Footnotes

 

 

 

1The deeds of the four have been chronicled in a rare volume, Saint Uldine’s Children.

 

2The Round Table of King Arthur was later inspired by the Cairbra an Meadhan.

 

3The usages of heraldry, as well as the theory and practice of chivalry, were still simple and fresh. They would not attain their full baroque extravagance for centuries to come.

 

4According to legend both Tabbro and Zoltra Bright Star engaged Joald, a submarine giant, to aid in their undertakings, for an unknown compensation.

 

5Chlowod’s grandfather had been a Balearic Etruscan.

 

6The honorifics of the time are modified by a hundred special cases. It is impossible to translate them into contemporary terms with both crispness and accuracy; they will therefore be rendered in more familiar, if simplistic, terms.

 

7The tournament in which armored knights jousted with lances, or fought mock battles, had not yet evolved. Contests of this time and place were relatively mild events: competitions at wrestling, horse-racing, vaulting: events in which the aristocracy seldom if ever competed.

 

8One of the Third Era peoples to inhabit the Elder Isles.

 

9The table, Cairbra an Meadhan, was divided into twenty-three segments, each carved with now unreadable glyphs, purportedly the names of twenty-two in the service of the fabulous King Mahadion. In years to come a table in the style of Cairbra an Meadhan would be celebrated as the Round Table of King Arthur.

 

10Literally: ‘peak on peak’ in one of the precursor tongues.

 

11Whenever the magicians met together, another appeared: a tall shape muffled in a long black cape, with a wide-brimmed black hat obscuring his features. He stood always back in the shadows and never spoke; when one or another of the magicians chanced to look into his face they saw black emptiness with a pair of far stars where his eyes might be. The presence of the ninth magician (if such he were) at first made for uneasiness, but in due course, since the presence seemed to affect nothing, he was ignored, save for occasional side-glances.

 

12In just such a fashion Shimrod was known to be an extension, or alter ego, of Murgen, though their personalities had separated and they were different individuals.

 

13The least in the hierarchy of fairies. First in rank are fairies, then falloys, goblins, imps, finally skaks.

In the nomenclature of Faerie, giants, ogres and trolls are also considered halflings, but of a different sort.

In a third class are merrihews, willawen and hyslop, and also, by some reckonings, quists and darklings.

Sandestins, most powerful of all, are in a class by themselves.

 

14Fairies maintain no specific size indefinitely. When dealing with men they often appear the size of children, seldom larger. When caught unawares, they seem on occasion only four inches to a foot tall. The fairies themselves take no heed of size. See Glossary I.

 

15Fairies share with humans the qualities of malice, spite, treachery, envy and ruthlessness; they lack the equally human traits of clemency, kindness, pity. The fairy sense of humor never amuses its victim.

 

16Gomar: ancient kingdom comprising all of North Hybras and the Hesperian Islands.

 

17A unit of acrimony and malice, as expressed in the terms of a curse.

 

18Old Street, running from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Cantabria, had been laid by the Magdals two thousand years before the coming of the Danaans. According to popular lore every step along Old Street overlooked a battlefield. When the full moon shone at Beltane, ghosts of the slain came out to stand along Old Street and stare at their adversaries across the way.

 

19Two-leg: a semi-contemptuous term applied by the Ska to all other men than themselves: a contraction of ‘two-legged animal’, to designate a middle category between ‘Ska’ and ‘four-leg’. Another common pejorative, nyel: ‘horse-smell’ made reference to the difference in body odor between Ska and other races, the Ska seeming to smell, not unpleasantly, of camphor, turpentine, a trace of musk.

 

20Memorandum: ‘King’, ‘prince’, ‘duke’, ‘lord’, ‘baron’, ‘ordinary’, are used arbitrarily and inexactly to indicate somewhat similar levels of status among the Ska. Functionally, the differences in rank are peculiar to the Ska, in that only ‘king’, ‘prince’, and ‘duke’, are hereditary, and all save ‘king’ may be earned by valor or other notable achievement. Thus, an ‘ordinary’, having killed or captured five armed enemies becomes a ‘knight’. By other exactly codified achievements he becomes a ‘baron’, then ‘lord’, ‘duke’, then finally ‘grand duke’ or ‘prince’. The king is elected by vote of the dukes; his dynasty persists along its direct male lineage, until the line becomes extinct or is voted out of power at a conclave of dukes.

For a brief discussion of Ska history, see Glossary II.

 

21Obviously the expression ‘Chamber of Ancient Honors’ is no more than an approximate translation.

 

22The water-level comes in several forms. The Ska used a pair of wooden troughs twenty feet long with a section four-inches square. Water in the troughs lay perfectly horizontal; floats at each end allowed the troughs themselves to be adjusted to the horizontal. By shifting the troughs in succession, the desired horizontal could be extended indefinitely, with an accuracy limited only by the patience of the engineer.

 

23Falloy: a slender halfling akin to fairies, but larger, less antic and lacking deft control of magic: creatures ever more rare in the Elder Isles.

 

24A fairy fabric woven from dandelion silk.