Late last year I wrote at length about my experiences trying to read a book for the first time in ages. In typical Furtive fashion I laid bare all my worries and neuroses and then just did a bunch of word-vomit about a thing that interests me.
This time, I've decided there's going to be a 'this time', and it's going to have less of the former but just as much of the latter. Because I'm invested in Jean Rabe's Stonetellers trilogy now, and I feel compelled to see it through to the end. Plus this year has been unnerving in the extreme, and I could use another distraction from my slowly growing age and shrinking bank balance.
At the time of publication we've just finished our two weeks of real autumn before all the leaves die and a long, damp pre-winter settles in. Something about the wind and the leaves reminds me of the schoolyear, which invariably leads to a series of panic attacks as I think back to that period of my life.
Can homework legitimately trigger PTSD? Asking for a me.
Another thing that this time of year fills me with is brief moments of swelling inspiration to do... something? Anything? Oftentimes the urge takes the form of something vaguely scholastic, like reading or writing or discussing a topic with passionate others. It echoes back to the feeling of walking my high school or college campuses in the rare moments when I wasn't quite so rushed or scared and I could imagine what a better being in my shoes would have accomplished by now.
I don't know why I get these moments, but I've experienced them for a long time. I think it comes down to some deep subconscious association from my youth. When the light hits the trees just right and I look out over the admittedly beautiful land that the Hudson River School romanticized and propagandized so effectively from a place just across the creek from me, I feel it. I get it. I am consumed by that licentious poison of the soul that we call the sublime, and I am moved to propagate or harness the feeling in some way. It's like somebody's beaming one of those silly academia aesthetic playlists directly into my lizard brain.
Invariably, the feeling deflates a second later as I remember why I can't do anything smart or academic or vaguely gesturing toward the notion of personal growth or learning because of reasons X, Y, and Z.
But this time I remembered my incredibly low-stakes struggle with these books, and where I left off.
... I said there would be less neurosis this time, didn't I?
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To simplify greatly, the first book in the series, The Rebellion, is about a group of enslaved goblin miners on the Dragonlance world of Krynn who rise up against their Dark Knight masters during a massive earthquake. They then endure the volcanic brutality of the Khalkist Mountains of Neraka, the world capital of Evil. They are led through much fiery death and bloody dismemberment by the begrudging hobgoblin foreman Direfang and the auguries of the self-interested geomantic shaman Mudwort. Along the way they team up with (and enslave) some of the knights who enslaved them, most notably the half-elf wizard Grallik N'sera.
The ragtag bunch survives long enough to stumble into the ruins of Godshome, where most of the gods of Krynn once schmoozed together with their followers before they punished the many for the sins of the few and nuked the planet from orbit. Here, Mudwort and the other Stonetellers of the goblin refugee army scried the entirety of the continent of Ansalon and glimpsed a prospective home for a new goblin nation far away in the forests of Qualinesti. They then set off on the long road south, unwittingly leaving behind them the still-warm corpse of Moon-eye, the first of many goblins about to get shanked in the back as power-hungry clan leaders throughout the army plot Direfang's overthrow.
Simple, right?
The sequel, Death March, focuses on that grueling journey southwest to Qualinesti, and all the challenges and intrigues the goblins are sure to face along the way.
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| It's also pretty metal as far as DL covers go. |
Speaking of Qualinesti, I want to touch on something that I don't think I gave enough attention to at the end of my first post.
The Rebellion began somewhere in Neraka, close to the city of Jelek that actually gets placed on maps on occasion. The exact location of Godshome changes from map to map over the years, but we can confidently say it's within the same neck of the woods. So let's say they ended the book somewhere within this area, using an excerpt from the map that appears in the 1992 Tales of the Lance boxed set that happens to be pretty detailed and accessible.
At the beginning of the book the goblin refugee column is over 1,000 strong. By the end, through a combination of attrition and smaller bands splitting off from the main body, that number is reduced to less than 500. Let's zoom out a little, and see how much farther they have to go with those numbers.
As you can see here, the refugees have quite a ways to go before they reach the-
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't zoom out far enough. Silly me.
There we go.
They've lost over half their number traveling less than 50 miles of what is conservatively a 400+ mile journey, and that's if you measure in a straight line as the crow flies, through some of the most hostile territories on the planet. If things keep going at this rate, these folks are screwed!
I mean, obviously not entirely screwed since there is a third book in the series and I'm pretty sure I saw trees on the cover when I downloaded an image of it. But I still don't have high hopes for anyone besides the named protagonists reaching their destination- heck, not even that will save them, considering how quickly the list of named goblins got chewed through in the first book.
I guess we shall see. Let's get this show on the road.
Chapters 1-4
The last book opened with a dramatic flash-forward to a shaken Grallik commenting on the devastation all around him, en medias res as the earthquake turned Steel Town into Hell Town. It was quick, grabby, and to-the-point. The sequel opens with a similarly dramatic excerpt, but it's far more jarring than the first one was:
We see Saro-Saro, one of the head conspirators, lying in a heap in a coughing fit as black pustules erupt across his body from some horrible disease. He reaches out and seizes Direfang's leg, digging his claws into his flesh and spitting in his face. He declares that Direfang will die with him, and all the other recoiling goblins nearby reiterate that if Saro-Saro can't lead, Direfang won't either.
Sooo... I guess the big villain setup from the last chapter is gonna get wrapped up pretty definitively? Throwing the contextless death of a major character out at the front there feels like such a weird writing decision bordering on self-spoiler. I'm guessing Jean has something planned here, but for now my brow is furrowed in hesitation.
After that sneak peek, we are thrown onto a bloody battlefield somewhere, where a Dark Knight commander named Bera Kata is slaughtering goblins with just a little bit too much enthusiasm, chest tight and breath panting as she coos for the dying goblins to sing and dance for her, all while her mind rushes with the thrill of killing so many filthy, ugly, subhuman animals.
My eyebrows are not relaxing yet, Jean!
Bera and her knights are a cleanup detail dispatched from Neraka to figure out what the hell happened at Steel Town and crack down on the scattered bands of escaped goblin slaves, which she does with enough relish that I fear she went to get a cigarette and some tissues between chapters. The goblins belonged to the clan of Hurbear, who split from Direfang on more amicable terms in the previous book after the camp was liberated. It's unclear if this is the whole clan or an earlier splinter. The lopsided battle ends with her force of 62 knights capturing 3 live goblins, who are quickly whittled down to 2 after a torturous interrogation- all the rest fight to the death or are massacred.
