnof said the restrictions on the parameters were much more stringent with more powerful spells. The sounds had to be perfect and exact, and the movements had to be done the same each time.

The spell Brisbane would spend the rest of the morning trying to master was called shocking grasp, and when performed correctly, was designed to send a large amount of electrical energy through its victim’s body at the touch of the spell caster. Roystnof said it was a good offensive spell, and a good one to learn first, for it had the power to kill most humanoids at a single touch.

Shocking grasp required no material components, but had rigorous verbal and somatic components. Brisbane’s throat quickly went dry from trying to copy the crackling noise of lightning Roystnof modeled for him time and time again. For the hand movements, Brisbane had to start with his fists together and his index fingers extended, touching only at the tips. He was to concentrate on the spot where his fingers met and start his crackling noise. Slowly bringing his fingers apart should cause a bright blue spark to hang thread-like between them. After that, the next thing he touched would have a jolt of electricity sent though it powerful enough to stop a human heart.

Shortwhiskers returned with the provisions and equipment when Brisbane was starting to get a small jumping spark between his fingers. The dwarf unloaded himself and, seeing that the others were still busy, discreetly left.

It was well past noon when Brisbane finally got it. He gave a wooden chair enough juice to turn it black. He sat down on his bed and wiped his brow.

“I’m exhausted,” Brisbane said.

“Magic does that,” Roystnof nodded. “It draws from the body. That’s where all your power comes from. Eventually, you’ll learn to tap the power of your mind. That kind of magic is much more powerful, but much harder to control.”

“You can cast spells with the power of your mind,” Brisbane said. “Can’t you?”

Roystnof smiled. “How about some lunch?”

Roystnof fixed them a small meal as Brisbane rested. They ate in the silence that exists between two friends who can talk to each other without speaking. When they had finished their repast, Brisbane took off his boots and lay on his bed, hands folded beneath his head. Roystnof began to study more of his red book in a chair near the window.

“Tell me about Roundtower,” Brisbane said as he closed his eyes.

“What would you like to know?”

Brisbane watched the colors roll around on the insides of his eyelids. “Well, I don’t know. What’s he like?”

Roystnof paused for only a moment. “Ignatius Roundtower is a very proud man whose skill with his sword is better than anyone else I have ever seen.”

“Proud?” Brisbane asked. “What do you mean?”

“He hopes to become a Knight of Farchrist one day. The reason he started traveling with Nog and later myself was to gain experience in combat and to test himself.”

“Test himself?”

“Yes,” Roystnof said. “To test his courage and the strength of his convictions, I suppose.”

“That seems unusual,” Brisbane said, his eyes still closed.

“Why?” Roystnof asked.

“Well, to become a Knight of Farchrist, you have to be of the right social standing and you have to be chosen by an existing Knight to serve as his Squire for a period of at least three years. It’s my understanding that they frown upon outsiders and mercenary types. No offense Roy, but the knighthood won’t look too well upon him if they discover he’s had dealings with wizards. Knights are sworn to serve the King and the will of Grecolus. You know how they must feel about magic and those who practice it.”

That started Brisbane thinking. He had just learned a magic spell. He hated to think of what he might have just done to this mother’s dream of him one day becoming a Knight. By those standards, he was now a servant of Damaleous. He had performed simple cantrips before, but Brisbane had considered those just tricks, little more than sleight-of-hand. Shocking grasp, however, was magic. There was no rationalizing around that. Even now, he could hear Otis lecturing him in his head.

“I suspect,” Roystnof replied, “that Ignatius realizes these facts, but is unwilling to admit their consequences to himself. Although, I have known him for some time now, and it is clear to me that his faith in his god is very strong and very pure. Ideally, that should be all one needs.”

“But you haven’t seen him in six years,” Brisbane said.

“This is true.”

Brisbane lay quietly for a while and Roystnof went back to his book. Brisbane began pondering his beliefs and he found them much more eroded than he would have thought possible. He could still remember his younger years when he had accepted all he had been told as the truth and had held it dear to his heart. But now he looked over all those wonderful truths and found them lacking. Even if it were all true, it was somehow not enough for him now. He felt that there was still something missing, that that could not possibly be all there was. That a timeless, ageless being named Grecolus created the entire universe in which he placed a wholly imperfect world where evil tortured good. Or perhaps, from the dwarven perspective, where philanthropy was conquered by greed. That in this bitter and ugly world, where only the strongest survived, one was expected to adhere to the ethical considerations and moral obligations of a creator who did not make himself visible, in order to secure a place in the heavens for an eternal life of bliss—while those who bested, spurned, and beat you in your short earthly life burned before your vindicated eyes in the fiery hells of Damaleous. Brisbane had been afraid to say it aloud earlier in his life, but to him, it all seemed so vengeful, and just a little bit childish.

Brisbane must have drifted off with these thoughts, for when he awoke the room was dark. In one corner, Roystnof and Shortwhiskers sat playing cards around a small candle. The dwarf was grumbling. He was obviously losing.

“Serves me right. Playing cards with a master of sleight-of-hand.”

Roystnof noticed that Brisbane had awoken. He motioned to Shortwhiskers and the dwarf turned in his chair to look at the young man.

“Put your boots on, Gil,” Shortwhiskers said. “We’ve got an errand to run before sundown.”

Brisbane noticed that the shades were drawn, but they were aglow with sunlight. He nodded to the dwarf, sat up on the edge of the bed, and began lacing his boots.

“What kind of errand?” Brisbane asked.

“Well,” Shortwhiskers said, “unlike your sorcerer friend here, I don’t think one little spell is going to be enough to protect you. We’re going to the armory.”

Brisbane finished tying his bootstrings. He looked up at Roystnof as if to get his permission to go with the dwarf. He had seen Shortwhiskers’ suit of chainmail tied to his pack mule, but he knew Roystnof had no such protection. It somehow seemed that he, as Roystnof’s would-be apprentice, shouldn’t wear any armor either.

Roystnof only nodded his bearded face.

Brisbane got up and left with the dwarf. They quickly found themselves on the busy streets of Queensburg. The day-long festival of Whiteshine was still going strong, and Brisbane could not help but think with some shame that he had just spent Grecolus’ holiest day studying magic and learning how to cast a spell. On the streets, Brisbane saw large groups of people enjoying the entertainment provided by jugglers and traveling acrobatic groups. The sun was nearing the eastern horizon and, within an hour, it would be gone for another night and the festival would be over. It seemed odd to Brisbane that a festival held in honor of the moon Grecolum would start and end with the sun, but that was the way it had always been done. Brisbane had never been to Queensburg before, but Shortwhiskers seemed to know where they were going.

They soon arrived at a small building that had a faded and weatherbeaten sign hung over the door. ‘Royale Armory,’ it declared with flaking paint. Brisbane was surprised it was open on the day of the festival, but he supposed some were worse off than others. The pair went inside and were greeted by a large man with a curly red beard and bulging forearms. He showed them all types of armor, but seemed disappointed when the dwarf said they needed something his young friend could walk out with.

“I usually make the armor custom-made to fit,” the man said. “Takes about a week, but practically eliminates chaffing.”

“Sorry,” Shortwhiskers said. “But we’re leaving town tomorrow.”

“Shame,” the man said. “It’ll be hard to find something laying around that’ll fit a lad as big as him.”

Less than an hour later Brisbane left the shop wearing a leather smock that gathered at the waist and was studded with dozens of metal plates. Shortwhiskers had paid fifteen pieces of gold for it. Brisbane promised he would pay the dwarf back when he came into some money, but Shortwhiskers curtly told him to forget it. They began to walk back to the inn.

