Tamora Pierce The Immortals - Humanities-Ebooks

Reading
Tamora Pierce
The Immortals
Wild Magic
Wolf-Speaker
The Emperor Mage
The Realms of the Gods
John Lennard
Humanities-Ebooks
Genre Fiction Sightlines
2nd edition

Genre Fiction Sightlines
Reading Tamora Pierce,
The Immortals
John Lennard
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Copyright
Text © 2007, 2013 John Lennard
The Author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this
Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988. First published as A Guide to Tamora Pierce: The Immortals
as an ebook in 2007 by Humanities-Ebooks LLP, Tirril Hall, Tirril,
Penrith CA10 2JE. Published as a Kindle ebook with updated bibliography
and notes 2010. Second edition, retitled Reading Tamora
Pierce: The Immortals, with revisions and updating 2013.
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This e-book is dedicated to the memory of my father,
Michael Briart Lennard
1922–1986
who let me read his books when I ran out of my own on holiday
and taught me more about them and the world than I can ever say,
but died before I could know him as an adult.
I believe that, despite a technology he would have hated,
he would like what it tries to do
for reading and for thinking about what you read.

Contents
Part 1 ~ Notes 6
1.1 Tamora Pierce 6
1.2 The World of Tortall 8
1.3 Magic and Mythical Beasts 26
1.4 Interfering Gods 32
Part 2. Annotations 38
2.1 Wild Magic 38
2.2 Wolf-Speaker 60
2.3 The Emperor Mage 76
2.4 The Realms of the Gods 89
Part 3. Essay 105
Of Stormwings and Valiant Women: Reading
the Tortall books 105
Part 4. Bibliography 119
4.1 Works by Tamora Pierce 119
4.2 Works about Tamora Pierce and Children’s Writing 122
4.3 Websites 124
A Note on the Author 125

Part 1 ~ Notes
1.1 Tamora Pierce
Tamora Pierce was born in December 1954 in South Connellsville,
Fayette County, Pennsylvania, a coal-mining area. Neither of her parents’
families were well-off but her mother was studying towards a
degree and intended to teach, while her father worked for the telephone
company, so there were both a steady income and plenty of books
around. Tamora was the eldest child; sisters Kimberley (b.1960) and
Melanie (b.1961) followed, and there was a large extended family
who cared for and shared with one another. But there were also tensions
with and snobberies from her mother’s family, who were classconscious
and found her father’s family vulgar rather than warm.
In 1963 her father got a job in California and took his immediate
family west. For six years, with the 1960s in full swing, Pierce
grew up around San Francisco, where the district known as Haight-
Ashbury was at the centre of US hippy culture. Though young and
by her own account ‘geeky’, much liberalism rubbed off, especially
where traditional restrictions on women were concerned. Homelife
was difficult, though, and it may partly have been as a defence
against the strain of living with her parents’ failing marriage that she

The Immortals 7
began inventing stories initially fuelled by TV SF and drama. “I was
telling myself stories, but I didn’t begin to write them down until my
father caught me telling stories to myself one day as I did dishes. This
was in early 1966, I think. He suggested that I write a book instead
and even loaned me his typewriter. He also suggested an idea that
he knew I would like, because he shared books he liked with me: a
time travel story.” (TP, email to the author, 26 July 2013; quoted with
permission.) In 1965 Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings had come out in
the US in paperback, and Pierce (led to it by a canny teacher) became
a serious fantasy reader and thinker. But in 1969 her parents’ marriage
ended and she moved with her mother back to Fayette County, and
genuine poverty.
Writing was Pierce’s great ambition, but she ran into a severe
writer’s block in tenth grade, lasting several years, so when in 1972
she went to Penn State University on full scholarship it was to read
psychology with a plan of working with teenagers. She graduated in
1977 with a general degree, difficulty with statistics having forestalled
psychology, and moved to central New York, before living in Idaho
for a while with her father. The writer’s block had lifted at college,
and Pierce had taken some writing courses. Stories flowed again, and
by 1976–7 she had completed a long fantasy novel for adult readers,
but was unable to get it published. She did sell occasional stories,
but for income in Idaho worked as a Housemother, cannibalising
bits of her novel for stories to tell the girls she looked after. Moving
to Manhattan, she held jobs in a literary agency and later a radio
production company, but everything began to change when an agent
suggested turning the long fantasy novel for adults into a quartet for
teenagers.
Alanna: The First Adventure came out in 1983 and its sequels
followed, completing the quartet under the general title ‘Song of the
Lioness’. The books were well-received and, after marriage to Tim
Liebe in 1985, Pierce began astonishingly to develop the world she
had created. Two further quartets (‘The Immortals’, 1992–6, ‘The
Protector of the Small’, 1999–2002) were followed by a duology
(‘The Daughter of the Lioness’, 2003–04), a trilogy (‘The Provost’s
Dog, 2006–11), and a collection of stories (Tortall and Other Lands,
2011). Amid all this Pierce also created a second world in her

