Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars)
Page 67
SIXTH LEVEL:
The manipulation of physical objects over long distances, the use of simple focusing devices such as fire, circles of fire or stone; again limited to objects in the macro. For these purposes, a visible fire is considered an object in the macro. The beginning stages of meditation and the focus on the space that the mind makes.
FIFTH LEVEL:
Manipulation of certain energies at the molecular level, including release of energy through chemical processes, though only over a limited area and in limited ways; these are complex processes which cannot be fully directed from the Fifth Circle. The manipulation of complex recording and focusing devices such as gemstones, precious metals, the construction of simple applications that can be effective over long distances; the art of singing without sound and the channeling of the bodies energies and physical energies.
FOURTH LEVEL:
Manipulation of the physical world at the molecular level over great distances through use of hyper devices like the shenesoeniis, a massive storage device for magical applications that enables the magician to use master-words to trigger portions of the tower’s script to come into play, enabling a scale of magic that can manipulate the world on a planetary scale. Mortal magicians throughout Jisraegen history have attained to this level and then were able to use either Wyyvisar, Ildaruen, or the Malei. Kentha Nurysem and Edenna Morthul were powers of this order. The Praeven College in Cunuduerum included four adepts of this circle at the height of its studies, before YY-Mother heard them sing the Great Breaking in their researches, and enabled Falamar to destroy them.
THIRD LEVEL:
Manipulation of atomic forces on the sub-galactic level, release of energy from atomic forces; development and use of hyper devices like the lyri ship which travels from star to star on the ithikan, which forms the basis of the economies that permit the Hormling Conveyance. . Only Jurel Durassa of mortals ever attained to this Circle of Power and stabilized into it; the only other Jisraegen ever to attain it, Falamar Inuygen, had no understanding of the force that he was unleashing and was destroyed by it
SECOND LEVEL:
Manipulation of space-time at a galactic scale. This is the level of attainment to which the Diamysaar were born, though certain aspects of these powers were limited after the women were exiled to Zaeyn. Cunavastar was a magician of this level as well. The Eseveren Gates are devices of the second circle.
FIRST LEVEL:
Manipulation of all forces at all distances, incomprehensible attainment. Capable of manipulation of the space-time fabric on the scale of the universe. The All. It is presumed that this level of power is unstable and would tend to split into two different forces continuously.
LIMITS ON MAGIC:
The magician is limited in the ways and durations for which she or he may control living beings. To see through the eyes of an animal is intensive and can only be accomplished from Fourth Circle or higher. To see through the eyes of another person is only possible if the magician asserts control of the person. To directly control a living thing costs greatly in terms of concentration since once a magician asserts control of any organism, the control must be maintained or the creature will die. To take control by magic of the will of any living being is an irreversible process and the living thing does not survive it. To kill with magic, however, is very easy on every level.
GLOSSARY
APPLICATION: Any formal use of magic to achieve a specific end.
DANCE INTO SPIN: Any movement in space that is compressed in time, that is, more energetic and faster. At the higher levels of magic, this can be very great in velocity.
DANCE: Any movement in space with a patterned purpose. A movement is the equivalent of a Word.
DEVICE: Any object used in an application
EYESTONE: Solid globes of muuren obtained from the Tervan used to focus the shenesoeniis; these must be periodically turned and polished and are equipped with mechanical devices to raise or lower them from the socket in the High Place. Seumren Tower is not equipped with an eyestone. The Tervan price for these stones was astronomical.
ILDARUEN: The language of the Other, the language of unmaking, which can be taught.
ITHIKAN: An application of magic which increases motion forward to the degree that the skill of the magician is able to do so. The ithikan is most often spoken of as a wave and requires an object already in acceleration relative to its surroundings.
KEI: The name of the mind space, the space of the small, in which the ruling languages are spoken.
KIRILIDUR: The central shaft of the Tower, an open cylinder, between the metal chases the Tervan use to make the Tower structurally sound. In Seumren Tower the Kirilidur is bare. In later Towers, spiraling threads of runes run from bottom to top or top to bottom of the Tower; the creation of these threads became very elaborate in the late Towers, and Ellebren Tower contains threads of Wyyvisar that read in harmony from lines in the Malei runes.
MALEI: The derived language made by the Praeven, for use in the chant. The language contains both scientific and magical properties; the Praeven learned to sing mathematics rather than to write it down.
PHYETHIR: The rule of a magician over a High Place; the consequent rule of the High Place over the surrounding land.
SHENESOENIIS: Also, HIGH PLACE, the raised stone platform inlaid with either Ildaruen or Wyyvisar runes. Raising the platform clear of the ground enables the magician to work with greater precision since the earth has a certain quality of magical interference inherent in it.
SPIN: An application of the ithikan to the moves of a dance, required in higher applications like the rune dance of encirclement required to attune a Tower to a magician.
WORD: Any packet of vibration produced within or impacting on the kei space.
WYYVISAR: The language of the One, the language of making, which cannot be taught.
