The Golden Sword

by Janet Morris

  gol: (S) The excrescence of the golachit of Siiistra. Gol comes naturally in five colors: blue, amber, white, silver, and red. Black or other adulterated colors are produced by feeding the golachit the proper melanis (harmless chemically treated fungi). Gol is considered superior as a building material because of its permanence; gol might last a man a lifetime, while iron, brick, and wood seem to wear away visibly under the Silistran eye.

  golachit: (S) The great builder beetle of Silistra thrives both in a wild state in the gollands at the feet of the Sabembes, and in a mutually beneficial symbiosis with man. As with web-weaver and webber, so do golachit and golmaster blend minds and create together such beauty as would have remained unrealizable dream for either alone. The golachit is a scavenger by nature and finds both food and stimulation in this community with man.

  gohnaster: (S) One who enters into community of minds with a golachit; a golarchitect.

  gristasha: (pre-Hide Silistra) The dark-skinned primitives who formed one-half of the hide aniet, precursors to the Parsets, who still tattoo themselves as did their fierce progenitors. The Parset culture, in language and custom, bears heavily this gristasha influence.

  Groistu: (ST) The constellation of the stones wielder, which dominates the southwest quadrant of the Parset sky.

  gul: (S) The ovoid, juicy fruit from which kifra is obtained; any of the three varieties of gul, the yellow, the orange, the purple-blue.

  harinder: (S) A sepia-colored, thorned shrub ubiquitous upon Silistra. It is speculated that when the Polar Wastes are explored, some subspecies of harinder will be found there.

  hard: (S) (n.) A common and tasty bird whose feathers are black and iridescent. The harth thrives in city and town, as well as plain and forest. He is a migrating bird, preferring warm weather. In the northern regions at harvest past, the sky is indeed “harth-black” with their numbers, screeching their distinctive “Hareee, haree” cry.

  harth: (S) (adj.) Anything black and shining, especially black with blue or purple overtones.

  helsar: (M) A bluish-white, crystalline life or prelife form said to be the reagent (in its shattered state) of life in a neighboring continuum. Helsars manifest upon a time-space world only contiguous to a disturbance such as is caused by flesh when first attempting the obviation of space.

  hest: (S) To bend or twist natural law to serve the will; to command by mind; to cause a probability not inherent in the time to manifest. (The line between hesting and shaping is somewhat difficult to define when highly skilled individuals are concerned. The rule of thumb is held to be thus: if natural law must be remade or totally superseded, as in creating a permanent object such as a fruit or a star, one is shaping. If one is simply controlling an already existing object or event, as would be the case if one caused a fruit or star already in existence to alter its behavior but not its structure, one is hesting. The fruit or star one moves to the right or the left or higher in the sky by will would not have behaved in that fashion, but is still the same star or fruit as was a natural inhabitant of the time before the hest was applied. If one, on the other hand, creates fruit or star, one has brought into the time, by a suspension of natural law, that which heretofore did not exist. One shapes matter. One bests time.) In usage, bringing in a hest, affecting probability.

  hide: (S) The seven hides of Silistra: aniet, bast, crill, diet, gaesh, rendi, and stoen. Each hide supported a thousand survivors and their progeny through the long years of waiting until the planet’s surface was again habitable. Under the aegis of the dharen’s Day-Keepers and forereaders, the hides were built and operating sixty years before the projected disaster. But few believed, and thus only in hide aniet were there other than Day-Keepers and forereaders when the world exploded into war. It is said that the word “hide” derived from the scoffing and mocking of pre-hide Silistra at the project. “Khys’s burrows” was another early name for the interconnected life-support complexes that saved what little of Silistra that was desirous of survival.

  hide-days: (S) The thousand years of subterranean living, accounted hide-year one through one thousand. Our present calendar date of 25,693 is counted from the first year spent above the ground. All that occurred before hide-year one is termed pre-hide, or prehistoric.

  hide-name: (S) Any of the seven hide-names: aniet, bast, crill, diet, gaesh, rendi, .and stoen. Hide descent is always carried through the mother. The hide-narne is second in the male, third in the female, and always takes lower-case honors.

  high-couch: (S) Formally, the Well-Keepress, also any woman able to demand over thirty gold dippars per couching.

  huija: (P) The metal-studded, braided lash favored by Parsets.

  hulion: (S) The most intelligent animal on explored Silistra. The hulion-winged, furred carnivore of the Sabembe range; shuns civilization. They are known to have mind skills and a complex language, but are not symbolizers such as man. The hulion does as he wills upon Silistra, and none obstruct him. The high Sabembes and the unnamed western mountains are their domain of choke.

