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Our two sources for Zerika's parentage agree that her parents were named Vernoi and Loudin. Unfortunately, Paarfi tells us of a Lord Vernoi and a Princess Loudin [FHYA 319-322], while Vlad says that Vernoi was Zerika's mother and Loudin her father [Tlt 146]. Did Brust the author slip, or can we resolve the contradiction within the limits of Dragaera?
As Paarfi tells it, Lord Vernoi converses with Khaavren about his wife, Princess Loudin, the Phoenix Heir (and Deputy to the Meeting of the Principalities [FHYA 17]): a maid of honor to the Consort until their marriage, she is now pregnant and near term. Not much question here of which one is the mother! But what about Vlad's report? Here it is in its entirety:
| [Morrolan:] | "She's the only daughter of Vernoi and, um, whoever it was she married." |
| [Aliera:] | "Loudin." |
| [Morrolan:] | "Right." |
By distinguishing Brust the translator (and possibly interviewer) from
Brust the author. We know that in the Dragaeran language (as in
Hungarian Fenarian [BPxxx]) the pronouns do not always
distinguish between masculine and feminine [FHYA 548-549]
(though sometimes they do [TPG 307, Jrg 143,
Ath 80?]). The immediate context of this conversation, as
Vlad heard and reported it, gave Brust the translator no clue as to
which gender to use, and he guessed wrong. (The same translator,
working on Paarfi's text, had plenty of guidance for gender from the
text itself.) Vlad himself may not have known, though he considers
himself to have been given "a good grounding in Dragaeran history"
[Tlt 53]. For that matter, if Morrolan, who was alive at
the start of Zerika's reign and helped her return from Deathsgate
[Tltxxx], has let this detail slip his mind, we shouldn't be surprised
if Vlad never knew.
But we shouldn't treat Paarfi as always reliable, either. Aliera's account of the events leading up to Adron's Disaster [Jrg 166-167] (as reported by Vlad to us, or to his listener, Brust the interviewer), differs significantly from the account appearing in Paarfi's historical romance A Discussion of Some Events..., which we know as Five Hundred Years After [FHYA 550]. And Aliera was there!
Date: Tue, 03 Mar 1998 09:25:23 -0700
From: Steven Brust
[...] You nailed me good on at least one inconsistency: the sexes of Vernoi and Loudin. That was a fuckup. But I really like the explanation you give, and I think I'll now make it official. <g>
We all know a Morganti weapon kills with even a scratch and eats the victim's soul [Jrg 40,Tlt 28,Yen 119], right?[*] Well, when Vlad and Morrolan invade Loraan's keep, Morrolan fights Loraan and his guards with sorcery and Blackwand, which is a Morganti sword. At the end of that fight "there was a large cut, as from a sword, in his [=Loraan's] chest, directly over the heart. He seemed to be rather dead." [Tlt 65]
But in Athyra "He's baa-a-a-ck!", and he's undead into the bargain. We know that not only from his appearance and because that's Vlad's conclusion [Ath 37,85], but because he's repelled and blocked by Savn's container of Dark Water [Ath 234]. So how did Loraan become undead after being killed by a Morganti blade? Kiera wonders about this, too; and, as we know by now, she knows a lot about death.
Vlad's answer is "Take it up with Morrolan. Or rather with Blackwand." [Orc 36] Blackwand isn't just a Morganti blade, it's a Great Weapon [Tlt 62]. And as Morrolan said to his first Dragon opponent in the Paths of the Dead, "Don't worry. It does what I tell it to" [Tlt 123]. (I'll bet you were already on to that, weren't you?) Maybe Morrolan didn't want to kill Loraan permanently and directed Blackwand not to touch his soul; compare the final dealings with the Sorceress in Green [Yen 204].
