#three mountains

In ACOMAF, we are introduced to the seemingly prophetic words of the Book of Breathings (BoB), which now resides in the world of CC. The chaotic half of the book speaks in threes and starts with this line:

Life and death and rebirth

The words of the BoB may be interpreted a few different ways. Each line includes a set of three, and each part of that three might represent a sister, such as life = Feyre, death = Nesta, and rebirth = Elain. Each phrase may (also) describe a particular sister. For example, Rot and bloom and bone is often connected to Elain since she is consistently associated with flowers. And last, but not least, it might refer to a life cycle that applies to all three sisters in general, describing their life as humans, death of that life, and rebirth as powerful fae. A key part of that journey includes healing; they find Hope shining in the Void. All three are valid and useful. For this post, I plan to focus mostly on the first interpretation as those three separate words—life and death and rebirth—may describe the light unique to each sister. This aligns nicely with the concept of unique or nuanced light we learn about in CC, which is connected to those who came to Midgard from Prythian.

While reading HOSAB, @offtorivendell reminded me that Theia (the Starborn Queen from Prythian) is named for the Greek goddess of sight and light. She had three children associated with different kinds of light: Helios (Sun), Selene (Moon), and Eos (Dawn). We only know of two children that Theia bore, one of them being unnamed and the other being Helena (which is a name that is sometimes connected to Selene, the moon). Bryce somehow bears Theia’s unique light, according to Aidas. Is this light connected to Helena’s offspring, who seemed to have stayed in CC, or the other, unnamed daughter? Is it possible that both, over the course of thousands of years, manifested different kinds of light? And if the unnamed daughter returned to Prythian to protect the people on the other side of the Rift, could she be that clever warrior from the ancient fae line that evolved into a human line?

“Clever, that Fae warrior. Her bloodline is long gone now—though a trace still runs through some human line.”

He smiled, perhaps a bit sadly. “No one remembers her name. But I do. She would have been my salvation, had I not made my choice long before she walked this earth.”

As @silverlinedeyes has suggested, could that human line run through the veins of the Archeron sisters? If so, that might also explain the manifestation of their different kinds of light—light that aligns with the children of the mythological Theia (Sun, Moon, and Dawn).

Life (Sun) - Feyre

Although Feyre is the youngest, she is the sister we come to know first. The first sister. Although she possesses power from all seven remaining courts, the most common light she exhibits is from the Day Court:

Faintly, as if some inner light shone beneath my skin, leaking out into the world. Warm and white light, like the sun—like a star.

Shining—I was shining bright and pure as a star. “Day Court?” I asked.

But there, deep within Day’s light … I gleaned it. A purifying, clear power. Cursebreaker—spellbreaker. The light wiped through every physical trapping, showing me the snarls of spells and glamours, showing me the way through … I burned brighter, looking, looking— Buried inside the bone-walls of the castle, the wards were woven strong. I sent that blinding light flaring once more—a distraction and sleight of hand as I severed the wards at their ancient arteries.

At me, resplendent and pure in white, beginning to glow with the light of day as the sun’s path flowed directly over me instead.

I released the damper on the power that I had unleashed in Hybern, my body turning incandescent as light shone through. Pure as day, pure as starlight. “Cursebreaker,” some murmured. “Blessed,” others whispered. [...] I let my glow spread, until it, too, rippled from Lucien’s bowed form. A knight before his queen.

So I bared my teeth and sent a fist of white light punching into that fiery shield—the white light of Day. Spell-breaker. Ward-cleaver.

Death (Moon) - Nesta

Nesta is the oldest of the three and the second sister whose story has been told. She is the second sister. The light she is associated with most is the cold light of the moon, the silver light of death:

But inch by inch, the scabbard slid from the blade. And inch by inch, fresh steel glowed—truly glowed, like moonlight lay within the metal. […] Iridescent sparks danced along the blade. Pure, crackling magic. The light danced and spurted as if an invisible hammer still struck it.

She’d seen a Queen of the Night. As merciless and cold and beautiful as the god Lanthys had wanted to make her. Death’s Consort. Death herself.

In the moonlight, before the silvered lake, she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Nesta finished the eighth maneuver, and returned the sword to center. The light in her eyes shone brighter than the moon overhead.

Silver thread embroidered the skintight velvet bodice, the straps so narrow they might as well have been nothing against her moon-white skin.