  Inner Well: (S) The great central court within a Well’s walls.

  ith: (S) One-seventy-fifth of an enth.

  Itophe: (P) The land of the Itophe, bordered on the north by Dordassa, on the east by Menetph, on the south by the Ernbrodming, and on the west by the southernmost Yaicas and the salt river Oppi. Itophic colors are gray and sepia, her device the triple triangle of sepia upon a field of gray.

  jer: (P) A watering place in an otherwise arid region.

  jeri: (MK) A costly and exotic M’ksakkan drink .which mixes seven fruits with a char-filtered grain beverage; a sweet drink much favored by women.

  jiask: (P) A Parset fighting man; one who has earned the jiask’s chaldric strand.

  jiaskcahn: (P) A jiask who rules over three hundred of his fellows.

  kapura: (S) A drum similar to the dhrouma, but having a cylindrical, uncurved belly. The dhrouma produces a lower, drier sound than does the kapura.

  kifra: (S) A Silistran drink made from crushed guls, a live fruit wine.

  Liaison: (S) The contact officers installed as semipermanent officials on Bipedal Federate Trade Union worlds. The designation “First,” “Second,” etc., is Silistran, but indicative of the local M’ksakkan hierarchy.

  Litess: The Litess River.

  Menetph: (P) The southernmost of the Parset Lands, bordered on the north and east by Coseve, on the south by the Exnbrodming, and on the west and north by Itophe. The Menetpher device is the amber star upon, a black ground.

  Mi’ysten: (M) Name for both a planet and people. Experimental sphere of the Shapers.

  M’ksakka: (MK) The administrative planet of the B.F. Group and Bipedal Federate Trade Union. M’ksakka is a highly industrialized world that exports all types of leisure and convenience machinery, a superior solar sail, and a synthetic shatterproof crystal.

  M’ksakkan: (MK) Originating upon M’ksakka. All M’ksakk’ns, unless very high or very low in their society, bear the M’ before their name; as Miennin, or, conversely, Khaf-Re Dellin.

  Morrlta: (S) The pelter town nestled in the foothills of the Sabembes.

  name: (S) A red, round fruit with crisp white pulp and a distinctly salty aftertaste; the tree, which bears red leaves and fruits eight passes out of the year; the drink made from pulping the fruit.

  Nemar: (P) The most northerly of the Parset Lands, bordering upon the Skin-valley in the north, the Sabembes in the east, Dordassa in the south, and the Yaicas in the west. At one time the border of Nemar included Mount Opir. The Nemarsi device is the slitsa wound around the Parset blade upon a field of crimson.

  Nemarchan: (P) “Will of Nemar”; the woman, by tradition a forereader, who is leader over Nernar’s tiasks.

  nera; (S) 1.2 B.S. miles; Silistran measure of distance.

  Oguast: (S) A provisionally entered B.F. planet in Silistra’s own sector. Oguast’s surface, is eighty-two percent water, her main exports are wistwa ivory and articles of superior ceramic process.
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  Ors Yris-tera: (ST) “Book of the Weathers of Life”; the divination system introduced by the dharen Khys during hide-days, along with the game itself, yris-tera.

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

  pandivver: (P) an insectivorous barrens bird whose favorite food is the hydrotaxic wirragaet.

  parr: (S) The small, wiry-haired food beast of Silistra. The snub-nosed, flop-eared parr provides Silistra with meats, hide, fertilizer, and glue. It is said of a parr that only its hair does man no service.

  parr-breeder: (S) One who raises parr; one who wears the low-chaldric brown strand.

  parr-hide: (S) The sturdiest leather available on Silistra, parr-hide is thicker and less pliable than either tas or denter. Its main uses are in harnesses, footwear, armor, and weapon-related leathers.

