Let's Read The March North

[AlexScribler]

My criticism of Saunders' art here isn't that he got distances confused.

It's that he chose, without being required to do so, to give extremely precise details about things and then contradicted himself. The most notable problem comes when he says something like "it's 5 km to this place" and then has his characters travel, say, something like 10 km and they're somehow only halfway there.

Given that elsewhere Saunders routinely gives us only subtle hints about what is actually going on, this is a problem, because it is entirely possible in this setting that he means that there is some spatial fuckery involving distances or something... but no, it appears to just be author error.

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This was my feeling as well.

Plus I'm a math guy. I care a lot about numbers and it bothers me on an emotional level when they're wrong. I acknowledge that most people don't have this hang up.

 

[AlexScribler]

Chapter 34

Heron hasn't died in the night, isn't as unfocused, there's a general agreement that Heron's not like people remember, Heron's memory's fine, remembers everything, but something changed.

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Heron, the person who tried to murder Chloris for helping to save the lives of tens of thousands of people, is doing fine. Just fiiiiiine. For values of fine that include being able to breathe and feed himself.

The forest, you can see why Heron was upset. Varied, the leaf colours aren't the same, and it's huge, it goes back and back on both stream banks.

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It's a nice forest. I'm not sure I'd agree that it was worth killing over, but nice. Not as nice as the Tall Forest, but most places aren't. More importantly it's "clean," which in this time and place means it's free of bio-weapon "weeds." Probably kept that way by Heron's family, or maybe by the local weeding teams?

The very existence of weeding teams implies that weeding is a specialist job, and if that's the case, the labor from the weeding teams may well be costing the local village more than the taxes on the land were bringing in. On the other hand, weed-free areas where kids can run and play and not be likely to trample somebody's vegetable garden probably aren't very common. The book never digs into these sort of day-to-day living type details, so it's difficult to make a full assessment of the value of the forest. Interesting to think about.

The ridge-tops are mostly bare, rain or old waves or they were just sand when the lake dropped and nothing grew that could hold it down, none of it looks steep enough or sharp enough to shed soil. Meadow up high, too, above the forest, thinner soil before the bare crowns of the hills. Highlands around the other side of the hilltops, the forest is in what's surely an erosional feature, lower, sheltered. The distant highlands to the north are meadow, a few stands of pine. Not high enough to be cooler, but closer to the Northern Hills, and those are high enough for year-round snow. Up in the chill wind from the mountains likely counts for what will grow.

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The land above and surrounding the valley is mostly unforested. Not useless, but certainly less productive than that in the valley. Even if there's not much call for lumber, more animals and fruits and nuts grow on and around trees than do in meadows.

The intended lake borders blaze up ice-white, and tall, taller than the trees, or we'd never see it. Can't see all of it, some of it's behind hills, it's ripply land, the lake-to-be goes back a long way. One of Arch's surveyors mutters something Dove translates as Must be nice.

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Must be nice! Zora asked Blossom to mark where the plan calls for the lake to fill up to.

The forest walks.

All of it, not just the trees, from the dirt up, clear down to bedrock, the forest walks. In places it's moving a couple kilometres, to get clear, well clear, of the lake contour, the meadows above it move, covering the bare and rounding ridges, rearranging, making room for where the water will rise.

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Zora, like the energetic and overambitious kid they are, commanded the whole forest, good clean dirt and all, to move out of the area they're planning to flood. Importantly, Zora didn't mention this plan to anyone before they tried it. It does work.

Zora says "Whee!" and falls over.

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And that's why you should tell your senior supervisor what your plan is before you try it.

Zora's not functioning, or not much; not conscious

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Really why you should tell your senior supervisor (sorcerer) what your excellent idea is. Even if it works, and it really did work, it was also a lot harder than Zora expected.

In the book there's a page or more of text in between this and an accurate assessment of how badly Zora hurt themself with this, to be fair, really impressive stunt. This is good writing because it means the reader experiences the slow rolling revelations just like the people experiencing them do. I'm trying to make what's happening clearer with the let's read, so I'm going to skip straight to the next section that deals with why Zora fell over.

"Zora's physical brain had motor and cognitive damage from bleeding and oxygen starvation. Zora was blind, had some bone-marrow damage, and the brain bleeds were ongoing. No survival expectation without prompt first-order sorcerous intervention, which Zora provided by reflexively shape-shifting into good physical condition while transitioning awareness down from the metaphysical self at the completion of the working."

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Zora hurt themself real badly. If not for Grue's shapeshifting training, Zora would be dead. Since Zora's brain was injured, and Commonweal law forbids altering the brains of other people, Zora was the only one who could save herself. If she'd made a mistake, Blossom would have had to watch Zora die quickly.

We're all why we're not going to die, it's new and no one knows what we're doing and it won't work without all of us, we already lost Kynefrid, it matters, trying to brain Chloris with a water pitcher isn't functionally any different from trying to kill me, except … lingering."

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Zora being dead would probably have killed the other students only a little slower. As Zora herself explained about trying to kill Chloris being like killing Zora too. This, of course, applies just as much to Zora.

In context, this was a spectacularly stupid thing for Zora to do. The book has to walk a line between convincing the readers that this was a realistic thing to do, and letting us realize how dangerous it was. I agree that it is exactly the sort of impulsively ambitious thing Zora, who keeps wanting to shapeshift into trees and snowdrifts would do. That's not the same thing as smart or rational

Zora is to do nothing with the Power for the next four days. Not so much as turn on a light. Zora looks briefly rebellious and then subsides, nodding.

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Even though Zora managed to keep themself from dying, Grue, who Blossom contacted magically for advice, says no more magic, for at least four days. Since the only work Zora does is magical, this isn't much different from saying Zora should get bed rest.

The third judge says "Independent, why did you permit your student to take such a risk?"

