Tamora Pierce, The Realms of the Gods
Simon Pulse, 1996
Beginnings and ends
One day you'd turn to me and see an old man. You'd want a young one.Numair to Daine
In the final installment of the Immortals quartet, a dire battle rages in which the fates of the mortal and immortal realms hang in balance. And Daine with her unusual power must reach beyond herself to save the world. Her choice: gain immortality or choose the companionship of those she loves.
Once upon a time not so long ago, Orzone was the emperor of Carthak. However, his greed and treachery saw him turned into a Stormwing, barred from human rule and trapped in a different realm. However, by the time that happened, the barrier that stood between the realms of humans and that of immortals was so weakened that "its power flickered like a guttering candle" (p.xii).
As Orzone unleashes his immortal army on to Tortall and its allies, the world is ripped asunder by battle. Sixteen-year-old Daine Sarrasri, now a wild mage of considerable repute, and her teacher and companion, one of the world's most powerful mages, Numair Salmalín, find themselves in the thick of things. Not in the least because Orzone has a personal score to settle with them. His one-time friend Numair and his student Daine were responsible for his present form, and he wants them dead.
In a skirmish with some frighteningly vile creatures called Skinners, Daine and Numair have all but lost the fight for their lives, when they are suddenly swept up into the divine realms. Daine's delight at being alive is redoubled when she finds that the rescuers are no other than her parents, whom she believed dead. She finally gets to meet her father, the god Weiryn:
The door opened and a man dressed in a loincloth entered... the crown of antlers firmly rooted in his brown, curly hair.... He was tan and heavily muscled with emerald eyes... there also were olive streaks in his reddish brown skin....
He looked so—odd. No one else's father had antlers, or went about half naked. What was she supposed to say? "Hullo, Da." She hid trembling hands under her blankets.
(pp.30-31)
However, both Daine and Numair know that they cannot stay. They are needed back home, where Tortall is being attacked, even as the Queen of Chaos Uusoae is fighting the Great Gods, her brothers and sisters.
Reluctantly, Daine leaves the seemingly peaceful existence of the divine realms and the company of her parents, and, with Numair, begins a treacherous journey back across the lands, through the dragan lands, back to the mortal realm. Their travelling companions include Broad Foot the duckmole god, the badger god and an assortment of inky, liquid, blob-like creatures called darkings.
But getting home is just the beginning. What of the war raging between Tortall's allies and Orzone's creatures? What of the battle among the gods? With the barrier between realms now totally destroyed, what does it mean for the future of humankind? Such pressing questions clamour to be answered, yet we find ourselves more concerned with the blossoming love between Daine and Numair.
It has been three years since Numair has taken his magelet under his wing and taught her to tame her wild magic. Despite the fourteen-year age gap, their obvious affection for each other, and their growing friendship, it was difficult to imagine Numair in the role of a father figure, though his intentions had never been anything but noble—taking considerable care to see that there was no gossip about him and his young student. But when the barrier between the realms finally evaporates on Winter Solstice and all those with magic are momentarily aware of each other, Numair:
could feel her blink as if those long lashes of hers touched his cheek. Suddenly he learned something that he had never considered before. For a brief moment, that fresh knowledge erased even his sense of magical cataclysm.
(p.xiv)
Despite a reputation for being a bit of a ladies man, Numair finds himself pausing when it comes to Daine. "I was 'canoodling'... when you were four," he says, hesitating to tell her he loves her, yet outraged that she thinks it is about sex.
While Pierce pulls off the Daine/Numair romance with ease, other matters remain more confused. The profusion of gods, immortals and their politics gets a bit confounding for mere mortals at times. However, the ingloriousness of war is aptly brought out by the following explanation of why Stormwings—who live off death and despair, defiling the dead, ripping their bodies, smearing them with dung—exist:
"Ages ago, a traveler in the mortal realms went from place to place and found only the leavings of war—the starving, the abandoned, the dead.... That traveler sickened of waste—of death. She wished for a creature that was so reuplsive, living on war's aftermath, that even humans would think twice before battle. That creature would defile what mortal killers left, so that humans couldn't lie about how glorious a soldier's death is."
(pp.218-19)
RATING: 7.5/10
The Immortals quartet:
Book I: Wild Magic
Book II: Wolf-Speaker
Book III: Emperor Mage