“You’ll need a weapon, too,” the dwarf said. “You can use one of mine. Ignatius always said I was a walking arsenal anyway.”

Shortwhiskers went suddenly silent and stared at his feet. Brisbane suspected the dwarf felt uncertain of what lay ahead for his friend. He felt he should change the subject if he could.

“You said you know where this Stargazer woman lives?” Brisbane said.

Shortwhiskers stopped and looked up at Brisbane. “Yes…”

“I would very much like to go there and see her practice this art of hers. I’ve heard about mystics who claim they can heal by divine power. I’d like to see it for myself.”

“Allison is no mystic,” Shortwhiskers said.

Brisbane did not allow the dwarf’s tone to sidetrack him. “Would you take me there?”

Shortwhiskers searched Brisbane’s face. “Want to see her practice her art, huh?”

Brisbane nodded.

Shortwhiskers shrugged. “Follow me,” he said.

The dwarf led Brisbane out of town towards the Shadowhorn Forest. They went about a mile out of town, and there, nestled under the outer trees of the Shadowhorn, was a pair of small cabins. One was dark, but from the other came the powerful glow of lamplight. Both cabins were made of felled timber, were single-storied, and had thatched roofs. Shortwhiskers said Stargazer would be in the lighted cabin, tending the sick, and he led Brisbane to the doorway.

Inside the cabin it was all one room, with a dozen cots lining the walls. All were empty except for one at the far end of the cabin. In it lay the figure of an old man and, sitting on a small stool next to the cot with her back to the door, was the honey-haired Allison Stargazer.

“Allison.” Shortwhiskers’ voice sounded hoarse.

She turned and when she saw the dwarf she jumped up. She bent down and said a few quick words to her patient and ran down to the door.

Brisbane watched as she called out Shortwhiskers’ first name, and as she crouched down to give the dwarf a warm hug. She stood a little under five and a half feet and had a slight frame. She wore a simple blue and white dress that dropped to the middle of her calves and her golden honey hair was pinned behind her ears, falling to her shoulders. She was thin but had a full bosom and sturdy hips. Her face was an angel’s dream. Bright, wide, emerald eyes dominated her sharp features and her complexion was pink and full of health.

Brisbane had never seen anyone so lovely.

“Nog Shortwhiskers,” she said as she broke the embrace and stood up. “What have you been doing with yourself?”

“This and that,” Shortwhiskers said, obviously embarrassed over Stargazer’s show of affection. “I was just passing through town and thought, well, you know.”

She smiled. “How are your ribs?”

Shortwhiskers patted his flank. “Good as new.”

Her smile broadened. “Good, good,” she said, catching Brisbane out of the corner of her eye and turning towards him. “And who’s your young friend, Nog?”

“His name is Gilbert Parkinson,” Shortwhiskers said. “He’s from the village of Scalt.”

“Parkinson?” Stargazer said disbelievingly, her eyes studying Brisbane up and down. “He reminds me of someone else.”

“Yes,” Shortwhiskers said quickly. “I thought so too, at first but—”

“Who?” Brisbane said abruptly, cutting off his friend’s comments. “Who do I remind you of?” He had caught the look in Stargazer’s face and, having seen it, he suddenly wanted to know who she was comparing him to. At one time in his life, Brisbane would have felt no such urgency. Once, he would have done everything he could to convince people him name truly was Gilbert Parkinson. But the look on Stargazer’s face, and its similarity to the look Shortwhiskers had worn before naming him a Brisbane in Roystnof’s study, had suddenly transformed his thinking on the subject.

Before answering, however, Stargazer turned to Shortwhiskers, seeking some kind of approval which the dwarf gave with a nod of his head.

“Brisbane,” Stargazer said simply. “You remind me of the Knights named Brisbane. You have a very strong resemblance, almost as if you were part of that family.”

“That’s because I am,” Brisbane said, his impromptu confession sending tingles of excitement rushing up and down his spinal column. “I am the bastard son of Sir Gildegarde Brisbane the Second and am named for him. But how did you recognize me? I have lived my life in Scalt and no one there has ever expected I was anyone but Otis Parkinson’s adopted son.”

Again, before answering Stargazer checked for some silent guidance from Shortwhiskers. This time, the dwarf gave her a slight shake of his head. Brisbane noticed her looking at the dwarf, but he did not see Shortwhiskers’ covert signals.

“I grew up in Raveltown,” Stargazer said, seeming to collect herself. “One does not grow up there and grow easy with your family name. One either respects it or abhors it.”

“And you?” Brisbane said.

This time, Stargazer did not take her eyes off Brisbane. “I respect it.”

A groan came from the elderly man in the last bunk. Stargazer quickly turned and went down to the man. Brisbane and Shortwhiskers slowly followed. The pair stood at the foot of the cot while the woman crouched beside the man. He was thin and frail and soaked with sweat. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be in a world of his own, with pain as his only companion.

Stargazer brushed the man’s hair off his slick forehead. “His name is Skinner. Joseph Skinner. All his life he has been torturing his weak body with the drink. Alcohol.” She said the word with much distaste. “He comes in here when the festering sore he has for a liver hurts him badly enough. I do what I can to take away his pain, but he had damaged himself too much for me to truly heal him. I will help him get through tonight and next week he will stumble in here again, holding his side and coughing up blood.”

Skinner groaned louder this time and his legs jerked beneath the blanket. Stargazer gently put a hand over his eyes and began to sing quietly. She slowly pulled the blanket down to reveal Skinner’s thin body. She placed her other hand on his abdomen and began to sing louder.

Brisbane did not recognize the language, but the tune was soft and sad and her voice was that of a songbird. Brisbane looked at the man laid out before him while listening. Skinner’s ribs clearly showed through his pasty skin, his chest was a sunken valley filled with bracken-like hair, and his hips jutted out impossibly far. He looked skeletal, a shape from the grave. Brisbane began to feel very warm in the leather jerkin he still wore.

Stargazer sung on and began to rub Skinner’s concave belly. Slowly, he stopped jerking about and groaning. Her singing died down and she took her hands from him. A small amount of color had returned to his flesh and he lay still with his eyes closed.

Stargazer covered him again with the blanket. “He will sleep now. Come.”

She led them from that cabin to the next one. They entered a small living room with carpeting and overstuffed easy chairs.

“We really can’t stay,” Shortwhiskers said. “We have to get an early start in the morning.”

“Off again, Nog?” Stargazer said. “Aren’t you ever going to settle down?”

“Tried that once already,” the dwarf said, somewhat sullenly. “It didn’t work out.”

She smiled, a bit painfully, Brisbane thought.

“Are you going with him?” she suddenly asked Brisbane. “You’re already dressed for it.”

“Yes,” Brisbane said.

She shook her head. “Running off seeking your fortunes. You’d be wiser to follow your forefathers and seek to become a Knight. The right family is more than half the battle, and you’ve got the right family.”

Stargazer did not look much older than Brisbane, but as she said those words to Brisbane she sounded years his senior. Brisbane had no immediate response for her, just staring at her for some time and feeling empty inside for a reason he did not know, a reason he would not know for some time to come. Stargazer caught his pained look, and her brow lost all of the stern wrinkles it had worn as she had given her advice, and returned to a perfect smoothness. Her emerald eyes caught the fading sunlight from the windows and flashed it across Brisbane’s worried face.

“You look so sad,” she whispered too softly for Brisbane to hear.

“Well,” Shortwhiskers said, also not hearing Stargazer’s words. “It was really good to see you again, Allison.”

