Literature / The Tale Of Gurion Thricebound

Wizard. Father. Spy. Traitor. Hero.

Everything Gurion Elero has ever believed is a lie. Like all wizards, he has been granted magical powers by the Mother—powers that give his kind the right to rule over and exploit the Unchosen masses. But when the Oligarchs he serves order him to take part in the violent suppression of an Unchosen uprising, he is forced to confront the brutal truth of the wizards' reign.

Appalled by their abuse of her gifts, the Mother withdraws her favor from the wizards, leaving them powerless—and helpless to intervene when a deadly plague spreads through Ravanet. Undeterred, Oligarch Darani tightens her vicious stranglehold. Gurion leaves behind his family and way of life to live among the Unchosen, turning spy for the very rebellion he once sought to stamp out.

Darkness is gathering, death is coming from all sides, and Darani will stop at nothing to destroy her enemies and secure her dominion over Ravanet. A reckless attempt to regain the Mother's favor may be the only way to save wizard and Unchosen alike. As the specter of war looms, Gurion must marshal his courage, rally his people to battle, and face those who have betrayed him—and those he has betrayed.

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Tropes featured in the book include:

• Action Girl: Aleris assassinates one of the Oligarchs with a thrown knife. Later she fights in several battles, using creative and daring tactics.
• Animal Eye Spy: Barley allows Gurion to see and smell through his senses during their escape through the sewers, allowing Gurion to endure the stench and claustrophobia with a rat's nonchalance.
• The Atoner: Gurion spends the rest of his life knowing that all his efforts on behalf of the Unchosen and his work to establish the Wizards' Guild can never fully atone for his participation in the Gold Death.
• Beast Fable: Shifon and the minstrels use these to convey their revolutionary ideas in a form the wizards will ignore. Some are direct references to Aesop's Fables, like "The Grasshopper and the Ants" and "Who Will Bell the Cat?." Others are original, like "The Raven and the Dove," a scandalous interspecies love story, and "The Lions and the Gazelle," a tale of noble self-sacrifice.
• Break the Cutie: Aleris has suffered a lot in her short life. As a baby, she lost her mother and siblings to an epidemic. As a teenager, her beloved father and stepmother refused to let her join their revolutionary efforts because she was too young, leaving her with relatives for several years while they traveled the country. Immediately after they finally return and allow her to join their efforts, they are all arrested and sentenced to execution. Aleris escapes because of Gurion's error and her quick thinking, but watches her family and friends die in prolonged brutal agony. When she carries on their mission and organizes an uprising against the wizards, it fails, and the wizards retaliate by massacring thousands of Unchosen. After the Mother takes their powers away in punishment, a deadly epidemic sweeps the city, killing wizards and Unchosen alike. Meanwhile, she falls in love with with a man she knows can never return her feelings. But she never gives up. After every setback she devotes herself with greater determination to the cause of Unchosen freedom. (References to the Great Unchosen Rebellion in The Chronicles Of Tevenar suggest she eventually succeeds, but not until fifty years after her return to Ravanet.)
• Brought Down to Normal: The wizards lose all their powers when The Magic Goes Away, becoming indistinguishable from Unchosen. Gurion considers them to have become Unchosen, since the Mother removed the blessing she chose their ancestors for.
• Category Traitor: After Gurion joins forces with the Unchosen, most of the other wizards consider him a traitor, including his wife, Fia..
• Condescending Compassion: The way Gurion treats Unchosen before his enlightenment.
• Defector from Decadence: Gurion abandons his life of wealth and power among the ruling wizards to live among the oppressed, impoverished Unchosen.
• Double Agent: Gurion serves wins back Darani's trust by offering to serve as The Mole in the Raven's organization. Actually, he remains loyal to Aleris and passes on the information she wants Darani to have.
