Lords and Ladies
5 ~ Tripod
We have many pages of clues regarding the Lackless family and so we should be able to create the biggest storyline so far. However, flicking about between all of their assorted names can only confuse matters unnecessarily so I will put my faith in a line from Caudicus as a truth we can trust and I will henceforth use the root translation of Lockless as the true family name to be used from this page onwards and say All Löeclos is One Lockless
'The family was called Loeclos or Loklos, or Loeloes. They all translate the same. Lockless.'
If the Lockless family name is the eldest of all family names (and trust me it is) that means that their name must have also been the first family name which at the time would make them the only noble family that there was. They ruled the land from the mountains to the sea, until some of the 'squabbling sea kings' we heard about one day rose up to became powerful enough to steal some bits of land off of them. Now modern history, 4Corners history, which is also church approved history, began on Tehlu Day the day after Tehlu and Encanis burnt together on the wheel in Atur and this important date would technically have recorded as year#1 of everything that has happened ever since. This Tehlu angle draws a parallel with how we view our own years as being counted since the time of Jesus.
But with Tehlu having just left this mortal world, who would all the people that he had just saved wish to rule them in the future of his land of the free? Lots of people would say this job actually went to the first king of Modeg and that answer clearly has won a lot of support. Some KKC readers might suggest Lord Selitos would now make a return to power and run for a second term in office, but he had other fish to fry. According to Kvothe in this part of the world the first kings of Tarvintas were the Calanthis family and that might well be true, but I reckon if you change the question to who was the first Queen of Vintas then the only possible answer would have been Lord Tehlu's mother, the Lady Perial who was now the most important Lady in Temerant. Tehlu's path began right outside of her front door meaning that her house must then be regarded as being the first house on Tehlu's side of the path and so would be house #1. Aka House Lockless. Exactly why she adopted the Lockless monicker as her family name is a task that will likely take up the remainder of this whole chapter.
Lady Perial's Hat
Back to the more recent Lockless family members then and I still remember when I was still new at this kkc game and my very first penny dropping moment was when I thought about Kvothe’s mother, who we are specifically told was once a noble woman. That one clue to the past fitted very nicely in many small ways with other passages elsewhere in the text, such as that among her life skills is a glimpse of a noblewoman’s education that includes a flair for classical language alongside a comprehensive knowledge of court etiquette and protocol in high circles. So we have a woman of noble birth who was suduced by cords of chorded song, fell in love, and ran away with an Edema Ruh trouper. By an amazing coincidence, this exact same thing also happened to the previous Lockless heir who we discover was called Netalia, who also ran away with the travelling ravel. Could it be possible that Netalia had simply changed her name to Laurian for the usual reasons and that in all actuality these two people were one and the same person? A bit like how Kote has changed his name from Kvothe only that his name change was for a few unusual reasons, too. Unsolved mystery concerning the re-naming of older names does seem quite normal within the Lockless family tree.
The more I thought about it, the better it sounded and I was convinced I was onto something big… I later found out that I wasn’t actually the first to think up this theory, just the latest in a long line of newcomers to the game who have spotted this easy clue first of all and this was the most common theory that other people who were reading the books closely had arrived at so far. It's also the only real theory than everyone agrees with today. But we all have to begin somewhere, so this piece takes me right back to a time when I didn’t even have a proper kkc notebook to scribble my mad ideas in. This is a Triangle problem and it goes something like this.
We are trying to establish a three way link between ‘Dark Laurian, Arliden’s wife' and Meluan Lockless, the heir to the Lackless Family name andctgen link them both with the classical character ‘Lady Perial’ from the play For All His Waiting.
Linking them all together correctly will allow us to arrange them more permanantly in a lump of three things to use in conjunction with all the other bricks in our wall, a bit like sygaldy only with triangles. The three points we shall call L M and P. for obvious reasons and firstly, we are trying to justify that L=M until we are firmly convinced that it is true. If this was sympathy class you would be focussing upon your Alar. OK? Then off we go.
Laurian {Lockless} Meluan
Sister Piece
Meluan passionately hates all of the edema ruh for their part in her sisters’s infamy, although what she thinks of her sister herself is not known, Shame? Anger? Respect? The truth is well hidden but the story is well rumoured. Even Caudicus' history books tell of the eldest heir abandoning responsibility which means that if this is a recent publication and is not talking about a previous member of the family from years ago, then the story of Netalia Lockless eloping with a Ruh trouper is pretty widespread news and not just a hushed up family secret. Court gossip and rumour might even put the name Arliden the Bard as the other half of the equation and scandal does seem to happen rather frequently in the family’s long history. Perhaps Meluan wants to believe that her sister was tricked, or lied to, or kidnapped even, or perhaps underneath she really just hates her wayward sister for breaking free from her chains of duty and dumping all of the eldest childs family responsibilies onto her own shoulders instead. After all, in a parallel universe it might well have been Netalia Lockless who would go on to court and marry the Maer. But Kvothe’s mum is called Laurian, even the Cthaeh calls her that, so where did Netalia go to?
The big clue here comes along in the song that Arliden wrote about his wife which got him into her bad books enough for her to throw him out of their wagon to go sleep by the fire instead as a lesson to mind his tongue in future no doubt. It seems likely that she prefers the life of an anonymous trouper on the open road and does not wish to be identified as her former self to any unfriendly ears. She certainly didn’t appreciate the remarked upon appalling meter that Arliden had used in order to force his chosen songwords away from their natural pronunciation pattern.
In the song, Kvothe’s father refer’s to his wife as ‘My sweet Tally’ which is clearly a private and personal nickname between them but which doesn’t fit with the name Laurian by any stretch of the imagination. Yet this nickname is later compounded with the line that he made his wife ‘Not Tally a lot less’ a very forced line which clearly plays on words sounding suspiciously like the names Netalia and Lockless both which was enough to convince me of her trueborn identity.
Many other clues exist, not least when Kvothe causes affront to Laurian when he sings another song about the Lockless family women, one which can be taken in all sorts of lewd ways if you disect it enough, and begins with the line ‘Seven things has Lady Lackless.’
This also shows the infamy of the Lockless family since his songs provenence was ascribed to a girl chanting it in The Commonwealth which is a long, long way from Vintas. No wonder she was upset to hear her ex-family name being mocked in rhyme by her own, ignorant son. Or perhaps she knew more about it’s meaning and import than she lets on. If she was born as Netalia Lockless then young Kvothe is obliviously chanting a song which insults his own mother.