8 Reading Tamora Pierce
‘Circle’ books, of which two quartets and two free-standing novels
have appeared since 1997. She has also co-written with Tim Liebe a
Marvel graphic novel, White Tiger (2007). The grand total to date is
27 novels in 28 years, plus the collected stories, that together have
won Pierce a formidable international following and wide praise.
Pierce has no children, but a lively extended family of nephews,
nieces, great-nephews and the like provide an audience (as well
as many distractions). She and her husband also keep a fair-sized
menagerie of cats and birds, and in 2006 moved out of Manhattan
to upstate New York, where there are more trees, space, and cats to
rescue.
1.2 The World of Tortall
1.2.1 The Five Tortall Series
The world of Tortall was created in three quartets, a duology, and a
trilogy. (The duology is almost as long as the quartets, and Pierce
has thanked J. K. Rowling for making longer books for young adults
acceptable.) There is also a collection of short stories, all but five of
which are tales of Tortall. In order of publication, these are:
Song of the Lioness
Alanna: The First Adventure (1983)
In the Hand of the Goddess (1984)
The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (1986)
Lioness Rampant (1988)
The Immortals
Wild Magic (1992)
Wolf-Speaker (1994)
The Emperor Mage (1995)
The Realms of the Gods (1996)
The Protector of the Small
First Test (1999)
Page (2000)
Squire (2001)

Lady Knight (2002)
The Daughter of the Lioness
Trickster’s Choice (2003)
Trickster’s Queen (2004)
The Provost’s Dog
Beka Cooper: Terrier (2006)
Beka Cooper: Bloodhound (2009)
Beka Cooper: Mastiff (2011)
The Immortals 9
Tortall and Other Lands: A Collection of Tales (2011)
Song of the Lioness deals with the education and early adventures
of Alanna of Trebond & Olau, the first woman in Tortall for more
than a century to become a knight. Despite the magic in this world,
a Victorian stupidity about women being incapable has set in, and to
undertake her training as a Page and Squire she has to disguise herself
as a boy. With the help of her skills, dedication, magical talent,
and the friends she makes, plus the blessing of the Goddess, she is
knighted, and forestalls the usurpation of the Tortallan throne by the
King’s brother Roger—a very powerful mage and the main villain of
the quartet.
In the later books Alanna travels as a knight, visiting the desert
tribes of the Bazhir and winning their respect both with arms and
magic. Her greatest adventure takes her to distant lands and gains
for Tortall the fabled ‘Dominion Jewel’, that can secure a state’s
prosperity or lock fast a tyrant’s grip. Roger thus also desires the
Jewel, and summons an earthquake to help him get it; he is eventually
defeated and killed, but only at great cost to the land. Alanna acquires
an immense reputation, the nickname ‘the Lioness of Tortall’, and a
position as King’s Champion.
Alanna’s growth to maturity means a growth into sexuality—
not easy for a woman in disguise, nor afterwards for a knight both
notorious and clearly trained to kill. For most of the quartet the love
interest is divided between (i) Jonathan of Conté, heir to the Tortallan
throne, who trained with Alanna, discovered her secret, and takes
her virginity, but must in the end marry for politics, not love; and

