Seril Undying’s Story So Far
Some of this is adapted from other essays, some is brand new. Enjoy!
Moon Mother, Green-Eyed, Consort of Kos and Lady of Alt Coulumb, Seril Undying starts the series seemingly, well, dead. But she “gets better” and becomes the deity we come to know best throughout the series as she is a bit more hands on with mortal happenings.
As we approach the publication of Dead Hand Rule, let’s take a look at Seril’s story so far.
Seril before the series
Seril is a goddess, and an old one at that. When told about how gods are born and how they grow, we learn that they develop alongside their people. When talking to Tara, Seril says that when she started out, “there were still—what’s the Kathic name for those big furry things with the tusks?” She means, of course, mammoths.
So Seril is extremely old and grew with her worshippers, and with Kos. Seril and Kos seem to have had connected but separate religious traditions; we’re not talking a cohesive pantheon like the Quechal deities, but there were definite overlaps. A Lord of the day, and a Lady of the night, taking on different but complementary divine responsibilities. The Church of Kos is not the Church of Seril, though historically each included the other in their liturgy.
“Seril was night and moon and rock, everything cold and proud and untouchable. Maybe that was why Kos loved her. She wouldn’t burn.”
“Kos loved her?” Tara hadn’t known that. A pair of gods ruling together, one for day, the other for night, one creating, another ordering. Bonds of love between opposites were powerful, stable yet dynamic. No wonder Alt Coulumb had stood for so long and grown so vast.”
Much like with Kos, we don’t know for sure whether Seril is a ‘native’ goddess to Northern Kath. Alt Coulumb, like many of the real world cities it is inspired by, are multicultural cities of immigrants. Many citizens of Alt Coulumb are white and of Craft!European heritage, while Northern Kath is a cognate for North America with similar indigenous peoples.
Conveniently for this essay, Gladstone answered a relevant question in our recent Reddit AMA! When asked “Are all white people on the continent descended from Old World immigrants, like with the Americas, or is the setup less analogous?”, he told us:
“This is a part of the series I haven't explored deeply on the page, so regard this as a bit of a sketchbook answer: the existence of the Archipelago (which used to be a larger landmass) changes the technological difficulty of trans-Atlantic-ish migration, allowing it to happen earlier, at least in a population-diffusion island-hopping kind of way--the sea's not navigable enough to allow Old World powers to do any force projection in Kath until relatively recent history, though, kind of like how Rome doesn't make it to China or India in any durable way. So while Kath does have a rough equivalent of the pre-Columbian era there was population-level contact, trade, and mutual exchange before the (ill-named) Contact Wars--part of the reason there were no equivalents of the Columbian plagues (though also the setting has magical healing, which helps). Many of the white folks in Northern Kath are recent (last 3-400 years) migrants, but they joined a pre-existing cosmopolitan multicultural society. Kos and Seril go WAY back.”
Both Kos and Seril, therefore, might have developed on the ground in Northern Kath, or have been brought by Old World migrants over the past three to four thousand years. Either way, they’ve been in the place that became Alt Coulumb for a long time.
The two gods are intimately connected. They are lovers, in liturgy and in fact (remember that words and belief shape reality). Perhaps they developed together in the old days of Northern Kath, or perhaps multiple groups with different belief systems joined and merged their respective religions. I quite like this latter idea, as it seems to be how many of our real world religions have developed over time - see, for example, evidence that stories in the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament represent different origin stories from different religious groups who united millennia ago.
Either way, Kos and Seril were partners ruling over Alt Coulumb. Seril looked after the night, and the gargoyles she created from stone, her children, were the City Watch. They wrote poetry in her honour, carved into her land, which became the streets of Alt Coulumb.
Everything was pretty great. Until the God Wars
Seril and her gargoyles went to do battle against the forces of Craft, while Kos remained neutral in the Wars and stayed in Alt Coulumb. She was slain by the King in Red at the Crack in the World, and barely survived in Her children - a fact known by few until the modern day.