There is also the moment when Kvothe meets Meluan for the first time and is absolutely convinced that he has seen her before, although such a meeting was declared nigh impossible. The best answer to that thought would stem from some subliminal family resemblance that suggests she looked like his mum. It might be possible that the once remarked upon visit to ‘relatives at three- rivers’ [ did I put 3 rivers on the map yet?] was actually a meeting of these two sisters and baby Kvothe was also present at the time. That’s about as far as we go as far as the Lockless link is concerned, but it should be more than enough to convince most folk that Yes, L=M is a solid link. It cannot ever be 100% proof, but we only want it to be 33 1/3% to do it’s job today.
Perial (Lady) Lackless
Relativity
Introducing P to the equation is much less obvious. But if we are to have three legs to stand upon…
When we get to the family fall out from the ‘Seven things’ song, young Kvothe, rather conveniently for us, compares the allusions that his songs words made as being no different from those used in the play ‘For All His Waiting’ when Fain asks ‘Lady’ Perial about her hat.
‘I heard about if from so many men I wished to see it for myself and try the fit.’
It’s pretty obvious what he’s really talking about.’
‘The difference is’… explaination given was beautifully, and probably deliberately, interrupted whilst Laurian sent Kvothe to go and get the Tripod!!! HA!!! before she reitterrated that
"The difference is between saying something to a person and about a person."
and Kvothe had unwittingly just done both by insulting her without even knowing it. Her own explanation tells us that as far as Laurian herself in concerned at least one of either Lady Lockless or Lady Perial is actually standing there in the present company. Almost certainly confirming her own title as being that of a Lady. She bangs this nail further on the head by giving another difference (which means that Laurian was officially telling Kvothe three times!) that one is a real person and the other is just a character. But elsewhere in these pages we read about how two supposedly different people can still be the same person when we are related a memory of Laurian telling Kvothe that she knew a man having two separate titles which, by a quirk of fate, meant that he now owed fealty to himself. Bredon confirms that this happens more than you would think, especially among the old families, and you don’t get much older than the Lockless family. That small and otherwise innocuous inclusion in our text could imply that a noblemans title may sometimes be a useful legal ‘hat’ which can be donned as and when required.
"I suggest that you could make it up to both Lady Lockless and myself if you found some sweet nettle for the pot tonight."
This last line puts Laurian herself firmly into the cauldron of this tripod shaped equation straight from her own mouth since this answer implies that she herself is currently the injured party that needs making up to.
If Laurian was not herself involved in the argument in any way then she would not personally feel insulted and nor would she have any need to be included in the sweet nettle apology. Yet she has clearly placed herself within this three legged tripod of names as being one of the injured parties.
The question of who is Laurian really is quite like a costume drama where she once used to be the current Lady Lockless and heir to the family name, but now her role is more comparable to the Lady Perial who I believe was one of the Historical Lockless heirs to this same family name. Laurian then could genuinely think of herself as either kind of Lady depending on which 'hat' she chooses to wear today.
Trying to correlate the church Perial more closely with the Lady Perial in this play is tricky work but thankfully Pat is nothing but consistent across all of his writing in that none of his characters share the same calling names meaning that each one can be regarded as an individual name tag for one person only because Names are important. Perial as two people would be the only exception to this rule (outside of Newarre) and that is a pretty good indicator that as far as Pat is concerned ‘All Perial is One Perial.’
I’ll be the first to admit that the veracity of these latest ‘P’-links are not nearly as strong as that of L=M, yet if it was that obvious a theory then it would likely be equally common knowledge among fans so arguing L=P would be considered as ‘old hat’ by now as well. It would be folly to insist that any such Perial link was impossible as that would enter the territory of faulty logic since you can’t prove non-existence and I am quite happy to put my name to the equation L=M=P. And that should become more obvious the further we go.
Depending on how much faith you have in each link, that the Perial who was the mother of God is the same Lady Perial with the hat who was the original founding Lockless matriarch. That Larurian was the previous heir to this house’s legacy, and that Meluan is the current encumbent of Holy Perial’s historic position will dictate your Lockless triangles strength. It may be perfectly equilateral, or it may be unwieldly and scalene or maybe part-skewed into an isosceles shape by over reliance upon only one part. In order to shore it up into a more solid building block we need to dig a bit deeper and stand a bit further back as we go even further into the Lockless conundrum.
6 ~ Colour Blind
"...when I finally do find one it’s got five eyes: two greens, a blue, a brown and a chartreuse. Then the next one has only one eye and it changes colour.."
Eye colour is important in these books and Arliden’s nonsense is a pretty good place to start. You can work out a lot from eyes which is lucky for us because it’s one of the more obvious building blocks that Pat has repeatedly provided as clues for us to work with and much ink is given over to talking about them. From the Adem’s ‘all eyes are grey eyes’ to Cinder’s being solid black and then there are Faen blue eyes which turn into a solid bright white when the fae come into contact with iron. There is an ancient faen shaper of ‘the dark and changing eye’ and Selitos One-Eye, too. We are told an awful lot about the specific eyes of certain folk from long, long ago and it’s all quite overwhelming to follow, although not a lot is given over to the individual colours of peoples eyes from way back then, that ink is reserved for adding a splash of colour to Kvothe’s own more recent observations. Perhaps the world was a bit more black and white in the old days.
The Eyes Have It
To kick things off, I’ll try working Arlidens problem out backwards for a bit and see if we can spot a pattern to work with. This latest line, to my mind, is best seen as a joke. Kvothe’s dad doesn’t really have these findings in his Lanre note book, It’s just Pat’s clever way of shoehorning the word ‘chartreuse’ into the narrative simply to justify it’s existence. The whole thing is like playing colours to a blind man sometimes, and I feel that he is probably not talking about the past as much as it is referencing the future, and the future is very complicated stuff indeed, the present day is hard enough at the moment.