Blossom says, with a sort of conversational calm, "It was not a predictable risk. None of the students have stable scope or capability, and by the time the risk was apparent, abruptly stopping the working would have been certainly destructive."

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Blossom didn't realize just how over-ambitious Zora was being until it was too late to stop Zora. Or maybe it'd be more accurate to say Blossom briefly thought about it and decided Zora probably could handle it, but didn't realize how much more Power was going to be needed because Zora was using the names of so many individual things? Like so much else of what the students do, they've never tried to do that before. Most likely nobody has tried to do something much like that ever before.

Arch's survey team have the bad shakes. Arch, they're not precisely indifferent, but some kind of functional
…
The witnesses are mostly gone, two of them still there, one of them is crumpled and crying, another one doing their best to stand upright.

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What Zora did wasn't just impressive. It was scary. It was awesome in the truest sense of that word; causing feelings of great admiration, respect, or fear. Awesome like a Greek god is awesome. Yes, it's impressive, but also terrifying and smart people do their best to avoid being nearby.

The surveyors had hauled out some sketch paper and have been figuring out the lake volume ever since. Optimistic floor is half a cubic kilometre; Arch figures it's really about point six. "Half the clear water volume of the Old Lake," Arch says, in a voice that's lost between twitching horror and admiring.

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That's the volume of the new lake. Zora moved all the trees and all the dirt and all the other living things on that surface area, or rather the volumetric perimeter of that area. That's a lot.

A different judge, the one I think would get on really well with Halt, asks Zora, "Did you do so much because you wanted to embarrass Heron?"

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The judges are impressed, but also concerned about Zora's motives.

Zora's first answer isn't very good. She also doesn't actually answer the question that was asked. She says she was angry, which isn't the same as saying yes she was trying to embarrass Heron, or no. So the judge's patient with Zora like they were patient with Heron, keep asking until they do get a responsive answer.

"All those trees. Everything that lives in all those trees. If you, everybody, don't have to lose half the forest, you shouldn't, we shouldn't, building, it's not, what's the word for things you can't just throw away? It's a worse canal if it takes away half the forest when it didn't need to, and it didn't, doesn't, need to do that. Everybody seems to have just assumed the forest had to go, I wasn't trying to flout the judgement, the judgement said forest holdings, not forest, the forest is more than that, this — " Zora waves at the lake bed — "is the right way to build the canal, the most gain for the least cost

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This is a better answer. I do like that Zora, and the author, try to make the point that construction should consider the value of what it is replacing, and be done in such a way as to minimize that lost value. Or said another way, Zora thinks a new building shouldn't be built in a park if there's an abandoned and unused building nearby that can be replaced instead.

Zora says "I do so attest by the Peace and my name within it," and the Shape of Peace doesn't protest Zora's veracity an iota.

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There are several quotes like this. I'm not going to pull out all of them, but since some commenters have been talking about how the Shape is a mind reading spell that can tell if someone is being honest or not, I thought it would be interesting to quote one of the examples of that happening.

I would be interested in how many times this check is used in this and maybe the previous chapter if anyone wants to do the count.

The quiet judge says "We did not expect creatures of legend."

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At least one judge liked Zora's answer.

put the dam in, first, and, I think it's a surprise, follow Arch's recommendations for where to put the locks and the sluice and the fish-ladder, that has to twist a bit to avoid being too steep.

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I'm way more incensed than is rational that the incredibly detailed canal building extravaganza of the last chapter didn't mention fish-ladders. At the time I thought Graydon, the author, just hadn't thought about it, but they're including one here so now I don't know what to think. I do not like that previous chapter, even though it includes the very important attack and trial.

We get asked about what we plan to do, how the new lake can fill. Everybody, everybody sorcerous, looks at me.

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That's a good question. I've been wondering that ever since the started digging all those kilometers of channels. The water has to come from somewhere and I'd be surprised if the Commonweal was okay with lowering the water level of an inhabited lake to provide the water.

"Somewhere, not very far away in the chances that make the world, the sea has not receded these last few thousands of years." Glaciation, Wake says, big sheets of ice covering continents in the northern hemisphere. So much ice it has drunk down the sea. "All we have to do is borrow the chances, enough for the lake we want, it was full over those near hills, you can see the wave-bench shapes further inland."

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Oh, they're going to use Wake's alternate history trick to fill in the new lake Zora just cleared the forest out of, and then use the water from that to backfill the inhabited lake as water flows downstream through all the new canal channels and the weed stream. Very cool!

We're careful not to get the ecology messed up, down at the newts and crayfish and smaller things scale you don't notice in time, careful to get fresh water, not salt, careful to get things that expect the temperatures they're going to get here and now, careful not to pull across a flock of ducks or something from surface-water to surface-water. There's one strange moment full of vast leaping toothy shapes, they're people, and we try to miss them and they leap aside, graceful, and then there's the sound of one small wave, gurgling back three metres from my toes.

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[Simon_Jester]

Remind me again what happened to Kynefrid?

 

[slybrarian]

Zora hurt themself real badly. If not for Grue's shapeshifting training, Zora would be dead. Since Zora's brain was injured, and Commonweal law forbids altering the brains of other people, Zora was the only one who could save herself. If she'd made a mistake, Blossom would have had to watch Zora die quickly.

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I don't think it's true, there are explicitly exceptions for saving a life if there are no other options. What Chloris did in self-defense was undeniably an alteration of Heron's mind, but it was only for that one instant and "giving to death" that one desire to cause harm. We get other examples later. Rose says that they could have legally healed the damage to Eugenia's brain if they had been present for the accident, and it was only because of the length of time that made it impossible to reverse the damage without causing a disjunction or clear alteration.

Whether Blossom could have done so effectively is another question, of couse, but if Grue had been present I don't think there would be any issue.

Oh, they're going to use Wake's alternate history trick to fill in the new lake Zora just cleared the forest out of, and then use the water from that to backfill the inhabited lake as water flows downstream through all the new canal channels and the weed stream. Very cool!