She was saved by the love of her children, the gargoyles:
“Seril died in the war. She fought the King in Red and fell.”
Growls rose around her, stone grinding on stone, but these didn’t move her as much as Aev’s slow shake of the head.
“Her power was spent,” Tara protested. “There wasn’t enough left to sustain her?”
“Sustain? No. Not as She was.”
“Consciousness is one of the first things to go when a goddess loses power.”
“Not,” Aev cut in, “if consciousness is all that is required.”
Tara’s eyes narrowed as dormant wheels in the difference engine of her brain began to rotate. She remembered Abelard saying that Seril created the gargoyles directly. If that was true, an immense amount of soulstuff was bound inside them. They were obliged to her for their very existence, and she to them for their worship. How much of Seril’s power had been at her own disposal after all, and how much anchored in the bodies of these magnificent monsters. “You’re saying you kept Seril alive, pared down. An echo of the goddess she used to be?”
“Not an echo. Still that Goddess, only less. She died by the Crack in the World, but as the King in Red struck the killing blow, our need, the need of Her true faithful, caught at Her. She fled into our hearts.”
…
“To her devotees in Alt Coulumb she perished, and to you, she lived, or a part of her did. But even if you could support her by faith alone, she would be an invalid as goddesses go. Powerless. She couldn’t help you.”
“We did not require Her help.”
“Why bring her back, then? Why not let her die?”
“Because She loves us.”
Not all the gargoyles had gone with Seril to the frontlines. Some stayed behind, and when they felt her die, they “went mad with fear and fury and grief” and “saw rebellion everywhere.” Abelard recounts that his grandfather told him the city went to war with itself. Most buildings retain the scars of the battle. The citizenry defended itself with hammers and chisels against the stone gargoyles, and priests called down Kos’s fire as the god wept.
When the gargoyles who had joined (and saved) Seril returned, they found the city turned against them. Kos was locked behind a protective circle that Seril could not cross, so they could not tell him she was alive. We hear that the gargoyles attacked the city again and again, but now that we know the full story I imagine this was at least somewhat propaganda. Incursions aimed at taking down the protective circle would have been retold as violent attacks, and perhaps issues that had nothing to do with the gargoyles were reframed as being their fault. Naturally, the people of the city began to view the gargoyles as monsters.
Abelard also says to Tara that he thinks some of the Cardinals in the Church of Kos were relieved they could recast Seril and her children as vicious monsters, never trusting her. We know that this was at least somewhat the truth. The remaining strength of Seril was remade by Alexander Denovo into Justice, and the Blacksuits were created.
And Seril remained outside the walls of the city for nearly forty years. Until David Cabot, a son of the city, returned from charity work abroad. The gargoyles found him wandering in the deep forests outside the city, and they told him what really happened to Seril. David returned to the city and prayed for guidance - he was surprised when Kos himself answered.
Kos then started to communicate with the gargoyles, sending dreams of fire. But he couldn’t break the binding circle his priests laid down, and was now suspicious of his own clergy, so worked with David Cabot and his father, who was a judge in the city. Over the next four months, Kos worked with Judge Cabot to transfer power to Seril, moving power into a pair of Concerns late at night, when few were awake to notice. Unfortunately, someone did notice something was wrong, and contacted Alexander Denovo to help sort it out. He figured out the issue, and set a plan in place to not only prevent Kos from restoring Seril, but to kill Kos and take power for himself.
Which brings us to Three Parts Dead.
Three Parts Dead
Seril herself isn’t really conscious throughout this book, so her part of the story here will be short. She plays a much bigger role later, so those sections will be more substantial.
From Seril’s perspective, her children “sang to [her] about the fire-dreams, and She shivered in anticipation.” The little that is left of her understands that Kos is trying to help her regain her strength. Her youngest gargoyle, Shale, is sent to retrieve the power Kos had funnelled into a Concern via Judge Cabot, when the judge iss brutally slain.