10 Reading Tamora Pierce
(ii) George Cooper, of very humble birth but considerable power in
the underworld, eventually becoming ‘the Rogue’, King of Tortall’s
thieves and hard men. Though lacking Jonathan’s royal status George
has a kind and wise heart, and after marrying Alanna becomes deputy
chief of the Tortallan secret service.
The Immortals begins some years after Alanna’s triumphs. Tortall
and its neighbours are troubled by Immortals—unicorns, griffins, etc.
but also stormwings and spidrens, vile combinations of human and
beast—that were banished to the Divine Realm four centuries past.
They have been loosed by the Emperor Mage Ozorne of Carthak,
who covets more power and land and whose defeat is the quartet’s
major theme.
The heroine is Daine, illegitimate daughter of an unknown father
in the poor north of Tortall’s neighbour Galla. Gifted with animals,
Daine flees her village with her pony Cloud after raiders kill her
family, and meets a pony-trader, Onua, who works for the Tortallan
military and hires Daine as assistant. Fostered by the Badger God,
who visits her dreams, her uncanny way with animals, including
sensing Immortals, secures her in favour, and she trains in ‘wild
magic’ with a great mage, Numair, born in Carthak.
Attacks by Ozorne on the Queen and in north Tortall are defeated;
Daine does great things, becomes guardian of an orphan dragon,
Skysong, and extends her magic from animal empathy to shapeshifting,
earning the name ‘the Wildmage’. A visit to Carthak during
peace negotiations precipitates a crisis: the gods are angry with
Ozorne and use Daine to dethrone him, but he survives, transformed
into a stormwing, and forges an alliance with all Tortall’s enemies and
the anti-Goddess of Chaos, Uusoae, who seeks to end the world. It
also transpires that Daine’s father was Weiryn, a northern God of the
Hunt, and that after death her mother has become a minor Goddess of
Childbirth and Healing, the Green Lady.
In the last novel Daine and Numair visit the Divine Realm, meeting
her parents and other Gods, Skysong’s dragon family, and much peril.
The Gods themselves need Daine as one of their own to help defeat
Uusoae and Ozorne. Eventually Daine kills Ozorne and saves the
day, but because she precipitates such change is confined thereafter

The Immortals 11
to mortal lands. Love with Numair and the many friends she made in
Tortall make it the richer prospect.
The Protector of the Small begins some years after the Immortals
War, and follows the second female candidate for knighthood in
Tortall. Unlike Alanna the Lioness, whom she greatly admires,
Keladry of Mindelan (from a newly ennobled diplomatic family) has
neither the steering hand of a goddess nor magic, and no need to disguise
herself to be admitted for Page training. But that cannot prevent
the prejudice of her peers and trainers, and Kel has to draw deep
on her upbringing and fierce childhood training in discipline and
stoicism in the Yamani islands (a version of imperial Japan) to get
through her hazing and beatings, the last an openly criminal assault.
The theme of formal justice runs throughout.
Successive novels trace Kel’s four years as page and four as squire,
but develop quite differently from Song of the Lioness. Kel is not only
a very good trainee, she can command; and to her suprise (having
hoped to be chosen by Alanna) she is taken as squire by Raoul of
Goldenlake, commander of the King’s Own—the business end of the
Tortallan army. Fighting mortal and immortal raiders, travelling the
length and breadth of Tortall, Kel receives a fine training in logistics,
learns to joust, and discovers in the escalating war with invasive
northern neighbour Scanra what battle truly is. The Scanrans, newly
coherent and disciplined under a fresh warlord-king, Maggur, also
have ‘killing devices’, razor-fingered robots made from giants’ bones
and powered by the trapped souls of murdered children. Temporarily
commanding a seasoned squad, Kel’s thinking and fighting skills
help them kill one; but the terror runs deep.
When Kel graduates the Chamber of the Ordeal assigns her a
special task, to kill the magician making the devices, Blayce. Military
need puts Kel in command of a refugee camp, guarding 300 adults
and 200 children, without a chance to follow her quest. But after a
Scanran strike force abducts all the refugees, enslaving adults and
marking the children for Blayce, Kel and a motley band of friends
strike out behind enemy lines, and burn the evil out, killing Blayce
and rescuing most of the refugees, as well as various others. A better
refuge is built, and Kel resumes command as the war drags on without

