D. T. Kane reads chapters 5 and 6 of his epic fantasy fiction novel, The Acktus Trials, and discusses the chapter with his audience. 

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The Acktus Trials, an epic fantasy novel, available now: https://dtkane.com/books/the-acktus-trials/
Map of Oration: https://dtkane.com/resources/map-of-oration/

What I’m reading this week:

Vlad Taltos, The Book of Jhereg, By Steven Brust (Audio: https://amzn.to/3sTCZCz eBook: https://amzn.to/3sv3q10)

Silence of the Lambs, By Thomas Harris (Audio: https://amzn.to/3gIhdM4 eBook: https://amzn.to/3szeomi)

(Narrated by Frank Muller, 1951-2008 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Muller) 

Disclosure: The links above are affiliate links. If you make a purchase I may receive a small commission at no cost to you. I use these commissions to pay for overhead such as hosting and editing costs. Thank you for supporting my show!

Characters in this Chapter:

Baztian (Baz): Our main character
Deliritous Torchsire: Baz’s master, heir to Torchsire Library
Rox: Deliritous’s Harbour (bodyguard)
Duke Octavinal Torchsire: Deliritous’s father, head of Torchsire Library
Salastair: Deliritous’s uncle
Trivinal: Deliritous’s aunt

Below are my notes/script for the episode, not a verbatim transcription.

PERSONAL UPDATE

I’ve got my physical copy of the book, finally! I’m about halfway through with my handwritten edits to Part III and that’s going well. And I’m starting to stew over both the plot of Part IV, which I’ll be starting in a few weeks, and also potentially a short story set in Oration that I can give away to fans for free. If you have any ideas for that, let me know!

On a note unrelated to my writing, I’m planning a trip to Chicago in a few weeks and looking forward to that. My wife and I love traveling but obviously with the pandemic that hasn’t been easy lately.

Finally, I think I’m going to start occasionally sharing what I’m currently reading in my spare time, as that seems to relevant to a podcast that I call a book club.

Vlad Taltos, The Book of Jhereg, By Steven Brust (Audio: https://amzn.to/3sTCZCz eBook: https://amzn.to/3sv3q10)

Silence of the Lams, By Thomas Harris (Audio: https://amzn.to/3gIhdM4 eBook: https://amzn.to/3szeomi)

(Narrated by Frank Muller, 1951-2008 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Muller) 

ANAYLIS CHs. 5-6

Alright, let’s dive into our discussion of chapters 5 and 6.

Chapter 5

Thanks (or lack thereof)

We start off walking back to Torchsire from Xavier Library. We learn that Delida slapped Deliritous after his display of insensitivity at the end of chapter 4. And Baz knows that’s going to mean trouble for her. Deliritous, probably not surprisingly, isn’t particularly strict when it comes to discipline, but she struck him in front of all those other Readers. Even if Deliritous doesn’t discipline her, his father is going to.

Baz also broods over how Deliritous doesn’t thank him for saving his life. I like this quote from Baz:

Not even a simple, “Hey, thanks for saving my life, Baztian,” or even a lame wisecrack about how that knife had nearly given him a new ear piercing. Perhaps outright gratitude was more than Baz could expect, but a joke at least would have been an acknowledgement that, if Baz wasn’t a slave, he would have been deserving of thanks.

Baz has some self-awareness here, right? He realizes that perhaps Deliritous is constrained by their relative positions in society from outright thanking him. But couldn’t he show some form of gratitude? Even when Deliritous tells Baz to accompany him to the audience with his father the Duke, it’s only because Deliritous wants to “keep up appearances,” not acknowledge Baz in any way.

Indeed, Rox of all people, Deliritous’s supposedly monstrous protector, gave Rox a nod of appreciation Baz tells us. Now, does this mean Deliritous is really the monster of that pair, or does it mean that perhaps Rox isn’t quite the horror he’s been made out to be so far?

Speakers’ Duel

So they arrive back at Torchsire Library and the guard at the entrance tells Deliritous his father wants to see him immediately in the Receiving Room, so we head there. It’s an audience chamber, right? The Duke mounted on his perch above the rest of the room. We’ll get to him in a minute. But first, the duel!

I like creating little games with rules–I’ve done that a few times in my novels. Here we have two teams of three–Speaker, Reader, Harbour on each side. Pretty simple rules–goal is to touch the other team’s Speaker three times before they do it to you. And Speakers can’t physically touch the other team’s Reader. As Baz puts it, “A Speaker wasn’t permitted to lay hands on a Reader even in duels.”

