The Dragon Revenant (61 page)

Astral
The plane of existence directly “above” or “within” the etheric (q.v.). In other systems of magic, often referred to as the Akashic Record or the Treasure House of Images.

Aura
The field of electromagnetic energy that permeates and emanates from every living being.

Aver
(Dev.) A river.

Banadar
(Elv.) A warleader and a legal judge for a given group of alarli, elected by their members to serve for a hundred-year term. At any time after the election, new alarli may choose to place themselves under his jurisdiction, but withdrawing from the same is a serious matter, requiring the agreement of all the other groups under his rule.

Bara
(Elv.) An enclitic that indicates that the preceding adjective in an Elvish agglutinated word is the name of the element following the enclitic, as can + bara + melim = Rough River (rough-I-name marker-I-river).

Bel
(Dev.) The chief god of the Deverry pantheon.

Bel
(Elv.) An enclitic, similar in function to bara, except that it indicates that a preceding verb is the name of the following element in the agglutinated term, as in Darabeldal, Flowing Lake.

Blue Light
Another name for the etheric plane (q.v.).

Body of Light
An artificial thought-form (q.v.) constructed by a dweomermaster to allow him or her to travel through the inner planes of existence.

Brigga
(Dev.) Loose wool trousers worn by men and boys.

Broch
(Dev.) A squat tower in which people live. Originally, in the Homeland, these towers had one big fireplace in the center of the ground floor and a number of booths or tiny roomlets up the sides, but by the time of our narrative, this ancient style has given way to regular floors with hearths and chimneys on either side of the structure.

Cadvridoc
(Dev.) A warleader. Not a general in the modern sense, the cadvridoc is supposed to take the advice and counsel of the noble-born lords under him, but his is the right of final decision.

Captain
(translation of the Dev.
pendaely
) The second in command, after the lord himself, of a noble’s warband. An interesting point is that the word
taely
(which is the root or unmutated form of-
daely
)can mean either a warband or a family, depending on context.

Conaber
(Elv.) A musical instrument similar to the panpipe but of even more limited range.

Cwm
(Dev.) A valley.

Dal
(Elv.) A lake.

Dun
(Dev.) A fort.

Dweomer
(translation of Dev.
dwunddaevad
) In its strict sense, a system of magic aimed at personal enlightenment through harmony with the natural universe in all its planes and manifestations; in the popular sense, magic, sorcery.

Elcyion Lacar
(Dev.) The elves; literally, the “bright spirits,” or “Bright Fey.”

Englyn
(Welsh) A verse form consisting of three lines tied together with alliteration by rules too elaborate to go into here. All the epigraphs in this book are englynion.

Ensorcel
To produce an effect similar to hypnosis by direct manipulation of a person’s aura. (Ordinary hypnosis manipulates the victim’s consciousness only and thus is more easily resisted.)

Etheric
The plane of existence directly “above” the physical. With its magnetic substance and currents, it holds physical matter in an invisible matrix and is the true source of what we call “life.”

Etheric Double
The true being of a person, the electromagnetic structure that holds the body together and that is the actual seat of consciousness.

Fola
(Elv.) An enclitic that shows the noun preceding it in an agglutinated Elvish word is the name of the element following the enclitic, as in Corafolamelim, Owl River.

Geis
A taboo, usually a prohibition against doing something. Breaking geis results in ritual pollution and the disfavor if not active enmity of the gods. In societies that truly believe in geis, a person who breaks it usually dies fairly quickly, either of morbid depression or some unconsciously self-inflicted “accident,” unless he or she makes ritual amends.

Gerthddyn
(Dev.) Literally, a “music man,” a wandering minstrel and entertainer of much lower status than a true bard.

Great Ones
Spirits, once human but now disincarnate, who exist on an unknowably high plane of existence and who have dedicated themselves to the eventual enlightenment of all sentient beings. They are also known to the Buddhists, as Bodhisattvas.

Gwerbret
(Dev.) The highest rank of nobility below the royal family itself. Gwerbrets (Dev.
gwerbretion
) function as the chief magistrates of their regions, and even kings hesitate to override their decisions because of their many ancient prerogatives.

Hiraedd
(Dev.) A peculiarly Celtic form of depression, marked by a deep, tormented longing for some unobtainable thing; also and in particular, homesickness to the third power.

Javelin
(translation of Dev.
picecl
) Since the weapon in question is only about three feet long, another possible translation would be “war dart.” The reader should not think of it as a proper spear or as one of those enormous javelins used in the modern Olympic Games.

