High Couch of Silistra (31 page)

Hertekiea:
A planet in the Wingtip Cluster, the inhabitants of which have achieved homogeneity of race. The typical Hertekiean has darker skin than one might expect for a world in which the yellow, green, red, and violet races were absorbed by the blue race, but her proximity to the ever-flaring star Bnien is said to account for the increased melanin production of the last ten generations. The dark lords of Hertekiea, otherwise, are in size and build much like Silistrans, and ideologically compatible as well. The Hertekiean men and women display by hair length and intricate braiding patterns thereof those motives and bindings that are known on Silistra as chaldra.

hest
: To bend or twist natural law to serve the will; to command by mind; to cause a probability not inherent in the time to manifest. (The line between nesting and shaping is somewhat difficult to define when highly skilled individuals are concerned. The rule of thumb is held to be thus: if natural law must be remade or totally superseded, as in creating a permanent object such as a fruit or a star, one is shaping. If one is simply controlling an already existing object or event, as would be the case if one caused a fruit or star already in existence to alter its behavior but not its structure, one is hesting. The fruit or star one moves to the right or the left or higher in the sky by will would not have behaved in that fashion, but is still the same star or fruit as was a natural inhabitant of the time before the hest was applied. If one, on the other hand, creates fruit or star, one has brought into the time, by a suspension of natural law, that which heretofore did not exist. One shapes matter. One hests time.) In usage, bringing in a hest, affecting probability.

hide: The seven hides of Silistra: aniet, bast, crill, diet, gaesh, rendi, and stoen. Each hide supported a thousand survivors and their progeny through the long years of waiting until the planet’s surface was again habitable. Under the aegis of the dharen’s Day-Keepers and forereaders, the hides were built and operating sixty years before the projected disaster. But few believed, and thus only in hide aniet were there other than Day-Keepers and forereaders when the world exploded into war. It is said that the word “hide” derived from the scoffing and mocking of pre-hide Silistra at the project. “Khys’s burrows” was another early name for the interconnected life-support complexes that saved what little of Silistra that was desirous of survival.

hide-days: The thousand years of subterranean living, accounted hide-year one through one thousand. Our present calendar date of 25,693 is counted from the first year spent above the ground. All that occurred before hide-year one is termed pre-hide, or prehistoric.

hide-name: Any of the seven hide-names: aniet, bast, crill, diet, gaesh, rendi, and stoen. Hide descent is always carried through the mother. The hide-name is second in the male, third in the female, and always takes lower-case honors.

high-couch: Formally, the Well-Keepress, also any woman able to demand over thirty gold dippars per couching-

hulion
: The most intelligent animal on explored Silistra. The hulion—winged, furred carnivore of the Sabembe range—shuns civilization. They are known to have mind skills and a complex language, but are not symbolizers such as man. The hulion does as he wills upon Silistra, and none obstruct him. The high Sabembes and the unnamed western mountains are their domain of choice. There is no beast, including man, that can stand before a hulion’s onslaught— up to twenty-three hundred B.S. pounds of sinew and tooth and claw. Hulions have been seen with wingspreads four times the height of a man, beasts so large that their jaws could snap a man in half. Disregarding the wings, a hulion much resembles a large dorkat, even to the slit-pupiled eyes and the silk-tufted tail.

Iartex
: One from the planet Iarte. The small stature and scuttling gait of these off-worlders is attributed to their planet’s half-again B.S. gravity. The Itabe colonized Iartex six thousand, three hundred years ago, and (other than the physical alternation their adopted homeland made upon them) seem to all intents and purposes culturally identical with their mother world, although each decries the other for its moral decay, and both sight unresolvable differences in their life-views.

Inner Well: The great central court within a Well’s walls.

Itabe
: A .99998 planet which revolves around the star Eeia, closest neighbor to M’ksakka’s system; Dellin’s birthplace.