Her children, led by Aev, search for Shale and the Concern. They confront Tara Abernathy on the roof of Club Xiltanda, but are scared away by Cat Elle and the Blacksuits. Ultimately Shale is freed, and meets with them in an abandoned warehouse.
Seril’s power lights the warehouse with moonlight, and her gargoyles explain to Tara what has happened. To prove to Tara that she is indeed alive, Seril briefly possesses Tara.
“If you do not believe,” Aev said, voice deep as surf, “we will show you.”
Light rolled in on Tara like the tide, and on that tide she heard a voice.
…
Tara rode the surf of a silver ocean in moonlight. Or perhaps she was the surf, floating atop the water and one with it at once.
Cool light bathed her. She opened eyes she had not known were closed, looked up, and saw herself, arched in the sky above as she lay curved upon the sea. Up there, she was full and round, glowing with love and serenity. The night was her flesh. Stars clustered in the hollows of her hips and at the base of her neck.
…
Tara was not looking at a Goddess.
She was one with a Goddess.
…
Lost beyond herself, Tara heard a voice. In her left ear it whispered: “Something is wrong.” In her right: “Permit me—”
Tara and the gargoyles are rounded up by Blacksuits and taken to the Temple of Justice to be judged. Tara takes over proceedings to lay out the full case as she knows it, unaware that Seril remains inside her. The power that was meant to be collected by Shale is revealed, and Alexander Denovo tries to grab it, as was his plan all along. He attacks Tara, and would have killed her (inasmuch as a Craftswoman can be killed) if not for Seril.
Seril works through Tara, who has become an unwitting priestess, frees her children, and joins the fight. In Tara’s body, she directly fights Denovo, but he is powerful and able to pull Seril from Tara.
It seems Denovo might have won, but Elayne Kevarian manages to resurrect Kos; Denovo turns his attack, letting go of the Concern that then gives power back to Seril.
It’s all a bit complicated, theologically speaking, but for all intents and purposes Seril is back. However, she remains weakened. After her death, she was carved up by her killers and parts of her taken as spoils of war.
Tara, who decides to stick around in Alt Coulumb as in-house counsel for the Church of Kos, spends the next year hunting down leads to regain power for Seril. She’s not particularly successful.
The city isn’t ready to have Seril back. Remember, their recent history is of the gargoyles attacking time and time again, scarring the buildings and killing the people. The priests of Kos reinforced these memories with a changed liturgy emphasising Kos alone.
The gargoyles and Seril agree to keep their heads down, but secretly do go about saving people who pray for help, particularly in the Paupers’ Quarter of Alt Coulumb. Whispers and rumours abound.
Then, one year later, it all comes to a head.
Four Roads Cross
In the Paupers’ Quarter, rumours abound about Seril and her children. Debate rages over what should be done. Drunkard Corbin Rafferty demands that the gargoyles be shattered, while Matt Adorne tries to keep the peace. Rafferty’s daughter Ellen confesses that she has prayed and been rescued by a gargoyle when lost. Corbin is incandescent with rage, and demands Ellen pray to bring gargoyles as proof they’re back. Unwillingly, she does so and Shale appears. He uses Seril’s power to show Corbin the error of his ways, unintentionally hospitalising Corbin. Ellen and her sisters Claire and Hannah move in with the Adornes.
Separately, Aev, lead gargoyle of Seril, saves journalist Gabby Jones in the Paupers’ Quarter, unintentionally revealing the return of both gargoyles and Seril. Tara tries to quash the story, but Gabby won’t let up.
Tara needs to pivot. If the world is going to know Seril is back, they need to shore up her credit and ensure she’s as strong as inhumanly possible before the outside world decides to attack.
But first she needs to argue. Seril used Tara’s soul on Corbin Rafferty without permission, and Tara is pissed off.
“I don’t believe you.”
“You do, though,” the goddess said. “On some level.” She stood by the counter of Tara’s kitchen-living-dining room, holding a knife. She looked precisely like Tara, only she glowed, and her jacket wasn’t torn. “I made you a snack.” She pointed to a bowl.
