WiC Reads: Blood of Elves

Jarosław Boberek as Yarpen Zigrin in

The Hexer

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CHAPTER FOUR

It occurred to me after reading “Chapter Four” that Sapkowski hasn’t strayed as far from the model of The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny as I’d thought. Blood of Elves is a turning point for this series, because it’s now a serialized adventure rather than an interconnected collection of short stories…but is it? “Chapter Four” is a story onto itself with a beginning, middle and end: Geralt and company join a caravan led by the dwarf Yarpen Zigrin, they get attacked by elves, and Ciri learns a valuable lesson about neutrality. Now, obviously this is going to have consequences later — this seems to be where the blood of elves of the title is spilled, which will lead to calamity according to one of those ominous prophecies that turn up so reliably in fantasy fiction — but it also stands alone just fine.

I guess this is the method Sapkowski finds most comfortable, and I’m okay with that. We get some good action on the final pages when the Scoia-tael elves attack the caravan, action given weight and meaning after Geralt fills Ciri in on some elven history. I’ve said before that The Witcher seems to take place in a world that’s halfway between J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth and George R.R. Martin’s Westeros, and Sapkowski’s elves are a good example of that. As in Lord of the Rings, they’re fading out and dying away, but while there’s an ethereal quality to them, they’re more earth-bound than Tolkien’s creations. They’re swayed, according to Yarpen, by messaging from the Nilfgaardian army, and are trying to reclaim the land humans took from them long ago. In fact, all the members of non-human races are going through a period of existential dread. Some, like Yarpen, choose to try and live alongside the humans, but others fight against them. There are political and cultural overtones here that wouldn’t be out of place in one of Martins books. If Westeros had elves and dwarves and the like, they’d probably behave like this.

Is this story headed toward a race war? It’s starting to feel like that. There are contingents of humans who want to wipe out the members of all non-human races, even people like Yarpen who want to live with them in harmony. The caravan ends up being a ruse; Yarpen was transporting goods on behalf of the human king, but his barrels are loaded with stones. It’s not said outright, but I think the idea is that the king was hoping the dwarvish caravan would be attacked by elves, with the best case scenario being that everyone died? This whole incident is bad for human-dwarf-elf relations, is all I’m saying.

I was moved by Geralt’s history lesson in the ruins of Shaerrawedd, a once-vibrant elven palace destroyed by its creators when humans encroached on their land. The story of Eilirena, the elven hero who led young elves into a losing battle against humans hundreds of years ago, is lyrically tragic, and further differentiates these elves from Tolkien’s. In Middle-earth, the elves are leaving. It’s melancholic. Here, the elves don’t have anywhere to go, so they’re going extinct. It’s apocalyptic. Like Ciri, I got a better idea of what being “neutral” means to Geralt. It’s not that he doesn’t care about human life; he just sees both sides of the conflict and doesn’t want see the old world fade away.

I continue to want Sapkowski to be looser with his prose, but at this point it’s clear that’s a pill I’m just going to have to swallow. I hope that’s something the Netflix series improves upon. Still, this was a good chapter.