Lwdd
(Dev.) A blood-price; differs from wergild in that the amount of lwdd is negotiable in some circumstances, rather than being irrevocably set by law.

Malover
(Dev.) A full, formal court of law with both a priest of Bel and either a gwerbret or a tieryn in attendance.

Melim
(Elv.) A river.

Mor
(Dev.) A sea, ocean.

Pan
(Elv.) An enclitic, similar to-
fola
, defined earlier, except that it indicates that the preceding noun is plural as well as the name of the following word, as in Corapanmelim, River of the Many Owls. Remember that Elvish always indicates pluralization by adding a semi-independent morpheme, and that this semi-independence is reflected in the various syntax-bearing enclitics.

Peel
(Dev.) Far, distant.

Rhan
(Dev.) A political unit of land; thus, gwerbretrhyn, tierynrhyn, the area under the control of a given gwerbret or tieryn. The size of the various rhans (Dev.
rhannau
)varies widely, depending on the vagaries of inheritance and the fortunes of war rather than some legal definition.

Scrying
The art of seeing distant people and places by magic.

Sigil
An abstract magical figure, usually representing either a particular spirit or a particular kind of energy or power. These figures, which look a lot like geometrical scribbles, are derived by various rules from secret magical diagrams.

Spirits
Living though incorporeal beings proper to the various nonphysical planes of the universe. Only the elemental spirits, such as the Wildfolk (translation of Dev.
elcyion goecl
)can manifest directly in the physical plane. All others need some vehicle, such as a gem, incense smoke, or the magnetism given off by freshly cut plants or spilled blood.

Taer
(Dev.) Land, country.

Thought-form
An image or three-dimensional form that has been fashioned out of either etheric or astral substance, usually by the action of a trained mind. If enough trained minds work together to build the same thought-form, it will exist independently for a period of time based on the amount of energy put into it. (Putting energy into such a form is known as
ensouling
the thought-form.) Manifestations of gods or saints are usually thought-forms picked up by the highly intuitive, such as children, or those with a touch of second sight. It is also possible for a large number of untrained minds to make fuzzy, ill-defined thought-forms that can be picked up the same way, such as UFOs and sightings of the Devil.

Tieryn
(Dev.) An intermediate rank of the noble-born, below a gwerbret but above an ordinary lord (Dev.
arcloedd
)

Wyrd
(translation of Dev.
tingedd
) Fate, destiny; the inescapable problems carried over from a sentient being’s last incarnation.

Ynis
(Dev.) An island.

A Special Preview of
A TIME OF EXILE
A Novel of the Westlands
by katharine kerr

It’s forty years after the end of
The Dragon Revenant
. Rhodry Maelwaedd has ruled Aberwyn with a gently firm hand and an open mind and heart. It has been years since he’s seen his former lover, Jill, years since he’s travelled the long road as a silver dagger … and years since he realized that he’s as trapped by the choices he made as he is by the elven blood that keeps him almost magically young. As
A Time of Exile
opens, Fate again takes a hand in Rhodry’s life and the dweomer converges to reshape his destiny once more…
.

“A
S THRIFTY AS A DWARF” is a common catch-phrase, and one that the Mountain People take for a compliment. Although they see no reason to waste anything, whether it’s a scrap of cloth or the heel of a loaf, they keep a particularly good watch over their gemstones and metals, though they never tell anyone outside their kin and clan just how they do it. Otho, the silver daggers’ smith down in Dun Mannannan, was no different than any other dwarven craftsman, unless he was perhaps more cautious than most. His usual customer was some hotheaded young lad who’d dishonored himself badly enough to be forced to join the silver daggers, and you have to admit that a wandering swordsman who fights only for coin, not honor, isn’t the sort you can truly trust with either dwarven silver or magical secrets.

During his long years among humans in the kingdom of Deverry, Otho taught a few other smiths how to smelt the rare alloy for the daggers, an extremely complicated process with a number of peculiar steps, such as words to be chanted and hand gestures to be made just so. Otho would always refuse to answer questions, saying only that if his students wanted the formula to come out right, they could follow his orders, and if they didn’t, they could get out of his forge right then and spare everyone trouble. All the apprentices shut their mouths and stayed; they were bright enough to realize that they were being taught magic of some sort, even if they weren’t being told what the spells accomplished. Once they opened shops of their own, they went on repeating Otho’s procedures in the exact way they’d been taught, so that every dagger made of dwarven silver in Deverry carried two kinds of dweomer.