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It's a neat trick and a vivd description, but the fact that they almost scoop up a bunch of people illustrates why the technique isn't to be used willy-nilly, as does Blossom's statement that when they tried it they only got a huge amount of metallic tungsten and soil full of heavy metals.

Remind me again what happened to Kynefrid?

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Kynefrid wisely recongized that they'd had too much training and developed too many preconceptions for this style of training to work without causing a fatal accident for themself or the rest out of disbelief, and so left to train with Crane instead.

 

[Tim Freeman]

In response to "We get asked about what we plan to do, how the new lake can fill. Everybody, everybody sorcerous, looks at me.":

Why do all the sorcerers look to Ed when there is a question about how to manifest a huge amount of water? The notable past large magic he lead was negotiating with a fire elemental, so that can't be it. Maybe it is by elimination - Blossom, Chloris, and Dove are all obviously destructive, Zora is out of action, and Ed is all that is left. Or maybe it is because he did much of the canal planning.

 

[AlexScribler]

That's a head scratcher, all right. My best guess is the same as yours - Edgar did most of the rest of the planning so they're hoping he has an answer this time.

 

[pheonix89]

Because the last time they used this effect Ed was on point and did it fantastically well.

 

[Tim Freeman]

I must have missed something. When was the previous time Ed did something like manifesting a huge amount of water?

If Ed is good for this because Ed resembles Halt, that raises interesting questions about how much of Halt's reality bending is responsible for the rest of the plot.

 

[pheonix89]

I must have missed something. When was the previous time Ed did something like manifesting a huge amount of water?

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The water isn't the important part.

The overlaying alternate possibilities is the important part.

The woods, back at the beginning.

 

[Tim Freeman]

Wake took the lead on making the Tall Woods, but Ed adjusted gravity so they could move huge amounts of rock soon after that. That makes sense in this context - maybe they didn't know at first that it was a reality-bending problem and not really a water-moving problem.

 

[AlexScribler]

As I remember it, Wake taught the students how to pick alternate pasts. Wake was not a participant in the working that made the Tall Woods even though he guided them through the planning and preparation steps.

Wake probably provided a ward during it, but I'm not sure what good that'd do given they were messing about with the past. If they get it wrong enough that they've always been standing in the heart of a volcano or at the bottom of an ocean, I'm not sure it'd much matter if they were in a ward or not afterwards.

 

[AlexScribler]

Chapter 35

Zora, apologetic and severely headachy, goes into an enchanted sleep on the first day. Wanted to know what bird that was, and reached with perceptions.

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Zora is such a kid. Couldn't even follow instructions not to do magic for a whole 24 hours. Good thing they're so likable

We … float Zora around in the illusory canopy bed, like a fairy-tale lost in a civil engineering manual.

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Chloris has gotten really good at making permanentish solid illusions. So, like something out of a fairy tale, Zora is going to spend the next long while sleeping on a flying bed. Honestly, that sounds really comfortable. The level of medical care available in the Commonweal, even while in the back of beyond, is impressive.

We wind up going back on a, well, not a standard barge, a cargo boat, twenty-six metres by nine, local to the Old Lake, taking mostly people, gerefan, the Clerk, some gean-gesiths, down to Thines.

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We learned recently (in chapter 33, the chapter that never ends) that a standard barge is eight meters wide. Edgar is being amusingly picky, refusing to identify the "cargo boat" as a barge just because it's a meter wider than usual.

They do some more magic to help the new canals fill faster and more safely than just flooding them from the lake side would do. Nice attention to detail there.

The Thines Meeting has a barge and a bunch of people there to meet us at the Weed Stream.

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The delegation and work crews who were gathering at Thines meet them at Weed Stream. Until the students and Blossom spent the last few days filling the canals with water, this was as far upstream as it was possible to go - the canals were left dry until just now. So it seems like everyone are making sincere best efforts to get the canals up and running so they can resettle the "twice-displaced" refugees as soon as possible

Lots of concern about Zora from the weeding team.

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That's sweet.

Chloris counts pangolins and nods inside and says "Most," eyes coming back into focus on here-and-now. Pangolins like trees but lurking in the long grass will work, there are bugs to eat there.

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Chloris killed all the plants and weeds the pangolins used to live in. It seems like most of them survived their displacement and have found new, less weedy, homes. This is a good callback to the previous chapter's work and an equally nice reminder that these sorcerers try to do as little harm as possible. Even while building desperately needed, life-saving canals.

And that's it. Nice to have a short, sweet chapter as a break after the last two.

We go home on a barge, with the Township of Morning Vale's gift of four big barrels of cider, a cask of peach brandy, and two root-wrapped rose-bushes for Zora. They're rare and bloom lavender. We'd offered to leave Arch's team the canoes, a survey team would certainly validate the design, and got a polite refusal. Arch gave us a formal evaluation of how well we met the surveyed route up north of Morning Vale. It comes with dry language and a strong sense of approval; we're three days home before I realize just how official a document it is, it's a direct copy of what got filed with the Lug-gesith.

We did a good job.

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[AlexScribler]

Chapter 36

Zora doesn't wake up.

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The chapter starts off with a serious problem. Zora is still asleep.

Blossom's notion of 'enchanted sleep', it's not precisely an enchantment, it's more like a spell that just goes and functions on its own, Blossom learnt it from Halt, Halt says it's good for at least six hundred years left to itself.

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A problem caused by Blossom. Oops. Zora can't wake up until Blossom ends the spell keeping Zora asleep. Blossom is "embarrassed" when she realizes she didn't actually explain that part before enspelling Zora. Oops.

"Be behind on studies," Dove says, so entirely mildly Blossom winces.

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You tell her, Dove!

