ALANNA: THE FIRST ADVENTURE, CHAPTER SEVEN: THE BLACK CITY, OR, IN WHICH THEY GO TO THE DESERT AND ARE NEARLY DEAD FROM PLOT DEVICE

The ride into the Southern Desert, it turns out, is long.  REALLY long.  You just wouldn’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly long it is.   Alanna spends most of it waiting on Lord Martin and Sir Myles and roughly twenty gazillion other people, because she is a page and dammit if pages ain’t gonna do them some work on their Duke-sanctioned field trips.  As they ride towards Persepolis, the city of the Great Southern Desert, they encounter several tribes of the Bazhir, who are MYSTERIOUS and PROUD and make their women wear VEILS and spend their lives riding and fighting in the harsh desert sun and crap.  (I know Tamora Pierce has stated that she based the Bazhir on the Bedouin, but they always read more like she saw Aladdin one too many times and went from there.)  Through these encounters Alanna notices that Lord Martin really seems to hate the Bazhir, and Myles is like “yeah well he has his reasons though!”  The reasons, apparently, are that the Bazhir are “unusual” and that some “renegade” tribes do not accept King Roald as their sovereign, mostly because his father, the Old King, killed a whole lot of them.  But that’s water under the bridge, surely!  Myles adds that no matter how much Lord Martin hates the Bazhir, he’s a very fair man.  Yeah, I guess, fair except for the RACISM.

After a week-long journey, they finally reach Persepolis. Alanna notices that the Bazhir are staring at her and Jonathan very intently.  She feels awkward about this, and continues to feel awkward through their arrival, their room assignation, and the beginning of the night’s formal banquet.  At that point Myles (who is already drunk) introduces Alanna to Ali Mukhtab, the governor of Persepolis Castle and the wearer of one very elegant vest.  He and Alanna have a weird conversation in which he compares her to a cat and she asks about the Bazhir.  Specifically, she asks why he, a Bazhir, is the governor of Persepolis Castle when Lord Martin hates the Bazhir.  (She’s even like “I know he’s fair and all” and he’s like “lol yeah fair my left TESTICLE”).  Apparently one of the few treaties the Old King drew up with the Bazhir before he decided to go the good old “kill ‘em all and let the gods sort ‘em out” route specified that the post of governor must always be held by a Bazhir.  He then leads Alanna and her friends to the Sunset Room, a room built specifically to watch the Black City.

The Sunset Room is missing an entire wall (for better watching purposes, one assumes), and faces west, hence its name.  They can just about see the Black City in the form of a tiiiiiiny speck on the horizon.  You’d think that someone would build a watchtower or something a few miles closer, you know, just to keep an eye on it properly.  Mukhtab tells the squires-and-one-page the story of the Black City: apparently when the Bazhir first came to the Eastern Lands from across the Inland Sea they were greeted by a clan of immortal demon… spirit… monster things called the Nameless Ones, who gave them arable land and cattle and took their souls as payment.  When the Bazhir realized that that was what they were doing they rebelled, burning the Nameless Ones in their own city.  Which… is still standing.  Of course.  Anyway, now the land the Nameless Ones gave them to farm is the Great Southern Desert and Bazhir youths still sometimes feel compelled to go to the City in the middle of the night, whereupon they are tied to their beds and starved to death, because apparently even that is better than facing the Nameless Ones.  Mukhtab then tells them that the Bazhir have another legend: that one day two gods, the Night One and the Burning-Brightly One, will come to the Black City and get rid of the Nameless Ones.  (The Bazhir are bad at names, apparently.)  Jonathan’s like “I wish there was a written history of the Bazhir and also please pay no attention to how intently I am staring at the Black City right now, thank you.”  When the boys go back to their rooms for the night Alanna wonders aloud who exactly the Nameless Ones were and Jonathan says that they are probably made up to scare children.  Alanna’s like, “By the pricking in my thumbs you are a fucking liar, Jonathan of Conte.”

Alanna wakes up in the middle of the night and speed-dresses, in a tremendous hurry for no particular reason.  She meets up with Jonathan, who seems to be in a similar hurry, in the corridor, and they ride out into the desert.  Towards the Black City.  Where people disappear forever.  Because they are CLEVER.

