The Carnelian Throne

by Janet Morris

  Mnemaat’s henchemen: (B) Those who implement the strict culling of over—and undersuccessful individuals during the Children’s Trial.

  Nehedra: (B) A town within the Wall of Mnemaat, Nehedra lies on a small tributary of the Isanisa just east of Dey-Ceilneeth Road. She is concerned primarily with the maintenance of the Beneguan preserve, and takes charge of all children consecrated into Wehrdom’s service. From all of Aehre are the children gathered into Nehedra, some once in their lives to take the Children’s Trial, some for long periods of time to study the parables of Beneguan law and become fit to serve Wehrdom. Whether consecrated to Mnemaat the Unseen, Imca-Sorr-Aat, or directly to Wehrdom, all children’s instruction and all Benegua’s commerce is handled in Nehedra.

  Nemar: (P) One of western Silistra’s Parset Desert Lands; birthplace of Chayin rendi Inekte, and his hereditary kingdom; now the winter capital of the co-cahndor’s reign.

  Nothrace: (B) The razed town on Nothrace ridge; the shelflike ridge at Mt. Imnetosh’s foot. Nothrace, like most of the eastern coast of Aehre, has no slope gentle enough to provide a harbor, but rises in a sheer cliff face to more than ten thousand (B.S. Standard) feet above the sea; the purported birthplace of Aat-Deilcrit.

  obviation of space: (S) The Shaper mode of travel, only now coming into use on Silistra; the transportation of matter around distance by making use of the nonsequential circuits that exist out of time: it is said that from the place called the domain of the Seventh Sorter all destinations are equidistant in that they exist coeval with the point of immutable now.

  ossasim: (B) The man-derived, winged creatures to whose advantage Wehrdom was designed and has since evolved.

  Othdaliee: (B) The capital “city” of Imca-Sorr-Aat, Othdaliee is a living relic from Aehre-Kanoss’ Mechanist past. I can find no mention of it in any of our records and must assume that it was, even then, of a most secret nature, to have housed such experiments as Imca-Sorr-Aat:

  owkahen: (St) “The time coming to be”; those probabilities among all the available futures that will manifest as reality.

  Parset: (P) An individual of any one of the five Parset Lands, the desert regions held by the co-cahndors. The Parset Lands still maintain their autonomy, notwithstanding the alliance formed between the co-cahndors and the dharen of Silistra.

  peona: (B) A pink-fleshed, black-skinned melon that grows wild in the Isanisa river valley.

  Port Astrin: (S) Well Astria’s dependent city; the Liaison’s Port, that is, the only facility on Silistra for starships. Estri diet Hadrath Estrazi’s hereditary holdings included both Port Astrin and Well Astria; the port from which the expedition to Aehre-Kanoss was mounted.

  ptaiss: (B) An eight—to twelve-hundred-pound, wedge-headed carnivorous mammal with slitpupiled eyes and a tufted tail, in size and shape resembling the Silistran dorkat, but with the mental skills and intelligence of a hulion.

  quenel: (B) A small, bushy-tailed carnivore, with a long, tapering snout, markedly rounded cranium, and paws with opposing-thumbed, fivedigited “fingers.”

  razor-moon: (S) A sharpened disk of steel or the green metal stra; a casting weapon with several varieties; the boot-sheathed razor-moons I favor are the one-way, nonreturning sort whose diameter is about that of a woman’s hand.

  roema: (B) A smaller cousin, seemingly, of the quenel, with the difference that while the quenel’s eyes are round-pupiled, the roema’s are slit. It is a burrower and a stalker, and makes no sound other than a sibilant hiss.

  saiisa: (S) A Silistran term of disrespect usually applied to coin girls of questionable cleanliness.

  Se’keroth: (St) The legendary blade of which Laore wrote, and with which, by all accounts, he was slain. “The blade itself. Se’keroth of the fire-gemmed hilt, was reclaimed by Khys at great personal peril in the last pass before the onset of the Fall of Man. With six lesser priests he crossed the Embrodming and liberated the sword from the Brinjiiri Loanan Museum, in the midst of that enemy’s capital ....”

  “... Se’keroth’s magical nature ensures its possession by those catalytic personalities that shape each ensuing age, all of whom undergo rigorous purification before the sword falls into their hands ....”

  “He who wields Se’keroth is himself that weapon, is himself wielded by that same which transmutes the gross into fine ....”—the dharener Car’. “.. The legend inscribed on the blade, ‘Se’keroth, direel b’estet Se’keroth,’ literally: ‘Se’keroth, light from out of darkness by the sword of severance,’ is ostensibly a simplification of the aphorism ‘reduction/resolution’ that pervaded early Stothric attempts to deduce the relationship of substance to matter.”—E.H.d.E., Wind from the Abyss.

  Shaper: (S) One who can control the constituents of matter and form them to his will; Shaper designates not so much a race or bloodline as an ability; Estrazi, forebear to many races, is a Shaper, as are those he calls brothers, though even in that small circle not all actually shape; Chayin carries Shaper blood through his Mi’ysten father, Raet, though not all Mi’ystens shape. Khys had the skill from his father, Kystrai, who was Chayin’s grandsire; and Sereth has come to his ability through a series of genetic inversions which brought his own traces of Shaper heritage into contact with the beneficial mutations Silistran evolution so frequently provides, causing totally new configurations of interacting predispositions to appear than have been previously encountered.

  sort: (S) (n.) The probabilities inherent in a specific moment of time; those alternate future available to one trained to seek them; the display mode of probability.

  sort: (S) (v.) To “sort” probability; to determine in advance the resultant probabilities from postulated actions.

  stepsisters: (B) A colloquialism for fahrass berries. telsodas: (B) A pinkish, carnivorous plant with reddish-brown leaves that depends upon flesh to stave off indehiscence.

  threx: (S) The preferred riding beast of western Silistra.

  Uritheria: (P) A beast from the Parsets’ TarKesian mythology, said to have ignited the sun in the sky; a gigantic winged and clawed serpent-like beast that is the cahndor of Nemar’s traditional protector.

  vabillia: (B) A strongly revivifying root when taken in small doses, vabillia grows submerged around the edges of shallow pools.

  wehr: (B) Any mind capable of entering into the community of minds called Wehrdom; an individual possessing the pan-species communication gene.

  Wehrdom: (B) The hierarchal organizations of wehrs.

  wehr-master: (B) Colloquial phylum name for ossasim; any coordinator of wehrs for the benefit of Wehrdom.

  wehr-wind: (B) The circuit by which Wehrdom communicates; th-6 network of joined minds of Wehrdom; any communication by way of that network.

  Wisdom Mask: (B) A mask like that of an aged woman, used in Beneguan mystical rites.