Books, plays, songs and holy texts

The Great Works of the One Land

What every people reads, sings, stages and swears by: chronicles and scriptures, comedies and sagas, songs for weddings and songs that are banned. Each is quoted in its own tongue.

Kingdom of Aldmere

Aldmere writes the way it plows, in straight lines and for use: its great books are rolls, charters and sayings kept by clerks and Hearth-keepers in round Hearthscript, and a clever Aldmeri who wants to be a poet usually goes to Solvaine and does not come back. What the kingdom loves it sings, laughs at from the back of a cart, or reads aloud at the Moot, and it has been quoting the same few pages at itself for eight hundred years.

Chronicle · chronicle

The Long Book of the Moot

Uth Privemey Lird Geesin “the moot's long book”

Dilnard of Kemvos, and every clerk of the Moot after him · 352 R. to the present

The running record of every sitting of the Moot since the first, kept at one page a sitting in the Chancery's plain Hearthscript: who came, what was argued, what passed, what the king refused. Dilnard's first page records the choosing between the two Tulvard cousins in 352 and, in one line, the reeve of Chomtholk who slept through the vote. Later clerks kept his habit of writing down what happened and not what anyone wished had.

Oam taweld vood Chomtholk frirlosud, uld wost nuth frolornud hoskum.A reeve from Chomtholk slept, and we did not wake him.

Its author, and how it lives now

Dilnard of Kemvos, and every clerk of the Moot after him. A Westmarch goatherd's son who learned letters from a Hearth-keeper and was the first clerk of the Moot in 352; he died in office in 389.

Kept in the Chancery on Moot Rise, nearly eight hundred pages and still growing; Dilnard's first page is read aloud each 1st of Halshul after the clerks knock three times on the floor. The entry for 1103 records the Chancery's answer to the Moot's wager on the Two, which settled nothing and is quoted by both sides.

Faith · book of sayings in seven parts

The Seven Embers

Vurn Monmitow “seven embers”

Wurith of Codtholk · c. 460 R.

The nearest thing the Hearthfaith has to scripture, and it would object to the word. It opens with the tale of Old Mother Ember and the seven travelers, then gives one short book of sayings for each Hearth, from Home to the Quiet Hearth, most of them practical: bank the fire, pay the reeve, bury the dead behind the hearth-house, carry a coal to a new house. The book of the Quiet Hearth is the shortest and says the least, on purpose.

Vurn tulrontow, oam baeld. Nuth lirir uth tulront vowth.Seven hearths, one fire. Do not leave the hearth cold.

Its author, and how it lives now

Wurith of Codtholk. Hearth-keeper of the Home hearth at Codtholk for forty years; she gathered what the village keepers of the Crownlands said and wrote it down so it would stop changing.

Every village hearth-house has a copy, and a Hearth-keeper reads the day's book aloud on its Hearth's day of the week. The Gray Choir reads the Quiet Hearth's book as a prophecy; Sister Tunith reads it as a set of instructions for nursing.

Learning · royal charter

The Charter of Hearths

Tulrontowey Tuvad “the hearths' law”

King Hethwur IV and the Moot · 641 R.

A law of one page that lets every man in the kingdom worship as he will, and holds that a Bound man is free the moment he touches Aldmere soil. It was written for the refugees the Hunger Wars and the Reasoned Purge had left on Aldmere's roads, and it is why the Clond exists. Aldmere's lawyers say it is the finest thing the kingdom ever wrote because it is so short there is nothing in it to argue about; they have argued about it for five hundred years.

Lail duvick olk thek thritin urm birnoth, uld mosk wuft tulk hoskey thalk ethrom.Every person on this soil is free, and may pray to his own god.

Its author, and how it lives now

King Hethwur IV and the Moot. The Tulvard king who married Princess Diznesh of Zarvand in 633; Zarvand says the Charter was her doing, and Aldmere says it was the Moot's.

Read from the steps of the Tirtird Cross, and then in every shire town, whenever a king is crowned, and cut into the Law hearth's stones at Hethlend. Tharax has never accepted it, the Office of Truth has asked for the names it shelters, and a Bound runaway who reaches Kemvos can usually recite the line above.

Poetry · ballad

Wemm's Song

Wemmey Desack “Wemm's song”

Anonymous; set down by Larrith of Ownvos · sung before 700 R.; written down 758 R.

The Southdowns ballad of Wemm, the boy who shot a hundred arrows at the moon to win a girl, one verse to each ten arrows and a refrain the whole alehouse takes up. The hundredth arrow sticks, the girl is won, and in the last verse she marries a miller anyway, which the Downs regard as the point. Larrith's text is the one the archery guilds teach.

Oam murd flainow tulk uth silden, uld uth doosod druninud.A hundred arrows to the moon, and the last one held.

Its author, and how it lives now

Anonymous; set down by Larrith of Ownvos. A Southdowns bowyer's widow who wrote the ballad out in 758 because, she said, every village was singing it wrong in a different place.

Sung on Wemm's Night at Ownvos mill and on every Southdowns butts; the Crown Wardens' longbowmen march to it, and sing it on the Statil's roof on Wemm's Night, where they are fined every year for the shooting and never for the song. Ownvos keeps Larrith's copy in the Stave House, where it is dry.

Stage · cart-play (comedy)

Counting Stars

Uth Glailalowey Yeenid “the stars' tax”

Kisard of Lultolor · 1131 R.

The old comic tale of the clerk who set out to count the stars for the tax rolls, fixed at last as a cart-play in three short acts. The clerk counts through the night, loses his place at every owl, charges the moon a hearth-tax, and is still counting when the sun comes up and his lord asks for the total. Every town played it its own way for three hundred years; Kisard's text is the one the autumn carts now carry.

Hwu nulk glailalow? Gork, heldor. Hoork gork.How many stars? Tomorrow, my lord. Always tomorrow.

Its author, and how it lives now

Kisard of Lultolor. A Chancery clerk dismissed in 1131 for writing it on the Chancery's paper; he died a carter's partner in 1140 and was buried at Lultolor with a tally-stick.

The best-loved cart-play of every Aldmere autumn, performed from wagon-beds in the Tirtird and every market square. Any slow official is said to be counting stars, and the Chancery is still annoyed about the paper.

Song · hymn

The Dawn Song

Uth Cobashey Desack “the morning's song”

Drerith of Chomtholk · c. 1104 R.

The one song of the Gray Choir, sung in the streets at every dawn, which teaches that the Quiet Hearth is going out, that the Great Winter was its first sign, and that the singers must give away what they own before the fire fails. It has seven verses and no ending; the singers begin again. Its tune is an old Chomkel harvest round, which is why farmers who hate the Choir find themselves humming it.

Uth tunnath tulront tald thust; wost hend gasest uth gleor.The quiet hearth grows dark; we sing before the sun.

Its author, and how it lives now

Drerith of Chomtholk. A Chomtholk weaver who lost her family in the Great Winter raids and was the first to wear gray; she gave away her looms and died in 1119, singing, the Choir says.

Sung at dawn in Chomkel by some twenty-five thousand people and in Hethlend's Tirtird by a few hundred; lawful under the Charter, forbidden inside the wool halls, and blamed by the grain factors for the unsown winter wheat. Nobody in Chomtholk can say whether it is a hymn or a warning, and the Moot has stopped asking.

Tharax

The Phymun hold that writing is for treaties with people who cannot be trusted, so the great works of Tharax are cut in pine and bronze, kept in the memory of the Thirty, or stamped out on the Drill Field, and the one small library behind the Hall holds almost none of them. Nothing in Tharax is long; what cannot be said in a breath, the Anvil teaches, was not worth the breath.

Faith · recited liturgy of nine lines, one for each day of the holding

The Nine Days

Nysk Therx “nine days”

Kharnoth the Unbroken, as the survivors kept it · before 0 R. (the Century of Fire)

Nine lines, each an order given on one of the nine days Kharnoth's line held where the old wall stood, the first of them the words every Tharaxi child knows. The ninth line is a single word, and the Thirty teach that it was spoken by a dead man. It has never been written down; the Thirty keep it in memory as they keep the law, and a Phymon who cuts it on wood or paper is tried for it.

Iloks mox kharn. Thantak.Now we are the wall. Stand fast.

Its author, and how it lives now

Kharnoth the Unbroken, as the survivors kept it. The mortal captain who stood the survivors in a line where Tharxa's wall had fallen and died on his feet on the ninth day; the lines are held to be his orders, one to a day.

Recited by one of the Thirty at the bare Temple of Kharnoth to every company that leaves by the Denekt road, and by the men of the line, under their breath, when the enemy's front rank is a spear's length away.

Chronicle · chronicle cut in Spearmarks on pine posts, ten years to a post

The Year Posts

Kithuk Skamisik “names of the years”

The Keepers of the Posts · 0–1147 R., and continuing

A double row of posts on Elders' Rise carrying the name of every senior skekir since the Accord of Surmave, one name to a year and nothing else: no battle, no king, no Rising. It is the whole of Tharax's official history, and a Phymon who wants to know what happened in a year must find someone old enough to tell him. Its only companion is the scroll of the named years in the library, which adds a line to a year about once a century.

Kourkek oux kithokot. Mesk gorthorek oux.It gives a name. It does not teach.

Its author, and how it lives now

The Keepers of the Posts. One keeper at a time since the Accord, each cutting the new senior skekir's name on Wardens' Day and recutting rotten posts by copying them exactly; the present keeper is Konpax the Keeper.

Every Tharaxi child is brought to find the year of the Battle of the Gap on it; foreigners who stop to read it are walked back to the Strangers' Yard; the keepers' saying above is quoted at anyone who asks a post a question.