12 Reading Tamora Pierce
the devices.
The Daughter of the Lioness (also known as the ‘Trickster series’)
jumps some years and provides a new heroine. Alianne (Ali) is the
daughter of Alanna the Lioness and George Cooper, and fancies her
father’s trade as a spymaster rather than her mother’s as a knight.
They will hear none of it, but Ali’s chance comes, rather brutally,
when she is caught by raiders and sold into slavery in the Copper
Isles (a version of colonial Indonesia).
Long ruled by light-skinned Luarin from the Tortallan continent
who oppress the native Raka, the Isles were cast down because their
God, Kyprioth the Jester, a trickster-divinity, was cast down by his
more warlike and dedicated brother Mithros and the Great Mother
Goddess. In Ali he sees a perfect tool for revenge, and inserts her, via
a mixed-race noble household, as spymaster into a rebel conspiracy
that grows into an insurgency. Over the two books wrongs earthly
and divine are comprehensively righted—and real blood, sweat, and
tears are shed.
Racism and colonial insurgency are new themes, but the real costs
of war, and young women’s abilities to wage it both with blood and
secrets, continue from Protector of the Small. There is no ‘portrait’ of
Indonesia, but there is a raw historical reality to some action. A lively
romance plot sees Ali fall for, sleep with, and marry Nawat Crow, so
called because he used to be one; all crows, it seems, could change
shape, but most think Nawat’s choice very odd. At the end a pregnant
Ali is established as spymaster of a liberated Copper Isles, politely
chasing out her father’s agents.
The Provost’s Dog is set two centuries earlier, and written in the firstperson
as the diary of Beka Cooper (an ancestor of George’s) as she
sets out on a career as a Provost’s Guardswoman, a feudal policeforce.
The books import elements of the crime story, with forensic
science modulated by magic, that Pierce very interestingly developed
in the second of her ‘Circle’ quartets, ‘The Circle Opens’ (2000–03).
Terrier sees Beka starting as a probationer in the slums of Corus,
tackling what is in effect a slave-labour operation. Bloodhound sends
her to Port Caynn and involves a counterfeiting operation. Mastiff

The Immortals 13
turns on a threat to the royal family, and sees Beka effect a daring
rescue and fall in love. She has a familiar cat, purple-eyed Pounce,
clearly the same divine creature that as Faithful accompanied Alanna
in ‘Song of the Lioness’; she also has a limited magical gift that
enables her to speak with ghosts (carried by pigeons) and dust-devils.
The frustrations of these gifts are stressed as much as their utility, and
the series is far more concerned with human than divine relations.
The crime-writing theme of policemen necessarily communicating
with and in some ways resembling criminals is prominent, replaying
and developing Alanna’s relationship with George Cooper in Beka’s
relationship with Rosto the Piper, who in Terrier becomes the ‘Rogue’
of Corus.
1.2.2 The Setting and Cultures
The world of Tortall is very unusual as a fantasy creation because it
openly corresponds in a rough but perfectly clear way with real geography.
The maps provided with the books have never been bigger
than a page, and have varied in scale, but local detail rarely matters.
At the same time, geography is warped into convenience, much as
magic can in this fictional world bend reality.
Tortall itself is Europe, combining English, French, Spanish, and
German elements into a generic mediaeval kingdom; its culture
of feudal chivalry has a Roman context but predominantly British
surface. To the north, mountainous and cold, is Scanra, whose blond
armies are distinctly like Vikings and the Germanic tribes who once
fought against Rome. The neighbouring nations of Tusaine, Galla,
Tyra, Maren, and Sarain, all to the east, are little explored. Beyond
them are lands Alanna visits that are plainly India and the Far East,
with the Himalayas (‘The Roof of the World’) and a version of the
Chinese Civil or Vietnam Wars. Queen Thayet and Onua are ‘K’miri’,
and seem Vietnamese or Cambodian. South-eastern Tortall, however,
strangely includes the lands of the tribal Bazhir, who are like Bedouin
nomads and live in deep desert that is African or Middle Eastern, not
European.
The land analogous to Northern Africa is occupied by Carthak,

14 Reading Tamora Pierce
which despite its name is not much like the ancient Carthage (modern
Libya) that was Rome’s greatest enemy. It is more a version of
Alexander the Great’s empire strongly flavoured with the notorious
pirate-kingdoms of the North African ‘Barbary Coast’ (modern
Algeria and Morocco), that until the early nineteenth century regularly
raided European ships and coasts for slaves. Reported lands south of
Carthak include ‘the grass plains of Ekellatum’, which sound like the
Kenyan Masai Mara or South African veldt.
Out in the Atlantic, less than a week’s sail from land, are two large
archipelagos. Further north are the Yamani Isles, there from the first
but emerging in Protector of the Small as a full-blown version of
imperial Japan, complete with language, dress, customs, sword and
steel technologies, politics, nobility, and raider-problems of their
own. Further south are the Copper Isles, also there from the first as the
source of a nasty princess very troublesome to Alanna, but emerging
in the two novels about Alianne as an equally full-blown version
of colonial Indonesia, complete with tropical climate, oppressing
rulers, oppressed darker-skinned natives, language, customs, dress,
technologies, double nobility, and developing nationalist insurgency.
The problem as a smart reader, seeing these real-world references
appeal to history while re-arranging geography and climate at will,
is what to make of it all. It matters because Tortall is evidently
more deserving and kinder than most of its neighbours. Scanrans
are thoroughly destructive and unscrupulous, and Carthakis (once
commandeered by Ozorne, and subsequently recovering under the
nicer Emperor Kaddar) are inveterate raiders and slavers whom the
Gods recently punished. Other countries are generally mistrusted,
and the East, racked by endemic wars, is a source of refugees. Isn’t
this a little disturbing? even racist? But the plots suggest otherwise,
and Pierce’s reason for mixing things up so much, historically and
geographically, may be precisely to mobilise these issues, not to
endorse them in some reactionary fashion.
Tortall’s European feudal and chivalric culture, for example,
imposes a rigid social system and cultural prohibitions given solid
reality, but the whole idea has been their systematic defeat and
modification by women. Alanna challenges the patriarchy of the

