by Holly Lisle
Celebration of New Souls (Kareen) Festival of the Kareen hill-folk (Faia’s birth culture) in which, during the fourteen-day Month of Ghosts and the Festival of Darkness, the fertile women attempt to become pregnant, so that the souls of their deceased loved ones, now waiting to be reborn, can find a home among those who already love them.
cherticorn A common grain crop grown for milling into flour and to be made into cereals. Coarse and dry, but hardy and resistant to blight.
chud jerky Jerky made of dried smoked chud fish, an oily fish with an overpowering smell and taste. Because of its high fat content, chud jerky makes a good travel food for adverse conditions.
Daane University (Ariss) Medwind Song’s alma mater and at one time the women-only magical university that ruled Mage-Ariss. Still one of the best universities in Arhel, though a bit stuffy.
day-blooming fox-roses Large perennial flowers on tall slender stalks that bloom with the first warm weather. Found in meadows and on hillsides. Commonly pink, fuchsia, and white. Unrelated to cultivated roses.
Delmuirie Barrier The barrier that has, for all of its known human history locked the continent of Arhel behind a wall of impenetrable magic.
Dorrell Province Independent political region that encompasses Bonton and much of the Kareen highlands.
Doweth Ecclesiastic Gate One of the purpose-specific gates built around the wall that protects Bonton. Visitors’ ingress and egress are no longer limited to the applicable gate, but in earlier times, the religious went in through the Doweth Ecclesiastic Gate, merchants through Timnett Merchanter, and so on. Bonton has sixteen separate gates.
drypress A pale green paper made of pulped and pressed seaweed, algae, and other water plants. The process of its manufacture is complex, and its manufacture is one of the larger industries besides fishing found in seaside towns.
eahnnk gurral (Klaue) Literally ‘burning memory’—however, the relationship of the term to a Klaue festival remains mysterious.
ecuvek (Huong Hoos) literally, ‘perverse and unclean.’ As used by Medwind Song, it merely demonstrates that she does not share the tastes of some of her fellow Hoos, who don’t think goats are ecuvek at all.
emeshest (Old Arhelan) 1) Literally, ‘the aura of a god.’ 2) A powerful field of magic that holds everything within it in stasis.
erda (Kareen) The unattractive all-purpose rectangular overwrap of the Kareen hill-folk. Serves as a poncho, a blanket, and even a tarp. Waterproof, warm and unflattering.
Etyt and Thiena (Huong Hoos) The male and female Huong Hoos gods of war and warriors. Medwind Song’s first gods.
Falchus (Ancient) Prehistoric god of unknown aspect. The god most familiar to Edrouss Delmuirie.
Faljon (Kareen) Folk philosopher commonly quoted by the Kareen hill-folk. Though the Kareen tell stories of his life, he may be apocryphal.
Father Dark (Kareen) One aspect of the Lord consort of the Lady. In this aspect he is the gatherer and teacher of souls, as well as he who leads them to the Lady’s Wheel of Life when their souls prepare to return to human form or move on to other planes of existence.
Festival of Darkness, see-Celebration of New Souls
Fetupad (Forst) Lovely, temperamental God of Beasts, and a favorite in Forst mythology. Nearly every Arhelan animal has a Fetupad story on how it came to be the way it is.
First Folk The “First Folk” were long thought to be the human ancestors of the current people of Arhel, until an exploratory team discovered a ruined city and the remains of the non-human Klaue who were the true first inhabitants of Arhel. (For further information, read Bones of the Past.)
Fisher Province Far southern province of Arhel notable for its lousy, cold, rainy weather and primitive living conditions.
Flatterland (Kareen) Mildly pejorative term for anyplace where there aren’t lots of hills or mountains.
Forst Capital city of Forst Province.
Forst Province North-eastern province of Arhel, bitter enemy of Dorrell Province and the Bontonards, and home of a people who exhibit markedly isolationist tendencies.
gallens (Klaue) Huge, movable wooden screens that served the First Folk in place of hinge-hung wooden doors and shutters.
Galtennor Eight-armed patron deity of the city of Omwimmee Trade. Each of his eight arms represents a different aspect of the Trader Ethos. Those eight aspects are Justice, Generosity, Profit, Craftsmanship, Mass Appeal, High Sell-Through, Low Returns and Prompt Payment.
Hada and Bnokt Amatory gods of the Celeidighe Fischebede religion. Hada is the God of the Perpetual Iron Rod; Bnokt is also called The Howling Goddess. According to their priests, Hada and Bnokt have not uncoupled since the creation of time itself. Their most ardent followers strive to emulate them.
Hortag-Ingesdotte script, see Bontonard ideographs
hovie Generic term for the hot-blooded, scaled, six-limbed fliers (most types have four wings and two legs) that are everywhere in Arhel. The hovie is one of many Arhelan species built on the six-limbed frame—comparative anatomical studies show that although hovies have analogous features with the equally common four-limbed creatures, there are no point-by-point parallels that would indicate a common ancestral heritage at any time in the past.