Alright, now I’m not going to profess to be a master writer. But I’d like to think that at this point I at least know some basics, and I think this dueling scene is a great example of the adage “show don’t tell.” Actually, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t even in the original draft, but I realized it’d be useful for my Readers to see how the core trio of Reader-Speaker-Harbour works together, and I wanted to a way to get it in early enough in the novel that it was useful, so the idea for this duel came to me.

 For me, I think the biggest take away from the duel is just how vulnerable the Reader is. He or she basically just has to stand in place, staring down at their Spoken Book. You really see why they need their Harbours. Back in my World of Warcraft days, the Readers would have been called the “squishy” of the party–they’ve got a boatload of power, but they’re going down quick if someone with a sword reaches them.

We also get our first look at a Creator in action here–that’s the type of Speaker Deliritous’s Aunt Trivinal is using. They seem to be focused on more defensive types of magic, right? Deliritous’s Uncle Alastair is launching lightning at Trivinal and she’s using the Creator to block it with what I call a “blinding aura,” but it’s really just a shield, right?

So they go back and forth for a while, but everything’s pretty much deadlocked. Trivinal counters her brother’s attacks, and the two Harbours are just dueling between them. So Trivinal decides to switch up tactics, and she exploits the weakness I just noted. Alastair’s staring at his Book and she drops her Book and charges him. Remember, all she has to do is touch him to score a point. Alastair tries to flip to a different spell to stop her, but Trivinal’s Creator causes a bright light to flash in his eyes and it’s too late. Trivinal hits him with her rapier (which is blunted I noted earlier, not a real sword) and the match is over.

One final interesting thing of note is that the spell Trivinal has her Speaker cast to blind Alastair? She lets the Speaker Speak it from memory, whispering it into the Speaker’s ear and letting her cast it later. Alastair is angry about this, calling it dangerous. Trivinal obviously is less concerned–
 

You’ve never permitted your Speaker to memorize a simple spell or two? Lighting a candle, soothing a headache? There’s no lasting harm she could cause with that bright light. And she knows my Harbour would have her head off in a moment if she even has a dream of doing me ill.

Couple interesting points here: (1) There’s some apparent disagreement here over what’s proper–Alastair against permitting his Speaker to memorize even the simplest of spells, whereas Trivinal isn’t nearly so strict apparently. So not all Readers view the restrictions on Speakers the same; and (2) Speakers don’t always need the spell Read to them immediately to cast it. We don’t get into it here, but eventually we’ll see, so long as the Speaker knows the Words and is nearby the Spoken Book, they can cast the spell.

You can see how this is both useful and dangerous for the Readers. Useful because they don’t have to pull out one of their giant Books every time they want something simple done. But dangerous because if a Speaker does memorize a spell, they could potentially cast it without having it Read to them first. This drives home the restriction Baz has referenced a couple times already and cites again in this chapter about Speakers not talking unless addressed.

Stop runes were well and good, but in a world where the Spoken Word is power, silence is slavery, and Speakers learned from an early age to hold their tongues or else lose them.

Duke Octavinal

Right, so the Duke dismisses his brother and sister, and none too politely, right? There doesn’t seem to me much love lost between the Duke and his siblings, right? But they also obviously respect his authority, as they make quick if sour exits.

So the Duke. Let’s read out first description of him again:

In that chair sat Duke Octavinal Torchsire, third of his name. His red silk jacket likely would have gone a long way to paying for that tower his Library was lacking, and the calf-high cordovan boots would be worth at least a few bricks as well. His hands were folded in his lap, though even the dark leather gloves that covered them couldn’t entirely conceal their deformity.

Descriptions. Let’s take this week’s look behind the curtain! They’re important, but ugh, I find them terribly boring to write. The story grinds to a halt during descriptions. Sometimes when I’m writing a first draft I’ll literally just drop a note–“describe this later” and move on to the good parts. And, I think allowing my readers to use their imagination is important, so I try not to bog you all down with too much detail unless it’s ultra important. I want you to know the vital features of a place or a character, but you can fill in the rest. I don’t care if you picture Octavinal with bushy eyebrows or yellow teeth or manicured nails. Do what you will!

I can tell you, though, it’s no accident that my opening description of him focuses on clothing. We know his Library is poor, yet he’s dressed in fine clothing. Baz, in his characteristic way, points out that for the cost of his clothing he could probably afford to renovate the Library. So we get a picture of an arrogant man who perhaps doesn’t have his priorities straight.