Song · marching count, spoken on the left foot, ten words to a cycle

The Count of the Line

Rostesk Tutaktik “number of the shield wall”

Todaktor Soskik · c. 240 R.

Ten numbers, each joined to one order, spoken by the file-leaders and answered by nothing but feet; the phalanx marches to it from the Drill Field to the field of battle. At a hundred paces from the enemy the count stops, and from then until the lines meet Tharax is silent, which is the part foreign soldiers remember. The Anvil teaches that it is not a song, and no Phymon has ever been heard to sing it.

Kaim, styn. Dru, krax. Tirk, thantak.One, stand. Two, hold. Three, stand fast.

Its author, and how it lives now

Todaktor Soskik. A boy in the Anvil during the War of the Gap who became a file-leader; he fixed the count so that a line of men who had never marched together would step as one.

Heard every morning on the Drill Field before the sun clears the ridge; Caelvenne's shore garrisons have taught it to Solvaine's street boys, who count it in the wrong order, and the Tharaxi do not correct them.

Tales · comic tale-cycle in six parts, told aloud

The Skekir's Wife

Skekirik Talyt “the warden's wife”

Dunoxys Spatokik · c. 610 R.

A skekir tries to give orders in his wife's house, and she makes him sorry six ways, each shorter than the last; in the sixth she says nothing at all and sets his spear outside her door. It is the nearest thing Tharax has to a comedy, and it is also the reason the Skekar will not hear a husband's complaint against his wife's door. Tellers may change the ways but never the number.

Tyxik daipox, skekir. Eimik spetom.Your mess-hall, warden. My house.

Its author, and how it lives now

Dunoxys Spatokik. A Phymon landholder of the Deneskid Side whose telling fixed the tale at six ways and gave the wife her lines; the women's yards credit her and the men do not ask.

Told by the Phymon women in their yards and at the loom, repeated on the Sastorid Side by dusk whenever a husband is sent back to his hall, and laughed at by the men carefully; the Skekar cited it to a complainant in Krerk of 1147.

Poetry · single-line verses cut inside the bronze rims of shields

The Shield Cuts

Domikh Gonemik “words of the shields”

Grilokor Meksanik · c. 770–806 R.

Forty-one short verses, each cut in Spearmarks inside the rim of a bronze-faced shield where only its bearer sees it; since a son inherits his father's shield, the verses pass down the halls with the bronze. The Thirty once ordered one ground off for having too many words, and it is the one every mess-hall can recite. The rest are known by the halls that hold them, and a man who reads another's rim is thought to have read his letters.

Gonam kharn. Kharn brex. Brex tyx.Shield, wall. Wall, men. Men, you.

Its author, and how it lives now

Grilokor Meksanik. A shield-bearer of the Deneskid Heights, called the Short for his height and his lines, who cut a verse inside the rim of every shield in his hall and never one on his own.

Thirty-odd of the shields still stand in the racks, and the line above is cut again by Outdweller shield-facers on new shields for boys whose fathers left them none, which the old halls consider cheating.

Song · work-song cycle in field-talk (dasthax), sung in rows on the terraces

The Field-Songs of the Terraces

Prekith Goksik “songs of the field”

The Bound; no names are said · before 199 R.; verses added every year

Hundreds of verses about barley, goats, weather and sleep, sung to the rhythm of the hoe and stopping when a red cloak passes. Whether the sleeping mother in them is a mother is the question the Tyrthas has asked for nine centuries, since the Furrow's first story is death to repeat aloud. The headmen are asked for the words of a new verse most years, and they always answer that it is an old one.

Skoun, drortex. Thak thesakhus tyx.Sleep, mother. Soon you will wake.

Its author, and how it lives now

The Bound; no names are said. Made and remade by the Bound of the terraces; a verse is always said to be old, and whoever made it is never named in front of an Equal.

Sung on every terrace in Tharax from sowing to threshing and heard in the halls of Tharxa, where no one answers; the Tyrthas listens to them carefully and has never hanged a man for a verse, only for what it thought a verse meant.

Chronicle · collection of Tharax's replies to foreign rulers, on one scroll

The Answers

Speix Nanorik “answers of the land”

Phorirkor Lokokik (compiler) · 1109–1112 R. (replies from 206 R. on)

Thirty-seven replies sent by the kings and the Thirty to foreign kings, princes and khaasars over nine centuries, none longer than a line, set down with the demand each one answered. The first is the one word sent to King Clislo II of Castavar in 206, when he asked that the Gap be opened; he came six years later. It is the only Tharaxi book in the library that foreigners ask to see, and the only one Phorirkor was not tried for, since every word in it had already been given to strangers.

Krokh.Come.

Its author, and how it lives now

Phorirkor Lokokik (compiler). One of the Thirty in the years after the Reforms, who wanted the Outdwellers' sons in the Anvil to know what Tharax says to strangers, and who wrote down only what Tharax had already sent.

Read by the one Phymon in ten who reads, and learned by heart in the Anvil by boys who cannot; the old men of the Counting Crag hold that the Khaasar's letter of 1137, lying unanswered in the same room, is its shortest entry.

Principality of Caelvenne

Caelvenne reads more than any realm but Kaishon and Zarvand, and most of what it reads is printed on Coin Row beside the price sheets, so that a love poem and a bill of exchange are often set by the same hand. Its letters are like its houses: painted, beautiful, built on borrowed ground, and never quite saying what they mean.

Chronicle · chronicle, kept year by year

The Dawn Annals

Lio Globamar diol Lio Punsimor “the book of the dawn”

Jendien diol Lalos, and the canons of Dawn Island after him · 368 R. to the present

A year-by-year record of Solvaine kept at the cathedral school: the height of the lake, the price of Aldmere bread, the Settling Days, the deaths of princes, and what the sky did. It is the book the canons mean when they say "the chronicles," and the source for the forty nights of the Lake Comet, the Great Flood of 539 and the stabbing of Prince Roltien in 603, which it records in one line and a ruled space. It never names who paid for anything.

Liau jende témauève brole liau glalove glauredinve vrasiloz.The star stood over the lake forty nights.

Its author, and how it lives now

Jendien diol Lalos, and the canons of Dawn Island after him. A canon of the Sun Cathedral who began the book in the winter after the Lake Comet, when the dome was first gilded; every canon of the cathedral school since has kept it in the Cathedral Hand.

Still kept daily on Dawn Island; the canons check every new comet and every flood mark against it, and Coin Row printers sell copied entries as quarter-flirone sheets whenever the sky does something the chronicles have seen before.

Faith · scripture and dawn liturgy

The Loan of the Light

Lio Farilsén diol Liau Iévaine “the loan of the Radiant”

The sun-priests of the Marrowmere cities; the fixed text by Cardinal Doulien diol Valcroix · fixed 372 R., from older sayings

The holy book of the Church of the Radiant Iévaine: how the Sun borrowed gold from the earth to make the first dawn, and why she repays it every morning onto Lake Surmave. Its hymns are the dawn liturgy, and its closing chapter, on false lenders who put a ledger where the light should be, is the text of the Radiant's Sermon. The Ledger faithful have always said the book proves only that the Sun is a debtor like everyone else, and they quote it more exactly than the priests do.

Plia punsimor, liau iévaine lémelle lio fonquiver diol eume.Every dawn, the Radiant pays her debt.

Its author, and how it lives now

The sun-priests of the Marrowmere cities; the fixed text by Cardinal Doulien diol Valcroix. The sayings and dawn hymns are older than Caelvenne; Cardinal Doulien, prelate of the new Sun Cathedral, ordered them into one book and struck every copy that disagreed with his.

Sung at every dawn liturgy on the lake and read against the Ledger each 3rd of Clauve; the household words at First Light, "The debt is paid," are its first response, said by people who have never opened it.

Song · tavern song

The Bell-Tower Song

Lio Mèsdas diol Lio Vincal “the song of the bell”

Anonymous, of Reedside · 603 R.

A short, jaunty song about the Aijal patriarch and his two sons hanging from the cathedral bell-tower after Prince Roltien was stabbed at dawn prayers, sung to a rowing beat. Its verses count the bodies, then the bells, then the house's debts, and each verse ends with the wind turning something. Printers have been fined for setting it and it has never been printed; everyone knows it anyway.

Fiane élchelz glule lio vincal, aul liau lènma vuquer zount.Three men under the bell, and the wind turns them.

Its author, and how it lives now

Anonymous, of Reedside. No one has ever claimed it; the Reedside boatmen say it was made in the Bells' own taverns the week the Conclave hanged the House of Aijal.

Sung in every Reedside tavern after the Settling Day races; the old wives' rule is never to hum it near an Aijal, and the Quiet Office's master keeps a painting of the tower in his study, not the song.

Poetry · cycle of love lyrics

The Bird of the Night

Lio Birrénras diol Liau Vrasilo “the bird of the night (the Caelvennois poets' name for the nightingale)”

Saulisine diol Teuvaun · 831–846 R.

Seventy short poems written to a lover never named, each set on a summer night on the Ienvaune terraces while the nightingales sing. The lover is in Claupiose, across the old grudge of 271, and the poems are about waiting, the lake between, and letters not sent. It is the root of the thousand Caelvennois poems about the nightingale, and every later poet either copies it or quarrels with it.

Teul félient deurin, aul liau vrasilo félient gleve.You are far, and the night is long.

Its author, and how it lives now

Saulisine diol Teuvaun. A daughter of the Ienvaune house whose arms bear a silver nightingale; she loved a man of a Claupiose house she was forbidden to marry, and died unmarried at her family's villa.

