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Setting: Immediately after the end of Echoes of Betrayal and the Lady’s death, there’s chaos and suspicion. Finally, as things began to settle down and reorganize–but still in the same place and with others around, Kieri asks his uncle, the Lady’s son Amrothlin, a crucial question.
“Who is now the ruler of the elvenhome?” Kieri asked Amrothlin. “Will it be you, her son, or had she named another in her stead?”
Amrothlin shook his head. “There is no elvenhome.”
“What–? Of course there is…must be.” At the look on Amrothlin’s face, Kieri said, “How can it be gone?”
“Do you not see?” Amrothlin gestured to his own grief-stricken face. “Do I look the same? Do you feel the influence of the elvenhome? It was hers–her creation–and it died with her. She alone sustained the Ladysforest; she had no heir. We are un-homed, nephew. We are cast away and nowhere in the world will we find a home now.”
……………………………..
Well, that may not be much solace…but it opens several interesting cans of…maybe worms, and maybe something else.
Comment by Sam Barnett-Cormack — August 2, 2012 @ 11:35 am
One would hope Amrothlin is just a little despondent – I, at least, would hope that another Elf could create a new Elvenhome. Certainly, ISTR that the Ladysforest wasn’t the only one – so hopefully another could be made. Given the previous conversations about Elvenhomes, anyway.
Comment by s.e. — August 2, 2012 @ 11:53 am
when’s the next book being published??????
Comment by Kerry aka Trouble — August 2, 2012 @ 11:59 am
s.e.@2 – I believe June 2013 was mentioned when New Editor had read everything.
Comment by GeekLady — August 2, 2012 @ 12:16 pm
I dunno, Sam, I’m getting a heavy sense that any other elvenhome wouldn’t be THEIR elvenhome. It doesn’t seem like elvenhomes are like houses where can just build a new one.
Comment by Annabel (Mrs Redboots) — August 2, 2012 @ 12:25 pm
Oh, poor Amrothlin. But wasn’t there a Lords Forest somewhere?
Comment by Larry Lennhoff — August 2, 2012 @ 12:35 pm
An interesting reflection of the situation with the exiled gnomes whom Arcolin took in. I wonder if Kieri will complete the parallel by creating a new elvenhome? Normally I wouldn’t think that possible for a half elf, but between his elvish gifts and the royal magery you might have the creation of this world’s first ‘halfelven home’.
Comment by Sam Barnett-Cormack — August 2, 2012 @ 12:40 pm
GeekLady, sure it would never be the same one – but I have a feeling that the Lady isn’t the only elf of the Ladysforest to pre-date the Ladysforest itself. Unless she’s some sort of brood mare as well (which seems very unlikely).
Maybe they just can’t deal very well with change. It wouldn’t be the only autism-spectrum trait you can see in the Elves if you look at them a certain way.
Also, it seemed that she broke her connection with it before she got killed – did it actually cease to be then, but would have been recreated after she won (if she had), or is there a seed of it, a remnant, that could be rekindled?
After all, it’s possible for Amrothlin to be wrong, albeit subtly.
Comment by Daniel Glover — August 2, 2012 @ 1:56 pm
Uuummm,
Now that is something I hadn’t thought would occur. Not that it doesn’t make sense as a possible outcome. Just not one I had thought of. Well done, Plot Daemon! Well done!
Comment by Rob Conley — August 2, 2012 @ 1:56 pm
If doesn’t give anything way, what exactly the nature of a elvenhome? I can understand that the Lady was central to its existence but this short snippet now got me wondering exactly what the Ladyforest was.
I always pictured it as an other place, a small pocket dimension just a step away from Paks’ world. One that due to time and effort was heavily enchanted to the elves’ taste.
Comment by elizabeth — August 2, 2012 @ 2:31 pm
Just talked to webguru Ruta, who will be putting up a page of info about elvenhomes sometime this afternoon, to answer a lot of questions. I know I talked about this somewhere in the archives, but I’m too busy to hunt back through them now.
Note: there is a spoiler on that page. If you don’t want to run into the spoiler, STOP when you reach the paragraph about elvenhomes dwindling. I don’t want to cut the spoiler(s) because then I’d have to redo the page later and…I’m lazy, remember?