Blossom, Halt, and Grue need to be together and settled, Halt's word is settled, before they try waking Zora up. There's some paperwork, too

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So the plan is to let, no, be honest, make Zora sleep for the next week. Possibly for two or more weeks while everything and everyone gets prepared. None of which was explained to any of the people who care about Zora ahead of time.

Oops?

Our internal balances aren't stable, we're more, if you asked me for the analogy, it's more like a stream that's usually a trickle and sometimes floods and sometimes floods over the banks. Block wants us to switch to a different idea, one where there's always a quantity of Power there, but not one that's inherently moving, now that we can

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Part of how Zora hurt herself so badly is that the student's aren't always able to call up and control the same amount of the Power. It makes them unstable. Unstable in a way that's hazardous to people around them (a big part of the reason the Round House is outside town is in case they explode). Unstable in a way that makes them more likely to overreach like Zora did. Now that they're back, Block is teaching them a better way of gathering and controlling Power, or magic. Magic in this world is often very metaphorical, and it works however a sorcerer thinks it works, so teaching the students, and getting them to believe in, another approach should give them a more reliable and consistent magical strength.

Why didn't they do this earlier? Well, the book implies you need a certain minimum amount of magical strength first, and they didn't reach the minimum until after all the magical exercise they got building the canals.

Going to have to think about this, all three of us. We can imagine what Block means, why it's important, but how, the metaphor, the appropriate pattern, that's not obvious to any of us. Probably shouldn't decide everything is fire, Dove says, half-whimsical and half sad

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Or rather, Block is trying to guide the students to coming up with their own metaphors or techniques that are more reliable. This is necessary since they're the first recorded sorcerer students to use the power primarily "external." Blossom and Grue learned both "external" and "internal" styles, but everyone else in their class died. So while Block knows one approach that doesn't work so good, nobody is sure of a better one. Pretty much the story for everything the students have been learning, and why they have to figure out how to do each thing themselves.

I've got to hold back a lot, it's an unsettling feeling, not the result, the awareness of the need. Block's over three hundred, and really does punch dragons.

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Edgar is stronger than Block now. Stronger here meaning something like can control more Power/magic at once. There's room for lots of interpretation here, but that's my understanding.

Dove and Chloris, Chloris is not as much shorter than Dove as smaller than Dove, they can get the balance to work, get much better results. Which means there's a twelve metre disk of what looks like the idea of green ice and another, counter-rotating, disk of pale gold fire above it. After awhile, there's some kind of shift and the whole thing turns into one disk

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Dove and Chloris figure out a metaphor that works before Edgar does. They're doing what Edgar calls "push-hands" from their first lesson with Steam, but is really a combined Power-raising and control exercise.

The Power's very apparently denser, I can feel it affecting the circulation in the consonance, and then about all I'm doing is trying to keep my balance

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Dove and Edgar have been building a shared metaphysical home. There's a magical/metaphysical circulation from Dove to Edgar and back again. As Dove works out her new, more stable metaphor, she's also getting a stronger one. As Dove gets stronger, the circulation gets out of balance, more Dove, but not more Edgar. Dove has always been stronger than Edgar, so they're familiar with how to keep a power imbalance stable. So Edgar can rearrange things to keep them stable, but it takes work to maintain stability as Dove gets stronger but Edgar doesn't.

I realize Blossom's standing behind me about the same time I notice Wake. I think they've been there for awhile, my attention's all on managing the consonance, keeping the joy-fire out of the Sunless Sea,

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Blossom has shown up. So has Wake. That's not a good sign. For both of them to show up during Block's lesson means they're probably worried and want to be on hand to help if anything goes wrong. Which means something could go wrong.

This is, apparently, pretty dangerous. Dangerous enough that Block, who Wake has previously praised, is not thought strong enough to deal with on their own.

Right around the time Dove asks Blossom Hey, sis, now what? Wake's put up a warding

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Wake only puts up wards when they're doing something dangerous. So, yep, this is dangerous all right. Dangerous enough that Wake has separated Dove and Chloris from everyone else.

Let the energy slow and stop and soak into your metaphysical selves, Blossom says, with an indescribable emphasis on metaphysical.

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Oh good, the way to stop is to absorb the magic. Basically eat it and grow strong off it. Because the students weren't scary strong already. Now they know how to increase their strength any time they want to.

Absorbing the energy into their physical bodies would likely cause them to explode, as Chloris observes in the next line. Thus Blossom's "emphasis on metaphysical."

Dove and Chloris are soaked through with sweat. They're fine, happy, grinning, Dove's making hug noises in our head, but Dove has to use both hands on a five litre water can and I need to help Chloris hold one, too wobbly otherwise.

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Dove is really tired. I can lift a five litre water can with one hand (five liters is less than two gallons), most adults can without too much trouble. If superstrong Creeks like Dove and Chloris can't, they're exhausted.

Blossom says, "... it would be a good thing if we can try to get you through a similar experience."

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Now it's Edgar's turn. Edgar is more worried about Dove than themself, which is sweet. Blossom says that it shouldn't affect Dove, and if it does, it'll probably help.

Doing push-hands with Blossom leaves me with the impression I'm exercising with a cheerfully polite landslide. It works, landslide or not; about my size, those who look fourteen to Creeks, immensely fine control

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I always get an image of someone trying to hold back a landslide by pushing with their hands here. It makes me smile.

More seriously, Blossom is a very skilled, very powerful, experienced sorcerer. Blossom, as even I tend to forget, is over 80 and has been a practicing sorcerer since shortly after learning how to walk. Lots of practice and skill.

Blossom isn't angry as a fundamental trait of character, not a mistake in the Independent process, truly believes in and upholds the Peace. Somewhere down in Blossom's core character, there's this rending crash, just the same.

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This is an interesting insight into Blossom's character. Blossom can fundamentally believe in the Peace while still really enjoying blowing things up. A bit like people who get really into fireworks, or demolition derbies, or battle-bots I imagine.

