[Dragaera] A slip of the tongue...

[Philip Hart]

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006, Scott Schultz wrote:

> > Tazendra's - uhh - idiot-savantism?
>
> Sethra's point to Tazendra in _Five Hundred Years After_ is that she gives
> herself too little credit when she tries to beg off from the challenge due
> to being a poor thinker. (Paraphrased - "There isn't a stupid sorceror that
> made it past his 500th year.")

I sort of suspect this is just Sethra making up for most of _TPG_ (and
other bits of _FHYA_).

> Perhaps that comes from hanging around with exceptional people like
> Khaavren and company. Perhaps it's simply that Dzur as a general case
> don't waste a lot of time on "wondering", which is no doubt why Tazendra
> finds it such a novel experience to be doing just that at certain points
> of _The Phoenix Guards_.


It's (I suppose) possible that T is just extraordinarily intellectually
incurious.  But I can also well imagine that skill in sorcery is not
necessarily correlated with normal intelligence but with a certain
obsessiveness - rather like music.

I'll have to look back at the Pirodessey for more evidence.