Runes, Part 2 Chapter 9-Pursuit

[Relayer]

I agree completely. This trend started when Linden back came from the horserite too stunned, weary, and cold to speak. Liand kept repeating her name over and over because he didn’t know any other way to help. And it seems like he has never stopped. In fact, the text says, “. . . Liand shouted her name as if he had never stoped calling for her.” Yeah, no sh*t. This is all he does.

I really shouldn't read this stuff at work. I hate having to stifle a LOL

But after I did, I realized... who <i>would</i> be doing that, constantly calling for her? Jeremiah! I don't know what the relationship is, but I suspect there's something there.

What’s the "Lost Deep?" “Nacre power spat and frothed, pale as air and ruinous as magma, shedding blackness like glimpses into the heart of the Lost Deep.” Just a metaphor? Why is it capitalized? A “real” place within Donaldson's cosmology? How was it lost?

Maybe it relates to the fracture in the earth where Kastenessen was supposed to be (and apparently is not anymore since he's broken his Durance)? It certainly seems to indicate a real place and not a metaphor. I'm going thru it this time in audio so obviously missed that.

[wayfriend]

Having accepted this task, Stave spoke steadily ... ... "Therefore they created the Demondim, laboring long in the Lost Deep."

... "While Corruption wrought covertly to mar the Council of Lords," he told the dark climb, "the Demondim also labored in secret, wielding their lore over breeding vats and fens in the Lost Deep, the lightless pits and caverns beneath the Wightwarrens of Mount Thunder. There among forgotten banes and ancient cruelties, they strove with lore and Power to make of themselves new creatures.

:
:
Lost Deep, the: loreworks; breeding pit/laboratory under Mount Thunder where Demondim, Waynhim, and ur-viles were created

So... the Lost Deep is a name given by the Haruchai to a place where the Demondim once dwelled and practiced their powers. Apparently it is further beneath Mt Thunder than the wightwarrens. A sub-basement of EEE-VILLL, if you will.

Two points to me for checking the appendix.

[dlbpharmd]

Good catch, WF - funny how I didn't notice that before. Who wants to bet that since we have a new name for an old location in the Land, Linden will end up there sometime in the future?

[Zarathustra]

That’s the first time we’ve heard that. Made finite existence possible within the infinite universe. How again? With unfettered passion anchoring the paradox of the finite/infinite. Whatever the hell that means. How does passion anchor any paradox?

Wild magic is unfettered passion; wild magic is also the anchor of the Arch of Time. I don't think that the author is trying to convey that it is the anchor because it is passion, or that the one somehow enables the other.

Hmmm. . . that wasn't really my point, but it's probably a point I would have made since I believe the entire Land is externalized versions of internal human experiences/being/archetypes, etc. My point was that the white gold makes finite existence possible. Donaldson has said that it was the keystone of the arch, but I didn't think he meant that it literally makes existence possible. This is the first time he's said this so explicitly. I understand how white gold can destroy time (kind of), but I don't understand how it makes time possible. I'm not trying to point out a contradiction; I'm genuinely intrigued and want to know more.

Two points to me for checking the appendix.

D'oh!!

[Relayer]

Yep, good catch WF! So much for my theory about Kasty

And another reason for me to switch back to the book...

[wayfriend]

Who wants to bet that since we have a new name for an old location in the Land, Linden will end up there sometime in the future?

Assuredly. She has to go there to find Jeremiah.

Donaldson has said that it was the keystone of the arch, but I didn't think he meant that it literally makes existence possible.

The Arch of Time makes existence possible. The keystone of the Arch is what makes the Arch possible. Wild magic is what makes the keystone possible.

First he built the arch of Time, so that his creation would have a place in which to be. And for the keystone of that arch he forged the wild magic, so that Time would be able to resist chaos and endure. Then within the arch he formed the Earth.

And wild magic was the keystone of Time, the pivot, the crux. Bound by Law, and yet illimitable, it both sustained and threatened the processes which made existence possible, for without causality and sequence there could be no life; no creation; no beauty.

