Cugino “the woodcutter who makes a staff for Incanto” (VI, list; VI, chap. 1, 16). His village is one day south of Blanko (VI, chap. 2, 37). Cugino is among the new men brought up from the south in time for the Battle of Blanko (VI, chap. 16, 244). Incanto thinks he might have first seen the old woman of the farmhouse he is staying at in Cugino’s village, and he describes her carefully but Cugino cannot identify her (244). Perhaps Incanto is confusing her with GOOD WOMAN. (The woman Incanto is describing is Jahlee in disguise.)
Italian: cousin.
Cuoio “the name by which Hide is known in Blanko” (VI, list; VI, chap. 16, 246).
Italian: leather.
D
Daisy “a fisherman’s daughter taught by Nettle” (VII, list). Wounded in the neck in wedding attack (VII, Afterword, 411), she later becomes Hoof’s wife (VII, chap. 16, 344) and writes the wedding chapter (VII, chap. 20). Together with Hide and Vadsig she writes the chapters set on the Long Sun Whorl. See BOOK OF THE SHORT SUN for details on its composition.
Botany: Bellis perennis, a common European species of daisy that is sometimes qualified as “Common Daisy” or “Lawn Daisy” to distinguish it from others. The name “daisy” is thought to be a corruption of “day’s eye,” because the entire head of the flower closes at night and opens in the morning.
Darjan, Trooper “a Gaonese boy” (V, list), he acts as the Rajan’s guide in the forest (V, chap. 12, 299).
Hindi: dozen.
Decina “the cook at Inclito’s farm” (VI, list; VI, chap. 1, 34).
Italian: [deh-CHEE-nuh] word meaning “ten things.”
Dentro “a young man who fell in love with a strega long ago” (VI, list). From the story “Stuck in the Chimney,” told by Salica (VI, chap. 7, 110).
Italian: inside; indoors or informally imprisoned.
dervis a wandering holy man (VI, chap. 2, 36).
Italian: dervish.
DHV text see BOOK OF THE SHORT SUN.
Dorp “a coastal town” (V, list), “north of New Viron” (VII, list). Horn’s good telescope comes from Dorp (V, chap. 1, 20).
Dorp is a town of merchants where the five judges (including Judge Hamer and Judge Kenner) have taken all the power, forming a tyranny of the judges. Scylla is mentioned, which makes sense since the town relies on sea traffic, but Dorp’s mother city on the Long Sun Whorl, Grotestad, might have been a Scylla town just like Viron.
Dutch: village.
dreams a collection of dreams in the text.
• Silkhorn’s dream of being in the pit again, but with the Chrasmological Writings. A picture of Scylla talks to him (VI, chap. 2, 58–59).
• Hide’s dream about Mora and Fava and their dolls in a hide and seek game within a house of the Neighbors (VII, chap. 1, 20).
• Silkhorn’s dream of past and future (VII, chap. 1, 26–28). A literary construct of the DHV text.
• Vlug’s dream of Jahlee as a goddess (VII, chap. 3, 62).
• Azijin’s dream within a dream, where he wakes up in a bed hanging like a picture on the wall in a room (VII, chap. 3, 63) that has no roof (65).
• Silkhorn’s dream, involving beginning efforts to write The Book of the Short Sun and The Book of the Long Sun (VII, chap. 4, 83–85). A literary construct of the DHV text.
Dusra Agast day and month of date in Gaon (V, chap. 10, 246).
Hindi: doosra, Hindi/Urdu word meaning “the other one” or “the second.” Agast meaning “August (month).” Thus “the second of August.”
E
Echidna “a major goddess, the mother of the gods of the Long Sun Whorl” (V, list; chap. 2, 55). On Blue she is the primary god of Gaon. She sends a dream to Hari Mau, inspiring his quest to bring Silk to Gaon from the Long Sun Whorl. (See entry in LS Half.)
Myth: (Greek) mother of monsters by Typhon.
Eco “one of the messengers chosen by Inclito” (VI, list). A mercenary hired by the Rajan, later hired by Inclito. He tells Inclito about the Rajan’s disappearance, which then becomes Inclito’s story “The Mercenary’s Employer” (VI, chap. 9, 133).
Eco says that he will use the money to buy land back home; “He’s got a girl back there he hopes will wait for him” (VI, chap. 7, 117). Later he marries Mora.