We also see that he has deformed hands. Now if you recall back to Chapter 2, Deliritous let slip to that old woman with her chicks that his father had had an accident some time back and now we see what it was–his hands have been ruined. We don’t know by what, but Deliritous did imply that that’s what set the Library back for a time. Which is kind of interesting, right? I mean, sure, getting your hands wrecked can’t be pleasant, but it’s not as if the Duke is a manual laborer, so why did that have such a serious impact on the Library’s finances? It’s not really important to Book 1, but just tuck that away for when we move deeper into the series.

So the Duke already knows about what happened at the questioning of the Citiless when Deliritous arrives. Another tidbit buried here that you have to go down to another level for: The Duke has a great information network, right? I mean, we don’t know exactly how quickly Deliritous left Xavier Tower after he was nearly killed by that Citiless, but it couldn’t have been that long, and he went straight back to his Library. And yet, the Duke already has news of what happened. So he’s a resourceful man.

He’s also not a very pleasant man, right? I mean, he doesn’t even think to ask if Deliritous is alright. No, the first thing he does is berate his son for making the Library look bad, permitting his Speaker to have such a lapse in discipline as to strike him in public. An outrage! Apparently, it wasn’t a secret that Deliritous has been sleeping with Delida, as the Duke lays into him for being “too familiar” with his slaves.

And then the significant thing: He’s having Delida whipped for his insubordination. Two things here. First, he considers 20 lashes a “fatherly mercy,” lamenting how it’s going to make them look weak to the other Libraries for not meting out a harsher punishment.

But more important, Delida was supposed to accompany Deliritous on the Acktus Trials, but she’s not going to be able to go now!

Who will come with me on the Trials?

So once Deliritous learns Delida won’t be able to accompany him he asks his father if he might be able to borrow one of his Speakers. And there’s something I skipped over that we’ll discuss now. Two of Octavinal’s Speakers are present, and what’s significant about them? Well, they’ve both had their eyes ripped out. Remember that bad joke Deliritous made back in Chapter 2, about permitting Tax to keep his eyes? Well, we see now why it was such a bad joke. Apparently some Readers just remove their Speakers’ eyes to make sure they never learn to Read.

Octavinal isn’t interested in permitting Deliritous to borrow any of his Speakers, though, is he? Again, we see he’s more concerned about appearances than helping his son out:

I’ll need my other Speakers as well. It would be shameful to present myself for negotiations with those swindlers from Fortune with fewer than three. How could we possibly hope to win the Triumvirate Congress chairmanship away from Farston Leamina if such an embarrassment reached his ears? The man’s a prig, but also an opportunist. Appearances matter, Deliritous. Must I always remind you of that?

And he makes this offhand remark too that Baz takes the Duke to task for, though obviously not aloud. The Duke cites the “damage Hellar Xavier can exact with his Speakers” as another reason to not let Deliritous take one of his Speakers. Of course, as Baz points out, Deliritous is going to be competing against Hellar Xavier and will be “on the receiving end of Hellar’s damage,” yet the Duke is more concerned about keeping his property intact than helping his son.

So of course, this leads up to the big bombshell of the chapter. Who does this leave for Deliritous to take on the Trials with him? Baz, of course! I know, I know. This probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise to many of you, particularly since the back-cover blurb says that Baz accompanies his master on the Trials. But here it is, we’re really propelled into the story now. Baz is going to be ripped from his ordinary life into an “adventure”–and I use that term loosely, because Baz obviously is not excited. In fact, he’s kind of horrified.

He’s unprepared, noting that most Reader-Speaker pairs spend months training for the Acktus Trials, whereas Deliritous does his best to never even use Baz. Indeed, Deliritous pretty much confirms Leanna’s earlier hypothesis as to why Deliritous doesn’t use Baz–he’s worried about Baz seeking revenge. “But, Father… He saw what I did to his brother. And he’s a Destroyer. What if he, well, you know?”

Octavinal obviously isn’t concerned about it, and we see more evidence of how out of tune he is with his son. He seems to think Deliritous has had plenty of time to train Baz–you’ve had that Destroyer for 10 years and I’ve been letting you handle the supplicants since you were twenty (so for 3 years). He seems oblivious to how little Deliritous uses Baz.