The Immortals 15
knighthood and monarchy. Daine challenges exploitation and abuse of
animals and is, with Kel, a reluctant warrior enraged by slavery, war,
and the politics that drive them. Kel is also a sterling and sometimes
satirical protector of children and refugees with an increasingly
acute class-consciousness, while Ali helps a people and a nation
liberate themselves from abusive and impious foreign rule. Evidently
committed to gender and social equality in law and custom, but
recognising sexual and moral differences that make people unequal
in many ways and degrees, Pierce’s contemporary feminism is far
more interested in realism and imagination than political correctness.
The distinct quartets and duology have helped by keeping the various
dimensions self-contained, and despite the acknowledged influence
of Tolkien’s massively coherent The Lord of the Rings Pierce does
not make a fetish of detailed cohesion. In later volumes of Protector
of the Small some aspects of Yamani life and the clash of Euro-Asian
values have featured in mainland Tortall, via Prince Roald’s marriage
to Princess Shinkokami and Kel’s memories of Yamani childhood,
but events with Ali in the Copper Islands were discrete, and what
impact they may have in future has been postponed by the move back
in time to Beka Cooper in Terrier. But the stories and nations that are
present offer a wide range of liberations for women and all children
to consider—and if the oppressions from which folk need liberating
are sometimes brutally real, in the real world oppression is brutal and
Pierce, for all her delight in fantasy, is deeply committed to changing
it.
1.2.3 The Cast of The Immortals
Although all Pierce’s quartets, and for the most part each individual
novel, can stand alone, they are highly accumulative, and knowing
who or what everyone is, and does throughout all the novels, makes
reading enormously richer. What follows is therefore a cast-list (or
dramatis personae, the ‘characters of the drama’) with some summaries.
Readers are warned that some spoilers inevitably creep in.
As mortals, immortals, and gods, with variant names, are all
present, entries are given in strict alphabetical order— ‘Daine’ is

16 Reading Tamora Pierce
under ‘D’ and her full name, Veralidaine Sarrasri, under ‘V’ (not ‘S’,
as would be usual in an index). The only exception is ‘the’, so ‘the
Cat’ is under ‘C’.
Alamid A Carthaki mage serving Tristan Staghorn.
Alanna the Lioness Alanna of Olau and Trebond, the heroine of
Song of the Lioness and present in all the series except The Provost’s
Dog. The first woman to achieve knighthood in Tortall for a century,
Alanna is a god-touched mage and a difficult, high-tempered woman,
but a fearsome King’s Champion and loyal friend. Myles of Olau is
her adoptive father. She is married to George Cooper, formerly ‘the
Rogue’, now deputy chief of the Tortallan secret service, and they
have three children, Thom (named for Alanna’s dead twin brother)
and younger twins Alan and Alianne (the heroine of The Daughter
of the Lioness). Alanna warmly welcomes Daine, and is Kel’s secret
sponsor in The Protector of the Small.
Aranh One of the male spotted hyenas in Ozorne’s menagerie,
distinguished by a nicked ear.
Arram Draper See Numair Salmalín
the Badger The male Badger God, first animal of his kind and not
simply immortal, but divine; if ‘killed’ he is immediately reincarnated.
He looks after Daine on Weryn’s behalf because after petitioning for
Sarra’s incarnation as a goddess Weiryn himself is bound to his lands
in the Divine Realms for a century; thus he is a father-substitute,
less important once Daine has met Weiryn and increasingly offstage,
helping Thayet and the darkings against Ozorne’s alliance.
the Banjiko A central or southern African tribe famous for
wild magic with animals, but mistakenly believing themselves also
divinely destined for slavery. Daine meets them as Ozorne’s slaves
and frees them. They are the first people to recognise Daine’s semidivine
nature.
Barzha Razorwing A stormwing queen, usurped by Jokhun
Foulreek and Ozorne and freed by Daine, whom she helps in the
Divine Realms.
Battle One of the wolves in the Long Lake pack, who famously
defended cubs against a mountain lion.

