THE VEIL OF LUNACY

>~The gaol at Castle Efride

My first attempt was a letter to request an interview, and it gained a reply:

Professor Bifurcati:

Your letter of the 9th was happily received. It is my custom to refuse such requests. As, in your case, I do.

Regards,

Hon. Ed. Wunsay

It was good to know that the pithy style of Mistress and Prince had not deserted its author. Otherwise, the note was discouraging.

It did not deter me, however, because historians are not so easily deterred. A friend from my Grey College days had served Furyondy at the Reymend negotiations as an advisor in matters of religion, and I secured an invitation to dine with her at her home in Stump, a village in Wunsay's Barony of Littleberg. On the way, I traveled a route that enabled me to stop, uninvited, near Wunsay’s residence on his mother, Baroness Littleberg’s estate, Castle Elfride, beautifully situated on the dramatic laps of Rhavelle Lake. At an inn on the lakeshore, within sight of the castle gates, I paused my journey and wrote to Wunsay for a second time to request an audience, this time with the inherent insistence of geographical proximity. In closing the note, I mentioned the imminent dinner engagement that I had with my well-informed classmate. Wunsay again replied with the presence of mind that had served him well in Reymend:

My dear Bifurcati:

Were we not gentlemen, I would suspect your letter of harboring a threat. Because we are gentlemen, I give you some gentlemanly advice. The grounds of Castle Elfride are well patrolled, and the patrol extends a mile or two beyond the castle grounds. Remarkably, their gaol is somewhat isolated from the system of justice prevailing elsewhere in my barony. Time, they say, passes indifferently there.

I trust your visit with Wilna Pummenford—whom I know well, and her family—passes enjoyably. I will tell you that I regularly rely on her discretion in this kind of thing. You may rely on anyone you please—except me.

Ceasing all acquaintance,

Hon. Edmore Wunsay, Castle Elfride, Barony of Littleberg

Students, I tell you that, before my receipt of this letter, I had no idea how knife-edged political diplomacy could be. Edmore Wunsay had threatened to lock me up and throw away the key! And though I had (and still have) no personal knowledge of Jolene of Samprastadar and Prince Thrommel IV, I did gain personal respect for the capacity of Wunsay's mistress and prince to discover love despite the perils of diplomatic circumstance. And I better understood Wunsay decision to romanticize their story, too: if you let politics in, it will choke out love like tropical plants choke deciduous ones in warming climes. Of the four principals—Jolene, Thrommel, Wunsay, and Aposnos—each had risked consequences beyond reckoning to realize love as they knew it. Each has paid the price that will be exacted from wonder by a mundane world.

Wunsay had left no doubt that my best interest was to contact him no more. (Writing his biography has been my obsession ever since; there are personal propensities that are peculiar to historians.) Following Thrommel's disappearance and the consequent mooting of the Treaty of Reymend, Wunsay had retired from public life and—after Mistress and Prince—never authored again. Apparently, a remarkable and gifted young man has been scuppered by a world that he discovered to be less worthy than he believed.

Even so, my essential questions needed answering. I could not do without it. I continued on to my way to Wilna and Leyri Pummenford.

>~Breakwalls House

Having been enlisted in Thrommel’s cause at the Treaty of Reymend, Wilna Pummenford—Wilna Dastabrail, as I had known her—was forced to retire from civil service, which in those days did not mean “employed at the public expense” but, rather, engaged in service to civilians and civility.

Following Thrommel's disappearance, some political factions in towns and cities (especially directly across from Veluna along the Verlverdyva River and in other places, too, where the Raoan religion remained in place, rechristened as the Raoan Churches of Furyondy, long after the dissolution of the Imperial Church of Rao) some reviled the supporters of the Unified Kingdom at Reymend and tried to purge them from the civil lists. These attempts almost entirely failed due to the popularity of the “UK” almost everywhere in Furyondy. But they did succeed against civil servants in what were often referred to as the “Raoan towns” on the Velverdyva, such as in the city of Kissail (on Temton Water). They were especially successful in their purge of “the prototypically Raoan, endowedly supreme, easy and comfortable, equilibrant though supernumerary Wordward College” (as its brochure has it); whose well-appointed viceregal campus rests only one mile west of Kissail. At Wordward, the Raoan faction among its patrons, administrators, academics, and students bullied, disrupted, threatened, and agitated the college into dismissing or dispelling anyone that had supported the Romantics at Reymend. There was no resisting, and several students, staff, and even trustees lost their posts. This was an especially hard hit on Professor Wilna Dastabrail Pummenford, whose home at Stump was only one hundred miles from Wordward, so that the college had let her divide her time between her academical and domestical residences, a grace that she found inimitable by any other institution. Faced with choosing between family and academy, “Dastagirl” (as we used to call her) chose family. “Is it really a choice?” she had said.