Chartreuse is a greenish yellow colour and if you are going to resort to using this obscure word for a particular eye colour shade then it is going to surely represent someone like our modern day hero Kvothe since it is remarked upon that his eyes are green with a ring of gold around the centre, and that is as close to being greeny/yellow as you are ever likely to find when talking about eyeballs. A blue and a brown are much easier to assign and since we already have Kvothe on the board then these two will do nicely for representing the eye colours of his closest friends Simmon and Wilem respectively. Our pair of green eyes are more tricky. Elodin and Mola would both qualify on this score, I would like this line of thinking to have also included Fela, or Denna but their eyes are reportedly dark, just like Wilem’s traditional brown Cealdish eyes are. Since we have already got Kvothe down as being the Chartreuse we ought to disqualify his green eyes from also being the same as these missing two greens and suggest we should pick a candidate from the other two names on my list., However, there is much to be said and written about Kvothe’s own colour-changing eyes which oft times, such as during his first whipping, are well known to darken quite perceptibly when he becomes… angry? as Wilem once pointed out, as does Chronicler.
‘Then he saw Kvothe’s [Kote’s] eyes. They had darkened to a green so dark they were nearly black.’
This ocular brightness control Kvothe has is enough to give our hero/anti hero two different shades of green colour possibilities of his own at the same time, and factoring in the ‘ring of gold’ too means that he is actually best suited in these books to represent all of these three green eyes by himself. When he becomes angry his gold rings will dim and his green eyes will darken.
Kote’s eyes, however, appear to have lost their earlier golden ring somewhere along the road to Tinuë. Our favourite inn keepers eyes were also once noted as being ‘so pale a green they could almost have passed for grey.' His eyes are now distant and joyless and elder Kvothe is no longer the bright eyed boy he once was, but then again, he is also accepted as being one of the Adem at heart now and The Adem, of course, all have the same eye colour… Grey.
Surprising Eyes
Adem grey does vary a bit, a touch lighter or darker from face to face, but that might be something like the Kvothe factor of ‘anger’ or ‘Vaevin’ as Penthe calls it, rising up behind their usually expressionless faces.
Maedre , to give him his long name, is the only exception to the Adem grey eye rule and when he was initiated into their ranks he was presented to Magwyn for inspection. She read his three part name and his fate by examining his hands, his voice, and… his eyes. What she actually and physically saw before her was a chartreuse eyed, flame haired, ex barbarian, musician Adem… I blame the parents.
That only grey eyes exist here is testimony to the purity of the Adem bloodlines and it also dictates that the Ultimate Adem matriarch clearly had grey eyes herself, as per Arlidens assertion on the subject. Say what you like about man mothers, all the men have grey eyes as well which confirms the theory beyond doubt. All the Adem have grey eyes, and the grey of their races eyes is as distinctive as the grey of their special swords. It is a genetic legacy passed down from before the days of the creation war and the long forgotten Ergen Empire. It might be true to say that every Adem ever since the creation war, that each of Saicere’s 237 previous bearers, that Aethe and Rethe too, were all grey eyed Adem.
It’s the standout feature of the race, like the dark skin of the Cealdim or the red hair of Yll. Subsequently, we should also be able to assume that if you ever saw anyone else with grey eyes then it could be a sign that they might even have a bit of Adem in their own family history somewhere. The Maer has grey eyes you know…
Anyway, That is how I translate the second of Arliden’s eye quotes. It is Pat’s little joke about the perils of attempting future prediction. Such study will do you no good whatsoever here because this is a History book.
‘A historical basis for Lanre? All the signs point to it, It’s like looking at a dozen grandchildren and seeing ten of them have blue eyes. You know the grandmother had blue eyes, too’
Arliden’s earlier line, though, is where the clues of the past really lie, it is genealogy you can trust enough to write a song about. The important thing here is that we are told that it is accepted knowledge that mothers generally, (but not always), pass along the genetic eye colour down to their children. Man mothers need not apply.
This earlier and more generalised statement from Arliden is more like his own findings should be, and he is saying that if one can only pin down the pattern then it should really supply the missing link that we are both looking for. It the eyes really do have it, then we should be able to see it clearly too, but isolating that link into our own search of ancient timelines is still bloody hard to prove. Arliden was talking about Lanre who was the focus of his whole song and he was clearly not talking about his own son’s snot coloured eyes or his unseen future, he was not claiming to be a Turagior, a word Pat invented because he thought it might come in useful. Arliden was actually doing exactly what we are doing today and coming to the same sort of conclusions, the truth is out there to be found. His analogy is more useful to me right now because it helps point out another nugget of tinfoil I discovered from the very bottom of the Lockless green-gold mine.
A Golden Ring
Kvothe gets his eyes from his mother, he admits as much to Denna, and we hear of Laurian that
‘Her eyes were green with a ring of gold around the pupil’
Which you must admit is pretty definite proof that, regardless of where his red hair may have come from in the genepool mix, Kvothe is definitely Laurian’s trueborn son and is not some weird fairy foundling child, swapped over at birth as the faerie tales spun about him might have you believe. So where did Laurian herself inherit her own quite extraordinary eye appearance from? The answer is clearly that she gets them from her own grandmothers side of the family. Laurian has true Lackless eyes and these specific ‘golden ring’ eye markings are unique in the world that we see at large and probably indicate something rather important.
Do all the Lackless women have them? No. Meluan Lackless is described as being dark-eyed but Arliden’s 10/12 maths don’t rule out their relationship being true and one of them is probably the black sheep of the family whilst the other is following the trueborn family tradition. Perhaps it's a first-born thing. But which one is which? Kvothe’s own eyeball inheritance doubles up his mum’s score to make it 2:1 to the chartreuse as being the answer among what we know of the Lockless family tree, which would mean that if we are correct in our assumptions about eyesight inheritance then we need to ask the question ‘did Perial Lockless have her own ring of gold around her own eyes?’
Now, Pat isn’t going to leave a whopping great clue like that lying around for all to see, simply stating that Lady Perial's eyes match Kvothe’s eyes is far too obvious, especially as this is all part an old family secret, and the Lockless family are chock full of hidden secrets, seven of them at the last count, each cleverly hidden by Pat's prose. But as the old crossword compilers adage goes 'you don't have to say exactly what you mean so long as you mean exactly what you say.'
If we are going to smoothe the crumpled tinfoil of these 7 secret things out gently into a soft acceptance level then I think that we can wager that it would be all rather too convenient for the argument if the words Gold, Ring and Eye were to make an appearance in the same sentence when analysing Perial’s brief description from the tale Trapis tells, and if these key words are actually there to be found then that will surely be enough proof to unlock the theory of the original and ultimate founding Lady Lockless as also being Tehlu's mum.
