Starting to read or reread a new chapter means adjusting to a whole new period as well as to a new location. This makes demands on the reader. XII features someone called "Deathless" who is:
"...the mightiest of all shamans..." (p. 241)
- so we start to infer where we are and also to expect to meet another immortal.
A boy asks a berdache (unrecognized by my computer) to carry a message to the shaman. The President of the United States has just decreed that there are only two gender identities. There is a continual interplay between Poul Anderson's works and what is happening on Earth Real while we are reading them.
We will have to tackle the sixteen pages of XII tomorrow, Sunday, when we might have time to learn what Deathless has to deal with which I have completely forgotten. It will be very different from the issues addressed by Richelieu, Tu Shan and others back through the history of the world. We are racing through history into futurity as the Time Traveler put it.
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