by Stefan Ekman
From both Paarfi’s and Vlad’s accounts, it is plain that travelers are tested both when entering and when leaving the domain of death. The main test for entering the domain actually comes once the border has been crossed, in the labyrinthine Paths of the Dead. This test calls attention not only to social segregation but also to injustice in death: both Vlad and Paarfi recount how books are available with instructions that a Dragaeran can memorize before death, as an aid to negotiating the Paths. These instructions are of varying quality, and are passed down in families; reading another family’s book is not allowed. Vlad (characteristically for a Jhereg) reacts against this inequality by proposing to steal one of the better books and sell copies. However, he is informed that such a breach of the rules of the domain would not be possible (Taltos 115). For the living who wish to enter the domain, another test precedes the Paths, as they must somehow make their way down the waterfall. Although Vlad and Morrolan carefully climb down a rope, Zerika just rides off the cliff edge and survives the fall (although her horse does not; see Paths 359–60)—indeed, one character suggests that the Falls will not kill anyone who plunges down them alive (Paths 198, 360). Going in is simply a question of boldness—to dare to enter in whatever fashion. Entering the domain of the dead is therefore radically different from leaving it. Anyone can, theoretically, cross the border at the Deathgate Falls and even enter the Paths. Once in the domain of the dead, alive or dead makes little difference, though, since no one is meant to return; people trapped in the domain of death are to all intents and purposes dead, regardless of the state of their physical bodies. The real test is, in other words, the return journey.
Leaving the land of the dead to return to the land of the living is traditionally the tricky part. “[F]acilis descensus Averno,” Æneas is told, “sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, hoc opus, hic labor est.”20 There are always conditions to fulfill for those who want to go to the underworld—and return. Æneas brings a golden bough as a present to Proserpine (Persephone). For Persephone herself, eating a pomegranate seed is enough to give her an annual stretch in Hades. Inanna needs to find someone to take her place in the underworld. In the Dragaeran domain of death, no matter what else, if you fall asleep there, you have to stay. Both Vlad and Zerika are exhausted during their return trip, and their test is simply to stay awake and walk until they eventually find themselves back in the domain of life. Even the awareness of this condition makes them weary: when Vlad is informed that he must not sleep, he “suddenly felt very tired” (Taltos 148); similarly, Zerika tells the gods that she needs to return to find somewhere to sleep and then realizes that “she was every bit as weary as she had said” (Paths 385). As soon as the characters become aware of the danger of tiredness, the clock starts ticking and the test begins.
Staying awake is not enough, though; only those of the right blood are allowed to return to life. Paarfi makes this into a social issue: Zerika is the heir to the imperial throne and can thus claim the Imperial Orb from the gods, who also want to see the Empire restored. The Orb then facilitates her return. Vlad’s account attributes Zerika’s return solely to the Orb (and thus her birthright), but although Aliera, next in line for the throne, has the same social reason (imperial succession) to return, the deciding factor is revealed to be blood in a more literal sense: Aliera has inherited the right to leave bestowed on her ancestor—her right to leave is a property of her blood, not her social position; similarly, it is Vlad’s non-Dragaeran blood that allows him to return (Taltos 156–58). Even the gods’ ability to cross the border is connected to their blood (Taltos 156), and Morrolan can thus return because he is given a small transfusion of divine blood (172 et passim).
The ability of Loiosh, Vlad’s jhereg familiar, to enter and leave the domain of the dead can be argued to be a question of his species. One of the gods informs Vlad that Loiosh “shares [Vlad’s] fate” (Taltos 156); but whereas the statement gives the impression of being unambiguous, it does not, in fact, say that the fates of Vlad and Loiosh are connected, only that they are shared. Loiosh is allowed to leave, but not necessarily because he is Vlad’s familiar. Instead, both narrators refer to giant jhereg that circle over the Deathgate Falls, the only creatures apparently able to cross from one domain to the other as they carry out the necessary task of eating the dead bodies that are sent down the Falls (Paths 360). As it happens, apart from the jhereg (and the obscuring mists), nothing can be seen of what lies on the other side of the border, regardless of whether one looks toward the land of the dead or back toward the land of the living. Even though Loiosh never attempts to return up to the lip of the Falls as his giant cousins appear to do, he displays intuitive knowledge about returning to the domain of the living. Vlad recounts how his familiar occupies a very important role during the journey back: “From time to time we’d stop, and Aliera and Morrolan would have a hushed conversation about which way to go. […] When this happened Loiosh would say, ‘Tell them that way, boss,’ and I’d gesture in the indicated direction” (Taltos 172).
This description suggests that any direction conveyed by the exhausted Vlad is telepathically supplied to him by Loiosh. It is reasonable to assume that the jhereg is also the one who ultimately points out the cave that leads them to the realm of the living (Taltos 173). Alone of the four, the small reptile is able to navigate his way back from the realm of the dead, sharing at least some of the liminal qualities of his giant relatives at the Deathgate. The fact that a representative of the most despised of the Dragaeran Houses leads two Dragonlords back illustrates how the border crossing can be used to subvert the social order, a topic that deserves further comment.
