Warbreaker (97 page)

When you’re the bigger country, the one who historically won conflicts and wars, you often don’t much notice the people you’ve stepped on along the way. While the smaller country may create a rivalry with you, you may not even realize that you
have
a rival. This is what happened with Hallandren and Idris. While some people push for war, the general populace doesn’t even think about Idris—except as that poor group of people up in the highlands who sell them wool and do jobs they, the Hallandren, don’t want to do.

This can be very frustrating for someone from the smaller country, like Vivenna, when confronted not with anger, but with indifference, about your feelings.

Back to Chapter Forty-Three

Annotations for Chapter Forty-Four

Siri and Susebron Talk about How the Next God King is Created

Siri’s impulse here—that the next God King might not really be the son of the current one—is a good one. She’s actually right, though there are a lot of other things in this conversation she’s wrong about.

More in the spoilers.

Spoiler

It
is
possible for a Returned to have a child. Vo, the First Returned, did it. The God King isn’t special in that he can do it; any of the Returned could, but it requires some special knowledge that—I’m afraid—I’ll have to keep secret until the sequel. Suffice it to say that the priests know how it is done.

The problem is, they aren’t always able to get this to work. Sometimes, they have to do what Siri guessed—replace the God King with an infant Returned. Infant Returns happen very infrequently. It’s more rare than an adult Returning, so there is something sound to the Hallandren reasoning that you have to do something heroic in order to Return. (That’s not true, but it is more sound a doctrine than Siri thinks it is.)

The God King’s priests take an infant Returning as a sign that it’s time to change God Kings. At that point, they choose a wife for the God King and hope that she’ll be able to conceive the next God King. They’d much, much rather that the God King be the literal child of the previous God King. (Susebron wasn’t, however. And his mother was indeed his mother, a poor merchant’s wife from far northern Hallandren.)

Now, an infant has indeed Returned. The priests see this as a major vindication of their faith, as they made the wedding contract with Idris twenty years ago and now, just when the marriage was to happen, an infant Returned. The problem is, now they’ve got to push Siri to get pregnant, because they’re on a deadline. They don’t want to have to replace the God King with this infant; they’d rather use his own child. Hence the push for her to have a child.

But if she doesn’t, they’ll go with plan B. Note that there’s not, in fact, any danger to her either way, no matter what Bluefingers says. She and Susebron, following the change in power, would have been taken to one of the isles in the middle of the Inner Sea and kept in a lavish lifestyle as long as they lived.

Siri and the God King Have Sex

You probably knew this was coming. At the very least, I hope that you were hoping for it. They are, after all, married. I thought it very appropriate that this happen, as the two of them have been falling in love for some time now. And beyond that, of course, it ramps up the tension in the book dramatically. That’s always a good thing.

Back to Chapter Forty-Four

Annotations for Chapter Forty-Five

Lightsong’s Very Short, Two-Paragraph Chapter

I was tempted to make this annotation the longest in the pile, just for irony’s sake. But I thought that might get boring. So you’ll just have to settle for the only annotation in the batch that’s longer than the chapter it annotates.

I’ve long wanted to do a chapter like this, one that’s just a few sentences long. (Or even one sentence.) I toyed with it in
Mistborn
, but never found a good place for it. When I was writing this book, it seemed very appropriate here. Something about the rising tension, the need to include a scene from Lightsong, and the poignancy of having a chapter like this right here—following the previous Siri chapter—worked perfectly in the book.

The reason I’m most sad for making Lightsong’s dreams of earlier chapters more violent is that I lose some of the punch of this chapter. Originally, this was the first place he dreamed explicitly of T’Telir burning. Before, there were hints, but he never remembered the actual scene of fire. Then we got here, and it hit with a
pow
.

But the need to keep the tension up earlier outweighed the need to make this scene unique. I have had troubles in the past with my endings being too overwhelming, particularly when compared to earlier points in the book. So Joshua’s constant pushing on this point here was very appropriate. I think the book is stronger, even if this chapter is slightly weaker.

And yes, he dreams this while Siri and the God King have sex for the first time. That’s not a coincidence.

Spoilers

Why does Siri having sex with the God King make Lightsong’s dreams turn more violent? Well, it means that the impending disaster is far more dangerous. If she is with child, then the tragedy of her death is that much greater. Beyond that, her having a child (or being thought to be going to have one) is part of what makes Bluefingers do what he feels he needs to in executing her.

He might have done that anyway, but the actual event of the consummation of the marriage is a powerful turning point in the karma of the city and the future of the world. And Lightsong, who is extra sensitive to these things because of being a Returned, is affected by that change in what is coming in the future.

Back to Chapter Forty-Five

Annotations for Chapter Forty-Six

Vivenna Sits Alone, Waiting for Vasher to Get Back, and Thinks about Her Place in the World Now

Vivenna needed a “Who am I?” moment. I struggled with this chapter because I worried it was simply about a character who sits around and thinks. I tend to put a lot of those into my books, and I don’t want to overdo it. I realize that many readers don’t enjoy those kinds of scenes as much as I do.

The thing is, Vivenna has had so much pulled out from underneath her, she needs time to establish for herself—and for the reader—who she really is. What about her has made the transition? Now we’re getting the real and pure Vivenna, the true woman that she is inside. That determination and, more importantly, that desire to be skilled and competent form the core of her identity.

Now that she’s cast off the trappings, the things she was pretending to be and the excuses she was making, she can take these elements in herself and do something with them.

