Here Be Dragons

by Stefan Ekman

  TOGETHER APART: BORDERS IN BRUST, GAIMAN AND VESS, AND NIX

  The fantasy genre offers a great variety of borders, and this section will investigate three examples, representing three different kinds. The first is the border between the land of the living and the land of the dead. Journeys to the land of the dead form a common theme in several mythologies and so-called taproot texts (texts that predate the emergence of generic fantasy but that include the fantastic and are of heightened significance to the genre10). The Sumerian goddess Inanna descends into the underworld only to end up captured there. The Japanese god Izanagi enters the dark realm of Yomi to bring back his spouse Izanami. Odysseus and Æneas both venture there for information, and Orpheus attempts to bring back his Eurydice. The Norse gods go down to Hel to bind Fenrir. Examples of how the land of the dead can be reached if one travels to the right place are common in fantasy literature as well. In J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, elves have to wait out the end of the world in the Halls of Mandos, which are located in the Undying Lands (and thus accessible to those elves who are still alive). Fritz Leiber has his heroes Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser ride to the land of death in “The Price of Pain-Ease” (1970). Raymond E. Feist’s protagonists Pug and Tomas journey to the Halls of the Dead (albeit with some magical help, as it is a very long trip) in A Darkness at Sethanon (1986). With the Celtic king Urtha, Merlin enters the Ghostland, where the spirits of the dead reside, in Robert Holdstock’s Celtika (2001). Jasper Fforde writes about how Thursday Next and her colleague Spike drive off the M4 motorway to a service station limbo beyond which the domain of death can be entered (Something Rotten 2004). Later, I discuss the Deathgate and the Paths of the Dead in Steven Brust’s Dragaera books, mainly Taltos (1998) from the Vlad Taltos series and The Paths of the Dead (2002) from the Khaavren Romances. Through their very different narrators and the close focus on the actual crossing of borders, these books offer an unusually clear example of the border between the realms of life and death. The Dragaeran realm of the dead is reached easily enough by descending a waterfall, leaving the land of the living at the top. Returning, however, requires special dispensation. The two trips described also illuminate how the border between the realms of life and death can be employed to present very different perspectives on Dragaeran society.

  Before I move on to the second border, another term needs to be clarified. Faerie, the mysterious home of any number of magical beings, is a popular location in much fantasy fiction. There is, however, no consensus about what the (often) nonmagical, everyday domain of humans should be called in opposition to Faerie. Many suggestions, such as the real world, the natural world, the mortal world, or the world of men, are problematic, since Faerie is often portrayed as a place just as real and natural as its counterpart, where both men and women live as well as die. (These expressions generally include the word world; in my own terminology [see chapter 1], Faerie would not be a “world” but a “domain”—that is, a part of a world where the laws of nature and causality differ from the rest of the world.) Tolkien, in Smith of Wootton Major, counters Faerie with the World,11 a distinction that would lack precision in a critical discussion. More precise, and poetic, is Lord Dunsany’s “the fields we know,” which he uses throughout The King of Elfland’s Daughter;12 but such an expression suggests that the critic would look at Faerie from without and at those well-known fields from within. In his introduction to The King of Elfland’s Daughter, however, Neil Gaiman refers to the mundane world,13 a term that, apart from being somewhat tautological, captures the quality of the earthly as well as the prosaic, connotations that are well suited to opposing the glamour of Faerie. To avoid the tautology, I simply use the term mundanity when referring to that which is not Faerie. This noun, while retaining connotations of the world and worldliness, refers to the “quality or fact of being commonplace, trivial, or ordinary” as well as to “that which is commonplace,”14 and seems an apt designation for the fields we know and inhabit.