What we actually get told is this.
‘When he touched her she felt like she were a great golden bell that had just rung out her first note. She opened her eyes and knew that it had been no normal dream.
God going around touching folk is paramount to how they all had their own longnames changed into something that they were not before. His touch turned the chosen ruach into angels, and whilst these ruach, along with everyone else in the world, must have also felt the touch of his iron hammer, Tehlu's own mother most uniquely, did Not. And that fact is going to prove Very important down the line because it makes her Very different from everyone else in the world Instead of the mark of iron that he left on the rest of the population Lady Perial was instead touched with gold , evidence of which would be written in her eyes from that day onwards.
Yes I know that there is a huge difference between a physical ring of gold, an ocular impairment and the ringing sound of a golden bell, but that is how riddles work! Pat's purple prose has hidden the answer words cleverly in plain sight, just like Arlidens clever play on ‘not Tally a lot less’, only this one was a lot better hidden.
The joke is on us though as whilst this last goldfoil nugget should close the case for the accused, obscure symbolism of this kind just makes us think more about the next riddle on the list, which is the line from the Seven things have Lady Lockless riddle that begins ‘One a ring that’s not for wearing.’
7 ~ Unraveling
The secrets of House Lockless are hidden within two confusing riddle rhymes and seven things will likely take at least three tricky chapters to unlock.
Warning: things are becoming more complex now and some Relar level thinking will be required.
Some problems like the door are pretty easy, others like the rings are less so. The whole may be impossible to crack without a third book of clues to help us and a seven fold binding was beyond even Kvothe. Still, we can but try
To differentiate between the two songs more easily it is common practice to name the first chant the girls song and the second chant the boys song. In the girls song I believe the focus is upon the original Lady Perial Lockless herself and it tells us something we didn't know before in that she has acquired a husband since we last saw her. She was unmarried when she gave birth to Menda and so any marriage must have taken place after her firstborn son had left home and probably happened some time after Tehlu Day. This union should have made her husband the new Lord Lockless by default which really ought to have given him a half share in the running of the family estates. That means that something like the Lockless door mentioned in both of our lyrics (which is obviously going to be the secret door which stands on the oldest part of their ancestral land) would effectively now belong to both of them at the same time. However, things like the 'secret she's been keeping' clearly belong to the lady alone since it is her secret. A candle mentioned in her lyrics is clearly labelled as being his candle but there may well be a second candle ascribed to her name as well if the items we are talking about are truly 'his n hers'. Candles are complicated and will be investigated at 'A time that must be right', which is not right now. Seven pairs of items of oddly dual possession (like the chancellor's socks) cannot be ruled out but that path to solving is irrational mathematics more worthy of a complex diagram and can also wait until we have fleshed out the remaining pieces a little better. The boys song is more ambiguous about ownership and I like to think this second song is actually more relevant to the husband than to the wife and so I shall upgrade the girls and boys monickers and henceforth refer to song#1 as the Ladies and song#2 as the Lords, and I intend to put a name to him before we go too much further down this particular rabbit hole.
The Lord of the Rings
Rings are the first pieces of the puzzle given to us in the two Lockless songs.
'One of them a ring unworn'
'One a ring thats not for wearing'
Now that may appear to mean the same thing at first reading but ring lore is an obscure Vintish custom all by itself that has nothing to do with rings found within eyes, apparently.
We hear from Bredon about the tradition of exchanging courtly rings among Vintish society as a time honoured way of displaying your perceived importance. The three levels of ring rank are lowly Iron, Silver for parity and finally superior Gold. Whichever ring you give or receive displays your current rung on the social ladder where kings are at the top and peasants are at the bottom. Gods golden spectacles [NB Jax and tinker,,] will mark Lady Perial as being accorded a status far above any mortal kings in the true way of such things but even if they didn't acknowledge her vision as having any bearing on ring matters, you must agree that any ring sent to her would always have been superior gold as no name could be held in higher regard than that of the mother of God. Not even her husband can claim that accolade as he could at best be just considered Gods new step-father and although we do not know his own ring status to properly compare their relationship, we can assume that he was likely regarded as a silver person in the three ring scale as you wouldn’t insult such a man with iron. If the eyes do indeed have it then I suppose sporting silver rings in your eyes would suggest the closest match there is to having grey eyes. Quite what colour eye would be a match for Iron is tricky but the non specific 'dark' eyes is the ubiquitous description for the iron loving Cealds so perhaps dark eyes of iron will just have to be used to cover 'everything else' for now...(except blue!)
Now if Perial's golden gift came via her touch from God, and everyone else in the world received a touch of iron instead then where did these silver people all come from and what's their backstory? The Adem is the obvious answer but they don't believe in Tehlu which is a bit of a spoke in that wheel and I prefer to follow a much deeper answer. I think that Silver eyes indicate eyes of Ergen origin.
/Now that bit of tinfoil definitely deserves a chapter of it's own so let's just put it on the shelf for now along with a nice Felurian quote regarding silver eyes
"Once, sitting on the walls of Murella, I ate fruit from a silver tree. It shone, and in the dark you could mark the mouth and eyes of all those who tasted it... eyes shining in the dark.'
Greenwood
Later we are told that there is a fourth ring to consider which denoted an even lower rung of the ladder than iron which once appeared in the ring rankings long ago to mark a servant. That practice has now fallen out of use completely and is only remembered as a plot device in a number of old plays, but a play which shows the origins of ring giving would be exactly the sort of place to go digging for answers. Perhaps a fanciful match for a wooden rings respective eye colour might be green and I might even suggest that it suggested a touch of fae in your bloodline...
In a modern day comparison to our historical investigation, the difference in status between the top ring and bottom rung of the ladder is well depicted when the Gold tier Lady Meluan Alveron-Lockless gives a member of the Edema Ruh family a wooden ring with her own name freshly burned into if. This highborn Lady is giving a ring which shows to the whole world that she is taking the most extreme method of making her point by declaring the recipient to be considered as far beneath herself in every shape, way and form imaginable, that the ravel ruh are ranked, in her eyes, as the lowest of the low, that the Edema men are an excresence on the arse of world, or even that they are like the green discharge that drips from it. Compared to her own lofty golden station they aren’t even bracketed as being the same species as herself.*
‘That means to her you aren’t even a person. You aren’t worth recognizing as a human being… It’s not the sort of ring you wear,’ Said Bredon uncomfortably, ‘It’s quite the other sort of ring actually.’