The Immortals 17
Belden of Dunlath A treasonable Tortallan lord, married to
Maura of Dunlath’s half-sister Yolane.
the Black God A great God, master of death and the afterlife,
and father of the Graveyard Hag, he is also reputed the kindest God,
refusing none in death. He figures by name in all novels, briefly in
spirit-person in Trickster’s Choice, and in Terrier it is revealed that
pigeons are his messenger-servants, bearing souls to him (that Beka
Cooper can hear).
Blueness A large tomcat in Castle Dunlath, who as a kitten fell
into a bowl of food colouring. He protects the kitten Scrap.
Bonedancer A Tortallan version of Archaeopteryx, the fossillink
between dinosaurs and birds—Bonedancer is literally a fossil,
magically resurrected by Daine while she wields the power of the
Graveyard Hag in Carthak. He chooses to stay alive afterwards as the
pet of Lindhall Reed, and also appears in The Protector of the Small.
Broad Foot The male God of ‘duckmoles’ (broad-billed platypi),
first animal of his kind and not simply immortal, but divine; if ‘killed’
he is immediately reincarnated. A friend of the Badger, Weryn, and
Sarra (whose fish stew he likes), he helps Daine and Numair in the
war against Uusoae by controlling the Three Sorrows.
Brokefang The Alpha wolf of the Long Lake pack, who is
manipulated by the Wolf God into summoning Daine to Dunlath.
Daine feels morally indebted to him for the pack’s shelter after her
family were killed, and because the greater intelligence she arouses
in him causes him grief.
Buriram Tourakom, ‘Buri’ A K’miri friend of Queen Thayet
who fled to Tortall with her, and became co-commander, then full
commander, of the Queen’s Riders. A kindly but tough woman who
is a good friend to Daine, she figures in all three quartets, and in
The Protector of the Small 3–4 pairs with and marries Raoul of
Goldenlake.
the Cat A mysterious animal God and constellation, who can
choose to become incarnate (always with striking purple eyes) and
assist struggling individuals, the Cat features primarily in Song of
the Lioness as Alanna’s companion, and returns in Terrier as Beka
Cooper’s. It turns up briefly when Daine is in the Divine Realms.

18 Reading Tamora Pierce
Cloud Daine’s faithful shaggy-coated mountain pony, at a critical
time her only companion, who has become preternaturally intelligent
through contact with her.
Daine See Veralidaine Sarrasri
Darkmoon Alanna’s horse, whose granddam she rides in Song
of the Lioness.
Deniau of the Copper Isles A prince allied to Ozorne, killed in
his wars. The mad Rittavon blood he represents is expressed through
Josiane in Song of the Lioness and central to The Daughter of the
Lioness.
Diamondflame The chief dragon, Skysong’s great-greatgrandfather,
who helps Daine fight Ozorne and Uusoae.
Evin Larse A Queen’s Rider from a theatrical family whom
Daine meets as a trainee. In Protector of the Small he has advanced
to a command rank with the Riders.
Flamewing A dragon, Diamondflame’s great-granddaughter
and Skysong’s mother, killed after helping Daine by Carthaki mages
during the attack on Pirate’s Swoop.
Flicker A squirrel, whom Daine heals from a stormwing-gash
and empathically inhabits to reconnoitre Dunlath.
Frostfur A wolf, the Alpha female of the Long Lake pack and
Brokefang’s second mate. Daine thinks her much nastier than the
dead female she replaced, and Frostfur returns the dislike.
Gainel, Master of Dream One of the great Gods, but permitted
only to converse with mortals in dream and standing with one foot in
the Divine Realms, the other in Chaos. He recruits Daine and Numair
on the Gods’ behalves to fight against Uusoae, and heals Daine after
she kills Ozorne. His eyes are infinitely deep, and he can in dream
take any form; to Daine he first comes as Rattail, a dead wolf she
loved.
Gardiner A Carthaki mage serving Tristram Staghorn.
Gareth the Elder of Naxen A duke and senior official from the
days of King Jonathan’s father. He plays a larger role in Song of the
Lioness.
Gareth the Younger of Naxen A classmate of King Jonathan’s
as a page and squire, now to the son as his father was to Jonathan’s