Learned by heart by girls of the houses before they float their lily; printed on Coin Row in small editions for lovers' gifts, and suddenly back on every lip in Ienvaune since a Flurdel son was offered to a Teuvaun daughter.

Stage · masked comedy in five acts

The Borrowed Face

Lio Goquint diol Lio Farilsén “the face of the loan”

Perousaud the Silverer · 1012 R.

A ruined young man of a great house borrows a painted mask made in his creditor's likeness, and in it courts the creditor's daughter, runs the creditor's counting-house for a week, and nearly marries her at a Mirror Vow before the mirror shows two faces. Every character wears a mask and every mask is owed to someone, down to the servant who wears the face of the prince. It ends with the whole cast unmasked before the mirror and still lying.

Sialle vaume feran jio, vaume feran vra farilsén.If you see me, you see a loan.

Its author, and how it lives now

Perousaud the Silverer. A mirror-silverer of the Furnace Isles who wrote four comedies for the guild halls; only this one survives, and he died in debt.

Played in the guild halls and the Spear Shore inn yards on the Night of Mirrors; the Lantern Road's players carry a shortened version, and a man snubbed in the arcades is said to have been shown the borrowed face.

Learning · book of maxims on lending, written in the trade register

The Kettle Sayings

Lioz Dosnassirz diol Vailine “the words of Vailine”

Gresilien the Clerk (compiler) · 1069–1074 R.

Two hundred and twelve rules on lending, security, debtors and the keeping of books, each said to come from Vailine Farisel, who founded the house with a kettle of coins in 903. They are written in the flat trade register with no adjective anywhere, and they are the nearest thing Caelvenne has to a textbook of banking. Scholars of the Book House at Ionjale Farisel have long whispered that fewer than forty of them are hers and the rest are Gresilien's, written in the year Farisel swallowed the House of Tésvol.

Nount mérmere lio fonquiver; mujé lio fonquiver bévouve.We write the debt down; therefore the debt holds.

Its author, and how it lives now

Gresilien the Clerk (compiler). A Ledger-following bookkeeper of the Kettle House who gathered the sayings of Vailine Farisel after the Bank Panic, when Farisel wanted the continent to remember why it trusted the house.

Every counting-house apprentice copies it out in the first year; the Kettle House keeps the compiler's own copy under glass beside the kettle, and bankers argue over which sayings are forged as other men argue over horses.

Song · sung drama for choir and voices

The Lily on the Water

Liau Fiajane plil Liau Tisouléle “the lily on the water”

Vincaud of the Dyers' Reach · 1138 R.

The old tale of the Lily knight and the Drowned Court fisher-girl, set for choir, two voices and the cathedral's small bells: she throws his crest-lily in the lake and it floats back to her every dawn for a year. Vincaud wrote three endings and would not choose among them, so the house that pays for a performance picks which one is sung, and the houses have used that to insult one another since the first night. It was first sung in the Fiajane on the Night of Mirrors, with the lamps set in the windows facing the lake.

Jio lias teul fovau. Quive teul prelles?I sent you away. Why do you come back?

Its author, and how it lives now

Vincaud of the Dyers' Reach. A dyer's son who sang in the Sun Cathedral choir and became Prince Lourien's favorite composer; he died in 1144 without writing the last act.

Sung in the Fiajane and the great houses on the Night of Mirrors; which ending a house chooses is reported on Coin Row the next morning, and read there as closely as the price of silk.

The Holy Crown of Castavar

Castavar writes slowly, in a script like a fence of spears, and most of what it has written belongs to the Berrode, which keeps its own books in the Close and burns other people's in Ash Square. What the church does not own the realm sings, plays and tells from memory, on the quays of Tandosa, at the cisterns of the Warren and in the cork groves at night, where the Office of Truth cannot burn a page that was never written.

Faith · scripture: an account of the First Hearing, with sayings and parables

The Book of the Hearing

Ula Mosralta deso ula Fojiga “The Book of the Silence”

Brother Sielolo · c. 330–345 R.

The Berrode's holy book: the goatherd, the storm, the lost kid and the voice in the thunder that said nothing, told in forty plain lines, then the sayings Fojo gave in the years after and the short parables the pulpit still preaches from, among them the merchant who sells all he has to buy one field and the rain that falls on the field of the just man and of the other. The first leaf of every copy is left blank. The Berrode calls it the page Fojo heard.

Jole muñuava nevo varalra, oe siequivemo.He said nothing, and I understood.

Its author, and how it lives now

Brother Sielolo. A Llovo boatman who could write, among the first to follow Fojo down from the cliff; the Berrode calls him the Pen of the Cliff and has never canonized him, because he asked it not to.

Read aloud without music at every Fojiga service in the realm and copied in the Berrode Script at a page a day; children are named into the silence after its first line, and the Grove says the blank leaf is the only honest page in it.

Chronicle · church chronicle (annals), dated in Years of Grace and church numerals only

The Chronicle of the Vunroldo Jartodo

Ulen Vaseman deso ule Vunroldo “The Years of the Cathedral-Fortress”

The canons of the Vunroldo Jartodo (many hands) · 367 R.–present

The Berrode's own chronicle, begun in the year of the Lake Comet, which it gives forty nights and rules a warning, and kept year by year ever since: Rislon raised, crusades preached, kings crowned, storks counted. It is famous for what it leaves out. Its opening leaves do not say what happened to Fojo on the cliff, the king who marched into the Sunmaw in the Hunger Wars has had his name struck from it, and the years 892 to 898 carry no war at all, because the Rislo of the day would not call Gaduo the Silver's war a crusade.

Cude dilreva trilmo ule grarañe, ula mosralta nevo muñua.What happened on the cliff, the book does not say.

Its author, and how it lives now

The canons of the Vunroldo Jartodo (many hands). The cathedral chapter of the Cliff Close, which has kept the book since the great tower went up; no canon signs an entry.

Kept in the chapter house and shown to no layman; the canons search it whenever a comet, a coinage or a king needs a precedent, and 'the book does not say' is what the Glovers' Steps answer to any question it is safer not to answer.

Faith · knightly rule

The Rule of the Thorn

Ule Moñiltue deso ula Corenva “The Law of the Thorn”

Maraso deso Corenva · 703–709 R.

The Order of the White Thorn's rule as it has been kept since the First Crusade: the oath of blood and thorn, the Thorn Vigil in the hawthorn grove, Rosemary of the Thorn in the helm, the board, the bread and the hours of the chapter house. Its longest chapter is on water. A man who watched King Llelilo's army die forty miles short of the Talodin wrote that a knight carries his own water, counts it every night, and gives it to no one who has not first given him his name.

Totue oe corenva. Ula corenva nevo clalla: fiso jore dueda rarveñen trilmo clervisco, durbarieta.Blood and thorn. The thorn does not lie: if she has flowers in the morning, you will live.

Its author, and how it lives now

Maraso deso Corenva. A knight of the White Thorn who came home from the First Crusade among the fewer than five thousand, and spent his last years setting down the Order's customs in the chapter house at Grarañe.

Every squire copies it out once in the Berrode Script before his vows, and the chapter checks each copy for the tale of the Knight and the Thorn, which somebody always writes in the margin.

Poetry · epic poem in twelve cantos

The Weighing of the King

Ule Firanvo oe ule Gadue “The King and the Silver”

Brother Nonro · 869–881 R.

The Second Crusade told in grave, crowded verse: the fleet to Baamarsh, the taking of Vonteen-Shorooq, two years' holding, and the dawn when the Zarvani cataphracts came across the crust of Lake Shorooq. The last cantos follow the king into captivity and home again to the great beam-scale of the Royal Mint, where he stands in his armor against a heap of Puesdro silver until the beam comes level. The Berrode reads it as a poem of humility; the Grandees, who paid, read it as an invoice.

Choquavana ule firanvo plala ula tolava oe ule gadue plala ule momole; oe Jole dretuava.They set the king on the right and the silver on the left, and He looked on.

Its author, and how it lives now

Brother Nonro. Chaplain to King Mairo II, taken with him at the Salt Pans and held in Zarvand until the ransom came; he wrote the poem in the Cliff Close and never left it again.

Grandees' sons learn its roll of knights by heart; the Old Jevarrie quotes the twelfth canto whenever a crusade is priced, and the Mint Ward says the scale in the poem still hangs from its roof.

Stage · tavern farce with a fiddle, played on the benches

The Thirsty King

Ule Firanvo oe ule Vuelle “The King and the Water”

Crolno Rintuedue (attributed) · c. 905–915 R.

King Llelilo, dying in the Sunmaw, refuses a Zarvani boy's cup of water eleven times, each refusal longer and holier than the last and spoken in church Castavari with a syllable added wherever one will fit; the boy drinks it and walks off. Its title mocks Brother Nonro's epic. The last scene belongs to two foot-soldiers in salt-mouth who pick up the cup the king would not touch, the story Tandosa still tells on its own as the Water at Forty Miles.

Ule firanvo jartodo nanlava; ule laumodo durbava.The holy king died; the boy lived.

Its author, and how it lives now

Crolno Rintuedue (attributed). A galleon's cook of Tandosa who came home from the Burning off Baamarsh in 896, to whom Seawater Row gives the play; nobody wrote it down, so nobody can prove it.

Forbidden in Grarañe and played in the taverns of Seawater Row, the Thirsty King among them, on any night but those of Litota, when the fiddler comes off the bench; the Office of Truth cannot burn a play that exists only in the mouths of sailors.

Tales · tale-cycle, told at night in the cork groves; written down once

The Oath of the Bull

Ule Gronrove deso ule Llusodo “The Oath of the Bull”

The Maskers of Lasdara (oral); written down by Brother Dinro · told before the Reckoning; written 1004–1010 R.