Stapes confirms this on the next page when he asserts that ‘You really shouldn’t wear it’ to which Kvothe replies ‘I’m not ashamed of what I am, If this is the ring of an Edema Ruh, I’ll wear it.’ Stapes sighed, ‘It’s more complicated than that.’
*If you count the Fae as being another species then suddenly my thought about a wooden ring being a faen ring suddenly starts to look a bit more promising as an answer.
Of course Faen Felurian also asserted that were never any human Amyr either meaning wooden might also be their ring of choice, too. The Amyr were of course first formed out of Aleph's Ruach, and the Ruach were the Ergen born survivors of Lanre day, those who may or may not have silver eyes... We really need to head down that choice of the path soon. Stapes is right. It Is more complicated than that.
/So, insertg with a table of wood then iron then silver then gold.
Fae/human/Ruach/gods
Green, dark grey gold
All of these words we can associate with our hero and his eyes will hint at four different bloodlines
The four corners of civilization
Husband/
Diagram eye chart pi chart
Unlke our Ladies songline of 'a ring unworn' which I'm attributing solely to Perial since you don't really wear your eyes. A wooden ring fits better onto the Lords hand as being a ‘ring that’s not for wearing' which is verbatim what the learned Bredon and Stapes have just said and I think that's going to turn out to be the end difference between the First Lord and the First Lady of Lockless. Her rings will always be golden rings and her own choice of ring for him, which might once have been the silver ring of a partner is now downgrades to a wooden one instead. Perhaps she caught him diddling the chambermaid.
This is not a summoning ring at all, quite the opposite in fact, this wooden band signifies the ring of an outcast.
Meluan Lockless should know better than any the gravity of using this old family tradition when she let her true feelings about the Edema Ruh be known to Kvothe. It's entirely possible she once sent a similar wooden ring to Arliden and maybe even sent another one for her sister Natalia, too. Kvothe's new ring he keeps as a memento of his own family reunion and it will end up sitting next to another wooden ring of secrets which he was already given to him by Auri for some completely different reasons. His new ring is a proper male heirloom since if this ring is symbolic of the ring for that original Lockless outcast then given his mothers bloodline this is also his Lockless birthright from his eternal grandfather's contribution the family gene pool. Now I bet you a jot that Meluan wasn't even the first Lockless to ever give out a wooden ring and the best way to tie up this ring cycle would be to discover if Lady Perial also once sent an outcast's ring to her own mysterious husband. Well scandal, strife and separation within house Lockless is just the sort of rumour that has dogged their family name ever since. If my princess Ariel theory is to be believed then it's happening again right now. I wonder if Maer has gotten his own wooden ring yet?
"It's generally accepted that there was some sort of falling out that splintered the family. Each piece took on a separate name"
This sort of husband scandal has bevome prevalent in house Lockless across time but it all had to start somewhere and a good story will always start at the beginning. We can assume that Lord and Lady Lockless must have had at least one child between hhrm in order for the family name to have continued on after them, which it obviously did, but their offsprings eyes could never hope to equal the pure gold perfection of their mother as the fathers silver contribution to the union would have muddied the waters so to speak. Even if there was nothing but inbreeding in the Lockless house thereafter they would none of them could ever match up to the 24 carat Lockless gold standard that greatⁿ granny Perial wore.
I earlier proposed that to keep both of their noble houses supplied with heirs, the Maer and Meluan should agree to share out their offspring with house Vint raising the boys and house Lockless inheriting the girls and I still have no fairer answer than that. If this has been the standard arrangement down the ages, written into all their marriage contracts as part of the Lockless own plenary powers perhaps, then that means House Lockless is going to be a purely female household. This answer will nicely explain why so many family members flew the nest and made their own names elsewhere in the world.
" Lack-key, Laclith, Kaepcaen"
These new names would then be representative of all the male Lockless issue, given over to their respective fathers houses to continue his own bloodline needs but boys were not considered deserving of the true Lockless name. In the worlds oldest bloodline all of the boys are considered bastards and only the golden girls get to stay.
So the first Lord Lockless was apparently given a ring that effectively banished him from the Lockless lands and in those days these lands stretched far and wide meaning then he would have been doomed to wander four rather extreme corners in search of a new family to call his own, one who wouldn't turn him away because of his indication of 'tainted blood'.
Kvothe as a male is a direct descendant of this union. From his mother’s side of the family he already has the Golden rings unworn of the Lockless family's ultimate grandmother and from his greatⁿ grandfathers side he has now received his very own 'ring that's not for wearing.' It is not the original of course but it is still the ring of a true Lockless male heir and it’s even got their name burned into it so now he has the matching set of gold and green. Through him that original family founding bloodline remains unbroken and so Kvothe the Bloodless is now the current favourite candidate to qualify as being the 'son that brings the blood.'
He probably also gets his bright red hair from this original union of the first Lord and Lady suggesting that regardless of their respective eye colours, one of them was also a red head in order to introduce that particular gene into the Lockless DNA. Now, red hair is most famously associated with the Yllish but that mistake was also made about red headed Kvothe by the character called Viari who then corrected himself and instead came to the correct conclusion that red heads can also be members of the One Family. and so if you put everything together pretty much wraps up my opening argument that points towards Lady Perial's ex-husband being none other than that infamous red-headed bard of Yllian, the first Lord of the the Edema Ruh.
Auri say’s that a wooden ring holds your secrets, and Auri is very wise about such things.
8 ~
The Chandlery
Fork Handles
Candles are a recurring theme in these books, not just common candles such as Kvothe is caught with in the archives, but important candles such as the one Auri makes especially for him. The Mauthern pot links Haliax to candles, the Lackless rhyme features them and the Adem may have a surprising addition to the list too. Auri makes a special candle for Kvothe in the slow regard of silent things and we get to see the whole process…well, sort of, and so that is where we shall begin our circtangular investigation into the the lost art of chandlery.