[Zarathustra]

Wayfriend, yes I know he has said that wild magic is the keystone of the arch. And arches aren't possible without keystones. And existence is not possible without time. [However, one wonders how the Arch held up before Covenant brought white gold to the land the first time. Was there white gold elsewhere in the land? If so, why didn't Lord Foul seek it out? Why was it necessary to pull it from another world if it's the very keystone of his prison? But I digress . . . ]

Here's the sentence which I think is new, or at least a new explication of an old idea: Its unfettered passion anchored the paradox which made finite existence possible within the infinite universe. He has never described it like that before. First, there's the explicit linkage of unfettered passion to the power of wild magic, which in itself is telling. Secondly, there's the concept that this wild magic anchors ("holds down, holds steady") the paradox of finte/infinite. In other words, without the white gold, the paradox would spin out of control into chaos. That explains the following quote:

And for the keystone of that arch he forged the wild magic, so that Time would be able to resist chaos and endure.[/size]

This quote was always puzzling to me, because I thought Law resisted chaos, not wild magic (which itself seems inherently chaotic). A keystone is an elegant piece of engineering, a mathematical construct made tangible in rock. Its power lies in its geometry and shape (which implies Law, not wild magic). But now Donaldson has given us an explanation of that process which was previously confused by the limits of his keystone metaphor. Wild magic is "untrammeled by restriction." It can violate the strictures of time. Because it is itself paradoxical and beyond limits of Law, it can force (not merely support) reality into a paradoxical state of unstable equilibrium. I like that.

Maybe this isn't new to you. And maybe it's not really new to me, either. I think it's really just a further explication of something that is virtually inexplicable: the paradox of being.

On a side note: while previously we had the image of a keystone--which supports the weight of a stone arch, allowing it to settle upon it in a stable fashion--now we have the image of an anchor, which holds a ship in place by weighing it down. Two different sorts of gravity/engineering metaphors. In the first sense, the paradox of the arch is something that is threatening to "crash down." Yet the keystone holds it up. In the second sense, the ship is threatening to "drift away." The anchor holds it in place by weighing it down.

I like this struggling for new metaphors. In itself, it is a recognition of the limits of the previous metaphor (keystone). It's like coming at the problem from two different directions, noting the incompleteness of trying to describe a paradox from only one angle.

[kastenessen]

I wrote in my dissection that this wasn't the meatiest of chapters. Reading all of the interesting post here I have to change my mind...

Malik 23 wrote:

Okay, so Anele gets possessed by a fire being when he touches ground. Does this remind anyone else of the fire monsters in Linden’s vision when she’s transported to the Land? Or Fire-Lions? Anele has the ability to “channel” rock’s thoughts and memories when he touches it. What if he’s not being possessed, but merely channeling a distress beneath the earth? This “possession” doesn’t seem to be a particular spirit. It never says anything. It’s just hot. It could be the suffering of the earth itself, a perversion of the Fire-Lions, of Earthpower.

A very interesting thought, does it say anywhere that he truly was posessed? At the Verge Of Wandering... Did Linden make that assumption?..have to go back and read anew...

Relayer wrote:

Misdirection. This IS Donaldson we're talking about

You mean like, we are to believe that he is in MT but Linden knows now that he is someplace else, a thought that we are not taking part of... Yes, could be, could be, a mean trick of Mr Donaldson isn't it?

That could be the case too, but I meant Linden believes he is in MT, and hence WE are to believe it too. But in truth he's somewhere else. The misdirection is to get Linden and us to think or expect certain things to happen, or certain characters/groups to act a certain way, but then the story takes a turn in some other direction. Like in a good mystery, things aren't what they seem to be. Think Gap Series

Spoiler

Of course we're about to find out that she is wrong, he ISN'T at Mt. Thunder. Unless this isn't Jeremiah, but that's a subject for another thread.

Exactly. I understand... But still, SRD phrases the "misdirection so deliberately obliquely that however we read it, it might turn out to be wrong anyway, that Linden jumped to conclusion for instance...