The Black City is, as advertised, quite black.  Once they are inside the gates Alanna suddenly remembers that pesky vision of the black city she’s been having since she was ten (really, Alanna? It took you this long?) and gets all antsy.  She tries to get Jonathan to leave, but he’s all “herp a derp busy looking at carvings.”  Because of their gay relationship she can’t just leave him alone and ride back to Persepolis, so they walk further into the city, towards an enormous temple at the top of a flight of stairs.  As soon as they reach the door Lightning starts humming, and Alanna tries to get Jonathan to leave once again, and he once again opts to stay and get his ass killed look around.  They approach the altar and suddenly ten tall, glowing, inhumanly beautiful men and women show up and start talking about eating them.  Yes, indeedy, it’s the Nameless Ones, who call themselves the Ysandir.  (And have names like Ylira and Ylon and Ylanda.  Presumably Yvette is on vacation.)  They are immortal and eat souls and plan to eat Jon and Alanna’s.

Luckily, they seem to be afraid of Lightning (and the Old Ones in general, as they refer to it as “one of their weapons”), which gives them time to raise walls of power and shoot purple lightning bolts and other Tortallan superhero crap.  Less luckily, the Ysandir are able to read minds, which means they quickly realize that Alanna is an Alanna instead of an Alan.  So they make her clothes disappear.  Jonathan gets a good eyeful of her naked (before lending her his tunic, because he is not yet Asshole Jon—best believe he wouldn’t have helped her cover up past book two) while the Ysandir lol themselves silly about a chick trying to defend a dude.  Which, okay, if we’ve learned anything about Alanna at this point it’s that she cannot stand people LAUGHING AT HER, the Ysandir are clearly doomed.  She holds Jonathan’s hand, and because of their mutual trust or the strength of their friendship or the purity of their gay relationship or something, they are able to raise a Wall of Power which spontaneously melts a couple of the Ysandir.  (They are immortal, but not the kind of immortal that can’t die.  Yeah, it’s never eally explained so don’t even bother trying to figure it out.)  Ylira tries to break their concentration in a way that I think is actually one of the most effective moments in the book:

“How long do you think she will last?” Ylira asked Jonathan, softly.  “Another few moments?  Not even that?  She is a girl.  She is weak.  She will give way, and then where will you be?”
It was the same small voice that taunted Alanna from within whenever she faced a taller, stronger opponent.

YES.  YES.  YES.  All those moments that Alanna’s had throughout this book when she feels inadequate because she’s a girl, all those moments when she thinks she’s a bad person, or a dirty fighter, or not worthy of such-and-such an honour, all those moments when she whines that she’s not good enough, not strong enough, not fast enough, and—when she has proven that she IS all of those things, and more—just not enough of a boy, they all lead up to this fucking moment, when she realizes that the person telling her that she’s worthless, she’s no good, she’s going to fail because she’s a girl and that’s terrible, is wrong.  And that maybe if that person who says she can’t do it is wrong, maybe the voice in her own head that tells her that she’s weak is wrong too.  Connecting your own internalized misogyny with the way you are treated by the world around you—or, rather, connecting that outside voice to the inside one—is a HUGE FUCKING DEAL and I am SO glad Tamora Pierce put that in.

Moving on.

 Jonathan and Alanna manage to kill a few more of the Ysandir before they properly retaliate.  A couple of them gather together and start to collect power, which is described as forming in a “small, evil ball.”

It looks pretty much nothing like that, I imagine, but wouldn’t it be cute if it did?  Alanna and Jonathan set a load of them on fire, until only two (Ylon and Ylanda) are left.  They say special nonsense words to collapse the Wall of Power.  (Really, guys?  YOU COULDN’T HAVE DONE THAT BEFORE?)  Alanna and Jonathan aren’t strong enough to fight them, even with their special gay relationship powers, so Jonathan asks Alanna to become what she was the night she saved him from the fever.  Which she does.  They start speaking to the Goddess in their grownup lady and dude voices, and the Goddess answers them, basically telling Alanna to USE THE SWORD YOU GREASY HIPPIE.  Alanna does, swinging Lightning in their faces while Jonathan chants and crap, and together they blow up the last two Ysandir.  And promptly pass out.

Jon and Alanna wake up a few hours later, sore as balls and itching to get out of the Black City. They ride out to an oasis a few miles away, where they can rest and talk.  Specifically, talk about that whole Alanna-has-a-vagina issue.  Alanna explains about the switcharoo she pulled with Thom, and he is duly impressed.  She asks if he is going to tell anyone, and he’s like “dumbass, we just blew up demon-thingies together, you vagina is not that big of a deal.”  She is so grateful she cries, which freaks Jon out a little.  They have a beautiful time together in the oasis, except one awkward moment when Alanna’s like “isn’t it weird that Duke Roger seemed so eager to send you to certain death?” and Jon’s like “TAKE IT BACK,” but everything is fixed a few minutes later when, as they’re falling asleep, Jon asks who she thinks he should choose as a squire come Midwinter.