Her ingredients are interesting since two kinds of wax are used, both beeswax from honeycomb and the wax obtained from Laurel fruit. This is important because bees are obviously not plants and the amount of formulae and factoring needed to mix and meld these fundamentally different things together properly, not forgetting the importance of including the intangible dreams of lavender, all together into something that would suit Kvothe’s unique personality is a very long drawn out process. Auri clearly knows her way around a laboratory and has mastered all the necessary skills of artifice to be able to follow the standard chandlers recipe perfectly. But! Auri also knows that to do things the correct way takes time and that vital ingredient is just what she does not have. Even entering the laboratory which involved crossing through Boundary was against her nature ‘For herself she would not dare, but this was simply how it had to be.’ but this step is even more daring. This was not a time for ‘begging favors from the moon’ but given that this was a special occasion and it is for a special person then Auri deemed it acceptable to use special ways of doing things and Auri knows things, secret things, things that even the masters don’t know. If time is the underlying problem, then best practice would be to remove it from the equation altogether. And since she could do that, she did.
‘ She grinned and bought the weight of her her desire down full upon the world. And all things shook. And all things knew her will. And all things bent to please her.‘
~~~
It was not long before Auri returned to Mantle with a sorrel coloured candle pressed with lavender. It smelt of bay and bees. It was a perfect thing.
Master Alchemist Mandrag says that ninety nine parts of alchemy is waiting, but Auri knew this final and most important 1% part, (something she shares with the adem legend Rethe), she understands the part that is not waiting, Thus she acted instananeously and removed time the whole process and, in an instant, had created her perfect present. Exactly how she did this involves poking about with the deeply profound arts that are best summed up elsewhere and can be found in my chapter ‘under lying principals‘ but to put it bluntly, she caused all the different wax to become one wax using the forgotten art of shaping which brings together a combination of live and inert names , beeswax and plantwax to bring you your heart’s desire, and since she was factoring out unwanted raw principals, all things that she wished to remain must now co-exist together in harmony. This bi wax candle has been shaped to be attuned to Kvothe’s unique personality and whilst he might not be perfect, this candle undoubtedly is. And there lies the rub. All perfect things have no imperfections and so will remain perfect for ever. Just like Caesura will never need sharpening, Auri’s candle will never melt because by it’s very nature it can never lose it’s perfectness to any form of unwanted decay… a bit like Willy Wonka’s everlasting gobstoppers. That means that this candle is exactly what Master Artificer Kilvin most desires in all the world to create for himself one day, an ever-burning light that can never go out. What a clever lettuce.
Seeing the Light
Shaped things are rare in the world now, the art has been lost to all but Auri. But that’s another story. Yet I have a rather good feeling that kvothe has already stood within the light of an Ever Burning Candle without realising it elsewhere in these books. It is possible that the candles in puppets lair are EBC too since if any other eternal candles existed, and master Kilvins old legends say that they did, then such things are rare and desirable and probably very dangerous to leave lying around. Any artefact left over from the forgotten days of shaping would be of huge significance and given the time scales involved then such things would undoubtedly have found their way to the University, or rather into the hands of the secret underground leader of that institution. Master Kilvin’s private workshop holds a collection of all the other shaped items and restricted schemata but he clearly knows nothing of any candles. Wherever they may be hiding in the world they should certainly be hidden away from irresponsible people like Kvothe and the best place to hide something is usually in plain sight. An ever burning light means exactly that, they cannot be destroyed and once they were lit by their owner I doubt if they could ever be extinguished by anyone else or rather forced to act against their nature any more than you could blunt an Adem sword or throw a rock and bring down the moon. It is necessary that the original owner of any such candle would be able to control it but no other would have the same alar that he has, rather like a gram is individually tailored unto it’s wearer and any external interference is rejected by the gram itself. If there ever were any EBC that outlasted their original owners then they could be burning still. It all depends whether the candle bearers themselves wished their light to be extinguished or not and that would depend upon whether they considered the blowing out of a candle to be against the lethani.
If you had a few such candles in your posession it seems very likely to me that you would want to keep all these treasures together, safely kept under lock and key in one secure room…together with any other unique artefacts that you may possess, like the adem’s old shaped swords for example.
The Adem sword room is locked although theft would be an unthinkable act among the Adem and untrustworthy barbarians are not allowed here. This was ‘the first locked door I had seen in all of Haert’ says Kvothe, which itself is significant and Shehyn, the head of the school, holds the iron key to open it.
‘The three of us moved into a small windowless entryway. Vashet closed the outside door and the room grew black as pitch cutting off the sound of the persistent wind. Then Shehyn opened the inner door. Warm light from a half-dozen candles greeted us. At first it seemed odd that they had been left to burn in an empty room…’
That’s a very interesting observation, there is an air lock in place to navigate before gaining access to this heart of Haert. Maybe they don’t want their candles to blow out, but if my suspicions are right then that should not be possible anyway. Maybe it is a light lock? One to prevent any this special candlelight from everyone seeing the light of day and that they don’t want any of this special light to leak back into the outside world? Maybe sunlight (or moonlight) can extinguish these flames? Whatever the reason, the outside world must clearly be kept safely away from this inner sanctum. Shehyn held the key and is the likely culprit for lighting them but if these are EBC then the original candle owner could have done that task for her long, long ago. They were also left still burning when the three departed the room locking the door behind them. Why leave a light on when nobody is home? the only reason that makes any sense is ceremony, but that doesn’t feel right to me. Wasting energy is not of the lethani and Pat doesn’t waste ink either so that indicates to me to be a clue that these particular candles are very important. That would support my theory that they cannot be put out, except by the person who lit them, or following my tinfoil theories further they mustn't be put out… If this room contains other shaped artifacts from long, long ago then the proper light for illuminating them would be an ever burning one. I can’t prove it, but i’m sure of it nonetheless.
There is a light that never goes out.
Haliax is depicted on the Mauthern pot with two candles. One was yellow with a bright orange flame, but the other sat underneath his outstretched hand: it was grey with a black flame, and the space around it was smudged and darkened like shadow. This important representation of secret things would seem to represent Haliax trying to extinguish a flame, or looking at things from another viewpoint, he could be trying to protect one! Taborlin the Great is also famously associated with owning a candle, it is one of his useful tools along with his coin and key which funnily enough are also some of the gifts that Auri has given Kvothe so far. TTG knew the names of all things and so he should by rights have all the necessary naming powers to make perfect things. There is also an argument about whether his sword, Skyaldrin, was made of copper or not because as Dedan points out copper wouldn’t hold an edge. But a perfectly shaped sword would be more than mere copper and this would render that argument invalid since shaped items do not decay. A master namer would most likely only employ perfect tools and so they would be unbreakable, hence the attempt to confound him by locking them away instead of just destroying them. It would seem likely that Cyphus the wizard king would have done just that if he were able but clearly did not and therefore could not. As to the rest of the tools, his coin and key, well I’m in the dark as to all their real meanings and importance myself… I’m only human after all.
