Gate of Horn, Book of Silk

by Michael Andre-Driussi

  Commentary: Smoothbone seems to be saying that Silkhorn looks related to him, perhaps a distant relative.

  Pas “a major god, the father of the gods in the Long Sun Whorl” (V, list; V, chap. 2, 55). (See entry in LS Half.)

  Myth: (Greek) the god Pan as the god of all, the Supreme God.

  peace quote Duko Rigoglio says, “Peace is but the slice of cheese in a sandwich, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting” (VI, chap. 14, 219). The second half is from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary (1911).

  Pehla “the Rajan’s principal concubine” (V, list; V, chap. 12, 299). She is pregnant by Silkhorn (V, chap. 12, 310). For a list of his concubines, see RAJAN OF GAON.

  Hindi: first.

  Perito “a hired hand on Inclito’s farm” (VI, list; chap. 11, 172; 174; chap. 16, 245).

  Italian: expert/surveyor.

  Phaea goddess of feasting, healing, and foodstuffs generally (V, chap. 12, 293). Depicted with a boar at her side or a piglet in hand. Patroness of cooks and physicians. As mirror image of Sphigx, she is a goddess of peace but she doesn’t get that title in Viron (paraphrase of VII, chap. 10, 204–205). (See entry in LS Half.)

  Myth: (Greek) the name of the sow of Crommyon, which ravaged the countryside on the Corinthian isthmus until slain by the hero Theseus.

  Pig “a mercenary of the Long Sun Whorl” (V, list); “a friend of Incanto’s in the Long Sun Whorl” (VI, list); “the name assumed by a blind wanderer” (VII, list). He is first mentioned with “Pig’s blindness, and all the rest?” (V, chap. 1, 33), but not met until much later (VII, chap. 2, 42), when he has been traveling toward the West Pole for one year (VII, chap. 4, 75).

  Upon selecting his name, he makes reference to a “blind pig” (VII, chap. 2, 45). This is slang for a place where alcoholic beverages are sold illegally; a speakeasy.

  Pig tells Hound he was looking for Silk, found Silk’s house with wife dead in coffin (VII, chap. 4, 83). Pig thinks that Silkhorn is Silk.

  At the end of Silkhorn’s dream, he sees that “Pig’s big, bearded face was Silk’s” (VII, chap. 4, 85). (But this is in the DHV text.)

  Pig was a cold one, his great size being his special trait (VII, chap. 5, 96). He is so large he must go on his knees to enter normal doors (VII, chap. 9, 200); on his knees, he is nearly as tall as Silk (202). Pig has pointed ears (VII, chap. 18, 372), which suggest he is a godling.

  Pig is being ridden by Silent Silk (VII, chap. 8, 174). The old line about a “silk purse out of a sow’s ear” is made (175). Pig had looted a manteion looking for gold cups (VII, chap. 10, 200). He killed the augur in front of the Sacred Window and then was possessed (201).

  Silkhorn deducing Pig’s manteion adventure (199) is based on his knowing that Silent Silk is in him (173–76). Pig says he killed the augur and something touched him (201). While the reader has been expecting Silent Silk as possessing him, Silkhorn says Pig was touched by the Outsider (201).

  Like Oreb, Pig holds a god fragment in his head, but in this case it is trapped there by his lack of eyes. Silkhorn solves Pig’s quest and helps Silent Silk by donating one of his own eyes.

  Myth: (Norse) Mimir is the giant guarding the Well of Wisdom, to whom Odin gave his eye.

  Pike, Patera “Patera Silk’s predecessor” (V, list; chap. 1, 39). (See entry in LS Half.)

  Zoology: the fish Esox lucius.

  pilav a food in Gaon (V, chap. 12, 288). The name sounds like “pilaf,” but it is really “little balls of boiled dough mixed with chopped nuts and raisins” (289).

  pirates the pirates on the boat that chases Horn are “mostly women” (V, chap. 5, 132), which suggests that they come from Beled. Years later, Silkhorn deals with some pirates by using the azoth to ruin their ship (VII, chap. 17, 358).

  pit, the the below-ground ruin that traps Horn on an island near the western continent. Horn first thought it was the island Strik had mentioned as a place to get water (V, chap. 7, 187). Later in the fog, the ship drifts a bit (228), then sails the wrong way and finds the mainland (230), so it probably is not the island Strik meant.

  The ruin seems to have prevented trees from growing until only ten years ago. Horn thinks it was a poison or a thick pavement (V, chap. 8, 192). Seawrack agrees, but thinks it was occupied until recently (193).

