Dragonstone 47

Chapter 47
There's some discussion about where to go, hampered by the fact that Ferai has no clue what their destination should be, and Alos - their helmsman - has no idea where they currently are. Samurai Chick again suggests that the "cursed keeper of faith in the maze" might be the statue of Gudrun. I guess that was a temporary Intelligence boost, not a permanent one, eh?
Although I would love to read a version of this story where Arin assembles a clumsy cat, a rotten ogre eyeball, a horny peacock, a ferret, and a marble statue, and then expects them to somehow save the day.
Arin glances at the sun and declares them to be 35 leagues south of Pendwyr. And . . .
"None questioned her word, for all understood Elves simply knew at all times where shall stand the sun, moon, stars, and the five wanderers. And given that power, Elves need only glance at the angle of any of those to gauge where on Mithgar they stood."
. . . why do elves have this power? Why do they have an instinctive, perfect knowledge of astronomy? How does that work? What are its limitations? How can elves know the precise position of unrelated celestial bodies thousands of light-years apart in real time?! \~/\~/
And assuming they do have this power, how does "know where the sun should be" translate into "perfect GPS?" If Mithgar is similar to Earth - and in one book, McKiernan explicitly says it's meant to be Earth in the ancient past - it has a surface area of approximately 197 million square miles. I realize that it's possible to perform some remarkable feats with dead reckoning, but that's a learned skill that requires time, training, and knowledge. This is some sort of inborn elf power. \~/
Wait a minute; elves aren't even native to Mithgar! \~/
Delon decides that Ferai must know where they should go next, and starts to question her about her past. Ferai is uninformative, finally telling him to leave her alone and storming off to the bow of the Brise. And then . . .
Aw, man.
We enter Ferai's flashback.
In brief, she was the daughter of an acrobat and a locksmith, who took jobs with a traveling circus "for this was steady work." Um, no. \~/ She grew up among circus folk, and learned acrobatics, clowning, knife-throwing, and how to be a fake fortune-teller. When she was twelve, her parents died in a mysterious fire and it's implied the circus owner raped her. Lovely. He was found stabbed to death, and she disappeared and was presumed dead as well.
She ended up in Pendwyr where she fell in with a band of thieves who taught her to be thief. Why an attractive teenage girl was not made a prostitute I dunno. They gave her the nickname Ferret, and she lived in relative comfort for ten years before being apprehended by the guard. It's strongly implied that one of her compatriots set her up, and that she actually was innocent of the specific crime for which she was arrested.
Back in the present Delon starts singing, Ferai begins to cry, and the chapter ends.
Drinks: 5
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