Nevertheless, candles are another important link here and we get quite a few pages in these books about ways to link candles during adept sympathy class. Master Dal gets two students to ‘duel’ with each other using their respective alar to over power each others will and the example we are shown involves lighting candles, although there is nothing especial about these tools.
In this class we learn that there are three choices to be made and firstly Fenton chose to use candles for the focus of the competition. Then he had to choose a link, and with candles the link was always either wicking or wax. Thirdly he had to pick a source and opted to use only his own body heat rather than a brazier. Since the choice was for wicking (or straw if you are stupid) the aim was to light your opponents candle using your own blood as a source whilst at the same time preventing him from doing the same to your own candle. I can only assume that if his choice of link had been for wax then the opposite would apply and the boys would be trying to smother their opponents lit flame whilst also keeping their own alight. This is tinfoil thinking, backward mathematics in a binary form which is how tinfoil performs best. If your link is wicking and you begin with an unlit candle then the aim is to make things burn, then when the opposite choice of wax is used as the link an opposite reaction must apply by default and so the entire game would be reversed. Starting with a lit candle (one lit using the same source, naturally) the idea would be to extinguish your opponents flame whilst keeping your own alight. I made that up myself but it is hard to argue against such logic when dealing with the unknown. There is no middle path available with candles, they either burn or they don’t. Prove me wrong if you can.
That is about as far as I’m willing to go on candles for now but there is still time for one last observation. Candles are linked to Haliax and haliax is linked to the chandrian. Fact. Now everyone assumes that the chandrian are named after Chaen, the number Seven, but the correct name for a candle maker is a chandler…Hmmm.
9 ~ Secrets
'There's a secret she's been keeping'
The time has come to start talking about man mothers. It's possibly the most challenging theory to explain to any degree of satisfaction so far without going on for ever or straying too far from the approved text and I'm sure it still won't convince everyone, but it will I hope tie a lot of loose ends together into the most satisfying knot available without any further input from Pat. Now I'm sure you will have differing opinions about this divisive topic, mostly based on your own understanding of human biology. But this is fantay fiction which means that anything is allowed. I've done my homework and I say that all humans need man mothers. Fact.
The Touch of Gold.
Perial, however, was God's chosen vessel and thus is not to be considered as human anymore. She didn't need a Man mother because her son had a God father instead, and his name was Aleph.
Tehlin doctrine says that there is no god but Tehlu but Tehlu is actually just a demi-god. A half god-half human hybrid for which the proper name is a Titan.
Now a true god is a noncorporeal being whilst Perial was born of flesh and blood. But whilst God's can do most anything they desire in their own realm they are like software programmers who work in a different field to hardware engineers and thus cannot themselves operate down in the physical planes of existence, Gods can only affect things here remotely which in Pat's world translates as 'through dreams' or to put it another way, through 'that which comes with sleeping'.
Since Aleph needed a more hands on approach to solving Temerant's demon infestation problem then he needed to create an avatar to work through, and that's where Perial came in. When she passed through the doors of sleep she entered into the spiritual plane we can think of as being middle ground , a place where Aleph could act.
This is the land where deals are struck. Through the Door of Sleep.
Perial said that "Man should never lay a hand on a woman save in love." And since she believes that God is love she willingly offered her services, gave him the requisite permissions and volunteered for duty meaning that this was Not a demonic possession, although that is something which can also happen in this dream realm. The being of light and fire that she spoke with there touched her heart with gold and in doing so 'soldered' her (so to speak) into the altered shape of the gold standard that was necessary for her coming task. Tehlu the Titan was more of a welder who worked with the name of Iron instead. In essence, Lord Aleph who gave everything a name flipped her internal switches into pure fertility mode and her dream body was joined with his dream desire and between them they created a Titan with a solid link to the real world that could now evolve into some new physical hardware.
That's about the best analogy I can think of to put my thoughts into words today. I will go more into the nature of Gods and men when we reach Atur but this computing analogy will, I hope, help to bridge the gap between my words and my thoughts.
Shaped creations by their very nature are made to last and gods golden touch was an eternal one that re-shaped the long name Perial at a fundamental level into someone fit to bear his desire and since his golden gift was never rescinded by their son's touch of iron that meant that once her holy task was done Perial could retire to her household with her gold watch reward still intact.
Perial should now be regarded as immortal, and unchanging , and so by rights she should still be alive today and still be as fertile as ever. She might even be using the calling name of Aculeus if I really wanted to stretch this tinfoil to it's limit.
The memory of Gods golden power is still within her, and gold does not rust so she has remained pure ever since and would therefore be forever fecund from that day forth. And since she has done it once before the second time around should be easier meaning that if she so desired, she could quite conceivably give birth again all by herself at any time that she wanted to. No man mother required. And that's the bones behind secret she's been keeping.
When Perial sleeps and Perial dreams of God she can if she desires become pregnant again. All she has to do is ask and she will receive, and conceive, and so the answer to 'That which comes with dreaming' is, in her case, a baby.
Silver
The Adem also don't need man mothers and probably never have but if Tehlu declared that all of mankind was wicked and needed punishing, how did they manage escape the justice of God? Well quite clearly, God did not consider the Adem in the same light as mankind, and who are we to argue with God?
There is only one explanation which fits in my opinion and that is going to take us away from our Lockless investigation and like Kvothe explains to Caudicus it's best to only focus on one family at a time lest you become too muddled. We shall be following his path to Ademre for a deeper dive in my next chapter but a small spoiler should suffice for now.
Let us suggest that the Adem nation were descendants of those citizens of the one city of Ergen which did not fall under shadow on Lanre Day. That means that the people of that city were the only people in the world to remember the lethani. If God considered that forgetting the lethani was the equivalent of being wicked and of walking on the wrong side of his path then that should mark the path of the lethani and the path of God to be the same thing. The Adem never once strayed from the correct path when everyone else became lost and so under Tehlu's universal justice system they should be found to be not guilty and totally undeserving of the same punishment he meted out to everyone else.