  The pit is 12 cubits (18 feet) deep (196). Here Horn suffers a kind of death, or a stage of death, which is most clearly signaled by his ghostly visit to Nettle back on Lizard. Only through a bargain with the demonic Krait is he able to escape.

  Plato’s Cave “Silk said once that we are like a man who can see only shadows, and thinks the shadow of an ox the ox and a man’s shadow the man” (V, chap. 2, 49).

  One of the powerful touchstones of the Long Sun series is the way that the situation on the Long Sun Whorl matches Plato’s analogy of the cave. Plato said that all people are in a cave, facing the back wall where they see shadows, and they confuse these shadows for reality. One man is able to escape the cave and see reality, thereby becoming a philosopher, and then he returns to tell the others.

  In The Book of the Long Sun, this breakthrough starts with Silk’s enlightenment, but then hits a more literal point when he looks outside his “cave” of the Whorl to see space and stars outside. The implication is that the Long Sun Whorl gods are all false and the Outsider is true. Silkhorn writes,

  In the presence of the Outsider, I was conscious of another whorl. Not a remote one like Green or the Long Sun Whorl . . . but a whorl that is as present to us as this one, a place all around us that we cannot see into. Many would say that it is not real, but that is almost the reverse of truth. It is the things of this whorl that are unreal by standards of that one (VI, chap. 19, 285).

  This seems to form a basic feeling for the colonists, that they are getting away from the false or at least capricious gods of the Long Sun Whorl and going to an empty place where they can be free.

  However, in the course of his travels, Horn and Silkhorn come to see that, far from being empty, the universe outside the Long Sun Whorl is full of real gods. Silkhorn says, “We have other gods here [on Blue] already. There is a Scylla greater than the one we knew, for example” (VII, chap. 20, 399), referring to the Mother.

  In this way, while we initially take the gods of the Long Sun Whorl as being exaggerated shadows of mere mortals, we learn that in fact they are diminished shadows of true gods like the Mother and others.

  Poliso “a foreign town near Blanko” (VI, list). It seems allied with Heleno, so it is probably Greek (VI, chap. 2, 48).

  Greek: the similar word polis means “town/city state.”

  Esperanto: policy/insurance policy.

  Potto, Councillor “Viron’s spymaster” (VI, list; V, chap. 5, 124; VI, chap. 1, 34). (See entry in LS Half.)

  Zoology: West African lemur.

  Q

  Qarya “Sinew’s village on Green” (VI, list; VI, chap. 24, 358). Qarya’s wall is impressive. Where most walled villages on Green have only rough palisades of pointed stakes, Qarya’s is surrounded by a wide, water-filled ditch, and its wall is made of earth faced with brick.

  Jahlee’s question about the defensive utility of this when inhumi can fly underlines the point that it is defense not against inhumi but against humans, whether they be adventurers like Horn or inhumans seeking human cattle for their masters.

  Armenian: village; town.

  Quadrifons “an aspect of the Outsider in the Long Sun Whorl” (V, list); “the god of doors and crossroads, and much else” (VII, list). “Olivine’s god, he of the four faces” (V, chap. 6, 157). Also the password for Olivine’s door into the Caldé’s Garden (VII, chap. 10, 215). Although Silkhorn admonishes her regarding this misuse of an unspeakable name (216), it seems fairly clear that she did not set the password.

  In the Chrasmologic Writings, Quadrifons is the most holy of the minor gods (215). Sometimes he is shown as a sort of monster, combining Pas’s eagle with Sphigx’s lion (216).

  Ol
ivine’s sacrifice of bread and wine becomes a funeral sacrifice for Horn’s body on Green (VII, chap. 12, 252).

  Myth: (Roman) Janus, god of gates, doors, doorways, etc. The Romans associated Janus with the Etruscan deity Ani.

  Quetzal, Patera “the inhumu who became Prolocutor of Viron” (V, list; V, chap. 4, 97). After being shot, he bled from recent feedings (V, chap. 5, 136). (See entry in LS Half.)

  Zoology: a beautiful bird of Central America.

  quire in Blanko the narrator starts with a quire of paper (VI, chap. 1, 15). A set of 24 or 25 sheets of paper of the same stock and size.

  R

  rainbow-frog creature of Blue (V, chap. 4, 107).

  rais-man “Sinew’s the rais-man here” (VI, chap. 24, 360). Later defined as “the general, the leader of the war band” (364).

  Onomastics: (Arabic) name Rais meaning “leader, chief.”