• Fantastic Caste System: The Unchosen are the largest, lowest category, who do all the menial labor and are considered inferior to all wizards. Wizards are ranked according to which of the original thousand wizards they are descended from, along the male line for men and the female line for women. Gurion is a member of the Elero line, the ninth ranked male line, and his sons inherit that status. His wife Fia belongs to the Vevim line, the fifth female line, as is her daughter. Both men and women use their line name as their surname and keep it their whole lives, not changing it upon marrying. Leadership is reserved for wizards from high-ranking lines, with the Oligarchs being chosen from among the highest. Wizards from low-ranking lines live in more distant parts of the empire, are assigned more modest housing, and receive a smaller share of the revenue produced by taxing the Unchosen.
• Fantastic Racism: The wizards are the descendants of the original thousand people the Mother chose and granted hereditary powers. They believe this gives them the right and responsibility to govern the rest of humanity. They exploit and oppress the powerless Unchosen, living in luxurious leisure supported by the labor of those they consider inferior.
• Fantastic Slurs: "Unchosen" is the official name for those without the Mother's power, considered (by the wizards, at least) to be a neutral, non-derogatory term. The shortened form "unchies" is a vulgar slur.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Ravanet incorporates aspects of Roman, Greek, and Egyptian geography and culture.
• Feed the Mole: Aleris and Darani each feed the other false information through Gurion.
• Folk Hero: Aleris assumes the persona of "The Raven," a mysterious vigilante who strikes out against the wizards and helps the Unchosen of Ravanet.
• Foregone Conclusion: The prologue lays out a number of facts that a reader of The Chronicles Of Tevenar already knows: direct human control of the Mother's power will be replaced by the system of familiars as intermediaries; Gurion will survive, go to Tevenar, and found the Wizard's Guild; Gurion will have three familiars (which is also spoiled by the title), who will be a rat, a dolphin, and a parrot. But many unknowns remain to be revealed in this book, particularly the fates of important characters like Aleris and various members of Gurion's family.
• Framing Device: Gurion introduces the story in a prologue stating his intention to write a personal memoir detailing the parts he left out of the more scholarly History. In the epilogue, he sums up his experience of doing so and wraps up the loose threads left by the main narrative.
• Friendly, Playful Dolphin: Played with. Whitecap is curt and hostile toward Gurion at first, only consenting to become his familiar because the Mother commands it. Over time his attitude softens, and Gurion learns about tragic events in his past which embittered him. Eventually their relationship becomes very close, and Whitecap gradually shifts to a more upbeat personality.
• Heel Realization: The first section of the book recounts how Gurion gradually comes to understand that the wizards' exploitation and abuse of the Unchosen, which he's taken for granted all his life, are evil and contrary to everything the Mother intended when she gave wizards her powers. The full realization hits him in the middle of his "The Reason We Suck" Speech to the wizards' council.
• I Know You Know I Know: Gurion too straightforward to play games of deception comfortably, but he does his best.
  I struggled to keep clear in my mind what I wanted her to believe, and what I supposedly wanted the Unchosen to believe, and what they supposedly wanted me to want her to believe…
• Innocent Bystander: When Gurion doesn't recognize Aleris as a member of the troupe of minstrel's he's been spying on, he assumes she was an audience volunteer mistakenly arrested along with them and persuades the Oligarchs to free her. She wasn't. But she plays the part for all she's worth, saving herself from being executed beside her parents and friends.
• Inspirational Martyr: The executed minstrels become known as "the twenty-four gazelles." Their memory inspires Aleris and the rebels she organizes.
• Just Like Robin Hood: One of Aleris's schemes involves Unchosen farmers reporting worse than usual harvests to the wizards, while actually hiding the grain in secret caches. When the scarcity causes the price of grain to rise, she sells the stashed grain to the wizards to fund her operation, while leaving sacks marked with a picture of a raven on the doorsteps of poor Unchosen families.
• La Résistance: Gurion joins the Raven's organization, which Aleris has put together to overthrow the wizards. The members go by code names, they are grouped into cells, and new members are screened to eliminate any wizards who might try to infiltrate.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The Mother's healing power can reverse biological processes, including the formation of memories. All memories are erased as far back as the amnesia goes, making it impractical to get rid of memories of things that happened more than a short time ago. Unscrupulous wizards sometimes abuse this power to make Unchosen forget crimes committed against them, and even well-intentioned use is considered unethical in any but the most compelling circumstances. After the introduction of familiars, familiars refuse to erase memories without the subject's consent.