But what I wish to tell you—in memoriam of the sweet, zephyred, and star-lighted summer air that had nestled in the fields of Furyondy that night—is that the Pummenfords placed warm lanterns in the windows of their home at night to welcome visitors like me. The wagoneer knew the way. Indeed, few drivers within ten miles of Stump do not know the way to familiar Breakwalls House.

The Pummenford home is less a mansion than they could afford; more complimentary to the High Street, where Wilna and Leyri chose to live among neighbors and not in palatial isolation. Of all the domestic arts that people may pursue, the Pummenfords had chosen hospitality. Breakwalls was a gathering of what is best about home, hostel, and hotel.

I did not ask Wilna about the misfortunately feminine abatement of her career at Wordward, her life's work, and her dedicated mind in favor of family and village. But I think she would have said that she had known the risks when she took up the Romantics’ cause. How could she regret it?

Life with Leyri at Breakwalls—the house Wilna had redesigned so to integrate family and guests as one acquaintance—was a close compensation. The Pummenford children, grown and gone when I visited, had been legendarily happy and brave. Life for the remaining Pummenfords was now centered on guests and rustic neighbors. Breakwalls House was a destination for all their friends. The world had no accommodation for Wilna Dastrabrail, so she accommodated the world.

Hospitality at Breakwalls comes with one stipulation: bring books. Wilna still publishes articles explaining Jolene's objectives to people who will not listen, and she asks for help to collect the resources she needs. I brought Moons of Verbobonc and The Shrine at Shandalanar, which provide perspective on Rao's place among other Velunar religions. May they prove useful to scholarly endeavor.

I did not burden our three nights and two days together with shop talk. Only on my departure did I show Wilna my list of questions and Wunsay's reply to my second request, where her discretion is relied on. She read the list, smiled a little, and promised a written reply. I hold it now in my hand.

Dear Annalo:

I do not know Edmore Wunsay anymore. I see him regularly; I am his friend; but the days when I knew him, when he was young, help me little now. He has hidden himself so deeply within Castle Elfride that no one, save two that you know, really know him anymore. If he ever wants or needs me, I will instantly respond. If you could see him, you would know why.

If you drag him into any controversy or publicity, you will betray me. I request you particularly not to do that. A greater unkindness may hardly be imagined. His constitution is that of a cardboard cutout, needing shelter from the rain. You, my friend, threaten rain. The world threatens rain. Leave him alone, for the sake of whatever gods still exist.

Although it sounds vicious, I have made arrangements to very effectively deny the contents of this letter, if I deem it necessary. I will end your academic career, if I deem it necessary. You are dealing with people whose loyalty to one another surpasses morality; which does not, come to think of it, say half enough.

This is not a threat. These are the terms of the contract by which I will tell you the truth, which I mean to do. Implicitly, Edmore means me to do it. It’s a risky business. Frankly, I am surprised that he undertakes it. Probably, he fears that the true villains of this piece are within a few years of escaping forever, and he wishes to drop a bread crumb trail leading to the truth. He believes in words, and he knows that historians preserve them. At least, the good ones do. Don't falsify anything, Annalo. Don't you dare.

I can hardly guess what you are driving at. Your questions seem innocuous, almost gossipy. Nothing about your published studies suggests that you are interested in gossip. What thesis could you possibly be working on? Probably, you are after the truth about what happened at Reymend. Oh, my gods, dear underclassman, you were always like that!

The pursuit of truth is for the desperate, yes. But do not give in to despair. You have friends, if you need them. You have Leyri and me.

I wrote the above after I wrote my answers to your questions. Answering was fun. People don't think enough about what matters, and though the four romantics matter to me more than anything but husband and children, you made me recall them in detail for the first time in many years. I know people who knew them, in a way. You did not know them but you are an historian. If you can write their story as it mostly was, it will be, I think, in good time.

~Questions and answers

Q: Did Jolene really disrupt the negotiations by sitting at the table beside Thrommel? Why?

A: Oh, yes, yes, yes! You are confused on this score because some press accounts described the changes as "planned," while others made Jolene out to be politically simple. Others made the story into an account of Jolene's naïveté and innocence in love.

If any publicists knew, none dared print the real story. Jolene's assumption of a place at the table beside Thrommel was a serious and disruptive ploy against Hazen's attempts to dominate Thrommel during negotiations. In those days, it was simply impossible to speak an unkindness in public about Jolene. The people would not let it stand. This meant that even the Religionists▽“Religionists” and “Royalists” were supporters of, respecively, the Archclericy of Veluna and the Unified Kingdom. (Eds) were forced to play the Lady's game. I am sure the Archbishop of Veluna City had warned them against her—he had been present at Castle Estival—but he would still have known little about what she was capable of. When Jolene switched places with Thrommel at table, it announced her to those present as a potent player. Yet, assiduously, we all pretended it was nothing more than the impulse of a doting bride.

