Bad Trips
***Spoilers for the Tawny Man Trilogy through chapter 17 of Fool’s Fate.***
We are in it now, friends. I don’t even know where to start. We’ve got the intense drudgery of traversing the glacier; Fitz getting drugged and tweaking out; a charged Fitz-Fool confrontation; the Black Man of Aslevjal creeping around; a Skill attack; and an awakening Wit-awareness of Icefyre under the ice.
We are just around the halfway point of Fool’s Fate, and I don’t think I could possibly be more excited for the conclusion of this trilogy. I have no idea what’s coming, but that won’t stop me from speculating!
I’m typically more of an in-the-moment sort of reader, but as the glacial expedition got underway, a few things started to click. All of a sudden it dawned on me that of course Fitz would have some sort of Wit/Skill connection with Icefyre that would impact his looming decision regarding the dragon’s fate. And then we get this brief moment after Civil and the Fool’s fight, when Fitz has a flash of clarity about his ability to Skill-heal the Fool:
“I cannot say how I knew what it was I had glimpsed. Perhaps something in that closed circle of touching told me. I drew a shaky breath and reached recklessly toward his face with outstretched fingers.
‘I can heal you,’ I told him, amazed and breathless with the discovery. The knowledge of my newfound power rushed through my blood, hot as whiskey. ‘I see what is wrong, the bits that are broken and how the blood pools under your skin where it should not. Fool, I can use the Skill and heal you.’”
Once the Wit coterie picks up on Icefyre’s presence, they note its fading-in-and-out quality, which makes the Hetgurd representatives lose their minds. No way in hell is Dutiful going to slay a depleted Icefyre and claim victory.
So: there’s heavy focus on Icefyre’s condition after his extended ice burial, plus a too-well-timed-to-be-coincidental return of Skill healing. I think we are heading toward some sort of Wit-Skill healing-bonding culmination between Fitz and Icefyre.
I also don’t think the sudden appearance of wizardwood (!) will prove insignificant. The Fool bestows a wizardwood arrow upon an enamored Swift – very curious how that will come into play. And Swift, along with the rest of Dutiful’s witted companions, has been too integral to not matter in the endgame.
Given its emphasis throughout the entire series, the interconnectedness of Wit and Skill, with Fitz as the lynchpin, has to be at the crux of where we are heading.
Also at the crux (if I use that word one more time it’ll lose all meaning) is the Fitz-Fool relationship. Oh, you angsty bastards!
I suppose we need to start with the Civil-Fool showdown. Civil is still (rightfully) furious with the Fool after the events at Galeton. It boils over into a physical altercation. Fitz wants to intervene, but Dutiful advises him to let them work it out. The Fool, with his freakish jester strength, holds his own. But when Civil tries to spring at him a final time, Fitz steps in:
“Civil and I were suddenly chest to chest in the night, the boy gawking up at me as I stared him down. He stumbled back a step, then he spun and hissed the insult at the Fool. “You say he isn’t your lover, yet he stands ready to fight your battles for you.”
Ay caramba! Sometimes Fitz is just such a man.
(Side note: I am consistently amused by Fitz’s casual dislike of Civil. I loved when he lamented him being the most boring spy subject ever, and now, leaving the tent: “I nearly knocked Civil over as I passed him, not that I would have regretted it much.” Easy, tough guy.)
After the fight, Fitz is ready to tend his beloved, and we finally get the conversation we’ve been waiting for since the Fool turned up on Aslevjal. They share another tantric-Skill sort of moment, but quickly fall into their main quarrel: Fitz refuses to let the Fool die, while the Fool insists fate must run its course. But Fitz isn’t the baby catalyst of old anymore:
“Do you see how stupid this is? I cannot possibly stand by and watch you die, Fool. I know that and you know that. You’d be asking me to be profoundly different from who I am. You’d be making the change, not me. And didn’t you once tell me that precipitating the change was my task, not yours? So don’t ask it of me. If fate demands that you be dead, well, then I’ll probably be dead too. At that point, I doubt if it will matter much to either of us.”
And with that, Fitz stands on business and gets his point through. The anger dissipates, leaving only the love beneath it all:
“‘Fitz. I’ve really missed you. Don’t go. Sleep here tonight. Please.’
So I did.”
There is a lot left to break down! Here are my musings:
When the Black Man of Aslevjal makes his eerie appearance at camp, the Fool reacts strongly:
“… not since I first encountered you have I felt such a tingle of … of significance.”
And:
“Well. Like it or not, you do, my Catalyst. And so also did he feel to me tonight, the Black Man! So many possibilities shimmered around him that I could scarcely see him. He is even more unlikely than you are!”
Why was I feeling weirdly jealous on Fitz’s behalf? Fitz may be a ding dong half the time, but he’s our special, Catalyst ding dong. This weirdo island bozo doesn’t just get to swoop in and be significant and unlikely.
Believe it or not, I am actually attempting to restrain myself when it comes to bitching about Chade week in and week out. But then there was this exchange that made me type the following note into my Kindle: “is wizardwordship gonna have to choke a bitch?”:
“‘I did what I thought best,’ I said stiffly.
And Chade, ever one to seize an advantage, agreed smoothly with ‘Of course you did. You always act from high motives, Fitz. But next time it is up to you to make a significant decision based on what you ‘think is best,’ you may remember this, and reflect that perhaps I have a few more years of experience than you do. Perhaps the next time, you will give my opinion of the matter a bit more weight.’”
As an antidote to Chade being Chade-ish, we have Thick and Fitz. I spent a significant portion of my last post discussing how affecting their dynamic has been in Fool’s Fate. And boy, does the investment pay off here. After they realize a Skill attack is fueling the growing tension between them, they have a beautiful reconciliation:
“’Someone was trying to make us think bad thoughts about each other. They don’t know that we are friends. They tried to make us hurt each other.’