We get a look at a few of Bera's knights, including the young and underperforming Eloy, Bera's wizardly second-in-command Isaam, and the absolutely gigantic, possibly ogre-blooded axeman named Zoccinder Angeda Redstone- Zocci for short. You know how a name can be so uniquely weird that you immediately know it's a Star Wars name? I'm beginning to get that but for Dragonlance from Jean.
We also get an idea of how deep Bera's xenophobia for goblins runs. She knows how they prefer to be cremated as an ideal way of freeing the soul for reincarnation, so she has her men leave them to rot in the sun unburned out of pure religious spite. That her father was Marshal Montrill, Grallik's former commander who died from his wounds after the earthquake and rebellion, only adds to that hate.
As night falls over the Dark Knight camp and Zocci gets up in Bera's face in a way that seems weirdly intimate, the point of view suddenly cuts away and shifts to our old friend, Spicy Garlic!
Grallik all of a sudden doesn't seem like the single biggest bastard in the world, thanks to his proximity to the Bera chapters. But he's still the same cowardly weasel we all know and love, repeatedly telling himself it wasn't a terrible mistake to throw his lot in with the goblins while struggling to fall asleep in camp. He insists that he needs to better himself by learning magic from Mudwort, who's now sporting a fashionably looted Dark Knight tabard and still not giving him the time of day. He refuses to learn the goblin language, yet he insists she must know enough Common to speak to him, if she'd just consent to it. So he stands and stares and waits for a time when he can accost her while she's alone.
Between this guy and what I remember of Raistlin Majere, I'm beginning to think incellic tendencies are a prerequisite to joining any of the robed orders.
His friend Horace the cleric, meanwhile, just takes everything in stride and sleeps with an enviable heaviness every time the goblin army stops to rest. I wouldn't have expected a priest of the Chaotic Evil sea deity to be so chill out there on a dusty, volcanic mountain range. Of course Grallik makes him wake up with a fever out of spite before going back to ogling Mudwort elbow-deep in dirt.
I take it back, Grallik is still tied for worst.
Mudwort isn't earning many points either, meanwhile. Her communing with the earth is aimless and indulgent, her new working relationship with the shaman Boliver (whose name still really bothers me for some reason) is weak, and she's written poor Graytoes off as worthless and annoying because she hasn't stopped sobbing since they found her mate Moon-eye's corpse getting snacked on by a wildcat. She doesn't even miss Moon-eye himself- just his powers.
With great difficulty and much distraction, Mudwort eventually forces her consciousness down into the earth in the shape of an ant and travels south, scouting ahead. She finds some goats for food, but also a cavern with polished floors, wall carvings, and voices- but she's snatched away from the secret by Direfang nudging her, and much to her chagrin the spell breaks.
Chapter 5
Just as suddenly as we were torn from Bera's psychosis to inhabit Grallik and Mudwort's minds for a few short moments, we again jump to a completely different point of view character.
Thya is the unusually tall, somewhat girlbossy chieftess of a free goblin clan that has thus far been mostly successful in evading enslavement by the ogres of the mountains. She fought and presumably killed the former chieftain for leadership eight months ago, and seems to have slotted comfortably into the role despite the wounds she suffered during the challenge, including a broken pinkie that didn't set correctly and sticks out crooked. It's unclear to me if this means they don't have the best medicinal knowledge, or if she forewent treatment to show how tough she is.
She's just finished leading her people out of their home to the top of a peak to avoid just such a party of slavers when we join her, and after a brief back-and-forth with her exhausted kin she pushes them into following the mountain chain south. She isn't a proper shaman like her aging mentor Rockhide, but she still sensed the geomantic poking and prodding Mudwort got up to recently, and took the earth's later warnings about the ogres as reason to join the migration south.
Another bit about goblin communication sticks out to me in this chapter. As with the first book, goblins are denoted as speaking the Goblin language (or their dialect of it) by speaking in broken English amongst themselves. In the case of Thya's clan, they use demonstratives in place of some definitive articles and pronouns; thus they refer to themselves as "this clan" rather than as "the clan" or "we/us" when discussing where to go and how tired they are.
I don't remember any of the goblins in the other tribes doing this, so it might be a kind of cultural marker for Thya's folk, or it could just be Jean continuing to explore how to "do" goblins.
At any rate, we are yet again bounced around to a different POV in the very next chapter. I guess we're setting up the new cast after so many goblins got deep sixed and/or deep fried last book.
Chapters 6-7
We return to the main army, unsatisfied by the goats Mudwort found the day earlier. The goblins attempt to solve their chronic food shortage in perhaps the most suicidally brave way yet: by killing a dragon.
Not a proper dragon (i.e. a purebred chromatic or metallic like the world revolves around), but a draconic hybrid that is half green dragon, half hatori. And much like the hatori from the previous book, it also inexplicably shares a common real life name: tylor. Tylors are way more dangerous than their hatori parents, as the goblins quickly discover; in addition to the sand crocodile's size and strength it possesses a dragon's fangs, fear aura, breath weapon, and innate knowledge of magic. Direfang realizes he screwed up in ordering the attack right around the time the tylor starts teleporting around the battlefield and blowing hillsides up with sonic energy blasts like the world's chunkiest shonen character.
With great loss of life and the aid of every single spell Grallik and Horace prepared that day, the goblins successfully reenact the cover art and bring down the tylor. Right on cue, Saro-Saro waddles out from his hiding place and pontificates on top of the corpse, dedicating the night's feast to the honored dead like he did anything.
We return to Mudwort's perspective as clouds of insects descend on the tylor carcass like it had been rehearsed, so she pokes around elsewhere on the shattered ridge instead of waiting in line for raw meat. In doing so she discovers Horace's unconscious body underneath a gaggle of goblin kids who'd apparently clung to him for protection, implying that he's at least more well-regarded by the clans than the other knights are.