I think she’s going to put it under the “people” section of the Paksworld website. When I get the URL for it exactly, I’ll post it, but you’re welcome to hunt around looking. Though probably it’s an hour or so away.
Comment by Richard — August 2, 2012 @ 4:04 pm
http://paksworld.com/elvenhomes.html
Thank you Elizabeth. Thank you Ruta.
Comment by elizabeth — August 2, 2012 @ 5:39 pm
Thanks for posting the URL, Richard.
Comment by GinnyW — August 2, 2012 @ 9:12 pm
The elvenhome page is a fascinating summary that raises lots of questions, and delivers very few answers. Does it matter what sort of material the pattern is made from? I am remembering that Arian had to rescue Flessinathlin from the (formerly banast) taig.
Comment by Iphinome — August 3, 2012 @ 1:05 am
What a legal mess. Even without an elvenhome title to the real property vests with the elves assuming I understand the Lyonya system correctly. Someone/someelf/somepony owns all that land.
I foresee centuries of probate court. Lyonyan landholders languishing in legal limbo over lengthily litigation looking for loopholes to let them liberate lasting land-rights.
Comment by Karen — August 3, 2012 @ 2:40 am
For what it’s worth, what a fascinating conundrum!
I’m so glad you’re posting these snippets, along with the surmounting architecture, because they create more questions than answers, and a fiction-reader like me would rather have many questions to think about than nice, neat bows to accept without question along the way.
In other words, I’m not only looking forward to more answers as the books are published, but I’m looking forward to wondering and puzzling, and– most of all, THINKING–, which is the true magic where reality meets imagination.
(Not that you’ve really spoiled so much that I can predict outcomes, or that I would even want to…).
I’m just glad that you’ve opened the mysteries of the elvenholme kingdom as much as you have — and am amazed that I can feel like it’s part of the world I think I live in (for the most part, I accept that it is, at least metaphorically, a world of angels and demons that I like to think both aspects of the elvenhome inhabits, rather than the world of something as simple as most people consider the difference between “right and wrong” (when I think about them seriously, the distinction becomes increasingly less clear).
I should probably mention that my religious tradition does not actually acknowledge “saints”, or “people ordained by God to have immense power, even after death” as such. Accordingly, I should have a tremendous amount of trouble with the cults of saints that have grown up in Paksworld. Instead, I find the obverse to be true — that I understand how “cults” have grown up around people who made such drastic changes to your world’s culture as they tried to make their/your world better.
That attempt is something I was trained to believe is the duty of every person of religious training in my own world to pursue — no matter what the source of their training.
That may be one of the things I like best about Paksworld — the idea that every being must strive, within the limits of their abilities, to do better and be better, no matter how “better is defined.”
In my experience of the “real” world, these are very difficult questions. The fact that these questions that aren’t simplified in your novels or your blogs only leads me to wish that more of my “religious” friends would address the “real-world” issues as carefully as you do in your books (and the excerpts) in order to address the problems amongst characters who seem so real in ways that, are — in fact — the most basic truths by which we live.
Comment by Jenn — August 3, 2012 @ 9:18 am
Ohh! thank you for the snippet and the info it did raise some questions: (You don’t have to answer them and I am sure that i will have more as I ponder)
What did it mean when Flessinathlin in KotN said that her right could be challenged?
Was “garden” Gird’s solider found in SN a former Elvenhome that had died out? Which then asks if the work of creation in the elvenhome remains after the home itself has disappeared?
Comment by Sam Barnett-Cormack — August 3, 2012 @ 9:47 am
One wonders if the elvenhome gift can exist un-nurtured, to be discovered when opportunity arises.
Also, whether the gift may arise in a part-elven person, especially >50%. And whether the ‘proportion’ of elven-ness in the child of two part-elves is always the average of the two, or whether it can deviate from that – meaning two half-elves would have some more-than-half-elven children, and some less-than-half-elven.
