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BattleAxe First Read: Chapter Twenty-Eight: Fernbrake Lake
Chapter Twenty-Seven | Table of Contents | Chapter Twenty-Nine
SCSF: A good day, everyone, and welcome back to BattleAxe! Last time, Faraday and co. travelled a bit, Faraday distrusted the Sentinels… but then she trusted them again, so that is all fine.
For the reader post, Chessy shows “education, not mind control” in action.
Wolfgoddess points out that the Renkins truly should not have all kinds of blankets and such to give away.
PPP: 207
Epistler points out that it makes little sense for the Renkins to have plates, and that they would likely have trenchers instead, so…
PPP: 208
Let me do the next chapter, then!
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Fernbrake Lake
Well, since I see that they still plan to go through with enchanting Timozel, let me show something that could be used instead:
“Timozel, we are going to Fernbrake Lake. You can come with us if you want to, but that will be quite dangerous. If you want to stay here, we will be back in a few days, and you should be perfectly safe. If you want to accompany Faraday, please leave your axe behind here and do not tell anyone you are an Axe-Wielder, because that would put you in danger. We will provide a story for you to stick to.”
Instead, we open some “hours before dawn” on the next day (so the 17th of October). Yr stands up from Timozel’s side and looks around. Jack, with his staff, waits nearby. They look at each other, but do not say anything. Yr then looks down on the sleeping Timozel, his face “boyish in repose”. Then she puts her hand over his face, “fingertips at his temples, thumb on the point of his chin”.
Um… I do not think that works quite as Douglass thinks it does. Using my own hand, I cannot quite bend it enough to touch something with both fingertips, like Yr does. I am not the best example for this, naturally, but this seems impossible.
It’s Like We’re Smart But We’re Not: 28
Blue light comes from her fingertips. She glances at Jack, who puts the knob of his staff on the back of her hand. The light becomes twenty times as bright, and they both squint. Jack silently says something, while Yr concentrates intensely.
Faraday watches from a distance. She thinks about “[p]oor Timozel”, who is stuck in an adventure he did not want. Now he is “[u]nwillingly subjected to an enchantment about which he [knows] nothing and that he [will] loathe and fear if he [does] know”. Yes, he indeed is. Thinking on this further… I think that Douglass wants to frame this as a “hard decision” that needs to be made. The trouble, of course, is that this is not the only way, so it comes off as insincere.
Faraday feels nervous about the coming day, and she wonders why the Prophecy came to life during “hers and Axis’ lifetimes”. Someone then says that it is precisely because it is their lifetimes, and she notices Jack looking at her. She wonders if he has “invaded her head as well”. Well, it certainly looks like it!
Give Me a Piece of Your Mind: 11
Still, the Sentinels can apparently use telepathy! That might come in very handy! (So it will not be used when necessary, I presume.) Well, Timozel’s breathing slows until he only breathes once per minute. Yr gets up, dresses, and puts her hair in a “knot behind her neck”. Faraday walks up to Yr and asks what they have done to Timozel. Yr looks at her and we have a note that Faraday looks “drawn and pale”.
Yr explains that she, with the help of Jack’s staff, has put Timozel “slightly outside the normal flow of time”. Consequently, what would be a further three hours of sleep for him will now be “three days, if not more”. He will wake without feeling like he has slept so long. Oh, that is another very helpful ability! It would be nice if that were used.
Also… if Yr has slowed Timozel’s time by some twenty-four times, and his heart beats once a minute now, he apparently has a heart-rate of 24 in rest. Taking a quick look, I see that that is not exactly usual, so I think saying his heart beat every half minute (and him having a heart-rate of 48), is quite more reasonable.
It’s Like We’re Smart But We’re Not: 29 (what is the trouble in looking this up, Douglass?)
Faraday asks if he will be alright, and how he will keep warm if it rains or snows. Yr hushes her, and says they are well within the Lake’s protection by now. The Lake knows they are coming, and that “Timozel, the pigs and the mule” need the same protection as they do. The Lake will protect them until the others return. Timozel will stay warm, the mule and pigs will stay “close by”, and the “worst of the weather” will be deflected.
Faraday asks what Yr means by calling the Lake “she”. Jack then comes up, and gives them their cloaks, as it is near freezing. He tells them to come, since “The Mother” awaits. Faraday then asks somewhat nervously what that is.