Mudwort does not share this sentiment, and bickers back and forth with Direfang for a bit about letting the "skull man" just die already. Once Horace is revived and Mudwort sticks her fingers in the mud again, Direfang leaves to get his fill of tylor meat (I hate typing this so much), which seems like it will be enough to feed all 800 surviving goblins.
I'm sorry, 800? When the heck did they add another ~300 to their number? Weren't they whittled down to less than half of their 1,000-strong start in the last book? I mean, I'm glad for them not to be quite as screwed, but it sticks out as a bit of a plot hole.
Anyway, as all of this is going on the humans begin to talk amongst themselves.
We finally get more dialogue out of Kenosh, the last remaining knight in Grallik's squad, who mostly stayed sweatily aloof in the first book while his fellows died one by one. He's had it with the goblins by this point, and he and Horace point out how bad and weird an idea it was for Grallik to throw their lot in with them. Once more, Grallik tows the line that he didn't want them to get demoted for what went down on his watch back in Steel Town, as if desertion is somehow better. They loudly suspect he's got ulterior motives, but he won't make a peep about it.
It's this exchange where I finally decide to mention something I've been noticing in the back of my brain for a bit. It's not just the goblins who speak funny in this book; the human (and half-human) characters have a manner of speech that is kind of... community theater'y? A lot of dialogue is dedicated to repeating or rephrasing what is being immediately responded to, almost as if to make sure the back row of the audience understands what's happening. It's not bad, and I'm sure loads of other fantasy novels cut from the same cloth do something similar as a holdover from old-timey storytelling, but it's distracting now that I've seen it.
Not to drag this chapter out much longer, but I also find it interesting that while doing healing work, Horace refers to his goddess as "Zeboim, called Rann in my homeland". I didn't know deities had regional identities or aspects in Krynn, which is cool, but I find it odd that one is treated as more correct or proper to invoke in prayer than the others. Maybe it's a formality tied to the Knights of Takhisis? Or maybe it's just to avoid the gods getting snippy about things, as is their wont.
Chapter 8
Another vanishingly thin cast-expanding chapter where we are introduced to a trio of goblins escaping some slavers, this time taking the form of minotaurs.
I wonder which side of the toes vs hooves controversy Jean Rabe comes down on. I realize the "original" Minotaur of myth was almost always depicted as entirely human from the neck down in pottery, but that just feels so weird and gross to me, like some oiled-up dude wearing an animal mask. Which come to think of it, is probably how poor ol' Asterius was portrayed in theater back in the day.
Anyway, we're introduced to Ruffem the gruff loner hobgoblin and his nameless allies of circumstance, who note that their clan's shaman bailed out days before the slavers arrived, following the vision of Mudwort and Direfang's army. That summons seems to have been far-reaching.
Chapters 9-10
Another chapter in which Mudwort uses her earth-magic to take refuge from her real world problems in a way that is starting to seem escapist and addictive. What drives her underground this time is the reek of the funeral pyre. What's with everybody on the planet thinking goblins stink, including other goblins?
She rediscovers the underground vault from last book, and manages to see its occupants this time: a clan of dark-red goblins who by all indicators seem fat and happy and content to stay right where they are. They tear a roasted boar to bits in a naturally domed chamber, then watch in awe as a novice shaman channels her magic through a cluster of beautiful green crystals in grey rock. Emerald, maybe?
Mudwort gets so engrossed in the vision that she faints and breaks out in a fever back up on the surface, leading to her rude awakening by Direfang shaking her. Once again, she lies and says she saw nothing.
The goblin column finally gets moving again after camping for the night. They leave the stinking tylor corpse behind, and Direfang thinks ahead to Qualinesti forest. The idea of trees blotting out the sun is absurd but enticing to him. He also frets about getting a pair of shoes, reminding the reader that most of the goblins in this army are naked if they haven't looted clothing and footwear from the knights and ogres they killed. I can't imagine ogre sandals would fit anyone well here.
Thinking about the trees becomes a bit of a mantra for him as a glance at the dark knights triggers a PTSD episode about the time he failed to escape and they cut off his ear and made him wear it around his neck until it rotted away. Direfang's previous role of foreman put him in the alienating role of middleman between his people and his oppressors, and it seems to have properly hurt him. He once more refuses to cry out of worry that he'll be seen as weak; a reminder that the position of leadership and respect afforded to him by his people is ultimately predicated upon the goblins' collective memory of hierarchical violence.
He's still carrying Graytoes though, and she has no qualms about grieving her loss. They share a private conversation in which Direfang urges her to move past her dead mate, and she asks him about the map he used to study in Steel Town, the memory of which now roughly guides them toward Qualinesti. It's a fine chat, up until Direfang missteps and they both go tumbling over the side of the mountain.
Saro-Saro shoves himself into the power vacuum so quickly, I almost wonder if his clan didn't shove Direfang over the edge. Mudwort insists that she can sense them both still alive through the stones however, and her ability to browbeat Horace and the other knights into following her down the slope to find and heal Direfang seems to check Saro-Saro's geriatric populist power base for the moment.
But the rumblings of Saro-Saro leading are never quiet for long.
Three more goblins are killed or maimed by falling during their descent from the mountains, adding to the constant trickle of death that has become almost banal at this point. Both the narrative and the horde shrug this off and continue on, reminding me that one of the hardest shackles the goblins have yet to throw off is the lingering devaluation of life instilled in them by so many years in slavery. If any of them could read, I'd slip them a copy of Necropolitics.
Chapter 11
We next have the misfortune of returning to Bera Kata's knights, though fortunately it's short and we get a peek at Isaam's perspective. The wizard is annoyed that foraging in the mountains has forced him into a diet heavy in meat and roots when he's normally a strict vegetarian for health reasons. I don't like sympathizing with him there, but I do.
Anybody else remember the days when fascist goons were more likely to be pseudo-spiritually vegetarian instead of this weird raw meat bro junk they've got going on nowadays? It was almost quaint.
Anyway, under Bera's scrutiny, Isaam uses a piece of melted crystal glass that is implied to be taken from the ruins of Grallik's study back in Steel Town. With it, he scries the deserters and their surroundings, but can't get a read on where they are other than that they are moving with a lot of goblins around them. Scouts arrive to cut the scene short, as another group of encamped goblins has been found.
I don't have high hopes for them.
Chapters 12-15
Nor do I have high hopes for the main cast, as the goblin horde wraps up committing another war crime.