• Love Triangle: Gurion loves his wife Fia deeply and faithfully. Aleris is well aware of this, but can't help developing feelings for him anyway, no matter how hopeless she knows they are. After Fia betrays and abandons Gurion, Aleris confesses her feelings and Gurion begins to return them. This makes things very awkward when Fia comes to Tevenar. In the end, both of them return to Ravanet while Gurion remains in Tevenar.
• The Magic Comes Back: After experiencing the devastation that follows the loss of the Mother's power, Gurion and a small group of companions hold a nearly suicidal vigil to attract the Mother's attention so they can beg her to return it. They succeed in summoning her, but she refuses to change her mind. After Gurion offers to sacrifice his free will, she devises a way to use animal familiars as intermediaries to ensure her power can be used but not abused. Unfortunately, those who profited from the abuse of her power are predictably unhappy with the new state of affairs. The newly bonded wizards flee across the ocean to escape persecution, leaving the rest of the world still bereft of magic.
• The Magic Goes Away: When the ruling wizards commit a genocidal massacre using her power, the Mother decides her gifts are too subject to abuse to remain in human hands and removes them from the world.
• The Mole: Gurion serves as the Aleris's spy among the wizards, while pretending to be Darani's spy in the Raven's organization.
• Morality Ballad: Shifon and the minstrels use these to convey their message of rebellion to the Unchosen.
• Muggles: The Unchosen are ordinary humans who lack the ability to use the Mother's power.
• Noble Bigot: Gurion begins the book absolutely certain that the Mother gave wizards have the right and responsibility to rule the Unchosen. He disapproves of the worst abuses of their power, but believes in the rightness of the system.
  I cringe, now, recording my words, but I won’t twist the truth to make myself appear better than I was. I truly believed, then, that wizards were superior to the rest of humanity, chosen by the Mother to rule and given special wisdom and holiness. I believed we deserved the adulation and willing service of the Unchosen, and that any who chafed under that burden were malcontents and troublemakers. True, some wizards occasionally resorted to measures I considered extreme to maintain their dominance, but I was willing to understand and forgive such excesses as the overflow of well-justified frustration. When contrariness and envy led folk to resist the obedience their station demanded, must we not enforce the natural order the Mother ordained and though our enlightened guidance lead them back into harmony with their proper roles?
• Nostalgic Narrator: Gurion occasionally comments on the events he's recounting with the perspective the intervening years have given him.
  Mother, forgive me. Of all the things I’ve sacrificed in your service, this is the only one I regret. The only one I can’t feel was worth it in the end. The only one I would take back.
  If I could.
• Obi-Wan Moment: While slowly dying tied to a stake with his intestines shredded, Shifon prompts the crowd to sing "The Lions and the Gazelle," the story of a heroic gazelle who saves his herd by drinking poison before allowing himself to be devoured by the lions who preyed upon them. When they finish, he echoes a few lines in a whisper:
  Eat your fill of savory meat.
  For in my death is your defeat.
• Plucky Girl: No matter what happens to her, Aleris stays focused on her goal of freeing the Unchosen from the wizards' oppression. She maintains a cheerful, upbeat attitude, at least in public.
• Police Brutality: The Securitors are ruthless in their treatment of the Unchosen. Gurion's son Dayam justifies their tactics as necessary to prevent a violent uprising, but later Gurion experiences for himself just how brutally most Securitors treat Unchosen.
• Police State: Gurion's son Dayam is a Securitor, wizard police who enforce order on and collect taxes from the Unchosen.
• Prequel: The Tale of Gurion Thricebound is a prequel to The Chronicles Of Tevenar, set 1000 years before the time of the main series. It was published after the fourth book of the series, although according to Word of God it was written between The Fuller's Apprentice and The Law of Isolation.
• Prequel in the Lost Age: This is an account of the ancient wizards and how they lost their powers, which is ancient history or myth to the people living a thousand years later during The Chronicles Of Tevenar.