Hrogner (Ariss) Saje god of mischief.
Huong Hoos The head-hunting, polyandrous plains dwellers of the south-eastern portion of Arhel.
Kedwar the Finder Bontonard god of those who search.
kekkis (Klaue) A succinct translation would be either ‘junk,’ ‘mess,’ or ‘crap.’
kellink Six-legged pack hunters and scavengers whose saliva is a deadly toxin, and who hunt by biting their prey and waiting for it to die and rot.
Keyu The deadly, magic-storing God Trees of the Wen Tribes who live in the unmapped jungles north of the Wen Tribes Treaty Line.
Klog A pejorative term for the Klaue, or First Folk. While this term was commonly used during Delmuirie’s time, it was rarely uttered in the actual presence of the Klaue.
Lady’s Gift (Kareen) Common term for magic used by hill folk who find themselves able to control it.
Mocking God One aspect of the god of tricksters, practical jokers and sadists.
nondes (Arissonese) The night meal, generally a light one.
Old Arhelan Precursor language to Arissonese and its many dialects.
oogins (Kareen) The little folk reputed to play pranks and do favors for children and kind adults.
ourzurd (pronounced WOO-zerd) An ancient word of uncertain origin. A mighty user of magic.
Ranchek the Trickster Another aspect of Hrogner. See also Mocking God.
Remling Tower Bonton’s overdone version of City Hall and the county courthouse.
rit The Bontonard base unit of currency.
sixteen blue hells of Fargorn The ancient Bontonard religion of the Five relates the tale of Fargorn, a man who was never able to find anything once he it put down. Five mythology relates that at his death, his body disappeared into the same place where all his belongings had vanished previously, and that he became the ruler of the unhappy land, and took over responsibility for making sure the belongings of other people got lost.
Skeeree (Klaue) Name for the ruined First Folk city discovered by Medwind Song and Nokar the librarian. (For further information, read Bones of the Past.)
Spavvekith Language of the peregrinating Fisher folk whose origins are in the cold and primitive Fisher Province.
Stone Tongue (Klaue) The language of irrevocable contracts and law. Anything said or written in stone tongue is binding to the writer and to the one for whom the writing is done.
taada kaneddu (Hoos) A god-desert or a taboo place. A place from which all magic has fled.
Temple of Horse-Dancers Gold-topped temple just north of Bonton belonging to an ancient cult that worships horses. Only a few of the Horse Dancers remain, and because their rites are secret, little is known of them.
Terrfaire Septoriim Terrfaire was the poet laureate of Bonton in the Age of
Gold. His stories, songs, and poems evoke the long-past beauty and grandeur of the Age of Gold while foreshadowing the sentiment and romanticism of the Humanic Age that followed. His greatest works are widely considered to be the epic fifteen-poem Maradian Bell Cycle, the stark Three Lies and the Maiden, and the sweet, yet sad Trees of Unterlei.
Thessi Ravi Spear-breasted, unreasonable, fiery-tempered female god of war to the Celeidighe Fischebede, most of whose believers reside in Omwimmee Trade and the surrounding region.
Timnett Merchanter The famous merchants’ gate in Bonton.
vigonia A popular, easily cultivated healing herb that also makes an attractive ground cover.
wajeros The paid magic-users of Bonton. Considered by the Bontonards to be the only real professional magic users in the world.
Water Tongue (Klaue) The Klaue spiritual language.
wingmounts The experimental flying horses first developed by the Mottemage of Daane University, and further developed after her death to become one of the most commercial of the properties of that university. (For further information, read Fire in the Mist.)
Afterword
When I wrote these three books, I’d planned to write just this series, The Arhel Novels, for my entire career. I figured I’d write two books a year, and get maybe fifty years of writing out of myself. So I decided I wanted to write a hundred books in the world of Arhel.
Seriously.
I suspect I was trying to justify the insane amount of worldbuilding I’d done on Arhel: maps, languages, cultures, religions, whole biologies, histories of various continents and nations, a couple of cool secrets. I’d really committed to Arhel and the larger world beyond its borders.
Besides, I was thirty when I finished Fire in the Mist, women in my family tend to live a really, really long time, and I figured if I ran true to the family genetics, my characters and I could grow old together in realtime. My great-grandmother lived to be 103, and if she’d been a writer, she’d have been writing the whole time. She was alert and oriented until the last week of her life.
Looking at family genetics, I figured I’d better plan for the long haul, and make sure I was doing something I liked.
So.
I planned Faia traveling outside the Delmuirie Barrier, and had Medwind Song eventually becoming the Mottemage who united male and female magicians in Ariss and finding ways to bring the good bits of civilization to the Hoos, and the good bits of the Hoos to civilization, and had notes for all sorts of human/klaue adventures.
But life is what happens when you’re making other plans, and after Bones of the Past and Mind of the Magic, Baen didn’t want any more Arhel books. So I packed up my notes on the world, and built new worlds.
