Gate of Horn, Book of Silk

by Michael Andre-Driussi

  The narrator, who thinks he is Horn, is very self-conscious of his narration. In a metaphorical sense, he is a gate through which the narrative must pass, and “Gate of Horn” is a term from classical mythology (in the Aeneid, there are two gates from the world of the dead to the world of the living. The Gate of Ivory is for shadows that are not true by daylight, and the Gate of Horn is for shadows that are true by daylight). There is a passage that touches upon the Gate of Horn by association. “I do not believe I have written this by daylight before. Why not say that was why I had not noticed how much falsehood is in it” (V, chap. 12, 283).

  The narrator writes about his strategy in capturing the essence of Silk “can I think like Silk without employing the words he did” (V, chap. 5, 76), an attempt to “channel” Silk. Yet the narrator’s memories show a confusion between Horn, Silk, and even “Silkhorn”:

  • “the man with the black sword recalled the mad laughter of certain animals he had known in a similar place” (VI, chap. 4, 65). That would be bufes in the tunnels under Viron, but that was Silk, and this is Horn, not Silkhorn. Still, Silkhorn is writing it.

  • Another Silk memory: “and had killed several of them [bufes] before Mamelta and I were apprehended” (VI, chap. 21, 317).

  • Here is a case of Silk and Horn in the same sentence. Talking to Hide, Incanto says, “Adulthood was forced on me, in some sense, when I came to our quarter from the schola; but the change really occurred in the tunnels, when we were fighting . . . My father had stayed behind in Viron” (VI, chap. 23, 348).

  Then there is the topic of Horn’s wounding during the revolution. Silkhorn tells Mora he was one of the wounded who Scleroderma rescued (VI, chap. 5, 88). This seems to refer back to a parenthetical passage in volume IV, where Horn wrote that in the tunnels Scleroderma rescued many wounded (IV, My Defense, 380). The surprise here is that Horn had been wounded, since there is no hint of that in The Book of the Long Sun.

  The subject next comes up, or nearly comes up, it seems, when Silkhorn is revisiting Blood’s villa and talking about the battle there. It seems he is interrupted just when he is about to say he was shot there (VII, chap. 6, 110). This would shift the site from the tunnels to the villa. However, this hint comes from the DHV text.

  The third time, Silkhorn says it straight out: “I was one of General Mint’s runners, [and] was shot in the chest” (VII, chap. 9, 181). This is suspiciously close to what happened to Silk when he was shot in the chest, then treated by a physician at the house. So it starts to look like Horn’s wound is a splice of memories, a blend of Silk’s needler wound, Scleroderma’s combat nursing in the tunnels, and the battle at Blood’s villa. Or it could be that Horn was wounded in the tunnels and recuperated during the weeks that the lander took to reach Blue.

  Regarding Horn’s quest to find Silk, Wijzer says that having Silk in New Viron is something the five faction leaders didn’t really want (this seems verified when Silkhorn arrives). Horn tells Seawrack it was just a trick to get him to go away (V, chap. 10, 248).

  Fairly early on, the Rajan intimates that he/Horn died once before: “If I were not killed a second time” (V, chap. 7, 172). And yet, even that death on Green was a second death, since Horn had “died” in the pit.

  Horn’s Deaths and Transitions

  1. The pit. He has a ghostly visit with Nettle, then emerges with a double (Krait).

  2. After the death of his double (Krait) on Green, Horn dies in the lander. He emerges on the Long Sun Whorl as a double-in-one (Silkhorn).

  3. He gives an eye to Pig, who is another double-in-one (Silent Silk in Pig). This is a noble sacrifice, a good deed.

  4. His bargains with the inhumi in Gaon seem like deals with devils, an evil deed.

  5. He visits Green, sees Sinew and grandsons, sees last remains of Horn.

  6. He kills Jahlee.

  7. He is released from Silk’s body by Remora’s exorcism.

  There is something very structured about this sequence, perhaps as formal as the stages of the afterlife presented in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

  Zoology: one of the hard, usually permanent structures projecting from the head of such mammals as cattle and antelopes. (But also there are references to inkhorn and musical horn.)

  Horn (the Neighbor) the only named Neighbor aside from Windcloud, Horn meets him in the Land of Fires (V, chap. 11, 272). He is taller than Hammerstone (267). He presents another strange case of the twinning going on around Horn. For a list of Neighbors, see NEIGHBORS.