Upon Nesta, this once-human female who had conquered death, who now glowed as if she had devoured the moon, too.

Rebirth (Dawn) - Elain

And Elain, the middle child whose story I believe will be told next, is the third sister. She is most associated with spring and rebirth, as well as the beauty of dawn:

Beautiful—she’d always been the most beautiful of us. Soft and lovely, like a summer dawn. […] Elain’s golden-brown hair was half up, her pale skin creamy and flushed with color, and her eyes, like molten chocolate, were wide as they took me in.

Elain at last slid into the chair near Mor’s, her dawn-pink dress—finer than the ones she usually wore—crinkling beneath her.

She set down the tray and wiped her flour-coated hands on the apron she wore over her dusty-pink gown. Even in the middle of winter, she was a bloom of color and sunshine. […] I surveyed the food she was assembling and asked between bites, “How long have you been working on this?” A one-shouldered shrug. “Since dawn.” She added, “Nuala and Cerridwen were up hours earlier.”

Elain had walked in halfway through. She’d been toiling in the estate gardens since dawn, and had been solemn as Rhys filled her in. Feyre had been unable to say a word. But Elain’s gaze remained steady as she listened to Rhys.

Her sister’s delicate scent of jasmine and honey lingered in the red-stoned hall like a promise of spring, a sparkling river that she followed to the open doors of the chamber. […] Her sister turned toward her, glowing with health.

Soft steps padded from under the stair archway, and there she was. The Faelights gilded Elain’s unbound hair, making her glow like the sun at dawn.

Their unique light might provide a necessary counterbalance to the dark. They are Hope (iridescent light) shining in the Void (darkness that gobbles up all other light and color) that a weaver of Fate, like Urd, created. As such, they act as a natural foil to the dark death-god siblings who, as @offtorivendell and I suspect, may be born of the Void like the Under-King and princes of Hel in CC. If the Under-King spoke true, beings return to the Void after death, and for the death-god siblings, that might actually be home. This connection to Void may be why the Bone Carver was also so pointed in his questions when Feyre described where she went after death:

“But was there anyone there—were you seeing anything beyond?”

“There was no other world,” the Bone Carver pushed. “If there was or is, I did not see it.”

“No light, no portal?” Where is it that you want to go? The question almost leaped off my tongue. “It was only peace and darkness.”

When the Cauldron took his life, it’s no wonder he was relieved: he was finally returning home. I also wondered in the shifting forms of fate post if the Cauldron was linked to Void (the darkness of beginnings and endings). It seems to be the dark womb from which everything is born, and those who have died can return through it, like a magical portal:

“Long ago, before the High Fae, before man, there was a Cauldron … They say all the magic was contained inside it, that the world was born in it. But it fell into the wrong hands. And great and horrible things were done with it. Things were forged with it. Such wicked things that the Cauldron was eventually stolen back at great cost. It could not be destroyed, for it had Made all things, and if it were broken, then life would cease to be. So it was hidden. And forgotten. Only with that Cauldron could something that is dead be reforged like that.”

But in dying for a worthy cause, did the Carver weaken his other powerful siblings? He and his siblings may be related to the Archesian amulet, a symbol of three overlapping circles in the CC series that provides protection. It’s the symbol the Carver draws for Feyre to explain him and his siblings:

The Carver traced three overlapping, interlocked circles in the dirt. “You have met my sister—my twin. The Weaver, as you now call her. I knew her as Stryga. She, and our older brother, Koschei. How they delighted in this world when we fell into it. How those ancient Fae feared and worshipped them. Had I been braver, I might have bided my time—waited for their power to fade, for that long-ago Fae warrior to trick Stryga into diminishing her power and becoming confined to the Middle. Koschei, too—confined and bound by his little lake on the continent. All before Prythian, before the land was carved up and any High Lord was crowned.”

Bryce wore this symbol in HOEAB and it protected her from detection:

Bryce zipped a tiny golden pendant—a knot of three entwined circles—along the delicate chain around her neck.

