Eastern Lands: the name used to refer to those lands north of the Inland Sea and east of the Emerald Ocean: Scanra, Tortall, Tyra, Tusaine, Galla, Maren, Sarain.
Frasrlund: the Tortallan port city at the mouth of the Vassa, on the other side of the border with Scanra.
Galla: the country to the north and east of Tortall, famous for its mountains and forests, with an ancient royal line. Daine was born there.
Giantkiller: a fort built by Third Company of the King’s Own in Squire, given its name in honor of Lord Raoul after Raoul killed two giants there in a Scanran raid; Lord Wyldon’s temporary command post.
Gift, the: human, academic magic, the use of which must be taught.
glaive: a pole arm, including a four- or five-foot staff capped with a long metal blade.
Goatstrack: a destroyed village near Fort Giantkiller.
grapples: large, three-pronged iron hooks that can be attached to a rope and tossed over a wall or cliff to be used as an anchor for a climber.
Great Mother Goddess: the chief goddess in the Tortallan pantheon, protector of women; her symbol is the moon.
Greenwoods River: the river that flows past Haven.
griffin: a feathered immortal with a catlike body, wings, and a beak. The males grow to a height of six and a half to seven feet at the shoulder; females are slightly bigger. No one can tell lies in a griffin’s vicinity (a range of about a hundred feet). Their young have bright orange feathers to make them more visible. If adult griffin parents sense that a human has handled their infant griffin, they will try to kill that human.
Hamrkeng: the capital of Scanra.
hand-and-a-half sword: a longsword with a longer-than-usual hilt, which may be wielded single-handed or with two hands.
Haven: refugee camp.
headman: the leader of a tribe, or the mayor of a small town.
Human Era (H.E.): the calendar in use in the Eastern and Southern Lands and in the Copper Isles is dated the Human Era to commemorate the years since the one in which the immortals were originally sealed into the Divine Realms, over four hundred and fifty years prior to the time covered by Protector of the Small.
hurrok: an immortal shaped like a horse with leathery bat wings, claws, and fangs.
Immortals War: a short, vicious war fought in 452 H.E., the thirteenth year of Jonathan and Thayet’s reign, named for the number of immortal creatures that fought, but also waged by Carthakis (rebels against the new emperor Kaddar), Copper Islanders, and Scanran raiders. These forces were defeated by the residents of the Eastern Lands, particularly Tortall, but recovery is slow.
indenture: contract of service under which a buyer pays a certain amount and in return is granted a person’s service for a set length of time, usually seven years. During that time the buyer must provide basics—food, clothing, shelter, education (in Tortall)— in return for the servant’s work.
King’s Council: the monarch’s private council, made up of those advisers he trusts the most.
King’s Own: a cavalry/police group answering to the king, whose members serve as royal bodyguards and as protective troops throughout the realm. Their Knight Commander is Lord Sir Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie’s Peak. The ranks are filled by younger sons of noble houses, Bazhir, and the sons of wealthy merchants. The Own is made of three companies of one hundred fighters each, in addition to the servingmen, who care for supplies and remounts. First Company, a show company, traditionally provides palace bodyguards and security for the monarchs. Under Lord Raoul, Second and Third Company were added and dedicated to active service away from the palace, helping to guard the realm.
logistics: the military study that involves the purchase, maintenance, and transport of supplies, equipment, and people.
longhouse: a long, barnlike structure that provides housing for several families or for an extended family and their animals (in winter). A typical Scanran home, it can also be found in both northern Tortall and Galla.
mage: wizard.
mage mark: a silvery circle on the forehead, used to identify a convict soldier.
Maren: a large, powerful country east of Tusaine and Tyra, the grain basket of the Eastern Lands, with plenty of farms and trade.
Mastiff: the new fort that serves Lord Wyldon as command post during events in Lady Knight.
mess (hall): the building in which military meals are eaten; sometimes cooks work in the same building.
Midwinter Festival: a seven-day holiday centering around the longest night of the year and the sun’s rebirth afterward. It is the beginning of the new year. Gifts are exchanged and feasts held.