The Grove of Lasdara's night tales, told by Maskers in the month of the bull: the land was a bull the first people rode, and when they tamed it the bull agreed to feed them if they would let it run wild one day a year. Later tales give the olive, the river and the spring rain their own bargains. Brother Dinro set the tales in order under their true names, and the Office of Truth burned him with the only copy in 1011.

Chusverieno, fiso fonrarieno ieme trailire ieno feliele deso vaullo vasema.You will eat, if you let me run one day of each year.

Its author, and how it lives now

The Maskers of Lasdara (oral); written down by Brother Dinro. A priest of the diocese of Lasdara sent into the cork villages to write the Grove's tales down so that they could be refuted; he wrote them down too well, and burned with his book in Ash Square.

Told in the Grove villages behind shut doors and in the Warren under the chimney masks; every bull-run in the Llovo March ends with its last line, 'Traila ule llusodo!', and the Warren says a second copy of Dinro's book lies in Brother Talvo's file.

Song · song cycle of nine songs for one voice

The Songs of the Glove

Ulen Tenonan deso ule Milre “The Songs of the Glove”

Taunma Fierela · 1140–1144 R.

Nine plain songs that run from the day the news came up the Puesdro road to the day she hung her husband's empty glove by the door. They name no crusade, no Rislo and no enemy, only the water-mules, the evening walk and the glove. The Office of Truth had the words read to it in 1143 and found nothing in them it could burn.

Ule milre deso tuma luesa trilmo ule goche; ule chanue nevo fuetiria.Your glove stays at the door; the hand will not come back.

Its author, and how it lives now

Taunma Fierela. A washerwoman of the Warren whose husband burned at the river crossing at Faashab-Talodin; she cannot write, and the songs were taken down by others.

Sung by the widows at the Warren's cisterns and on Seawater Row by the Vinvelon, never in Litota and never in church; since 1144 the Glovers' Guild has been asked to make empty gloves for widows who have no hand to fit.

The Khaasarate of Zarvand

Zarvand writes right to left on Talodin-reed paper with its figures running the other way, and it keeps three copies of everything, because a lie written down can be read back. Its prose is exact to the balaal and its verse is the one place a Zarvani may exaggerate, so the realm's great works are star tables, chronicles and sayings on the one hand, and on the other the poems recited by lamplight in the garden houses to lute and drum.

Faith · book of sayings and temple readings

The Sayings of the First Flame

Ujataakhoot-i Kelong-i Peekim “words of the first flame”

Rahaash Tarsunaad of Mazbaaran · c. 190–214 R.

The scripture of the Faith of the Eternal Flame: the myth of the First Flame, the spark named Truth struck from nothing and the Shadow that has fought it ever since out of fear, followed by some three hundred short sayings on honesty, oaths, contracts, hospitality and the tending of fire. It closes with the forty days of Salestaad's walk from the mountains with the spark in his hands, told as a list of the places he did not let it go out.

Tartal, kelong-i peekim. Neesh lurnelish: diznesh mehabat.Truth is the first flame. Do not lie: the Light hears.

Its author, and how it lives now

Rahaash Tarsunaad of Mazbaaran. Fire-priest of the new temple in the generation after Salestaad the Builder, who set down what the keepers of the Flame had said aloud since before the Reckoning.

Read aloud at dawn in every fire-temple and straight through on the Night of the Flame; its first line is the realm's motto, and every Zarvani contract is sworn before the Flame on its chapter of oaths.

Song · lament in seven songs, sung to lute and drum

The Seven Princes of Kasaadeer

Khoof Onlanoreem-i Kasaadeer “seven princes of Kasaadeer”

Loneekh-i Feshfaan · c. 404 R.

A song for each of the seven princes said to have died with Khaasar Kasaadeer III at the Poisoning of 398, each undone by his own flaw: pride, haste, greed, trust, fear, wine and counting his brothers. It lays the blame on no Jaarzeb and no city, which in the reign of Avisteer I, who had burned Feshfaan for the poisoning, was read as an accusation.

Khoof onlanoreem. Ursun onlanor desht peft-i zhubaa dazhudat.Seven princes. Each prince died by his own heart.

Its author, and how it lives now

Loneekh-i Feshfaan. A poet of Feshfaan who lived through the burning of her city in 398 and wrote in the orchards of Kebidaan; where she is buried is not known.

Not sung at court since Avisteer III fell ill in 1145, but still sung in the garden houses of Kebidaan; every Zarvani mother knows the seven flaws by heart, and the children's game of "the Seven Princes" in the lanes comes from it.

Learning · astronomical tables, published yearly

The Star Tables

Anseeshoot “star tables”

Eelraad the Star-Watcher, and the Celestial Table after him · 681 R. to the present

For each night of the coming year, the places of the navigating stars and the height of the noon sun, with the moon's columns and the eclipses, figured in the ledger figures with the diamond zero. The House foretold the return of the Lake Comet in 960 to the month by them, which the Celestial Table counts as its one miracle.

Peenfidoot tartal senozond.The stars tell the truth.

Its author, and how it lives now

Eelraad the Star-Watcher, and the Celestial Table after him. First master of the tables at the House of Learning under Zhinraad the Learned; every year's tables since have been made by the House's star-watchers.

Read from the Star Tower steps at the Reading of the Tables on the 1st of Peenfid and sold bound the same day; every navigator on Aethorra steers by them, Castavar's inside the covers of approved books since the Berrode banned them in 960, and forged copies with errors in the lunar columns turn up every year.

Chronicle · chronicle, kept year by year

The Chronicle of the House

Doormafoot-i Tameed-i Zhinraz “years of the House of Learning”

Vamusaad the Chronicler, and the keepers of the House after him · 681 R. to the present

The House of Learning's own record of itself: each year's examinations and who passed them, the star readings, the physicians' cases, the water-engineers' works, the deaths of Khaasareem, and every book bought, copied, lent or lost. Its entry for 681 says Zhinraad set a stone bench in the outer court "for two who taught here before there was a House." The next page is missing, and the page before it carries a drawing in the margin of two men with digging-sticks.

Hish zhob. Vooneem zashhoz tameed peehool dadoshsolond.For two. They taught here before the House.

Its author, and how it lives now

Vamusaad the Chronicler, and the keepers of the House after him. Clerk named by Zhinraad the Learned in 681 to keep the House's book of years; its keepers since have been chosen by examination.

Kept in the House and read only there; a scholar may copy a year but never the book. It names Tartal-i Kebidaan as the first woman to pass the examinations, and its missing page is the one scandal every Zarvani scholar raises and none has solved.

Faith · book of teachings in paired sayings

The Two Fires

Zhob Kelongoot “two flames”

Benrinaad and Jeerin, the Twinkeepers of Kebidaan · c. 790 R.

The teaching of the Shadowed, set out in pairs of sayings, one for the bright fire and one for the banked: Light and Shadow are two faces of one fire, and the true worshipper owes the day candor and the night mercy. It retells the First Flame so that the Shadow is the frightened elder rather than the enemy, and it has been condemned by the Rahaasheem with the faith, four times.

Yiqamsakh eshkat mazbaaq. Zurfal tartal, tirris menren.Shadow is also fire. Truth by day, kindness by night.

Its author, and how it lives now

Benrinaad and Jeerin, the Twinkeepers of Kebidaan. The first pair of Twinkeepers of whom anything is written: Benrinaad spoke and wrote it down, and Jeerin, who never spoke, is said to have struck out every third line.

Banned from the fire-temples and burned when found in Mazbaaran, it is copied by hand in Kebidaan's meemakh and read by the two fires behind closed doors in the Kilns; Prince Faasheer has promised the Rahaasheem he will burn every copy with the temples.

Tales · comic tale-cycle of the market storytellers

The Rahaash and the Liar

Bazast-i Rahaash “the Rahaash's question”

The storytellers of the Khovavi; first written down by Vubar the Storyteller · told since the 700s R.; written 1068 R.

A liar goes to the fire-temple to be cleansed, and the Rahaash asks him one question. The question is different in every version and the liar always leaves worse off, and a storyteller who cannot invent a new question is not paid.

Yod dekekh dalurnelum. Kemir. Chizakh peekim."I have never lied." "Agreed. That is the first."

Its author, and how it lives now

The storytellers of the Khovavi; first written down by Vubar the Storyteller. A market storyteller of Mazbaaran who wrote out a hundred versions in 1068 R. so her daughters could not claim them as their own.

Told every afternoon at the corners of the Khovavi and in every caravanserai yard in the south; for thirty years the Rahaash in it has been Rahaash Kelongaad, who is said to have laughed at only one version.

Poetry · collected verse in the plain meter

The Salt Lake Poems

Avistoot-i Shorooq “poems of the salt lake”

Khaasar Avisteer III · 1102–1145 R.

Some four hundred short poems written over forty summers at Vonteen-Shorooq: gardens and water channels, the stars over the lake, the Walking girl arriving each spring, the dead of the Third Crusade, and the Khaasar's sons one by one. They hold to the plain meter he has used since he was young and are counted the best verse in the Zarvani language.

Telir peenfidoot, lakhkad kebid-i yod. Qenast vooneem yod neesh teeshtum.Above, the stars; below, my garden. Between them I do not sleep.

Its author, and how it lives now

Khaasar Avisteer III. The present Khaasar, poet and star-watcher, who wrote most of it in the long gallery of the Summer Palace facing Lake Shorooq.

The measure of every poet, recited at every garden-house recital in the realm; the Summer Palace household still sweeps the gallery for him, though he has not come since 1145.