Paarfi and Vlad clearly express their own social bias in the way they use and comment on the social hierarchy reflected in the construction of the border between the two domains. Death is not a place of social equality. Vlad makes two basic points that display a connection to the social order: Easterners are not allowed to enter this domain of death, only Dragaerans are welcome. This echoes the fact that Easterners can be imperial citizens only if they buy a title in House Jhereg or become serfs in House Teckla (and thus become nominal Dragaerans). Furthermore, Vlad explains how only Dragaerans who are “highly respected by their House” are sent over the Falls (Taltos 74; see also 99); high social status is consequently a key to the afterlife. Considering the animal statues along the Blood River, it is also possible to infer that no Tecklas (and possibly no Jheregs) are sent to the Paths of the Dead. Paarfi’s account mentions how Zerika’s party passes the statue of each noble in the group, but never mentions any Teckla statue or any reaction to such statues by the Teckla lackeys (Paths 318–19). Nor are the two lackeys ever included in any discussion about entering the Paths, and they do not discuss it between themselves. While this does not prove that Tecklas are not sent into the Paths, it implies that at the very least, such a journey is of much greater moment to Dragaerans of the noble Houses. A similar argument can be made for House Jhereg—no Jhereg sculpture is mentioned—but on the other hand, no Dragaeran Jhereg passes along the river near the Deathgate Falls in either story.
The animal sculptures, and the Paths themselves, express not only nobility but also the segregation of Dragaeran society. The animal sculptures, and the various places for launching the dead over the Falls, offer a physical manifestation of the social taboo against mixing blood between Houses. This image of segregation is reinforced further by the fact that each House has its own route through the Paths. That House Teckla, and possibly House Jhereg, is not represented along the river—that they are not sent into the domain of death—would accord with the acceptance by both of these Houses of inter-House marriages and children of mixed parentage. Not only a lack of nobility, but also failure to comply with the segregation demanded by society, is emphasized by the border and the Paths of the Dead.
The implicit and explicit discrimination in favor of the upper classes at the Deathgate Falls, while clearly visible in both books, is used in opposing way
s by the two narrators. Paarfi’s story is one of reestablishing Dragaeran society and maintaining its social order, with an imperial sovereign at the top. The social values of the border match those of Paarfi, and he uses them to reinforce the legitimacy of Zerika’s quest. She and her noble friends all in some way acknowledge their respective animal sculptures; and as they approach the Deathgate Falls, Zerika’s behavior changes in the direction of the autocratic and self-reliant personality expected of an Empress (see Paths 316). Paarfi relates how Zerika deals with the tests both of entering and leaving in a manner appropriate for a strong leader: a constant reliance on her own strength and fortitude, and a focus on how her role as imperial heir and restorer of the Empire (and thus its society) allows her to cross into the domain and return.
In Taltos, on the other hand, Vlad uses the superiority of social status and the importance of segregation as a foundation for social criticism. As they enter the Paths, Vlad’s account centers on how he is treated with contempt by the Dragaerans for being an Easterner and a Jhereg, and thus neither respected nor allowed into the domain of death; and he counters by refusing to abide by traditions or social rules. Once Aliera’s soul has been retrieved, it is made clear how blood rather than social position determines who can leave. That marks the beginning of a subversion of the Dragaeran social hierarchy: in order to return to the domain of the living, the two Dragonlords, one of them the imperial heir, have to rely on an Easterner belonging to House Jhereg (and assisted by a jhereg). Representing the pinnacle of Dragaeran society, the imperial throne itself, as well as a noble House, Aliera and Morrolan need the assistance of Vlad, a criminal from the lowest of the noble Houses, who would not even be a citizen were it not for that House’s policy of selling titles; compared to the Dragonlords, he truly belongs on the lowest rung of the social ladder. Furthermore, Morrolan can leave only through the use of witchcraft, a despised form of magic among most Dragaerans, and by mixing blood, a symbolic violation of the taboo against inter-House liaisons. Social mores are turned on their heads and traditional roles reversed. Vlad, doubly unprivileged, saves not only Morrolan and Aliera but, by extension, the Dragaeran Empire—assisted by a despised and reviled animal, a jhereg. At the same time, Vlad himself would not be able to leave without the Dragonlords’ help, and the three eventually find themselves friends rather than social opposites. Their return thus celebrates cooperation rather than autocracy and heroic self-reliance.
The narrators thus offer distinct differences in perspective on the Dragaeran afterlife. Vlad focuses on the injustice of an afterlife restricted to the few, and it is his refusal to play by the rules that allows him to return to the domain of life. Paarfi, although he reports Zerika’s disapproval of some aspects of the afterlife (Paths 365), treats her quest for the Orb as precisely that: a trial for a hero on her way to save the world. Where Vlad’s sojourn into the domain of death and back again is an act of social defiance, Zerika’s is an act of heroism sprung from social responsibility.