Brisbane and Stargazer locked eyes for a moment longer and then she stumbled away from his gaze when the pause after the dwarf’s words became embarrassingly long.

“Yes,” she said as she bent down to give Shortwhiskers another hug. “Don’t stay away so long this time.”

“I won’t,” Shortwhiskers promised.

She broke the embrace and stood up in front of Brisbane. She reached up and placed her hand on his cheek. “I hope you return safely with Nog.”

Brisbane put his hand over hers, pressed it against his face, and then slowly drew it away. “I am glad we met, Allison Stargazer.”

“As am I, Gildegarde Brisbane.”

Shortwhiskers offered a final farewell and Brisbane left the cabin with him. Stargazer shut the door and they started back for Queensburg. They walked in silence for the entire trip.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

A Word Child by Iris Murdoch

This one is definitely worth a re-read. I think Murdoch is doing a couple of interesting things, but maybe they’re too far spread out among too many characters, or perhaps just not developed to the degree that I would’ve liked.

The Inner Circle

Here’s the interesting thing I stumbled across first.

After leaving the office I would travel either to Sloane Square or to Liverpool Street to have a drink in the station buffet. In the whole extension of the Underground system those two stations are, as far as I’ve been able to discover, the only ones which have bars actually upon the platform. The concept of the tube station platform bar excited me. In fact the whole Underground region moved me, I felt as if it were in some sense my natural home.

This is our narrator speaking -- a middle-aged professional with a dark past named Hilary Burde, the titular Word Child himself. See what he says here about these bars in the London Underground.

These two bars were not just a cosy after-the-office treat, they were the source of a dark excitement, places of profound communication with London, with the sources of life, with the caverns of resignation to grief and to mortality. Drinking there between six and seven in the shifting crowd of rush-hour travellers, one could feel on one’s shoulders as a curiously soothing yoke the weariness of toiling London, that blank released tiredness after work which can somehow console even the bored, even the frenzied. The coming and departing rattle of the trains, the drifting movement of the travellers, their arrival, their waiting, their vanishing forever presented a mesmeric and indeed symbolic fresco: so many little moments of decision, so many little finalities, the constant wrenching of texture, the constant destruction of cells which shifts and ages the lives of men and of universes.

It’s not just of life, it is life itself -- Hilary’s own mind pulsating and breathing with the options open to its will, to its unseen and unclaimed destiny.

The uncertainty of the order of the trains. The dangerousness of the platforms. (Trains as lethal weapons.) The resolution of a given moment (but which?) to lay down your glass and mount the next train. (But why? There will be another in two minutes.) Ah qu’ils sont beaux les trains manques! as I especially had cause to know. Then once upon the train that sense of its thrusting life, its intent and purposive turning which conveys itself so subtly to the traveller’s body, its leanings and veerings to points of irrevocable change and parting of the ways. The train of consciousness, the present moment, the little lighted tube moving in the long dark tunnel. The inevitability of it all and yet its endless variety: the awful daylight glimpses, the blessed plunges back into the dark; the stations, each unique, the sinister brightness of Charing Cross, the mysterious gloom of Regent’s Park, the dereliction of Mornington Crescent, the futuristic melancholy of Moorgate, the monumental ironwork of Liverpool Street, the twining art nouveau of Gloucester Road, the Barbican sunk in a baroque hole, fit subject for Piranesi. And in summer, like an excursion into the country, the flowering banks of the Westbound District Line.

It is an entire world of possibility -- this London Underground -- but even within that infinite abundance, Hilary has his favorite place, his favorite state-of-mind writ large against this huffing and pulsating metaphor of life.

I preferred the dark however. Emergence was like a worm pulled from its hole. I loved the Inner Circle best. Twenty-seven stations for fivepence. Indeed, for fivepence as many stations as you cared to achieve. Sometimes I rode the whole Circle (just under an hour) before deciding whether to have my evening drink at Liverpool Street or at Sloane Square. I was not the only Circle rider. There were others, especially in winter. Homeless people, lonely people, alcoholics, people on drugs, people in despair. We recognized each other. It was a fit place for me, I was indeed an Undergrounder. (I thought of calling this story ‘The Memoirs of an Underground Man’ or just simply ‘The Inner Circle’.)

The Inner Circle. In the Underground and in his mind. What things will happen while Hilary is ‘riding these rails’? Not as much, it turns out, as I would like, but the concept does lead us into the other interesting thing that Murdoch is trying to do with this novel.

No Never-Never Land

“Of course,” I said, “if you think the world is an illusion you don’t care what you do. A very convenient doctrine.”

“Doesn’t Christianity say---?”

“Naturally of course Christopher doesn’t really believe this, no one could. He announces that people don’t really exist! It doesn’t stop him laying about with his ego like the rest of us.”

“Well, I don’t think we exist all that much,” said Arthur.

“Speak for yourself.”

“I think we should just be kind to each other. It’s all a pretty good mess-up and if that’s what Christopher means---”

“Oh, don’t you start.”

“I mean one’s mind is just an accidental jumble of stuff. There’s nothing behind ordinary life. There isn’t anything complete. Life isn’t a play. It isn’t even a pantomime.”

“No Never-Never Land.”

“Certainly no Never-Never Land,” said Arthur. “That’s the point.”

“So you don’t see Peter Pan as reality breaking in?”

“No,” said Arthur. “On the contrary. What is real is the Darlings’ home life. Hook is just a fantasy of Mr. Darling.”

“What is Peter then?”

“Peter is--- Peter is--- Oh I don’t know -- spirit gone wrong, just turning up as an unnerving visitor who can’t really help and can’t get in either.”

“That’s rather fanciful.”

“I mean the spiritual urge is mad unless it’s embodied in some ordinary way of life. It’s destructive, it’s just a crazy sprite.”

“I think Smee is the real hero. Hook envies Smee. So Hook can be saved.”

“Only in the novel.”

“Novels explain. Plays don’t.”

“It’s better not to explain,” said Arthur. “Poetry is best of all. Who wouldn’t rather be a poet than anything else? Poetry is where words end.”

“Poetry is where words begin.”

“I think Nana is the hero.”

“Nana is the most conventional character in the whole thing. Now Smee---”

“You must remember that Smee serves Hook.”

“You must remember that Nana is only a dog.”

“Exactly,” said Arthur. “There’s nothing bogus about Nana. Nana doesn’t talk. Even Mr. Darling fails, he wants to be Hook.”

“What about Wendy, does she fail?”

“Yes. Wendy is the human soul seeking the truth. She ends up with a compromise.”

“Living half in an unreal world?”

“Yes, like most of us do. It’s a defeat but a fairly honourable one. That’s the best we can hope for, I suppose. Now Nana. She’s the truth of the Darling home, its best part, its reality. Nana fears Peter. She’s the only one who really recognizes Peter.”

“I can’t think why you idolize the Darling home life. It seems to me to be pretty dreary.”

“Oh no -- what could be better -- a home with -- children and---”

“I think we’re drunk,” I said. “At any rate I must be. I thought for two minutes that you were saying something interesting.”

This is not the first mention of Peter Pan in the novel, but it is the most extensive -- a group of friends using it as the frame for a philosophical conversation over drinks. But mark what they are saying about it. It is unreal. It is not an idealized life. It is, in fact, not life at all -- because life, unlike Peter Pan, has no heroes and villains, no rising action and climax, no plot, no story line. Life just is. And in that dreary, static, secular, and inescapable crucible, there are (or are not?) people still with responsibilities to care for one another.

This concept will open the dark and depressing theme of the novel -- that in a world without magic -- without God -- what does it mean, what can it mean, to repent and to be forgiven?