  Onomastics: there might be a sly allusion to the musical horn, which would also be an “air” name akin to Windcloud.

  Hound “a shopkeeper of Endroad” (VII, list). Met at his home (VII, chap. 4, 71), a league beyond the bridge where the godling sat (69), he says he grew up in Endroad (72). Hound and Tansy lived in Viron until five years ago (72). Their shop is a general store (72).

  After the sacrifice at the Grand Manteion, Hound is lured away from rejoining Silkhorn by a man offering to sell him candles at a low price.

  “Hunting of the Snark, The” a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll (1874) which has a number of significant ties to The Book of the Short Sun. It is a poem in eight sections about a group of ten odd persons on a hunt for a legendary beast in an unknown land.

  • The first section talks about the sailing across an uncharted sea, not unlike Horn’s voyage to Shadelow continent.

  • One character is the Baker, who loses his name early on, and answers to a variety of names including “Ho!” These points make him seem like a close match to Silkhorn.

  • The presence of a non-human among the hunters, that being the Beaver, a tame one, who is rather like Babbie the hus.

  • The fifth section involves the Jubjub bird, which is somewhat similar to the Pajarocu bird.

  • The dissolution of the successful hunter (the Baker) in the end, “For the Snark was a Boojum, you see,” anticipates the dissolution of Horn after successfully getting Silk back to New Viron.

  husband, the see CORN SEED MAN.

  Hyacinth “Silk’s beautiful wife” (V, list). She is mainly present in the text through association with the azoth she gave Silk. She shows up in occasional dreams, like the one of a young Hyacinth with Silk, chopping nettles (V, chap. 16, 379). In addition to confusion with Nettle, she also becomes confused with Seawrack, as in “I heard Hyacinth singing to her waves” (VI, chap. 8, 121).

  Horn-in-Silkhorn writes that Horn “had loved Nettle . . . and had envied Patera Silk Hyacinth (lovely, savage Hyacinth) with all his heart” (VII, chap. 1, 19).

  Hyacinth “was a very beautiful woman, the most beautiful I’d ever seen. I’ve seen one other since who might rival her, despite being maimed” (VII, chap. 6, 134). (See entry in LS Half.)

  Botany: flowers of the genus Hyacinthus, formerly placed in the lily family Liliaeae.

  I

  Incanto “the name by which the former Rajan of Gaon is known in Blanko. (Also the name of Inclito’s older brother, who died in infancy)” (VI, list). The narrator wonders why Salica named her firstborn this way (VI, chap. 6, 108). See MYSTERIES.

  His first story is “The Man with the Black Sword.” His second one is “The Man Who Returned.”

  Italian: a spell; enchantment.

  Commentary: perhaps the parental idea for such a name was that the child’s birth would break the curse that seemed to be upon Salica. It was ominous that the infant died, and later on, the husband died, too.

  incense willow a tree of Blue (I, chap. 2, 63).

  Inclito “the leading citizen of Blanko” (VI, list). He meets the former Rajan in front of a stationery store, where the Rajan is beginning his new volume (VI, chap. 1, 18). Later Inclito writes the war-time letter to Incanto that starts the book (VI, prologue). He is almost totally bald (33). Having borrowed and read The Book of the Long Sun the year before, after meeting Incanto he tries to borrow it again (VI, chap. 6, 107). His name means “the famous” (107).

  He designed the sewe
rs of Blanko and they were built but they did not work so they remain dry (19). New ones were built.

  His mother is Salica. His daughter is Mora. His wife Zitta died on the lander.

  The first story he tells is “The Sentry and His Brother,” followed by “The Mercenary’s Employer.” He seems to have heard of someone who returned from Green, but he discounts it (VI, chap. 3, 58).

  Italian: illustrious; glorious; the famous.

  Increate a word used by Duko Rigoglio when they find themselves on Urth (VI, chap. 21, 313). Incanto writes, “It was a new term to me” (313).

  Incus, Patera “the Prolocutor of Viron” (VII, list; chap. 2, 40). He urges Silkhorn to assist at sacrifice in the Grand Manteion. Owing his position to Silk, he has reason for wanting Silkhorn to go away. (See entry in LS Half.)

  Anatomy: a bone of the inner ear.

  inhumans the human slaves of the inhumi (VI, chap. 24, 368). They ride herd on the human cattle. Auk and Chenille are in this class.

  inhumi the vampire-like creatures native to Green. Inhumu is the male, inhuma is the female, and inhumi is the species name or general plural. Inhumus is the male plural (VII, chap. 20, 404).