The head of the column was startled by a dwarf woman of all things, washing clothes in a river they came to drink at. In response to her screams giving away their position, Spikehollow and several other goblins promptly shank her to death and beat her corpse unrecognizable. Direfang, hobbled by his fall, arrives too late to stop it. He would have preferred to talk with her, or just leave her be. He does prevent a fight over the clothes in the laundry basket from turning bloody, though.
But when the dwarf's kin show up wielding hoes and shovels, he doesn't try to stop the ensuing battle.
What follows is a bizarre series of events as the goblins kill most of the dozen dwarves save for one who cleaves through many of them with a hoe during his last stand. In the middle of this melee, some goblins stop to reach out and feel the bark and leaves of the trees growing alongside the river. Others rush off to find the dwarves' homes to pillage. Still others continue to splash and drink from the river without a care, or try on their new clothing.
It's a fricking mess.
Direfang only halts them short of attacking the dwarf village in the hills, thinking there's been enough bloodshed. Using Horace as a translator because he knows a bit of gnomish, they're able to learn from the surviving women of the strangely surface-level dwarf village that it is named Reorx's Cradle, a god whom they're fervently praying to for protection from the goblin mob. I'm guessing the goblins wandered into the outskirts of Thoradin while trying to avoid the ogres of Blöde.
The two parties are in the middle of tense negotiations when Saro-Saro and his sycophants decide it's time to take everything. They begin to loot the village gardens, halted only by Direfang physically flinging the little pricks away when they try to fight him. But the challenge to his leadership forces his hand, and the looting commences- just in a more orderly and bloodless fashion than if Saro-Saro had led it. He delegates different tasks to each of the clans (notably leaving Saro-Saro's to do jack-diddly), the village's goats are rounded up to eat or take with, and an oath is extracted not to kill anymore innocent noncombatants- tainted blood, as Direfang calls it.
The looting goes about as well as could be expected. Grallik does the grunt work, burning the bodies of the goblins who died in the attack but leaving the dwarf bodies for the dwarves to deal with according to their customs. Horace finds paper for the dwarves to draw Direfang a map. Mudwort finds a whole mess of pretty gemstones and beads. Graytoes steals a fricking baby as a surrogate for the pregnancy that skull knight forced her to miscarry in the last book, while her new caretaker Rustymane mindlessly chows down on some forgotten dwarf porridge like a huge hairy Goldilocks. And Spikehollow takes some blankets from an old, dying dwarf man who is revealed to have black knobs growing on his neck, intending to give one as a gift to his chief Saro-Saro.
The jarring flash-forward at the beginning of the book begins to take shape.
Direfang marches the army out of battered old Reorx's Cradle before camping for the night, wisely guessing that the truce wouldn't hold if the goblins were tempted by the sight of all the stuff they hadn't yet messed with.
As night falls, Grallik tries yet again to get on Mudwort's good side. He manages to get her to acknowledge that she understands his language, but she uses every word of it insulting and degrading him. When he finally blurts out that he wants her to teach him magic—the most honest thing he's done all series—he apologizes and blames his hunger. So she tells him to go and beg Direfang for food. Which he immediately does, despite having been starving for weeks without doing anything of the sort up until Mudwort brusquely ordered him to. He ends up acquiring a basket of potatoes, hardtack, and other things for all his groveling to an awkwardly pitying Direfang.
Later that night, he's even permitted to sit next to Mudwort and Boliver while they conduct their next scrying spell to scout ahead. Specifically, they let him join so that they can drag his psyche along for the ride and drain his body of magical energy to fuel the spell. Grallik doesn't care that she's using him as a battery, so exhilarated is he by the mental flight out over New Sea and the marshes of Blöde. Eventually he's completely drained and passes out, and Pippa, one of Saro-Saro's young sycophants, robs him of all his food for good measure.
Either this is the humbling phase of his eventual redemption arc or he's about to learn he has a humiliation kink, and I am not okay with either possibility for Spicy Garlic.
Chapters 16-17
Of course with the just-for-funsies dwarf massacre narrowly averted, Saro-Saro can't keep away from proverbial shit-stirring for very long.
Because everyone just assumes the fat old man is a wise leader for having stayed alive so long, it doesn't take much for him to convince Cattail, the chieftess of the Firegrass clan, to join his clan in striking off on their own- but not before they assassinate Direfang to bring as many other goblins under their command as possible. They stick to this plan despite the fact that their prospective assassin Spikehollow develops a fever and a cough while wrapped up tight in his new blanket. The deal is struck while Saro-Saro plucks a hair from a mole on his face and gets repeatedly distracted by Cattail's "musk", and the question of whether he'll make her or Pippa (who's practically a child) his queen after he becomes goblin king.
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| No, still not that one. |
We're obviously meant to dislike Saro-Saro and boy is it working, but as a consequence of that writing, I also begin to dislike everybody else who loves, placates, or even just tolerates the presence of that narcissistic little lemon anywhere near politics and positions of leadership because he's loudly confident and entertaining. He doesn't even have an answer for the question of what to do or where to go after murdering Direfang!
... Ironically this greatly humanizes the goblins, by way of making them resemble certain modern voting blocs.
Meanwhile, Mudwort realizes she's a time-traveler.
Her visions of the cavern full of red goblins and the shaman called Saarh are echoes of the past, taken from the memories of the ancient stones that bore witness to them. She's been moving back and forth through the years with every visit, finding the woman as a young novice first and then a middle-aged and wizened shaman later. The realization of the extent of her stonetelling powers excites Mudwort, but she's greatly frustrated when she wills herself to project into that cavern in the present and finds only darkness and bat guano, the halls long abandoned by goblins and just about everything else.
It intrigues me greatly, though. Assuming Saarh was a stoneteller like Mudwort, she's a practitioner of the geomancy school of primal sorcery. Primal sorcery, which derives from the ambient chaos magic of the land rather than from the pseudo-religious magic of the moons, has only resurfaced within the past few decades after the Chaos War suffused the world with enough chaos juice to make it usable by mortals again- the last time primal sorcery was widely practiced was when the Graygem was still zipping around the planet uncontrolled, wreaking havoc on the land and mutating countless new species into existence. That was during the Age of Dreams, thousands of years ago. Mudwort's magic goes deep.