Jack just smiles, and asks if she remembers how scared she was before she want into the Chamber of the Star Gate. Faraday nods. Um, she did not feel that at all; I just checked!
PPP: 209
He then asks if she also remembers how she felt looking into the Star Gate. She nods again and thinks she will never let it fade. Jack continues that the Star Gate is “one of the most magical and powerful places” of Tencendor. Fernbrake Lake, or the Mother, as it was once known, is another. She is caught up in an adventure she “did not ask for and did not want”, but she is still witnessing wonders that no Acharite has seen for almost a thousand years! I… guess that might be enough for Faraday; for myself, I would not know.
Faraday thinks on his words, and the “stress lines” on her face ease. She has seen the Star Gate, after all, and even if she does not see it again, it is enough to know it exists. She then says to Yr that she knows so little, and will Yr tell her more about Tencendor? (I do like that Faraday wants to do this because of the wonders she saw.)
Yr says she will gladly. Today they will see a part of Tencendor that lives much like it did before “the Seneschal started to murder this beautiful land”. Jack then tells them to come because they need to do much climbing. Faraday and Yr put on their packs, and Faraday goes over to Timozel. She touches his cheek and tells him to “[r]est well” and that she will come back safely. That is quite sweet.
Jack packs up, too, and sends Yr ahead to lead Faraday onto the trail. He then puts his hand over Timozel’s face and reads his mind.
Give Me a Piece of Your Mind: 12
After a moment he removes his hand, puzzled. He considers (and he actually has blond hair, I see. For some reason I imagined him with brown hair). Veremund told him what he found in Timozel in the Silent Woman Keep: a good heart, shadowed with unhappiness, with “troubled choices” in the future. Jack has found all of that, but there is also a “taint of something strange” that he cannot identify. That makes him “very uncomfortable, very uncomfortable indeed”.
Then… you might want to investigate further before leaving Timozel alone for possibly days? After all, he might well come to kill you if you are unfortunate. Oh, that also reminds me:
Ill Logic: 150 (+5)
Morals for Thee But Not for Me: 87
Jack, however, just hurries after Yr and Faraday. Again he wishes he had led them into any Barrow other than the ninth one. He cannot “deny the Prophecy”, however, and “none of the marked could ever evade the Prophet’s hand”. That is quite ominous! I might expect someone to note the Prophet’s danger and do something about it… but I wonder if that will happen.
This Is What the Mystery: 21
There is a scene break. They climb “solidly” until the sun rises above the mountains ahead of them. They have no breath left for talking once they begin to “bend their backs into” the mountain path. For a long time, only their boots can be heard. Once the sun has risen well above the mountains, Jack calls a halt.
PPP: 210 (I doubt that “bend their backs into” is the right phrase to use here)
Yr and Faraday go to sit against the wall of the path. Faraday wonders “vaguely” if Tencendor’s wonders exist on the “very top” or on the very bottom of the world. Yr then reads Faraday’s mind again.
Give Me a Piece of Your Mind: 13
She says that all the other places “have been destroyed”, and only those on the top and bottom have survived. Faraday closes her eyes, and thinks she will never get used to the mind-reading. Yr pats Faraday’s hand, and says they do not do it “all the time”, since they try to be polite. If you truly wish to be polite, you might do better to set down some rules about it with Faraday, I think.
Faraday wants to know what kind of thoughts Yr picked up in the palace. Yr (who was apparently grinning) says that it were “not always pretty ones”. …That does not answer what Faraday asked. She thinks about “some of the more irksome and surprising” knowledge she picked up, as well as the “troubling secrets” she gathered at the Tower of the Seneschal. She thanks the Mother that Axis is away from the Seneschal for now. Just maybe his journey north can show him “some of the lies that envelop[] him” and he can find his own truths.
Cut to Jack, who watches them. He is “immensely relieved that they [have] been able to leave Timozel behind”. When he and the other Sentinels talked about “spiriting Faraday away to Borneheld”, they wanted to train her as much as possible before “events over[take] them”. However, he and Yr were “severely restrained by Timozel’s presence”, and Faraday still needs to go on the path of the Prophecy.
Then what was to stop you from telling her things via telepathy, or from explaining to Timozel that you are going to train her? You decided Timozel would make it impossible to train her without even trying, and… why would you constrain yourself so much?