In the beginning, the negotiations at Reymend were dominated by the theocrats. They had dictated the seating arrangements, which were unusual because the two heads of state sat, not opposite to, but beside one another at the head of the table. Each nation's representatives then became opposite sides of the long rectangle, with the Religionists sitting to Hazen's right and the Royalists to Thrommel's left. Advisors were seated behind the chief negotiators along the room's walls (where I sat).

The advantage in this for Hazen was that he had immediate access to Thrommel. He used this, not only to direct Thrommel's thoughts and attention, but to make a public display of friendliness and familiarity in view of the gallery. Everyone in the negotiating room knew that, following Chendl’s declaration of the spiritual / temporal distinction, the Archclericy and the Kingdom were political rivals or even unfriendlies. This situation was more damaging to Hazen, because the public saw Thrommel as motivated by love, not politics.

Hazen's chair beside the Royal Provost allowed him to appear a friend and to speak to Thrommel in a lowered voice, so that only the two could hear. Each day, the newspapers printed drawings of Hazen in this posture, whispering friendlily to Thrommel. When discrepant accounts of their comments appeared in public, those making Hazen out a friend to Thrommel were more likely to be believed.

Hazen's public popularity at that point was less than what it has since become. The people truly loved Thrommel and Jolene, especially Jolene. She was new to everyone, a dove from the blue, an innocent in everyone's eyes, the brave girl who had kissed her man in the presence of his army. Thrommel was considered her protector, the hero prince guarding the sheltered maiden. Hazen had no defense against that perception, except to appear as Thrommel's benefactor and Jolene's friend.

Hazen at the negotiating table was a deliberate distraction to the royal provost. Thrommel was no fool, but no one can listen to two conversations at once, and Hazen had the habit of whispering to Thrommel at key points in the discussions. The goal here was confusion, to force clarifications and repeat discussions of as many points as possible. Hazen believed that time was his friend and that he would, in time, reduce the public's affection for Jolene and so defeat the attempt to subject his theocracy to a king.

The solution to Hazen's ploy was astonishingly simple, but unimaginable to most. If Jolene were the cause of Hazen's discontent—she linked Thrommel to the Plar of Veluna’s Celestial Order of the Moons—and Hazen was pretending to be her friend, then she had the power to position herself in his way.

Because I credit Jolene with this intervention, I ought to justify my authority. I was two levels removed from the decision itself, and I was a member of Wunsay's team, mind and soul. For this reason, my account is reliable. None of us knew Jolene at that time. Wunsay had not troubled himself with a negotiating team at Castle Estival—he had represented Thrommel by himself. At Reymend, we all understood the personal significance for Edmore of Jolene's occupation of Thrommel's heart. Of course, we always had understood that Wunsay's dedication to Thrommel was hopeless, but we still considered Jolene an unnecessary cruelty, a possibility that we had come to hope, after five years or more, would never happen. None of us wanted to suddenly find that Jolene was a political player on par with Wunsay himself. Neither did we suspect the depth of Wunsay's attachment to Jolene. We had them very wrong, and of the four, Jolene was the last we loved.

It was Wunsay himself who silenced our reservations about Thrommel's girl. When we objected that the lady should not be seated where she was being sat, that she was not up to it, Edmore stated very clearly that it had been the lady's idea, and we had better get used to her contributions, because there would be more of them. I both remember this and have it in my journal.

On the morning of the eighth day of negotiations, one of Thrommel's party went missing at the table. This was not unusual. Representatives were often busy and would seat themselves later, during a scheduled break.

Ten or fifteen minutes into the session, just as Hazen began whispering into Thrommel's ear, Jolene entered the room. She had dressed in symbols of innocence: I mean to say, she had dressed to kill. I wish I could remember the costume, but I only remember the effect. Very few people knew her then, and she could represent herself as she wished. She appeared not a courtier but an ingenue, a father's darling girl, a party's most decorous candle, a prince's pure fondness, any man's fiancée. She flitted through the room and straight into Thrommel's arms, hugging him unashamedly, as if she did not know the difference between a negotiating table and a drawing room at home. Thrommel's half of the room stood and applauded: we had been clued to this.

Hazen's party groaned and bemoaned the interruption. Jolene had elicited their mistake. In the eyes of anyone who cared for her, the princess must be allowed her display of affection. By breaking so rapidly to Thrommel, Jolene had caused an unrehearsed moment from the religionist side of the table. Thrommel, like the rest of us, was ready.

"What?" cried the prince against the complainants. "Would you have a man rebuke his fiancée for hugging him? My heart, I tell you, the political world is not so unkind. Ladies and gentleman, make a place for my bride. There is an open seat just there. Slide down one place, everyone, and make a chair for Lady Samprastadar. It is love itself, and not an idle prince, that beseeches you."