Blossom's disk is white, not shades of white, it's utterly uncomplicated

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And then we contrast with poor, beleaguered Edgar.

I'm complicated, it's not darkness, it's not the shadow-limbs of something we pretend are spiders, it's whatever I pretend is water in the Sunless Sea. It's cold and it's ancient and it doesn't belong in the green world. It's not all the same cold, it's not even the same ancient, there are layers and currents and so many slow changes

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Amusingly, this is Edgar's self image, even when, as far as Edgar knows, they've never seen deep water before, much less the kind of deep water they imagine for their sunless sea.

I'm soaked. Kinda wobbly, not all that bad, I can pick up my water can myself and stay standing. Definite success.

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Success!

"Remember us, all of you, remember us from the shining sky," Block says.

"After this, I cannot teach you," Block says. "Advice, knowledge, I will share gladly, but — " the angle of Block's body, the shifted shape of stance, indicates Wake — "if I must call the great master of wards and barriers to attend your exercises, I cannot teach you."

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That's fair. That's really fair. To me, this chapter felt a lot like a description of an ascension ritual. Nothing says the students can't come back out here and do this again, every single morning. Just getting stronger and stronger. Or, if that seems excessive, Block makes an excellent point. If Block isn't considered strong enough to protect them from themselves, then Block can only advise, not really teach.

"I have no knowledge of tomorrow," Wake says, "but today? Chloris' control was graceful and impeccable, Dove's confident and entire, and yours, Edgar, was absolute." There's a strange cast to Wake's benevolence.

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[AlexScribler]

Happy Halloween!

 

[AlexScribler]

Chapter 37

It's another décade and a half … before the Hale-gesith's clerks, the Galdor-gesith's clerks, the Peace-gesith's clerks, and the one lucky clerk-at-large who gets to come to Westcreek Town

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Poor Zora. Another 15 days of enchanted sleep and the paperwork is only starting.

Lots of sorcerer-stuff got easier after the circulation exercise

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No kidding. Poor Zora, though. She's going to have to get caught up on that too.

The problem, if I'm understanding what Halt means, I'm sure I'm understanding what Halt says but it's not quite the same, is that Zora's metaphysical brain necessarily grew …

The bad thing is that Zora's physical brain didn't change. It can, that's one of the reasons to teach us shape-shifting as soon as we could learn it, to let the metaphysical brain change the physical brain, our physical brain structure's still the, Grue says, Dominant substrate, the thing that we're using most of the time.

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As several commenters guessed, the reason Zora is injured even after shapeshifting is that her metaphysical brain is out of alignment with her physical brain. They would have both grown together, but then Zora shapeshifted the physical brain to heal it, and in the process shapeshifted to an older version of her physical brain that's no longer compatible with her newly improved magic brain. When she tried to do magic, any magic, afterwards, she hurt herself again. Since she hasn't completed her transition yet, she's still mostly thinking with her physical brain. So; she kind of needs it to not be damaged.

Zora's reflexive shape-shift restored a brain 'suitable to previous challenges'

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The book makes the explanation of how the second injury happened and why it is so severe explicit. It's not so much that Zora's current brain is so badly injured, as much as it is that Zora needs to shapeshift to a new brain as soon after waking up as possible.

"Less and less," Halt says, "as it should be".

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This is Halt observing that the students are thinking with their physical brains "less and less." But they haven't fully shifted over, and won't until they complete their transitions. Halt thinks this is a good thing because sorcerers who try to keep thinking with their physical brains usually go insane and/or set their brains on fire (like Zora did!)

Zora needs to shape-shift to a different physical brain, that's not something Zora knows how to do on purpose, none of us do. There's a tendency to have it happen, if we're 'conscious of novelty', is how Halt puts it.

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And here's the explanation for why they haven't just woken up Zora and told her to shapeshift her brain. Well, this, and the obvious dangers of deliberately altering the thing you're actively using to control the alterations.

Clerk Hyacinth's spoon ticks distinctly on a plate. The Clerk looks at Grue and says "Is this a refectory conversation?"
…
Someone going by catches Hyacinth's eye and says "We like knowing what else we're worried about," and keeps going, hands full of pickle-caddies.

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Edgar is, apparently, learning all of this while having lunch in the community dining hall (refectory). Edgar, being Edgar, never bothers to tell us readers where he is, or even that the previous explanation was a conversation. I'm sympathetic, I have a hard time reformatting exposition as dialogue too.

Zora didn't realize the sheer scale of names would make something so much harder, that the risk, having cognitive substrates out of step with each other like that, needed to be addressed.

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And here's the core explanation of how Zora hurt herself and why Blossom didn't recognize the danger in time. Blossom didn't realize Zora was going to try to use zillions of names at once, and Zora didn't know any better. Classes have been long on try-it-and-find-out but short on theory. Which is deliberate, there is no known theory for how to do this style of magic, the best the teachers can do is provide guidance and protection during the finding-out phase. Which, carrying that train of thought a little further, explains a lot about why Halt had so much trouble getting permission to try this teaching style. If the existing style mostly works on one hand; while on the other hand, nobody knows how to teach the new style and getting it wrong will probably result in a lot of dead students and possibly missing landscape. If I was on that ethics board, I wouldn't give Halt permission either.

Grue says 'more than fifteen species is hard,' about turning into a cloud of dragonflies, something done for fun, because it's a nice sunny day worth enjoying better.

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Grue really likes shapeshifting.

"I am here in an official capacity to investigate formal complaints of overworking apprentices, all three of you present and certainly including Zora. Since those responsible for your training, and thus the overwork, were overwork to be found, are those who propose to provide Zora with an opportunity to magically alter Zora's own mind, there is an unresolved conflict of interest."

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And here's why the paperwork is taking so long. The citizens of Westcreek town are worried the teachers are mistreating the student sorcerers. Letting possible abusers alter the minds of their abuse victims is obviously something a government, any government, ought to prevent. So before Zora can be woken up and assisted in fixing her brain, the teachers first have to prove they haven't been abusing the students - the specific form of abuse being overwork.