Ill Logic: 151
He then gives out “thick slices of ham, crunchy currant biscuits, and tawny, dried summer apples”. If Timozel was “an unplanned nuisance”, he says, then Thedithe has “served her purpose” much better than he hoped. She certainly has, by supplying all kinds of impossible stuff!
PPP: 212
And for the “unplanned nuisance” comment:
Petty Ain’t the Word for You: 38
He now tells Yr to talk about the “Sacred Lakes” while they have breakfast. Faraday is amazed and asks if Fernbrake Lake is one of them. Yr confirms it, while “nibbl[ing]” on an apple core. She says there are four of them. Fernbrake is one of them. Can Faraday guess the others?
Well, here is the newest version of the map. Can you guess?
Faraday instead thinks about how delicious the ham is, and she wonders what it is smoked over, and suggests “dried pig manure”. She thinks about it quite hard and forms a clear image in her mind. Jack spits out his last bit of him. Faraday lets go and “laugh[s] delightedly, clapping her hands like a small child”. The Sentinels “look[] wryly” at each other, and think they are caught. Faraday laughs they were “[n]ot polite”. That was somewhat funny, and I like how Faraday found this out!
Yr “represse[s] a smile” and reiterates her previous question. Faraday concentrates and comes up with the Cauldron Lake. Timozel told her “how strange it was”, so it must be one of them. Yr “incline[s] her head in agreement”, and says there is one Faraday knows “even better”.
Faraday is confused for a bit, but then… she thinks it is “Grail Lake”! Yr says it is exactly. Grail Lake has “buried its enchantment” deep in the past hundreds of years, though, because it has been “the most exposed to the works of man”, and to the eeeevil Seneschal. Faraday asks what the fourth Lake is.
Jack says it “lies far to the north”, and he thinks it is the most beautiful of them all. (Hm, I think I see what this refers to. Why can Douglass not do things like this more often?) Faraday asks Yr why the lakes are sacred. There is a random bit about Yr eating a currant biscuit, and she answers that each of them has their “own purpose” and secrets. Today, or maybe tomorrow, Faraday can see why the Avar “particularly revere the Mother”.
Can you never answer a straight question, Yr? Also, if you are so bothered about Timozel holding Faraday’s “training” up, I think you would do well to tell her as much as you can!
Faraday then remembers what Veremund told her about the Avar, the “people of the forest”. He called the Icarii “the people of the Wing”, and now Jack has told her that the Icarii have wings! So she asks Yr that, since the Icarii are called “the people of the Wing” and they actually have wings, what the Avar look like if they are “the people of the forest”. Do they have leaves for hair, for example?
I think this would have worked as well with the first half of the paragraph cut out.
Hand-Holding: 17
Yr and Jack just laugh at her suggestion. She literally does not know! Why are you laughing at her suggestion? If you do not want her to say such things, you should have taught her, you idiots! I quite hate them. Jack just says that it is “hardly that” and says it is time they get moving again.
Well, just as they climb further, Faraday remembers what Veremund said further about the Avar, “that perhaps they could speak to the trees”. She looks around the “slopes of the Bracken Ranges”. They are called that because of the dense ferns that cover the lower part, but now Faraday wonders if the region around Fernbrake Lake has larger plant life. She gets a bit nervous again. We are told that until now, her “entire life [] had revolved” around fear of the forest and its creatures (I doubt it was her entire life, but alright), and despite her wonder at the Star Gate, “it was not easy to let go of such ingrained fear”.
Well, good to see that Douglass actually acknowledges that! I would hope it goes beyond lip service, but I do not quite know. We now have a scene break, and we pick up with Timozel. Oh, this.
While he is “caught in his enchantment”, he dreams like with the Renkins. Again he walks down the ice tunnel, terrified and not in control of himself, and again he approaches the heavy wooden door. Again the voice tells him to enter and his hand closes on the latch, which then twists open. Oh, so that is because the other person opens it! He screams “no”, but the latch keeps moving and then the “door lock [gives] way”. Just as the door begins to open, “his mind let[s] go” and he falls asleep again.
That went further than the time before, and it is certainly unsettling. The nasty thing is that Timozel cannot adequately defend himself, not even by waking up. Given the amount of pettiness we have already seen toward Timozel, this comes off… quite badly. I will not mark Douglass for this, but I do suggest that she might not have wanted to put everything on Timozel.