It also keeps her up all night long and leaves her exhausted, deepening the parallel I see between it and escapist addictions like video games.
Lower-stakes and almost sweet if you ignore the whole kidnapping bit, Graytoes and some other goblins also take time during this rest to name her new daughter. A long list of suggestions are made, including several goblin-language words like lek, deva, sugi, or sheel, each one conveniently translated into English by another goblin for our reading benefit despite the fact that there should be no difference in the word they're saying, since they're all speaking goblin.
I will never not be pedantic about that trope.
Eventually Graytoes decides to name her daughter Umay: Hope.
Umay also happens to be the name of the Turkic goddess of fertility, motherhood, and childbirth, a counterpart to the Mongolian earth-mother Etügen. I'm not sure whether Jean knew that or not, but it's a bonus for me regardless!
Chapters 18-19
We alight next upon Spikehollow's sweat-soaked shoulder as he hobbles his way up the mountain trail the dwarves set them on. For the first time we get a glimpse into his thoughts and motivations, though they aren't all that remarkable: he sees himself as the natural successor to Saro-Saro, so by helping him secure power he's also helping himself. This is what he's spied and plotted and murdered Moon-eye over, and soon he'll do the same to Direfang.
If he can just stop coughing long enough. His fever's worse, he's suffering dizzy spells, and his head is pounding. His friend Bugteeth (whom he gave another blanket to) is even worse; when he coughs, blood froths at the edges of his mouth. But Spikehollow refuses to be seen as weak by getting help from the priest. So he sweats and swoons and coughs at the mountaintop, waiting for Direfang to bring up the rear so he can dispose of him in private, just like he did Moon-eye.
But before he can trick Direfang into admiring the view and kick him off, he himself almost falls. Direfang catches him of course, and gingerly carries him down the slope just like Graytoes carrying her babe.
He awakens to find the goblins camped in the woodland below the trail. The refugee army is larger than it had been before he passed out, thanks to the addition of the Hunter's Ridge clan, Ruffem & Co, and several others who've followed Mudwort's summons. Being saved by Direfang and seemingly healed by Horace softens Spikehollow somewhat, especially since Bugteeth died from the same illness while he slept, pushing Spikehollow to decide not to be Saro-Saro's man for the hitjob. He and Pippa also wander the woods for a time, coming across a large pine tree with bottles hanging from its branches like windchimes. It's odd, and they both comment on that, but also pleasant and peaceful.
It's a very old and abandoned glass tree, apparently. An old Nerakan and later elvish tradition of hanging bottles and carving symbols in trees for good luck and to ward off evil. I don't know if this is something found in other Dragonlance books or a stand-alone invention for this one, but it's a nice little bit of worldbuilding that I like. It fits both the "sure, why not?" superstitions of traveling merchants and the sentimentality of elves. And it comes to perfectly fit the unvarnished pragmatism of the goblins a moment later when Direfang orders all the bottles taken down and used to carry water.
Chapters 20-21
Mudwort continues to take advantage of Grallik's desperation when he and a sickening Kenosh creep on her during another spell of hers and he begs her to teach him her magic. She names her price for the training, saying he must convince Direfang not to stop short of Qualinesti Forest because of the mounting logistical concerns with moving so many goblins so far through dangerous territory. With over 2,000 in number now, the Plains of Dust seem increasingly attractive.
But Mudwort needs to go to the forest and find that powerful source of magic she glimpsed at Godshome, and she is willing to risk the whole horde as her bodyguard to get there. The deal is struck just as Kenosh doubles over coughing up blood.
Many more goblins have taken ill since Spikehollow took those blankets- Spikehollow included, whose fever returns alongside telltale black nodules on what we would identify as his lymph nodes. Horace works feverishly to combat the spread, but one priest can only do so much against what seems to be the Krynn equivalent of a bubonic plague epidemic.
I hope they don't accidentally spread it to the rest of the world on their journey west; that'd cleave a little too closely to old and increasingly discredited real-world theories about how the Black Death in Europe can be "blamed" on the Mongol successor khanates and the armies and commerce that flowed through them.
Fortunately the army seems to understand the basics of contagion theory, and the ill goblins are separated from the rest to lie beneath the dangling black limbs of a huge dead willow tree. Very goth.
While doing triage and healing those who might still be saved, Horace even seems to make a connection between the quilts and the disease. Still, none of the characters can shake the specter of how the old dwarf woman prayed to Reorx to destroy them all days before.
Spikehollow, Kenosh, and others die one by one, and I realize that this book is going through the same winnowing of the supporting cast as the last one, just without so much volcanism. Horace contemplates drowning himself in the river or stabbing himself with Spikehollow's stolen dagger to be rid of the whole affair, but again he resolves to go with the flow as it were and follow the tumultuous current Zeboim set him on.
Chapter 22
We check up on Saarh again, now the wizened leader of her clan. She leads them out of the tunnels that have grown too small and food-scarce to support their numbers, into the outside world that most had never even seen before. The sun is bright, the wind is sweet, and the forest in front of them is not yet a forest; centuries-old Qualinesti is just starting to grow in Saarh's time, giving Mudwort a better understanding of how long ago she lived there beneath the Kharolis Mountains, just a stone's throw away from where familiar Dragonlance locations like Solace and Pax Tharkas would one day stand.
Mudwort is mildly disgusted to learn that Saarh's tribe acknowledges and seems to revere Chislev, the neutral deity of nature. But she reasons that goblinkind's rude awakening to the callous apathy of the gods simply has yet to come in that time. And she is pleased to follow in Saarh's footsteps, especially because the old shaman seemed to sense the same powerful magic "pulse" she does. Whatever's out there buried beneath the forest has been there for a very long time.
Chapters 23-25
The bodies continue to pile up, and it doesn't take long for people to pick a scapegoat. Pippa, Leafear, and others blame Horace for not saving Spikehollow and the others, and attempt to kill him out of a misguided drive for vengeance. It ends with a few more goblins dead, this time by Grallik's fire when he comes to his last remaining friend's rescue. Only Direfang's intervention keeps them both from being lynched, which is becoming a distressingly common occurrence in this migration.