“Carrots.”
“Simple, I grant, but you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to DO things with matter. Every activity on this plane involves so many counterbalancing forces and microscopic, hells, quantum interactions; I would have made you cookies but I never can remember how the proteins denature. Besides, you should eat healthier.”
…
“You could have asked before you used my soul to save his.”
The divine light dimmed, which Tara chose to read as embarrassment. “Here.” The goddess held out one hand, and a spark took shape. “Repayment with interest. I wish I could offer you more, but I’m close to the wire as it is.”
…
“I didn’t think you could do that in the first place.”
“The rules are looser between a Lady and Her priestess.”
“Oh, no.”
“Not that you’re a good priestess: you don’t sacrifice or pray, and you ward your dreams so thick I’m surprised you haven’t gone insane. I must admit, this is a new one on me: I’ve never had a Craftswoman priestess before.”
To strengthen Seril, Tara needs Her old records - scripture and archives that spell out what Seril owns and how Her theology works. Having somewhat reluctantly become Seril’s priestess, Tara is able to ask her directly - but Seril claims to not have such archives. She had poetry, stone and wing and claw - her gargoyles. Aev manages to convince Shale to work with Tara (she stole his face, he’s understandably mad about it) and fly Tara over the city so she can see the Stone poetry visible only from the sky. Tara translates as best she can the meaning of the poems into Craftwork legal jargon. Seril is lady of the skies over Alt Coulumb, meaning that she ought to own the skies - this gives her real estate which can then be leased out in return for soulstuff, for example.
Meanwhile, at the docks Blacksuit-cop-slash-priestess-of-Seril Cat Elle and her love interest vampirate Raz Pelham bust a drug smuggling ring and uncover a people trafficking operation. Dozens of people are trapped by predatory loan agreements as debt zombies, and slumber in Varg’s hold. Due to international agreements, Kos can’t intervene - but Seril might be able to.
Craftswoman Madeline Ramp shows up to serve suit against Kos for His off-book relationship with Seril, and consequent undisclosed liabilities. Ramp is an old associate of Denovo’s, making Tara immediately suspicious of her convenient timing to appear in the city.
Tara sets up an exclusive interview between Seril and Gabby Jones to try and control the narrative. Cat and Raz free the debt zombies in Seril’s name - only to be hit by a trap. The refugees are infected with demons, and if the demons can break Seril, they’re free. Blacksuits, gargoyles, and Raz are attacked. Seril screams mid-interview as Her children and Her power are eaten. In the Adorne home, Ellen Rafferty falls ill, crying out.
Abelard asks Kos to intervene. Demons fall to fire in the night sky.
And there’s the proof Ramp needed: Kos has undeclared interest in Seril. She presses suit, and Tara calls a Council of War. As part of the plan, she and Shale fly to Dresediel Lex to speak with the King in Red and ask him to return the rights to Alt Coulumb’s skies, which he took as spoils of war after killing Seril.
This goes about as well as you would expect. Check out Shale’s story so far for the full picture.
Kopil has donated the sky rights to the Two Serpents Group, and sends Tara and Shale along to meet Caleb Altemoc, who has managed to throw himself into the middle of danger and is currently holding together a mountain that houses an ancient goddess. Shale takes his place, Caleb gives Tara the sky rights, and Tara threatens the mountain goddess.
Passing out through lack of soulstuff, she needs Seril to fly her back to Alt Coulumb via the moon road - but Seril can only do that when the moon is in the sky, and Dresediel Lex is three hours behind Alt Coulumb.
Seril must stand alone in the court case, without legal representation. Her supporters in the city are trying their best to give her as much power as possible.
Ellen Rafferty and her sisters bring people together to pray for Seril, and Abelard goes out to spread Kos’ word in support of Seril. In evensong, Gabby shares her interviews with Seril and Aev and the gargoyles join the Criers’ Guild in praise of their Moon-mother. Word quickly spreads throughout Alt Coulumb.
