Chapter Three – Proper Blue Quartz:

THE BIRD WHO IS A RIDDLE:

Beak of silver, bones of cold iron
Wings of setting sun
Claws that catch only emptiness

-- from The Bonefall Oracles

I take this proverb to be a metaphor for our world.  The bird is the earth, made up of elements such as silver and iron, but the earth also involves things like the setting sun, which we can see but cannot touch.  The claw that catches “only emptiness” means that life on earth, and only earth (without heaven) is empty. 


In chapter three, we discover that Chert is of the lower middle-class of Funderlings.  He inhabits a small dwelling without much adornment, a fact that has always caused him guilt.  He is ashamed that he has never been able to provide a richer life for Opal, given that he is not the heir of his family’s house.  Opal, of course, has never cared about that, but this does not ease Chert’s mind about his self-defined failure.  Chert’s low self-worth will come to play a big role in his actions later on in the book.  Let’s just say that a more successful man might not have taken the risks that he chooses to take. 

We are told that Chert and Opal do not have any children of their own, no doubt another cause for concern in Chert’s eyes.  Based on her treatment of the strange boy, Opal clearly has motherly tendencies that have yet to be fulfilled.  Because they don’t have any children they name the boy Flint, a dubious honor, as that name is typically reserved for family heirs.  It is Opal who chooses the name (Chert chooses Pebble – a fairly unimaginative name, apparently).  It is in that moment that Chert realizes that Opal hasn’t taken this child home just to give him a hot meal; she is prepared to adopt him if his family cannot be found.  Although Chert comes to have feelings for Flint as well, the strong need to protect him as the book progresses stems from not wanting to let Opal down.  She finally has a child of her own (sort of), and he knows how important this is to her.   In this way, Chert is very much like Ferras Vansen in that they both are driven by feelings of inadequacy. 

And what would a Flint chapter be without another hint about his mysterious past? We find out that Flint knows the name Merolanna, the name of King Olin’s aunt, even though he doesn’t know anything about Southmarch or the surrounding area.  We come to find out in a later chapter that this name does indeed to the same Merolanna, not another woman of the same name.  What then is/was his relationship to this woman? Again, we discover this later. 

We are also told in this chapter brief details of how King Olin was captured.  He had traveled to Hierosol to rally the nobles against the encroaching Xandians from the south.  But, before he could do this he was detained by Hesper, King of Jellon, and delivered to the Protector of Hierosol, the former adventurer Ludis Drakava.  He is being ransomed for one hundred thousand gold dolphins (their currency), a price the realm cannot afford to pay at present, despite raised taxes.  As the chapter comes to a close we learn that Drakava has sent an envoy with a letter to Kendrick.  By my recollection, we don’t learn the contents of this letter for the entire first book, which is frustrating, to say the least, but also causes a great deal of dramatic tension.  I’ll say this, though, that the contents of that letter better knock me on my ass.  Because the reveal is delayed so long, the revelation has to be that much more shocking. 

Perhaps the most intriguing moment of the chapter occurs on the docks outside of Southmarch castle.  During the night an exchange occurs between a man in a boat and a hooded man on the dock.  They spend no more time together than it takes to pass the object from one person to the other.  After the exchange, the boatman paddles away as the hooded man disappears up the dock.  We are told that only one person, a skimmer, sees this exchange take place.  Who were the two men? What object was exchanged? What is the meaning of this object?


Chapter Four – A Surprising Proposal:

THE LAMP:

The flame is her fingers
The leaping is her eye as the rain is the cricket’s song
All can be foretold

--from The Bonefall Oracles

I am starting to see a pattern forming here, and also the reason why I didn’t bother with these quotations the first time through.  I have no idea what this means.


The opening paragraph of this chapter is one of my favorites in the whole book: “Puzzle looked sadly at the dove that he had just produced from his sleeve.  Its head was cocked at a very unnatural angle; in fact, it seemed to be dead.”  Even better is his response to this: “Perhaps I need to find a bird with a hardier constitution.”  Puzzle could not have been introduced in a better way.  There’s nothing else that I want to say about it, it’s just fantastic. 

In my first read through Barrick was one of my favorite characters, but as I read through these first few chapters again, I began to wonder why.  This kid is a sniveling, grumpy bastard.  What made me feel something for him the first time around? Chapter four reminded me that there is much more to Barrick than meets the eye. 

First, there is his mangled hand, which not only causes him physical pain, but emotional pain due to how differently he is viewed because of it.  He thinks that he will never know the love of a woman because of it (actual love, anyway).  Try to remember when you were fifteen and how important the feeling of attractiveness was to you.  Now try to imagine what it’s like with a physical deformity.  It can definitely change you. 