Itabic
: One of Itabe, the race from which Dellin’s mother sprang. The Itabic peoples have made numerous contributions to society, the most notable being their Multilingual Cipher system, which lay bare the logics of language common to all cultures that has been of inestimable aid to Liaison missions and contact teams alike.

ith
: One-seventy-fifth of an enth.

jeri
: A costly and exotic M’ksakkan drink which mixes seven fruits with a char-filtered grain beverage; a sweet drink much favored by women.

jitkaw
: Named for its cry, the jitkaw is a brightly crest-headed bird, usually tri-toned, with a curving beak and red eyes. The males have tails twice the length of the females, on which flames of light color scallop each feather’s tip. A red-yellow-amber jitkaw is held to be a harbinger of glad tidings, while a green-yellow-blue is the worst of signs.

Katrir
: An off-world race characterized by tufted ears, split-pupiled eyes, and multiple birthings; from the planet Katrii, the gemstone center of the civilized worlds, and twin to the planet Beten.

kifra
: A Silistran drink made from crushed guls, a live fruit wine.

Koster
: Having origin upon the planet Kost, famous for her silks. The inhabitants of Kost, at least the ruling class, have a bluish, pale cast to their skin, and silvery hair, even in youth.

Liaison
: The contact officers installed as semipermanent officials on Bipedal Federate Trade Union worlds. The designation “First,” “Second,” etc., is Silistran, but indicative of the local M’ksakkan hierarchy.

Liaisons Port
: Foundress Astria’s couch-gift to the M’ksakkan M’glarren; Silistra’s single space port.

Litess
: The Litess River.

Macara
: The fourth pass of the Silistran calendar.

M’glarren
: Couch-mate of Well Foundress Astria, first M’ksakkan to set foot upon Silistran soil.

Mi’ysten
: True name for both the planet and people of the world the M’ksakkans call Zredori; experimental sphere of the Shapers.

M’ksakka
: The administrative planet of the B.F. Group and Bipedal Federate Trade Union. M’ksakka is a highly industrialized world that exports all types of leisure and convenience machinery, a superior solar sail, and a synthetic shatterproof crystal.

M’ksakkan
: Originating upon M’ksakka. All M’ksakkans, unless very high or very low in their society, bear the M’ before their name; as M’lennin, or, conversely, Khaf-Re Dellin.

Morrlta
: The pelter town nestled in the foothills of the Sabembes.

name
: A red, round fruit with crisp white pulp and a distinctly salty aftertaste; the tree, which bears red leaves and fruits eight passes out of the year; the drink made from pulping the fruit.

nera
: 1.2 B.S. miles; Silistran measure of distance.

Oguast
: A provisionally entered B.F. planet in Silistra’s own sector. Oguast’s surface is eighty-two percent water, her main exports are wistwa ivory and articles of superior ceramic process.

parr
: The small, wiry-haired food beast of Silistra. Parr seldom reach more than six hands in height, but may carry up to four hundred B.S. pounds. The snub-nosed, flop-eared parr provides Silistra with meats, hide, fertilizer, and glue. It is said of a parr that only its hair does man no service.

parr-breeder
: One who raises parr; one who wears the low-chaldric brown strand.

parr-hide
: The sturdiest leather available on Silistra, parr-hide is thicker and less pliable than either tas or denter. Its main uses are in harnesses, footwear, armor, and weapon-related leathers.

Parset
: (adj.) Having origin in the Parset Lands.

Parset
: (n.) An individual of any one of the five Parset tribes.

Parset Lands
: The Parset Desert; the Parset barrens; the territories of the five tribes—Coseve, Dordassa, Itophe, Menetph (under which lies hide aniet), and Nemar. The Parset Lands lie at the bottom of Skirr Valley. They are bounded on the northeast by the tail of the Sabembes, on the east and south by the Embrodming Sea, and on the west by the southern Yaica range and the river Oppi.

pass
: One-fourteenth of the Silistran year; the Silistran lunation. Each pass is composed of four sets.

peg
: (v., to peg time.) To scale down one’s time sense, to become concerned with the moment, to expand the moment. Pegging time is a prerequisite to all temporal skills. More formally referred to as “taking stance in the now,” this process is the Silistran weapon against idleness and apathy, as well as the first step in sorting: discerning the probabilities available ” from the moment. The moment is infinitely fruitful; it is the mind’s apprehension of it that is subject to famine and drought. If a man, at the end of the day, recollects only a blur of similitude, it is then incumbent upon him to redouble his efforts to “take stance,” lest he come to the end of his life and find, in truth, that the days have all slipped away.

pelter
: Trapper, one who hunts for fur beasts.