  Commentary: presumably “-man” is added because in Trivigaunte a rais is always a woman.

  Rajan of Gaon “the narrator” (V, list). He has at least seven concubine/wives (V, chap. 16, 371), probably 15 in all (I, chap. 2, 67). Pehla is the highest ranking. Others are Alubukhara, Chandi, Chota (Evensong), and Moti. At least two of these women (Chandi and Chota) are from different towns. Early on, Hari Mau tells Silkhorn, “We have suggested to other towns that they send their daughters. Most will” (VII, chap. 18, 382).

  When the Rajan makes his deal with the inhumi, the final reward he promises upon completion of the war is to tell the surviving inhumi where the buried ones are located (V, chap. 13, 320). He obviously does not want to dig them up himself, since they would kill him after the last one. “I have promised over and over to give them the locations of the remaining interments, which are concealed now by booths and the like” (V, chap. 14, 344). In the end he leaves Evensong to do this, and since she does not know the terrible secret, they are less likely to kill her afterward. She wants to know the secret, if not for the Man of Han then for herself, but he tells her “that you know where the others are buried but do not know the secret they would die to protect” (375).

  Hindi: king.

  Commentary: the Rajan’s dealings with the inhumi is somewhat like the legends of King Solomon working with various supernatural beings in Middle Eastern lore.

  Rajya Mantri “the Rajan’s principal minister” (V, list; V, chap. 1, 18). Chronologically seen the first time (VII, chap. 18, 382).

  Hindi: royal minister.

  Ram “a citizen of Gaon” (V, list). After the Rajan is knocked down by rifle recoil at the wallower hunt, a hunter named Ram helps him up. The Rajan notes that the name sounds Vironese (V, chap. 10, 226).

  Myth: (Hindi) Ram or Rama (meaning “pleasing,” “charming”), an incarnation of Vishnu. His wife Sita famously endured a lot of grief for him.

  rani “the ruler of Trivigaunte” (V, list; chap. 7, 183).

  Hindi: queen.

  Ray, Patera the earlier augur of the manteion where Hound and Tansy went (VII, chap. 10, 209). Silkhorn’s story of the boy who found Patera Ray weeping (209–10) seems to be a memory of young Silk himself, coming at the end of the year he and his mother lived in the countryside. On the other hand, this is from the DHV text and therefore might be just an editorial attempt to address the mysterious “year away” gap in Silk’s youth.

  Zoology: Batoidae is a superorder of cartilaginous fish known as rays.

  Red Sun Whorl “the distant planet on which Rigoglio was born” (VI, list). The world known as Urth.

  Remora, Patera “the head of the chapter in New Viron” (V, list), he visits Horn at the start (V, chap. 1, 21), in the group with Blazingstar, Eschar, Marrow, and Gyrfalcon. He had performed the marriage ceremony for Horn and Nettle. Horn thinks Remora has seen the Vanished People (V, chap. 11, 269). In the end he exorcises Horn from Silkhorn, leaving Silk. (See entry in LS Half.)

  Zoology: the pilot fish.

  Rigoglio, Duko “the ruler of Soldo” (VI, list), conqueror of Olmo (VI, prologue). His sleeper-tube name is Roger (VI, chap. 18, 278).

  In Soldo the colonists claimed to be glad to be rid of a Duko, but they did not know how to run things. Rigoglio used violence and became strongman, then Duko.

  “After that I settled quarrels. If you were a friend of mine, you won. If you weren’t, I gave the nod to the weaker party and chopped off your head if I could find an excuse. A couple of months of that, and everybody in town was a loyal supporter” (VI, chap. 18, 279).

  While this closely matches the situation in Gaon before the Rajan arrived, Rigoglio goes further: “I remembered Pas, or whatever his name was. It was pretty much what he’d done” (279). Thus Rigoglio patterned himself after Typhon, and so by halting Rigoglio, Silkhorn prevents Pas from coming to Blue in another way.

  When Incanto and Jahlee warp space with him, Rigoglio’s memory of Urth takes them there (VI, chap. 21, 312). He enters the ruins of his house and is stabbed by an omophagist (316). The group takes him to the citadel’s barbican, seeking medical aid. As payment for this aid and lodging, the omophagist is put into the lion pit (VII, chap. 9, 190).

  Upon their return to Blue, they find Rigoglio to be a mindless or spiritless shell of his former self (VII, chap. 9, 187).