The royalists moved as one, one place down the table and into the open chair. Thrommel moved down too. Jolene sat, as if unconsciously, in his empty place, between the Prince and the Canon at the very summit of the arrangements.

Hazen had clearly considered that Jolene would sit to Thrommel's left. When Thrommel seated Jolene at the head of the table, between he and Hazen, just as if any Lady from Anywhere belonged there, Hazen for a moment lost composure. His expression was visibly framed to object, and someone from the religionist side did. That snapped the canon to attention. Every shred of his negotiating strategy hung on seeming friendly to Jolene. This was a setback, but the logic was unchanged.

"Silence, pray!" he gestured abruptly to his adherents. They silenced. A few seconds' pause was enough for Hazen to grip his emotions.

"Reason, Peace, and Serenity are always graced by beauty," he said, bowing to Jolene. "Lady Samprastadar, are you perfectly comfortable? A cushion? A glass of water?"

Hazen's hold over the negotiations was broken, and everyone perceived it. What we did not perceive was how thoroughly this was true. The Canon thought he was seated beside a pretty girl. (Let me put this parenthetically, because it is my bias—but Hazen was at that time a man of only fifty years, and I believe he thought he could charm her. Of course, I tend to like ideas so savory that they simply must be true.) Thrommel looked at Jolene's father, the Plar, seated two places to Hazen's right, and smiled. Well, smiled is a reserved way of saying that they laughed. Hazen was seated immediately beside the most cutting blade in Reymend. He did not know it, but he would find out.

This is the reason why so many differing press accounts appeared the following morning. Overnight, Hazen wished to make it seem as though Jolene had made an awkward blunder in political protocol by entering the room; that Thrommel had not known how to save her blushes; and that Hazen had sacrificed his place to cover the lady's embarrassment. But regardless of what was believed, Jolene's popularity was unaffected or even enhanced. The negotiations were changed forever. If Hazen wished to comment to Thrommel now, he had to do so through Jolene, or write a folded note and pass it by her. Jolene was perfectly able to keep to herself a comment or note for as long as she deemed it prudent. She might even paraphrase a word or two. Moreover, Hazen was no longer seated beside Thrommel but between Jolene, on his left, and the plar, two seats to his right. Of the four people nearest him, only the Archbishop of Veluna City was his ally. A smart fly was Hazen, but only a fly and caught in a trap.

Q: Was Jolene really such a skilled diplomat at that age, when so inexperienced?

A: The answer is yes and no. Really, it would have been better, for all the royalists, had she been thirty-three, not twenty-three, when the Reymend negotiations began. The Treaty of Reymend, once finished, left Thrommel believing he needed a military victory to cement his throne. Given ten years' experience, Jolene could have negotiated that need out of existence, and Thrommel would have been slower to put himself at risk.

Of course, at thirty-three, she would have been the Supreme Mistress, not the plar's second daughter, and Thrommel would have been thirty-nine, not twenty-nine, when they first met. Their love may have failed in the face of more wizened concerns. It is a difficult thing to contemplate. Would anyone wish that Jolene and Thrommel had never loved for no better reason than that a lost kingdom might exist?

Historians, however, must put hypotheticals out of mind. The answer is yes, nothing about her reputation is exaggerated. When her father, Count Lorrish, abdicated to make Jolene the Supreme Mistress (the title given to women that are plars), he was subjected to harsh, private inquisition about the decision. The count was a famous, even notorious politician, and we feared we would miss his command. "Nevermind," said the Plar, "my daughter says it has been five years since anyone taught her anything. Well, I believe experience may teach her something yet, but that will only take her further than she already is beyond me. She has Wunsay. Politically, they are already a wedded pair. No one should desire to stand in the way of what they may achieve together."

In Lorrish's mind, the only reasons for concern were positioning and timing. If Jolene were made supreme mistress, then Hazen might demand that she be seated in the plar's place, two seats to Hazen's right, with no one between the Raoan high priest and Thrommel. Jolene slew that dragon, too, with her uncanny sword of Saint George. First, she accepted the plar's place, apart from her groom. Then,

"I have a letter from my new father. The King thinks of visiting Reymend because he misses his son and daughter. Since we now have occasion, let us reserve this high place for him. The King of Furyondy sits, according to protocol, at the provost's right hand—precisely the place I am vacating. Let a high chair be set there, awaiting his arrival, and reminding us of our unified temporal lord, the king of us all." There was no speaking against this. What was Hazen to say, "A pox on the King and his standing"? Belvor then hurriedly post-dated the mentioned letter.