Eco is a “foreigner” who is “not from Grandecitta” (VI, chap. 19, 304). So it would appear that “Eco” is his nom-de-guerre, just like “Cuoio” is for Hide. Eco had seen Hide searching for Horn in Gaon (VI, chap. 10, 155–56). In what might be a clue, Eco’s town sacrifices steers (VI, chap. 10, 150).
Italian: echo.
elephant creature of Blue with eight legs and two trunks. Named by Gaonese. Not the same as the THREE-HORNED BEAST.
Commentary: the two-trunks detail echoes the bishtar, an elephantine creature of L. Sprague de Camp’s planet Krishna, itself another world inspired by Barsoom.
Endroad “a village subject to Viron” (VII, list), located at the edge of the wilderness to the north, beyond Blood’s villa (VII, chap. 2, 32). Silk’s house (an old manse) and its neighbors are about an hour’s walk from Endroad (32). Hound and Tansy have a shop in Endroad.
Eschar “a New Vironese merchant” (V, list); “a magnate of New Viron” (VII, list). One of the five leading citizens who send Horn on his mission to bring Silk, the others being Blazingstar, Gyrfalcon, Marrow, and Remora. Tall and stooped, he had been on the lander with Horn and Nettle (V, chap. 1, 21).
Anatomy: a dry scab; a medical term for dead tissue that sheds from healthy skin.
Evensong “the concubine given the Rajan of Gaon by the Man of Han” (V, list), she is also known as Chota (V, chap. 12, 292). “The concubine who stowed away on Incanto’s boat” (VI, list). Her name “means music played at shadelow” (V, chap. 12, 289). (For a list of his concubines, see RAJAN OF GAON.)
Evensong “might be a year or two younger than Seawrack” (V, chap. 12, 308). She has a mother, a father, brothers and sisters, two uncles and three aunts (310).
A Hanese prisoner calls her “the Man of Han’s woman,” and she tries to have the Rajan kill him (292). This raises an interesting question: is Evensong a spy? When the Rajan tasks her to unobtrusively buy an escape boat, the one she gets seems to be a Hanese boat. When they are later surrounded by inhumi, she tries very hard to get the Rajan to reveal the secret to her—if she had this terrible secret she might very well install herself as the new ruler of Han.
F
“False Friend and the True Friend, The” Mora’s second story, about the bad little girl and the good little girl (VI, chap. 7, 113–14).
Fava “a houseguest at Inclito’s, Mora’s playmate” (VI, list). She appears to be a girl of thirteen or fourteen, with light brown hair (VI, chap. 9, 138), but she is an inhuma spy, and she recruited Mora (139). Incanto asks her if she is as young as she looks. She shakes her head (VI, chap. 13, 196). But we also know she has been feeding off of the grandmother Salica, which makes it hard for her to maintain a youthful appearance (VI, chap. 9, 146).
Fava does not believe in the Vanished People (VI, chap. 10, 151–52).
Fava’s first story is “The Washed Child,” and her second is “The Girl on Green.”
Fava somehow facilitates the weird warping of space that Silkhorn learns to do. After Silkhorn warps the group of mercenaries to Green, Fava dies in the snow on Blue, but her spirit continues to meet with Mora in the strange dreamspace.
Italian: “fava bean,” which is a bean, or more specifically, a “broad” bean (possible pun relating to her feminine nature).
Commentary: Fava dies, Jahlee (re-)appears. This pattern is similar to the one where the pirate woman dies, shot by Horn, and then Seawrack appears (wounded by Babbie).
felwolf a creature of the Shadelow continent on Blue (V, chap. 12, 298). The Rajan hears the cry of one (298), and later sees one drinking at the river (V, chap. 15, 367).
Firebrat a nickname for Firefly, the cousin of the CORN SEED MAN, the character who gives Silkhorn the maize (VII, chap. 2, 31).
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Firefly a cousin of the CORN SEED MAN who did not know his own name after he fell on his head one time (VII, chap. 2, 31).
Zoology: a winged beetle with light-emitting organs on its abdomen.
Flannan “one of Pig’s friends, a Flier” (VII, list). Mentioned by Pig as one of the many Fliers he met after he was blinded (VII, chap. 4, 74), Flannan told Pig he could get new eyes at the West Pole (VII, chap. 4, 74–75).
Onomastics: a common name in 7th century Ireland and Scotland, where “flann” means “red.”
