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.

+ + +

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.

+ + +

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.

+ + +

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.

+ + +

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?

+ + +

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.

+ + +

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.”

+ + +

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

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I took this one on a recent extended family vacation, thinking it would provide an entertaining distraction when needed. Several of my relatives, upon seeing the book in my hand, commented on how much they had liked it, and how “good” it was.

It was not good.

It’s fine, I guess. But I suspect that it suffers from a number of translation errors, seeing how it was first published in Swedish and under an entirely different title -- Men Who Hate Women.

Here’s my favorite.

“Yes,” Blomkvist said without hesitation. “Martin was dafter than a syphilitic polecat -- where do I get these metaphors from? -- but he confessed to all the crimes he had committed.”

Dafter than a syphilitic polecat. At first, I thought that perhaps that was something like a Swedish idiom -- something that made some kind of sense in that original language and its cultural context -- but which had no accurate or meaningful English translation. You know something like “he’s batting a thousand” translated into a language without baseball as its cultural content. Because “dafter than a syphilitic polecat” doesn’t mean anything in English, at least it doesn’t mean anything that any random group of English speakers could agree on.

But then there’s that parenthetical comment. Where do I get these metaphors from? Parenthetical but not in parentheses, simply set off with em dashes, as if the character actually said these words out loud, bracketed by a pair of vocal pauses. Maybe he did? The character is, of course, an author, and evidently based on Stieg Larsson himself. Therefore this seems to me like another of those tiresome situations in which an author is writing not to impress a reader but, frankly, to impress himself. 

So, it’s not a translation issue. It’s just bad writing.

And then there’s this:

Berger thought that the book was the best thing Blomkvist had ever written. It was uneven stylistically, and in places the writing was actually rather poor -- there had been no time for any fine polishing -- but the book was animated by a fury that no reader could help but notice.

This, of course, is not narratively written about the book the reader is reading, it is written about the book that Blomkvist ends that book by writing, but it might as well have been written about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, since it seems that sum that work up pretty well.

+ + +

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

CHAPTER ONE

FARCHRIST TALES

BOOK ONE:

STONE TO FLESH

They called him the Peasant King. His name was Gregorovich Farchrist and he grew up in poverty. When he was twenty-one he organized and led the rebellion that shattered the old regime to ashes. After the monarch had been hung in the street and his body had been fed to his dogs, after his manor house had been burned to its foundation and it ruins smashed and trampled into the earth, the peasants had carried their leader upon their shoulders and had named him their new King. The day was called the Day of Vengeance and the calendars started over again at Farchrist Year One.

+ + +

Gil’s mother died five days after his eighteenth birthday. Her death left him alone. His father had died before Gil had been born and, although Gil knew who his father had been and what position he had held, Gil did not know the circumstances of his father’s death. His mother had never talked about it and Gil had learned at an early age not to ask.

Gil’s mother had thought her son needed a male role-model to emulate as he grew, so when Gil was two, she married a man named Otis Parkinson, a somewhat wealthy tavern owner. Until after the wedding, Otis, like the rest of the small village of Scalt, knew nothing about Gil’s father and who he had been. But Gil’s mother told Otis the whole truth on their wedding night so Otis would know how to properly raise his stepson. Her fondest and most secret dream was to see her son attain the same position his father had held, as well as his father before him.

Gil respected his stepfather during his childhood, but he never felt any great love for him. Otis raised Gil to be virtuous and to place personal honor before all else. His education included a deep devotion to the god Grecolus, who made him and all the world. Gil was to lead his life in goodness and purity, and to preserve the sanctity of all such good life. Although it was necessary for him to accept the name of Parkinson as his mother had, Gil was told not to be ashamed of the name with which he had been born.

Gil accepted all he was taught and he held it dear to his heart. He was young, but he could feel it strengthening his budding soul. All he was taught seemed so right to him. The world was a beautiful place in which he played an important role. His love for his creator kept him alive and his faith in himself kept him strong.

When Gil was twelve, he met Roy Stonerow. The man came to town in a horse-drawn wagon and moved into a recently vacated house down the road from Otis’ tavern. The cart had been bulging with his possessions, all of them covered by a red tarpaulin. Roy Stonerow had been a young man of twenty-four when he came to Scalt that day. His hair had been black and he had worn a full beard that dipped an inch below his chin.