The Jade Dominion of Kaishon

Kaishon writes more than any realm on Aethorra and signs less: its great works are registers, commentaries and copies, brushed in Measures by men who were examined on them, and the Doctrine holds that a book is good in the degree that nothing in it can be disputed. What the realm loves it keeps in Reed-marks, in teahouses and in kitchens, where the magistrates do not see it because their mothers keep it.

Faith · book of sayings, with commentary

The Measures of Ordered Reason

Ketsán, Kônrì, Tàiro “order, merit, reason”

Borontan Geisho · c. 271 R.

Eighty-one short sections on duty, merit, harmony and measure, each beginning with a thing that can be counted: a field, a granary, a road, a man's years of service. It never names a god, not even to deny one. The denial came in 590 with Grand Chancellor Seiro Ketsan's Commentary on Merit, bound with the Measures ever since, which is the page visiting scholars most often copy at Tsenkin.

Kokdâu zoreiji. Rekpài kokdâu sanshìho.Measure the field. Then measure the lord.

Its author, and how it lives now

Borontan Geisho. Passed the first examinations Dezau Kokdau set in 260, served as a magistrate in the old country of the northern throne, and wrote the Measures when he was too old to sit in his hall.

Every candidate for the Examinations has it by heart, its motto is brushed over the door of every state academy, and the Meritists answer the Measured with its second sentence.

Chronicle · chronicle, one column to a year

The Annals of the Throne

Giwe jek zanhek “the Throne of year: the Throne's years”

Kansek Tsauma · 612–640 R., continued yearly to the present

A register of the Jade Throne from Dezau Kokdau's conquest in 248, one column to a year: the harvest, the edicts, the tax, the deaths of emperors and chancellors, and nothing the ministries' registers could not show. It gives the number of temples shut in the Reasoned Purge and no names, and its entry for 725, the one deposition under the Mandate of Merit, is a single line. The originals of its first four centuries went into the lake in 890, and some of the copies were made from Kokrin texts that burned in 927, so its early reigns are copies of copies with nothing behind them.

Tsò kézu, tsò gektsí.Not known, not written.

Its author, and how it lives now

Kansek Tsauma. A compiler in the ministry of the archive at Tsenkin, whose examination-name means 'wise'; he wrote the first four centuries and set the rule every compiler since has kept.

Candidates learn the reign-chapters for the Examinations, clerks quote Tsauma's rule when they are asked to enter a rumor, and in the Brush Quarter's lodging houses the Meritists read the one line for 725 aloud.

Faith · household recipe-book

The Stove Book

Shôktéwâ jek rúbêsèn “stove of book: the stove's book”

No one · oldest known copies c. 600 R.

The Unseen Kin have no scripture, and this is what they have instead: how much rice for the Stove-Kin, which bowl for the Door-Kin, what the Kin are to be told of a birth, a marriage, a death or an examination, and how the full bowl is set on the longest night. It names no god and asks nothing. It is written in Reed-marks only, never in Measures, and has passed from mother to daughter since the Reasoned Purge burned the temples' books and missed the kitchens.

Jéknàu tsáu, myókra. Bonyàn, pahòtà.The first bowl, the Kin. After, the child.

Its author, and how it lives now

No one. Every copy is in a different hand, most of them women's, and every keeper adds her own pages before she gives it to a daughter.

Forbidden as the instrument of a faith and kept in nearly every kitchen in Kaishon, the magistrates' included; a stove-inspector who finds one enters it as a cookery book, which it is.

Poetry · short poems, disputed

The Margin Poems

Ryonsówau jek nàchên “paper of side: the paper's edge”

Attributed to Emperor Tokrai Koimu · after 725 R.

Forty-one short poems found in the margins of pages copied at the far desk of the archive: lakes, ink, cold, the sound of other men's brushes, and nothing else. The originals went into the lake in 890. They survive because an unnamed copyist of the forty-year recopying copied the margins too, against the rule, and the Measured hold that he wrote the poems himself.

Kíngyon koimu. Tsei gomê koimu.The lake is quiet. I am quiet too.

Its author, and how it lives now

Attributed to Emperor Tokrai Koimu. The only emperor cast down under the Mandate of Merit, sent to Tsenkin in 725, where he copied manuscripts at the far desk until he died.

On no examination syllabus and known to every candidate; a visitor to Tsenkin who copies a margin poem as his one page is taken to have said something, and the Page Ledger enters it like any other page.

Stage · shadow play for paper screen

The Measured Field

Kokdâu zoreiji “measure field”

Shizo Teison · c. 870 R.

The Doctrine's own founding story on a lit paper screen: Dezau Kokdau measures his father's field with a rope, finds the landlord has cheated by one pace, is laughed at by the old king's court, and comes back with an army. The ministries license it because every line in it is the Doctrine's, and its title is the first two words of the Measures. In the court scene the crowd of laughing figures has two pins with nothing on them, where the countryside says two strangers stood and did not laugh, and Teison never said why.

Hyáu-sen, shau-mi kokdâu. Kokdâu geishò.Honored One, this small one has measured. The measure is true.

Its author, and how it lives now

Shizo Teison. A shadow-master of Sorogei whose troupe cut the first set of figures; nothing else is known of him but his screen.

Played in the villages on Kite Day and in the Rókshái teahouses on the tenth day; no troupe has ever filled the two pins, and the ministries have never objected to an empty pin, since nothing is on it.

Tales · storytellers' tale-cycle

The Crooked Bank Tales

Reikochà nàchên jek tautsá “river side of story: the stories of the far bank”

The storytellers of the Crooked Bank · c. 930 R. to the present

Some sixty tales told nightly in the suburb the grid never reached, never written in Measures and seldom in Reed-marks. The best known are 'The Examiner's Cricket,' in which an examiner passes a cricket shut in a candidate's cell and is promoted for his judgment, and 'The Rice March,' the tale of General Dezau Kyarau's thirty thousand at the Tontanor fords in 626, the last Kaishoni army to stand west of the Rampart. The tellers name no official, and the audience supplies one.

Chisàu, tobok tsauma.It sings; therefore it is wise.

Its author, and how it lives now

The storytellers of the Crooked Bank. Tellers in the cheap teahouses across the Tsanha from Kokrin; none has ever put a name to a tale, and none has been arrested for one.

Told every night on the Crooked Bank to full houses; 'it sings, therefore it is wise' is said in Rókshái of any appointment the Seal Quarter makes.

Song · conscripts' song

Beacon Night

Wekèisìn jek pínsònkó “fire of night: the fire's night”

Dôijoi Two-Terms · 1109 R.

A song of the Rampart Muster, the one night each year when every beacon on the Long Rampart is lit from the Frostmarch to the Verdant Deep: one verse to a tower, called by its number, with the men on it and what they eat, down to the last verse, when the Kite Terrace at Kokrin lights its own. It has a verse for the tower that did not light, and every singer puts in whichever tower his grandfather blamed.

Wekèisìn ôtsa. Tsei-tsei nátéi.The fire goes on. We stay.

Its author, and how it lives now

Dôijoi Two-Terms. A conscript of the Rampart March who served two terms on the wall, was discharged in 1106, and died among the Rampart Squatters.

Sung on the wall and in the Tribute Yards on Muster night, and outside the Rampart by the Squatters all year; the ministry of war once issued a verse in praise of the ministers, and no tower has been heard to sing it.

Hrodvald Clanholds

The Hrodvald keep their books in the heads of their hrinduk and old women, and what is written at all is cut in Storm-Runes on staves, gables and standing stones, exact about the number of ships and vague about everything else. A saga is sung from memory at a hearth, from the Speaking Mound, or in the Vuvud Hall, and a hrind who sings it false can, under the old clan law, lose his tongue.

Faith · hymn (storm priests' chant)

The Hymn of the Anvil

Hogu thoji balnasa “the storm-father makes the world”

Unknown (the storm priests of the Old Ones) · before the Reckoning

The chant of Selthar forging the world on an anvil of ice, every thunderclap his hammer, and of the scraps that fell off while he worked, the hardest parts, which became the Frostmarch and its people. It is chanted in the sacred groves and at the standing stones when a storm comes down the lake, and it uses the storm-father's old name, Hogu, which is heard nowhere else.

Hlir tonkesk; hlir breld duseng.We fall; we do not break.

Its author, and how it lives now

Unknown (the storm priests of the Old Ones). No hrind claims it; the storm priests say it was chanted before there were clans, and carve no verse of it.

Chanted by storm priests in every grove; the last line is shouted by crews in a gale, and Statha the Far-Seer is said to be the only one who knows every verse.

Chronicle · saga

The Saga of Anoga Wolf-Mother

Anogek dausvum “the wolf-mother's song”

Tigna Road-Singer · c. 440 R.

The Frostmarch Famine of 432, and the first woman Hearthking leading the clans south to buy grain instead of raiding for it: the wolf on a rope at Hethlend, the hundred wagons, and Anoga coming home with the bread and without her arm-rings. Clan Nugag sings a longer form in which two men walk behind her, speak Aldmeri to the king's men and Hrodvaldr to Anoga, and name the price as not raiding; the other clans leave those verses out, and nobody has ever settled who is right.

Skond drard grorn deld, hesul bágunuk.She comes back with bread, and without her arm-rings.

Its author, and how it lives now

Tigna Road-Singer. A hrind of Clan Nugag who, the Nugag say, walked south behind the Hearthking's wagons and came back to sing them.

Sung in the Ice Mother's Count, most lately by Sauld Half-Sung at the Split Shield in 1146; Selra's side calls her "Anoga's daughter" from it, and Kruman Ironjaw calls her "Anoga's shadow."