Pleiatu
: The inhabitants of the planet Hiatus; master weavers

point-leader
: Rank designation; officer over twenty in any private mercenary force, such as the Well guards.

Port Astrin
: Well Astria’s dependent city. Port Astrin, adjoining the Liaison’s Port, caters more than any other Silistran city to off-worlders. “If a man itches for the stars, send him to Port Astrin. If Astrin does not sate, buy him passage, for where spirit goes, flesh must sometimes follow.”—Astrian proverb. In Port Astrin may be found all manner of off-world recreation and necessity. She is the only authorized embarkation/debarkation center, housing both M’ksakkan and Silistran Port Authorities.

presti m’it
: (Stothric: Presti, let us be of; m’it, one flesh;, thus, let us be of one flesh. Prest m’it: we be of one flesh.) Traditional Day-Keeper greeting.

ragony
: Tan-and-black-striped hardwood from the deciduous ragony tree. Ragony is used where a decorative wood is desired. It is not uncommon, nor so costly as thala, and is often used as a substitute for thala where price is a concern.

rana
: A hot, stimulating drink, rusty-brown in color, from the steppe-grown berried plant of the same name.

rana
: (adj.) Being of the color rana, rusty-brown.

rendi
: The hide rendi, under the city of Stra, which lies on the most western shores of the inland Opirian Sea; the hide-name rendi.

Sabembes
: The Sabembe range, sometimes called the Eastern Crags.

Santha
: The Plateau of Santha; the Falls of Santha.

seed-sowers
: Variously known as the Lawgivers, Lords of Form, Creator Sons, System Suzerains, Pantheon of Gods, etc.; any postulated supernal hierarchy that aids, guides, judges, or in any way concerns itself with the lives of men; the doctrines of supernormal paternity and judgment. In specific, as it is known upon Silistra: In the beginning, there was the differentiation of One into the Sevenfold, and the resulting Interchange begat Time, and into Time was birthed Matter out of the Universe Mother by God the Absolute. Then began Dispensation of Labors and the creation of the Master Circuits, upon which were laid the superuniverses in plan and potential, that creation be ongoing. Into being came then the Hierarchy in its multitudinous Corps. These began instantly upon their functions; creation by differentiation and the Ordering of Time and Space. Under the guidance of the Creator Spirit was undertaken the design and implementation of the peronalizable minuscule, diversely known as the Mirror of Creation, the Eyes of God, and Mortal Man. So great was the hopes of the Source Indivisible for Man that the command came down the hierarchal circuits: In your own image, let them be made. And even did the Father Indissoluble send out fragments of himself to partake of the Apprehension of Creation from within as full partners with mortals of Silistra, and upon this decision came into being the seed-sowers, that the divinity-destined minuscules receive the aid and comfort due these flesh-children of God the Sevenfold. Into seed-sower care were placed the worlds of man, and even did they come upon Silistra and give instruction and guidance to the seven root-races. These Created Sons and Daughters lived side by side with primitives of Silistra, giving fire and language and in some cases admixing with mortals until the races of Man were secure. At that time, their mandate ended, they retired from the planet to the Magisterial Plane to take up the increasingly complex duties of caring for all that they had wrought, and to await reassignment in the worlds of ongoing creation.

sereel
: A Mi’ysten measure of mental broadcast range.

set
: Seven days; one quarter of the Silistran pass. Sets in a pass are reckoned first through fourth. “First third” would be the third day of the first set in a given Silistran pass.

Seven
: A man who has attained the rank of seventh in the council of seven Slayers that oversees the Slayers of a given hostel; in addressing one of that rank: “Seven”; in speaking of him, “the Seven” of a. given hostel.

Shaper
: One who can control the constituents of matter and form them to his will.

Silistra
: The third planet of the star Veriti; in usage, the inhabited continent, exempting the Polar Wastes and those shores of which none are empowered to speak.

Silistran
: (adj.) Of Silistra.

Silistran
: (language.) Often called modem or New Silistran, the planetary tongue. Although some may not speak Darsti, the language of science, nor Stothric, the language of metaphysics, nor Parset, the tongue of the desert dwellers, all speak Silistran.