Gil had been playing outside when Roy Stonerow and his wagon rolled up, and Stonerow quickly recruited Gil and his little friends to help unload the towering pile of goods from the wheeled cart.

The things Gil carried into that house that day astounded him, and would change the course of his life. It seemed that Roy Stonerow was a wizard of sorts, and he had the paraphernalia to prove it. He had boxes and boxes of tubes, flasks, mortars and pestles, bowls and mixing utensils; all with which to create his bubbling potions. Old and yellowed parchment with strange red and black writings were carted off by the bundle, along with stacks of books, some tomes as thick as Gil’s head. Locked chests had filled the bottom of the wagon, which either appeared laboriously heavy and were as light as a feather, or appeared small and manageable but were too heavy to lift.

All of Gil’s friends left when they saw the things to be carried out of the wagon. They had heeded the warnings they had been given about the evils of magic and wizards. Magic was the tool of Damaleous, the Evil One, and those who used it were his servants.

Otis had given these warnings to Gil as well. But as much as Gil knew these warnings to be valid, and as much as he knew magic to be an abomination against Grecolus, the more Gil was fascinated by sorcery.

After the moving in had been completed, Stonerow gave Gil a small pentacle medallion of silver as payment for the help he had cheerfully given. Gil ran home to tell Otis and his mother about Scalt’s newest resident and to show them his new necklace. Otis spanked Gil that day for the first and only time in his life. The older man called the medallion a Token of the Beast and threw it deep into the woods behind their home.

It took Gil a week, but he eventually found that small silver medallion in the underbrush of the forest, and this time he kept it hidden from Otis and his mother. He also kept hidden his visits to Stonerow and the friendship that developed between the two of them over the next six years.

As those years passed, Stonerow told Gil more and more of his personal history. Orphaned at a young age, Stonerow had been adopted by an aging wizard who had passed the rudiments of magic along to Stonerow before he had died when Stonerow was seventeen. Most of the things in the Stonerow’s house now had once been the property of this old wizard.

After his death, Stonerow took to wandering, and in his travels he met up with a pair of warriors, one of whom was a dwarf, and together the three of them had set out on dangerous quest after quest for treasure and power. On the last such adventure, Stonerow had found some ancient tomes of magic, which he had decided to study and master over the next few years. This was why he had retired to the peaceful village of Scalt.

But history was not the only thing Stonerow taught Gil in those ensuing years. Gil quickly and secretly became a student of magic. Stonerow taught him how magic worked in their realm of reality. It was an underlying force inherent to all things in the universe. But it was a dangerous force to control once the user discovered how to employ it. Therefore, Stonerow said, one must not progress too quickly in their study of magic. If so, the user can become a slave to the power and will use it for horrible purposes. It was not the magic that was evil but the mage who has lost control over it.

Near the beginning of Gil’s education, Stonerow gave his pupil a test of his magical force. This would see just how inherent the force of magic was in Gil’s body and mind, and that would determine how powerful he could become through devotion to the craft. The test required Stonerow to cast some low-powered spell, using Gil instead of himself as the medium. Normally, spells were cast by the wizard through himself, using his own mystic force to channel the magic to his desired end. But a particularly powerful wizard could cast spells using the magic of another body, and Stonerow was just such a wizard.

The spell used was a simple light spell, with the intensity of the resulting light indicating the extent of Gil’s potential. The candles in Stonerow’s home were snuffed out and the spell was cast. To Gil’s youthful surprise, the result filled the room with a bright flash of light against which he had to shield his eyes. The master announced that his pupil had significant potential.

As the years continued to pass, Gil progressed slowly in his craft for he always had to keep it hidden. If his mother or Otis had ever found out, it would have been all over. Magic, to say the least, was not popular among the Grecolus-fearing populace, and although no one had any suspicions about Gil, everyone knew what Stonerow’s profession was. As a result, the townsfolk kept themselves as far removed as possible from the wizard and his practices.

Under these circumstances, Stonerow knew he could never prime Gil into the wizard he might one day become. Magic needed one’s full attention and one couldn’t always be looking over one’s shoulder for the accusatory fingers. One night, Stonerow and Gil talked it over and together they decided Gil should give up, or preferably delay, his magical training until he wasn’t so much under the gaze of Otis and his mother.