Thick looked at me dolefully. ‘Sometimes we are friends. Sometimes we fight.'”
…
“’Sometimes we fight,’ I admitted to Thick. ‘But not to really hurt each other. We disagree. Friends often disagree. But we don’t try to hurt each other. Even when we’re angry with each other, we don’t try to hurt each other. Because we are friends.’
Thick gave a sudden, deep sigh. ‘I did try to hurt you. Back on the boat, I made you bump your head a lot. I’m sorry, now.’
It was the most sincere apology I’d ever received in my life. I had to reciprocate. ‘And I’m sorry that I had to make you come here, on a boat.'”
Which leads us to the pièce de résistance:
“’I always got angry at my mum when she washed my ears,” he told me. “But she knew I loved her. I love you too, Tom. You gave me a whistle. And pink sugar cake. I’ll try not to be mean to you anymore.’
The simple words caught me off guard” … “It had been a long time since I’d been offered love on such a simple and honest basis. Strangely enough, it woke the wolf in me. I could almost see the slow, accepting wag of Nighteyes’ tail. We were pack. ‘I love you too, Thick. Come on. Let’s get out of the wet.'”
Damn, Robin- the “I love you”s, the declaration of pack, Nighteyes’ metaphorical tail wagging. The fuck you trying to do to me over here?
They’ve really backed Dutiful into a corner with this challenge. Half his crew are hell-bent on him not slaying Icefyre, while Elliania, Peottre, and Chade are hell-bent on seeing him keep his word, no matter how dumb the mission:
“And if this Six Duchies farmer-prince kills our dragon when he is in sickness and unwarlike, then all the wrath of every clan will fall, not just on Narwhal and Boar clans for condoning such a cowardly act, but upon the Six Duchies. If the young Prince does this to make an alliance and stave off further war with the God’s Runes folk, then he must be sure that he does it in the manner agreed upon.”
So let me make sure I have this straight: Dutiful is here to kill the dragon Icefyre to preserve his betrothal to Narcheska Elliania, which was arranged to preserve peace between the Six Duchies and the Out Islands. Yet, if he does indeed slay said dragon, he will invoke the wrath of the Out Island clans (who frankly aren’t that keen on Elliania and House Narwhal to begin with).
At least Dutiful realizes there is more to this challenge than Elliania is letting on. He gives her the chance to reveal what’s really going on here, but she balks, and so into the ice we dig!
My friends from the Cursed Shores are never far from my mind, and I was picking up some major Selden vibes from Swift. First, when Chade is annoyed that the search for the dragon involves actual searching:
“‘He’s here,’ Swift said quietly. ‘Oh, yes, he is. His presence ebbs and surges like a wild tide, but there’s no denying he’s here.’ The boy swayed as he spoke and his voice was far away.”
And then Web drops this tidbit of dragon lore:
“It is said they can infatuate the unguarded mind, inspiring a nearly slavish devotion.”
Excuse me, hwhat? Do we need to stage a rescue for Selden like we are busting him out of Scientology? I’ve been joking about Tintaglia being bitchy and timidly questioning if restoring the time of dragons is truly in humanity’s best interest (I’m not trying to summon her to my dreams!), but the dragons are sort of giving villain energy in Tawny Man. I will continue to root for their survival (I mean, Christ, don’t let me have gone on the serpents’ journey in vain) because I am a fantasy reader, engrossed in this fantasy series, and me want dragons. But also, perhaps Tintaglia could cool it on threatening to bite Nettle’s head off?
Yo, WTF was up with Peottre dropping by Dutiful’s tent with a drug-laced cake to share? And guess who happens to be the first person offered a slice, and thus the only one royally fucked up for the next day or so? Obviously, Fitz.
Upon ingesting the cokecake, his Skill magic is completely snuffed out (and has yet to return!). I found this deeply disturbing:
“Now I was suddenly severed from all the myriad tiny connections it made to all folk. The great voice of the human world, the constant murmur of other thoughts and minds around me, was stilled.”
Poor, poor Fitz. After saving the rest of the coterie from suffering the same fate, our perpetual sacrificial lamb has a rough night. His drug-fuelled descent into despair was almost too real (I’ve got some questions, Robin 🤔). Fitz can’t shut up, and all of his insecurities come tumbling out:
“’Can you be quiet, Fitz?’ he asked me earnestly, and after a moment’s thought, I shook my head.
‘I don’t think so.'”
…
“I dropped my head into my hands and covered my eyes. ‘All my life, I’ve done everything wrong.’
‘It’s going to be a long night,’ the Fool observed woefully.”
And it’s not just the Fool who has to shoulder his torment:
“I spent several hours telling Chade just how much I despised myself. Dutiful later told me that he had never lived through such a tiresome recounting of any man’s imagined sins. I recall that several times he tried to reason with me. I spoke openly of killing myself, a fleeting notion that I had often considered but never before uttered.”
And one more gut-punch for the road. As if that weren’t enough, Fitz then has to spend the next day hiking the glacier in his post-elfbark despondency. Web keeps him from throwing himself into a crevasse company, but the scene is brutal:
“The presence of his Wit-beast reminded me savagely of the absence of mine, and sent me into a fresh pit of mourning. I did not sob but the tears ran down my face in a steady flow.”
Is no one going to get taken out by this glacier? I have been expecting a sudden crack in the ice to wipe out some of the extraneous players on this mission. The next chapter is called Ice, perhaps the moment is upon us? Or, more likely, we’ll just be painstakingly chipping away at the ice above Icefyre.
Either way, let’s strap on our crampons and get to work!
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