"Concerns that you are rarely seen sitting down, as distinct from collapsed in heaps, that you arrive to the refectory in haste, that you miss meals, that when you do show up it's even odds you'll be nearly late, seriously muddy, covered in black burnt metal dust, drenched, sometimes in sweat, or so tired you're giddy."

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I feel like this is a pretty fair summary. The book did a fantastic job of laying the groundwork for this concern. I've pointed out a lot of places where the students aren't just exhausted, but the people nearby are observing their exhaustion with concern. I think it also does a great job of sinking below reader's conscious notice, because students or protagonists working until collapse is such a common trope in our literature.

"Overwork is when you get weaker." Chloris says this with the authority of the formal legal definition it is, that everyone learns in school. "When you go back the next day and you do less and worse, because everything hurts and you ache and your muscles haven't recovered."

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It's really neat to see a book pointing out that working to the point of exhaustion usually doesn't make people stronger. It makes you weaker. Chloris even accurately describes the mechanism. Hard work and exercise build muscle, but only with adequate nutrition and breaks to allow the body to recover.

The bit about the soldiers reporting on how hard the students are training is also really fun.

"None of what we've done was overwork, none it was close to overwork, the armour foci hurt, but we got stronger. If we weren't worried about all those people, the canal would have been fun. Parts of it were fun anyway."

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Sadly, the Chloris insists that in this case the working to exhaustion was totally fine. Because magic. I don't actually want Blossom and Halt and Wake to get arrested for overworking their apprentices, but it would have been very funny.

"Everybody's always been really careful about hydration, any time we used the Power." Chloris' tone is careful. "I don't think I could have drunk five litres of water before, I think we've changed more than we notice." Something quirks across Chloris' face. "I never knew you could sweat through your shoes."

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I find this part of Chloris's argument much more compelling. The course of study is quite difficult, but the students were never pushed past their limits.

"My take on overwork started as a farmer." Dove sounds a little wry. "This feels like we're being a bit slack, everyone's taking extra care with us."

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Dove agrees. If anything, the teachers have been extra careful. Again, the book went to pains to establish this. Lots of good, on-screen discussion of safety and personal protection equipment. Lots of work went in to ensure the teachers always kept student safety and capability in mind.

"General idea of a focus, make a mind, the mind uses the talent of the participants, you get a multiplier based on the power of two of the participants, eight's three times, sixteen's four times, stops at thirteen times and what's going to be about eighty-five hundred participants, foci that big are messy."

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Possibly the clearest explanation of how focuses work in the series. They let people pool their talent. And not just pool, they multiply it based on log base 2 of the number of people contributing to the focus (log base 2 of a number is how you find which power of 2 is closest).

"Dove and Edgar's consonance works by a square root, the multiplier is apparently exactly root two, Dove and Edgar fully cohered is about one Blossom." The idea of which delights Blossom, puts a small dent in Hyacinth's clerkly impassivity, and causes an even smaller smile on Halt's features.

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Blossom is delighted that she's as strong as two people put together. Or possible that she has friends as strong as her for what is probably the first time in her life (Halt is stronger and more grandmother than friend).

"Their full coherence creates a third distinct mind, there are three of them at that point in time, there might be an entire intermittent personality."

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There might be an entire intermittent personality.

Extending the pattern to their fellow students or to me or to me and their fellow students does not create another mind, does not create a control mechanism, does not in any respect result in an executive anything, but it does extend the multiplier."

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Adding more people to the working link increases the multiplier. So the working link, like a focus, doesn't just add together the student's power, it adds and multiplies it. And the more of them, the larger the multiplier.

Hyacinth's gaze goes up, briefly, there's a brief dashed pencil calculation, Hyacinth says "Four and a half times your individual output?"

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One internet cookie to anyone who can explain the math here.

"It works like Dove and Edgar," Chloris says. "You're completely defenceless to it, it's not inherently threatening but you couldn't, there wouldn't be time even to leave, it's not safe, there is no way to make it safe. I trust Dove enough that I can trust Dove trusting Blossom. It was really hard to trust Blossom that much the first time, first few times, anyway, and Blossom's over there a bit, not quite in. It's never going to be like getting together in a focus team."

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The working link means exposing your mind to everyone else in the working link. If someone went crazy, they could do a lot of damage with that kind of access.

If Blossom can qualify for an engineer, maybe I can qualify for a clerk.

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Edgar is so impressed by Clerk Hyacinth, they want to be a clerk too. Cute.

Halt looks down the table. "As perhaps you shall, Chloris dear, but remember that two workings with an unmelted head is better than one larger done with melting."

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Halt takes time out from the middle of a very serious discussion; one where they're basically on trial; to encourage Chloris not to make the same mistake Zora did. If that doesn't convince the Clerk that the teachers really are trying their best, I don't know what would.

Blossom points. "The essential bit is — " a chain, fifteen or sixteen things, brightens — "uncomplicated, but it's difficult. The talent flavours have to get along, the minimum talent to do this at all isn't much below Zora, Kynefrid's fear of catching fire's plausibly correct. The multiplicative effect — " three spots, they're not connected, get haloes — "might be unique to Dove and Edgar. We haven't experimented."

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Cleark Hyacinth asked if future students could learn to establish a working link. Blossom says it'd be challenging and might not get the focus-like multiplication. Having effective access to multiple talent flavors and shared power would still make it useful. Would it be useful enough for people to be willing to trust each other as much as they must for the working link to work?

We also got a completely unexpected confirmation that Kynefrid might well have been right to leave so early in their studies.

"Experiments are not undertaken in the expectation of a singular success." Hyacinth's clerkly impassivity quirks, something human shows through it for a moment. "The Second Commonweal is new, and small, and needs fear to suffer the rule of sorcerers, having been overcome."

