Geas
The narrator's word for one of the Sorceress's tailored curses. Each geas is specific — try to speak about it, even tell someone you are under one, and the words die in your throat or come out as stuttering nonsense. A sufferer is left aware enough to be horrified by what he has been reduced to, and forbidden from explaining why. STD:Tress:Ch 23
Known facts
- static-rules-leave-loopholesHuck passes on what his family has told him about the Sorceress's curses: they are not alive, they are static, like the clauses of a contract — so however carefully she writes them, every curse leaves holes. A cursed person cannot directly answer that they are cursed, but the way they fail to answer is itself a confirmation. The trick to undoing one is to feed the cursed person enough indirect questions — a story about somebody else's cure, asked for their opinion — that the curse never spots the answer slipping through.STD:Tress:Ch 28
- cursed-person-knows-their-own-cureEvery person the Sorceress curses hears the spell as she casts it, and therefore knows the path to their own salvation — and is then forbidden by the same curse from telling anyone what it is. Huck frames it bluntly: the cruelty is deliberate. She wants her victims to know how to free themselves, and to be unable to ask for help.STD:Tress:Ch 28
Backreferences
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 23
- factHoid
- factHoid
- factHoid
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 27
- factCharlie
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 28
- factGeas
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 61
- factHoid
- summarySTD:Tress:Ch 63
- factHoid
- factHoid
- factHoid
- factCharlie
- factThe Sorceress
- summarySTD:Tress:Epilogue
- factHoid
- factCharlie