The Ropemaker Identity Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #4

She was remembering a fist the color of moonlight rising above a parapet and grasping great eddies of raw force as if they had been cobwebs dangling from a beam in a barn. She needed a name for the enemy, a way of thinking about him. Moonfist. Yes, that would do. (15.84)

Tilja decides she's had enough of having an enemy without a name, so she dubs him "Moonfist" after what he looked like on the walls of Talagh. Tilja doesn't have power over Moonfist by possessing his true name, but she has the next best thing—an identity she bestows upon him. By giving her amorphous enemy a name, Tilja makes him human—potentially conquerable and someone she can fight—not just an all-powerful guy.

Quote #5

He reached out his cupped hand to accept it. At the last moment she let go with her left hand and snatched at a finger, while her right flung the ring into the darkness where the mouse had gone.

"Ramdatta!" she cried.

In the shadows something moved, began to explode. Then she was in darkness. (17.98-100)

Tilja finally faces off with Moonfist. To call on the Ropemaker, she invokes him by calling on his secret—and true—name, "Ramdatta." Only saying his name brings him to her side in a moment of crisis. Tilja has saved this highest form of magic for the moment when she needs it most.

Quote #6

"It is a secret name. None of you, not you or your daughter or any of the daughters after, must ever tell anyone that name, except the one who's going to have Woodbourne after you." (20.130)

Tilja tells Anja about the importance of the Ropemaker's real name when she—or her descendants—need to call on him. Tilja stresses the secrecy of the name to protect future generations of Urlasdaughters, and perhaps so no one uses the power unnecessarily. Once again, a name is the key to the magician and his powers.