Rereading this four years later, I regret not participating in real time. Thank the Internet gods for our granted power of trans-temporal conversations! I feel almost like a Ranyhyn myself, leaping through time to join other minds in a rite of future-peering informed by a past-preserved.
First things first: Wayfriend did an excellent job. Very insightful. I enjoyed the excerpt about the Marines, which immediately had me wondering what the heck it had to do with the subject at hand, only to payoff generously and unexpectedly with his comparison between officers and Ranyhyn riders. It must feel like quite a responsibility, indeed, for a rider to guide a Ranyhyn, to direct this living example of Earthpower incarnate. From the perspective of the rider, that must be a daunting task ... an aspect that never occurred to me, since the Ranyhyn chose their own riders, and thus exert their own control over this situation (i.e. the "invisible hand" WF notes later). In fact, if that sense of responsibility had been conveyed in the 1st Chronicles themselves, it would have made the books better. A sense of
reverence for the mighty horses was well conveyed in the text, but never a sense of "I'm not worthy" or even any self-doubt of one's worth for this great honor/responsibility. We saw an example of how
not being chosen produces self-doubt (e.g. the Lord whose wife was chosen, though he was not), but never any doubts that the rider had failed to live up to his Ranyhyn's choice to bear him. That would have been a nice touch.
But the fact that the Ranyhyn do choose their riders, and have a view of the future, makes their compliance as mounts entirely different from the officer-soldier comparison. If a soldier knew ahead of time what his officer was going to command, and consented to this path in virtue of such knowledge, his willingness to follow orders wouldn't be blind obedience at all. That combination of knowledge + consent would alter the responsibility of the officer from taking control of an uninformed, less knowledgable subordinate, to a situation where his future choices were already judged and approved by a vastly superior being. In fact, such knowledge + consent would shift the burden of responsibility to the Ranyhyn himself, because he would enable that future to unfold. Rather than being a blind instrument to be wielded, the Ranyhyn are enabling and choosing, as WF notes here:
wayfriend wrote:Did the Ranyhyn read the future? Do their time-loose powers of perception extend to this kind of prognostication? If so, the implications are astounding.
Think about what it means to be chosen by the Ranyhyn. Is it an honor? Is it an indication of valour? Or is it, as these lines imply, that you are chosen to meet a future need that only the Ranyhyn see? If so, then perhaps the Ranyhyn are not the passive although superb beasts of burden that they seem to be. Perhaps all along they have been shaping events in the Land by choosing whom they would bear.
Perhaps the will of the Ranyhyn has been an invisible hand all along.
And that's exactly why the Ranyhyn feel guilty or ashamed for showing Elena the horserite warning. They were an invisible hand, as WF notes, as no subordinate soldier could ever be. Therefore, they have at least as much responsibility--if not more--for the events which they enable to happen, because they (unlike virtually anyone else) have foreknowledge of the consequences.
And that's another feature that I wish had been in the 1st/2nd Chrons. Wayfriend is right: it has profound implications. It should have impacted the story. But that's also one of the reasons the Last Chronicles is a much deeper, more thoughtful work than the previous two. Those implications are finally impacting the story in an explicit way, and the consequences are being shown.
I did have one small problem with the text in this chapter. WF already quoted it, but I'll repeat for clarity:
"No," she protested as if she were sure. "No." Her hands insisted at his shoulders. "Bannor heard what High Lord Elena said, but none of you heard the warning."
"Sure," she went on, "Kelenbhrabanal's despair didn't save the Ranyhyn. I get that. But what did?
"It wasn't anything grand. It wasn't Lords or Bloodguard or white rings or Staffs. The Ranyhyn weren't preserved by Vows, or absolute faithfulness, or any other form of Haruchai mastery. That was the real warning."
"Linden Avery?" Stave sounded implacable, ready for scorn.
But she had come too far, and needed him too much, to falter now. "It was something much simpler than that. The plain, selfless devotion of ordinary men and women." The Ramen. "You said it yourself. The Ranyhyn were nearly destroyed until they found the Ramen to care for them.
"They wanted Elena to understand that she would be enough. She didn't need to raise Kevin from death," or give up sleep and passion, "or do anything else transcendent," anything more than human. "All she had to do was trust herself."
Why do the most Earthpowerful beings in the Land, who have the power to see the future, need the simple, ordinary skill of the Ramen to just to survive? Couldn't they have easily avoided the dangers of the Sunbane without the Ramen to guide them? They could have seen it coming. They are stronger and faster than these relatively weak, mundane humans who serve them. Why were the Ramen vital to their survival? And if that's true, if it actually makes sense, doesn't it negate everything transcendental about the horses? Doesn't that dependency contradict their very nature? Why do the Ranyhyn need caretakers to tend to their basic needs, like pets? No other being in the Land needs this kind of basic care. Every other race is perfectly capable of taking care of itself. Why would the strongest, fastest, most prescient, most Earthpowerful need something that no one else needs?
It's an interesting paradox, no doubt. But I'm not sure it's a plausible one.