Grallik actually apologizes to Horace the following morning as they sit morosely on the riverbank. But Horace doesn't blame him for dragging him along; he's following Zeboim. The wizard lights the corpse tree and all the plague dead on fire, and then they move on to damage control and a health PSA.
Of course just as they're establishing the need to lockdown and quarantine so as not to spread the plague, Saro-Saro's supporters start to agitate loudly for his ascension. It says a lot about his inability and his lack of power outside his clan and the Firegrass that even with Direfang mostly shrugging and saying "be my guest", a debate still rages over leadership for days.
Over those days, more and more goblins die, including a few more names like the chatterbox Pippa. The huge boost in numbers from newcomer clans is effectively negated, with less than 1,000 goblins left alive after a week. Finally, it seems the plague has run its course.
After the last cremation ceremony Direfang formally hands leadership over to Saro-Saro, and wordlessly breaks off south.
... Only for the entire goblin host to start following him. Everyone, from Mudwort and Boliver to the knights stick with him. Even Saro-Saro joins when it becomes clear he commands less than 100 loyal goblins.
Less than 100, compared to almost 1,000 who immediately followed Direfang, soon joined by 18 more clans when they reach the shores of New Sea, the body of water formed in Ansalon's interior back when the gods had their meteoric hissy fit. Mudwort's summons had worked.
This migration's population chart is shooting up and down so quickly it's starting to turn into a seismograph. Even Direfang comments upon that as he rues how the clingy mantle of leadership just won't leave him the hell alone. Thya's the first one to greet him, rounding out what I suspect is the last cast infusion for the book.
While the goblins rest off the last of the plague or lose their minds over seeing so much water all in one place, Grallik reveals the nature of the shortcut to Qualinesti that he coaxed Direfang along on Mudwort's plan with: hire a bunch of ships to cross the sea, using some of the gems Mudwort took from Reorx's Cradle to finance the voyage.
I guess we're not going to the Plains of Dust after all. Bummer.
Chapter 26
The ships can be chartered in a nearby human city, and the gems Mudwort's been carrying around as trinkets can pay for them plus supplies and clothes. But the issue of actually making the arrangement remains, seeing as how 3,000 half-naked and armed goblins waddling up to your town is rarely seen as a lucrative business opportunity in this world.
The solution is simple, and also terrible: Send Grallik alone with all the money to go do it. He'll come back. Third degree burned pinkie promise!
Surprisingly, he does stay true to his word. Mudwort knows he won't leave without her magic, and despite thinking of all the reasons he should abscond and live like a prince, he knows she's right. Instead, he limits himself to a day of freedom.
Over the course of that day, Spicy Garlic murders a merchant just to steal his clothing for a few minutes in order to not look like a beggar and a thief while going into the most expensive baths, shops, and eating establishments in the city. He overeats to the point of vomiting in an alley. He almost decides to buy sex from a bathhouse worker, but fortunately she's spared from that experience by how picky he is. And then he goes on an absolute spending spree, buying masses of supplies for the goblins and hiding his own personal comforts in and amid them. He even buys the ships outright rather than just booking passage on them.
Honestly, I'm kind of glad he's still as much of a prick as ever. It makes the possible redemption arc feel less likely. Trauma by itself doesn't (and shouldn't be expected to) turn you into a better person than you went into it as.
Irresponsibly wealthy and possessed of a small navy, Grallik returns to the mouth of the river at sundown.
I'm sure that paper trail won't make them painfully easy for Bera Kata and company to follow.
Chapters 27-29
Another Saarh chapter reveals that Mudwort can learn new forms of primal sorcery just by watching them performed by others. After Saarh kills two bears with lightning plucked from the sky in the past, Mudwort stands in the surf for hours until she can get bolts to arc out of the bottoms of the clouds with her mind. She keeps this new talent to herself, however; another secret to whip out when needed.
Grallik reveals the nature of the ships' passengers and doles out more sapphires to placate the captains, who keep their grumbling crews on board. I dislike how the goblins are sometimes called "cargo" or compared to shipping cattle here. There's even an implied enslavement scare when the goblins realize one ship is crewed and captained by minotaurs and panic. Jean's writing weird mixed signals here.
Also, Direfang orders Horace to cast a suggestion spell on the last goblins unwilling to board a ship for the first time in their lives. It's the same spell the knights used to keep some of the enslaved goblins from fleeing Steel Town back in book one. It works on all but about two dozen, but it's a violation of personal autonomy they should all know better about by now.
Four goblins drown boarding the ships, but rather than being accepted with the same resignation as so many other collateral deaths during travel, they are lamented. You can't scatter the remains of a body lost at sea, after all. But Horace insists the sea will take care of them before the spirits become trapped.
It's little surprise that the single aspect of goblin culture that comes up most often revolves around death, but it helps ground them and remind me that my Krynnish cousins are more than Chaotic Hungry little marauders. Otherwise I'd start to understand what all you humans mean by "goblin mode".
At first it's relatively smooth sailing, aside from the barfing of thousands of goblins who've never been asea before. But then a heavy storm starts to batter the fleet, and the flagship the Clare realizes they're being followed: pirates! Specifically, Ergothian pirates led by a sorceress who can ward her ship the Blithe Dagger against the weather while it slows down their prey.
I cringed slightly when the captain of the Clare awkwardly calls them "your kind" to Horace's face, and then specifies that they're "sea barbarians". Ergoth is one of the oldest and most enduring human civilizations on Krynn, and calling them barbaric when they're the only dark-skinned human culture in the world who are also kinda-sorta-African-coded is a little yikes to me. Maybe the pirates are meant to evoke a Barbary States analogue, and Jean went with the etymological root word to do it? I dunno.
(To elaborate, coastal and urban Ergothians whom most of the world know of are very typical high medieval sorts with an emperor and a senate, and material culture similar to their Solamnic neighbors. Meanwhile the rural inland Ergothian communities prefixed with the name Ker- are extremely tribal traditionalists ruled by a paramount chief.)
Anyway, the situation gets worse still when the sorceress-captain reveals she can even deflect Grallik's fire magic. The pirates begin to hurl grappling hooks at the stern and the sailors start to call it game over when suddenly lightning suddenly arcs down from the sky, striking the Dagger in the mast and side and causing it to list into the waves. Apparently the sorceress had warded the ship against fire and wind, but not lightning. An exhausted Mudwort grins at Direfang, and hisses for Grallik to keep quiet- and take credit.
