tenken ya — Themorian life debt.
terin’ai — it is the hidden, the shadow of a self. To face it is to face one’s self honestly, without excuses or regrets. It is the greatest battle a Themorian can fight.
Tharn — one of the three Guardians charged with protecting Melekath’s Children, also known as the Fist. Rome badly wounded it with the black axe in the battle at Guardians Watch.
Themor — Shorn’s home planet.
Thrikyl — kingdom south of Qarath where Rome used the black axe to bring down the walls.
tiare — peppery liquor made in Karthije.
Treeside — small village in the Firkath Mountains where Netra and Gerath encountered Tharn.
Treylen — Sounder who wrote about the arrival of Shapers on the world.
trunk lines – the huge flows of LifeSong that branch directly off the River. From the trunk lines the feeder lines branch off, and off the feeder lines come the individual flows that directly sustain every living thing.
Tu Sinar — a Shaper of the Sphere of Stone and one of the Eight who stood with Xochitl at the siege of Durag’otal. He was destroyed by the ingerlings — creatures brought from the abyss — that the Guardian Kasai unleashed on him. Though not actually dead, since the Shapers are immortal, Tu Sinar is dissipated to the point where he will never reform.
unserti — Themorian word for wisdom.
velen’aa — Themorian term. “Velen’aa is not just war. It is any fight which fills a warrior’s life. To embrace it is the beginning of unserti (wisdom).”
Velma — Tender that Nalene leaves in charge when she leaves with the army.
Veragin — dead city the Rome’s army found at the end of the summer campaign. The people there worshipped Gorim.
Werthin — young Takare man who carries Shakre off the Plateau and keeps an eye on her.
Windcaller – men reputed to be able to call the wind and make it serve them. They are considered blasphemers by the Tenders.
Windfollower — name given by the Takare to Shakre.
Windrider — name given by the Takare to Shakre after she rides the wind to save the people of Bent Tree Shelter when the Plateau is tearing itself apart.
Wreckers Gate – the name of the main gate protecting Ankha del’Ath, ancestral home of the Takare. According to the Takare, the wealth and acclaim they received as the Empire’s greatest heroes blinded them. Eventually a rogue Takare led the Takare still living at Ankha del’Ath to rebel and the great gate was shut. The Takare legions returned home and slaughtered their kinsmen. When they realized what they had done, they threw down their weapons, forswore violence, and moved to the Landsend Plateau, where the affairs of the world could no longer tempt them.
Wulf Rome — leader of Qarath.
Xochitl (so-SHEEL) — the deity worshipped by the Tenders. She is a Nipashanti of the First Ring and was a Shaper of the Sphere of Stone before moving to Life.
Yelvin — name of the two Insect Tenders who accompany Ricarn.
Youlin — (YOU-lin) young Pastwalker from Mad River Shelter. She awakens the Takare warriors to their past lives.
Acknowledgements
I would like to take this opportunity to thank some people who made valuable contributions to this book. They are my select team of trusted reviewers, reading the first draft of The Broken Door and pointing out misspellings, sentence errors and places where things just plain didn’t make sense.
Thanks to my wife Claudia and my son Daniel (can I please have more than five weeks to write the next book, Daniel?). Thanks also to my brother, Scott. Last, but not least, thanks to Stormy and Paul Hudelson for their valuable input (and an extra thanks to Stormy for getting me back on track when I had lost faith in the story).
About The author
Born in 1965, I grew up on a working cattle ranch in the desert thirty miles from Wickenburg, Arizona, which at that time was exactly the middle of nowhere. Work, cactus and heat were plentiful, forms of recreation were not. The TV got two channels when it wanted to, and only in the evening after someone hand cranked the balky diesel generator to life. All of which meant that my primary form of escape was reading.
At 18 I escaped to Tucson where I attended the University of Arizona. A number of fruitless attempts at productive majors followed, none of which stuck. Discovering I liked writing, I tried journalism two separate times, but had to drop it when I realized that I had no intention of conducting interviews with actual people but preferred simply making them up.
After graduating with a degree in Creative Writing in 1989, I backpacked Europe with a friend and caught the travel bug. With no meaningful job prospects, I hitchhiked around the U.S. for a while then went back to school to learn to be a high school English teacher. I got a teaching job right out of school in the middle of the year. The job lasted exactly one semester, or until I received my summer pay and realized I actually had money to continue backpacking.
The next stop was Australia, where I hoped to spend six months, working wherever I could, then a few months in New Zealand and the South Pacific Islands. However, my plans changed irrevocably when I met a lovely Swiss woman, Claudia, in Alice Springs. Undoubtedly swept away by my lack of a job or real future, she agreed to allow me to follow her back to Switzerland where, a few months later, she gave up her job to continue traveling with me. Over the next couple years we backpacked the U.S., Eastern Europe and Australia/New Zealand, before marrying and settling in the mountains of Colorado, in a small town called Salida.
In Colorado we started our own electronics business (because, you know, my Creative Writing background totally prepared me for installing home theater systems), and had a couple of sons, Dylan and Daniel. In 2005 we shut the business down and moved back to Tucson where we currently live.
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Guardians Watch
Book Three of
Immortality and Chaos
by
Eric T Knight
Copyright © 2018 by Eric T Knight
Version 2.0 6/2016
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Guardians Watch Page 47