But if he did that, why wasn't Loraan revivified, becoming not undead but simply alive again? Perhaps there was no one left around able to revivify him or have it done before three days had passed and his soul had left his body [Jrg 41]. Or perhaps Morrolan sent his soul directly to the Paths of the Dead and his body was sent up later. We don't know that a Great Weapon could do that, but it seems plausible. As Aliera tells Vlad after killing the Left Hand sorceress who helped to trap and kill Morrolan, "[Pathfinder] is a Great Weapon. Her body is back in Castle Black, and her soul is here, where we can get at it whenever we want it." [Jrg 153]
[2005-05-25] ° But what if Loraan was already undead in Taltos? We don't know what happens to an undead who is struck a "mortal" blow with a Morganti blade. Maybe he goes unconscious from the shock of the wound. Maybe he "dies" physically and has to be healed magically. In that case, Loraan might have had spells hanging around his person and/or his castle ready to be triggered by such an eventuality, or maybe he had given instructions to a trusted or otherwise suitably controlled servant, perhaps along with objects containing the necessary spells, which could be triggered without any special sorcerous ability, like a flashstone.
Or maybe the blow has no magical effect at all, since the undead's soul is elsewhere and the Morganti blade can't affect it. In that case, it's just as well to play possum, especially if your attacker isn't aware that you're undead. Looking "rather dead" should not be much of a challenge when you have a large cut directly over your heart, especially if you drop any spells you may have been using to make your undead body look alive.
In Taltos Vlad bribes a Teckla wagon-driver to smuggle him into Loraan's keep in a wine cask, which he breaks out of in the storage room [Tlt 48-49]. This is part of the intended burglary that leads to the fight in which Loraan is killed.
Several years later Loraan kills the wagon-driver -- who we learn is called Reins -- in order, as Vlad sees it, to draw Vlad in and kill him [Ath 162]. He succeeds in the first part of his plan, because Vlad considers that he himself is partly responsible for Reins's death, and therefore owes Reins a vengeance on Loraan [Ath 39]. So Loraan must know that Reins had a part in his (Loraan's) death.
How did Loraan learn this? One possibility is magic... but it wouldn't even take magic to connect Vlad with the broken wine cask in the storeroom! If the burglary had gone as planned, Loraan would have still been alive and would certainly have noticed the loss of the staff containing Aliera's soul. After that it would be easy to trace the broken cask back to Reins, and through Reins to Vlad: Vlad, who is sometimes very careless with his life, but never with other people's [Orc 281, as Kiera puts it. So how did he and Kragar miss this possibility in all their careful planning [Tlt 45-46]?
Vlad tells Savn that he lost his left pinkie to a sword blow [Ath 45], but he tells Kiera that "a very heavy weight" was responsible [Orc 4]. He's lying to one or the other, if not both; more likely to Savn, along with other lies.
Technically it's not a lie. Vlad describes a way to deflect a sword blow barehanded, adding "Your timing has to be perfect. Also, you ought to remember to keep your pinkie out of the way." (This is undoubtedly the empty-handed parry referred to by Paarfi [FHYA 512].) This sounds like an answer because Vlad says it in response to Savn's question, but literally it's simply a description of a defensive move. Yeah. It's a lie. This is also one of many obvious hooks for other adventures to be filled in.
Oh, a sword could be described as "a very heavy weight", but it would have to be a very heavy sword. Alternatively, as Bryant Durrell points out,
"a very heavy weight" could also be metaphorical, which I think would fit well with Vlad's attitude at the time of Orca. I.e., he could have lost it to a sword as the result of some moral burden he's carrying.
Rick Haan wrote in that Zerika's Palace in Adrilankha seems to be the same as Tortaalik's Palace in Dragaera City, which was destroyed in Adron's Disaster, and where did it come from? I agreed with his impression and posted his comment here. Brust saw it and wrote:
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 00:15:30 -0500
Hmmm. I certainly didn't mean to give any such impression. Certainly, it is very, very, old, and steeped in tradition--from Vlad's perspective. (And in fact, parts of it are very old indeed--it wasn't built from scratch.)