Did I repent? That question troubled me as the years went by. Can something half crushed and bleeding repent? Can that fearfully complex theological concept stoop down into the real horrors of human nature? Can it, without God, do so? I doubt it. Can sheer suffering redeem? It did not redeem me, it just weakened me further. I, who had so long cried out for justice, would have been willing to pay, only I had nothing to pay with and there was no one to receive the payment.

Twenty years in the novel’s past, Hilary has done something dreadful. He has had an affair with another man’s wife, and through his actions, albeit accidently, caused her death. He has lived a life of biting obscurity since, removing himself from his old haunts and habits. In the novel’s now, the man he wronged has re-entered his life, and much of the novel is consumed with Hilary’s inability to reconcile his past actions.

“I’ve thought of nothing else ever since. That’s hardly an exaggeration. I have lived and breathed it all these years.”

“And you’ve felt guilt?”

“Yes.”

“And you feel it has ruined your life?”

“Yes.”

“Then you need help too.”

“Of course. But who can give it to me?”

That is really the crux of the novel. In a secular world -- a world without a Never-Never Land -- who can forgive sin? Can sins even be forgiven? Can anything ever be redeemed?

“Don’t you want to change your life?”

“I’m not sure. It could change for the worse. I can see that Gunnar might feel better after he’d talked to me. I doubt if I’d feel better after I’d talked to Gunnar. Gunnar can’t “forgive” me, I doubt if God could, what’s done is done. I don’t mean anything very dramatic by that. There just isn’t any psychological or spiritual machinery for removing my trouble. Gunnar feeling a bit better won’t help me, it won’t even, if you see what I mean, cheer me up. And seeing him will just bring it closer, drive it deeper. Death is my only solution. And I don’t mean suicide. Do you understand?”

No, I don’t think the person Hilary is talking to here does understand, and neither will your average reader, who will not likely understand or, if understand, not likely agree with the premise being laid and the question being asked.

Gunnar is the man wronged by Hilary -- and so it may be important to review what he thinks about Peter Pan.

Gunnar, who had either become pompous through being grand, or was so now out of nervousness, made a speech to Freddie to the effect that of course Peter Pan was about parents and being unwilling to grow up, but what made it sinister was that childishness had been invested with spirituality. “The fragmentation of spirit is the problem of our age,” Gunnar informed Freddie. “Peter personifies a spirituality which is irrevocably caught in childhood and which yet cannot surrender its pretensions. Peter is essentially a being from elsewhere, the apotheosis of an immature spirituality.

It’s difficult to see, but in a thematic understanding of the novel, I’m thinking that Murdoch is equating spirituality -- of any kind -- with a world in which forgiveness and redemption exists -- where bad things that a person does, or which they cause to come into existence, can be purged from their hearts and the hearts of everyone affected by them.

But that is not the world in which Hilary exists, as we see time and again as he cogitates in a kind of self-flagellating stream of consciousness while riding the metaphoric trains of his Inner Circle.

If God had existed and we could have stood together in His presence and looked together without falsity at what had been done, and then looked at each other, might not some miracle have occurred? “This is what I did.” “I know.” But there was no such scene, only two sodden semi-conscious psyches wrestling with each other in the dark. Could anything ever be clarified, could anything be really done here? Had not my feelings, whatever they were, for Kitty simply misled me with a momentary vision of a new heaven and a new earth? I had wrecked my life and Crystal’s by a guilt which was itself a kind of sin. Could that be cut away? The idea of forgiveness, pardon, reconciliation, seemed here too fuzzy, too soft for what was needed. If Gunnar and I could be even for a moment simple, sincere, together … But that was the way of hope, and there must be no hope, only a task, only the truth itself if one could but discern it and hang on.

But Murdoch isn’t just asking this question -- this question of whether or not forgiveness and redemption can exist in a secular world -- she quite decisively answers it.

“You speak of truth. Well this is a matter of science, and science is truth isn’t it? There are no miracles, no redemptions, no moments of healing, no transfiguring changes in one’s relation to the past. There is nothing but accepting the beastliness and defending oneself. When I was a little child I believed that Christ died for my sins. Only of course because he was God he didn’t really die. That was magic all right. He suffered and then somehow everything was made well. And nothing can be more consoling than that, to think that suffering can blot out sin, can really erase it completely, and that there is no death at the end of it all. Not only that, but there is no damage done on the way either, since every little thing can be changed and washed, everything can be saved, everything, what a marvellous myth, and they teach it to little defenceless children, and what a bloody awful lie, this denial of causation and death, this changing of death into a fairytale of constructive suffering! Who minds suffering if there's no death and the past can be altered? One might even want to suffer if it could automatically wipe out one’s crimes. Whoopee. Only it ain’t so.”

And, almost as if to drive this painful point home, Murdoch twists her plot in such a way that Hilary’s sin is not just not redeemed, it is in fact repeated. Gunnar has a new wife. Hilary falls in love with her and commences an affair. And she comes to a tragic end due to his own negligence and constant inaction. 

Repentance, penance, redemptive suffering? Nothing of the sort. … It was burning the orphanage down all over again, only now there was no one to stop the work of destruction.

In A World Child, sin repeats itself, and there is no Leviathan to step in, to change things, to make things better again.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

CHAPTER THREE

FARCHRIST TALES

BOOK ONE:

STONE TO FLESH

Throughout the realm the name of evil was Damaleous. But to the people of The City Below the Castle, evil bore the name of Dalanmire. This evil took the form of a monstrous winged lizard, a dragon, with scales of dark blue, deeper than the color of a midnight thrush. The old regime had extracted a dragon tax from its citizens and had delivered the gold to the beast in order to spare The City and its valley from destruction. The system had worked for decades—perhaps centuries—but the followers of Farchrist thought it was just a scheme to steal what little they had and, with the revolution, they quickly abandoned the collection of the dragon tax. In Farchrist Year Four, seven years had passed since the last collection and the tax came due again.

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The three of them left early the next morning, before the sun was an hour over the Shadowhorn Forest. They decided first to travel east to Queensburg, a journey that would take all day on foot. There they would spend the night and buy the supplies they would need for the trek south.

Shortwhiskers was dressed much as he had been the night before, but he had a pack mule with him, laden with all sorts of things he had acquired. Most of it was hidden in packs and saddlebags, but Brisbane could see a myriad of weapons and a small suit of chainmail tied securely to the beast of burden.

Roystnof, as usual, was adorned in red and black. He wore comfortable walking shoes, black pants with plenty of large pockets, and a red shirt, buttoned down the front and tucked into the trousers. He wore a black cap, carried a backpack, and leaned on a polished wooden staff that was tipped with metal and as tall as himself. He looked very much like an ordinary traveler.

Brisbane was dressed simply as well. He wore boots that laced halfway up his calves, tanned leather pants, and a blue tunic his mother had made for him. His hair was tied back with the same red strap he had worn the night before, the tail falling to the bottom of his shoulder blades. He still wore the pentacle medallion.

He remembered the scene the night before, after he had left Roystnof’s house and had told Otis that he would be leaving with the wizard in the morning. Otis had taken it surprisingly well. He had merely nodded his head as if he had long ago sensed that this day would come. Brisbane had seen deep disappointment in Otis’ eyes, but Otis had contained himself and had not spoken out against his stepson’s decision. He had even tried to give Brisbane a small bag of gold coins, but Brisbane had not been able to bring himself to take them. Now, the memory gave him a chill in the warm sunlight.

