Blood 22

Chapter 22
Verna wanders through the Popette's garden, and there's a rather nice description that mixes real-world vegetation like flowering dogwood and huckleberry, and fantasy versions like peeping lilies and everblossoms, “that bloomed throughout the year” (though I am reminded of the evermind flowers in Lord of the Rings). There's also a reference to the night wisps – remember Shar, the night wisp in Book 1? Unfortunately, it's used as an excuse to mention “the benevolent nature of the wizards and Confessors who guided the alliance of the Midlands.” Yeah.
There's some more chatter about how the people of Europe have pretty much stomped out magic and magical creatures, but the Americans guard and protect them. Mm-hmm.
Magical Creatures in America:
*Dragons
*Fish
*Heart hounds
*Santa Bear
*One-eyed tentacle cave monsters
*Night wisps
*Misters
Magical Creatures in Europe:
*Dragons
*Fish
*Misters
*Poisonous magical death-bugs
I guess I'll just accept Terry Goodkind's word on that, since we haven't been shown any such thing. \~/
There are sleeping ducks and unseen frogs, and a random “fluttermouse” which is TOTALLY NOT JUST A BAT NOPE NOPE NOPE. After wandering for a bit, Verna “somehow felt that this was the place she sought,” \~/ and finds an “enchanting little stuccoed building with four gables.” There's some more softcore scenery-porn and we find that the place is protected by a magical shield which incorporates both ice and spirit. This is apparently a big deal.
“An impulse came to her” \~/ and Verna spontaneously touched the Popette's ring to the door, which bypasses the shield. The building contains an altar and some really nice furniture. Verna wastes a page and a half poking around the place before she finally finds the Plot Coupon hidden in a bowl of ashes. It proves to be a “journey book,” a magical book that has a twin somewhere, and whatever is written in one appears instantly in the other. Sort of like a magical instant messaging system.
“Journey books were objects of magic, like the dacra, that had been created by the same wizards who had invested the Palace of the Prophets with both Additive and Subtractive Magic. None since, for three thousand years, had except Richard, had been born with Subtractive. Some had learned it through the calling, but none but Richard had been born with it.”
Questions . . .
IM book sound highly useful. Why haven't any modern wizards/sorceresses tried to recreate them? Why do they require Minus Magic to work? We learn that writing in a journey book can be erased, thus making them eternally useful, but even without that feature they would be amazingly valuable. Why, aside from the Rule That All Really Cool Magic Items Can't Be Made Any More, can't these be made any more? \~/
It may be petty of me, but why is it always the ancient wizards who did stuff? We have yet to hear a single reference to ancient sorceresses doing anything cool. Even the Mindrapists, that all-female cadre, were explicitly brought into being by wizards. Are men just plain better than women? Is that the message here? \~/
Why hasn't anyone – anyone at all, anywhere – been born with Minus Magic in the last three millenia, except for Richard? Or, if the Minus Magic gene is being bred out of humanity, why was Richard born that way? I hope you don't expect an answer to that, because none will ever be given.
What's this deal with “the calling?” I thought Minus Magic was uber-rare and special, despite every single Satanist spellcaster having access to it. If someone can learn Minus Magic, why don't they? What's the distinction between being born with Minus Magic and learning it due to having “the calling?” \~/
We get a random infodump on the Nuns' abduction process for young wizards. Some Nuns can sense young wizards, and when they sense one they send a commando team out with an IM book to nab the wizard (but not young sorceresses, I notice, because Women Are Worthless \~/).
“Of course, a wizard could teach the boy to control the gift in order to avoid its many dangers, and in fact that was the preferred method, but wizards were not always available, or willing. The Sisters had long ago established an accord with the wizards in the New World. In the absence of a wizard, the Sisters of Light were allowed to save a boy's life by taking him to the Palace of the Prophets for training in the use of his gift. For their part, the Sisters had vowed never to take a boy who had a wizard willing to teach him.”
Got that?
As established earlier, the Nuns can only nab a wizardling if no wizard in all of America is willing to train him. It would seem to be the Nuns' responsibility to establish this, despite the fact that Zedd has stated that neither he, nor any wizard he trained, would ever refuse to train a new wizard. This means that every boy the Nuns have kidnapped from America has been in violation of their “accord with the wizards”. And Richard was far from the first, since Verna has repeatedly referenced Nuns making their way through the Valley of the Lost and Found, whose only purpose is to block off Europe from America.
The Nuns are treacherous and deceitful deal-breakers. The deal was stupid, but that doesn't change the fact that the Nuns have been willfully and repeatedly breaking it for a very long time. Verna tries to insist that it was Ann who broke the deal, and Verna who was her instrument, but that was clearly only the most recent in a long line of violations.
Verna wonders who could possibly have the other IM book (gee, who could it possibly be?), then wanders back to her office, startling Phoebe. She sends Phoebe down to clear the vaults so she, Verna, can do some studying. Phoebe acts like a schoolgirl and Verna feels all mature and experienced and superior.
Verna heads down to The Vaults! [dramatic thunder] where she pauses to be nice to some cute little girls. This scene has no purpose except to show Verna being nice. Considering what demonstrably bad people the Nuns are, this comes across as rather self-serving and hypocritical.
Verna goes into an alcove where Warren is waiting and tries to give him a death dildo, saying that “though you have the gift, it will not protect you against [the Bad Nuns]. This will. There is no protection against this. None.”
To be picky, that's not really protection. If a Bad Nun decides to cut Warren in half with a spell from across the room, a death dildo ain't going to help him. It's an extremely close-range weapon, and is utterly useless if the Bad Nuns decide to paralyze Warren – which, as we've seen, even non-Bad Nuns can do. So it's a nice gesture, but ultimately useless.
Verna and Warren bicker for a bit, and then Warren quotes a prophecy, which I shall reproduce here for your edification:
“When the Prelate and the Prophet are given to the Light in the sacred rite, the flames will bring to boil a cauldron of guile and give ascension to a false Prelate, who will reign over the death of the Palace of the Prophets. To the north, the one bonded with the blade will abandon it for the silver sliph, for he will breathe her back to life, and she will deliver him into the arms of the wicked.”
Warren says that the prophecy is “on a true fork,” and then reveals that he made the prophecy just a few hours ago. Warren is a prophet! I assume this means he will be lucked up in solitary confinement for the next nine centuries for fear that he might talk to people, since that seems to be what the kind, noble, God-fearing Nuns do to prophets.
Warren says that the words are only a way to pass down the visions, which are the true prophecy; the Nuns have been studying the key for three thousand years instead of the actual information. "I went into a kind of trance, and in this state of rapture, I had a vision of fragments of this prophecy, along with the words." are his actual words. Apparently, prophecies can only be understood by prophets . . . which seems dumb, but okay, I'll roll with it. And I just spared you about two pages of blather with that summary.
Warren reassures Verna that the “false Prelate” named in the prophecy is not her. Naturally, he doesn't know who it is, because that would be useful information and we can't have that. Verna is relieved, until Warren reminds her that, for someone else to be Prelate, she would have to be dead.
Dun dun DUN!
Drinks: 7
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