When Inil en-Gula, the factor at Fuld, the most northerly of the Arvannethan trading posts, complains of the abominable cold and suggests that he and the Captain General, Sidir, go inside, Sidir replies that he would like to breathe a while longer and will join Inil shortly.
"'The Ice has already touched you, has it?' Inil muttered, and departed.
"Sidir stared after him. What the Nine Devils had that meant?" (p. 110)
What indeed did it mean? Are we to learn about strange psychological effects of the northern Ice?
Left alone, Sidir ponders the effect that the Northern woman, Donya, has had on him:
"They call the Rogaviki women witches.
"Beneath his Rahidian reason, an old barbarian stirred. He felt the wind's bite, shivered, and followed the factor inside." (p. 111)
Sidir shivers from wind and witchcraft. In Anderson's works, the wind is always with us. Beneath reason is instinct; before instincts were the elements.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
In a way, Inil en-Gula was right, the "Ice" was affecting the Captain General. BECAUSE the Rogaviki, esp. their women, WERE different and Sidir was starting to realize that. As readers will soon realize, scholars in Killimaraich had "rediscovered" Darwinian theories of evolution. Once that reached the Rahidian Empire, I can easily see Imperial scholars starting to wonder if CHANGES caused by evolution lay behind the strangeness observed in the Rogaviki.
And, yes, Stirling's chief objection to the Rogaviki was his argument that ten thousand years was not long enough to cause such a drastic speciation within the human race.
Sean
Paul:
It's an interesting touch, this capitalized "Ice" with the suggestion that it has touched a person's mind. Michael Scott Rohan has a fantasy series, also titled The Winter of the World. In that, what appears to have been the Wisconsin Glaciation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_glaciation) was directed and augmented by godlike Powers which thus became collectively known as "the Ice" — and they certainly did try to "touch" and subvert human minds, with the goal of extinguishing human and eventually all life.
Kaor, DAVID!
This MSR novel reminded me a bit of S.M. Stirling's THE PESHAWAR LANCERS, because of how the truly monstrous villains in that book were the priests or agents of the Peacock Angel, who hated all life and wanted to destroy life on Earth.
But I'm a bit annoyed Mr. Rohan "appropriated" Poul Anderson's title for his own book. Isn't that at least bad manners, even if not an infringement of copyright? MSR could easily have found another title for his book.
And, of course, "Rohan" will be familiar to all readers of Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS!
Sean
You can't patent titles -- I asked Poul for permission to use "Kings Who Die" for a story; he granted it, but pointed out that we were both drawing on the same sources to come up with it.
And "Rohan" is actually MSR's name.
I like his work, though the "Spiral" series (starting with CHASE THE MORNING) best.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I did wonder about the "legality" of one writer using a title for a book that another author had already used. Poul Anderson wrote A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS, and later I saw there was an another book called KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS, by a different writer. Understood, titles of books cannot be patented.
And I did know "Rohan" was a real name for real persons and families. Esp. the French Rohan family. Altho I've came across his name, I've never read any of MSR's works. Yet another of the many gaps in my reading of SF!
Sean
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