But now, the lessons and ethics Otis was teaching him were somehow less important to him. Gil no longer believed magic to be the coldly evil power that worship of Grecolus demanded. This was such a basic belief of the devoted—that magic was the tool of Damaleous to inflict his presence upon the world—that without it, Gil’s entire faith began to erode. Stonerow had taught Gil some simple tricks before he had stopped his studies. Stonerow had called them cantrips. They were not spells as such. They were not that powerful, but they were magic nonetheless. Gil could conjure up small insects or make strange noises echo from seemingly nowhere. By his old beliefs, because he could do these simple cantrips, he was a servant of Damaleous and was irrevocably bound for the lake of fire.

Gil had never before had any doubt that this was true. But now that he had met Stonerow and had learned what he had from the wizard, he embarrassingly found his old ideology a bit silly. He was still young and very confused over all the seemingly contradictory information he had received in his short life. Gil had no one to work it out with, either. His mother and Otis could never know about the source of his new ideas, so there was no help there, and Stonerow, who Gil had by then begun to think of as an older brother, offered only his side of the argument. He denied even the existence of Grecolus and Damaleous. As a result, Gil spent his adolescence mired in a bog of spiritual confusion.

He became depressed and spent most of his time methodically going through the chores of his life like a bystander. Otis would often comment on his zombie-like attitude and how he had been neglecting his divine studies. Otis would ask what it was that was bothering him, and offer any help he could provide, but Gil just couldn’t bring himself to tell his stepfather of the turmoil with which he was wrestling.

When his mother took ill, and it became painfully clear that there was nothing anyone could do for her, Gil suddenly realized that he needed to know what had become of his father. He would sit beside his mother’s bed, begging her to tell him what had happened, but she would always refuse him. Gil would keep at her until Otis would drag him away, saying his mother needed her rest.

On his eighteenth birthday, Gil’s mother called him to her sickbed and told him the time had finally come for Gil to know the truth. As Gil already knew, his father had been a Knight of Farchrist and had served under the Farchrist line of Kings just as Gil’s grandfather had done. Gil’s father had thrown himself into his knighthood. His father, Gil’s grandfather, had been killed in knightly service when Gil’s father was only three years old and, from a very young age, Gil’s father had decided to become the most pious and devoted Knight that he could be. Raised with all the strictest knightly virtues ingrained into him, he became a Knight of Farchrist when he was twenty-one under the reign of King Gregorovich Farchrist II.

What Gil did not know, and what his mother now told him, was that a year after his knighting, Gil’s father met and fell in love with Gil’s mother. He had been forced to suppress his love for her, however, because Gil’s mother was a commoner, and it was beneath his station to consort with such a woman. He began to seek any excuse he could find to go into the city so he could see her. They were deeply in love with each other, but both of them understood and respected the strictures placed upon him because of his station.

This situation continued for some time. But on the night King Gregorovich II died, Gil’s father was so saddened at the loss of his lord, he could no longer bear the separation from the woman he loved. He went into the city that night, went to Gil’s mother, and cried out his grief in her arms. She comforted him as best she could, and in a moment of passion, they culminated their lingering love for one another in a fitful burst of lovemaking. When Gil’s father left that night, she was already pregnant with their son.

Gil’s father was wracked with guilt in the ensuing weeks and eventually his knightly disciplines compelled him to confess his transgression to the new King. Gregorovich Farchrist IV, the great grandson of the Peasant King, was astounded. In his opinion, never had the name of Farchrist been soiled so horribly. One of his Knights had coupled out of wedlock with a commoner, breaking the laws of both his society and his god. The King considered the infraction unforgivable, and he quickly stripped the knighthood from Gil’s father and had him escorted from the castle.

In his misery, Gil’s father went to Gil’s mother after his dismissal and told her to leave the capital city immediately. Once word spread of her part in the scandal, the townsfolk, who loved their King and the Knights, would not take kindly to her presence among them. She asked him why he refused to escape with her, why they could not go off somewhere together to spend the rest of their lives apart from the society that would not tolerate what they had done, but Gil’s father would give her no reply. He kissed her briefly on the cheek and left. In the morning, his lifeless and crumpled body was found at the bottom of the cliff on which Farchrist Castle stood.

Gil’s mother had been crying long before she reached the climax of her tale, the tears silently spilling down her cheeks like belongings she knew she could not take with her to her grave. Gil tried to choke back tears himself, but occasionally one would escape him, rushing down his face to stain the fabric of his tunic. Finally, his mother reached out and took her son’s strong hand. She looked at him in silence for a long time before saying that loyalty was the most precious trait a man could possess.