  Parset: (P) (adj.) Having origin in the Parset Lands. Parset: (P) (n.) An individual of any one of the five Parset tribes.

  Parset Lands: (P) The Parset Desert; the Parset barrens; the territories of the five tribes: Coseve, Dordassa, Itophe, Menetph (under which lies hide aniet), and Nemar. The Parset Lands lie at the bottom of Skirr Valley. They are bounded on the northeast by the tail of the Sabembes, on the east and south by the Embrodming Sea, and on the west by the southern Yaica range and the river Oppi.

  pass: (S) One-fourteenth of the Silistran year; the Silistran lunation. Each pass is composed of four sets.

  peg: (S) (v., to peg time.) To scale down one’s time sense, to become concerned with the moment, to expand the moment. Pegging time is a prerequisite to all temporal skills. More formally referred to as “taking stance in the now,” this process is the Silistran weapon against idleness and apathy, as well as the first step ins sorting: discerning the probabilities available from the moment. The moment is infinitely fruitful; it is the mind’s apprehension of it that is subject to famine and drought. If a man, at the end of the day, recollects only a blur of similitude, it is then incumbent upon him to redouble his efforts to "take stance, lest he come to the end of his life and find, in truth, that the days have all slipped away.

  Port Astrid: (S) Well Astria's dependent city. Port Astrin, adjoining the Liaison's Port, caters more than any other Silistran city to off-worlders.

  rana: (S) A hot, stimulating drink, rusty-brown in color, from the steppe-grown berried plant of the same name.

  rendi: (S) The hide rendi, under the city of Stra, which lies on the most western shores of the inland Opirian Sea; the hide-name rendi.

  Sabembes: (S) The Sabembe range, sometimes called the Eastern Crags.

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

  sa-nera: (S) Full nera; one nera.

  Santha: (S) The Plateau of Santha; the Falls of Santha.

  sarla: (S) A summer-blossoming shrub often used in hedges, the sarla has variegated leaves and flowers, often producing blossoms of three or four colors simultaneously.

  set: (S) Seven days; one quarter of the Silistran pass. Sets in ,a pass are reckoned first through fourth. "First third" would be the third day of the first set in a given Silistran pass.

  Seven: (S) A man who-has attained the rank of sev-enth in the council of seven Slayers that oversees the Slayers of a given hostel; in addressing one of that rank: "Seven"; in speaking of him, "the Seven" of a given hostel.

  Shaper: (M) One who can control the constituents of matter and form them to his will.

  Silistra: (S) The third planet of the star Veriti; in usage, the inhabited continent, exempting the Polar Wastes and those shores of which none are empowered to speak.

  Silistran: (S) (adj.) Of Silistra.

  Silistran: (S) (language.) Often Balled modern or New Silistran, the planetary tongue. Although some may not speak Darsti, the language of science, nor Stothric, the language of metaphysics, nor Parset, the tongue of the desert dwellers, all speak Silistran.

  skim: (S) An unrestricting short garment worn by women, often white. A s’kim may be tied in numerous ways, and is differentiated from a short-length wrap by its strings at neck, waist, and hip.

  Slayers: (S) The enforcement arm of the Day-Keepers, those who have tested for and been awarded the black-iron chain, chaldric strand of the Slayers. Slayers are an authority as accessible to one man as any other, and there is no man who is denied the strength of a Slayer’s arm, be his need just and true, and his waist chalded. A Slayer is responsible to his Slayers’ Seven and ultimately to the Day-Keepers for his actions, but in practice he is usually his own authority, responsible to the Law Within. The limit of fourteen Slayers upon any one commission, however, is strictly enforced. The Slayer’s device is the crossed sword and stones in black, upon a silver ground. Their leather colors are slate and black. Subranks are indicated by belt colors and cords.

  Slayers’ Seven: (S) The top-ranking Slayers in a ‘given hostel; the seven officials directly responsible to the Day-Keepers for the comportment of their hostel. Each is addressed by his rank number, “One” through “Seven.”

  slitsa: (S) Any legless reptile; of the class “slitsa.” There are one hundred and five species of slitsa.