As Count Lorrish had anticipated, abdicating as plar in favor of his daughter drove a final wedge through the Velunar delegation at Reymend. Officially, the religionist College of Bishops and the royalist Celestial Order of the Moons were a joint entity negotiating on behalf of Veluna. In actuality, of course, the Order wanted union with Furyondy and the political destruction of the archclericy. Although Jolene's place between Thrommel and Hazen became but an empty chair, that would serve Thrommel well enough. In return, Samprastadar's lady could now rightfully insist on unfettered access to the Archclericy's negotiating tactics. Equally—unlike her father—she had irreproachable and unlimited access to Thrommel. The Archclericy could circumvent this, but only to an extent. Whenever they introduced a secret at table, Jolene could correctly insist that she be informed of their intentions and then delay or hurry proceedings until she got a concession.

It was at this point—five months in—that the negotiations threatened to truly crawl. No less, it was the point at which the Archclericy lost all hope except prayer. (That's funny, because they had long since lapsed from that special virtue.) Jolene overmastered them, gradually. Whenever they sought to sidetrack and delay the negotiating table's proceedings—which remained their one hope of preventing union—the Supreme Mistress would simply throw the rail switch again by counseling them privately. To see them return from private conferences with Jolene was a stage delight for the royalists. A three hundred years old political power had been rendered abject, crestfallen, morose. I do not know whether to credit or mock them for remaining, to the very last, as much a negatory stonewall as they could be. But they managed it, as best they could. Things dragged on to their inevitable conclusion.

Annalo, there were no superlatives surpassing Jolene, even at that age. Evils may overcome her—they have done, I suppose—but those are not superlatives. Even though you dress them in clerical garb, they are only evils from dwelling places far below the Supreme Mistress of the Celestial Order. Anyone may murder once at midnight. A sun shines constantly by day. Jolene shone. She was a sun.

Q: Did Jolene really call Hazen "a wadded Canon"?

A: Ha ha ha! Oh Lord, I must laugh again: Ha ha ha! Actually, no, she didn't.

Near the end of negotiations, Hazen had resorted to simply refusing to agree to anything. The treaty was finished, really. Hazen's gambit had failed: Jolene and Thrommel, and the new kingdom they represented, were as popular as ever. Taverns in Reymend and Verbobonc Towns rang with songs about the new era. Wunsay, stopping in one of the boozier establishments with his usual accompanist—his sister or wrong-sexed wife, Ferrica Aposnos—pronounced one of the songs to be the new national anthem. By the next day, it actually was being printed and sold as such! Wunsay hummed it all day at the negotiating table. Oh, lords, those were the days.

Hazen had been crumpled from a political force to empty pride. He simply would not agree to the last details of the treaty or have it signed. Hours would go by with him saying nothing at all. The Religionists would shout whatever objections came to mind, out of anger and perversity. It is difficult to finish off a clericy in its death throes.

Everyone was frustrated; everyone had said things in anger. Especially Wunsay, who said things so scythingly that only the meaning was audible. Every cut only thickened the religionists' skin. They grew impenetrable.

I do not believe that Jolene intended to say what she did. She is, by nature, a reconciler, meant to help friends, not break enemies. Having reduced the Archclericy of Veluna to a pile of toppled ceiling vaults, she would have helped them collect the old stones, if she could. But the Archcleric of Rao refused to see the pieces on the ground. She interrupted him in one of his patented, disgruntled musings.

"Enough of this!" she said, slapping the table. "I will not have these men and women, citizens of my husband's new kingdom"—her gesture included the entire table—“be subjected any longer to the damp squibs sprouting from this impotent wad of a Canon. Either he shoots, or he leaves the bed! And if he cannot find strength for either, then I would free the King's subjects from his presence. He may sit there for the eternity that he loves so ostentatiously, if he chooses."

Hazen sat unmoved, accepting the final insult as though he had been waiting for it. Jolene led the Royalist party from the table. The religionists remained, alone and unhappy. When you are beaten, you want to go home, not sit at table with an old man. The following day, the Treaty of Reymend was signed.

Jolene had a fine sense of humor, a bit too steeped in learning, perhaps, for most. Thrommel and Edmore revelled in crude puns on various physical levels, and she had no doubt picked up the syntax from them. Had either the provost or the privy councilor bemoaned the "impotent wad of a Canon," it would have produced outrage. Jolene was, by now, well reputed as a political serial killer, but her manners were always demure. When she produced her pun, the whole table, all around, was stunned. We royalists tried to stifle our laughter, but when we saw half the religionists doing the same, we knew the final score.

The religionists had each been chosen for loyalty to the Archclericy, but even loyalists know when it’s quits. By refusing to progress the treaty, Hazen was only risking that Thrommel would punish the Church of Rao, perhaps by refusing its establishment in the Unified Kingdom. Hazen had become blind to the future. All he saw was backwards and black.

So, anyway, Jolene did not say that Hazen was "a wadded Canon." She said, "an impotent wad of a Canon." I just enjoyed playing with you on that.