Stage · mock-saga for two voices

The Hrind Who Sang Backward

Hrindeth danlá “the hrind, backward”

Thasig the Crooked · c. 640 R.

A hrind lies in a saga and is cursed to sing every saga backward forever after, and the piece is his punishment performed: one hrind sings a famous saga forward while the other sings it from the end, so that every hero dies first and every battle is over before it starts. The two voices meet in the middle at the lie, and the hall is expected to shout it out.

Lymun frirn grevy; drolam frirn hrarga.Death before life; the end before the war.

Its author, and how it lives now

Thasig the Crooked. A hrind of the Barerk coast, remembered as the man who made the clans laugh in the hungry years after the Year Without Summer.

Played at the fire at the Farrur falls in the salmon run and on the benches of the Split Shield; since 1146 it is sung, pointedly, whenever Sauld Half-Sung is in the room.

Song · work song (shipwrights' blessing)

The Launching Blessing

Jonut thulon “bring home”

Lemra of the Keel Strand · c. 764 R.

A short song sung over every new hull as it goes down the slip onto Lake Farvig, asking that the ship come home rather than go away. It names no god and promises nothing, which is why storm priests, Sun-Turners and Salt-Sworn crews all sing it without argument.

Jonut gotamuk thulon, breld óngong.Bring ships home, not away.

Its author, and how it lives now

Lemra of the Keel Strand. A shipwright's widow of Krasvuv who, the Strand says, made it the winter after the Barerk Raid on Shanyo, from which two of her ships did not come back.

Sung at every launching on the Keel Strand, by Sauld Half-Sung among others, and it is the one song in the north no one has changed a word of.

Learning · law code in verse

The Frostmarch Concord

Vuvudek frarn “the Vuvud's law”

Frarna Law-Tongue · 877 R.

The first law every clan agreed to at the Vuvud, that a killing be paid for in silver before the Reldith and not in blood at night, with the prices, the witnesses and the oaths set out verse by verse. The Vuvud-count begins from it, and its staves are kept in the roof-beam of the Vuvud Hall at Krasvuv.

Drolak kúg skivuth.Blood-price or blood.

Its author, and how it lives now

Frarna Law-Tongue. The hrind who set the Vuvud's one law into verse so it could be remembered, and who is said to have made the clans repeat it until the sun came up.

Recited whole from the Speaking Mound every Vuvud by the hrinduk taking it verse about, Sauld Half-Sung and Kausk of Clan Ironjaw among them, and neither of those two changes a word of it; it is kept about one time in two.

Chronicle · saga

The Saga of Thalmirn (the Old Way)

Kruman-deyganek dausvum “the iron-jaw's song”

Skivar the Loud · 1128 R.

The raid on Thalmirn in 1127, the last great raid after the Great Winter: the Burnt Row, the gate, and Kruman Ironjaw taking a spear in the eye and holding the gate while the longships load. It is the saga Sauld Half-Sung has rewritten, and it is the saga every Ironjaw child knows before any other.

Veyr gaseg haberka. Veyr thranad dausta.He loses an eye. He holds the door.

Its author, and how it lives now

Skivar the Loud. An Ironjaw hrind who was at the raid on Thalmirn and taught the saga to the Ironjaw hrinduk before he died on the ice in 1139.

Sung the old way at Ironjaw Hold and by Kausk of Clan Ironjaw; in 1146 it and Sauld's version were sung to the same field on the day of the sagas, and a hrind who sings Sauld's version at the Ironjaw Open Door is fed and asked very politely to sing something else.

Poetry · saga cycle, still being made

The Hearthking's Sagas

Brúbanek dausvumuk “the Hearthking's songs”

Sauld Durtha, "Sauld Half-Sung" · 1144–1146 R.

Sauld's retelling of the clans' sagas, verse by verse, so that Selra Stormbrand is the hero of every one, the Hearth-Makers' sagas made before the Hearth-Makers have made anything. Its most famous piece is his Thalmirn, sung in the Vuvud Hall on the fourteenth night of Aninn 1146, in which the gate is held and Kruman is not named; to it he has added the envoys' star, the grain wagons, and a saga of this summer's Vuvud that the older hrinduk say is the first of his to sing a thing as it happened, with the other side in it.

Hleyflothid thronad dausta; brúbaneth thronad balnasa.Someone held the door; the Hearthking held the world.

Its author, and how it lives now

Sauld Durtha, "Sauld Half-Sung". The Durtha hrind who keeps Selra Stormbrand's sagas in the Vuvud Hall, reads everything, and writes it down wrong on purpose.

Sung nightly in the Vuvud Hall and at the Split Shield, which sings the star verse with him; Kruman demanded Sauld's tongue for the Thalmirn verses as a false hrind's, then at the Vuvud of 1146 asked for no one's, and the Durtha are proud of Sauld and nervous about him in the same breath.

The Cherüsh Horde

The Cherüsh cannot read and have never needed to: everything the Grass Sea keeps is sung to the drum at the tent fire, stitched on the felt that hangs opposite the door, or shouted from the saddle. What a rider sings with the witness ending he swears he saw, and the steppe judges its songs first by who has the right to sing them that way.

Chronicle · witness-song (sung chronicle, to the drum)

The Grass Burned

Ghorsot Zaghisrat “grass burn-PAST”

Danmoy the Guide · 509–c. 530 R.

The steppe's account of Kaishon's Emptying of the West, 505–509: the burned tents, the columns that starved through the rice harvest, the grass fire of 507 that the wind turned back onto the Rampart's own hoardings, and the column of 508 led in a circle. It is the only Kaishoni deed the Grass Sea remembers by name, and it is remembered as a thing the riders watched rather than a battle they won.

Ghorsot zaghistay; zaghum tsol zaghistay.The grass burned, and I saw it; the sky did not burn, and I saw that too.

Its author, and how it lives now

Danmoy the Guide. A Nintang rider, one of the guides who took Kaishon's column of 508 north after the saiga and brought fewer than half of it back; dead before 560.

Sung without the witness ending since the last man who saw 507 died, except by the Nintang, who say they inherited the right; the Blue Riders will not sing the second half of the refrain at all, because it swears to the sky.

Faith · hymn to the drum, sung at the Bloom

The Song of the Promised Horse

Ingkunranuk Yarming “promised-horse-OWNER song”

Yutos the Drummer · c. 860 R.

The chant sung on the last day of the Bloom, when each tribe frees one ingkunra, a horse promised to the sky, that no one may ride or catch again. It tells the Wide Blue's Horse, whose running is the wind and whose hoof-sparks are the stars, and bids the freed horse go and join it. It carries no witness ending anywhere, because nobody has seen the sky up close.

Ingkunra zaghumsha jalcharsur; yir gaq kunmo döklensür.The promised horse will go to the sky; we will never ride it.

Its author, and how it lives now

Yutos the Drummer. A shaman of the Wide Blue remembered only for this song and for the drum he was buried beside; the tribes do not agree which tribe he was born to.

Sung by every tribe at the Bloom and by Bagoq the Elder on the rise above the fords; riders quote its last line to end an argument over a horse nobody owns.

Tales · fire-tale, told to the drum; now also played on the Lantern Road's stage

Shaghis's Wall

Olriqnuk Shaghiski “chief-OWNER stone-wall”

the tribes (no teller named) · after 502 R.

The founder of Tontanor builds a wall on the Grass Sea and is found dead against it, sitting, facing out, his tribes gone. The tale is about Shaghis's grandson, whose clerks counted horses, told of the grandfather, and the steppe tells it as a warning against walls. It is always told without the witness ending: nobody was there.

Olriq shaghiski churunrat. Olriq shakisrat; izültün tsol ogarrat.The chief built a wall. The chief sat; the tribes did not come.

Its author, and how it lives now

the tribes (no teller named). Told at every tent fire since the fall of Tontanor; the Lantern Road's Cherüsh telling was learned from a Nintang rider at the Jade Gate.

The best-known Cherüsh tale off the steppe, played by the Lantern Road in Caelvennois and in Cherüsh with two empty chairs at the side of the stage; on the steppe it is told pointedly within earshot of the stones Sarsak Tolmar is laying where Shaghis sat.

Song · war-song (marching song of the hundreds)

Arrow-Flight Does Not Lie

Zoqin Tsol Chilong “arrow-flight not lie”

Chinkuk of the Shusa · 1141 R.

Made the summer Sarsak Tolmar killed the last rival olriq in single combat among the ruins of Tontanor and bound the four factions into the Horde. Every verse is sung with the witness ending, because the man who made it was there, and it names no tribe as the loser. Its refrain is the horse archers' old saying, and its last line is the people's name for themselves.

Zoqin tsol chilong. Chesh yoygus döklentey. Yir cherüsh.Arrow-flight does not lie. I rode the war-horse, and I was there. We are free.

Its author, and how it lives now

Chinkuk of the Shusa. A living horse archer of the Shusa, of Juryan Redbow's hundred, who rode at Tontanor in 1141; his name means voice.

Sung by every hundred on the march and at Tolmar-Buyor; only riders who were at Tontanor in 1141 may sing the middle line as written, and the Angsit sing the whole song a beat behind everyone else.

The Dunmorrow

The holds keep their craft in a guild-script no outsider reads, write down every number because none may be spoken in the deep, and sing at the forge in a cant taught only to apprentices who have sworn. Their great works are ledgers, forge-songs and one old lament, and a Dunmorrow will tell you the ledgers are the most beautiful.

Faith · forge hymn, sung in time with the hammer

The Old Underking Hymn

Uth Rorgey Gamob “the Underking-OWNER forge-song”

Durn Hammerhold · c. 390 R.

