[Dragaera] A passing comment of Sethra's

[Jon Lincicum]

Bryan Newell wrote:
>>> "Should I happen to not be around when Lady Teldra
>>> wakes up, you will not forget to give her my
>>> regards?" p.253(pb) ISSOLA
>>>
>>> It struck my wife as significant, because she read
>>> it as "In case I'm no longer around when..." which
>>> implies that Sethra has either divined, intuited,
>>> suspects, fears or has had prophesied that her 
>>> demise is imminent
>>>       
>
>   
>> do we know via Paarfi if Sethra survives until Norathar's reign?
>>     
>
> I finished a reread of /Five Hundred Years After/ this morning, and Paarfi
> mentions this precise subject at the very end of chapter 34:
>
> (FHYA spoilers ahead)
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> 	"... even the awful destruction and suffering ... cannot detract
> from the honor Sethra Lavode deserves from us all.  Similarly, that today
> she has vanished from sight, perhaps for all time, does not detract from the
> honor"
> - pg 535 of the paperback
>
> 	"Sethra had only managed to bring Aliera's body; Aliera's
> life-essence, or soul, was ripped from her body in the maelstrom of elder
> sorcery which was even then beginning to cascade through the city, and her
> soul found its way no on knew where.  Indeed, Sethra herself thought for
> many years that it had never escaped the fall, but had been destroyed along
> with so many others.  It is not impossible that the belief that she had
> failed accounts for Sethra's vanishing from human intercourse, if, indeed,
> she has not met her fate in some awful battle or tragic mischance."
> - pg 537
>   

I see your quote from FHYA, and raise you this nugget from the preface 
to /The Paths of the Dead/ (page xxii, paperback):

"This historian, we may add, has, over the years, had the honor to carry 
on a  limited but fascinating correspondence with Sethra Lavode, in the 
course of preparing for the work (as yet unpublished) from which, 
accidentally, sprang our two previous histories; and the Enchantress has 
never mentioned any such conversation to this historian."

This last quote makes me think the two previous examples are perhaps 
only an indication that Sethra is no longer actively appearing in 
public--not that she has met some gruesome fate by  the time of the 
Khaavren Romances.

After all, Sethra has a long history of disappearing from sight for long 
stretches, only to re-emerge in full force some centuries (or millenia) 
later.

Majikjon