Of course, all of the wicked people would then become jealous of their neighbours for still having a nice unspoilt city to live in once Tehlu had left the scene they probably decided it was acceptable behaviour to take it over for themselves and evicted the grey eyed mutants to go wander the wilderness so that they wouldn't be a constant reminder to this barbarian mob of their own failings.
So when Tehlu came to the Adem he considered what his mother would say and since they had done nothing wrong he decided it was probably best to leave them as they were and so did not impose his iron will upon them.
The Touch of Iron
When Aleph first came to her Perial the Good was most worried for her wicked neighbours.
Perial asked her dream god if he was going to 'do something' for her neighbour Deborah and whether he was going to 'lay his hand on her husband Losel and make him a better man.' Which is rather prophetic of her since that is exactly what He did.
Now laying his hand on people is gods way of changing them. I will deal with the recipe for that particular pie in a later chapter but for now we just need it pointed out that this is exactly how he and his avatar acted to both reward the good and to punish the wicked. One works with gold, the other with iron, and iron rusts which gives all of it's victims a shelf life.
In response to Perial's questions Aleph replied that 'Mankind was wicked and the wicked should be punished' and that
'Man and wife were each others fitting punishment'
So Tehlu's touch of iron was how Gods punishment was to be administered to the masses but his actual sentence upon them for the crime of being wicked was for man to be 'paired' to woman for life. The science behind this punishment of iron probably involves magnetics which would effectively lock their +/- iron molecules together into a new shape making mankind's joint sentence, in essence, to be locked up together and means that in the future each half of the whole would be dependent on the other half for the mutual continuation of their species. These are the facts of life in Temerant as I understand them. Or to put it another way it will always take Two ha'penny to make a whole one.
Using the binding of iron, Tehlu made this so and by renaming everyone afterwards, he locked in this new change for the rest of their mortal lifespan. The result of this reshaping was that from that day forward a woman would always need a man in order to make a baby. And thus Tehlu created man mothers as his punishment for all those who had strayed onto the wrong side of his path.
Perial, of course , was already standing beside him on the right side of his path and so was exempt from this lock and thus is fully deserving of the name Lockless.
The rest of Mankind is now bound to the rules of Iron which will protect them from the wickedness of demons and prevent any future procreation war.
20 ~ Wait! What?
If you have made it this far with your sanity still intact, well done.
The richness of the weaving in this Tapestry of Temerant is becoming quite complex now and it does not want to follow a straight line. Our eyes constantly are being drawn elsewhere as it becomes abundantly clear that everything is related to everything else, and I hope you are starting to appreciate the skill of Path the weaver. However. Us mere mortals can only follow one warp or weft at a time and I will happily admit that I do not have all of the answers. But while the storyline wants to diverge I will try to steer it onto a straigher course which hopefully brings the bigger picture more into focus. Following the main line of the Old Stone Road westwards will eventually bring us to the University and that's more of an architectural endeavour than the theological one. We shall pass through Atur en route and that will involve a deep interpretation of the events of Tehlu Day. We also need to tie up the Adem question and start thinking about Lanre soon but in a final attempt to sum up our Lockless songs , here is my extrapolation of what we have guessed to far. It's quite mad stuff at times , so strap on your Tinfoil helmet before continuing. I'll add a diagram to help.
A Play on Words
Of course, we know that in Naming circles a wooden ring means that the ringbearer in question knows the name of wood and the Lockless box is a prime candidate for also being a shaped article that was once created for purpose by speaking the Name of wood to it. Wood will obviously be more complex a name than stone to master because a tree will naturally have a higher level of vaevin than a stone.
Since I don't exactly know what is inside the box any further credible investigation today would be a waste of ink and brain cells. We don't even know what kind of fruity smelling wood it is made of or even if the tree it came from has long since gone extinct but if the Ladies song is to be believed then whoever wrote it's riddling words purports to know this secret answer as to it's mystery content is, apparently, the Lord Lockless' rocks! Whatever that means. Her husband then would be the proper man to ask but since he has long since left the stage we need to turn back the pages of time to the date when the box was last open since whoever wrote the song must have been present at that time in order to know what nobody else does.
Setting the scene.
The location of this act takes place on the oldest part of the Family estate where stands our mysterious stone door to act as a backdrop. It is currently unlocked and standing open, a single stone door in a frame that opens inwards into darkness. The stage lighting is provided by a pair of candles, his and hers. Standing in front of this door the Lord and Lady Lockless are performing the box closing ceremony. This is the very root of the family name and it is most certainly family members only although the promise of a future child might be visibly present under Lady Perials maternity dress. If there were no other witnesses and it is just him and her that know of this secret thing that tells us that one of them must have also written the Ladies song with it's content clue and my money is going on the husband. In her hands she holds her husbands rocks which are quite likely to be considered as whatever got her in the family way in the first place. The Lord, as a bona fide wooden ring wearer knows the long name of wood and he wears this plot device upon his finger and he is holding a suitable piece of wood which he is ready to shape anew. The name of wood is spoken (edro?) and the wood dances to his desire and becomes an open box. The Lady places his rocks inside and the Lord speaks another word of power that tells the box to close which it duly does. Naming and shaping adds a new condition on the boxwood to make it become unbreakable, like all shapen ware is, meaning it can never be opened by force. Ceremony over, he gives the box to his lady to look after, a secret to hold tight in keeping. She, not being a name knower herself cannot open the box again because she doesn't speak the language of wood which is the key to unlocking this lockless box.
Then the rockless lord says goodbye to his lady. The lord kisses the Lady farewell then poignantly kneels before her and sings a farewell lullaby to his unborn son who is growing within her womb.
Then focussing his alar he takes the flame from one candle and puts it into the other to be his light in dark places when all others go out. He marches boldly through the dark doorway , the door closes silently behind him and locks from the inside. As the curtain falls, the closing image is of this forbidding door of stone bearing the legend SATIRALAV.
*Tomes trailer. Now the best box in the world would be one which could be trusted to never open again and this is the best box you can get. But if it is now believed safe from opening then it is no longer dangerous, but nothing can ever be 100% perfect, not in a broken world it can't, and so while this box has a 99% chance of staying shut until the aleu fall nameless from the sky it still has a 1% chance of being opened again one day in the future. Moon numbers. That's how the all things operate. Tldr. You cannot have a light without a shadow because imperfection is part of life.