  “They survive for . . . months without the blood that is their only food” (I, chap. 4, 109). Wijzer says they cannot be drowned (109).

  Knowing that inhumi were present on the Long Sun Whorl, Horn speculates upon how they might have gotten there. He comes up with three scenarios:

  1. That there is a hypothetical Green or Blue conjunction with the Long Sun Whorl, every 60 or 100 years.

  2. That a group of inhumi rode an even earlier lander back.

  3. That the inhumi built a lander, went to the Long Sun Whorl, and there separated to hunt (V, chap. 7, 182–83).

  Later on he learns that the Neighbors visited the Long Sun Whorl when it first arrived and, in order to test the humans, they introduced inhumi.

  Silkhorn tries to figure out how he warped from a sellaria in Dorp to Green without the negotiated aid of an inhumu or inhuma. He writes a number of possible explanations, the third of which is, “that I was assisted by the Neighbors, from whom the inhumi must originally have gained this power” (VII, chap. 9, 183).

  Horn learns the inhumi secret that later causes so much trouble for Silkhorn. “Krait told me, and we talked together until I understood the secret and what had happened almost twenty years ago” (VI, chap. 5, 82). What had happened was Jahlee came to Lizard and bit Sinew, then returned to Green and gave birth to Krait. The unspeakable secret seems to be that inhumi are bad because the humans they feed upon are bad.

  The “inhumi gambit” used by the Rajan is a desperate attempt to win a war using unconventional means. The Rajan “commanded more than twenty inhumi in Gaon” (VI, chap. 23, 351). Among them were Jahlee and Juganu. Although this is novel to the humans, it seems as though it was a technique used by the Neighbors in the past.

  Inhumi history is that of rising from slavery, enslaving the former masters, and declining. As Silkhorn puts it,

  On Green, the Vanished People had done what I had done in Gaon, Hide. They had made the inhumi serve them; and as time passed they had become more and more dependent upon their servants, servants whom they permitted to come here to feed, and perhaps carried here to feed (VI, chap. 23, 355).

  This comes after musing upon how the towers of Green still stand while their cities on Blue have crumbled into nameless hills. Thus, the Neighbors lived on Green as slaves, repairing the towers, long after their kind had vanished from their homeworld of Blue.

  As for religion, the inhumi have a god (VII, chap. 17, 344), and Jahlee becomes a new goddess for them for a brief time.

  Inhumi reproduction is not entirely revealed, but it seems analogous to that of mosquitos. An inhuma takes human blood and this becomes the basis. If she takes female blood, her offspring will be female; if she takes male blood, her offspring will be male. She then returns to Green, where an inhumu builds a hut in a manner very similar to the way that certain Earth birds (e.g., male bowerbirds) build elaborate display nests. When she has selected the nest that appeals to her, she enters. The couple then engages in an elaborate fantasy that they are human, as described by Juganu (VII, chap. 19, 385–86).

  J

  Jahlee “an inhuma rescued by the Rajan and Evensong” (V, list). The first one they dig up to fight against the Han (V, chap. 13, 314), given a name meaning “false” (318). She briefly has the name “Judastree” while visiting Qarya. In dream travel, she has long reddish (sorrel-colored) hair (VI, chap. 23, 368).

  She had been buried for years (316), so she was not one of the recent ones that the Rajan had seen buried. Jahlee leads inhumi missions against the Han during the HAN-GAON WAR. One example is where they cut barges to break a bridge on the upper river (V, chap. 14, 350). They also have success with starting rumors and sending false messages (350).

  Jahlee becomes a quasi-daughter of Silkhorn. During the time when her body is in a coma in Dorp, she becomes a new goddess on Green. A Neighbor convinces her to return with Silkhorn to Blue. Her desire to meet Nettle seems sinister.

  While dying from Silkhorn’s beating, she says that she was the one who fed from Sinew as an infant, and that Krait was her son from this (VII, chap. 15, 316). So she must have come to Blue at the first conjunction and returned to Green at the same period. On a subsequent visit to Blue (presumably after the next conjunction, six years later) she was captured and buried alive, where she became dormant until freed by Silkhorn.

  Hindi: fake/counterfeit; net (fish net).

  Judastree a Vironese name for Jahlee (VI, chap. 24, 364).