At some point, during one move or another, I lost all my Ariss notes and worldbuilding.
But I kept building more new worlds with lots more notes.
Over the years, I wrote many more books, a couple huge writing courses, a bunch of short writing courses, earned a man who fit me, had another kid, got older.
And then, years later, I regained the rights to Arhel.
At the time self-publishing was still expensive and labor-intensive, so the rights reversion letters sat in my filing cabinet while I kept on writing courses and books.
And then one day, I discovered that while I was otherwise engaged, self-publishing had gotten easier. And relatively inexpensive.
And I remembered my big plans for Arhel, and though I hadn’t read the books since shortly after I wrote them, I thought, Hey, Arhel! I own all the rights, self-publishing is something that actually makes sense now, and I could write all the books I wanted in Arhel. Once upon a time, I was going to make that world my career. It was a pretty good world.
Only…
You can’t go home again.
I went back and re-read the Arhel trilogy, and I loved the world as much as I ever had. But I was stunned by how much I was no longer the woman who’d written the stories and characters.
I’d changed, my life had changed, and what mattered to me had changed.
I thought the biggest problem I’d face in picking the Arhel series back up would be in rebuilding the details of the world that had gone missing when we moved. I never even considered that the writer of the Arhel novels might have gone missing, too. That she would no longer be me, or I her.
Reading through them, the temptation to rewrite these books was strong. I wanted to fix the things my younger self thought were noble or heroic or magnificent that my current self sees as idiotic (well, that’s the polite version). From the vantage point of time, I could see where I could rip things out, move things around, and everything would be better.
But I don’t believe in rewriting history. You start doing that, and like those Mages and Sages back in Ariss in Fire in the Mist, you forget who you were, and how you got where you are, and the price you had to pay to do it.
Those are terrible things to forget.
When you rewrite history, or you ignore history, you guarantee that you’ll be revisited by the worst of it.
So these books represent who I was and what I knew and thought I knew back when they were written. They’re pretty good stories, they’re time capsules of an idealistic woman with some wrecked premises, and if you jump forward in time to my more recent work, you’ll see where life kicked the crap out of me, woke me up, and forced me to question many, many unexamined assumptions I held about what matters and why it matters. The answers I found led to the betterment of both my existence and my fiction.
At some point, I may revisit this world with new characters. Or it may stay complete as it is.
Either way, every journey has a beginning. This was mine.
Cheerfully,
Holly Lisle
Monday, October 24, 2011
About the Author
HOLLY LISLE has been writing novels professionally since 1991, when she sold Fire in the Mist to Baen Books. The novel went on to win the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel in 1993, sold remarkably well, and stayed in print for about ten years, giving Holly a seriously skewed view of the ease of publishing…
…Which publishing promptly clobbered out of her with later books. In spite of which, she has, at the time of this writing, sold 32 novels commercially, and is both re-releasing many of her novels via self-publishing, and self-publishing her newest novels.
Look for the re-release of Cadence Drake: Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood, to kick off the long-delayed but finally in-progress ten-book Cadence Drake series.
Get her latest book announcements here:
http://hollylisle.com/the-fun-with-teeth-sign-up-page
Lisle also wrote and has been teaching two of the most challenging fiction-writing courses in existence: How To Think Sideways: Career Survival School for Writers, and How To Revise Your Novel: Get the Book You WANT From the One You WROTE.
Get a year of free weekly writing tips and updates on her courses here:
http://hollylisle.com/writer-updates-newsletter
More by Holly Lisle
FICTION
Cadence Drake: Warpaint (coming soon)
Cadence Drake: Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood
The Ruby Key: Moon & Sun
The Silver Door: Moon & Sun
Hawkspar: A Novel of Korre
Talyn: A Novel of Korre
Night Echoes
I See You
Last Girl Dancing
Midnight Rain
Memory of Fire: World Gates
The Wreck of Heaven: World Gates
Gods Old and Dark: World Gates
Diplomacy of Wolves: Secret Texts
Vengeance of Dragons: Secret Texts
Courage of Falcons: Secret Texts
Vincalis the Agitator: Secret Texts
Fire in the Mist: Arhel
Bones of the Past: Arhel
Mind of the Magic: Arhel
Glenraven; (w/ Marion Zimmer Bradley)
In The Rift (w/ Marion Zimmer Bradley)<
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Sympathy for the Devil: Devil’s Point
The Devil and Dan Cooley (w/ Walter Spence): Devil’s Point
Hell on High (w/ Ted Nolan): Devil’s Point
Minerva Wakes
When the Bough Breaks (w/ Mercedes Lackey)
Mall, Mayhem and Magic; (w/ Chris Guin)
The Rose Sea; (with S.M.Stirling)
Curse of the Black Heron
Thunder of the Captains (w/ Aaron Allston)
Wrath of the Princes (w/ Aaron Allston)
WRITING COURSES
How To Think Sideways: Career Survival School for Writers