Annalo, there is one thing you did not ask that I desire to say. As a lifelong friend of Edmore Wunsay and a good friend now of his sister, Ferrica Lamsher, and her husband, there is a role that these two played that is difficult to get into history books. As I have said, the primary advantage enjoyed by Jolene and Thrommel was their public popularity. It lasted until the very end or, if anything, grew greater. How was it so?

Three or four nights a week—I was a part of most of them—Edmore would have dinner with his sister, and following the dinner, we would go out to "relax" in one of the many public houses in Reymend and Verbobonc. These were not merely social calls. Edmore would ply a few drinks and begin regaling the tavern with tales of his Mistress and Prince. He was no less gifted by the spoken word than he would prove by the written. Moreover, everyone knew who his "sister" was—Ms. Ferrica, to the public; Ferrica, to me and the other negotiators; "Ferrie," to Edmore. A farmer from the northern Lorrish Valley.

Ferrica has no formal education. She speaks as an ordinary Velunar to the Velunars. She is also—I cannot believe I surprise you in this—the sincerest person, woman or man, whom I have ever known. When she spoke of "Lady Jolene," whom she had known since she was nine, that lady became true life.

It was not the Jolene we others knew. When Ferrica and the Lady of Samprastadar had played as children, it was more commonly at the Aposnos' farmhouse than at the manor. There, Jolene could be herself, as she would have been, apart from the influence of her father and his purposes. Is it any wonder that the girls loved each other? Jolene depended on Ferrica, and Ferrica responded to that dependency.

As Edmore arranged it, it was Ferrica's Jolene that became the Jolene of the people. Do not concern yourself with explaining the tabloid papers. It was Ferrica's intimate friend that the people knew; and when Edmore wrote his book, they recognized its subject, because they already knew her.

OK—what I want to say is this. Jolene is a complicated subject. To her enemies, she was a secret spider. To her acquaintance, a spider caught in her own web. To Ferrica, Edmore, and Thrommel, she was Leen, Jolie, Joey. The problem is, no one but the two friends still living really knows what the endearments meant. She was habitually reserved and careful. Edmore wrote that both he and Thrommel were captivated by her immediately. I do think there was some sort of signal, but she knew so few people before Reymend, and after then, she retreated to the safety of her special friends.

Some evenings, when she was safe in a corner of the big foyer or the ballroom of Leeward House and near the other romantics, she would laugh loudly enough be heard widely. If you looked, you saw a different Jolene. I mean it as a compliment when I say that she looked usual, typical, approachable, calmly pretty; and yet—if you knew her—with all that mind.

I tell you it, so that you will know that Jolene is today an unknowable thing. Each of your questions concerned her. I hope you don’t mean to biograph the woman. Your scholarship always has been geared to what is needed, not to what you wanted.

The world does not need a biography of Jolene. The whole truth of her resides within Ferrica Lamsher and Edmore Wunsay, and they will not help you. Everything else is loose ends, and if you tie them up, that will be as you please, and not as they were.

There are many—I may include myself—who explain her politics. Pretty successfully, I think. There is good reason why none of us has moved beyond. To know Jolene personally, I think Edmore's book is pretty accurate. It sounds like my tavern nights with him and Ferrica. I emphasize: when Ferrica was present, no lies were passed. If you even thought about fabricating or embellishing her friend, Ferrica's look of reproach would shock you. I only wish that I had written all that stuff down. It turns out to have been more important than the treaty itself. Heh.

Come to Breakwalls again. Sometimes, Breakwalls just misses people straight away, and it misses you. So do Leyri and I. Besides, I did not think you looked entirely well. Your eyes were fairly good, but your body looked worry-ragged. That's a bachelor's disease. You have no idea how practiced I am at curing it, but you must come here and stay three weeks to receive the benefit.

Remembering the Grey days,

Wilna Pummenford, Breakwalls, Stump, Littleberg

Thrommel

Readers, it was a bit unnerving to read how easily Wilna Dastabrail had understood my mood—"desperate," "worry-ragged." As you are increasingly aware, the circumstances of writing this autograph are unpleasant, even ominous. A darkness is at its margins that will not be enlightened; a monstrous intent touches every page. Even Dastagirl had edged on a threat of violence.

Of course, since these pages will be read by a number of people that would just about comprise a small seminar at an obscure college, I run no risk of fouling D-girl's injunction against publicity and controversy. I am only sorry to hear that Edmore Wunsay, who once took on the world, now needs castle walls to shelter from it. You may call that weakness. No doubt, he is vulnerable. But hearts are vulnerable things; and perhaps he retains his, despite the efforts of many. I am almost able to say the same.