  When Hide explains the first adventure on Urth as, “We took the Duko home to die” (VI, chap. 22, 322), he inadvertently draws attention to the following pattern:

  1. Roger/Rigoglio.

  2. Cilinia/Scylla of the Long Sun Whorl.

  3. Horn/Rajan/Incanto.

  That is to say, just as Roger is taken home to die, and Cilinia, too, so is Horn.

  Italian: luxuriance.

  Rimando “one of the messengers chosen by Inclito” (VI, list) to deliver the letter that starts the book (VI, prologue). He was raised in Blanko and says his name means “delay” (VI, chap. 10, 148). Mora finds his attentions to be deeply disturbing, since he seems to see her as an object. She takes his horse and his place. Later he is sent to help prepare Blanko for siege (VI, chap. 16, 239).

  Italian: return; cross-reference. (“Delay” would be ritardo.)

  Rimo, Private “a trooper in the horde of Blanko” (VI, list; VI, chap. 20, 300).

  Italian: removal.

  rings there are a couple of rings in the text.

  • The white-stone ring Seawrack gives to Horn after his time in the pit. It marks him as a friend of the Neighbors. On one level, it marks an exchange of rings, since Horn had earlier given her one. But Seawrack seems to see it as a tool to be used in case of emergency, as she puts it, “You must wear it, because you might fall into the pit again” (V, chap. 10, 253). Later he uses it in the bargain to transport his non-physical essences across space from Green to the Long Sun Whorl. It is left behind in the broken lander on Green, and Silkhorn later gives it to Sinew.

  • The black-stone ring Oreb brings to Silkhorn at the snowbound inn before Dorp (VII, chap. 3, 56). This gem seems to lighten up by stages, such that it is white when Hoof sees it (VII, chap. 17, 337–38).

  rockwren creature of Blue (VII, chap. 20, 406).

  Roger Rigoglio’s sleeper-tube name.

  History: Roger I (of Sicily) was a Norman Count of Sicily (c. 1071–1101).

  Commentary: for Urth names, this one is about as ancient and obscure as “Catherine.”

  Rose, Maytera “an elderly sibyl, now dead” (V, list; chap. 1, 39). (See entry in LS Half.)

  Botany: common name for some members of the Rosaceae, a large family of herbs, shrubs, and trees.

  Roti “a citizen of Gaon” (V, list); “one of Hari Mau’s followers” (VII, list). He is in the group investigating the house of Vanished People found by Barsat near Gaon (V, chap. 11, 265).

  Hindi: a type of flat cake of wholemeal bread, similar to chapatti.

  S

  Saba, General “an officer in the horde of Trivigaunte” (V, list; V, chap. 1, 34). The needler Horn gives Sinew was the one Nettle had taken from Saba (V, chap. 3, 74). (See entry in LS Half.)

&n
bsp; Arabic: east wind.

  Salica “Inclito’s elderly mother” (VI, list). Her first tale is the autobiographical “From the Grave.” Her second tale is “Stuck in the Chimney.” If she is 60 years old, then she came to Blue when she was 48.

  “From the Grave” describes her four husbands, but she was married five times (VI, chap. 3, 54), so she must have married yet again. This is confirmed by Mora, who says, “Papa’s father wasn’t even the last one” (VI, chap. 5, 84).

  Commentary: since there were five husbands, perhaps they were like the fingers of a hand. Starting with the thumb for Turco would make Inclito’s father the ring finger. Adding a bit to this, the text tells us that Solenno, husband number three, “was a trifle taller than Gioiosio [husband number two]” (VI, chap. 3, 55).

  History: “Lex Salica” is the code of laws of the Salian Franks, rule of succession in certain royal and noble families of Europe.

  Italian: close to salice, the word for “willow.”

  Samru the riverboat of Urth (VII, chap. 12, 346) that Silkhorn and group warped to from the Seanettle on Blue (VII, chap. 17, 352).

  Myth: (Persian) “an alternative name for Sinurqh, the bird of immortality” (Lexicon Urthus).

  Sborso “a hired hand on Inclito’s farm” (VI, list; VI, chap. 11, 172; 174; 175).

  Italian: disbursement.

  Schiamazza “an elderly servant in Salica’s girlhood home” (VI, list), back in Grandecitta on the Long Sun Whorl (VI, chap. 2, 52).

  Italian: cackles.

  Schreiner a trooper guarding prisoners Incanto and Fava in the snow one moment, warped with them and the mercenaries to Green in the next (VI, chap. 13, 193). An inhumu latches onto him, and Auk, one of its slaves, tells Incanto to flee. Schreiner survives because the mercenaries kill the inhumu and the slaves flee, but he distrusts Incanto.

  German: a carpenter; a joiner.