The forge-song of the Kingdom Under the Spine: the mountain is a forge, the Dunmorrow are its smiths, and the Underkings were those who could hear the anvil under the Spine ring. It is sung in the old speech with the cant's forge-words in it, one beat to each hammer-stroke, and it is the nearest thing the ancestor-stone faith has to a creed.

Uth rorguw duwfud uth grurn. Wost duwf uth grurn feldurn.The Underkings heard the anvil. We hear the anvil still.

Its author, and how it lives now

Durn Hammerhold. Remembered by the holds as smith to the first Underking's forge; the hymn is his and the verses have been worn down by eight centuries of hammers.

Tesk Deepsong sings it over every piece she makes, and the Restorers take each hearing as encouragement; the Thanes' smiths still sing it, more quietly, and say it is a hymn and not a program.

Poetry · lament (lay in the old speech)

The Lay of the Falling Hammer

Uth Veknum Scututh Feldurn “the hammer fall still”

Korirk Coldshaft · 555–556 R.; last verse disputed (c. 1139 R.)

A lament for the Kingdom Under the Spine, broken by the joint siege of Aldmere and Castavar, and for Grarg the Proud, whose hammer was thrown into the deepest shaft and is falling still. The lay ends with the hammer falling. The copies the Restorers teach add one more line, which they say was always there.

Uth veknum scututh feldurn. Uth rorg yeld serm.The hammer is falling still. The Underking will return.

Its author, and how it lives now

Korirk Coldshaft. A smith of Coldshaft who was in the holds at the siege of 555; Coldshaft, which speaks least of the nine, claims him as the one time it said a great deal.

Sung at every hold's midwinter feast; the old smiths stop after the first line quoted here, and Hammerhold's young go on. The old smiths date the second line to about 1139 and say so at every feast.

Chronicle · chronicle-ledger in the guild-script

The Roll of the Nine Lamps

Uth Nirn Korgabuw “the nine lamp-PLURAL”

Bikleb of the Nine Lamps · 565–1145 R.

The written roll of every Deep Moot, one page to each: which Thanes sat, which lamps burned, what oil each hold brought, and what was decided, all with the numbers written and never spoken. Because the holds have never fought one another since the kingdom fell, it is a chronicle of six centuries of quarrels that ended in writing. The Dunmorrow read it the way other peoples read epics.

Nirn korgabuw bletinnud.Nine lamps burned.

Its author, and how it lives now

Bikleb of the Nine Lamps. Keeper of the Nine Lamps' council hall at the first Deep Moot after the fall; every keeper since has written in the same hand-size, by rule.

Kept in the council hall of the Nine Lamps and read only there; the title is written but never said, and aloud it is only the Roll. The first page names nine Thanes, and Tesk Deepsong says its foot has eleven marks; the page for 1145 notes that one lamp guttered and leaves the hold's name blank.

Stage · midwinter comedy in the smiths' cant

The Buyer

Uth Krorn “the buyer”

Tirn Graywater · c. 830 R.

An apprentice plays a surface buyer at the Gate-Hall, and two smiths settle his price in the cant in front of him while he admires the plate. The buyer understands none of it; the audience understands all of it; and at the end the buyer pays exactly what he was always going to pay. It is the one Dunmorrow play, and it can only be performed for people who have sworn at a forge.

Uth krorn nuth duwf. Uth gug urm tuthsall.The buyer does not hear. The price is good.

Its author, and how it lives now

Tirn Graywater. A mule-breeder and smith of Graywater Hold, the hold most often seen above ground, who had sold to more outsiders than any Dunmorrow of his day.

Played in every hold at the midwinter feast with the gates shut; the Restorers now play it for the young they teach the cant to, which the old smiths call giving the joke away.

The Qaflan

The Qaflan are the most lettered of the free peoples, because letters are their cargo: they read every script on the continent and carry debts in all of them. Their own works are in Maved, the road-cant, which has no words for fighting, so a Qaflan tale that must speak of violence changes language and everyone listening knows why.

Chronicle · chronicle of the Council of Wheels, in many scripts

The Road's Book

Maved-i Rubesen “road-LINK book”

Ujatakh the Scribe · 1 R.–1146 R.

One entry for every Council of Wheels, written in the Accord Days by whichever elder has the best hand that year, in whatever script that elder learned first, so that the Book runs through a dozen alphabets. It records the Road Terms sworn and sworn again, the clans' debts settled, and every Qaflan cast out and marked with a broken wheel. It holds no account of any war except the roads it closed.

Maved yakhir. Wost gektsi, wost vamus.The road is open. We write; we remember.

Its author, and how it lives now

Ujatakh the Scribe. The Wheelwright who wrote the first page at the first Council of Wheels after the Accord of Surmave; his name is the cant word for word.

Carried to each Council in the Wheelwrights' eldest wagon and read aloud only there; Mother Hamen has not opened it in thirty years and says it agrees with her.

Faith · recitation and oath

The Road's Bargain

Maved-i Vemhaq “road-LINK price”

no author (older than the Reckoning) · before the Reckoning

The Road was once a river that dried up and, having nowhere to go, agreed to carry people instead of water if they would never make it choose a bank. The recitation ends in the words of the Neutrality Oath, which every Qaflan swears and which is the Road's price. It is the whole of the Road Spirit's scripture.

Maved nachen vaul oveme; wost nachen vaul oveme.The road takes no side; we take no side.

Its author, and how it lives now

no author (older than the Reckoning). Spoken by the eldest of each caravan; the Qaflan say the Road set the terms and they only repeat them.

Recited at every crossroads shrine and at each Qaflan's swearing; merchants of every faith mutter its last half when they leave a coin, and the Council of Wheels quotes it whenever Zesose the Wheel is named.

Tales · wagon-tale, told in two tongues

The Captain Who Chose

Myan Nachen Da-oveme “he side PAST-take”

the Ember-Carriers (no teller named) · c. 700 R.

A caravan captain carries a king's army in his wagons for gold, and finds the next morning that every road he takes leads back to the same ford. The teller tells the bargain and the roads in the road-cant and the army in whatever tongue the listeners fear most, because the cant has no words for it. He is still at his crossroads in the Sunmaw, and children are told to look for him.

Myan howith da-oveme. Cobash plia maved otem da-yonern.He took the gold. In the morning every road came back.

Its author, and how it lives now

the Ember-Carriers (no teller named). Told on every road; the Ember-Carriers' telling is counted the best, and theirs is the one taught to children.

Told to every Qaflan child and around every caravan fire; since Zesose was cast out, tellers on the Spice Way leave a pause after the first line that was not there before.

Song · drivers' songs

The Broken Wheel Songs

Nachen Nachen “side side (sides)”

Noriel · 1144–1146 R.

The Wheel-Breakers' songs of the Spice Way, the first Qaflan songs to take a side and boast of it. The verses about the carrying are in the road-cant; the verses about what the gold pays for are in Zarvani, because the cant has no words for them. They are the scandal of every letter-house on the continent.

Wost nachen oveme; howith nervile.We take a side; the gold is good.

Its author, and how it lives now

Noriel. A living driver of Zesose the Wheel's Wheel-Breakers, cast out with them and marked with the broken wheel; his name is the cant word for sing.

Forbidden by the Council of Wheels, which will not let them be sung inside a caravan's circle; young drivers on the Spice Way know every word, and Mother Hamen is said to know them too.

The Tzalan

The Tzalan lost their writing with the First Sun, and the glyphs on the pyramids are now read by a few priests, argued over by everyone, and understood by no one who will say so. What the jungle keeps it keeps in drums that carry from Sutzam to the river in a morning, in songs sung under the afternoon rain, and in dances on the Ball Court.

Chronicle · drum-chronicle of year-names, chanted

The Rain-Count of Sutzam

Bé'yìtzak Ye'chik “come-DONE rain”

Yatziwi · 815–1146 R. (the 1st to the 332nd year of Sutzam)

Each year of Sutzam has a name, given by the Sun-Speaker from the Great Pyramid when the first rain falls, and the priests keep every name in order and chant them all at the Opening of the Rains. Beside each name the chant carries a line or two of what the year held: a flood, a sack of a spice-fort, a Sun-Speaker's death. It is the only Tzalan history older than living memory that is not carved in stone nobody can read.

Bé'yìtzak ye'chik; bé'yìtzak tzàyoka.The rain has come; the year has come.

Its author, and how it lives now

Yatziwi. The first Sun-Speaker of Sutzam, who named the city's first year from the pyramid stair in 815; his name means obsidian.

Chanted whole at the Opening of the Rains and drummed down the Nhal the same day; the river villages say a few names from the Awakening years have been sung differently since Ixatl took the city.

Faith · sermons, preached from the glyphs and memorized by the priests

The Sermons of the Stair

Kóhekak Chopúl “speak-DONE Sun-Speaker”

Sun-Speaker Ixatl · 1142–1146 R.

Ixatl's teaching, preached in the pyramid halls and from the stair: the First Sun built the pyramids for his children, the Sun withdrew when the Serpent drove them into the jungle, and the Sun will return when the pyramids are wholly retaken. The outsiders cutting the jungle are a sickness the Sun will burn out. The Serpent Clans' priests learn each sermon by heart and carry it to the villages.

Lónok xemù. Tamokom yèyetix Lónok.The Sun hears. The Sun will burn the strangers.

Its author, and how it lives now

Sun-Speaker Ixatl. Priest-king of Sutzam since 1142, who preaches from the glyphs of the Great Pyramid's halls and reads more of them than he admits.

Recited in every village Ixatl has bound; Chelpan's river villages hear the sermons and do not repeat them, and his smuggled scholar says the glyphs they are preached from say something else.