The Immortals 19
father. He heads the Tortallan delegation to Carthage, and features in
all three quartets.
George Cooper Alanna’s plain-featured husband, of poor birth,
once ‘the Rogue’, now deputy chief of the Tortallan secret service
(his street-name is ‘the Whisper Man’) and Baron of Pirate’s Swoop.
He features in all the series except The Provost’s Dog (about one of
his ancestors), but is most important in Song of the Lioness and The
Daughter of the Lioness, where his paternal advice to Alianne is often
very sharp and funny.
Gissa of Rachne A Carthaki mage serving Tristan Staghorn who
spills ‘blood rain’ on her hand and has to cut it off to save her own
life.
Gold-streak A darking, the first to rebel against Ozorne’s
commands and contact Daine, and later the architect of the plan to
spy for Daine. It survives and goes to live with other darkings in the
Dragon Lands.
the Graveyard Hag A great Goddess, but only of real power in
Carthak where she is the dominant divinity. A daughter of the Black
God, she typically appears as a one-eyed hag, loves dicing, and has
as her sacred animals rats and spotted hyenas. She lends Daine divine
power to resurrect the dead to punish Ozorne’s neglect of her and the
other Gods. She also appears in Trickster’s Queen.
the Great Mother Goddess The greatest female divinity,
subsuming classical and northern deities of childbirth, love, and
maternity. She has aspects as Maiden, Mother, & Hag, but allows
the Graveyard Hag to dominate in Carthak, and lesser local gods like
Sarra, the Green Lady, to hold sway in small ways. She is enamoured
of military prowess and hates deception; though Alanna’s patron in
Song of the Lioness, Alianne manages to deceive her to her face in
The Daughter of the Lioness.
the Green Lady See Sarra
Hakim A Bazhir soldier in the King’s Own, who recognises
Daine’s divinely-gifted archery; he also appears in Protector of the
Small as a welcome friend and mentor to Kel.
Hebakh A stormwing lord, mate of Barzha Razorwing, and a
nervy, intelligent creature, always bating.

20 Reading Tamora Pierce
Huntsong A golden eagle of Dunlath with whom Daine magically
rides.
Iakoju An ogre who helps Daine free the enslaved immortals,
mortals, and animals of Dunlath.
Imrah of Legann An important Tortallan, commanding the
biggest port. He was Roald’s knight-master, and though gruff and
intimidating is kindly and wise.
Inar Hardensra A powerful Scanran mage with one eye
replaced by a large ruby who becomes an important ally of Ozorne
and Uusoae. He is eventually slain by Numair.
Iry A spotted hyena in Ozorne’s menagerie, distinguished by
having (in Teeu’s words) “more spots than he can use”.
Jachull A stormwing queen devoid of feeling, who allies herself
with Ozorne and is eventually slain by Barzha Razorwing.
Jelly A darking, third to defect from Ozorne but only after
exposing Daine and Numair to attack by hurroks, and later killed by
Ozorne; a darking martyr.
Jewelclaw A nasty dragon, who threatens Daine and Numair
and summons the Dragonmeet against them. His fate is unclear but
involves a severe punishment for discourtesy by Rainbow Windheart.
Jokhun Foulreek A stormwing king, who usurped Barzha
Razorwing (whom he could not fight) by betraying her to Ozorne
as the price of an alliance; after her escape he must fight her, and is
slain.
Josiane of the Copper Isles A Rittavon Princess who figures in
Song of the Lioness as an enemy of Alanna and the Cat. She matters
here because her death is a cause of political hostility between the
Isles and Tortall, making the Rittavon monarchy (overthrown in The
Daughter of the Lioness) ready allies of Ozorne.
Jonathan of Conté King of Tortall, once Alanna’s lover but
married to Thayet; basically a good king and wise reformer, but of
necessity a politician and compromiser. Sympathetically presented in
Song of the Lioness and The Immortals, he gets a much more critical
examination from Kel in The Protector of the Small.
Kalasin, ‘Kally’ Jonathan’s and Thayet’s elder daughter, a
powerful healing mage-to-be. She is about 8 in the Immortals

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