But the attack is far from harmless. The sorceress vanishes without a trace, and before she does she bends the hull of the nearby Shinare's Prayer until it tears open. All hands and all but three of the 500 passengers are lost. The seismograph wiggles again. Direfang falls into a catatonic state.
Chapters 30-31
And it gets worse. Later while looking at maps in the captain's quarters, Direfang learns it only would have taken two months rather than two years to reach Qualinesti on foot, compared to the two weeks by boat. He doesn't take this news well, and dwells on how many goblins said they're rather just walk.
It's nothing some booze can't fix, though. Captain Gerrold of the Clare shares some excruciatingly fancy cherry wine with him after they divide up the loot taken from the wreck of the Dagger. The man's genial nature (plus the alcohol) loosens Direfang's tongue enough to actually confide in another person for once, and a human at that.
Meanwhile, an exhausted Mudwort tries to find rest down in the hold, or the "wooden cave" as the goblins call it. It's difficult for her, surrounded by the reek of stale air, hundreds of seasick goblins, and the stench of a handful of goblins who sneaked on board with the plague- all from Saro-Saro's clan.
Mudwort visits Saarh again to pass the time. The shaman of old could have brought her clan to different chambers in the mountains where food was more plentiful, it's revealed. But those places did not have this alluring magical pulse. She nearly gets her closest friend Brab lost in the forest during her relentless search for the source. The parallels between her and Mudwort continue to grow.
But Saarh finally finds it. A huge, gnarled old oak tree rises up to meet them, hiding something. Using plant magic that she's also developed since coming up to the surface, Saarh splits the tree open to reveal that it was hiding something: an ornate greenwood spear decorated in precious stones and metals, and feathers that are the symbol of the goddess Chislev.
Saarh isn't a stoneteller or a wielder of primal sorcery at all, I realize; she's a druid, guided by divinity to find a relic of her deity. "Shaman" is just the goblins' catch-all term for spellcasters other than wizards.
I feel vaguely betrayed, but Mudwort's interest remains piqued despite her and Direfang's famous maltheism.
I swear, if this turns into some kind of redemption story where the goblins "find god" again and are forgiven for abandoning the feckless divine... I'll have only myself to blame because that is Dragonlance's M.O. more often than not.
Chapters 32-33
... Oh frick, it's finally happening!
Direfang is snapped out of his gazing out to sea by a goblin who tells him to come down below deck for something urgent. It's Saro-Saro. Despite showing symptoms of the disease he refused treatment at the shores of the New Sea and secretly brought it aboard with him. He even kept the fancy quilt Spikehollow gave him. Now, the buboes are rupturing and he's vomiting blood. Direfang sends the healthy members of his clan topside and quarantines the sick around their leader, who speaks so weakly that the hobgoblin has to come in closer to listen.
Saro-Saro laments the mines, enslavement, the plague, and how everything had ruined his plans. Direfang almost reaches out to touch him in a moment of sympathy, and tries to console him with the possibility that the clan can still live on after reaching Qualinesti. But through his coughing fits, Saro-Saro will have none of it.
Two clansmen grab Direfang from behind and shove him down onto his knees. Saro-Saro, suddenly rallied with whatever bloody piss and vinegar he has left in him, leaps at Direfang to claw and spit like he's trying to drive as much plague bacillus into him as possible, all while cursing the hobgoblin who had never wanted leadership, and offered several times during the journey to disperse the host or give command over to another. Stupid bile from a stupid little man and his minions who willfully risked dooming their whole community.
Others rush toward the back of the hold at the sounds of the disturbance, most to help Direfang. But he forces them all back and quarantines himself too, calling only for Horace. When the priest later deduces that none of the others can be saved, Direfang interrupts his triage to instead use his magic to purify the rest of the hold and stop the disease's spread. Then he gathers up armfuls of the sick and dying, and makes his way up to the deck...
And slowly, methodically, hurls them one-by-one into the sea. A blasphemous punishment for some admittedly bastardly folks. Saro-Saro bounces off the hull of the ship on his way down like a melon after one last bitter exchange between he and Direfang. Die free, old one. Die fast, young one.
Horace is in the middle of explaining the plague to the enraged bosun's mate, the half-ogre K'lars, when the goblin Two-chins screams in horror. Direfang stands up on the railing, names the hobgoblin foreman Rustymane his successor, discharges himself of his duties, and jumps over the side to end the plague once and for all.
Were I a few years younger and just a little more terminally-online than I already am, I'd call this based.
Chapter 34
Oblivious to all the commotion, Mudwort and Grallik sit in the mess hall where she ravenously eats after her days-long trance, and he explains the goddess Chislev to her. Horace would know more, but she grills her personal wizard toy for info instead. He gets the gist of her across—nature goddess, wild ruler of the seasons and weather, druids instead of priests, bad relationship with Zeboim, etc—before Mudwort passes out on her plate.
It's good that she doesn't bother Horace- the priest is busy looking over Direfang after K'lars dives in after the hobgoblin and rescues him, despite the half-ogre's personal opinion that goblins are giant rats on two legs. Direfang had just been getting used to drowning, too. He'd been beating down his survival instinct and gulping down seawater to hasten the end. But no such luck.
Captain Gerrold, enraged at the whole ordeal, takes back command of the ship and sets them on a course for the central island of Schallsea; the whole ship is going to be purified of this doom, and they're going to need the healers of the Citadel of Light, the legacy of Goldmoon herself, to do it.
Direfang doesn't get to slip out of goblin-wrangling duty so easily.
Chapter 35
Direfang awakens on Schallsea Island after passing out and breaking his jaw from the rapidly-progressing disease, a few teeth poorer but otherwise much healthier. Much has already been done by Mishakal's clerics and mystics (read: the divine magic counterparts to primal sorcerers, like a favored soul mixed with a monk's self-cultivation). While the same can't be said for the surrounding towns and villages, the mystics don't discriminate based on race. The quarantine group is even joined by a friendly gnoll druid named Orvago, who is such a weirdly specific character that I feel like he's got to be a shout-out to another DL book. I had forgotten gnolls were even native to Krynn.
