A Rising Moon
Page 35
Taibhse (TOY-cha)
Cateni word for spirit or ghost (plural: taibhsean (TIE-chan))
Teine (TCHEE-na)
Fire
Tha! (Hah!)
An exclamation of approval. Yes!
Tirnanog (TIR-nah-nog)
The Otherworld of the Cateni—the land of the gods and the spirits
Trusa (TROO-SAH)
The former capital city of the Mundoa, razed by Voada and her forces, which is currently being rebuilt. Cateni name: Iskameath.
Uisge (OOSH-kah)
Water
Velimese (VELL-eh-mees)
A town in Albann Deas
Voice
The person representing the Emperor/Mundoan authorities in a town or city. His spouse is called the Voice-wife. The Voice is universally someone of Mundoan origin.
R. Yarrow (YAH-roh)
The river that runs past Pencraig. The River Yarrow’s source is Loch Yarrow, and it feeds into the greater River Meadham.
Var (VARH)
A town on the southern coast of Albann Deas
Zar atmak (Zahr AT-mack)
A Mundoan game of chance that uses six-sided die
Acknowledgments and Notes
Special thanks to . . .
Denise Parsley Leigh, for being the only person upon whom I inflict my first drafts, for her insightful (and gently blunt) comments. Denise, you shape every story I write as you’ve also helped to shape my life. I love you.
Sheila Gilbert, who brought me into the DAW family and whose editorship of my last several novels and kind friendship in general have been a true gift. Sheila (as I’ve said in the past, has relentlessly made certain that each of my books has been as good as I could possibly produce at the time, and for that she has my endless gratitude. Sheila is more than just an editor; she is a mentor, and best of all, a friend.
Notes:
Though this is the second book in a two-book series, I’ve tried as much as possible to allow readers to enjoy A Rising Moon without having read the first book, A Fading Sun. Still, you’ll understand more of the backstory if you read the first volume. I’d love to hear from you if you read this book without reading the first volume—let me know if I succeeded or not.
This book is fiction. Not history. Those of you who read the preceding novel, A Fading Sun, already know that the first book was loosely based on Roman Britain of the first century C.E. and the rebellion of Boudica. However, the historical Boudica’s story ends and we learn nothing in the surviving Roman texts of what happened to her two daughters after her death. So Orla’s story is entirely fictional. As with the first book, the landscape is imaginary, the Mundoan culture is emphatically (and very deliberately) not Roman (it’s more Turkish than Roman) and I’ve not allowed historical facts to stand in the way of how I’ve portrayed the Cateni/Celtic culture—not to mention that there’s genuine magic in this world. A Rising Moon is, to some extent, the way I wish the historical Boudica’s story might have ended.
Books read as research for this novel:
Tacitus. Annals (Loeb Classical Library). Translated by John Jackson. New York: Harvard University Press, 1937. I was especially interested in Book XIV, Chapters 29–39 , which cover Boudica’s revolt in Britain. In A Fading Sun, the speech that Voada gives to the Cateni just before the final battle is a paraphrase of the words that Tacitus puts in Boudica’s mouth in Annals, Book XIV, chapter 35, but given that Tacitus wrote about The Annals half a century after the actual event, it’s highly unlikely that Boudica actually said any of those words.
Hingley, Richard and Christina Unwin. Boudica: Iron Age Warrior Queen. London: Bloomsbury, 2005. This is an interesting study of Boudica that examines the various ways she’s been imagined, presented, and used symbolically from the time of the Romans through the present day. The concept is that Boudica has worn the masks of many agendas throughout history, not all of them complimentary and certainly few of them accurate. In these two books, she wears a mask of my own making, and it was as false as any of the others.
Robb, Graham. The Discovery of Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013. The author’s contention is that the Celts deliberately and knowingly mapped out their kingdoms in now-lost, precise straight lines aligned to the solstices and to the compass points, and that important locations were often found at the intersections of those lines. Frankly, I felt Mr. Robb’s arguments were hazy, tenuous, and ultimately unconvincing (take any sufficient collection of random dots on a page, and you’ll be able to connect several dots with a straight line), but that didn’t stop me from borrowing a few concepts . . .
Curriculum Development Unit. Celtic Way of Life. Dublin: O’Brien Press, 2000. This slim volume concentrates (unsurprisingly, given the publisher) on Celtic tribes in Ireland. Rather scant on details or references to source material, but still a decent overview.
As usual, I also prowled the Internet for articles and information on an ad hoc basis during the writing of this book, far too many sites and places to list or even to remember at this point. The Web is a wonderful resource and tool. I’m old enough to have written stories and novels before the answers to questions could be found with a quick googling, and am grateful that the Web is there for all writers.
About the Author
Stephen Leigh is a Cincinnati-based, award-winning author with nineteen science fiction novels and over forty short stories published. He has been a frequent contributor to the Hugo-nominated shared world series Wild Cards, edited by George R. R. Martin. He teaches creative writing at Northern Kentucky University. Stephen Leigh has written Immortal Muse, The Crow of Connemara, and the fantasy trilogy Assassin's Dawn.
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