But as the day wore on, Brisbane began to shake loose some of the guilt he felt for doing what he wished instead of what had been expected of him. He began to feel that he had left his old life behind and became eager to start living a new one.

Roystnof was generally quiet throughout the march to Queensburg, only mumbling to himself on occasion, obviously deep in thought about some part of his craft. Both Brisbane and Shortwhiskers felt it wise not to disturb the wizard, so they spent the time getting to know each other. Shortwhiskers said he was from a small clan who lived in the northern reaches of the Crimson Mountains, and that he had left his home about the time the Farchrists had come to power in the valley. He was elusive about the reason he had left, but it was obvious to Brisbane that he hadn’t been back since that time, and that such a long absence pained him deeply.

Brisbane didn’t feel he could tell Shortwhiskers much about his true family that the dwarf didn’t already know, so he spoke of his childhood in Scalt, his mother, Otis, and his upbringing.

“Nog,” Brisbane said at one point in the day. The dwarf had asked the young man to call him that after Brisbane had called him ‘Mister Shortwhiskers.’ “Nog,” he said. “Last night you used two names in exclamation that I did not recognize. Moradin and Abba-something. What are these names?”

Shortwhiskers gave him a slanted look. “Do you mock me, Gil?” Brisbane had in turn asked the dwarf to call him by his first name.

Brisbane was shocked. “Of course not. I was just curious, that’s all.”

Shortwhiskers still looked at him in disbelief. “Moradin and Abbathor,” he said clearly. “They are two gods of the dwarven pantheon. Moradin is the Soul Forger, creator of the race of dwarves, and Abbathor is the Great Master of Greed, the thoroughly evil opponent of Moradin and his followers.”

Brisbane’s curiosity jumped up three notches. In all his studies and teachings, he had never heard mention of gods other than Grecolus. In fact, the worship of false gods was one of Grecolus’ deadly sins. “Tell me more,” he said.

“You mean,” Shortwhiskers said, “you have never heard of Moradin?”

Brisbane had thought—and had been taught—all the races: men, dwarves, and even the elves, worshipped Grecolus. He had been taught that Grecolus created them all. “No,” he said with all honesty.

“I didn’t think anyone led such a secluded life,” the dwarf said. “But since you are a Brisbane, I will accept you word as the truth.”

“Tell me about your gods,” Brisbane said.

Shortwhiskers showed his teeth in a smile, revealing one gold incisor. Brisbane already knew the dwarf well enough to know he liked telling stories.

“Well,” Shortwhiskers started, “when the world began, the fold of the dwarven gods, ruled by Moradin, and the gods of the other races decided to populate the Earth with races of their own creation. Moradin is called the Soul Forger because it is he who created the first dwarves, forging them in the center fires of the world from iron and mithral. He gave them their souls when he blew on their mortal forms to cool them.”

Brisbane found this information fascinating. Here was a totally different view of the creation of life. This one dealt with many different gods creating many different races. It was so foreign to what he had been taught that he found it strangely attractive.

“And Abbathor?” Brisbane asked.

“In the beginning,” the dwarf continued, “Abbathor was not an enemy of Moradin. He was the God of Gems and Metals, and his worshippers were respectable members of the community. But when Moradin named Dumathoin the protector of the mountain dwarves—”

“Dumathoin?” Brisbane interrupted.

Shortwhiskers chuckled. “Not heard of him either, eh? Dumathoin is another of our gods, the Keeper of Secrets Under the Mountain. You see, the mountain dwarves are miners by and large, and since they mine for secrets under mountains, Moradin appointed Dumathoin their protector. Abbathor argued that since the secrets that the miners discovered were gems and metals, he should be their protector. But Moradin would not hear of it. From that day forward, Abbathor has worked to wreak his revenge on the other gods—and especially Moradin and Dumathoin—by trying to establish consuming greed as the focus of dwarven lives.”

Brisbane began to realize that this mythology was remarkably similar to the one he had been taught. But in his case, Damaleous had not been a god, but a powerful servant of Grecolus who had felt wronged by his creator and who had sworn undying vengeance upon Grecolus’ flock because of it. Brisbane began to wonder if in fact Moradin and Abbathor were really just the dwarven names for Grecolus and Damaleous. He wanted to see if there were other similarities between the two religions.

“But how did your gods get here?” Brisbane asked the dwarf. “You said they were here when the world began. Did Moradin create the world? And who created Moradin?”

“Moradin did not create the world,” Shortwhiskers answered. “The world was here when Moradin and the gods of the other races arrived. Where they came from is only speculation in most circles, but the highest dwarven clerics believe it was from a faraway place in the sky where our laws of nature do not apply. It is also believed that Moradin exists out of the time frame that structures our lives, so that to us it would appear that he has always been and will always be.”

Some of this differed from what Brisbane had been taught. Grecolus was said to have created the universe: the stars, the sun, the moons, the Earth, and everything on it. He did it all. But as far as Grecolus’ origin was concerned, it was left as abstract as Moradin’s. Brisbane’s lessons had always been hazy in this most important respect. The best he had ever been able to come away with was the explanation that Grecolus had created himself, too.

They passed the day with this kind of talk and about two hours after the sun had dropped behind the Crimson Mountains, they stumbled into Queensburg. It was a small town, much larger than the tiny village of Scalt, but small when compared to Raveltown, the City Beneath the Castle. It lay on the shores of the Sea of Darkmarine, nestled between the Shadowhorn Forest and the Windcrest Hills.

Queensburg was dark and quiet when they arrived, but light and voices could be seen and heard coming from the town’s square. When Brisbane and his companions arrived on the scene, they found the square filled with people. At one corner of the square stood a large stone platform which pushed a small pulpit twenty feet above the throng gathered below. Two huge torches burned their orange lights on either side of the pulpit and, in the pulpit itself, shouting to the crowd, was the figure of a woman.

As Brisbane followed Shortwhiskers and Roystnof as they meandered through the crowd, he listened to what the woman was shouting.

“Friends! Citizens of Queensburg and subjects of Farchrist! Look into the sky and see the full face of the white moon of Grecolum.”

Her voice was like that of a choir. It had many facets that seemed to reverberate in unison. She sang the words into the night air, and her voice had the power to warm the chill that hung in one’s bones.

“The Evil One’s satellite is dark this night, afraid to show its red luminance. For tonight is the eve of Grecolus’ holiest day. The Whiteshine is upon us!”

Brisbane had momentarily forgotten it, but the woman was correct. As everyone knew, the Earth had two moons, the token symbols of Grecolus and Damaleous. Grecolum was by far the larger of the two and, when it was full and Damaleum new, it marked the eve of the festival of Whiteshine. It happened once every three years. Brisbane had no way of knowing it, but he assumed worshippers of Damaleous held a similar festival when their moon was full and Grecolum new. How often that happened, no one Brisbane knew had ever bothered to figure out.

“And so I have gathered you faithful here to hear the good news of Grecolus,” the woman in the pulpit went on. “For some time now we have been plagued with rumors of an army of orks massing in the Windcrest Hills to our south, intent on burning our homes and destroying our crops.”

Brisbane had heard of orks although he had never seen one. They were denizens of evil who warred continuously to claim more and more power. Some people classified them as a separate race, like the dwarves and the elves, while others believed them to be demons on earth, slaves to their master Damaleous.

Brisbane looked and saw that his friends seemed to be making for a small inn on the far side of the square. He followed them, but tried to keep his eye on the speaker.

“But it is a time of goodness—the heavens confirm it—and no abomination of evil can expose itself to the full radiance of Grecolum!”