Also, he is also the younger brother of the new King Regent.  As if he couldn’t feel any more inadequate, he has his seemingly perfect old brother to live up to (I didn’t realize how large a theme the feeling of inadequacy was in this book until just now).  He will forever be in his brother’s shadow in every way. 

Finally, there is also the matter of Barrick’s…illness.  We will learn more about this later, but from what I recall, it would certainly cause one to be melancholic.  So, in a nutshell, there are a multitude of reasons why this kid is permi-pissed off.  I get it, Barrick.  I understand you.

The introduction of Selia definitely adds some depth to his character, more specifically to his relationship with women and his fear of never finding true love.  When thinking about finding love, Barrick thinks to himself, “I will never know.  Not as long as I am of this family, I will never know what anyone truly thinks of me, what they think of the crippled prince.  Because who would ever dare to mock the king’s son to his face?” It’s a sentiment that isn’t lost on me.  Just look at the amount of celebrities whose love lives are in constant turmoil because of things like this? How could you ever take someone seriously? How could you not think that everyone has an ulterior motive when you have so much to lose and they so much to gain? In the matter of a few pages I went from being completely annoyed by Barrick to feeling entirely sympathetic for him.  Nicely done, Tad.  Nicely done.

I liked how protective Briony was over these potentially ambitious women.  Her shooing away of Selia gave me a chuckle.  Of course she’d be wary of Selia! Barrick’s reaction to Briony was priceless, as well; he reacts in much the same way any fifteen year old who has just been cock-blocked would: utter derision.

Anissa and Chaven make their first appearances in this chapter.  Both are fairly quick and relatively useless.  We learn that Anissa is pregnant with Olin’s fourth child, and Chaven is short and stout.  That’s about it.  These two become more important later, but at this point they mean nothing. 

Dawet-dan-Faar, the envoy from Hierosol, is an intriguing character.  His warrior physique coupled with his mummer’s tongue is a potent combination.  It’s also revealed that he has a prior history with Shaso, of which we know nothing about at this point.  An interesting tidbit is the fact that the envoy from Hierosol is dark-skinned (Xandian).  It is well known that the Autarch has established a political presence in southern Eion, but has his power grown so much that he is now in control of Ludis Drakava?  Or is the Autarch, and not Drakava, somehow involved with the kidnapping of King Olin?

I said earlier that I have a love/hate relationship with the mysterious letter, but my opinion is quickly swaying towards simply love.  The fact that Kendrick knows the contents of the letter and nobody else does, not even us, allows for some fantastic dramatic tension.  The tension is immediately heightened when Dawet reveals that Drakava will lower the ransom to twenty thousand dolphins (one-fifth the original ransom) if Kendrick allows Briony to marry Drakava, because Kendrick appears to be willing to make that sacrifice based upon what he read in the letter; both Barrick and Briony’s reaction to Kendrick shows that this is out of character for him.  At this point I’m thinking, “For the love of God, what does the letter say?!!!”

Another (not so small) detail that I missed the first time around was the exposition about Brone’s relationship with Olin Eddon.  Evidently Brone is nearly single-handedly responsible for keeping the Eddons on the throne.  Olin’s father brother Lorick died suddenly while King Ustin was on his deathbed.  While the Summerfield’s were plotting to pry the throne away from Olin, who was but a small boy at the time, Brone came to Olin’s aid and, along with Nynor, was able to help the boy King rule Southmarch until he was fully capable of ruling on his own.

This bit of history becomes important once the murder-mystery plot starts to unfold.  Brone is sometimes painted as power-hungry throughout the book, and he is suspected for the murder because of this.  I had never understood this paranoia until I read his history.  Brone’s actions with Olin were motivated by either duty to the Eddons and the old King Ustin, or Brone knew that if the Summerfield’s arrested the throne from the Eddons, he would no longer hold any power.  This last possibility is the likely one.  I certainly would have suspected Brone more had I remembered this about him.


Chapter Five – Songs of the Moon and Stars:

THE LOUD VOICE:

In a snail shell house
Beneath a root, where the sapphire lies
The clouds lean close, listening

--from The Bonefall Oracles

This poem seems to point out the importance of what goes on underneath the earth where we cannot see, a sentiment that, thus far, is a major theme of The Bonefall Oracles.  They have instructed to pay more attention to what is not right in front of our eyes, i.e. under the earth, or the spiritual realm.  The Oracles see the importance of opening one’s mind to things we cannot understand at first. 

In chapter five, Chert takes Flint with him to Chaven in hopes that he can unravel the mysteries of both the boy and the shifting Shadowline.  Several interesting things happen en route to Chaven’s secret backdoor through the Funderling tunnels.