Trying to work this out, I responded (Brust's replies are in blue italics):
After all, why shouldn't a major port, a site that's been in the
history of the Empire from its very foundation, maybe the second-major
city of the Empire all along, have a lot of old Imperial architecture
in it? Including, maybe, a palace or something like it to house
Imperial offices and the Emperor when he's there? Especially in the
days before train and telephone teleportation and routine
telepathy?
Well, that's sort of what I was thinking.
And, after the fall of the old capital and the elevation of this city to the new capital, what more natural than to adapt the existing construction into a new Imperial Palace, carrying over as much as possible of the organization of the old one?: such as a Jhereg Wing, which may be Cycles old in construction but not have been put to that particular use previously? (Or might have been, if the organization of the original Palace was used as a guideline from way back.)
Yep.
(Jerry Friedman sent in some insightful commentary, which became irrelevant before I could post it.)
Vlad's preferred method of permanent killing is a stiletto through the left eye and into the brain. [Yen 9] Duels in Castle Black are always under the conditions of "no cuts to the head, and revivification afterwards". [Jrg 76] But even without damage to the brain itself, chopping off the head or otherwise severing the spine makes a person unrevivifiable [Jrg 42,Phx 139].
But in the events leading up to the first Dragon-Jhereg war, about 10,000 years before the Interregnum, the Dragons
... got the head of their messenger returned to them in a basket.
The insult, reasoned the Jhereg, wasn't that great. After all, they hadn't destroyed the poor fellow's brain, or done anything else to make him unrevivifiable. They were just sending the Dragons a message. [Jrg 73]
As I reconstruct it, my lords, here is Brust writing his first novel, still building the world of Dragaera. The general idea of revivification is clear to him, and he thinks at one point, "The brain has to be intact". That allows for non-permanent decapitation, and the early Jhereg-Dragon insult is framed in those terms. But later it occurs to him that what we think of as the brain is continuous with the spinal cord, so that severing the spine actually does damage the brain irrecoverably; and that becomes the premise for all further writing about revivification. Unfortunately, he forgets to fix the part already written.
It's not as though the sorcerers of the Sixteenth Cycle knew how to revivify a spinal case. It should be possible in Vlad's time, if ever, because of the methods developed during the Interregnum to deal with the absence of the Orb:[*]
"...Now, when the Orb is back, sorcery has grown so strong from the new skills that what was inconceivable before the Interregnum, and impossible during it, is now commonplace. [...] Even resurrection of the dead has become possib--" [Phx 117, Verra lecturing Vlad]
[2003-05-27] As Jerry Friedman has pointed out, this strongly implies that revivification was impossible before the Interregnum, unless by "resurrection" Verra is speaking of some other process even more impressive. And since we have no other indication of such a process, and we see no use or mention of revivification as we know of it in The Phoenix Guards or Five Hundred Years After, we are left with an authorial Crack.
[2003-05-28] When we first meet Morrolan, in the sequence of his life history rather than the publication of Brust's books, Paarfi refers to him as "a traveler", "a young man", "a warlock" [POTD 27-35], but not as "Morrolan", for the excellent reason--
("Boss!"
"Oh, hell, it is an excellent reason. When Paarfi uses that expression the reason is usually absurd or tautological or obvious. This reason is unusual and unexpected.")
-- that that is not yet his name. He is an apprentice witch in quest of his name. [POTD 30]
So what did his parents and his foster parents call him? "Hey, you"?
I suppose the simplest explanation is that he had an Eastern name (a different one), but we readers haven't learned it, and maybe never will. There might even be magical reasons for that.
[Morganti weapons] If you don't already know that, you shouldn't be reading this. Upon your own head be it.
[absent Orb] I can't imagine how sorcerors developed anything at all with the Orb gone from the world, but fortunately I don't have to: that's Brust's job, if he wants to deal with the question at all.
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last modified 2005-05-25