"Another bad outcome we might help avoid," Dove says, voice mild with unconcern.

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I feel like Dove answered this well.

My read is that at least some members of parliament are getting really worried about how strong the students are. Dove's response is basically, there are strong sorcerers outside the Commonweal - better we be strong enough to defend everyone than not. A very militant answer, but delivered calmly and politely, and the more effective as a result.

Hyacinth looks at us, student-us. "Overwork as a concern is held addressed. The proposed treatment for Zora is approved." I can feel myself relaxing, just a bit. "The categorization of the course of study undertaken is altered to strenuous."

"It is," Grue says into Chloris' mutinous look.

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Chloris being upset about essentially winning is pretty funny to me.

They wake Zora up so they can help her shapeshift herself better. Before they start with the magic, Dove gives her some good news.

"The canal's in full service. Map says they're calling it Kind Lake."

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[Simon_Jester]

Classes have been long on try-it-and-find-out but short on theory. Which is deliberate, there is no known theory for how to do this style of magic, the best the teachers can do is provide guidance and protection during the finding-out phase. Which, carrying that train of thought a little further, explains a lot about why Halt had so much trouble getting permission to try this teaching style. If the existing style mostly works on one hand; while on the other hand, nobody knows how to teach the new style and getting it wrong will probably result in a lot of dead students and possibly missing landscape. If I was on that ethics board, I wouldn't give Halt permission either.

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Understandable. On the other hand, it's been repeatedly said that the usual method of teaching independents actually DOES result in a lot of dead students on a regular basis. So if Halt, who is probably the single most qualified independent in known history to comment, thinks that a curriculum change might result in drastically fewer dead students, when the existing method is more of a "sorta works" than a "mostly works" and takes orders of magnitude longer to see results...

Well, especially under the Second Commonweal's present circumstances, I can absolutely see why they agreed to let Halt go ahead... but also why they have misgivings.

 

[AlexScribler]

Chapter 38

Zora's in the hospital another two days. Various doctors have trouble with a diagnosis of 'the wrong brain'

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Taken out of context after a two-day break over the weekend, this is hilarious to me.

Setting up the working link again, they let Zora out right after breakfast the third day, takes some thinking. Not quite the same Zora, not quite the same us. There's this moment of shared nervousness, a longer period of shared determination, and then it all works again.

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A subtle reminder of just how much trust and cooperation the student's working link requires. So much trust and cooperation Blossom isn't sure anyone else will be able to duplicate it.

I go right on feeling uneasy. Dove's started to think about commenting.

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Edgar is feeling uneasy for no apparent reason. They were feeling this way last chapter too, and at the time it seemed like worry for Zora, but that seems unlikely now.

"So while I was borrowing Grue's shape-shifting I asked, and Grue said ssh and showed me how to comprehensively alter my heredity."

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While Zora was getting help fixing her brain, Zora also made some improvements to her "heredity." I'm inclined to interpret this as genetic upgrades, but they're subtle ones since she still mostly looks the same. Something similar to the upgrades Edgar gave himself during shapeshifting lessons, but more durable in that they're probably inheritable, I guess.

Does Zora changing her heredity "just" change her current genes, or did she, like Wake after the wound wedges, actually reach back into the past and change her historical heredity? I don't think the book gives us enough information to be certain either way, so I'm curious what other people think is being described. If it's the latter, a whole bunch of Zora's family may have just gotten upgrades too.

"You aren't going to worry too much about human flesh," Zora says. "I want to keep mine."

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Zora went to the trouble of doing the upgrades because she wants to keep her physical body. Interestingly, she assumes the others don't want to do so. Even though Edgar has repeatedly expressed concern about wanting to not forget how to look human.

You're feeling twitchy, Dove says, and I nod back. As it gets closer, it's definitely dread.

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Another note about Edgar feeling uneasy for no apparent reason.

Blossom is unable to explain how Zora's illusory bed got into the hospital, it's not a next-year thing, it's a Blossom thing, a general understanding of bound illusions that Ongen can do something similar to, and maybe Dove will understand some day, but no one's figured out how to teach.

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Blossom can move physical things 90 degrees away from consensus reality to make them smaller. I assume the same technique would work just as well for illusions. Blossom does like having multiple ways to do things, though, so what's being talked about here is probably a different way of accomplishing the same goal, but specifically for illusions.

The hospital doesn't want the ornate illusion bed, so Blossom does her magic trick to get it outside again and the students float it up to the Round House where they live. Now they've got the same problem they had at the hospital, the bed is too big to fit through the doors.

Chloris does something, and the bed, all of it, the illusory mattress, the illusory sheets and blankets, contracts. Factor of two, or nearly.

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Chloris "almost" gave up all the empty space in the illusion over to death. Something Chloris is increasingly using as her first instinct for how to do things magically.

"This is one of those things about illusions that's much easier than actual stuff. Actual stuff, the space between the atoms isn't very adjustable. The illusion is just pretending, it picked up your expectations and set a value. You can request a different one, you can do that temporarily. Go slow enough you don't light the physical binding on fire." Blossom's obviously very pleased Chloris could get it to work the difficult way.

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Blossom recommends a different approach. Is this the same technique Blossom was using earlier? Or is it a fourth method for shrinking illusions? The book mentions in a couple of places that magic will give you any set of rules you can dream up, and I appreciate all these small scenes that show off just how variable and flexible it can be. As long as a sorcerer is the sort of person who can switch between believing in multiple incompatible and contradictory rule sets as easily as changing hats.

Which I think explains a lot about why all the (good) sorcerers are crazy.

the thing Blossom just explained takes Chloris a quarter-hour to make work, the whole bed slowly, it takes a couple minutes, shrinks until you could pick it up with one hand if you were sure the canopy was sturdy enough.

