Man, Chapter 5 is a doozy. It's not that long of a chapter but it's very dense, filled to the brim with ominous foreshadowing and some setting up the pieces in the board so we can start to gleam, more or less, where they're supposed to be headed. And even Bugg offers us a summary of the whole thing while still being vague enough so the reader can both fill in the blanks and also wonder what's he actually talking about.
Me trying to summarize the whole thing would be kind of a pointless exercise imho since I don't fully grasp the whole subtleties here but I'm more or less figuring out the "what" but still TBD on the "why".
So... Hannan Mosag is trying to free/dig up Sheltatha Lore. Then forms an alliance with Sukul Ankhadu, which is one of Sheltatha's sisters. Sukul eats humans (literally devours a hapless fellow that happened to follow her on the streets) and has diluted Edur blood in her veins. The sisters aren't on particularly friendly terms with each other as we see then a meeting between Menandore (yet another sister), Shadowthrone, Hood and The Errant in which ST agrees to 'help' Menandore with her sisters in exchange for a gate into Starvald Demelain.
Thus: WHY? Why do the sisters want to kill each other? Why does Shadowthrone want access to Starvald Demelain? Oh, I'm sure it's all RAFO, but all those things keep swirling in my head until I keep on reading the book.
This chapter really feels like a chapter in which alliances are made: not only Shadowthrone and Menandore, but also Hannan Mosag and Sukul agree to help each other with a particular problem they seem to have in common - Silchas Ruin. The albino Andii is looking for Scabandari Bloodeye and, since the erstwhile Warlock King thought that he was buried there near the Azath in Letheras it's "safe to assume" Silchas does too. Which means he'd be falling into a trap, since it's Sheltatha Lore who's buried there instead of Bloodeye - and both Hannan Mosag and Sukul want Silchas destroyed. Mosag promises TCG will help when the confrontation begins because Silchas has allies (we know them) but in exchange, he wants to use the Finnest that houses Scabandari's essence/power for its own secret purposes. Sukul Ankhadu agrees to this even though she believes treachery will be inevitable - even so, she warns Hannan Mosag that if she senses TCG escaping instead of helping them with Silchas Ruin, the sisters will snitch everything they know to the albino. Seems like a nice, easy to follow idea, huh? :P
And there's another alliance forming here, between Nisall (the First Concubine) and Bruthen Trana, who we last saw trying to convince Triban Gnol into letting him see the Emperor. This was a damn good scene, since it's clear both Bruthen and Nisall are pretty sharp people that are acutely aware of Gnol's machinations. Wonder where that will lead to.
Oh and before that, Nisall had a pretty chilling conversation with the former Queen, Janall. She's a shadow of her former self, mind twisted almost completely by the power of TCG, but... there's like hints in there of the person she used to be. To me it feels more like she's being like... possessed, or programmed, in a certain way. As in the 'actual' Janall still exists under layers and layers of insanity. In this sections there's also a very telling moment courtesy of TCG speaking through/within the former Queen, a moment that makes us reevaluate a lot of what we know regarding the pulled-down God: "I am your god. I am what you made me. You all decry my indifference, but I assure you, you would greater decry my attention. No, make no proclamations otherwise. I know what you claim to do in my name. I know your greatest fear is that I will one day call you one it - and that is the real game here, this knuckles of the soul. Watch me, mortal, watch me call you on it. Every one of you." Once again the idea of a god, a deity, being actually fashioned in the worshipper's ideal instead of the worshipper deciding to follow the deity's ideals/dogmas. And it's chilling to know the god's thinking "hey, I'm aware of the shit you do in my name. One day I'll call you on it and *you* will know. Be thankful you get my indifference for the time being" because I'm sure there'll be some incredible reckoning when that happens. So... what does TCG actually want? How different is he from what his worshippers believe he is?
Apart from that, man, there's so much in this chapter - the absolutely hard to read scene between Tanal and his prisoner Janath, who's quickly becoming one of my favorites because of both her incredibly brave resistance and just how clearly she sees Tanal and the Patriotists for what they really are. Her takedown of those pieces of shit is so damn accurate and glorious ("Delicious irony. Karos Invictad became a victim.") but it's also brutal to see what happens next when that brute lashes out at her. Of course, in a certain way, she still wins since he's so fucking SHAKEN by the idea that he might get what he deserves, whether in this life or the next. He's basically shitting his pants at the idea of justice.
And we still have the monologue from Janath that informs us that Letheras was built atop some KCCM ruins that predate both the Jaghut and the Azath... *and* that it might've been a climate change type of cataclysm that the KCCM were trying to protect themselves against. And we also get Rautos discovering yet more artifacts that can be fit into a "mechanism". Once again the idea of the past coming back to the present, never fully buried or forgotten.
I've talked a lot and it still feels I'm leaving lots of shit behind. Seriously, this chapter was dense but with a looooot of good stuff.