Mithros: the chief god of the Tortallan pantheon, god of war and the law; his symbol is the sun.
naginata: the Yamani term for the glaive used by Kel.
Northwatch: the command base for Tortall’s northern defensive, currently the headquarters for General Vanget haMinch, commander of the northern armies.
ogre: an immortal with aqua-colored skin, shaped like a human, from ten to twelve feet in height.
Pakkai River: a small river in Scanra.
pole arm: any weapon consisting of a long wooden staff or pole capped by a sharp blade of some kind, including spears, glaives, and pikes.
Queensgrace: a town on the Great Road North.
Queen’s Riders: a cavalry/police group charged with protecting Tortallans who live in hard-to-reach parts of the country. They enforce the law and teach local residents to defend themselves. The basic unit is a Rider Group, with eight to nine members. Rank in a Group is simply that of commander and second-in-command; the head of the Riders is the Commander. They accept both women and men in their ranks, unlike the army, the navy, and the King’s Own. Their headquarters lies between the palace and the Royal Forest. Buriram Tourakom is now the Commander; Queen Thayet was the Commander but has since passed the title to Buri.
regular army: foot soldiers, cavalrymen, catapult operators, quartermasters, scouts, and their officers; uniformed troops.
remount: a rider’s second horse, to ride when the primary horse gets tired. In the case of knights and the King’s Own, remounts are often warhorses, heavier mounts trained to fight.
River Olorun: its main sources are Lake Naxen and Lake Tirragen in the eastern part of Tortall; it flows through the capital, Corus, and into the Emerald Ocean at Port Caynn.
Riversedge: a town near Fort Giantkiller.
Scanra: the country to the north of Tortall, wild, rocky, and cold, with very little land that can be farmed. Scanrans are masters of the sea and are feared anywhere there is a coastline. They also frequently raid over land. Their government is a loose one, consisting of a figurehead king and a Great Council (formerly the Council of Ten, expanded in the disruptions following the Immortals War) made up of the heads of the clans. Maggur Rathhausak, a warlord stirring up trouble for Scanra’s southern neighbors, has taken the crown at the start of Lady Knight.
scry: to look into the present, future, or past using magic and, sometimes, a bowl of water, a mirror, fire, or some other device to look through.
Smiskir River: the Scanran tributary to the Vassa River.
Southern Lands: another name for the Carthaki Empire, which has conquered all of the independent nations that once were part of the continent south of the Inland Sea.
spidren: an immortal whose body is that of a furred spider four to five feet in height; its head is that of a human with sharp, silvery teeth. Spidrens can use weapons. They also use their webs as weapons and ropes. Spidren web is gray-green in color and it glows after dark. Their blood is black and burns like acid. Their favorite food is human blood.
squad: ten soldiers commanded by a sergeant and two corporals.
standard-bearer: the young man or boy who carries the company flag.
Steadfast: the fort built to serve as headquarters for Third Company of the King’s Own and Lord Raoul.
stockade: a wall made of whole logs, their upper ends cut into rough points.
Stormw
ing: an immortal with a human head and chest and bird legs and wings, with steel feathers and claws. Stormwings have very sharp teeth, but use them only to add to the terror of their presence by tearing apart bodies. They live on human fear and have their own magic; their special province is the desecration of battlefield dead.
strategy: the plans for a battle or war from a distance, working out the movements of armies and setting goals for them.
tactics: the plans for a battle at short range, as it happens.
Tirrsmont: a fiefdom in northernmost Tortall.
Tortall: the chief kingdom in which the Alanna, Daine, and Keladry books take place, between the Inland Sea and Scanra.
Tusaine: a small country tucked between Tortall and Maren. Tortall went to war with Tusaine in the years Alanna the Lioness was a squire and Jonathan was crown prince; Tusaine lost.
Tyra: a merchant republic on the Inland Sea between Tortall and Maren. Tyra is mostly swamp, and its people rely on trade and banking for income. Numair Salmalín was born there.