Comment by elizabeth — August 3, 2012 @ 10:20 am
Iphinome: Alliteration alleges alliances; alas alienation allocates all to alarms. Well, not exactly, but I had to play. The legal system’s very different…at least four traditions have been known in Lyonya, and what gave elves “rights” in the first place–in Lyonya–was force. They came in and overpowered the natives, just like magelords in Tsaia and Fintha, only earlier. Since the same elves who did that are still alive, they know what they did. (Do you think the bones of the King’s Grove regret the Lady’s passing? No. The better among them hoped that making the forest more beautiful and outliving the human generations would fix all that. Um…no, again.)
Karen: Extraordinary people remembered long after their deaths as cultural heroes (or saints–depending on the culture) are fairly common across human cultures and often considered mediators in some way between ordinary humans and whatever “higher powers” that culture acknowledges. The same is true of the sense of “special places apart” that have some additional qualities and evoke emotional resonance. In some cultures, this specialness derives from the shape of the land, in others from a myth or legend associated with it. People of some cultures are particularly sensitive to such places in their “homeland” and may or may not “feel” them somewhere else. I have enough Celtic genes that some places in the UK, the first time I went there, hit me unexpectedly (and I knew nothing about those particular places except that suddenly I had gooseflesh all over.) I’ve always been sensitive to land–to the shapes, to the waters and so on. So in creating imaginary lands and peoples, that’s some of the background that comes out. Glad you’re enjoying it.
Jenn: I don’t know if that garden in the swamp was a leftover from an elvenhome or still being cultivated…it didn’t come into the story. If I focused on it, I could perhaps find out but it would take time. The beauty of an elvenhome lasts for a time after an elvenhome decays/disappears, gradually becoming less obvious. The means of destruction in Paksworld are not so pervasive and efficient as they are here, if the iynisin aren’t involved (and even they don’t match the destruction of a road-building crew with heavy machinery, in any 24 hour period.) Iynisin can affect only a small area around them, individually, and a somewhat larger area in a group. When they start fires, those of course can continue to burn. But the iynisin curse is limited in scope. So, for instance, if someone were magically transported to the site of the Eastbight elvenhome, the forest there would simply look somewhat healthier than the forest outside it, and would probably harbor more species, especially the prettiest. The visitor would think “What a lovely place” in much the way I did when visiting a fragment of old virgin forest in West Virginia years ago. The whole mountain was forested…but a skinny triangle at the ridge had been mis-surveyed orginally and a forest-service employee realized that and claimed the ridge–and then donated it as a sanctuary. The other forest was beautiful. That bit was special…a richness, a depth of beauty that the rest didn’t have. I don’t know if it’s still there. I wish I’d had more than a few hours there.
Comment by Richard — August 3, 2012 @ 3:22 pm
“At least four legal traditions in Lyonya” – I’ve failed the challenge. Old humans for one. The elf-imposed rules for two. From those benign-enough magelords whom the elves agreed to admit, the Falkian strand of the Aarean tradition for three. Plenty of scope there for interactions and legal reforms but I daren’t guess what stages the system might have gone through since.
Comment by Iphinome — August 3, 2012 @ 4:49 pm
Oh brava your Ladyship, well played. I’m happy to see you taking a minute to play.
With apologies to the Monty Python writing crew.
Look, strange bones lying in the ground in mounds handing out images of the past… that’s no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical orthopedic ceremony.
I don’t see how the sinyi rights after conquest could be any less than those of the Normans after Hastings. Indeed we have in-world precedent with Alurd taking Siniava’s lands and Kieri’s conquest of the lands that became Tsaia’s north marches. It was even assumed by some in the south that he simply conquered Lyonya.
Any laws outside the elvenhome in place the day before Flessinathlin’s death would have to remain in place after unless someone/somesinyi changes them. That would be in effect a new conquest as the current laws are how those in power derive their legitimacy.
Comment by Karen — August 3, 2012 @ 10:10 pm
Iphinome,
I just don’t know what to say except that I wish you would consider writing your own book (which I would buy without any competition with our glorious hostess simply because her books are already in my yearly budget…)
Glorious Hostess,
I grew up knowing that there are as many variaties of people as there are of relationships with Our Creator (which — I hope you will understand does not mean that I have any conflict with real science, a field of endeavor that I was raised to believe — and believe more as each day passes) to simply be a study of any words you want to use to describe a being who could not only make the blind to see, the galsctic wonder that makes supernovae and the tiny “helpful” gut bugs, which new studies show do so much more than keeping us “regular”.