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Chloris does figure out how to do this technique, which argues against it being the one "no one's figured out how to teach" from back at the hospital.

"All of a sudden you smell really nice." All of a sudden, all the dread is here.

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Oh, is this what Edgar has been nervous about for the last few chapters?

Hatching.

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Tune in next time to find out what Edgar is going to hatch into! Also the secrets of life, the universe, and everything. Also, next time might be slightly delayed due to family responsibilities.

I'm just to the door, running, I need to be outside, very outside, away from people, when I hear, the link's down, dropped, as down as I can make it fast, there's a feeling like pure wrath coming through the floor, Dove saying "Up, intact" in an voice empty of anything but strength.

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[pheonix89]

Next Time: We find out what Edgar's deal is!

 

[AlexScribler]

Chapter 39

"Fetch another rock for an old lady, would you dear?"

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Halt is not scared of whatever Edgar hatched into. Then again, Halt laughed when an amphitheater of demons tried to eat her (TMN, chapter 23), so that isn't especially reassuring.

Not senescent, I don't think we do

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Edgar thinks whatever he and Halt are, don't get weaker as they get older. Remembering how young Edgar is, he's maybe not old enough to take his thoughts on the topic entirely reliably.

Hatching hurts.

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Poor Edgar.

Figuring out there's nothing that says a weed can't talk, that I've got some kind of emotionally parasitic life cycle, that there's serious question Dove ever wanted me, chose the consonance, for any real value of wanted, hurts worse than hatching.

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Wow, there's a lot packed into this sentence. Let's try to unpack it.
1) Edgar thinks he's a weed
2) Edgar thinks he's a parasite, specifically, an emotional parasite. Not sure what that means but it sounds bad.
3) Edgar thinks they might have mind controlled Dove into liking Edgar. Oof, that's gotta hurt. Also mind control is very much not legal in the Commonweal.
4) Edgar is nice and feels so bad about the three previous points that it hurts worse than hatching.

1 is an interesting belief. Especially with the way Edgar phrases it: "there's nothing that says a weed can't talk." Chapter 17, and several other chapters, make the point that the Commonweal is generally willing to consider anything that can talk as people. There's some intermittently sentient trees that the Commonweal treats as people and Chapter 17 makes the point several times that weeds can't talk. I think a fair definition of a weed would be anything hostile that can't or won't communicate. So Edgar's attitude here might be better understand as signaling depression, rather than taken literally. I think that's a good way to view the whole chapter.

I've got this mad impulse to apologize for how wet the rocks are, ripped out of a stream bottom. In a swamp.

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Edgar has an odd sense of humor, but he can be really funny. Apologizing for wet in a swamp is like apologizing for wet in the ocean.

Strong talents are rare, but anybody who made it through school ought to be able to remember why that's different.

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I really like the reminders of how public schooling works. It says a lot about what the Commonweal society values. I do wish the author would give more details. What do you think the difference between rare and special is?

"Did Dove really say yes?" I've been in Dove's head for months, most of a year.
…
"Dove really said yes." There is no doubt in Halt's, it's still a voice, none. Halt doesn't need an absence of doubt to grind down mountains, but this would, all by itself.

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And getting back to more serious topics relevant to hatching, Edgar asks Halt if Dove really likes Edgar, or if Edgar just mind controlled Dove. Edgar doesn't use those words, but I think that's because it's too important, too sensitive, for Edgar to be able to discuss straight on. Halt says Dove really likes Edgar.

There is a certain pattern of attachment to the strongest talent available

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Edgar and Halt are entelechs. Entelechs, as part of their development cycle, form an emotional attachment with the strongest talent they encounter.

a person with an entelech's ability to command the wills of others, their desires and beliefs as much as their thoughts

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Then the entelech mind controls the object of their desire into desiring them back.

That's bad enough and entirely illegal in the Commonweal.

sometime, it is in large matter a function of the strength of the talent to which they have attached, a successful hatching

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If the person the entelech likes/loves/desires has enough magic, the enetelech eventually grows up and hatches.

"They'd devour them alive."

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Then they eat them.

No wonder Halt is the only person like Halt in the Commonweal. The Commonweal must kill any entelechs it finds as soon as possible, like any other weed.

And, of course, the entelech loves the person they ate. And really enjoyed eating alive. It usually drives them insane.

"Sometimes they kill themselves." Halt is entirely conversational. "Sometimes they conquer a continent." There's a pause, reflective, contemplative. "Sometimes two," Halt says.

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You just know Halt is talking about themself here. No other textual evidence, but I can't imagine it being anything else.

"It is rare," Halt says, rare vast in understatement, "for the attachment to possess a stronger talent."

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Fortunately Dove is stronger, magically, than Edgar. Edgar can't eat Dove. Edgar had time to learn how to shapeshift and modify the urge to murder and eat Dove into something Dove can and does consent to. So Edgar didn't kill them, and isn't likely to.

"Really, Edgar." Halt's back to merely firm. "As is your inescapable hereditary nature, you have found someone to value unreasonably, someone you wish to ward and protect, which is not so different from any other person. There's no question of coercion, of mind control, as there might have been with Chloris, absent your fortunate meeting with Dove."

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Really fortunate that Dove is stronger than Edgar.

The parasite saved my life.

"Possibly twice," Halt says. "Your exercise of the Power grew to feed the parasite."

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What Edgar thought was his bad luck, his signature tragedy, the parasite that blocked him from using magic, saved his life. The parasite kept Edgar the young entelech from mind controlling anyone and getting killed. It let Edgar live long enough to meet Dove, who is safe from Edgar. It made Edgar develop enough magical strength to learn to shapeshift before they hatched and tried to eat Dove anyways.

"Yes, Halt." Because, because happy is good, but what matters, it's not just my happy, or Dove's, it's everybody's, so what really matters is getting Blossom time to enchant stuff and Halt time to machinate so people mostly don't decide this is too much choice now, stop

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