(urth) TSH: Ted's identity

[Craig Brewer]

These are all good questions and ways to reason this out, I think.

A couple of points: are we sure that the man who appears to Bax by the river before he talks to Lupine was actually Ambrosius? Why not Goldwurm? I've been assuming, like others, that Ted and Ambrosius were probably the same and that his appearing in the forest was somehow to protect Doris. But I suppose I could be mistaken. When the "big, heavyset man" stands frowning in front of them (129), Doris has already turned back and Lupine was holding Bax's hand. Maybe a small detail, but it already seems at that point that Lupine is more interested in Bax than Doris, so does she need protection?

I'm also just curious about Ted's ring. It's gold and has a basket-weave design. All we know about Goldwurm, really, is his name and that he lives in a tower. But a golden wurm just seems too close to a golden ring for me to dismiss the possibility quite yet.

Another question: with so many twins around, is it possible that Zwart Black also has a twin? If so, Ted is out because, as Roy has pointed out, Wolfe specifically makes them different sizes. But could it be Goldwurm since so much is made about good and bad twins fighting? Or Ambrosius if he ISN'T Ted? But who and why? (And if Black was really old Nick the whole time, is Nicholas more than just a created vampire?)

Sorry for the ramble...




----- Original Message ----
From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: Wed, April 21, 2010 1:25:10 AM
Subject: Re: (urth) TSH: Ted's identity

Taking up where I left off:

Craig Brewer wrote:
> And do we think he's actually dead and what Bax/Doris see is his ghost? Or
has he just relocated to faerie like Black seems to have done? The list of
characters specifically identifies Ambrosius as a "murdered" sorcerer, so if
Ted and Ambrosius are the same, we're seeing his ghost?<

I'm not sure what to think about Ted. Doris claimed to still be paying off
his medical bills, which suggests he died, probably in a hospital. Funerals
can be faked, like Skotos's.

The best Bax could figure, Skotos showed up about the time Black
disappeared. Bax stopped drinking three years and ten months ago, presumably
when he went to prison. He spent a little over three years there and had
been out for less than six months. Skotos "died" three years ago, just about
the time Bax went to prison.

Martha left her younger twins when they were still young boys. (I'm not sure
how that works. If no one ages in Faerie, how could they ever grow up There?
Bax pegged their age at 13 to 15. How did they get to be that old unless
they spent those years Here?)

I'm rambling here. <g>

> But even more than that...why is Ambrosius or Ted even in the story, for
that matter? I can't quite figure out their significance, other than as an
added bit of strangeness.<

The ring with the changeable stone that Bax found in the catfish was
apparently the object in which Ambrosius had stored some of his power (270).
So Ted's ring probably had nothing to do with Ambrosius. Ambrosius was
Black's rival in some sense (ibid.). I suggest that the external object in
which Black stored some of his power was the poor wooden crutch old Nick
carried but didn't need to walk. At the final river battle, old Nick
revealed himself as Zwart Black and his crutch became more like a hiker's
staff and had a "gold head" (284).

I showed earlier that Ted is not Black. Black is not dead and has his own
"weapon of sorcery" (so called, p-73). If Goldwurm killed Ambrosius, he
obviously did not kill Black. *After* Doris gave Bax Ted's ring, when the
big man we later learn looked like Ted showed up when Ieuan was beating Bax,
Bax saw a ring on the big man's hand (50). (At least I *think* he meant a
ring on the man's hand. Maybe not.) That ring, at the time, made Bax think
the big man was "something else" than the boy's father, a false conclusion
he came to after the event. What the hell? What ring could dead Ted have
been wearing that night? According to Doris, he hadn't even been buried with
his wedding band, which was then being worn by Bax.

What "something else" could Bax have thought him to be? A ghost, because the
ring on the man's hand (if that is intended) looked like one of the two he
himself was wearing? Remember, at that point Bax didn't know what Ted or
Black looked like. Or Ambrosius.

Whatever the conclusion Bax came to about this ring at the time, why did he
later decide the big man must be the boy's father?

-Roy

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