Young Wizards theorycrafting: What distinguishes an Ordeal from an ordinary Errantry?

inklesspen:

An Ordeal is an Errantry on which the Lone Power seeks to have the Wizard betray her oath with the best of intentions.

I think I’ve figured out how an Ordeal differs from an ordinary Errantry. Some spoilers for the series will follow.

---

An Ordeal is an Errantry on which the Lone Power seeks to have the Wizard betray her Oath with the best of intentions. It’s not enough to just die, or to give up and renounce your Wizardry, or to make a mistake. What he wants is for you to see the situation and say “Yes, I know, but,” to feel like this is the practical, sensible thing to do. Because if he can do that, he can prove the Oath is just a joke, that Wizardry is pointless, that he wins, forever.

Dairine’s Ordeal has a really good example of this. She thought giving the mobiles Wizardry would be good, and then they very nearly stopped Life — an ultimate violation of the Oath — because the Lone Power used her logic against her and they didn’t have enough experience with Life to know why it was good.

And, by this theory, Nita and Kit’s Ordeal wasn’t over with at the end of book 1; it started there but didn’t end until book 2.

For a well-sung Song, Nita was, well, not exactly willing, but content to go ahead with the plan to sacrifice herself. But what about an already-sabotaged Song? In such a case, surely the reasonable thing, the practical thing, was to find a new solution. To find some way out, so you can make things better later. And Nita spent some time considering that option.

Ultimately the Lone Power failed there for the same reason he failed with Dairine and the mobiles; he couldn’t comprehend why someone would hold that Oath higher than their own reason, and choose to give themselves away.

So when writing fics, an Ordeal should be an Errantry where the Wizard faces a situation where the reasonable and sensible thing to do fundamentally violates the Oath and the only way through is to trust beyond reason, give yourself away, and keep looking to the heart of time.