  The second border I turn to is thus the one between Faerie and mundanity. The exact relationship between the two domains varies widely among those texts that deal with them both: fantasy stories, folktales, and taproot texts. In general, the relations between domains fall into one of three categories: either Faerie is an Otherworld, accessible from mundanity only by magic or certain portals (for example, in John Crowley’s Little, Big [1981], Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell [2004], and Tad Williams’s War of the Flowers [2003]); or Faerie and mundanity intermingle in so-called crosshatches (as in Delia Sherman’s Changeling [2006], Charles de Lint’s Newford books [1998–present], C. J. Cherryh’s Faery in Shadow [1993]—and, of course, in William Shakespeare’s taproot text A Midsummer Night’s Dream [1600]),15 where, in many cases, fairies and humans share a common world but the former generally remain invisible to mortals; or Faerie lies next to, or is surrounded by, mundanity. Examples of this third category would include Tolkien’s Smith of Wootton Major (1967), Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961), Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter, and Hope Mirrlees’s Lud-in-the-Mist (1926). For the discussion that follows, I have selected the illustrated novel Stardust (1997–98), by Gaiman and Charles Vess, for its obvious awareness of the long tradition of Faerie in fantasy. In Stardust, Faerie abuts mundanity, if only for a short stretch. The border between them is guarded to keep mundanity from adversely affecting Faerie, a refuge for the imaginary and fantastical, while mundanity itself grows increasingly scientific and skeptical.

  The third type of border takes the division between the mundane and the magical even further and divides the world into one domain ruled by science and technology and another domain where magic works. The stories move from one domain to the other and display the differences between them. An early text that separates a place of magic from a world of technology is Theodore Cogswell’s “The Wall around the World” from 1953, in which the boundary has been used to allow for the development of magic (although the change takes place in people, not in the environment). The opposition between magic and technology is even more in focus in Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series (Sabriel [1995], Lirael [2001], and Abhorsen [2003], and the novella “Nicholas Sayre and the Creature in the Case” [2005]). Nix’s border is guarded both by a medieval-looking wall and by guns, concertina wire, and modern troops, portraying a conflict between the two sides. The border defenses’ shortcomings are crucial, as the differences between the two sides are central to the plots. Other examples can be found in Roger Zelazny’s Jack of Shadows (1971) and in the Borderland series of shared-world anthologies and novels (1986–present), created by Terry Windling.

  Just as Joseph Campbell’s monomythical hero crosses the threshold on his way to adventure, returning in due course, the heroes in the Brust, Gaiman/Vess, and Nix stories cross borders into the unknown. These borders are not what they initially seem, however; they are areas of transition that subvert and undermine the reader’s first impressions. They provide the hero with a “there” while never promising that the same hero will come back again.

  A Final Injustice: The Dragaeran Paths of the Dead16

  Hades, Hel, Yomi, Hell—whatever the underworld has been called, journeys there have long been the stuff of myths and stories. In Steven Brust’s Dragaera books, the soul’s destination after death is the Halls of Judgment, home of the gods. Two visits to this realm of the dead are described in Brust’s books.17 In Taltos, the fourth Vlad Taltos novel, Vlad is sent there together with the Dragonlord Morrolan to bring back an imperial heir. In The Paths of the Dead, volume one of the third novel of the Khaavren Romances,18 the true heir to the imperial throne, Zerika, makes her way to the Halls of Judgment to reclaim the Imperial Orb with which she intends to restore the Empire.

  The Dragaeran class system, which permeates both the Vlad Taltos novels and the Khaavren Romances, can also be found in the realm of the dead and is even reflected in the border between the domains of life and death. By examining how each novel’s na
rrator—Vlad Taltos in Taltos and Paarfi of Roundwood in The Paths of the Dead—treats what is basically the same setting and very similar plots, it is possible to see how the border and the crossing of it can create quite dissimilar views of this class system. The two narrators, from opposite sides of the social spectrum, stress different aspects of how the border is constructed, while agreeing on some fundamental features. The discussion to follow begins with an outline of the Dragaeran social hierarchy and the narrators’ respective places in it, followed by an examination of how they present the border and what is required of those who cross it in either direction. Finally, there is a brief consideration of how the portrayal of the border reflects each narrator’s social position: Vlad’s return journey subverts the social order, whereas Zerika’s celebrates it. In either case, death in Dragaera brings no final justice; having a geographically accessible land of death does not change this, but rather emphasizes it.