Flosser the mercenary who ties Fava’s hands (VI, chap. 13, 197).
English: one who flosses.
fortune teller’s prediction in Gaon the visiting fortune teller (V, chap. 9, 211) says that the Rajan will:
1. Lead three towns not his own to victory,
2. Be tried for his life,
3. Return as a stranger to his sons’ native place, and
4. Find new love.
These all come true. The three towns are Gaon, Blanko, and Dorp; he is put on trial in Dorp; he returns as a stranger to New Viron; and he finds new love in Seawrack.
fourgoat a creature of Blue (VI, chap. 20, 297). Among the game killed for the baletiger is a fourgoat that Cuoio is allowed to take.
“From the Grave” Salica’s first story (VI, chap. 3, 50–57). In Grandecitta of the Long Sun Whorl, Salica was courted by two young men, Turco and Casco. Both went to war. Salica married Turco on his deathbed. Casco went to defile the grave and was warned against it by a strego in black who had a black bird. Casco defiled it anyway and died in thirty minutes.
Salica married Gioioso the next summer. He died suddenly in autumn.
Three years later she was not yet twenty when she married Solenno. They were together for 17 months until he suddenly died.
She married Inclito’s father. He solved the curse by finding the boot with the death adder’s fang in it. These boots had killed Casco, but also Gioioso, and then Solenno, too. So Turco’s revenge had been more dreadful than Casco’s.
G
Gadwall “a New Vironese smith” (V, list), the one who forged the knife that Sinew gives to Horn (V, chap. 1, 44). He tried to make needler ammo but found that his needles would not work (V, chap. 2, 52).
Zoology: a kind of duck.
Gagliardo “an astronomer of Soldo” (VI, list), he gives the figures on the distance to Green (VI, chap. 15, 228). (See GREEN.) He is wealthy, supported by his rents, and so he studies the stars (228). He is mentioned again (VI, chap. 18, 283).
Italian: strong, robust, vigorous.
Gaon “a troubled inland town on Blue” (V, list); “a large and prosperous town southeast of Blanko” (VI, list). In Blanko, Inclito refers to Gaon as a mountain town “way down south” (VI, chap. 1, 28). It was founded 15 years before Silkhorn arrives there (VII, chap. 18, 379).
Gaon is located in a big valley between two tall mountain ranges to east and west (V, chap. 12, 297). The river Nadi runs through it, with cataracts at south (the Greater) and at north (the Lesser). The Greater Cataracts are located ten leagues south of the palace (V, chap. 5, 130), and both cataracts are capable of powering a mill (V, chap. 13, 322). Gaon has date palms, but most are destroyed in the pre-conjunction storms (V, chap. 5, 125). The Rajan wonders how long a seedling must grow before it bears, guessing twelve years. (On Earth it is four to seven years.)
There is an impassable forest that the Rajan penetrates during the war against the Han in the hope of raiding Hanese supply trains. The location of this forest is assumed to be south of Gaon, yet the plan is to go “two leagues north, turn east and see” (V, chap. 12, 300).
The climate of Gaon seems tropical, yet it is not really that far from Blanko, where it snows in winter. This makes it seem as though Gaon is not literally in the tropics, after all, but has an anomalous local climate, perhaps created by the mountains trapping warm air in the valley, with humidity from the Nadi increasing the greenhouse effect. All of which might make Gaon more of a “Shangri-La” than initially supposed.
Concerning the population, where Viron had more than a half-million people, the Rajan doubts Gaon has even a tenth of that (V, chap. 5, 131–32). So less than 50,000.
Echidna is the primary god of Gaon. “Echidna gets more sacrifices here than all the rest together. She is generally shown as a loving mother holding the blind Tartaros on her lap while her other children swarm around her vying for her attention” (V, chap. 5, 131). The Gaonese faith finds the “embodiment of Great Pas in the bulls and that of Echidna in the cows. Out of regard for these deities, they will not eat beef or knowingly wear or possess leather items made from the skin of cattle. When they sacrifice cattle, as they do almost daily, the entire carcass is consumed by the altar fire” (V, chap. 9, 215).
In addition to cattle, snakes are sacred to Echidna. Passing mention is made of a big snake, “a sacred serpent that I had at first believed a part of Echidna’s image in Gaon” (VI, chap. 14, 216). This animal is the probable location of an Echidna fragment, the one who sent the dream to Hari Mau to go forth and retrieve Silk from the Long Sun Whorl.
