The Forge of Souls

Chapter II of The Chronowarden. The gallery of half-formed beings standing in pale arches, lit by light that comes from nowhere and is kind.

An earlier version of this post described a place called the Plateau of the Forgotten Gods, which does not appear in the novel. The Forge of Souls does. The Forge is the gallery Anselm brings Lyra to in Chapter Two — and the room that, in working terms, the entire rest of the novel is preparing her to leave.

What the Forge is

A long stone gallery, the narrator says, lined with pale arches. The arches are deep enough to hold a standing figure. In each arch stands a being half-formed — like a sculpture the sculptor has not yet decided whether to free from the marble. The arches are not all the same. Some hold beings further along than others. Some hold beings the reader's eye, on close inspection, cannot quite resolve.

The light, the narrator notes plainly, comes from nowhere. It is also kind. These two facts seem to matter to the novel more than the architecture itself.

The light came from nowhere and was kind.

What happens there

Three small things, across the chapter.

One: Anselm shows Lyra the three named Hollow Travelers in a basin of what looks like water and is not. The three faces surface in turn. The faces are not the same as the names. The names are older than the faces. This is the first time the novel introduces the order by its proper name.

Two: the unformed beings in the arches lift their heads. They do not move otherwise. They are measuring, the narrator says, whether Lyra's shape might fit them, one day. This is the novel's quietest moment about reincarnation — the Forge is not a place where souls are made, but the gallery where souls are held before they take a particular shape. Lyra, in their patient gaze, is one of many possible shapes a soul might one day decide to wear.

Three: Lyra is given her working materials. The Tablet on its chain. The instruction in how to use the black tourmaline she has carried since she was nine. The beginning of the work she will have to finish at the Axis Mundi twelve chapters later.

What the Forge means, in working terms

For the practitioner reading the novel, the Forge is the chapter that names what initiation actually is. Not the dramatic ceremony. The patient walking past a long line of unformed beings, being measured, and continuing to walk. The initiation is the not-stopping. The materials handed over at the end are almost incidental — what the practitioner is really being given is the experience of having been seen by the room.

This is, in some sense, what every working practitioner's own initiation looks like. Not a single dramatic night. A long gallery of small witnesses, each lifting their head briefly as the practitioner walks past, deciding whether this is the shape they might one day take. The walking is the initiation. The seeing is the practice that follows.

Why the chapter is short

The Forge of Souls is one of the shortest chapters in The Chronowarden. It is also, in the press's reading, one of the most load-bearing. The novel spends only as much time in the Forge as is necessary to show what is there and let it begin its work in the reader. The chapter does not over-explain. It trusts that the gallery, having lifted its head once, has done its part.