Later that night, she slipped into a coma and in less than a week she would be dead. After her death, Gil would often think about what she had told him that night. He would think about it in the quiet dark of his room, late at night after the tavern had been closed and the rest of the village was asleep. He would think about it while sitting on the edge of his bed, unable to sleep, while gently rubbing the surface of the silver inverted star that Stonerow had given him.

+ + +

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

The Alienist by Caleb Carr

Caleb Carr is a tease.

Here is what he promises.

There’s no simple way to describe it. I could say that in retrospect it seems that all three of our lives, and those of many others, led inevitable and fatefully to that one experience; but then I’d be broaching the subject of psychological determinism and questioning man’s free will -- reopening, in other words, the philosophical conundrum that wove irrepressibly in and out of the nightmarish proceedings, like the only hummable tune in a difficult opera. Or I could say that during the course of those months, Roosevelt, Kreizler, and I, assisted by some of the best people I’ve ever known, set out on the trail of a murderous monster and ended up coming face to face with a frightened child; but that would be deliberately vague, too full of the “ambiguity” that seems to fascinate current novelists and which has kept me, lately, out of the bookstores and in the picture houses. No, there’s only one way to do it, and that’s to tell the whole thing, going back to that first grisly night and that first butchered body; back even further, in fact, to our days with Professor James at Harvard. Yes, to dredge it all up and put it finally before that public -- that’s the way.

That’s your narrator in the opening pages setting the stage for the players to walk out upon. And that stage is an interesting one -- a thriller, centered on the pursuit of a mysterious (almost magical) serial killer, with a psychological theme that dances on the knife’s edge between determinism and free will, and set in the 1890s, with several historical figures included among the dramatis personae.

And initially, that is very much what it appears that Carr is trying to deliver.

The Kreizler mentioned is Laszlo Kreizler, a fictional creation and the alienist of the book’s title -- a scientist turned investigator that studies mental pathologies and the deviant behaviors of those who are alienated from themselves and society. And he, at least for the time that he lives in, has some very odd beliefs about the true nature of man.

Kreizler’s relationship with James was far more complex. Though he greatly respected James’s work and grew to have enormous affection for the man himself (it really was impossible not to), Laszlo was nonetheless unable to accept James’s famous theories on free will, which were the cornerstone of our teacher’s philosophy. James had been a maudlin, unhealthy boy, and as a young man had more than once contemplated suicide; but he overcame this tendency as a result of reading the works of the French philosopher Renouvier, who taught that a man could, by force of will, overcome all psychic (and many physical) ailments. “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will!” had been James’s early battle cry, an attitude that continued to dominate his thinking in 1877. Such a philosophy was bound to collide with Kreizler’s developing belief in what he called “context”: the theory that every man’s actions are to a very decisive extent influenced by his early experiences, and that no man’s behavior can be analyzed of affected without knowledge of those experiences. In the laboratory rooms at Lawrence Hall, which were filled with devices for testing and dissecting animal nervous systems and human reactions, James and Kreizler battled over how the patterns of people’s lives are formed and whether or not any of us is free to determine what kind of lives we will lead as adults. These encounters became steadily more heated -- not to mention a subject of campus gossip -- until finally, one night early in the second term, they debated in the University Hall the question, “Is Free Will a Psychological Phenomenon?”

Most of the student body attended; and though Kreizler argued well, the crowd was predisposed to dismiss his statements. In addition, James’s sense of humor was far more developed than Kreizler’s at that time, and the boys at Harvard enjoyed their professor’s many jokes at Kreizler’s expense. On the other hand, Laszlo’s references to philosophers of gloom, such as the German Schopenhauer, as well as his reliance on the evolutionist theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer in explaining that survival was the goal of man’s mental as much as his physical development, provoked many and prolonged groans of undergraduate disapproval. I confess that even I was torn, between loyalty to a friend whose beliefs had always made me uneasy and enthusiasm for a man and a philosophy that seemed to offer the promise of limitless possibilities for not only my own but every man’s future. Theodore -- who did not yet know Kreizler, and who had, like James, survived many and severe childhood illnesses by dint of what he reasoned to be sheer willpower -- was not troubled by any such qualms: he spiritedly cheered James’s eventual and inevitable victory.