Stage · masked dance-drama

The Jaguar's Face

Xuchin Xoba “return scar”

Teyex of the Serpent Clans · c. 600 R.

Why the jaguar has spots: the first Sun-Speaker's nails scarred it, and the dance shows the fight in the dark, the jaguar's flight, and the Sun-Speaker left with nothing but the marks on his hands. It ends with the dancer who plays the Sun-Speaker drawing his nails down his own face, as every Sun-Speaker since has done in earnest.

Nutà'ak xoba chopúl; xuchin xoba.The Sun-Speaker gave the scar; the scar returns.

Its author, and how it lives now

Teyex of the Serpent Clans. A dancer of the southern ruins remembered as the first to wear the jaguar mask; her name means feather.

Danced on feast days on the Ball Court at Sutzam and in the Serpent Clans' ruins; Ixatl danced the last figure himself the year he took the city, and the scars he wears are the ones it calls for.

Song · canoe songs of the rain-season

We Don't Eat Clay

Kax sèkon waki'lol yútz “not eat clay we”

Tzimik of the Nhal · c. 1075 R.

Paddling songs made to be sung under the afternoon rain of satzi, one verse to each bend of the Nhal between the villages and the delta. Their refrain is the river's old jibe at the Mud-Eaters, and the Mud-Eaters sing the same refrain back from the delta, which is the joke and the peace of it. The later verses count the spice-forts the way a trader counts buyers.

Xonù ye'chik; kax sèkon waki'lol yútz.The rain falls; we don't eat clay.

Its author, and how it lives now

Tzimik of the Nhal. A canoe-woman of the river villages who sang the pepper down to the spice-forts in the years they paid fairly; her name means cacao.

Sung on every canoe on the Nhal in the rain-season and answered from the delta; Sutzam's priests do not sing it, which on the river is how you tell whose side a paddler is on.

The Uusung

The Uusung write nothing down, and everything they know is held in speech, some of it in the long voice that is used only for the dead. Their works are lists, tellings, drum-dances and lamp-songs, and a work that is not spoken for three winters is counted as gone.

Chronicle · list of the dead, spoken in the long voice

The Long Dark's List of Names

Mirgaqva Munpuvangungu “Long-Dark-OWNER name-PLURAL”

the eldests of the Long Dark; kept now by Lilvuq of the Long Dark · older than any count; spoken at every Long Dark Vigil

Every one of the Long Dark camp's dead, name after name, back past anyone's memory, spoken on the Names Ground to the Lights so that the dead can find the door. It is the Uusung's only history: a person, a winter and a death at a time, with no dates because the Uusung keep none. The Hrodvald suspect it holds more about the far north than any book.

Natgaqsuu, qaq maq kuqnalak.Grandmother, I do not forget.

Its author, and how it lives now

the eldests of the Long Dark; kept now by Lilvuq of the Long Dark. Each eldest adds the year's dead and hands the whole list to one heir; Lilvuq has spoken it at the Vigil for forty years and taught it to no one but his granddaughter Jaamang.

Spoken once a year at the Vigil; if Lilvuq dies before Jaamang holds the whole of it, no one living knows the Long Dark's names, and every camp knows it.

Faith · telling, spoken at the Vigil after the names

The Lights Walk

Qinaqas Kujallul “the-Lights walk”

Pipanuq of the Door · older than any count

The Uusung teaching that the Northern Lights are the dead walking home along the sky, and that the Uusung are the people who stayed behind to keep the door open for them. Its last part is told once a year and only at the Long Dark: that the Two have been to the Door and come back, and did not go through, because they were not dead and it would have been rude. The telling says nothing more about them, and the camps say that is their own business.

Qutun piilgi kujallul; qil uusung pakmaq.The dead walk home; we keep the Door.

Its author, and how it lives now

Pipanuq of the Door. The eldest of the Door camp whom the camps name as the first to give the telling at the Vigil; nothing is told of her except that her name means breath.

Told by the eldest at the Long Dark each Vigil; Jaamang has asked her grandfather whether the Two are why the Door is kept open, and he has told her to come home.

Stage · drum-dance

The Bear Who Was a Man

Uq Kuqnalakasiv “he forget-PAST”

Jaala of the Whale Bones · remembered as old; no count

A hunter stays too long on the ice and forgets, and becomes a frost bear who is kind to hunters and does not remember why. One dancer is the hunter and then the bear, and the drum slows as he forgets. Every Uusung child is told which bear it is, and no one hunts him.

Uq pigunasiv; uq kuqnalakasiv. Qil maq qugi.He stayed; he forgot. We do not kill him.

Its author, and how it lives now

Jaala of the Whale Bones. A drummer of the Whale Bones camp, remembered as the first to dance the bear in the Rib Houses; his name means sled.

Danced in the Rib Houses through the Long Dark and taught to every child; hunters who have stayed out too long are greeted with its first line when they come in.

Song · lamp-keeping song

The Lamp Song

Taagangva Nirtu “lamp-OWNER song”

Pitaqtat of the Blue Ice · c. 1089 R. (the Great Winter)

Made in the winter the Frostmarch starved, when the seal failed and a camp's life was the oil left in its lamps. The song is sung low over the lamp while the wick is trimmed, one verse for each lamp in the snow-house, and it names the oil as well as the dark. It is the newest song all the camps know.

Mirgaq kiqtut; taagang muutuq. Qil maq kuqnalak.The Long Dark is dark; the lamp burns. We do not forget.

Its author, and how it lives now

Pitaqtat of the Blue Ice. A woman of the Blue Ice who kept her camp's lamps through the winter the south calls the Great Winter; her name means light.

Sung by whoever trims the lamp in every camp through Mirgaq; Pitaqtat's own name was not spoken for three winters after her death, and the song went on being sung without it.

The Waheli

The Waheli have no writing and speak in whispers, so their letters are whatever a warden can say in a hunting-blind without being heard ten paces off. Their works are told, never read, and they are told under the redwoods, where the Waheli believe the trees keep every word.

Faith · whispered litany

The Sleepers' Count

Saeyanae Neifofil “sleepers-OWNER name-PLURAL”

Oryasath of the Old Grove · before the Reckoning (the Waheli count no years)

The mother-redwoods of the seven Groves, named one after another in a fixed order, with the teaching that the oldest trees are the Builders of the Age of Ruins, asleep. It is the Green's one creed: a Waheli who cuts a living tree murders the very old. The Count is whispered at the opening of every sitting of the Circle of Roots.

Siha remeinmanil. Nalyeros flael ieth.The redwoods are sleeping. We do not wake them.

Its author, and how it lives now

Oryasath of the Old Grove. The elder the Old Grove says first set the mother-redwoods in their order; her use-name means whisper, and her true name went into the ground with her name-bark.

Whispered at every sitting inside the mushroom rings, except in the silence moon, Veval, when the Circle does not sit; its second line is the charge the Circle laid against the Bark-Singers.

Chronicle · told history (warden's recitation)

The Shields on the Trees

Limaeyoae Thalhoval “edge-OWNER shield-PLURAL”

Slarni of the Edge · 734 R.

The Venei's Throat massacre as the Waheli tell it: two hundred armed men came through the pass to escort a Castavari logging company to the sleepers, and were invited to stay. Every shield on the trees at the forest's edge has its place in the telling, and a Waheli child can point to where each man stayed. It is the Waheli's only history of an outsider war, and it is told as a children's tale.

Ith-yadar yamalesil; ith-ilnilth yamalesil.The trespassers came; the trespassers stayed.

Its author, and how it lives now

Slarni of the Edge. A warden-hunter of the Edge who, the Edge says, nailed up the first of the two hundred shields; her use-name is the bloodroot the wardens paint with.

Told to every Waheli child at the Edge within sight of the shields, which still hang there; Elder Wiroll keeps them nailed up and has said the telling has room at its end.

Tales · winter tale, whispered in the hollow redwoods

The Marten at the Door

Lidithae Mirwi “winter-OWNER door”

Swinya of Deepshade · old; known to Moss Harbor's trading partners by c. 900 R.

A marten comes to a hollow-tree door every winter and is fed, until the winter it is not. It is the Waheli coat of the tale every people tells, and the Waheli way of telling it is to leave the ending unsaid: the teller whispers the marten's last coming and stops, and the listeners do not answer.

Ith-yadar, ith-saleth. Ith-yadar, ith-saleth. Ith-yadar.It came; it ate. It came; it ate. It came.

Its author, and how it lives now

Swinya of Deepshade. A grandmother of Deepshade whose telling the Groves say is the right one; nothing else of her is remembered.

Told in the snow moon, Thenin, inside the hollowed redwoods; to whisper its last line to someone outside a tale is to tell them they have been fed long enough.

Poetry · night-songs, sung aloud to the trees

The Waking Songs

Sel-nalyeros Saeyan “FUTURE-wake the-sleepers”

Nalyeros · c. 1046 R. and after

The songs the Bark-Singers sing at night in the northern marsh, teaching that the sleeping Builders in the redwoods should be woken. They are the only Waheli works meant to be sung out loud, which is half the heresy. The Waheli say the trees have begun to answer, and they are afraid.

Femend yei; yeith remeinman. Sel-nalyeros saeyan.I sing; the redwood hears. The sleepers will wake.

Its author, and how it lives now

Nalyeros. Founder of the Bark-Singers, cast out of the Circle about a hundred years ago; the name is the one the Circle gave him when it cast him out, and means wake.

Forbidden by the Circle of Roots and never repeated inside the Groves; wardens on the marsh side of Hollowmere know them by ear, because they have listened to them at night for a hundred years.