The court case begins. Ramp and Wakefield go head to head - but Wakefield only represents Kos, and thus must step aside when Seril is brought in. With Tara stuck in Dresediel Lex, Seril is undefended. Aev and the gargoyles come to defend Seril in Tara’s stead and are attacked.
The Rafferty sisters lead a vigil in the Paupers’ Quarter; the debt zombie refugees, now freed, step in to support, and show Ellen how to weave the disparate, conflicting stories of all worshippers together into one prayer. But, still, Seril is being eaten through her gargoyles, until Cat joins the fray and tries to arrest the Craftswoman for assaulting Aev, a citizen of Alt Coulumb. Joined by her fellow Blacksuits, she fights, freeing up some of Seril’s power to final transport Tara across the continent.
Just in time, Tara appears, and shows she has gained Seril’s rights to the skies of Alt Coulumb. There’s yet more fighting, as is standard in Craft court cases, but ultimately they win.
Seril is not back to full power, but she’s a hell of a lot stronger now. And now she’s in a better position that before to get more power.
When the Two Serpents Group comes knocking to pitch their venture to Seril, she gives them a counter offer. Based on some gargoyle style poetry coming from the island of Kavekana, she and her people are pretty certain that there is a shard of Seril held by the priesthood of Kavekana’ai, hidden in their pool of unreality.
She wants Teo Batan to work with Cat to get it back for her.
Full Fathom Five
Seril has a minimal but crucial role in Full Fathom Five. Foreign gods may not step foot, so to speak, on the island, so Seril herself cannot be there. Cat, working on her behalf, is cut off from Seril’s power and grace.
The shard is indeed in the pool. It was the shard of Seril that gave a voice to the god who was born there in the caldera, helping her reach out to potential worshippers (like Izza Jalai and Edmond Margot).
The heist ultimately does come off, with some difficulty. Teo Batan drops a homing beacon into the pool, giving Cat a way in. She retrieves the shard and leaves the island.
Izza, newly minted prophet of the Blue Lady, begins to build a new theology around the god born in the pool. Crucially, Seril plays a role in this theology as the Blue Lady’s mother. The connection between the two goddesses surely must be important at some point?
Ruin of Angels
Again, we don’t see a great deal of Seril in this book, but as she saves Kai’s life at the end, she is arguably pretty important.
Tara is a major character here, but doesn’t have many POV pages. So we have a priestess of Seril, but don’t get to see Seril per se until the end. I could rewrite the entire book from Seril’s perspective, but that would be Tara’s perspective and, well, I already did that here.
Instead, here is a bullet point list of Seril moments as I see them:
When Tara first appears (after Ley seems to kill Alethea Vane), she fights against Wreckers guarding the crime scene and “a burst of moonlight-flashed shadow roiled out into the room,” which I take as Craft-shadows and Seril-moonlight
When Tara wants to speak privately to Kai Pohala, she draws Craft circles on a conference room’s walls, ceiling and floor. Each circle is “bridged by an arc of moonlight.” This may just be Craft, but as it’s Tara who’s involved, I’m taking this as Seril-infused Craft.
When Tara resurrects Alethea Vane, she needs starlight to power her Craft. However, the first reference we get about the sky is the moon hanging overhead.
When we FINALLY get Tara POV, as she prepares to fight against the God Wastes, she “felt the moon smile.”
When Kai is stuck in space, Seril (using Tara’s face) rescues Kai and takes her back to the ground. I love this scene, so here it is:
“There was a woman outside, framed by the moon, though the moon had set long since.
“Tara?”
The woman smiled. //Not exactly.// She looked behind her, at the sky. //It’s nice out here, isn’t it?//
“Yes.”
//I don’t think about space this way// She admitted, a bit embarrassed. //This is not how they told the story of the world when I was young. That may sound odd, I guess.//
“Not really,” Kai said. “I’ve met You before.”