Or is he? I guess you could also interpret this as the Duke purposefully setting his son up to fail. Hmm, interesting. Baz did not back in Chapter 2 that Deliritous isn’t really heir by choice, he’s just the Duke’s only kid. Could the Duke actually secretly want Deliritous to fail? We see at the end of the chapter all this pressure the Duke puts on him–he has to bring back a Book from the Trials, we can’t have an heir who lost his Trials?” But again, is this sincere pressure, or is the Duke just trying to bury his son under expectations. Hmm. Either way, do we perhaps begin to feel the slightest bit of empathy for Deliritous here? Maybe. Shoot me an email–your feelings changing at all toward Deliritous after reading this chapter?

Yeltax

One final interesting thing of note in this chapter is that we see Octavinal wasn’t too pleased when Deliritous, as he puts it “ruin[ed] the best Speaker this Library has had since the Burning.” Now it doesn’t come right out and say it, but this is an obvious reference to Baz’s brother. And we actually see that maybe the Duke had a bit of a soft spot for Baz’s brother? The Duke is apparently against naming Speakers, as it creates “needless attachment.” But when Deliritous points out that his father named Yeltax, the Duke gets a bit touchy, right? “That was different.” Curious. We already knew Baz’s brother was a rare breed of Speaker, but was there more to it than that? We don’t know yet, but stay tuned!

Chapter 6

Uncle Salastair

So on to Chapter 6 and we’ve moved to the Speaking Room. Remember, this is where Chapters 1 and 2 took place, and Baz reminds us of that, noting he hates going in there because he always hears his brother’s cries of pain when he does.

Deliritous is practicing Reading a spell with his uncle as the chapter opens, the same uncle we saw in the previous chapter who lost the duel. It seems Deliritous has improved his Reading since the beginning of the novel where we saw he was just awful at it, his uncle even congratulates him on that. But maybe for the first time we see a bit of maturity out of Deliritous here. He isn’t particularly pleased with his Reading, even after his uncle’s complement. He admits he’s only been practicing Creation spells lately, since he was planning on brining Delida with him. Basically, he’s admitting he isn’t prepared for the Trials now that it’s Baz going.

How does Uncle Salastair respond to this? Not with comforting words of suggestions on how Deliritous might nonetheless succeed. No, he essentially tells Deliritous to go and hide. Stay away from the other Speakers, particularly Hellar Xavier, his uncles tells him. Calls Hellar perhaps the best Reader in Erstwhile.

Now, Baz is more than happy with that plan, right? Let’s just hide in the countryside for a couple months, avoid the danger entirely!

But we’ve got a bit of a reversal here from the scene in the torture chamber back in Ch 4. Now it’s actually Deliritous who’s showing a bit of courage. Or, maybe not courage, but at least commitment to duty. He notes how the Library has been struggling for the past decade and really needs a good showing in the Trials. Honestly, I can’t remember if this has really been touched on in the novel yet, but it’s on the back cover and will be discussed soon. Since Speakers aren’t taught to Read, they also can’t write, so finding a new Spoken Book is a big deal. So competing in the Trials and bringing back a Book you can imagine would be a big deal.

Uncle Salastair, ever the encouraging relative, tells Deliritous he’s simply outclassed and would be better off playing it safe than dying out in the wilds. He departs without saying anything further. Ouch, yeah?

You know, up until now, Deliritous has given us zero reason to sympathize with him. But we saw how dad treated him in the previous chapter, and now his uncle too. Neither seem to have any particular faith in Deliritous’s skill, yet he’s being pressured to compete against apparently the greatest Reader in the city to bring his Library glory. And Deliritous also points out that everyone seems to be discounting Marla. Remember, she’s the one who was really enjoying watching the torture of the Citiless. She seems to frighten Deliritous as much as she did Baz. Let me know what you think. Anyone out there feeling for Deliritous just a bit now?

Maturity

So after Uncle Salastair leaves, Deliritous starts talking to Baz. Baz is not interested in having the conversation. He’s over there slouching against the wall, essentially distraught over having to accompany Deliritous on the Trials. And we learn another reason for Baz’s distress. I mean, we already know that the Trials are dangerous. You’re out in the wild, and Baz mentioned earlier that it’s not uncommon for competitors to die. But we also learn that, while Readers aren’t supposed to harm other Readers, there aren’t any rules against hurting another Reader’s Speaker. So it’s entirely possible Baz could be targeted by Xavier or Marla in order to but Deliritous at a disadvantage.