Vassa River: the river that forms a large part of the northeastern border between Scanra and Tortall.
warhorse: a larger horse or greathorse, trained for combat—the mount of an armored knight.
wildmage: a mage who deals in wild magic, the kind of magic that is part of nature. Daine Sarrasri is often called the Wildmage for her ability to communicate with animals, heal them, and shapeshift.
wild magic: the magic that is part of the natural world. Unlike the human Gift, it cannot be drained or done away with; it is always present.
Yamani Islands: the island nation to the north and west of Tortall and the west of Scanra, ruled by an ancient line of emperors, whose claim to the throne comes from the goddess Yama. The country is beautiful and mountainous. Its vulnerability to pirate raids means that most Yamanis, including the women, get some training in combat arts. Keladry of Mindelan lived there for six years while her father was the Tortallan ambassador.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Anyone who reads this and knows where I live will see clear parallels to the events of September 11, 2001. This is and is not a coincidence. I had planned the fate of Haven and its inhabitants since the mid-1990s, when Mallory said she would love to see a new series about a new girl knight, and I began to work out the course of Kel’s adulthood. I forgot where in Lady Knight I had stopped writing when September 11 swept us all into the real world. Afterward, all I knew was that I needed to get back to Tortall. I had to get back to Tortall. I wanted to immerse myself in fantasy because reality was “way too much.” I wasn’t able to sit down at my computer for five days, and when I saw where I had stopped— on Kel’s second return to Haven—my hands began to shake. It took me two weeks to write the next twenty pages, the hardest twenty of my life. I did it because it had to be done; I had to write the book, awaited by so many faithful readers. And then, I confess, when I did the rewrites, I expressed my feelings about war, refugees, and disaster a bit more forcefully than I had in the first draft. So September 11 did and did not shape this book; maybe the right way to put it is that it added muscle and my own personal trauma to what would have been a strong story in any case. Make of it what you like. Think about what’s here and come to your own decisions, that’s all I ask.
As ever, my heartfelt thanks goes to my wonderful editrix, Mallory Loehr, whose idea it was to make Kel a commander (I wasn’t sure I could write anyone who works and plays well with others), and whose enthusiasm for Kel’s story from the very beginning has kept me moving forward. Books are very much co-productions, and without input from Mallory, my agent Craig Tenney, my beloved Spouse-Creature, Tim, and my English editrixes Holly Skeet and Kirsty Skidmore, the Kel you read about now would be very different and not as solid. These people help me to tell my story in a straightforward way, make sure I explain things that are confusing, notify me when something is unneeded, and give me the ideas that get me unstuck and writing again.
My thanks also to Rick Robinson, geometer (map-maker and -reader) extraordinaire, and Raquel Starace and Tracy Schlabach, whose continued horse input gave birth to Peachblossom.
To my mother, my stepbrothers, my sister, my husband, and all the family clustered around us, well, the old eagle flies free at last. I just hope he flies slow enough that we can catch up to him when it’s our turn to fly.
TURN THE PAGE FOR A BRAND-NEW STORY FROM THE WORLD OF Tortall.…
Bone’s Day Out
Copyright © 2014 by Tamora Pierce. Published by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
The man came for Lindhall before dawn, rousing both him and Bonedancer out of a perfectly nice sleep.
“Is that your bird-lizard skeleton?” the stranger asked as Lindhall dressed. “I’ve never seen it before. It’s not much bigger than a cat. It’s really alive? How can it have paws and wing bones? Does it eat and sleep?”
Lindhall tossed a hank of uncombed silver-gold hair back out of his eyes. “Bonedancer is alive. You woke him and me and half of my neighbors bellowing of a clutch of spidrens, not lizard-birds.”
“Sorry,” the stranger replied. “We only just found their hide-out by the river an hour ago. I’m still a bit rattled.”
Lindhall was clothed now. Bone flew onto his shoulder as he left the bedchamber for the workroom and steadied himself by gripping a fistful of Lindhall’s hair with a wing bone that ended with a three-fingered set of claws. Cocking his long, bony skull, more like his lizard self than his bird’s, he gave a whistling, spiraling sound that meant a question—a common question between the two of them.
