David T. Shaw wrote:I love the idea of the Periwinkle being some sort of artifact for allowing Leeana to speak to the dead (or maybe just one particular dead champion).
However, I see a problem - Vaijon's first act of transcending death wasn't with Leeana - or with her anywhere about.
He helped channel energy to Bahzell shortly after his death - far, far away from the Wind Plains and Leeana.
Perhaps Tomanak and Isvaria have made some sort of deal in regards to Bahzell and Vaijon in particular, or with His Champions in general?
Just wondering, has any mention of ghosts been made in the series? I can't remember any serious discussion off hand, but it's been at least a year since I read the first three books.
If I'm right that the Periwinkle doesn't expain Vaijon's ghost, does it do anything?
And what is the significance of Isvaria recognizing Leeana and Gayrfressa as 'daughters'? Is it like calling someone a child of God - just a recognition of their loyalty to the light? Or perhaps something along the lines of being of the 'elect' because they will always be loyal to the light? Or is it some special status or relationship to the God (besides being Her Champion)?
As already mentioned, the scene with Isvaria must foreshadow something.
There was no previous textev of dead champions still being alive in any fashion prior to this book. There were plenty of undead creatures on the side of the "dark gods", but those creatures still weren't actual ghosts or anything like that, just simply unnaturally sustained beyond the natural physical limits. And except for the traditional concept of "souls" feasting at Isvaria's table after they died and went to the local concept of "heaven", which so far as I'm aware only first explicitly appears in this book, there wasn't even anything I noticed about the "afterlife" even in this book (much less any previous one) to foreshadow the climax of the book.
It's possible that within the fictional metaphysics of this universe the way the Champions were able to utterly destroy the devils of this storyline was to intertwine their "soul" with the essence of Tomanak himself, and thus despite physically dying in combat Vaijon's "essence" was somehow partially separated from his body at the moment of his physical body's death, and that this combined with his link with Tomanak allowed him to semi-survive in a fashion no previous champion had.
Or it's possible that you're right, that Isvaria and Tomanak simply felt Vaijon still had more work to do and decided to not "banish" him from the physical world by sending him to her "table" immediately.
But as for the periwinkle, I'm pretty sure that's been explained as what caused the scrying difficulties for the dark wizards in the climax of situation with the king. So yeah it did do something, just not what you were expecting given who provided the device. I can understand why people would expect such a device to come from Semkirk instead, but if that's what you were thinking you too quickly forget that the "light gods" are truly allied and cooperative. Semkirk could very easily have been involved behind the scenes, but he would have had no problem at all with Isvaria helping him out for a minute or two, either in the creation of the device or the delivery or both.
So I'm not sure the scene really foreshadows anything at all... except perhaps that the "strands" of time are rapidly approaching a truly critical "cusp point" and that the light gods are going to be as involved as they have to in order to make sure they win... at least in the universe the storyline is set in.