Alanna sat up on her elbow.  A week ago she would have told him to pick Geoffrey or Douglass.  But she had not been to the Black City then.  She had not proved to the Ysandir that a girl could be one of the worst enemies they would ever face.
But what if she had not gone to the Black City?  Duke Gareth had mentioned that, with a deal more practice, she could become one of the finest swordsmen at Court.  In archery she hit the target every time.  The masters who taught her tactics and logic told her she was sometimes brilliant—Myles said she was far more intelligent than many adults.  She had bested Ralon of Malven, and in some strange way she had won her sword.
All at once she felt different inside her own skin.
“Me,” she said at last.  “You should pick me.”

It’s quite a nice moment—not quite as FUCK YEAH as the one earlier with the Ysandir, but equally important to Alanna, who suddenly realizes that she’s not just not weak, she’s fucking badass.  To her surprise, Jonathan completely agrees, and they have the book’s final gay moment when she kisses his hand and pledges her fealty.  They go to sleep under the stars, and will presumably awake to find they have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do to the people they’ve left behind in Persepolis.  The book ends with the words “The Beginning.”  ‘Cause it’s the FIRST adventure, get it?  Oh, Tamora Pierce, you so clever.

Will Alanna and Jon’s gay relationship continue into squiredom?  Will Duke Roger continue his poor-concealed attempts to seize the throne?  Is Alanna going to eventually fake puberty to disguise her lady voice or what?  Find out next time in the first chapter of In the Hand of the Goddess!  Which as of yet does not have a snappy make-believe title, but I bet when it does it’ll be really funny.  No, seriously.

ALANNA: THE FIRST ADVENTURE, CHAPTER SIX: WOMANHOOD, OR, IN WHICH ALANNA TELLS GEORGE A SECRET, NEARLY DIES, GETS A LETTER, WINS A DUEL, AND IS INVITED ON YET ANOTHER SPECIAL PAGE FIELD TRIP. IT IS AN ACTION-PACKED ADVENTURE THRILL RIDE, BASICALLY.

“Womanhood” is the longest chapter of Alanna: The First Adventure, and it would have been a lot shorter had Alanna ever read Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.  Just sayin’.

So Alanna’s doing her sword fighting thing, learning to not be shitty at life, and she wakes up one morning and realizes that there are things happening in her special region.  Mysterious, bloody things.  She freaks out—shockingly—and quickly realizes that she can’t tell any of the Palace healers.  So she decides to ride out into the Lower City to find George, because if there’s one person to whom you can confide your secret double life as a lawbreaking vagina-owner, it’s the King of Thieves.  Rather than actually go inside the Dancing Dove and talk to anyone, she breaks into George’s rooms via the roof.  George hears her coming and nearly slits her throat.  Apparently people who break into his rooms don’t get the one-ear warning.  Alanna tells him that she needs to see a female healer, and George is all “you’ll need to give me a little more than that, brosef.”  And so she tells him.

Alanna swallowed hard.  “I’m not a boy.”  It was incredibly hard to say.  “I’m a girl.”
“You’re a—you’re a what!” George yelled.
“Hush!  D’you want everyone to hear?”  She scuffed her foot against the floor.  “I thought you’d guess.  You have the Gift.”
“And your Gift shields you.  Alan, if this is a jest, it’s a poor time for one.”
She glared at him.  “D’you want me to take my clothes off?”

NO, ALANNA.  And then it comes out that she’s apparently seen George naked like ten thousand times before.  Apparently either Tortall has no nudity taboo or the Dancing Dove is like the Shortbus of imaginary medieval countries.

