Publisher’s note: Ten years ago a young black American mathematician and cryptographer, K. Leslie Steiner, published a comparative translation from several ancient languages of a brief narrative text (c. 900 words) known both as the Culhar’ Fragment and the Missolonghi Codex. That work has prompted several archeological expeditions to find the historical location from which that ancient text most likely originated, most recently one headed by Wellman, Kargowsky, and Kermit. It sets out just as this volume goes to press. In the same ten years Steiner’s ingenious translation methods (highly speculative and mathematically based) have inspired several volumes of stories and novels by Samuel R. Delany about Nevèrÿon, of which this volume—now that the site grows less and less imaginary, more and more real—is the third.