//Once or twice.// Seril sighed. //I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to stay. It’s peaceful out here. There are so many places to go.//
“Someday, maybe. For now, I have work.”
The Goddess smiled halfway. //You need a vacation.// But She reached out, through the window and the capsule’s skin.
Kai took Her hand.”
Isn’t that beautiful?
Some time passes before our next book. Tara is searching for information about the skazzerai, so one can only assume Seril is with her on the journey. And then Tara’s father dies.
Dead Country
Another book without much Seril. While Tara is in Edgemont, she is largely cut off from her friends in Alt Coulumb, including Seril. When she prays it sounds like static.
But before that happens, we get a bit of Seril.
Tara is subsumed in her grief. When she packs up her belongings to head to the airport and fly to Edgemont we read that “She looked away from the moon, from Seril who was its goddess. The Silver Lady wanted to talk to her, but she did not want to talk back.” Seril sends Shale in her stead to comfort Tara.
We know that Seril, more than many deities, feels her priestesses emotions and can speak to them more directly than many of her kind. Seril’s theology describes her as the Moon-Mother; feeling Tara’s devastation and grief over the loss of a parent must feel particularly close to Seril’s heart.
When in Edgemont, after her father’s funeral, Tara does pray (against her Craftswoman instincts). She apologises for leaving abruptly, explains the situation, and asks Seril to tell her friends she misses them.
But something isn’t right.
“Silence, moonlight, stars. She waited, and made herself open, which was the heart of prayer.
When the answer came, it was wrong.
//—eed to he—ain, reply haz—n’t unde—re are yo—//
Into the openness of her soul a sandstorm came, scouring, bearing shards of glass and clods of dirt and bugs and lizard bites.”
Seril’s access to Tara is cut off by the Raiders and their curse, which is in turn due to the Craft goddess who later became part of Dawn. I’m not entirely certain of how to translate Seril’s message, but my best guess is that Tara’s message sounded equally broken, and Seril is saying:
Need to hear
Say that again? Reply hasn’t come through
Can’t understand
Where are you?
The first line gives me most trouble - need to hear? Need to help? Another word entirely - succeed? Creed? Read? Feed? Who knows.
Tara tries to heal someone with Seril’s power but “the prayer line was full of sand and howling static, and clouds choked the moon.” Then things get even worse, as Tara is infected with the Raiders’ curse and can’t pray at all. When she tries to, “the curse in her arm lurched hungrily.” Tara describes Seril as walled off behind the curse.
Some time passes between this moment and the end of the book. Knowing Seril, one can assume she is NOT happy with her wayward priestess, and is trying to marshal forces to go and get her. Is she arguing with Shale or Cat about a retrieval mission? Insisting that at the very least somebody write a letter?
I also imagine that the others roll their eyes and tell Seril to leave Tara alone in her grief, to give her some time. Unlike Izza and Kai, it doesn’t seem that Seril’s priestesses and children can speak to one another directly through prayer, so none of them would have necessarily witnesses the sand and static.
We do see Seril briefly at the very end of the book. When Dawn-who-is-now-Sybil tries to attack Tara, Tara prays. The curse is gone. But Dawn/Sybil says gods can’t hear her. Edgemont isn’t a place for gods any more - to save Edgemont, Tara wrote up everything about the town in legal Craft language, claiming it as hers, and sort of Dawn’s.
But Tara is a more experienced Craftswoman than Dawn. Edgemont is her home, yes, but so is Alt Coulumb. So she can connect the two, and “the clouds broke and the moon burned through the pain. Far away she heard Dawn scream, and after that the rush of stone wings.”
Seril is able to save Tara at the last minute. Dawn runs from the goddess’s might.
But it won’t be long until she’s strong enough to face them.
Wicked Problems
Seril keeps hunting for Dawn after she escapes Edgemont. Dawn heads south by day, hiding from the moon at night to prevent Seril from seeking her out. In Alt Coulumb, Seril has charged her gargoyles with keeping an eye on Tara - she knows Tara well enough to know full well that Tara is going to try and chase Dawn alone.
