The Circle of Magic (Spoilers all books incl City of Dragons)

[Farseer]

Yes, indeedy...or so Fitz tells us/seems to believe. This was why he was so concerned when Fool was retelling the story of how he came to be on Aslevjal in FF...how Fool had run to the Witness Stones and then ended up at the memory stone quarry with Girl-on-a-Dragon who then flew him on her back over to the Out Islands. Fitz was aghast when he'd heard that Fool had gone through the Skill Pillars of the Witness Stones as Fool could just as easily have gone through a Pillar into the earth and this would have meant he could not return. I recall that Fool had smiled at Fitz because his concern was entirely out of order given that Fool had obviously survived the ordeal and was sitting with Fitz retelling the story!

There was at least one other time that I know of when Fitz relayed concern about ending up beneath the ground when using a Skill Pillar, and I have a feeling that it was when he and Dutiful had used them a couple of times in quick succession to Others Island etc. In his desire to escape both the Piebalds and the Others, he worried that he may choose a wrong rune face and thus end up chosing a destination under the ground.

I often wondered how Fitz had come to this conclusion and why he was concerned about such a scenario, especially given that no Skill Pillar he'd ever seen before had suggested the danger of this happening to be real, but here we have such Skill Pillars in Chalced. Given the quote I posted previously, the Elderlings, as enemies of ancient Chalced, had certainly died or been trapped or "confined" in such a fashion....just as Fitz had feared that Skilled Ones could be trapped with no way of returning.

Interesting that it is written that it was Skillmaster Treeknee who had ordered the defacing of the runes of the Witness Stones etc to prevent unexperienced Skill users from using the Pillars. The quote above, from CoD, suggests that it may have been the Chalcedians who'd done the defacing. Hmm...

Heading over to another old thread to confirm a previous thought...