  The narrators of the two novels come from completely different social positions. Dragaeran society is strictly hierarchical, with Easterners as well as members of House Jhereg occupying unprivileged positions. Devoid of citizenship, Easterners are at the very bottom of society. Above them are the commoners of House Teckla, and the sixteen noble Houses are found at the top. The most exalted of all nobles is the Empress (or Emperor). Segregation between Houses is fiercely maintained, and only House Teckla and House Jhereg accept inter-House liaisons and any resulting offspring. While counted among the sixteen noble Houses, Jhereg is in fact more of a criminal syndicate, and its members are therefore despised by the other Houses. Their unpopularity is emphasized by the fact that the animal from which the House has taken its name is a scavenger and generally considered to be vermin. Vlad, both Easterner and Jhereg, embodies the lowest rung on the social ladder, being a part of Dragaeran society and yet an outsider; his (bought) title in House Jhereg grants him citizenship, but it entitles him to very little respect outside his own House. Paarfi, on the other hand, is a nobleman, and very popular at that (Paths [xv]–xvii); he writes about the concerns of the noble Houses, the restoration of Dragaeran society, and the establishment of the Empress. While not at the pinnacle of society, he certainly writes from a privileged perspective.

  Vlad and Paarfi agree that the most salient features of the border between the domains of the living and the dead can be determined: the actual border is located somewhere between the lip and bottom of a waterfall, hidden by mists. Above it circle giant jhereg, and upstream along the river, animal sculptures indicate where the various Houses launch their dead over the Falls. There is a distinctness about this border, an abruptness evoked by the water cascading down Deathgate Falls, although the actual border is not visible from the top. Here, where the Blood River rushes down a sheer cliff, is the only place where the Paths of the Dead and the domain of death can be entered. Incidentally, the similarity between the Blood River and the Phlegethon is one of several parallels to Dante’s Inferno19 that can be found in Vlad’s journey into the Paths of the Dead. Others include how Vlad’s companion throws down a rope to descend the Falls, just as Virgil does (Taltos 105–7; canto xvi), and although Vlad and Morrolan climb down themselves, the serpentine, two-legged jhereg that circle in the air above the Falls echo the monstrous Geryon who carries Virgil and his charge down from the seventh to the eighth circle (canto xvii). Even the encounter with Lord Baritt, believed by Morrolan to be still alive (Taltos 131), parallels a similar meeting with the friar Alberigo (canto xxxiii). But where Alberigo’s body supposedly remains among the living inhabited by a demon, Baritt explains his presence by the temporal peculiarities in the Paths. (Paarfi discusses the behavior of time in the Paths in detail; see Paths 175–76, 358.)

  “[T]he foot of the falls,” Vlad explains, “isn’t in the same world as the lip.” He adds that attempts have been made to reach the bottom of the Falls by other routes but that no one has succeeded (Taltos 99). The exact point where you pass from one domain into the other is obscured by mists and water spray, which also make it impossible to estimate the height of the waterfall. Vlad relates how people who have returned from the dead (as undead) vary in their assessment of the waterfall’s height: “The reports say it is a mere fifty feet, that it is a thousand feet, and any number of distances in between. Your guess is as good as mine, and I mean that” (Taltos 99). Vlad’s emphatic invocation of the narratee underscores how unknowable the height of the Falls is—if the guess of someone who has never been there is as good as that of Vlad, who has climbed down the cliff, it must be impossible to know. The fact that neither the height nor the exact point of crossing can be determined (and bearing in mind Clute’s description of a threshold, discussed earlier) suggests that rather than constituting a distinct demarcation, the waterfall marks a gradual transition from one domain to the other.

  The gradual transition may in fact extend into the valley above the waterfall. Depending on who the narrator is, the domain of the dead affects the domain of the living, turning the valley into a crosshatch where both domains inhabit the same space. This crosshatch effect is most evident in Vlad’s narrative, as he mentions how two characteristics of the land of death affect the land of the living a fair distance from the Deathgate. Sorcery becomes more difficult to perform as he and Morrolan approach the Deathgate; and the atmosphere of the place is somber—it is too quiet to be in the vicinity of a large waterfall (Taltos 96, 100–101). Paarfi, on the other hand, mentions nothing like a crosshatch at all.