So it’s really looking pretty dire. Deliritous is unprepared, and even if he’s being treated unfairly, we saw by how he reacted when the Citiless attacked him that he probably isn’t going to be the betting favorite in this competition. But Deliritous really turns out to be the adult in this scene, right? He’s trying to keep his tone bright, calling Baz “old chap,” and trying to let Baz participate in selecting the Books they’re going to take with them.

Baz meanwhile, is really being almost petulant. He won’t glare at Deliritous directly, but he’s essentially scowling into space just over Deliritous’s shoulder. I guess Baz has good reason to be upset. I mean, he’s basically viewing this upcoming trip as a death sentence. But still, he’s acting a bit childish here, yeah? Deliritous even finally calls him out for it at the end of the chapter and threatens to have Rox teach Baz a lesson when he mouths off some more.

Now, did you catch something interesting there? Again, just like back in Chapter 2 when Deliritous initially ordered Rox to kill Tax, Rox reminds Deliritous his oath is only to protect Deliritous from harm. So there is some limit to Rox’s viscousness. You have to be harming Deliritous before he’ll come after you. That’s certainly going to be important to keep in mind as we go, and perhaps is also hinting that maybe, just maybe, Rox isn’t quite as terrible as Baz has made him out to be thus far.

Deliritous’s Regret

OK, just a few other quick items to touch on here. First, we get a bit of a touching soliloquy from Deliritous toward the end of the chapter. In response to Baz’s criticism over his failure to ever utilize Baz’s ability as a Speaker, he explains a bit why he doesn’t use him. I’m actually going to read that whole paragraph again, because even if nothing else has convinced you yet, I think this gives us a glimpse that Deliritous might not be all bad:

“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Baztian. If anything, I trust too much. I don’t have any siblings myself, but I remember seeing my mother… Well, another thing we don’t need to speak of. But I know the relationship you had with poor old Yeltax, and you were here when I did, well, what I did. I did the best I could, you know, after Father gave you to me. Lots of Readers would have killed you, you know, rather than go through the trouble of worrying over whether you might fry them each time you were Read to. And I’m not certain I could entirely blame you for such a reaction. Don’t you see? It was really the best for both of us, old chum, right? You not tempted to turn spells on me, and we both get to keep pumping the old air in and out?”

Baz, of course, responds, that yes, “Very kind of a Reader not to murder a kid for being upset over watching what you did to his brother.”

This is tough, as they both have some valid points I think. Deliritous seems to have some genuine remorse over what he did to Tax. But Baz is of course right as well–Deliritous shouldn’t be congratulated for showing mercy to a little kid who had his brother taken from him. But that’s something I like to think I do a decent job of in my writing. I like to raise difficult questions and get you thinking. I certainly don’t think I have the answers to many of those questions, but thinking about them is just as important as knowing the right answer sometimes.

Elements

Lastly, just a quick note for now. We’ve seen this referenced already, but for the first time Baz really emphasizes that there are five types of magical elements: fire, earth, water, light, and shadow. Apparently each Book is based off of one of these elements and does different things. For instance, Deliritous notes he’s always considered light to be a better element for Creation than destruction. And shadow is apparently dangerous–Baz tells Deliritous to put away a book of shadow spells before he hurts himself, and Deliritous notes he’s seen Marla vaporize rats with a few words of a shadow spell. Nasty stuff.

The elements will become more important later on in the series, but for now they’re more just an interesting detail about the magic system.

CONCLUSION

So that’s it, two more chapters down!

Homework: So next week we’ll read Chapter 7. Baz goes down to the sub-basement where the Dukes “Retired” Speakers live. We’re going to see Leanna again and see some more interaction between the two of them. Then, we get a surprise. I’m interested to hear if you truly were surprised by it, and whether you think it was a fair one or that I was hiding the ball a bit. I don’t think so, but obviously I’m biased. And we see some interesting things about singing and tattoos. What do you think the significance of those two things are?

Listener Question: D. T.: How do you write so many books in a year?

Quest: What do you think the inciting incident of the novel is? I’m sort of torn between the Citiless attack or Octavinal’s announcement that Deliritous has to take Baz on the Trials. Or maybe you think it’s something else entirely. This is another quest that there’s no right answer to. Just send me your thoughts and you get the experience. 2 XP for this one! I’m curious to hear what you think out there.

Quote:

“When I was your age, television was called books.”

-William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Until next time, this has been D. T. Kane’s Epic Fantasy Book Club.

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