First, I loved the scene with Boulder (not to mention Boulder himself – I mean, a dwarf Funderling…how hilarious is that?).  It was very cool to see the primitive (or, more natural) technology that the Funderlings employ.  I suppose in some ways they are more advanced than their human counterparts. Secondly, there is a particular passage that I thought important to highlight.  When contemplating whether or not it would be safe to show Flint Chaven’s secret door, he thinks to himself, “it was hard to believe anyone could choose one so young as a spy, not to mention plan with such skill that the one person who knew these tunnels would wind up taking the child into his home.”  This is interesting in two ways: first, it draws attention to the fact that the Qar are using Flint (while not as a spy, certainly as something else) even though he is just a child; and second, this feels like Tad wrote this sentence to hint at the fact that perhaps the Qar did plan on Flint being discovered by Chert – that Chert was part of their plan all along – because he was necessary for facilitating Flint’s task, whatever that may be.  Let us not forget about the stone around Flint’s neck, which Chert takes a definite interest in; also, Flint’s exposure to the Funderling tunnels is an important part of the book.  I’m not sure whether or not I’m looking too far into this, but it’s something to think about.  And even if this question is never answered, this sentence is enough to make me believe that the Qar actually did “plan with such skill;” the idea just makes the Qar much more intriguing.

The narrative then switches to Briony for a short while, during which we are introduced to Utta, and by extension the goddess Zoria, who becomes an important figure in Briony’s life.  I’m making it a matter of importance to pay attention to all the Zoria references during our re-reading for this very reason.  Later, Briony becomes somewhat of a strong follower of Zoria, so I want to pay particular attention as to why this is.  It is revealed in this section that Zoria is the goddess of Wisdom and the daughter of Perin, the sky god.  Utta is a priestess of Zoria, and it appears that Zoria – who once had a following to match her father’s – has become the chosen goddess of intellectuals.  It seems that the followers of Zoria are the scholars and teachers of Eion. 

Briony has a moment that definitely foreshadows the tragedy to come: “Earlier she had felt sure the worst had happened, but now she thought she could feel the shadowy wings still beating above her, as if there was some threat as yet undiscovered.”  Perhaps Zoria herself imparted this feeling to her.  If not, there is definitely a sense of unnatural awareness that is difficult to explain. 
The story switches back to Chert and Flint at this point and we get out first significant look at Chaven.  He reveals something about the Qar that I found particularly interesting.  Chert finds it difficult to believe that the Qar could have simply found the boy wandering across the Shadowline and then instead of capturing him, merely carried him back across the Shadowline to safety.  Chaven responds by saying:

Even when they were slaughtering mortals long ago at Coldgray Moor, the Twilight People did things that no one could understand.  In the last months of the war, one company of soldiers from Fael moving camp by midnight stumbled onto a fairy-feast, but instead of slaughtering them – they were far outnumbered – the Qar only fed them and led them into drunken revels.  Some of the solders even claimed they mated with fairy women that night.

The Qar just keep getting more intriguing every time they are mentioned.  This race, believed by the humans to be pure evil, show compassion and even solidarity to enemy soldiers during the war.  This reminds me of the German and Allied soldiers during World War I, who, at Christmas, actually met in the middle of the battlefield and celebrated together.  They drank and talked, enjoyed themselves as much as they could, only to go their separate ways the next day, during which they tried once again to kill each other.  This just goes to show that the majority of soldiers aren’t fighting against the opposing soldiers, per se, but simply for their cause.  The Qar soldiers, much like the Germans, are fighting because their superiors tell them to.  They are no more evil than the humans (some of them at least); they simple have a different agenda.  Beautiful stuff.

The chapter ends with yet another bit of Flint being Flint, and by that I mean him saying something that completely belies his innocent exterior.  He asks Chaven “where is the owl?” implying that he has some prior knowledge of Chaven, or at least his observatory.  Chaven tells him that there is no owl, but Chert thinks that Chaven was shocked by the question.  As we all know, Flint isn’t imagining things.

Also, Flint mentions the constellations in the sky, which shows that he has had education in the past.  However, the names that he gives are different from the ones that Chert has learned from the humans.  Flint calls the moon a “he,” which contradicts the typical human name for the moon, Mesiya, which is female in nature.  Flint laughs at Chert’s insistence that the moon is a goddess, instead saying that it is the sun’s little brother. 

Clearly Flint has learned these things from a source other than a human, which begs the question of how long he was with the Qar.  Did they raise him? Did they educate him? If not, where did he learn this information? Upon hearing this, Chert was certain that “something had just happened – something important – but he could not for the life of him imagine what it might have been.”  I will definitely be keeping my eyes open for more information on this “male” version of the moon, and where this legend stems from.