Gaonese funeral rites involve dying men killing a favorite animal, usually a horse or dog, so it will accompany them in death. In the Long Sun Whorl their rulers went so far as to have their favorite wives burned alive on their funeral pyres (VII, chap. 3, 66).
The channel project is concocted by the Rajan to make a waterway around the Lesser Cataracts below Gaon. It also serves as a make-work project to employ men outside of harvest season (V, chap. 12, 286–87). The project goes through a number of distinct, time-consuming phases:
1. Tax on foreigners to finance the project.
2. Time allotted for the job (during non-harvest season). The work itself goes faster than originally anticipated.
3. The Man of Han requests the construction of a second channel, this one around the Greater Cataracts.
4. The Rajan’s trip to survey the route around the Greater Cataracts.
5. The meeting with the Man of Han.
The Han-Gaon War begins some relatively short time after the meeting. All told, it seems as though the work on digging the channel took place while the Rajan was away in Skany.
Gaon is a strange case of being both politically advanced and politically primitive. The government is literally a dream come true, a philosopher king who judges wisely (because he doesn’t want to be there). Such good as Silkhorn gives Gaon is mainly due to his transitory nature—he wants to leave, to go home. The Rajan’s concubines, while the trappings of oriental despotism, probably form a sort of pillow council—each one presumably representing a rival faction within Gaon or a different satellite town. This is all created around “Silk,” and Silkhorn delivers stability and even expansion. The expansion creates rising expectations and excess labor, which leads to make-work projects. War follows from outside.
Hindi: village.
Geier “one of the travelers assembled in Pajarocu” (V, list). On Green, Geier said inhumi are akin to leeches (V, chap. 4, 109).
German: vulture.
Gelada “a convict murdered by Auk long ago” (V, list; chap. 13, 201). (See entry in LS Half.)
Zoology: a genus of large, baboon-like primates.
Gevaar, Private the mercenary who took Incanto’s staff when Incanto offered himself in prisoner exchange for Inclito (VI, chap. 12, 191; VI, chap. 13, 203).
Dutch: danger, peril.
“Giant’s Daughter, The” Mora’s History, her first story (VI, chap. 2, 43–45). Nobody liked the giant’s daughter. Then a new girl came to town, very pretty and very smart. She became the friend of the giant’s daughter.
Gib “one of the colonists who accompanied Auk and Chenille” (VII, list; chap. 2, 45). (See entry in LS Half.)
Zoology: tomcat.
Commentary: Gib is a candidate for the BLIND MAN IN THE SEWERS. Still, he is most likely the big man among Sinew’s prisoners (VI, chap. 24, 372).
Gioioso “one of Salica’s u
nlucky husbands” (VI, list); her second one, in “From the Grave.”
Italian: joyful, happy.
“Girl on Green, The” Fava’s second story (VI, chap. 9, 128–33), in which a newly hatched inhuma is saved by “Incanto’s leader” (Horn), who hopes to frustrate the plans his son (Sinew) and a young woman (Bala) were making in one of the human settlements.
This hints that Fava met Horn on Green, which does not seem likely. Instead, Fava appears to be “reading” Incanto about Horn’s last struggle with Sinew on Green, but it also accurately foreshadows the situation when Silkhorn warps to Green with Jahlee.
godling “even the godlings that they send among the people [of the Long Sun Whorl] now are, for the most part, immense” (V, chap. 6, 157). They are giants. The godling on the bridge near Endroad manteion has shoulders like two hills, a bald head bigger than a farm kitchen, and pointed ears (VII, chap. 2, 53). The godling who picks up Silkhorn has thumbs the size of a man’s head (VII, chap. 6, 139). When Silkhorn sits on his elevated palm, the distance to the ground is two or three times Silk’s height (VII, chap. 8, 162), which sounds like twelve to eighteen feet, but we cannot tell the posture of the godling.
Pig is a godling, either of a smaller type or just a young one who has not finished growing yet.
Gods of the Long Sun Whorl
In addition to the nine major gods, there are a few dozen minor gods.
Minor Gods
• Ah Lah—another name for the Outsider (see entry in LS Half).
• Catamitus—cupbearer of the gods (see entry in LS Half).
• Comus—jester of the gods (see entry).
Gate of Horn, Book of Silk Page 20