Shortwhiskers and Roystnof arrived at the inn, a homey little place called The Driftwood, and Brisbane stopped just outside the door. The inn was near the corner where the woman stood in the pulpit and Brisbane was as close to her as he was going to get that night. He looked at her one last time before he went inside and, as he did so, he realized that she was beautiful. The door shut and her voice became muffled, but still understandable.

“So be at peace, my friends. Rest easy tonight and enjoy the festival tomorrow!”

A tremendous cheer went up throughout the gathered crowd.

“You want rooms?” asked a small balding man behind the front desk.

“Just one large one,” Roystnof answered as he stepped up to deal with the innkeeper.

Shortwhiskers moved closer to Brisbane. “Her name is Stargazer,” he said.

Brisbane was watching her descend from the pulpit through a small window. “She’s beautiful, Nog. Who is she?”

“A mystery to most,” the dwarf replied. “I’ve known her for some time, but most, even those who live in Queensburg, have not. Her first name is Allison. Allison Stargazer.”

“Why was she addressing them? Is she a priestess?”

Shortwhiskers paused. “Not exactly,” he said as he scratched his beard. “She’s more of a prophet, now. She worships Grecolus in the old traditional ways. She has a place outside of town where she practices her art.”

Brisbane lost the mysterious woman in the crowd. “Her art?” he asked, turning back to look at Shortwhiskers.

The dwarf nodded. “Allison’s a healer. She says her power comes from Grecolus himself.”

Brisbane could only stare at the dwarf. He found he had no other response to make.

Roystnof suddenly called to them from the stairs, saying their room was ready, and the two stragglers quickly caught up.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin

Still enjoying Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice, with A Storm of Swords comprising the third volume in that series.

As with the first two books, I’m watching an interesting theme develop -- namely that those who act with treachery wind up being successful and those who act with honor wind up dead.

And who should most be faced with this dilemma in A Storm of Swords but Daenerys Targaryen? Here she struggles with the morality of forcing slaves rather than inspiring free men to fight for her cause.

“Prince Rhaegar led free men into battle, not slaves. Whitebeard said he dubbed his squires himself, and made other knights as well.”

“There was no higher honor than to receive your knighthood from the Prince of Dragonstone.”

“Tell me, then -- when he touched a man on the shoulder with his sword, what did he say? ‘Go forth and kill the weak’? Or ‘Go forth and defend them’? At the Trident, those brave men Viserys spoke of who died beneath our dragon banners -- did they give their lives because they believed in Rhaegar’s cause, or because they had been bought and paid for?” Dany turned to Mormount, crossed her arms, and waited for an answer.

“My queen,” the big man said slowly, “all you say is true. But Rhaegar lost on the Trident. He lost the battle, he lost the war, he lost the kingdom, and he lost his life. His blood swirled downriver with the rubies from his breastplate, and Robert the Usurper rode over his corpse to steal the Iron Throne. Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died.”

Hard to get more clear than that. Honor = death. Treachery = success. Which will Danerys choose?

When she chooses treachery, it feels like Martin is carefully setting the scene, signaling that something important is happening.

Full dark had fallen by the time the Yunkai’i departed from her camp. It promised to be a gloomy night; moonless, starless, with a chill wet wind blowing from the west. A fine black night, thought Dany. The fires burned all around her, small orange stars strewn across hill and field. “Ser Jorah,” she said, “summon my bloodriders.” Dany seated herself on a mound of cushions to await them, her dragons all about her. When they were assembled, she said, “An hour past midnight should be time enough.”

“Yes, Khaleesi,” said Rakharo. “Time for what?”

“To mount our attack.”

Ser Jorah Mormont scowled. “You told the sellswords---”

“---that I wanted their answers on the morrow. I made no promises about tonight. The Stormcrows will be arguing about my offer. The Second Sons will be drunk on the wine I gave Mero. And the Yunkai’i believe they have three days. We will take them under cover of this darkness.”

“They will have scouts watching for us.”

“And in the dark they will see hundreds of campfires burning,” said Dany. “If they see anything at all.”

“Khaleesi,” said Jhogo, “I will deal with these scouts. They are no riders, only slavers on horses.”

“Just so,” she agreed. “I think we should attack from three sides. Grey Worm, your Unsullied shall strike at them from right and left, while my kos lead my horse in wedge for a thrust through their center. Slave soldiers will never stand before mounted Dothraki.” She smiled. “To be sure, I am only a young girl and know little of war. What do you think, my lords?”

“I think you are Rhaegar Targaryen’s sister,” Ser Jorah said with a rueful half smile.

“Aye,” said Arstan Whitebeard, “and a queen as well.”

A queen. Because of her treachery. At least in the eyes of the men she has not yet betrayed.

But there is more to Danerys than her conscious choice towards treachery. There is, always, that lingering specter of madness.

“Some truths are hard to hear. Robert was a … a good knight … chivalrous, brave … he spared my life, the lives of many others … Prince Viserys was only a boy, it would have been years before he was fit to rule, and … forgive me, my queen, but you asked for truth … even as a child, your brother Viserys oft seemed to be his father’s son, in ways that Rhaegar never did.”

“His father’s son?” Dany frowned. “What does that mean?”

The old knight did not blink. “Your father is called ‘the Mad King’ in Westeros. Has no one ever told you?”

“Viserys did.” The Mad King. “The Usurper called him that, the Usurper and his dogs.” The Mad King. “It was a lie.”

“Why ask for truth,” Ser Barristan said softly, “if you close your ears to it?” He hesitated, then continued. “I told you before that I used a false name so the Lannisters would not know that I’d joined you. That was less than half of it, Your Grace. The truth is, I wanted to watch you for a time before pledging you my sword. To make certain that you were not…”

“...my father’s daughter?” If she was not her father’s daughter, who was she?

“...mad,” he finished. “But I see no taint in you.”

“Taint?” Dany bristled.

“I am no maester to quote history at you, Your Grace. Swords have been my life, not books. But every child knows that the Targaryens have always danced too close to madness. Your father was not the first. King Jaehaerys once told me that madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin. Every time a new Targaryen is born, he said, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.”

Indeed. Danerys clearly is mad -- or perhaps goes mad -- in the show. Will she also go mad -- or is she already mad -- in the book? It’ll be something worth watching.

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Two other things worth mentioning.

First is the long wandering mess that is the Arya plot. When I watched the show I was also confused, but I thought it was a symptom of them trying the pace for television something that must’ve been better paced and plotted in the book. Nope. I got lost all over again. Who are they? Where are they? What the hell is going on?

And the other is the Lord of Light raising Catelyn Stark from the dead -- and the way her corpse begins to take revenge on the Freys for the Red Wedding. That certainly wasn’t in the television show. Will she figure as a major plot point in the next volume?

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

CHAPTER TWO

FARCHRIST TALES

BOOK ONE:

STONE TO FLESH

They built his castle high on the cliffs overlooking the Sea of Darkmarine. It was built at a record pace by hands that would take devotion to its limits. It was said that its towers reached high into the sky to embrace the love of Grecolus and that its walls stood solid against the hate of Damaleous. When completed, the Peasant King moved in with his wife and attendants. He would often come out to look down on the city and his people, of whom he had once been a member and now over whom he ruled.

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The dwarf entered a tavern called The Quarter Pony a few minutes after midnight. He was of average height for a dwarf, about four feet tall, and had the stocky build typical of his race. He had the customary dwarven round face with red cheeks and a protruding brow and nose. But unlike the traditional dwarf, who wore his beard as long as possible, this one had his light brown whiskers cut very close to his face, like the moss on a tree stump. He was dressed in a green tunic and tanned leather pants. A brown cloak fell from his shoulders to his boots and on his head he wore a broad-brimmed hat. At his belt was sheathed a short, thick sword in a jeweled scabbard, and on the middle finger of the hand resting on the sword’s pommel was a slim gold band.