After Thrommel's disappearance—no one wants to call it his demise—the world got on as it could, as my history must too. Yet, in many ways, you, my companions in the picaresque, never got to see Thrommel IV in a life-sized portrait. Tor Fens, yes, his universally acclaimed, crowning victory. But battles depend on circumstance at least as much as on planning. Thrommel wrote treatises about that, which was why he believed that, having communicated his plans to his generals, he was of no more use tactically behind the lines. He was needed where his influence could be instant, at the place where the battle was floundering.

In battle, he said—especially in times of great danger—he would become calm, like the ocean in a hurricane when a diver goes deeper and under. "Actually, I don't think I'm quite right in the head that way. I need people to tell me when running is a good idea. I had a soldier take an arrow through the eye for me. She was grabbing my horse's reins and saying, 'Prince, we need to go.' That, you see, is hellishly unnatural, because I'm sure that the archer had aimed at me.

"If my calm comes from the heavens, then it must come from Hextor, who saves only those who will bring more death. Always, I seek to salvage a fight and ask my soldiers to die for it. My father cannot understand why I do not pray to Heironeous. Isn't it obvious? A lost battle always seems to me to have a last hope of reorganization and salvation, a final chance to force it into the history books. But if your soldiers no longer see it, you must yield to the larger wisdom. Else you rally them to death for a victory only you ever saw."

If there was a war, Thrommel knew that, as a prince, he had already failed. He wanted not the power that he had—to salvage a desperate situation in battle—but to keep people safe from such desperation. Perhaps that's why he needed Jolene and Wunsay. Thrommel was an intelligent man, near enough to Jolene's equal so that no one would notice ordinarily. But he was not quick; he pondered and made sure. If Jolene and Wunsay—the brilliant ones—could know his objectives, they could keep him from wars. It was Thrommel's generosity—more than any other, that word describes him—that made him want to rid the world of its need for his greatest talent.

He was King Belvor IV's only child. It was as if the gods had said, you have this golden one, and you shall have no other. When Thrommel vanished, it was not a only a prince, an only son, a provost, and a marshal that was gone; it was all hope in those few gods that believed humanity could make it.

Thrommel’s death and the Unified Kingdom’s failure reduced the central Flanaess to so much mistrust and misgiving that, when the Horned Society conquered the Shield Lands in 579cy, Furyondy and Dyvers did nothing at all. Four years later, when Iuz invaded in turn, the Shield Knight Commander, Earl Holmer, distrusted King Belvor so extremely that he chose to defend, his capital, Critwall, with only his knights rather than let Furyondian soldiers in the gates to assist. That fabulous error made the looming invasion of Furyondy inevitable: the Greyhawk Wars had begun.

Another monstrous threat existed south of Furyondy, where the memory of the Elemental Evil horrified Verbobonc still. Even while the Treaty of Reymend was in negotiation, barely months after Thrommel’s victory at Tor Fens, rumors that the demon queen Zuggtmoy was a haunt in the black temple’s depths rescinded Verbobonc’s hopes of safety and peace. The prescience of those rumors was proved by the reappearance of the Evil in 579cy. After that, the viscount’s decision to watch the fell temple from Homlett Castle, purposely built nearby, lead him to withdraw Verbobonc’s military patrols from the Gnarley Forest and the Kron Hills, which left the elves and gnomes unprotected. The public received the proclamation that “all enemies of the viscounty, both imaginable and otherwise” had been eliminated even more skeptically, however, than was customary. No one in Verbobonc would find safety by allying with Furyondy or Veluna, either, because their lingering suspicions about the Unified Kingdom’s demise meant that an alliance with one risked provoking the other.

And yet, less than a decade earlier there had been hope. The Treaty of Reymend had awaited only the Canon of Veluna’s signature to annul the Archclericy altogether; the Velunar theocrats were to be restored to their spiritual and priestly calling; the Celestial Order of the Moons would govern Veluna in the name of Furyondy’s king, and the Unified Kingdom, not Veluna, would assist Verbobonc in its defense against the border monsters. But the kingdom had failed; Prince Thrommel was presumably killed; the Celestial Order was subject again to the canon’s authority; and there was no hope of safety in the forests and hills.

These are the inconvenient truths that historians methodically fail to recognize when they speak of King Belvor and Canon Hazen as friends and allies against Iuz, of Verbobonc’s viscount as the canon’s “willing vassal,” and of Veluna and Furyondy as beacons of hope and bastions of goodness against darkness and danger. Nothing about any of this is true.

The truth is different. The Treaty of Reymend’s abrogation had deprived the central Flanaess of a security like none in place since Furyondy’s viceroyalty. Historians have said that the liberation of Furyondy and Veluna in 254cy had restored peace and decency to decadent Ahlissa, but how can it be so? The concave illusion has shown the troubles that roiled the Flanaess for almost two hundred years following the independence movement’s beginning. Never in that time was peace known there. And lo! my scholars watching against credulity, I remind you: although the illusion was mine, the history was taken from Histoire, C’estclos’ impeccable, magisterial history not of peace but of commerce and war.