Regardless of whether crossing the border between the domains of life and death is constructed as a means for criticizing or upholding the social order, death in Dragaera is, as was pointed out earlier, not a great leveler. Apart from Dragaerans’ ability to live for millennia, Dragaeran sorcery can resurrect recently dead bodies—making someone stay dead therefore requires a special effort from the killer. Even after death, status and wealth are important. Revivification is very expensive, and thus a privilege of the rich. Furthermore, even in those cases in which revivification is too costly (or impossible for some other reason), not everyone is sent to the Paths of the Dead. Only those “deemed important (and rich) enough” are brought to the Deathgate and sent over the Falls to the Paths (Taltos 99). In other words, this afterlife is not for everyone—which also implies that either another afterlife exists for everyone else (presumably without a geographical position) or these other souls meet some other fate, for instance reincarnation (see Paths 365). The Paths, and the Halls, may be reasonably well known to Dragaerans; but for a large number of the Empire’s citizens, they are not the final destination. To them, and certainly to all Easterners, death remains an undiscovered country, one from which no traveler has so far returned. Discrimination is built into the Dragaeran afterlife, but whether the journey into the domain of death and back is used to criticize that discrimination or to uphold the society from which it springs depends on who tells the tale.
Protection from a Hostile World: Faerie and Wall in Stardust21
Stardust tells the story of how Tristran Thorn ventures into Faerie to find a fallen star in order to win the love of the beautiful Victoria Forester. It was originally published as an illustrated story in serialized form in 1997 and 1998, as a result of the collaboration between Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. Even though it was later published in a text-only edition (in 1998), the illustrations provide an essential paratext that greatly extends the text,22 and it is thus the illustrated version that is considered here.
The narrator introduces the story of Tristran and Victoria by constructing a bridge between the reader and, ultimately, Faerie. From the village Wall, where the two youngsters live, there is a track, the narrator explains, that if “[f]ollowed far enough […] becomes a real road, paved with asphalt; followed further the road gets larger, is packed at all hours with cars and lorries rushing from city to city. Eventually the road takes you to London, but London is a whole night’s drive from Wall” (6 [2]). This almost anxious attempt by the narrator to persuade the reader that Wall is located in the same world as London—that the reader could, in fact, drive from one to the other—could have been written to illustrate Brian Attebery’s description of how extension works in reportorial mode to suggest a connection between the fictive place and the reader’s location in the actual world:
Once we know we are in a story in reportorial mode, we can extend the narrator’s observations in any direction. If the story mentions London, we can assume Paris. We can fill in Tower Bridge and the dome of St. Paul’s, whether or not they are invoked specifically. We can supply Henry VIII and Victoria, Samuel Johnson and Virginia Woolf. Even the least well-read can provide traffic and parks and shops and cinemas to fill in the background of what the narrator actually chooses to notice. Ultimately the world of the story extends in an unbroken path to the reader’s own doorstep. Thus the reader does a lot of the hard work of bringing a story to life.23
The route from Wall to London is offered as a pattern for further extension. From London, the reader can extend the story world to Cardiff, or Vancouver, or Auckland. And to make certain that the extension is not only geographical, the narrator also supplies a number of historical references, clues that allow anyone with sufficient knowledge or interest to work out when the story takes place.24 With a narration set in a modern age of cars and lorries and a story set in the early Victorian era, historical extension is thus introduced along with the geographical.
Stardust is not written in the reportorial mode, however, and the part of the world that is extended is biased toward logic and reason. That this is a fantasy story is given away by its title and subtitle (Being a Romance within the Realms of Faerie); and as if this hint were not enough, the text quickly mentions curious events that happen on a nine-year basis and odd figures glimpsed on the other side of the wall in Wall. Yet the reader is encouraged to extend the world of Wall, geographically and historically. The extension only brings part of the story’s world to life—the lion’s share of the “hard work” of bringing to life what I call mundanity is left to the reader. This extension of mundanity is biased in a certain direction by the narrator’s encouraging measures: the step-by-step route description and the historical puzzle (with men of science smiling disdainfully at any mention of Faerie) imply an extension of mundanity as a place of reason, of logic and science, but devoid of fairies. The world in Stardust thus becomes constructed of two domains: a domain of rational mundanity that extends along the “unbroken path” of the reportorial mode
to the reader’s doorstep and, separated from it by a stone wall, the domain of Faerie.
In fact, mundanity never manages to extend all the way to Wall, and the extension becomes part of the process that places magic and science in opposition. Whereas the path to London is unbroken, the route description unobtrusively takes the reader off that path. Only if followed “far enough” does the road become a “real road.” While the town of Wall and Faerie beyond it are accessible to the reader in a way very different from a formulaic fairy-tale introduction such as “Once upon a time,” or the rather more modern “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” getting there still requires a leap of imagination. Instead, Stardust uses the extension of the reportorial mode to set up a world of two domains, where magic and reason are clearly opposed to each other from the very beginning.