I’m just trying to say that your books often remind me about how much I don’t understand about the wonder of my own existence — and that wonder makes me grateful.
Comment by Richard — August 4, 2012 @ 4:47 am
@Iphinome
… and Dorrin’s conquest of Verrakai.
Good job you adapted the Monty Python quote – the original might have been a bit too close to the bone.
Comment by Iphinome — August 4, 2012 @ 5:57 am
@Richard Yes sir, In the next line the word watery replaced with Girdish would have done the trick but how often does one get to use the word orthopedic in a joke?
@Karen (Forgive me, I don’t know how to address you, is it miss, ma’am, sir, or simply Karen?)
Did I fail to provide enough attribution for the Monty Python quote? I beg your and everyone else’s pardon.
Comment by Karen — August 4, 2012 @ 9:17 am
Iphinome,
Karen is sufficient, and I got the Monty Pythonesqeness very well. I sincerely believe, however, that anyone else who can also appreciate the Ministry of Funny Walks is probably able to a) apply for funding to create their own funny walk or b) write a very good novel.
Comment by Iphinome — August 4, 2012 @ 5:32 pm
@Karen All cracking wise requires of me is a mile wide mean streak. I try to suppress the innate nasty by limiting myself to puns and commentary with alliterative appeal. Poking fun at people is the mark of a bully not a novelist.
Novel writing requires an actual skill-set along with an understanding of human nature that extends beyond merely hurting people. Look at her Ladyship’s deep insight then look at a comment that tries for the quick and cheap laugh. Please note the difference.
Comment by Karen — August 4, 2012 @ 8:27 pm
Iphinome,
I get the part about cracking wise — most of my family is very good at it.
I also know that some of my family has risen above merely cracking wise to some truly amazing feats.
In other words, one of the things they’ve taught me is that a compliment, when offered, should be accepted. The other thing they’ve taught me is that I am the only one who can limit what I can be.
Comment by Iphinome — August 4, 2012 @ 10:01 pm
@Karen
I am duly chastised. Thank you Karen and thank you for the correction. I shall endeavor to do better in the future. *curtsey*
Comment by Karen — August 5, 2012 @ 12:37 am
Iphinome,
You have no need to curtsey to me, or to accept my word as a form or chastisement.
I was not named for her, but one of my *other* favorite writers was Isaak Dineson, also known as the Baroness von Blixen, also know know as Karen. The name comes from Catherine, which means “pure” — and if there’s nothing I ever do that was truly pure, it was to repeat that I believe you have a gift for writing you haven’t tapped (did you know that I’ve been reading our hostess’ blog for awhile — and I’ve been noticing your posts…).
Comment by Karen — August 5, 2012 @ 12:50 am
Iphinome,
I made so many mistakes and typos in that last post that I hope you are forever cured of the desire to curtsey!
Meanwhile, I meant what I said about your ability to write (and I don’t just mean without typos and other gaffs).
Comment by Robert conley — August 5, 2012 @ 11:24 am
Thanks for posting the Elvenhome article it was a great read. And Lyonya is lucky to have Kieri as their king at this point in history.
Comment by Rolv — August 6, 2012 @ 3:00 am
Sad, but wonderful.
I feared from your Questionnaire on Elvenhome some time ago that the Ladysforest might cease to exist with the death of the Lady, but not hasving spotted the Elvenhome entrance referred to above, I never realized that a new could not be created.
This leaves me yearning even more for Limits to arrive.
Comment by Richard — August 6, 2012 @ 11:38 am
Karen, thinking of the Ministry of Funny Walks helped me with skiing.
Everyone, thinking about Ladies handing out magic swords (see @Iphinome’s Monty Python source quote, which I had to look up: it came from where I expected, but I must confess to only having seen that film once, on TV) makes me realise: we’ve seen streams, rivers (of all sizes) and seas in Paksworld, and bits of marsh, but NEVER A LAKE.
Comment by Gareth — August 7, 2012 @ 3:01 am
This raises an interesting question. Elizabeth writes (talking about the master of the Kinsforest) “He and she had a child together (the Lady’s original heir) but as he saw that heir going to the bad, he refused to father another child with her.”