Tara is smart, though, and manages to slip past her gargoyle guard. Seril realises what has happened just in time, and arranges through Kos for Shale to fly Abelard to the airport to travel with Tara.
As you’ll have read (I hope??) in other stories so far, Dawn steals a skazzerai shard and the heart of the goddess Ajaia, and Tara ends up with Abelard, Caleb and Kai on Eberhardt Jax’s yacht. They update each other, and develop a game plan. Abelard lets slip that Seril is looking for Dawn, of course, and Tara is not happy about it.
Dawn is still hiding from the moon, by the way. When the moon comes out after a prison break in the Shining Empire, Dawn collapses as she is attacked by Seril.
We next see Seril properly wearing Shale’s body, confronting Kai in a market in Chartegnon. The whole exchange is absolutely delightful. I love hearing Seril’s voice.
“The ways are yours, and your the vault of sky,” Kai prayed. “Lay the moon roads beneath our feet, and invite us through your gates into your hall, as ragged guests and worn.
“Ah,” Seril said, “but this is not my hall. Still, I always loved that prayer. It’s enough, almost, to atone for half a century’s imprisonment.”
“I don’t see why ou have to keep bringing that up,” Kai said.”
“So clever and so bold. If we wore different forms, I’d pinch your cheek. As it stands, I’m afraid the gesture would be misinterpreted.”
“It would not be appropriate anyway. Consider the power dynamic.”
“My fair if unwitting jailer, I find it rich that you speak of power and presumption to one who languished, chained, if you’ll forgive the image, in your basement, for the better part of fifty years.”
“I didn’t know. And I helped you escape when I found out. And it’s not like you were chained. When you were—brought low—in the Wars, a fragment of your body was stored with us. Like a briefcase in a safe-deposit box. We don’t look in the briefcase.”
The hint of a smile did not change.
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Ideally without fishing for it,” replied the Lady of the Moon. “But in this world even gods must take what we can get.”
There is more banter, but I shall restrain myself from copying over the entire chapter. Seril confirms that Tara doesn’t know she’s here, and asks that Kai keep her presence secret. She doesn’t want Kai to sabotage Tara or spy on her, just keep the secret and be ready to call on Seril if the need arises. Seril gives Kai a lily gilded in silver, which can be used to reach her.
Seril cares about Tara, that is extremely clear. The fact that Tara refuses to speak to her saddens her, but also frustrates her because if they just worked together everything would be much easier. Seril would be in a lot of trouble if she was discovered to be working in Iskar, where the squid god rules, but she has shown up anyway with Shale, who is a damn good spy. The two of them are prepared to be Tara’s backup, but they need an in - Kai.
And thank goodness they showed up. When everything goes wrong at the Opera and Tara is arrested by the Iskari, Kai is able to pray to Seril and get a direct line to the goddess for help. Seril guides her through the halls of the opera house, and sends Shale (in James Bond drag) to rescue her from a fall through an elevator shaft. It’s so cinematic, I adore it.
In the catacombs under Chartegnon, Shale and Seril are searching for Tara. Seril is not possessing him at this point - the Iskari are now on high alert, so she can’t risk it. Kai and Shale are able to locate Tara just in time to help save her from Clarity the ancient flying vampire and the creepy skazzerai metal grey men. Seril does intervene here, a little, as we see “moonlight flooded the chamber” as Shale flies in to rescue Tara.
She keeps a low profile for a little bit, until Clarity et al catch up with Tara, Shale and Kai in the Grimwald spire. The moon is visible in the sky, just, so Seril can transport them along the moonroad (so long as they hold their breath). She deposits them in Dresediel Lex, just in time to help save Abelard, who is burning up with godfire. About to die, Abelard hears Tara speak his name and feels a cold rush of moonlight flood into him - Seril healing him through Tara.
And that is Seril’s story so far.
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