  Botany: Judas tree, a small deciduous tree of Southern Europe and Western Asia, known for its prolific display of deep-pink flowers. There is a legend that Judas Iscariot hanged himself from a tree of this species.

  Juganu “an inhumu freed by the narrator” (VII, list), first mentioned much earlier: when the flying inhumi circled over Silkhorn and Evensong, Silkhorn “stood up and called out to them (addressing them as Jahlee, Juganu, and so forth)” (V, chap. 16, 376). Juganu is one of the released inhumi who serve the Rajan in the HAN-GAON WAR. Later met in New Viron, he is used by Silkhorn for warping to Urth (VII, chap. 16, 344). In dream travel he has “yellow hair and a big hawk nose” (VII, chap. 17, 346). He becomes enamored of Tigridia, a prisoner on Urth. Juganu leads the inhumi attack on Hide’s wedding because he was enraged at not being allowed to stay on Urth (VII, chap. 20, 400; 403).

  Hindi: a word meaning glow worm; firefly.

  K

  kandij word used by Vadsig for Hide (VII, chap. 9, 180).

  Dutch: candy.

  Karabin, Lieutenant “a mercenary officer” (VI, list). Initially employed by Soldo, stationed at the saddle (VI, chap. 12, 187), Karabin is among those who warped to Green (VI, chap. 13, 205). He is tall and slender, with a black mustache (205).

  Polish: rifle.

  Karn “a two-year-old-boy, Sinew’s son” (VI, list; VI, chap. 24, 363). His mother is Bala, and his big brother is Shauk.

  Hindi: ear, but also close to words for “cause” and “sentiment.”

  Myth: a form of Karna, the son of Kunti and Surya the Sun God.

  Onomastics: Sanskrit name meaning “guide.”

  Kenbaar, Lieutenant Dorp officer who escorts Silkhorn to his trial (VII, chap. 11, 222). He is older than Silkhorn expected, perhaps thirty.

  Dutch: knowable.

  Kenner, Judge one of the judges ruling Dorp (VII, chap. 11, 226). Wijzer saw Hoof and Hide at Kenner’s house, leading the attack.

  Dutch: connoisseur; (good) judge (of something).

  Kilhari “a hunter of Gaon” (V, list). Leader of group hunting wallowers (V, chap. 10, 225).

  Hindi: kilharis are a class of professional cattle herdsmen (note under entry on “killari” in Mason’s World Dictionary of Livestock Breeds, Types, and Varieties, 5th edition, 2002, by Valerie Porter and I. L. Mason).

  kite maker it turns out the old man w
ho built the unique kite for Musk (the one used to train Musk’s eagle to attack a Flier) later went to Blue in the lander with Horn and Nettle, where he told them about Musk and his birds (VII, chap. 6, 117).

  Krait “the inhumu adopted by Horn” (V, list); “the inhumu who rescued Horn from a pit” (VI, list). First mentioned in the text as a shifty character: “or that Krait had left the sloop and was shadowing us for some purpose of his own” (V, chap. 5, 137).

  He is first met after he had been feeding off of Babbie (V, chap. 7, 174). The second meeting is at the pit on the island where Horn is trapped (V, chap. 9, 197). First use of name (V, chap. 10, 231).

  In a dreamy sequence, Silkhorn writes “my grandson, Krait, the son of my daughter Jahlee” (VII, chap. 4, 83), which turns out to be an artistic foreshadowing in the DHV text. Krait is an inhumu version of Sinew, Horn’s first child, who had been bitten by an inhuma as an infant on Lizard. His mother is Jahlee.

  Horn and Krait go through a complicated father/son cycle which mirrors that between Horn and Sinew. Krait is the “demon” version of Sinew, and yet the relationship ends in atonement as Krait is dying in the jungles of Green. This resolution stands in stark contrast to the rift between Sinew and Horn, which is so deep that Horn dies alone in the partially repaired lander near Qarya. Thus, Krait appears to be an “ideal” son compared with the real son.

  This meme, the notion of an inhumu being adopted by a human, causes great mischief throughout the text, continuing with Fava, then Jahlee. Jahlee scores a major victory when Silkhorn takes to calling her his daughter. As seductive as this meme is, with its seeming reconciliation of the irreconcilable, it is terribly false, and it is better that Sinew perhaps killed his father than Silkhorn take his “daughter” Jahlee home to Lizard Island.