Never having seen them before, he had devised motley models of both Revelstone and Mount Thunder; messages in red and blue and yellow bricks. Using the only language available to him, he had tried to prepare her for his plight-and hers. But she has failed to understand him.
In spite of her chagrin, however, she now knew where to find him.
But first she has to enter Revelstone. That message had become clear to her as well. Why else had Jeremiah included it in his construct?

We never take part of her her thought here, just almost. SRD implies, gives us a direction, manipulates... in one sense she doesn't jump to a conclusion at all, but we are, the reader is...and then the spoiler...layer upon layer of mysteries!

kast

[wayfriend]

I cannot really buy into a misdirection thing. That's not very like Donaldson. I can't think of any other times in his writing where he's let a character proceed from a false fact. I'm still holding out that the meaning of Linden's revelation will be clearer in time.

Spoiler

Because if it IS a misdirection, then everything in the story to date that touches upon 'Lord Foul has my son' is a misdirection. And all the hints that Linden will need to heal her son are a misdirection. That's too much to swallow.

RE Anele: I think that different types of stone changes the mode of his insanity. And different modes allow different possessors. But I don't think the stone itself possesses him; he's declared it is his friend too often.

Also, I have another theory, and I am starting to believe that all of Anele's possessors are the same person.

[Zarathustra]

I agree that different stone changes the mode of his insanity. But regardless of the mode, he is inherently able to "channel" the consciousness of the rock. If that rock, or earthpower within the rock, has been perverted, then channeling it would look a lot like possession. But at this point, it's all guess work.

I agree about not liking the whole misdirection thing. It does seem to invalidate a bunch of stuff he's been telling us all along. Yet, what else can we conclude? Either Linden's conclusion about Jeremiah is misdirection, or the last line of the book is misdirection. Both can't be true.

[Relayer]

I cannot really buy into a misdirection thing. That's not very like Donaldson. I can't think of any other times in his writing where he's let a character proceed from a false fact. I'm still holding out that the meaning of Linden's revelation will be clearer in time.

But Linden "knowing" Jeremiah's location is not a fact, just her interpretation.

To me, SRD seems to do misdirection all the time What about Esmer? Why did he really want her to go back to get the Staff? How about the quest for the One Tree? That whole book is a misdirection (those who don't like it would certainly agree ... TC thought he was going so he could actually get a branch of the Tree, not for Vain's sake... The Soothtell. Almost anything Findail says. The entire "history" of the Land in TWL. TC's journey to Mt. Thunder in WGW... the whole thing was set up for us to think "TC is giving up."

Most of the Gap is a misdirection of one sort or another -- "but that wasn't the Real Story" -- the characters are constantly being led somewhere but not for the reasons they think.

And Foul? "Always he seeks to mislead you"

Spoiler

Because if it IS a misdirection, then everything in the story to date that touches upon 'Lord Foul has my son' is a misdirection. And all the hints that Linden will need to heal her son are a misdirection. That's too much to swallow.

Not necessarily, though I agree with a lot of your theories about healiing Jeremiah, etc. There are many other possibilities...

Spoiler

"Tell her I have her son" may not refer to Linden. It could be that this isn't really Jeremiah riding up to Revelstone. It could be that he "has" Jeremiah in ways other than physical (perhaps he's possessed or otherwise gotten Jeremiah to take his side, like it appears he has w/ Roger - remember that Jeremiah was once at the Community of Retribution).

Plus, consider that whatever his purposes are, Foul has already "helped" Linden at least once, in leading her to hurtloam, but only because Foul needs her to have her healthsense. It may be that giving Jeremiah back to her helps Foul somehow. Like, if she thinks he's safe, maybe she won't care so much about fighting for the Land.

[Zarathustra]

Very good point, Relayer. Misdirection is essential to good story-telling. An author has to point the way so that the end doesn't come out of nowhere, but at the same time it can't be explicit beforehand. So how does one walk this line? Misdirection. Sleight of hand. A magician's trick. Donaldson has certainly used it many times in previous books.

But it still feels like cheating when it's done poorly. Perhaps it's too early to say that Linden's conclusions about Jeremiah were handled poorly. Hopefully, the next book will clear this up.