Jul-11-2011, 11:58 PM (UTC)
(This post was last modified: Jul-12-2011, 12:01 AM (UTC) by Omie.)
(Jul-10-2011, 05:30 PM (UTC))NeverBeenWise Wrote: EDIT: Also, why the heck is Beloved so interested in the Attract Birds charm?
Oh good, I'm glad I'm not the only one to be curious about that.
I thought of two possibilties. It could have been because the charm was not entirely specific. In the same way that the anti-predator charm unsettled Fitz, the charm worked only with the generalities. Perhaps, for instance, rather than attracting birds it attracted non-humans who wear feathers (and the Fool's brief stint as Realder's girl in her feather crown qualified him for the latter, with the fact that he really wasn't entirely human putting him squarely in column 'a').
I think another possibility is that it was foreshadowing the way the Fool saw the charms as potential tools for his own agenda. He only used hedge magic to aid himself in surviving the Piebalds, but perhaps that was a bit of a hint that he considered the possibility of tweaking the bird charm to work on dragons. Maybe he wasn't attracted to it because of its magic, but because of his own personal curiosity.
Incidentally, I've wondered if the carving of himself, Nighteyes and Fitz might have been some adapted and elaborated hedge magic too. It was skill stone as well, but I wonder if the Fitz -> Fool figurine connection was actually a way for them to communicate without a skill bond. It would be a convenient way for Robin Hobb to continue their story line without going against her word that she would not write another Fitz and the Fool series, if ever she decided to write another series that included one of the pair individually. After all 'I have never been wise' was not really a memory, but a thought, and an answer to the statement that it would be wise of the two never to cross paths again.