“No, my friend,” Lindhall told Bone kindly. He knew what that next sound meant: “very well.” “You are not coming. Has anyone sent for Numair?” Lindhall asked the stranger while loading a carry sack with things he might need to deal with spidrens. “He’s at the palace. We will do better with mages, and he is the best we have.”
“Yes, yes, he’s on the way. We need all the strong mages we can call in, with as many of the creatures and their sellers as we’ve found.”
Lindhall set Bonedancer on one of the room’s many perches. “Stay here and behave,” he ordered. “None of your tricks with the new housekeeper.”
Bone clattered his jaws in complaint.
“I mean it,” Lindhall said. “I have too hard a time keeping anyone who will clean.”
Bone lashed his long tail, making it click. Lindhall shook his head and left, taking his guest with him.
Giddily, Bone flew around the dark workroom. Their previous housekeeper had been particular about ensuring that the window shutters were locked before she left for the night, but she had gone to be with her daughter, who was expecting a baby. Lindhall only remembered to lock the shutters when he was cold, and the new housekeeper had to be reminded every day. After a mild night, two shutters stood open.
Once he was sure that Lindhall would not return for something he had forgotten, Bone soared outside. The air rose sweet and cool over the university gardens. The birds that nested there peeped cheerfully in the dawn light. Quickly, Bone flew away, before they saw he was free and made noise about it. Bone did not want anyone to find Lindhall and warn him that he had escaped again.
He held no grudge against Lindhall’s rules: No flying in the university grounds without Lindhall to supervise. No flying in the city. No explorations in the city, palace, or temple unless he rode tamely with Lindhall or one of Lindhall’s specially chosen friends. No taking anything without his proper escort’s permission. No eating anything unless Lindhall approved it. No tormenting anyone, be they winged, four-legged, or two-legged, however much fun tormenting people might be.
Bonedancer loved his tall human friend. He understood that out in the world humans would try to steal him, to keep him as a plaything, to try to take the magic they thought he held, or to break him up and sell his pieces. Bone simply thought he was far more clever than such humans. There were times when he wante
d to fly out, free and alone. Away from the university and peering, peeking students and their masters. Away from the mages with their prying magic. Away from shouting servants and their brooms. He wanted to have fun sometimes, out in the open air. Flying was the best thing about his new life in this world inhabited by his descendants. Unlike in his first life, he could fly easily.
But freedom came with a cost in this life. As he flew over the houses between the university and the markets, local birds rose to defend their nests against what they thought was a threat. Squalling with fury, they darted at Bone, diving and pulling back at the last moment. They risked their lives to drive him away from the ledges, holes, and trees where they nested.
For a certain length of time, Bone allowed his feathered descendants’ attacks. When he tired of them, he took a pinch of his magic, opened his ancient jaws, and released the pinch as a grating, ugly cry. It knocked the birds away from him, tumbling them tail over beak. Once they recovered, they decided they had things to do elsewhere.
Bone chattered a short lecture about respect for ancestors as he soared over the garden, then flapped on. The city lay below, a ready invitation. Humans were awake. Agreeable scents rose to fill Bone’s nostrils. He considered a visit to the source of one of those tempting smells, but he remembered just in time that there were other places that smelled just as good. They were also far bigger, which meant there was less chance that a human would spot him and raise a screech that would get Bone in trouble with Lindhall. He would hate to be caught so early. Also, Lindhall was more alert and watchful after one of his escapes. If he was going to lose his freedom, he meant to enjoy more of it first.
Bonedancer banked and glided down toward the heart of the city’s markets. At the edge of the area where servants shopped for foodstuffs were the city’s great bakeries. He had only to wait for some apprentices to look away from a basket of rolls. He stooped, snatched one, and retired to a chimney to devour his breakfast. One lad seemed to have glimpsed him, but he only stared at the basket that Bone had stolen from, scratched his head, and returned to his work.
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