Can iynisin turn good?
Is it a one time transition or can it really be much more dynamic? Can an iynisin be redeemed?
You’d think if they can turn one way they could return as well. Of course that would make them more like humans with a bit of good and evil in all…
Comment by Jenn — August 7, 2012 @ 9:29 am
Ah Gareth, my questions exactly. And…
where is that heir at the moment?
Comment by Gareth — August 7, 2012 @ 10:20 am
… or was that the heir that had gone to the dark side that we saw at the end of Echoes?
Comment by Richard — August 8, 2012 @ 3:16 am
Gareth,
supposing for the sake of argument that an iynisin can turn good, what would you bet on the survival chances of one who tried to?
Comment by Gareth — August 8, 2012 @ 4:49 am
I can see that a reformed iynisin could be a target, but not necessarily any more so than a regular ranking elf etc. It sounds as if they are/have been able to exist alongside and disguised as regular elves. Wouldn’t it be possible for some of them to convert (or become double agents). Remember we’ve only heard the publicity from one side – perhaps we need to hear the PR side of the iynisin…
I often have trouble imagining wholly ‘bad’ cultures. Clearly for the iynisin to work they have to cooperate and have a culture that works together. I find it very hard to imagine a culture built on destruction that can cooperate to work together. It is more subtle in that they do create things (they don’t only destroy) but their view of what to create is rather different. Maybe someone needs to write a sympathetic story about Dark elves/Orcs/Goblins or how their culture is really a lot more subtle than outsiders think. It has to be to keep functioning. From the hints we have about iynisin numbers it is clearly a successful ‘culture’ that we don’t know enough about. Why is it successful – how does it operate?
In our world we have cultures who hate each other, but when you look inside each they are usually a lot ‘nicer’ (and usually more similar) than your initial prejudices might suggest. We’ve heard the bad press about the iynisin from the Sinyi (and others). What do the iynisin think about themselves?
Comment by elizabeth — August 8, 2012 @ 7:46 am
I’m not sure iynisin form a culture, in the sense we usually mean, any more than the various “hate groups” form a functional culture….though the Nazis certainly did, for awhile at least, and I don’t see anything to admire in them. In-group behavior may be better than out-group behavior, but this doesn’t make them admirable. What makes iynisin who they are is resentment, offended pride…how dare the Tree recognize and honor a lesser being?
If you’re lucky, you’ve never met someone so wrapped up in resentment and hate that they cannot recognize beauty in anything the target of their resentment and hate does. I have. I see them around me, living in a “red” state where people rant against the poor, women, people of color, etc. and refuse to see that anything they do is good. Inside this culture are they “nicer”? To each other, much nicer than to the poor, the people of color, women who conform to their narrow ideal, yes. But to the world? No. And their hatred does harm, including to themselves.
The root of that kind of thinking and behavior is in every single one of us, just as Solzhenitsyn said, that line “running down the middle of every human heart.” We all could choose resentment, bitterness, envy, anger–and finally hate–over recognizing that others can do things we can’t, or do the same things better, and appreciating what they accomplish without wanting to smack them down. There are writers I could waste my time envying–women far more beautiful than I was at my best–people who’ve had the advantages I never had (and especially if they’ve done nothing I admire with those advantages)–people who are more what I would like to be than I will ever achieve–and so on. I fight back the urge to envy them, to resent their opportunities and their success, because I’m not anywhere close to perfect…and that knowledge hurts. (I wish I never felt that sting, that temptation, but “saint” is one of those things I’m not.)
So the white supremacist walking into a Sikh temple with intent to kill people–because he resents the existence of brown people–is a human form of iynisn. The Ku Klux Klan–is iynisin in human form. Every person and every group that centers its beliefs on resentment, envy, hatred, a determination to “get mine first”–is iynisin in human form.