6: A note from the translator
In undertaking this singular project, here at the fortieth anniversary of the meeting of the Hormling and Erejhen peoples, it is only right to record what impossibilities have been juggled and what compromises have occurred in the process. No translation out of the Erejhen High Tongue (for today we know the Jisraegen as the Erejhen, in the ebb and flow of the language) can hope to match the precision of thought possible in it. I have only attempted to tell the story of Jessex Yron as he wrote it down himself after King Kirith crossed the mountains, when that age of life in Aeryn-now-Irion was over. I have essayed to preserve what richness I could. The sounds of High Erejhen cannot be duplicated in our alphabet since the Erejhen hear better and differently than we do, and speak and sing over a different range, and so I have approximated what I can, and have supplied a glossary that translates the names and words into something which can be said that is acceptable. In spellings, I have attempted uses of our alphabet which allow for a look that is something like the grace of the older Jisraegen scripts, the doubling of vowels and the substitution of the “YY” and “ii” spellings for the long “e” sound, which parallels the practice in the days when “Kirith Kirin” was written some nine hundred years ago. Only the spelling of the name of God, analogous to the “YY” which I have chosen, remains unchanged today. The doubling of that particular vowel in archaic High Erejhen always denoted a divine connection to the concept being addressed.
To the author’s clear intent in putting his own story into words, I can add only that any Erejhen child could tell you most of this story by heart, and that the author is the same person now called, like the country, Irion, and who is said to be alive today in the north of that strange place, which has become our destiny. Soon after Yron wrote his book he retired to Inniscaudra and in general closed that part of Irion to strangers, so that a foreign traveler today might find a guide to take her as far north as Montajhena, which has been recovered, as the Erejhen put it, or to Bruinysk, or to the mound of what was once Genfynnel and the tower Laeredon that still stands. Further north no one ventures, or if she does, she simpl
y wanders south again without realizing it, and that is the case as often as she cares to try.
No one in that country doubts that this tale is anything but history, a record of the Long War, no more than they doubt the living King Kirith descended to the low road and crossed through Tornimul after an age of peace. As the years pass and we know more and more about the people and the past of Irion, we come closer to grasping the reality that this may be a true history, and that magic may be real, at least in one place we know. We have all seen reason to be glad for that.
Jedda Martele
Béyoton, Year Standard 32334
Author’s Bio
Jim Grimsley is a playwright and novelist who was born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina in 1955. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Jim's first novel Winter Birds was published by Algonquin Books in the United States in 1994. The novel won the 1995 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Prix Charles Brisset, given by the French Academy of Physicians. The novel also received a special citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation as one of three finalists for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Jim's second novel, Dream Boy, was published by Algonquin in September, 1995, and won the 1996 Award for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Literature from the American Library Association; the novel was also one of five finalists for the Lambda Literary Award. Dream Boy was adapted for the stage by Eric Rosen, the play premiering at About Face Theatre in Chicago in 1996. Jim’s third novel, My Drowning, was published in 1997 and for this book Jim was named Georgia Author of the Year. His fourth novel, Comfort & Joy was a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and his fifth novel, Boulevard, was published in April, 2002; for this novel he was named Georgia Author of the Year for the second time.
Jim has written eleven full-length and four one-act plays, including Mr. Universe, The Lizard of Tarsus, White People and The Existentialists. A collection of his plays, Mr. Universe and Other Plays, was published by Algonquin in 1998, and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist in drama. He has been playwright-in-residence at 7Stages Theatre of Atlanta since 1986 and was playwright in residence at About Face Theatre of Chicago from 2000-2004. In 1988 he was awarded the George Oppenheimer Award for Best New American Playwright for his play Mr. Universe. He was also awarded the first-ever Bryan Prize for Drama, presented by the Fellowship of Southern Writers for distinguished achievement in playwriting,in 1993.
He was a 1997 winner of the Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest Writers Award. His first fantasy novel, Kirith Kirin, was published by Meisha Merlin Press in June, 2000 and won the Lambda Literary Award in the Science Fiction/Horror category. He has since published two subsequent science fiction novels set in the same universe, The Ordinary and The Last Green Tree, both with Tor Books of NY. The Ordinary was awarded a Lammy in 2005. His short fiction has been anthologized in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth and Nineteenth Annual Collections, edited by Gardner Dozois, in Best New Stories from the South, 2001 edition, edited by Shannon Ravenel, and in other anthologies. He is a member of PEN, Dramatists Guild, Alternate ROOTS, and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. He has twice been a finalist for the Rome Prize in Literature. In 2005, he won an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his work as a playwright and novelist. In 2006 he, along with Dorothy Allison, was one of the inaugural winners of the Mid-Career Author’s Award from the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival.
Jim is currently Senior Resident Fellow in Creative Writing and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta.
Publisher’s Note: Ducktown Press
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South Pole Entertainment was created to develop single-player and massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG). Our first will be The Wizard's Tower, based on the magic in Kirith Kirin. We expect to have it out in 2013. If you wish to be kept informed of its progress you may sign up for email updates at our website www.SouthPoleEntertainment.com.