The dwarf walked up to the bar and heaved his heavy frame up onto a bar stool. The three quiet patrons gave him a quizzical look but soon turned their attention back to their glasses. The bartender wiped the bar down in front of the dwarf. He was a tall young man in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up over his large biceps. His blonde hair was long and tied together in back with a red band.

“What’s your poison?” the bartender asked in a clear and unhurried voice.

The dwarf did not answer him right away. He looked for an odd moment or two into the bartender’s face, almost as if he recognized the young man. Shaking his head, he muttered something to himself and quickly lost the look of familiarity.

“A cold mug of ale will do for my throat, my boy,” the dwarf said in a low tone of nearly fluent common tongue. “But I also require your indulgence in answering a few questions about this part of the world.”

The bartender arched an eyebrow. He had not expected such an eloquent manner from his stout patron. Most of the dwarves that came in from the nearby mines were proletarian folk who, by and large, drank more than they spoke. But, of course, those dwarves were dressed in grimy rags and had dirty faces behind their long beards.

The bartender poured a mug of ale and set it before the dwarf. “Ask away,” he said. It was about as eloquent as he got.

The dwarf took a long drink from the mug. He looked both ways down the bar and leaned closer to the bartender. “Would you happen to know where I might find a man named Roy Stonerow?”

The bartender chuckled. “You know,” he said quietly. “If you had asked anyone else in this town that question, they would probably have led you to an open mineshaft.”

The dwarf smiled. “I doubt I would be that gullible.” He took another drink of ale.

“Well, whatever,” the bartender said. “I do know where he is.”

“Can you take me to him?”

A door behind the bar opened and through it came an aging man with a small wooden keg held on his right shoulder.

The bartender spoke to the man. “Otis,” he said, “I need to help this gentleman find his way. Can you tend the bar for a while?”

Otis nodded. “Don't be gone too long.”

The bartender walked through a swinging gate in the bar and the dwarf hopped off his bar stool. The pair left The Quarter Pony and the bartender led them down the street. The dwarf stared up into the night sky as they walked on in silence. Soon they came to a small red house. The bartender stopped at the front door, knocked loudly twice, and opened the door.

“Roy?” the bartender called out as he and the dwarf walked down a dark hall to a single lighted room at its end. “I’ve brought someone who knows your name.”

The bartender and the dwarf entered the lighted room and found a middle-aged man sitting in an overstuffed chair with a massive tome in his lap. His hair was black and cut short. His face wore a charcoal-colored van dyke beard and his eyes were steel gray under a furrowed brow. He was dressed in a red v-neck tunic with black cuffs and collar, black trousers, and red houseslippers. The room itself was a library of sorts, the walls lined with heavy bookshelves and the floor richly carpeted.

The man in the chair let his eyes fall upon the dwarf. He slowly smiled. “Nog Shortwhiskers,” he said. “It is good to see you again. How did you find me?”

The dwarf called Shortwhiskers pulled up a chair and sat down. “It wasn’t easy, Roystnof. After that last adventure, you really dropped out of society.”

“Roystnof?” the bartender asked.

“The name I used in my career before I settled here,” Roystnof said to the bartender. “I told you about those days and my companions. This is the dwarf I associated with.”

“Associated, he calls it,” Shortwhiskers said sarcastically. “We would go out and nearly get ourselves killed for gold and treasure, and then we would, ah, we would…” The dwarf trailed off strangely in the middle of his comments and gave the bartender another odd look.

“Have we met somewhere before?” Shortwhiskers asked the bartender.

“No, I don't think so,” the bartender said.

“Nog,” Roystnof said. “This is a good friend of mine here in Scalt. His name is Gilbert Parkinson.”

“Parkinson?” Shortwhiskers said, his tone of voice indicating that he did not believe it for a second. “No, his name’s not Parkinson. I don’t know how it’s possible, but Moradin strike me dead if his name isn’t Brisbane.”

Brisbane and Roystnof exchanged glances.

“How do you know that?” Brisbane asked the dwarf.

“Gil,” Roystnof said. “Nog knew your father. He must have recognized the family resemblance.”

Brisbane looked intensely at the dwarf. “You knew my father?”

Shortwhiskers nodded. “And your grandfather. Finer men I’ve never met.”

Brisbane pulled up a chair of his own and studied the dwarf’s face and hands. He looked to be a man in his forties. “My grandfather?” Brisbane asked, puzzled. “But how can that be? You look so young.”

Shortwhiskers smiled. “We who live under the mountains may not see as much of the sun as you humans do, but we are generally given more opportunity to do so. I am a hundred and sixty-three years old.”

Brisbane was astounded. He had only known one person who had ever met his father—his mother—and no one who had ever known his grandfather. Here was a dwarf who claimed to have known both. “Tell me about them,” Brisbane said, his need to know sudden and clear in his voice.

“Sometime,” the dwarf said, “I will tell you all I know about them, which is much indeed. But for now, more pressing matters are at hand.” He turned to the wizard.

“What has happened?” Roystnof asked.

Shortwhiskers cleared his throat and sat back in his chair. His feet came off the floor and he swung them absentmindedly as he spoke. “Two weeks ago, Roundtower and I caught a rumor in Queensburg. It told of a forgotten temple standing at the source of the Mystic River. Surely exaggerated, this rumor told of uncounted wealth awaiting the brave souls courageous enough to face its keepers. I can’t speak for Roundtower, but I never claimed to be brave. Greedy, yes, but not brave.”

Brisbane spoke as the dwarf paused. “Roundtower?”

Roystnof nodded. “Ignatius Roundtower. The other warrior I associated with before I settled here.”

“Associated again,” Shortwhiskers snickered. “Anyway, we suited up and started following the Mystic into the hills. Boring landscape. About one day out, we encountered something that absolutely scared the marrow out of my bones.”

Brisbane nudged closed and Roystnof closed the book in his lap. He took out a pipe, mumbled to himself, and lit the tobacco with the end of his index finger, which had begun to glow red.

“Go on,” the wizard said.

Shortwhiskers coughed into his fist. “Yes, well, we first came upon this low stone wall, which seemed to enclose a large area between two hills. Inside the wall there were plenty of trees and bushes, as if someone had made an oasis amidst all that barren rock and soil. We spotted some fruit trees and, already tired of our dry rations, hopped the wall to get some fresh fruit. We went to the nearest tree and Roundtower pulled down some fruit for us. We were just eating the fruit and taking in the scenery when…it happened.”

“What?” Roystnof asked.

Shortwhiskers swallowed hard and looked first at the wizard and then his young friend. “Roundtower called out my name. He was about thirty feet away behind some bushes. ‘Nog,’ he says. ‘Look at this—’ I turned as the words stuck in his throat. He stood frozen for a moment, with one finger pointing ahead of him, and then he slowly turned dull gray in color. Not just him, either. Everything he wore drained all its color away and became just like granite. In less than ten seconds, he looked like a statue someone had chiseled out of a slab of rock. And still he did not move.”

Roystnof and Brisbane only stared at the dwarf.

“I crouched down beneath the branches of the tree I was standing next to and looked in the direction Roundtower had been pointing. It came out of the bushes slowly. It moved like a snail, as if hours were only minutes to it. It was a huge lizard, as high at the shoulder as a large dog, and longer than young Brisbane here is tall. Its scales were dark brown along its back and brightened to yellow in its underbelly. I couldn’t see its head, it was moving away from me, and for some reason, I felt relieved that it couldn’t stare at me. Most freakish of all, however, was that it had eight legs. It gave me plenty of time to count them. With that many legs, I would think it could scamper along like lightning, but it moved so slowly.”