Comment by Jenn — August 8, 2012 @ 3:47 pm
Some what off topic but here is proof that the iynisin have cursed knitting.
http://knitty.com/ISSUEwinter02/FEATsweatercurse.html
you might also be interested in the toe down socks in the same issue
Comment by Gareth — August 9, 2012 @ 2:42 am
Elizabeth – interesting parallels – at least in our world occasionally some of the haters awaken and start to see the other groups as people. Who would have thought it possible that Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness in Northern Ireland would end up with such a good relationship. I think I can imagine an iynisin slowly ‘awakening’ to the beauty of the world perhaps influenced by a relationship. I have visions of an injured iynisin being accidentally nursed back to health by a Kuagan (Shades of Paks)… Initially so badly injured that unconscious – mortally wounded but the Kuagan feels bound to try and save… – Can you tell an sinyi from an iynisin when they are unconscious – I assume not as it is an attitude not genetic. Now the repercussions of that incident could be fun. Feel free to write it – I couldn’t, but I can dream it – my plot daemon works – but the other part that turns the dreams into words doesn’t work very well.
(Jenn/Elizabeth) What is it about fantasy writing and knitting… Just reading the back cover of Trudi Canavan’s latest and it says “spends her time painting, knitting and writing novels”.
Comment by Jenn — August 9, 2012 @ 1:32 pm
Gareth,
I am like you. I believe that hate can overcome and enemies can come together. Or at least one can overcome hatred for ones enemies. Kind of like Immaculee Ilibaiza standing before the man who massacred her family and forgiving him.
This is probably why I find politics tedious, divisive and generally ineffective. People change the world not governments.
As for knitting…knitting is creation. Seeing color and string come together and become something beautiful and often (but not always) practical.
Comment by Iphinome — August 9, 2012 @ 4:39 pm
@Jenn and Gareth Forgive me but I think you’re both forgetting a few things.
In the books anything touched by the infection of evil cannot be redeemed, instead it must be brutally cut away. What would be left of a kuaknom? Half a fingernail?
They live forever. You don’t need a society in the way humans do. We die, if we don’t prepare a next generation everything that matters to us is lost. They can stay the course till they meet their goals, doesn’t matter how long it takes.
Comment by Gareth — August 9, 2012 @ 5:31 pm
If evil is a one way trip and good can never redeem it that sounds like an unstable situation. PAKS of course had the taint ‘cut away’ but did heal – who knows what the gods can do. If Kauknom WANTED to change I wonder if intervention could be possible. I suspect they would have to want it which would be interesting. People can be infected by hate but recover. Why not elves – they chose to turn away. It sounds from the description of Fless’s heir that the choice is there. Seems a tad unbalanced if the choice can only be made one way. Obviously we’re guessing postulating and anthropomrphing an alien world but it would be fun to see what a reformed kuaknom could do. Could cause some interesting ripples.
Comment by elizabeth — August 9, 2012 @ 11:15 pm
Evil need not be a one-way trip, but it can be, if the person who has chosen evil does not choose to change. (The lightbulb has to want to change.) Some would argue that some people cannot change–that they are by nature incapable of pulling back from the edge. Whatever “went wrong”–whether genetics or upbringing or trauma later–is beyond desire or will to change. I don’t know (though I do know traumatic brain injury changes personality in many of its victims.)
But by the time of this story, the oldest iynisin still living have stuck to their choice to hate and destroy for tens of thousands of years…and habit is a strong shaper. I don’t think any of them are going to swing the other way. The situation might be different for those elves/iynisin sliding toward the iynisin view of things, allowing resentment of something (might not be the original cause of the Severance) to take hold in their hearts. It is possible that some of those might change back…but I think it unlikely. Elves are not humans; their psychology is not like ours, exactly. Their great and near-godlike powers create greater temptations and perhaps deeper falls.
Comment by Fred Zebruk — August 11, 2012 @ 12:45 am
Should a personality arrise to attempt to produce another *.forest will the assistance of the Dragon be sought/required?
Comment by elizabeth — August 11, 2012 @ 6:47 am
This isn’t something I can discuss until the books are out there. Major spoilers.
Comment by Rolv — August 14, 2012 @ 11:45 am
Elizabeth,
#38, so true and so well-written.
Yes, hate poisons and diminishes the hater.
I believe there is a real danger of reaching the “point of no return”, where repentance becomes impossible, although we are not authorized to pronounce that judgement on any human.