• Rabble Rouser: Shifon seeks to provoke the Unchosen into open rebellion against the wizards. Because of the wizards' ability to use the Mother's power to spy on him and his accomplices, they must use indirect methods, hiding their messages in songs and stories.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: More accurately, a "The Reason We Suck" Speech. Inspired by the Mother, Gurion addresses his fellow council members, denouncing the way the wizards have perverted the Mother's gifts to oppress the Unchosen, and declaring that their misdeeds have finally provoked her to take her power away from them:
  "And what have we done with her powers?... We have used them for selfishness and greed and cruelty. We have taken and taken and given nothing in return. We have turned those we were meant to serve into our servants. We have built for ourselves a life of luxury on the backs of the ones entrusted to us. We have not relieved suffering and misery and despair, we have increased them! We have served not creation, but destruction! We have taken the gifts she meant for good and turned them to evil!... And yesterday… yesterday it finally became too much. The Mother watched as our hands—these hands—” I held up my hands before me. “—poured out her power in a rain of death. And she said, no more.”
• Rebel Leader: After her parents' execution, Aleris sets out to rouse the Unchosen into active rebellion. Calling herself "The Raven", she recruits followers, forms an organization, and schemes to overthrow the seemingly invincible wizards.
• Sapient Cetaceans: While other animals touched by the Mother as adults report a sudden increase in their awareness and understanding, Whitecap seems to have noticed no change.
• Spoiler Opening: Several major plot twists are spoiled by the prologue. However, they're all things that will already be ForegoneConclusions to readers of The Chronicles Of Tevenar.
• Tap on the Head: Averted. When Jashon hits Ranor in the head with a fireplace poker during his escape, Ranor suffers a skull fracture and a serious brain injury. Gurion and Barley's intervention saves his life, but the Mother's Power isn't able to repair all the damage, leaving him with slurred speech, aphasia, and impaired motor control. His condition improves over time with ongoing treatment by healing magic, but he remains significantly affected for the rest of his life.
• Super Supremacist: The wizards believe their gifts make them superior to the Unchosen. In addition to the practical advantage their abilities give them, hey believe their ancestors were chosen by the Mother to receive her power because they were the most intelligent, wise, and holy, and that they have inherited those qualities along with their powers.
• These Hands Have Killed: During his "The Reason We Suck" Speech to the wizards' council, Gurion holds up his hands, from which the Mother's power had poured to slaughter Unchosen during the Gold Death.
• This Is My Story: Gurion wants the personal parts of his experiences remembered along with the historical facts.
• Troubled Sympathetic Bigot: Gurion goes from Noble Bigot to this as he investigates Shifon and Anya's efforts to rouse the Unchosen to rebellion. What he learns bothers him more and more, but he continues to believe the wizards are in the right until after the Gold Death and the Mother's removal of her power.
• Uplifted Animal: The Mother touches ordinary animals and transforms them into potential familiars. Their intelligence is increased to human levels. They gain the ability to bond to a human wizard, with whom they can communicate telepathically. When touching, wizard and familiar can use the Mother's power.
• Urban Segregation: In Miarban, wizards live in the spacious, elegant, white marble villas high on the hillside overlooking the Irkolis river. A wall separates the Wizard's District from the lower city where the Unchosen live and work. The lower city includes a broad range of living conditions, from squalid poverty through respectable working class to mansions owned by the wealthy, but all Unchosen are excluded from the Wizard's District, with only a few allowed inside for certain traditional ceremonies. Wizards are free to visit the lower city, but the only ones who regularly do are the Securitors who keep order and young adults looking for a good time.
• Uriah Gambit: After Darani's second husband outlives his usefulness and begins to threaten her power, she gets rid of him during a battle by withdrawing the rest of their forces while he's leading a charge against the enemy.
• Whole Episode Flashback: The entire book is an account of events that took place forty years prior to the time of the framing prologue and epilogue.
• Who Will Bell the Cat?: Shifon and the minstrels perform a variant of this fable. In their version, a single mouse sacrifices himself to lead the cat into a trap, whereupon the mice overwhelm it by force of numbers. The audience plays the part of the mice, ripping the cat costume to shreds.