Roystnof nodded and blew a smoke ring. “And Roundtower?”

Shortwhiskers clenched his hands together in his lap and bowed his head. “That is why I have sought you out. I waited until the beast was finally gone. It seemed like hours, but I waited anyway, unwilling to reveal myself to it until I had determined what it had done to Roundtower. Eventually, I was able to get up and move over to him. All this time he had been frozen in place and had remained entirely the color of granite.”

The dwarf looked up suddenly. “He was granite. Vile Abbathor, I knew that before I even touched him. I’ve smelled that stone too often to mistake its scent, no matter how impossible the situation. I could salvage nothing from him. Everything he had carried had become stone as well, and was securely attached to the statue that had once been my friend.”

Shortwhiskers drifted off briefly into silence. “Then I began my search for you, Roystnof,” he said quietly. “I left him standing alone in that garden. There was little else I could do. It took some time, but eventually I was able to track you down. I can only hope you know what manner of creature it was I saw that day, and that you know something that can be done to help Ignatius. He is certainly beyond my power to assist.”

Roystnof quickly got up and went over to a bookcase. He spoke as he chose a book from the shelf. “I believe I do know what manner of creature it was. I have read of it in the years I’ve spent away from you, my friend.”

Roystnof came back to his chair with a slim book in his head. “It is called a basilisk, and it has the power to turn men to stone. It accomplishes this by merely gazing at its intended victim. If that victim meets the creature’s gaze, as Roundtower must have done, he will actually turn to stone.”

Shortwhiskers was staring intently at Roystnof, listening carefully to every word he said. Brisbane was doing much the same but, unlike the dwarf, who was hopeful at the wizard’s words, Brisbane was somewhat fearful. Shortwhiskers had already asked Roystnof if he knew of anything that could help this Roundtower. If Roystnof did, it would mean only one thing to Brisbane. Roystnof would be leaving Scalt to administer this help.

“Can anything be done, Roystnof?” the dwarf asked.

Roystnof looked at Brisbane when as he answered the dwarf’s question. “Yes. I know a spell that will return Roundtower to his own flesh.”

“Thank Moradin!” Shortwhiskers exclaimed as he rose to his feet. “I knew you would know what to do, Roystnof. I just knew it. You always got one more trick up those red sleeves of yours, don’t you?”

Roystnof and Brisbane were exchanging glances. Brisbane got up to leave suddenly but Roystnof detained him with an outstretched palm. Brisbane obediently sat down.

“Nog,” Roystnof said. “I will need some time to prepare this spell tonight.”

“Oh sure, sure,” Shortwhiskers said. “I understand. I’m beat anyway. I’ll go back to the inn and get some sleep. I’ll come back in the morning and we’ll head out. Okay?”

“That’s fine,” Roystnof said.

Shortwhiskers looked about himself to see if he was leaving anything behind. “Tomorrow, then.” He extended a hand to Brisbane and the young man promptly shook it. “Nice to have met you, son. Someday we’ll sit down and I’ll tell you just what your name means.”

Brisbane smiled. “I’d like that.”

Shortwhiskers patted him on the back, said a final farewell to Roystnof, and left the house.

Roystnof sat down and put the slim red book he had taken off the bookshelf on the low table in front of Brisbane. “Take it, Gil,” he said. “Open it and look inside.”

Brisbane picked up the book. On the outside it looked ordinary. It was bound in featureless red leather and was perhaps fifty pages thick. Brisbane opened it and met a blank first page. He began to leaf through it and recognized the magical writings that filled the rest of it. Some of the twisted and arcane runes he could understand from the lessons he had stopped years ago, but most were beyond his comprehension. He continued flipping through it and glanced at the page numbers as they went by. Fifty, one hundred, one hundred fifty, two hundred. The book isn’t this thick, Brisbane thought as he kept paging through three and four hundred. He looked up at Roystnof.

“There are seven hundred and twenty-six pages,” Roystnof said. “All of which I have magically slimmed down to exist in the space of fifty or so.”

Brisbane shut the book with a snap and handed it back to Roystnof. The wizard put the book back on the table.

“Gil,” he said. “When I came here six years ago, I had boxes and boxes of books that I had collected over my travels.”

Brisbane took something out of his shirt pocket. “I know,” he said. “I carried them in.”

Roystnof smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, you did. Those books were filled with magical information. Spells, magical research, summonings, curses, component enhancers. It was a treasure trove of knowledge.”

Brisbane rubbed the thing he had taken out of his pocket between his thumb and fingers. It had a slim silver chain that hung down between his knees.

“In the past six years,” Roystnof continued, “I have gone through those books. Page by page, paragraph by paragraph, line by line. And I have consumed and understood nearly all that I have seen. My abilities must have increased a thousand fold.”

Brisbane looked sharply into the eyes of the wizard.

Roystnof indicated the red book on the table before them. “All of this knowledge, Gil, all of this power I have set down in this book. It contains everything the other books in this room have taught me, and a few things these books have enabled me to teach myself.”

Brisbane only rubbed the silver medallion in his fingers.

“The time has come,” Roystnof said, “For me to take this book and see what I can do and attain with it. I must go with Nog to help Ignatius, yes, but after that I must continue with my travels. Scalt is a nice town, but six years is too long for anyone to spend in it.”

“I’ve been here for eighteen,” Brisbane said. He did not want Roystnof to go and he suddenly decided that if that was the way it would be, then he meant to go with his friend.

“Gil, I want you to come with me.”

Brisbane almost dropped his medallion.

“The time has come for you to continue your training. Although it has been a while, I doubt you have forgotten a single thing I have taught you.”

“I haven’t,” Brisbane said.

Roystnof smiled. “But, it is your decision. If you feel you should stay, I will understand and wish you well. I am sure Otis will want you to stay, and if you feel you bear any obligation to him, perhaps you should stay. But again, it is you who must decide.”

Brisbane fastened the clasp of his medallion behind his neck. The silver pentacle rested in the space between his collar bones, below his Adam's apple and above the swelling of his pectorals. He thought of how upset Otis would be if he left with Roystnof. The elder Parkinson still instructed him in the knightly virtues and the holy words of Grecolus, but Brisbane had only been studying these to avoid a conflict for years now. He had lost most, if not all, of his faith in the benevolence or even the existence of Grecolus and the evil Damaleous. The only proof he had was the existence of magic, which he had been taught was the tool of the Evil One. But Brisbane no longer believed that either. Roystnof worked magic and he was not evil. Or if he was evil, then the concepts of good and evil were not absolute, and were subject to interpretation. The more Brisbane thought of these things, the more confused he became.

Brisbane then thought of his mother and the wishes she had had for his life. If she were still alive, he was sure he would be traveling to Farchrist Castle to appeal to the King to start his formal training to become a Knight. He would have done it if she had asked him to go but, somehow, with her gone, it didn’t seem as important. Her last words to her only son had been about loyalty, and staring at Roystnof’s red book of magic on the table before him, Brisbane realized that he felt more loyalty towards his wizard friend that he ever had for his mother’s dream.

“I will go with you,” Brisbane said finally, and he lowered his head, feeling somewhat ashamed.

Roystnof put a reassuring hand on Brisbane’s knee. “The choice is made, my friend. Go now and sleep a dreamless slumber. I will fetch you in the morning.”

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.