Dragonstone 7

Chapter 7
We suddenly find ourselves in Mirkwood Darda Erynian, aka the Blackwood, aka Enchanted Forest #554, with Arin. This chapter actually starts an agonizingly long flashback to when Arin had her Mysterious Vision of Mystery, detailing just about every single damn thing she did from that point to present day, all of which could have been summed up in a page or three. But Tolkien had long, rambling descriptions of The Mighty Deeds of Old, so McKiernan has to have long, rambling descriptions of The Mundane Deeds of Last Month.
Arin is in a glade in Darda Erynian, staring into a fire and attempting to trigger a vision (which she knows cannot be triggered, but happen randomly and without apparent pattern, but never mind that). Meanwhile, some other elves are off murdering the local wildlife.
We learn – again – that Arin can see stuff in fire, recapping what we learned two chapters ago almost verbatim. There's also another elven seer, Rael by name, who lives in Darda Galion, “the great Eldwood to the south and west,” although she uses a crystal instead of fire. Apparently these two are the only elves capable of having visions, and for some reason the narrative fixates on the fact that they're both female.
“Females, two females among all of Elvenkind, two females who could <see>. Was it that males of her Kind had not the power? Or was it instead that only females among the Elves had the patience?”
Or was it sheer random chance? Your sample is two out of an entire species of millions of individuals; that is not statistically relevant.
Also, McKiernan's elves are immortal. Some have been around for tens of thousands of years. I find it hard to believe a species could be truly immortal and not have a healthy degree of patience.
Arin's friends come riding back into the clearing, and one of them, Vanidar, has a dead deer across the withers of his horse, “slain no doubt by an arrow loosed from Vanidar's white-bone bow.” He has a bow made of bone? That seems . . . unlikely. Bone is not know for its flexibility, a quality rather necessary for a bow. \~/
We get a description of Vanidar, which means Silverleaf – no relation to Legolas Greenleaf, I'm sure. He's “five feet nine or ten,” which is, again, desperately necessary information. McKiernan has a weird fascination with exact measurements, down to the inch, no matter how unnecessary it is. Vanidar is a Lian, which is McKiernan's version of the non-woodland elves. They, uh, still live in woodlands, but they're not woodland elves. Don't think too hard about it.
We also get names for the other elves, but I shall call them all Generic Elf, since they share not a single personality trait among them.
Legolas Vanidar's horse is described as “lathered,” and the horses of the Generic Elves as “sweat-foamed and blowing.” Arin starts rubbing Vanidar's horse down with “twisted grass sheaves,” which, I guess, sure, okay. When she asks if she needs to walk the horse, she is told “I think not . . . We rode at a walk most of the way back . . . until we reached the clearing.”
If this is true, your horses should not be “lathered” and “sweat-foamed and blowing.” These horses have clearly been ridden hard for long enough to work up a fierce sweat, the human equivalent of panting and gasping for breath. Horses are delicate; if you don't treat them well, they will die. I would expect ripoffs of Tolkien's elves to know better how to care for animals. \~/
Vanidar bleeds out the dead stag in unnecessary detail, and Arin glances at the fire, and is suddenly struck with a vision, one so bad it causes her to “[cry] out in torment” and then faint.
So that's our second chapter-ending cliffhanger based on the exact same premise.
Drinks: 2
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