Others' Island (spoilers all books incl RWC)

[Farseer]

When people seek the prophecies or sooth-saying of an Other from the Island, they place two gold coins on its tongue. While I think we have firmly determined that they get most, if not all, of their 'far-seeing' ability from the waters taken from around She Who Remembers, WHY do they ask for a coin payment? Of what use is gold to an Other?

I thought of this previous post while re-reading the part in AA where the Red Ship Raiders demanded gold to be paid in exchange for Forged hostages to be killed. There may or may not be a connection, given we know, post-TM, that it was the Pale Woman who was pulling all of the strings at the time, but the "gold" jumped out at me.

EDIT: Sorry, the passage re gold as payment for Forged hostages comes from Chapter Nine in AA, 'Fat Suffices'.

So many threads, old and new, to respond more in depth to, and...no time! *sigh!*

Likely there is no connection (so thus just another of my fanciful theories ) but I can't shake the thought that there is a firm link between the Others and the Pale Woman. This being so, I am trying to come up with possible bonds between them as well as nut out a reason for the Others requiring gold payments...

I put forward the suggestion that the Others received the gold from those wishing to hear their prophecies and then gave a portion (if not all) of it to the Pale Woman. This gold then enabled her to finance her plans to ruin the future of the world eg having enough gold to purchase Skill scrolls from Regal etc. This extra gold sourced from the Others would nicely supplement the gold she received, at times, as the requested payment for the non-return of captured Six Duchies folk. Under both her and Kebal Rawbread’s guidance, if the gold was not forthcoming, the people were instead Forged and returned to not only wreak havoc within the SD, but to also pursue Fitz (and Verity) due to the attraction of the Skill. Clever lady, both outcomes suited her purposes!

Then there is Henja. Her role in Buckkeep, with her relations with the Narcheska and Peottre, as well as the Piebalds, was all part of her service to the Pale Woman. When Fitz was cutting Thick's hair up in Chade's room, he shared Thick's memories of his meetings with Laudwine etc via the Skill.

At one point a woman spoke and Laudwine replied, “I don’t care what is working well for you, woman, nor do I care for your offer. My vengeance belongs to me, and I won’t sell it to you for your foreign gold…”

Padget responded, “Do not forget it was me who rode double with you that day (when Fitz had lopped off Laudwine’s arm), to keep you from falling from your saddle? When she made her offer, I only thought, well, what do we care how they die? Let her have them, and let us use her gold for our cause, to bring the Farseer’s false throne down.”

Laudwine again, “I care how they die! Their deaths belong to me! And my blood vengeance is not for sale….”

Here we see that Laudwine is annoyed at Padget for making an arrangement with Henja to ‘sell’ Lord Golden and Fitz to her (obviously for the PW). As for her foreign gold, well, it cannot be money taken in lieu of the lives of Forged SD folk as it would be in a SD currency and therefore not ‘foreign’ to Laudwine at all. This suggests that it is either Outislander currency or another currency from Bingtown, The Pirate Isles or Jamaillia, which has been obtained by the PW by some other means eg from payments by ones such as Kennit to the Others.

Later, when Fitz saves Civil but is on the ground injured by Laudwine’s blade, he sees Henja scowling at him from within the crowd, appearing genuinely concerned for him. Obviously this concern is due to the fact that she didn’t want him to die before he could be taken to the PW in Aslevjal.

That'll do for now!