George takes a moment to absorb this new information, then tells Alanna that he is going to take her to see his mother, a trained healer who used to be a priestess of the Goddess.  She takes Alanna into her study and asks her what’s wrong, and then just about kills herself laughing when Alanna tells her that she’s bleeding from her bikini area.  She tells Alanna that this is not a medical emergency and is just something that happens when you own a vagina for the correct amount of time, and Alanna—guess what!—freaks out.  She’s all I HAVE THE GIFT I CAN MAKE MY VAGINA NOT DO STUFF and Mistress Cooper’s like NO YOU CAN’T DERPYHOOVES, because apparently that pisses the gods off or something.  She gives Alanna an anti-pregnancy charm (even though Alanna insists that she doesn’t intend to have sex at any point, ever—oho, my dear, just wait until your fake homosexual liaison is finally consummated), and then takes her hand to read her future and is all “aw, shit, you’re chosen by the Goddess, SUCKS TO BE YOU.”

And it does suck to be her, because when she gets back to the Palace Duke Gareth grounds her for riding into the Lower City without permission.

She doesn’t get out again until after her thirteenth birthday, when Sir Myles asks her to ride out with him to his estates for a sleepover field trip excursion.  He tempts her by telling her that there is a ruin near his castle that dates back to the Old Ones, the people who founded Tortall.  Duke Gareth gives his permission (in a dressing gown fit for Chrestomanci himself) and within a few days Alanna and Sir Myles are trit-trotting out to Olau, a barony nearly due south of Trebond.  Alanna briefly gets a little homsesick because Olau reminds her of home, except it’s full of orchards and fields instead of bloodthirsty Scanran raiders and the castle has windows that don’t let in the wind.  That seems like a great reason to NOT be homesick, tbh, but okay.

On their second day at the Barony, Myles and Alanna hike out to the ruin and Myles tells her about the super awesome paper he is writing about the way the Old Ones lived.  He is apparently particularly interested in the way they… cooked.  He is like that Sociology graduate student who spends long hours at the grad bar, drinking scotch and talking about his thesis and totally killing your buzz.  Myles also lets slip that he was compelled to bring her out to Olau via prophetic dream.  (Those pop up a lot in Tortall, no big.)  Alanna is weirded out, which is odd, as everyone who meets her can’t seem to stop talking about her special ~destiny.  They reach the ruin, and Alanna’s ~destiny directs her to a big black door in what used to be the armoury.  She promptly moves it using special touched-by-the-Goddess strength.  It opens onto a dark, forbidding tunnel, which Alanna naturally bounds joyfully into, using her Gift to light the way.  She finds a neat-looking sword with a crystal on the pommel and examines it while Myles bellows outside about a sudden storm on the rise, which he says is some kind of supernatural god-storm or some bullshit.  Alanna’s all “yeah, whatevs, lookin’ at this sword I found,” and then the dark tries to strangle her.

Yep.

Suddenly the light of Alanna’s magic went completely out.  Darkness swirled around her in long tentacles that tightened on her body.  She opened her mouth to scream for Myles, and no sound emerged.  She fought to breathe and fought to throw her magic into the stifling blackness, but nothing happened.  She tried to shove it away with her arms and legs and found the blackness had bound her tight.  It was squeezing her ribs, forcing the air from her lungs… She was dying, and she knew it.

Alanna accepts her own death—dude, like two pages ago you couldn’t even accept that you were bleeding from the twat, suddenly you’re accepting your own death?—and then the crystal on the pretty sword she found lights up and, like, sucker punches the darkness off of her.  Or something.  Anyway, she doesn’t die, and Myles is like, “Keep that, I was probably compelled to bring you here because of that life-saving sword with the crystal on the butt.”  Alanna does keep it, and names it Lightning.

Back in Corus, people notice Alanna’s new sword, and she tells them all that she picked it out of Myles’s armoury, instead of telling them that she found it while barreling into a tunnel and getting into a wrestling match with the dark.  (She tells George the truth, and his only reaction is “lol you accepted something?”)  Duke Roger asks to inspect the blade, and when he does he freezes up and twitches and has some kind of crazy evil sorcerer reaction to it.  He’s like “WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GET THIS IT IS MAGIC AS BALLS” and Alanna plays dumb.  She also realizes that she really, really hates Duke Roger, because apparently the way to get on Alanna of Trebond’s bad side is to mess with her stuff.  SHE JUST DOESN’T LIKE OTHER PEOPLE TOUCHING HER THINGS.

Shortly after this, Stefan the Hostler brings Alanna a secret letter from Thom, who sends them via George.  Thom tells her about having moved from the Convent to the Mithran cloisters, and warns Alanna not to trust Duke Roger.  Yes, Thom, that is certainly something that could conceivably happen.  Thom also mentions that Duke Roger is one of the few living sorcerers powerful enough to send the Sweating Sickness to Tortall, and that he is next in line for the throne should Jonathan die.  George mentions this to Alanna as well, and Alanna pooh-poohs them both.  However, she finds herself working stronger, more complicated spells in her free time, almost as though she actually believes them and isn’t a complete tool.  Almost.