Vasher Shows Her Some Commands with the Rope

I’m sorry it took so long in the book to get to a point where we could start exploring the magic system. I wanted to do it differently from the previous two books I’d explored. In
Elantris
, we didn’t get to learn about the magic system until the end. In
Mistborn
, we got it straight out. Here, I wanted to try putting it into the middle—to have us experience it and see it work before we got a lot of the rules. Plus, there just wasn’t a good character to learn about it until now.

Vasher casually mentions that the Idrians used to be Awakeners. That’s true. Before they left, they were as big into Awakening as anyone else—of course, what he doesn’t mention is that Awakening back then was much more new than it is now. It was fresh back then, and the Idrians had some very bad experiences with it turning against them. (And what we call Idrians were just one noble house, the Idrian line, those related to the king and his servants.)

Vasher Explains the Different Kinds of BioChromatic Entities

This is a scene I’d been waiting to write for almost the entire book. Not just because I wanted to get into the scientific rules for Awakening, but because I wanted to pull a good reversal for Vasher. When he begins talking like this, I hope that the reader responds like Vivenna: Who is this guy?

A lot of readers, my editor included, resisted the term BioChroma. They wanted me to simply use Breath, as they thought BioChroma was just too scientific sounding. I like this concept, however. I
want
people to read the book and think it sounds scientific. My novels, my magic systems, have a kind of “hard magic” sense to them. I want there to be an edge of science to them, a feeling that people are studying them and trying to learn about them using the scientific method.

Vasher’s explanations here are dead on. He’s got a lot of good information, and he has a handle on what he doesn’t understand. That alone should be a big clue about who he is. The fact that he never has to trim his beard is another one.

Origin of Awakening as a Magic System

I never did write out in annotation form an explanation of where Awakening came from. I believe I talked about the origin of the term Awakening, but never the actual powers of the magic.

As I’ve said, I wanted to do something that had a very “vulgar magic” feel to it. Something gritty, dealing with the forms of people, like voodoo or hedge magics. I wanted to have something that reached back into our cultural unconscious, and something that dealt with necromancy in a new way.

Those are all pieces of the puzzle. Another piece, however, was the desire to do an animation magic—a magic focused around bringing inanimate objects to life on order to serve you. As I’ve said, it’s very tough to come up with completely new powers nobody has written about or used (though I think I’ve got a few in store for
Way of Kings
). However, a good magic system can be crafted from the interpretation of old powers used in new ways with interesting limitations and cultural connections.

I’ve seen people bring objects to life in books or movies, but I’ve never seen a formal magic designed completely around it.

One of the other things I’m always looking for is new ways for people to gain their magical powers. As much as I like
Mistborn
, the “It’s genetic and you’re born with it” method of gaining magical abilities is just about the oldest and most commonly used way. It’s used so much because it makes sense, and because it’s easy to explain. Breath, and the transferring of it, came from my desire to come up with something different—something that had an economic component, something that allowed anyone to become a magic user, but which still had limited resources so that not everyone could be one.

I’m still trying to innovate in this area, but I think my favorite part about Awakening is the concept of Breath and how it’s transferred. It turns people into resources for the magic, but in a way I hadn’t seen done before.

Back to Chapter Forty-Six

Annotations for Chapter Forty-Seven

Spoilers

This annotation is almost all spoilers, I’m afraid.

Calmseer

Calmseer was indeed a spectacularly good Returned—the last of the old guard, so to speak. She Returned, in fact, in order to save the life of her daughter. She of course forgot this once she got back.

She did complain about not being able to do enough for people, though she had that personality even before Returning. She was the self-sacrificing type who took care of those around her and always had a kindly attitude. She died from an illness she caught while caring for the sick family who lived next door to her. (They’d lost their father to the same illness, and while all eventually recovered, Calmseer herself came down with their disease and passed away from it.)

She didn’t give up her Breath because of what Lightsong assumes, that she felt so guilty for not being able to do more for people. Instead, she saw her daughter come through the petitions line. The woman was brought by her husband, who felt he had no other option. His wife had the same disease Calmseer had. She remembered, at that moment, why she had come back—indeed, she remembered her entire life (that’s common for Returned the moment before they give up their Breath)—and gave away her life to heal her daughter.

Llarimar Is Never Mad or Excited

I put these references in—Lightsong trying to get a rise out of his high priest and never succeeding—because I wanted it to be all the more dramatic when Llarimar really
did
lose control.

Lightsong Uses the Word “Statistical”

It’s very subtle, and my editor tried to cut it three times as not being appropriate, but I managed to fight and get Lightsong’s little thought about statistical probability into his narrative here. This is just one of several tiny clues in the way he thinks and talks that indicates he was an accountant before he Returned.

Lightsong Thinks about How Hallandren Wouldn’t Fall

He’s wrong here. If he hadn’t intervened and taken responsibility, the God King would have died, and another Manywar would have begun. It would have ended with Hallandren in flames, destroyed by the advancing Idrian coalition, who by then would have gained the secret to creating swords like Nightblood from Yesteel, who is hiding in one of the kingdoms across the mountains and who secretly knows what Vasher did to create the sword. He would have brought his kingdom into the conflict. And the world would have burned.

Llarimar Reveals That the Face Lightsong Sees Isn’t His Wife

I’m not sure what readers’ reactions to this will be. No, she’s not his wife—or even his lover.

In a way, this probably makes it okay for him to harbor his love for Blushweaver like he does, though I suspect that some readers are a little disappointed to find that he isn’t imagining the face of his wife.