  The two narrators’ differences on this point cannot be reconciled, although it is clear that they owe partly to the narrators’ difference in character. Vlad’s narrative is informed by his apprehension about going into the domain of the Dragaeran dead, a domain that he has been told he is not allowed to enter. In Taltos, the overall atmosphere around the Deathgate Falls thus becomes one of hesitation rather than certainty, as the descriptions tend to emphasize impressions as much as actualities: “it seemed like you could wade in it,” “[t]his did not seem normal,” “it seemed to me that this was a calculated effect” (100–101; my emphasis). The narrator of the Khaavren Romances employs a different style altogether; both the style and the contents of his story restrict the border to a space between the lip and the foot of the Deathgate Falls, so that the valley does not form part of it. Paarfi attempts to give an account of the events that is as factual as possible (albeit with some poetic license). To him, as a Dragaeran, the Paths of the Dead hold much less mystery than they do to Vlad, and although he professes no personal stake in the affairs he narrates, his is the heroic tale of how the current Empress won her throne and reinstated the Empire. Paarfi’s third-person narrative leaves out descriptions of any perceived atmosphere or other crosshatch effects noted by Vlad; the historian’s straightforward narration dispels the suspense associated with the Deathgate through meticulous descriptions of the topography, flora, fauna, and population of the surrounding area (Paths 314–15). His insistence that there are “mysteries surrounding Deathgate Falls that the historian [i.e., Paarfi] will make no claims to have solved” (Paths 319) does not add much in the way of mystery to his hindsightimbued accounts.

  Whether the performance of sorcery is affected by the domain of death is equally impossible to decide from the two narrators’ accounts. Where Vlad is clear about this effect, Paarfi mentions no diminution of any sorcerous abilities; one of his protagonists is actually prepared to do magical battle with an opposing sorcerer only a few steps from the waterfall (Paths 329). Closer examination makes both cases tenuous, however. Vlad never verifies Morrolan’s assertion that sorcery becomes increasingly hard the closer to the Falls one comes (Taltos 96, 104). Given that the Dragonlord explains that he discovered this in a fight that he, according to Paarfi’s story, was nowhere near, there is cause to doubt him; he might, for some reason, have lied to his companion. As for Paarfi’s account, the magical battle he mentions never takes place; sorcery is never employed near the Falls in either case, so Morrolan’s claim is no
t disproved. Consequently, the border might be described as a crosshatch in Taltos owing to Vlad’s being nervous and misinformed; or it might not be described this way in The Paths of the Dead owing to Paarfi’s imperfect knowledge.

  The two narrators give similar accounts of the way back to the domain of life—that is, of crossing the border in the other direction. In both cases, the return route is indeterminate until the protagonists find themselves back in the land of the living. The actual point of crossing is, again, impossible to determine; it is only clear once the characters have returned that they have in fact completed the crossing itself. Although the way back to life is as much a one-way track as is the way down the Falls, the indeterminate nature of the exit is more pronounced than the entrance. Vlad and Paarfi agree that it is impossible to predict where in the domain of the living people will turn up if they manage to return from the domain of death (Taltos 99; Paths 315). Yet both Zerika and Vlad leave through a cave. These caves (or this cave; it is never made clear whether they are in fact one and the same) come as surprises to both of them because of their great weariness (Taltos 173; Paths 387), illustrating how the border cannot be anticipated before it is crossed; it cannot even be identified in retrospect.

  Unlike the two examples to follow (from Stardust and the Abhorsen series), in Taltos and The Paths of the Dead entry and exit across the border do not coincide, either spatially or in terms of construction. Both directions have their indistinctness in common: in neither case can the actual point of crossing be identified, which stresses the gradual nature of the border. The entrance to the domain of the dead is always located at the Deathgate Falls, however, whereas the location for the exit varies. Furthermore, the return trips construct a border that does not correspond to any of the functions Clute mentions for a physical threshold: it lacks the distinctiveness of a spine, and there are no borderlands for which it could serve as a spine; nor is there any suggestion of a crosshatch or polder. Instead, it combines a physical aspect (moving, physically, from one area to another) with a metaphorical one (achieving a certain feat, fulfilling some condition, passing some test). Orpheus and Eurydice illustrate this combined border: the border between Hades and the land of the living is a physical location in that they can walk there, but it also entails a test of Orpheus’ faith, a test he fails by turning around to look at Eurydice. Brust’s protagonists are similarly subjected to a condition: they cannot leave if they fall asleep. The focus when they enter at the Deathgate is on the physical challenge; when they leave, their weariness causes a shift in focus to the metaphorical aspect and to the achievement needed to leave. The border, and the passing of it, cannot be anticipated in their state of weariness; it can only be established once they have passed it. This shift in focus not only constructs the border differently; it suggests that returning to the domain of the living is actually a test, continued life being a gift only bestowed on those who are worthy of it.