WiC Reads: Blood of Elves

CHAPTER FIVE

Once again, the latest chapter of Blood of Elves feels distinct from the ones before it — we pick things up with Geralt some time after he’s dropped Ciri off at her proper, non-Witcher boarding school — but “Chapter Five” doesn’t feel as self-contained as “Chapter Four.” Although we don’t immediately realize it, most of the chapter is driven by Rience, the mysterious rogue sorcerer (according to new character Philippa Eilhart, anyway), who nearly tortured Dandelion in “Chapter One.” Who is he? Why is he after Ciri? What devilry is at work in the wider world of The Witcher?

We still don’t have answers to most of those questions, but it looks like Blood of Elves is going to start digging into them. And Rience is most likely from Nilfgaard. I’m prepared to make some predictions: the two main conflicts in the Witcher saga will be a war between intelligent species and a conflict between Nilfgaard and the rest of the “Four Kingdoms,” as they’re named here. Witcher fans: how am I doing?

As for the chapter itself, I liked how it contrasted Geralt’s old world-style approach to monsters and monster-hunting with that of Linus Pitt, Master Tutor and Lecturer in Natural History at the Oxenfurt Academy, The Witcher’s answer to the Citadel in A Song of Ice and Fire or the University in The Kingkiller Chronicle. Every fantasy saga has to have a seat of higher learning. (Although is there more than one seat of higher learning on the Continent? To be continued.) Pitt prefers to think of monsters as heretofore undiscovered animals, and has no shortage of names for the hostile creature Geralt has been hired to protect a trading barge from. Geralt has only one name for it: an aeschna, a many-clawed, razor-jawed monster with a hunger for human flesh.

The conflict between magic — the old ways, represented by Geralt — and technological progress — represented by Pitt — is a rich one. Here, all of Pitt’s high-minded theories about undiscovered miracles of biology collapse when confronted with the dangerous reality of the aeschna, which of course attacks the barge. It’s clear what side of the fence Sapkowski falls on; in “Chapter Four,” Geralt’s historical understanding of the aeschna soundly trumps Pitt’s academic approach.

But like I said, Rience drives this chapter. We don’t find out at the time, but Geralt took the job on the barge hoping to draw Rience out. It doesn’t work, but he is attacked by a couple of thugs sent by Rience, both of them disguised as Temerian guards. (I’m still getting used to all the placenames in The Witcher saga — Temeria, Redania and the rest.) We’re getting closer.

In the other half of the chapter, Dandelion pays a visit to the Academy in Oxenfurt, his alma mater, and finds it comfortingly similar to how he left it to seek his fortune as a poet and minstrel years ago. His reminiscences are fun, but the point of following him is so he can be escorted before Sigismund Dijkstra, a spymaster for the Redanian government. Like everyone on the Continent, he’s looking for Ciri, whom Geralt has safely squirreled away. Philippa Eilhart, a senior member of the premiere wizarding order in the land, is also after her, although she’s stingy on the details. I think it’s high time we get some of those.

Also, Philippa can transform into an owl, which is solid.