(Spoilers for _Paths of the Dead_.)
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Peter H. Granzeau [I think] wrote:
> The situation of the Phoenix puzzles me, and Chapter
> Eighteen of _The Paths of the Dead_ don't help me a
> single bit. Parthenogenesis?
Is anyone up for a close reading of the passage on
page 195 of _The Paths of the Dead_ where Verra and
her two sisters discuss the problem? I'll reproduce
it here for easy reference.
] "You explain it," said Verra to Kéurana. "The
] breeding of humans is your domain; I cannot explain
] why two that are hidden can produce one that is
] seen."
] "Let Moranthë explain, because she understands the
] phoenix and its significance, and how it lives when
] it dies, and creates when it destroys, and
] prophesies while making its prophecies come to
] pass."
] "No, let Verra explain," said Moranthë, "because
] she comprehends the Cycle better than I, and
] moreover knows how, to preserve itself, it can
] summon the phoenix, and even cause people to fall in
] love who otherwise might not have met."
I suspect that this exchange will turn out to describe
the solution, although we may not have enough
information yet to figure out how, and it may also be,
as others have commented, that SKZB never intends to
nail all the details down.
I will present a few wild speculations.
1. In the first passage, at first I thought the "two
that are hidden" were the two living Phoenixes. On
reflection, the theory that I like better is that
Verra is referring to Mendelian genetics: crossing two
carriers of a recessive gene ("two that are hidden")
may result in an offspring that displays the recessive
trait ("one that is seen"). This reading makes sense
of the "breeding of humans" reference. That could
mean either that a Phoenix can be produced through
genetic engineering, which is plausible but not
elegant, or that a Phoenix can be produced through
sufficiently methodical breeding of Dragaerans of
other Houses.
2. I can't get much out of the second passage
regarding the problem of the Phoenix Heir. The
reference to how the phoenix "prophesies while making
its prophecies come to pass" does seem to foreshadow
Ordwynac's challenge to Zerika in Chapter 34 that she
"cannot both create the Empire, and use the Empire to
defend it, all at the same time," and her answer that
she will. (This is also a neat way to sum up a basic
property of social behavior: institutions work because
everyone thinks they work.) I suppose traveling to
the Paths of the Dead could be seen as a way that
Zerika "lives while she dies," too.
3. The third passage looks simple in light of the
first, which probably means there are deeper layers of
meaning that I haven't deciphered yet. The reference
to the Cycle's ability to "summon the phoenix" might
refer directly to the problem that a phoenix must pass
overhead when a Phoenix is born, assuming Vlad has
that correct. It also might mean more broadly that
the Cycle shapes events so that the required Heir
eventually comes into existence. That fits in with
the ability to "cause people to fall in love who
otherwise might not have met."
4. My proposed solution: The two living female
Phoenixes -- Zerika and the other, who someone
speculated might be Illista, which makes sense to me
-- will both have children before they die. The
children will necessarily be of mixed descent. At
some point, some agency (maybe Verra, maybe Kéurana,
maybe a Dragaeran or group of Dragaerans, maybe the
Cycle itself) will begin carefully breeding the
descendants of those two sources of Phoenix genes.
Some might be Jhereg, some might be Teckla, some might
be of no House. In the course of the thousands of
years before the next Phoenix Reign, the result of the
breeding project will be at least one genetically
satisfactory Phoenix Heir. Or that's the plan,
anyway.
Comments, anyone? I'm particularly curious to see if
anyone who likes this line of reasoning can fit the
second passage more closely into it. I also wonder if
there's any relevance of the identification (from
_Issola_) of Verra and her sisters as (I think) Night,
Pain, and Magic.
-- Greg
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