Danika went on patrol armed with claws, a sword, and guns, but Bryce’s daily armor consisted solely of this: an Archesian amulet barely the size of her thumbnail, gifted by Jesiba on the first day of work. A hazmat suit in a necklace, Danika had marveled when Bryce had shown off the amulet’s considerable protections against the influence of various magical objects. Archesian amulets didn’t come cheap, but Bryce didn’t bother to delude herself into thinking her boss’s gift was given out of anything but self-interest. It would have been an insurance nightmare if Bryce didn’t have one. Danika nodded to the necklace. “Don’t take that off. Especially if you’re looking into shit like the Horn.” Even though the Horn’s mighty powers had long been dead—if it had been stolen by someone powerful, she’d need every magical defense against them.

But it was to just unclasp the golden amulet from around her neck. “Here. To sweeten the deal. An Archesian amulet. It’s fifteen thousand years old, and fetches around three million gold marks on the market.”

“Says the female with the Archesian amulet around her neck. The amulet of the priestesses who once served and guarded Parthos. I think you know what’s here—that you spend your days in the midst of all that remains of the library after most of it burned at Vanir hands fifteen thousand years ago.”

“Danika knew the Archesian amulet would hide you from any detection, magical or demonic. With that amulet, you were invisible to the kristallos, bred to hunt the Horn.”

So, how are the death-god siblings connected to this amulet? Was it developed by the clever warrior who may have been related to Theia and the Archeron sisters, and was subsequently forgotten? (Hence, the similarity between the names Archesian and Archeron, as @offtorivendell has pointed out to me more than once.) Was it used as protection from or as a way to confine the siblings’ magic? How is that history connected to the priestesses, then and now? Have they intentionally hidden the secrets of this history, biding their time for a sign from Urd? Bryce’s landing in Prythian at the end of HOSAB could be that sign.

Is it also possible that the three interlocking circles are the death-gods themselves, trapped in Prythian as protection against an even greater foe, such as the Asteri? While I do think that Koschei has been set up enough to serve as the main villain in the ACOTAR series, the events of HOSAB have made me wonder how the crossover might impact the future plot. Both the Carver and Weaver—though neither are considered heroes—enter bargains with the Night Court and ultimately sacrifice their lives to help Prythian. When the Carver died, the Weaver felt his loss deeply, like a Brunnian link in Borromean Rings (three interlocking circles). These rings symbolize strength in unity, and when one circle is broken, the other two fall apart. Is it possible, then, that when the Carver and Weaver were killed, Koschei felt their loss just as deeply and was weakened? Is this the reason he appears as a shadow rather than in his true form? Will he serve solely as a villain or could he enter into a bargain like his siblings and help Prythian, and their long-lost relatives who are in Midgard, fight an even greater foe (the Asteri)? Or, equally concerning, was the protection that this symbol may have offered Prythian severed, lifting a protective veil over the world and granting access that was previously locked fifteen thousand years ago? Hence, the appearance of not only Aelin, but Bryce as well, after their deaths.

This ancient, interlocking symbol isn’t exclusive to circles either—there is another, referred to as the valknut, that has three interlocking triangles. The meaning of this Norse symbol isn’t as clear, but it may be associated with Odin, the afterlife, and his ability to bind and unbind. Derived from two words for slain warrior and knot, it may mean knot of the slain warrior. In Norse mythology, the Valkyries served Odin and were sent into battle by him to determine where warriors might go after death. He also had a spear, Gungnir, that would strike true regardless of the skill of the bearer. (Sounds a bit like Truth-Teller, doesn’t it?) This interconnected symbol, as with other knots, sometimes represents the unity between earth, heaven, and hell. Thus, its nine points may symbolize the nine worlds in Norse mythology. The three interlocking triangles most often form mountains, though they can also form a star. Is it possible that this interlocking symbol brings together both the three stars (that we see in the Night Court symbol) and the three mountains of Prythian, an ultimate symbol of the link between different worlds and beings? Is the eight-pointed star in the Prison, much like a compass rose, under the other two mountains as well? And is that where the portals to other worlds exist?

The symbolic union of earth, heaven, and hell may also be connected to the three sisters and three brothers, who create a balance of light and dark as @silverlinedeyes suggests here. And if she and @offtorivendell are correct about the Illyrians being related to the Princes of Hel, is it possible that their union is one of earth (mountain), heaven (star), and hell (demon)? Their powerful union, guided by Theia’s starlight through Bryce, may be what is needed to open the portals, release the armies of Hel, and create an epic inter-world battle to end the tyranny of the Asteri once and for all.