This book sounds like a lot of intellectual fun -- at least in these early pages. Carr seems to be setting up a battle between free will and determinism, with each philosophy epitomized by one of the characters. For determinism, the alienist Laszlo Kriezler. And for free will, yes, that Theodore Roosevelt, serving in the time period of the novel as New York police commissioner.

But that is not really the novel that winds up unfolding. This theme will occasionally get a spotlight shone upon it, but not in the form of a battle between character motivations, but only in an occasional explanation for Kreizler’s methods in pursuing the serial killer.

From that moment on, he said, we must make every possible effort to rid ourselves of preconceptions about human behavior. We must try not to see the world through our own eyes, nor to judge it by our own values, but through and by those of our killer. His experience, the context of his life, was all that mattered. Any aspect of his behavior that puzzled us, from the most trivial to the most horrendous, we must try to explain by postulating childhood events that could lead to such eventualities. This process of cause and effect -- what we would soon learn was called “psychological determinism” -- might not always seem entirely logical to us, but it would be consistent.

Kreizler emphasized that no good would come of conceiving of this person as a monster, because he was most assuredly a man (or woman); and that man or woman had once been a child. First and foremost, we must get to know that child, and to know his parents, his siblings, his complete world. It was pointless to talk about evil and barbarity and madness; none of these concepts would lead us any closer to him. But if we could capture the human child in our imaginations -- then we could capture the man in fact.

It’s almost as if Carr falls victim to the same clouded thinking he has Kreizler caution the other characters in the play about. Free will -- men choosing to do good or evil -- is such a suffocating psychological frame, that even an author trying to write a novel about determinism is unable to creep out from under its blanketing effects.

Most of his characters in fact rebel against rather than embrace Kreizler’s odd beliefs.

Kreizler sighed heavily, but did go on: “The theory of individual psychological context that I have developed---”

“Rank determinism!” Comstock declared, unable to contain himself. “The idea that every man’s behavior is decisively patterned in infancy and youth -- it speaks against freedom, against responsibility! Yes, I say it is un-American!”

At another annoyed glance from Morgan, Bishop Potter laid a calming hand on Comstock’s arm, and the postal censor relapsed into disgruntled silence.

“I have never,” Kreizler went on, keeping his eyes on Morgan, “argued against the idea that every man is responsible before the law for his actions, save in cases involving the truly mentally diseased. And if you consult my colleagues, Mr. Morgan, I believe you will discover that my definition of mental disease is rather more conservative than most. As for what Mr. Comstock somewhat blithely calls freedom, I have no argument with it as a political or legal concept. The psychological debate surrounding the concept of free will, however, is a far more complex issue.”

Is it frustrating in the extreme for Kreizler to meet emotional assertion with reasoned argument like this. It’s never a fair fight, and only satisfying to those who already assume to hold the high ground. The Comstocks of the novel never change. What greater crime is there, after all, than being un-American?

And worse, frequently Carr seems to forget that his characters are living in the 1890s.

“And would be transmitted through the act of sex,” Marcus added. “So you’re right, Doctor -- sex is not something he values or enjoys. It’s the violence that’s his goal.”

“Isn’t it possible that he isn’t even capable of sex?” Sara asked. “Given the kind of background we’re supposing, that is. In one of the treatises you gave us, Doctor, there’s a discussion of sexual stimulation and anxiety reactions---”

“Dr. Peyer, at the University of Zurich,” Kreizler said. “The observations grew out of his larger study of coitus interruptus.”

“That’s right,” Sara continued. “The implications seemed strongest for men who had emerged from difficult home lives. Persistent anxiety could result in a pronounced suppression of the libido, creating impotence.”

“Our boy’s pretty tender on that subject,” Marcus said, going to the note and reading from it. ‘I never fucked him, though I could have.’”

“Indeed,” Kreizler said, writing IMPOTENCE in the center of the board without hesitation. “The effect would only be to magnify his frustration and rage, producing ever more carnage.”

Seriously. Is this 1896 or an episode of Special Victims Unit? I eventually gave up and read it for what it clearly was -- a modern thriller only wearing period costumes. Only Roosevelt seems to talk in the idiom of the day, probably because he’s a historical figure with well-defined and recognizable patterns of speech. Dee-lighted!

+ + +

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