(I do want to praise the “unsettling” part, though. I am quite convinced, especially by Threshold, that she could have done quite well as a horror writer.)
Cut back to Faraday and co. After hours of climbing, they top a ridge and see Fernbrake Lake: “a vast circular body of emerald water almost completely filling the collapsed peak of a mountain”. Is that “collapsed peak” supposed to be a caldera? Either way, this is misleading, since Fernbrake Lake fills an impact crater, and I do not think that a mountain peak would “collapse” when hit.
PPP: 213
Massive ferns, as high as humans, surround much of the lake, but at one end, there is a “stand of massive trees” which towers “into the dark and cloudy sky”. Jack leads them down the ridge to “a smooth, well-grassed area” between the trees and the lake. Ooh, this all sounds like a nice place to be in!
They go onto a steep path “hemmed in by the tall tree ferns”. Faraday is “subdued”. Fernbrake Lake may be beautiful, but it is not as wonderful as Jack and Yr told her. She certainly thinks it is nothing like the Star Gate. She is also “depressed at the sight of the trees”, as they recall the vision for her and she does not think she can bear another. Yr now smiles to reassure her. Yr said that she will come to love the trees more than life itself, but she thinks it will “take all her efforts simply to learn to accept them”. Even the “myriad birds” that call from the ferns do not calm her.
Oh, I like this quite a bit! Naturally she will not be ready for the tees quite yet, and I am pleased that that is acknowledged. I further just like that she is not willing to trust the Sentinels on this yet. Finally, I see that she thinks accepting the trees is an option, which I quite approve of.
It takes them nearly an hour to climb down the path and go along the lake to the clear area before the trees. The clearing extends “some fifty paces” from the lake, and forms “an almost perfect crescent”. Yr explains that it is a “very sacred spot” for the Avar, since they revere—
Jack says that he does not think she will need to explain, while he looks at the tree line. He thinks that, for once, “[their] luck has turned for the better” (yes yes, it is “bad luck”), as the Mother “has an Avar Bane in attendance”. Oh, then we can finally see one of the Avar again!
Yr and Faraday look at the spot Jack looks at. Yr is suitably awed. Faraday can see nothing for a while, and then, as he eyes adjust, “a man, carrying a small child, walk[s] into the cold daylight of the clearing”. There we have them! (This will be interesting, I think.)
Cut back to Timozel, who is again trapped in his dream at the point he left off, with the door slowly opening. He finally manages to pull his hand off the latch to prevent being “pull[ed] precipitously” into the room beyond it. The being that opens the door stand behind it, and all he can see is “his shadow stretching across the ice floor”. Even the “ill-defined shape of the shadow”, though, is enough for him to break free “from the power that [holds] him” and escape again.
There the chapter ends. That was… quite a bit better than I thought it would be! I think it helps that the story is going somewhere now. Until next time, then!
no subject
I've just thought up a term for characters who conveniently act like this for no logical reason: plot slaves.
EXACTLY.
There's an awful lot of gratuitous nudity in this trilogy. Frequently involving children.
They could have just put him in an enchanted sleep without all this medical fail nonsense. But nooo, let's overcomplicate things and make ourselves look like an ignorant twit.
You aren't. They're treating him like an object.
It seems they didn't even have to put up with the usual environmental disasters caused by deforestation.
The only comfort for me is knowing these assholes will indeed eventually get what they deserve.
You're really going to enjoy certain scenes in book three. I certainly did.
no subject
Seems accurate. Like, I get needing the characters to cooperate for the story to go in a certain direction, but surely there's a more organic way to do that than constant mind-control. Not only is it hella creepy, it's also a cop-out.
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...I wish I hadn't heard that. Good lord, Douglass, what is your deal?!
no subject
There absolutely is, and it's 100% just lazy writing.
Too late to ask her now.
I swear to god these multiple scenes of naked kids in every book, and even two instances of a child or infant being made to strip for no reason that is ever given just get more and more bizarre and uncomfortable. Between that and all the incest and the many, MANY really creepy moments where someone is hit on (including mouth to mouth kissing) by their own grandparent (and there's even a love triangle in the sequel trilogy involving a young woman and BOTH of her grandfathers) I'm absolutely certain there was something really fucked up in her past. She even thought Grandpa incest was a perfectly normal sexual fantasy to have and laughed about it like she had no idea what a disgusting thing to say that was.