While Alanna works spells and pretends not to hate the Duke, Jonathan keeps going down to the Lower City to drink with the riffraff.  I’m sure that what Pierce was trying to set up here is that Jonathan is a king who cares about the common man, but the Dancing Dove is full of con artists, thieves, swindlers, cutthroats, and ladies* of negotiable affection.  I feel like sending the privileged, sheltered heir to a vast and wealthy kingdom to a den of iniquity as his first exposure to the working class gives him a slightly crooked** idea of what the poor are actually like.  Jonathan is going to be knighted soon and everyone wants to be his squire.  (Note: it is also revealed at this point that Alex was chosen to be Duke Roger’s squire, which makes Alanna side eye at him a lot.)  Everyone wants to be Jonathan’s squire, especially Alanna, but she’s all I’M A GIRL ANGST ANGST I’M NO GOOD AT SHIT ANGST ANGST HE’LL NEVER WANT ME AS HIS SQUIRE ANGST ANSGT FOREVERRRR.  Kid, you have a magical sword and you’re destined as fuck, I think you’re gonna be okay.

In April—this is in Alanna’s fourth year, for those of you keeping score at home—Lord Martin of Meron arrives at Court.  (Fief Meron, by the way, is apparently better known as the Great Southern Desert, a land that was already populated by an indigenous people, the Bazhir, before Tortall conquered it.  And now it’s a “fief” that just happens to be roughly as big as the northern half of the kingdom and home to a number of nations and tribes.  Good show, Tortall.)  He’s come North to propose a trip for all the soon-to-be knights, so they can meet the Bazhir and learn their ways before they inevitably kill them as adults.  Which is all kinds of horrifying.  Lord Martin was an expert swordsman in his youth, and Captain Sklaw takes his arrival as a sign from the gods that it’s Humiliate Alanna Time once again.  He pits her against Lord Martin’s son, Geoffrey, in a free-style practice duel, and she kicks his ass, proving that all those late nights with Coram’s sword have started to pay off.*** It’s a BFD and everybody claps.

Later that night, Jonathan goes to see Duke Gareth to ask him if he can take Alanna on the trip to the Great Southern Desert.  His explanation for why he wants to do this:

“Because he’s my friend.  Because I always know where he stands, and where I stand with him.  Because I think he’d die for me, and—and I think I’d die for him.  Is that enough?”

Before the squires (and one page) leave on yet another Tortallan field trip, Duke Roger calls them all into the Great Library for a special man-to-man talk.  There is, apparently, a place called the Black City in the middle of the desert which is totally evil and from which nobody leaves alive.  He hints that since he is the best and even HE doesn’t dare to go anywhere near it, a bunch of pansy-ass babies like THEM don’t stand a chance.  He is wearing a very pretty sapphire necklace, which he fiddles with as he talks to them, and which makes Alanna sleepy and dopey when she looks directly at it.  He closes his lecture with “I know when a sword is too heavy for me to lift,” almost as though he is challenging them (or rather Jonathan, who he is looking directly at).  This disturbs Alanna deeply, because sure, he’s next in line for the throne, and yeah, he’s been repeatedly named one of the few sorcerers in the Eastern Lands who would actually be able to send the Sweating Sickness from a great distance, and okay, she’s been having weird awkward hostile feelings toward him and his moustache since they both arrived on the scene, but that doesn’t mean anything, right?  Right?  Right?

Will Alanna’s newfound fencing skills come in handy in the desert?  What’s the dealio with this Black City crap?  Will anyone ever stop being derpy about Roger’s repeated attempts to kill Jonathan? (Nope.)  Find out next time in CHAPTER SEVEN: THE BLACK CITY, OR, IN WHICH THEY GO TO THE DESERT AND ARE NEARLY DEAD FROM PLOT DEVICE

* There may also be men, although they are never mentioned.  In the Beka novels there are certainly a few male sex workers kicking around, although they seem to be an exception to the rule, but perhaps that’s one of those kooky Tortallan customs that died out between King Roger and King Roald, like lady knights or not killing LBGTQ people.

** See what I did there?  Ah, this is why I make the big blogging bucks.

*** This could be a euphemism.  But it’s not.