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

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

  Stoth: (ST) The Stoth disciplines; the prehistoric philosophy and religion that were precursors to the Day-Keepers and the Weathers of Life.

  Stothric: (ST) An archaic Silistran language; the language of metaphysics; the traditional garb of the Stoth priesthood.

  Stra: (S) The city of Stra, upon the most westerly shore of the inland Opirian Sea. Stra is the mining capital of Silistra, the home of famed stra-metal, whose secret is considered Stra’s greatest treasure. Stra also refines copper, bauxite, iron, and gold, all of which they mine in the rich Yaica range. Within Stra’s gates are Well Frenya, and beneath her, the hide rendi.

  stra: (S) That greenish metal refined in the city of Stra, whose resistance to corrosion and tensile strength are greater than that of Silistran steel.

  ta-nera: (S) A quarter-nera.

  Tar-Kesa: (P) The god Tar-Kesa, by whose laws the cahndors and dhareners rule the Parset Lands.

  tas: (S) The woolly hill grazer whose flesh is most highly prized of all Silistran meats.

  tas-skin: (S) Often referred to simply as tas, or tas-suede. The hide of the tas may be split very thin, and even in splits rivals the durability of leathers thrice as thick.

  Tasa: (ST) (Stothric: be blessed.) The common Silistran farewell.

  tasling: (S) A tas under six years of age.

  thala: (S) The most costly hardwood upon Silistra. Northern thala, the preferred variety, is black with a blue cast. Southern thala, substantially less expensive, is black with brown overgrain. It lacks the sheen and depth of northern thala, but shares its near-imperviousness to weather.

  Thrah: Iridescent long-haired pelts from the planet Torth: the animal from which the Thrah pelt comes is about the same size as a brist and might be mistaken for one, but for the long, multicolored coat and the fact that the thrah walks on all fours and is mute.

  threx: (S) The preferred riding beast of Silistra. The threx may range from fifteen to twenty hands in height, from one to two thousand B.S. pounds. It prefers meat. but can subsist upon almost anything. It is readily domesticated up to a point, but remains a moderately dangerous animal-at all times. Threx can reach a speed of up to forty neras an enth for short periods, and in endurance races have been known to make as much as six hundred neras in four days, Threx are readily trained and often war-trained. Threxmen are fond of saying that there is no weapon but man more dangerous than threx. The threx of the north and the Parset threx, who has two vertebrae fewer than his northern cousin, are in some other ways dissimilar: the Parset t
hrex has a more efficient metabolism, nictitating membranes, nostrils that can be closed at will, and greater strength and stamina than the common Silistran threx.

  tiask: (P) .A Parset warwoman; one who has claimed the tiask’s strand.

  tiaskchan: (P) A tiask in command of three hundred of her sisters.

  atrium: (S) A pinkish metal similar to gol but less costly. Titrium is the metal of the couchbond strand, and the half-well titrium coin. Titrium is a product of the city Torwin.

  Torth: The planet Torth, from which Silistra buys more goods than from all the other star-worlds combined. Torth sculpture, whether out of metal or stone, or in the form of “Torth sculptured hangings” is much sought upon Silistra. A Torth sculptured hanging is basically a thick-piled tapestry Worked upon a very fine grid with threads woven from the Thrah-hair, and then carved to various depths, revealing at each level different tones of color.

  Torwin: (S) The city Torwin, from which comes titrium. Torwin is sometimes called the musicians’ city. Both players and makers of instruments throng Torwin from elsewhere on Silistra, to study the aural arts. Torwin, upon the Karir river delta, has both a sea and river port, and from it ships tropical fruits and certain crustaceous delicacies north.

  tun: A starchy, black-skinned tuber with yellow pulp that grows in stony, sandy, or even poor soil.

  uris: (P) A species of succulent that grows wild in the Parset Lands; the stimulant drug made from the uris plant.

  uritheria: (P) A beast from Tar-Kesian mythology, said to have ignited the sun in the sky; the cahndor’s device.

  veil: (P) A colloquialism for forereader’s disease. webber: (S) The arachnid artisans who produce, in cooperation with web-weavers, web-cloth and web-work.