One of the mystics give Direfang (and us) a quick rundown of the island, its native goblin population that might be interested in joining the migration, and the history of the Citadel. Surprisingly, Direfang knows about Goldmoon and the Heroes of the Lance. I wonder what kind of warped historical narrative he got from the former Knights of Takhisis.
Under the steely-eyed watch of a group of Citadel guardians, Direfang wanders the area catching up with the surviving goblins and reminding them not to get too comfy on Schallsea; the ships are their homes for now.
Eventually he finds Mudwort and Grallik, who I'm surprised to find mingling their magic together again. Boliver hasn't been seen since before the ships set sail, and Mudwort seems to be accelerating her lopsided partnership with the half-elf in his place. She finds where Saarh's surface village once was in the present, then delves into its past by herself, Garlic's curiosity be damned. Saarh is older still, babies are being born, and her consort Brab magically no longer has physical disabilities that slowed him down and made half his face sag- a stroke perhaps? The Spear of Chislev gleams in her grip.
Mudwort declares it will be hers.
150 more goblins leave Schallsea to join the migration, swelling the total number to nearly 5,000 by the time they land on the shore of eastern Abanasinia a few days later. How the math works out when they embarked on the voyage with a little more than 3,000 I have no idea, and I don't think Jean does either.
Mudwort looks eagerly ahead to distant Qualinesti Forest. Grallik stares hard at the sea; Horace will not be joining them for this last leg of the journey. The sea calls to the sea priest, compelling him to join the crew of the departing Clare without so much as an on-screen goodbye. I suspect Grallik is so angry at his departure because Direfang freed Horace, but pointedly not him.
Horace is replaced by two healers from Schallsea; Orvago the gnoll, come to make sure the goblins don't harm the forest, and Qel the young human exposition mystic. Direfang suspects she's been sent to spy on them for the Citadel, but he's too thankful for their healing services to do anything about that yet. Try as they might to be left the hell alone, the goblins have officially become a matter of international interest.
Graytoes and Umay play in the surf one last time, having somehow survived the entire ordeal despite being perhaps the two most vulnerable people in the whole host.
Finally, Direfang leads them inland.
Chapter 36
Bera's back, back again. Bought a ship, Mercy Corvan.
She followed the goblins' trail all the way to the city Grallik schmoozed around in for a day, confirming my suspicions that all his conspicuous spending would be easy to follow. She and her knights take the biggest ship in the harbor, which Grallik had actually passed over for being a little too fancy for the intended passengers weeks before. She's joined by Isaam and Zocci, and several hundred more knights whom they've picked up along the way, darkly mirroring the progress of the goblins.
She's also joined by the last two survivors from the party of eighteen goblins who wouldn't follow Direfang across the sea. They're to be tortured for further information, and then thrown into the sea to see how well they swim.
In the middle of this ruthless villain-speak, a chubby penguin waddles down the dock and leaps into the water.
Since when the heck does central Ansalon have penguins? I mean I'm happy for it, but no less confused. This should be a pretty temperate area, relative to the tundra of the south and the subtropics up north.
Despite taking so many soldiers way, way far away from their posts in Neraka, Bera's mission seems to remain of the utmost importance, both for her personally and for the stained reputation of the order. She sees crushing the goblin army as sending an important message to all of Krynn, and whispers like a proper scenery-chewer about how she'll send her traitorous brothers down into the deepest corner of the Abyss.
-
Well that was a trip.
This book took me several months to work through rather than just most of one like the first did, primarily because of real life business and issues with motivation. It felt good to get through. But it also felt like a longer read overall.
Death March is a meaner book than the first. It dwells more on the petty ugliness and odors of the goblins and their plight now that the stark drama of their initial escape has worn off. The death toll is far higher as well, and the speed at which characters are introduced and then killed off feels faster as well. Then there's the seismograph comparison I made to describe the ping-ponging population.
With some standouts like Spikehollow's slow, miserable expiration and Direfang's attempt at a murder-suicide with Saro-Saro, death is more unpleasant but less meaningful in this book. Maybe it's no different from death in The Rebellion, but I'm simply more aware of the rhythms of writing this time around. Maybe it's intentional, too; endlessly dying and resupplying in droves in a way that both the narrative and other characters often just gloss over serves to shine a light on the cheapening of goblin life in this world, while highlighting Direfang's moments of almost-tender grief.
It's also a much wider book in scope. I couldn't collect 5 or more chapters into a single gloss like I did in the last post because the narrative jumps around so much more between geographically (and chronologically) distant POV characters. The book was published in 2008, but it remound me of the rote style of fantasy TV series pacing later popularized by GoT and its source material.
People end up playing a far smaller role than I'd initially suspect when they're introduced. Details that are brought up once don't serve for deeper characterization or as foundations for relationships later. It feels more like texture for the road in this road trip novel, to be felt and then driven past.
Still, it was refreshing to glimpse more of Krynn than just the mountains of Taman Busuk for a change. I'm still largely ignorant of the Age of Mortals, and it's interesting to see where the world has gone and how it's changed since those hazy and half-remembered books of my childhood. I realize that's the same kind of shallow self-reference that a lot of sequel or reboot blockbusters do to pander to a certain fanbase nowadays, but maybe that's just the type of media consumer I am- or would be, if I didn't have a whole mess of anxieties about viewing films in addition to my mild bibliophobia.
I expect the third and final book in the series will narrow the scope to match that of the first now that all the major players have reached or are close to Qualinesti. In that sense I can forgive the middle of the trilogy being kind of fitful in its progression; it serves the dual role of book and connective tissue between the two bookends, and that's not easy. Then again, almost every middle book in a trilogy has that responsibility, so maybe I could hold this one more... accountable? I'm not sure where I'm going with this.
I'm afraid I don't have any saccharine messages of encouragement about writing and finding an audience to share with you this time around. But I appreciate you getting through this whole post, Dear Burrowers. You're who I started this for in a weird reverse-parasocial way, even if it has become something for my personal enjoyment over time. Besides, my new therapist says I should acknowledge when something makes me happy.
I can safely say that I'm locked in to finish the trilogy. I don't know if I'll like how it all ends, but I'm determined to see to it. I kinda dipped into regular shade-casting at Jean for this book, but she has succeeded in keeping me engaged throughout.
I might even take less than a year to finish the next one.
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