What else would it be? In all that time, no arrow had ever flown for freedom, no offer of independence was ever freely made. The upshot of independence was that nations took free advantage; whether at the behest of monarchs, princes, priests, or merchants hardly signified. All were set free. None of the liberators questioned freedom’s utility, because freedom had come to a progressive empire, and progress required freedom.

What did freedom mean? Was it significant that Furyondy had first tested its bid for independence by seizing the Ahlissan tithe? The tithe was a due tax; it may as well have been a tea party. Furyondian revolutionaries preached freedom but said not on whose terms, and “Why not on mine?” they thought.

Freedom is mine, they thought, although (it would seem obvious) no one living among others may freely gain.

My reach must ever exceed my grasp, they wrote, or what’s a heaven for? Oh! is it then for attainment? Is it for apprizing? A strange gospel!

(From among the wondering students, a hand is timidly raised)

Excuse me, Professor?

(Dazed and confused but returning to his senses)

Yes?

You said that the Shield Knight Commander’s mistaken decision to defend Critwall alone against Iuz made the invasion of Furyondy inevitable, so the Greyhawk Wars had begun. If you could skip all this freedom stuff and get back to that, it would be OK by me, because that’s where Iuz and Doraka’a come in, and our adventure comes after that.

As you wish. Although, I may ask you, before we return to our history and leave off the romance, to rehearse where the death of Prince Thrommel has left us, in 570cy?

Well, consulting my notes, Prince Thrommel was gone, the Unified Kingdom was abrogated, Veluna was nearly beheaded, the six nations didn’t trust one another, there were monsters everywhere, and Iuz had observed it all, I think.

Yes, precisely. If I may refine things a bit. Since the beginning of our history, I have maintained that the Flanaess was a monstrous continent conquered for Oeridian glory; the Vale of Luna was refashioned into a Raoan land; the Raoan imperial civil service was prepared to be a theocracy; the High Canon of Rao broke troth with the Prince of Veluna and declared the independent Archclericy of Veluna; a parade of independences for the former vassal states followed, leading to violence across the Flanaess; Furyondy allowed Keoland’s conquest and occupation of Veluna for eight decades because it served the king’s interests then liberated Veluna when Keoland’s aggression threatened Furyondy too; the liberation of Veluna lead to a serious attempt to displace its theocracy and restore secular government; the archclericy survived this threat and, in the words of ◒Histoire◓, “the Velunar College of Bishops convened in Mitrik to decide whether to break from the kingdom” of Furyondy for the second time, in 446cy. In my illusion, I celebrated this re-declaration with a fireworks finale rising high into the concavity’s sky.

I ask you to consider, if the Archclericy of Veluna had been so near to a new subjugation to Furyondy that it needed to declare its independence once more, how close to subjugation had it been?

Very?

Of the two independence declarations, in 254- and 446cy,/span>. which is more directly related to modern Veluna and the Greyhawk Wars?

The second one?

Why?

Because it’s in between.

Sweet gods in heavens, yes, it is in between. And though you may think I am condescending, I remind you that historians persistently miss the fact. Why is 254cy so emphasized, when it was nearly cast into oblivion more than one hundred fifty years ago? The question closely relates to other points that I dispute. Why is the Canon of Veluna’s equivalence to the High Canon of Rao so essential? Why was the Crook of Rao lost, found, and placed in the canon’s hands? Why is Luna mechanical in Word of Incarnum? The only answer is that the Canon of Veluna’s authority must be perceivably divine and eternal. The necessity of it gets very near to the heart of the matter.

It is not obvious that something must be eternal to be divine. A blessing given today was not apparent yesterday but is divine all the same. The appearance of divinity is what’s necessary, and that is the problem.

It is very difficult to find a time when the canon appears to be a blessing. Whenever you inquire about it, you are referred to another time until you confront eternity. Apart from eternity, the canon’s holiness appears somewhat dubious. Nothing in the past as I’ve written it recommends his holiness, so his sanctity and, in reality, his relevance to us must date to the history that we recommence in our next scenario. There he will appear for the first time as what he claims to have always been: a saint, a sovereign, a monarch, a theocrat.

I interrupted the history of his life and works to tell the romance of Mistress and Prince for this reason: so you may see how it will end. No one can write about history without a knowledge of where it is going, which is why the history of a recent time will be preliminary. But you, my allotted prisoners paroled by a dark fate, know in advance that Edmore Wunsay’s romance ends badly and is historiographically reliable. I tell you, too, that things will get worse. Prince Thrommel’s disappearance in 570cy coincided with Iuz’s escape from a demiplane under Castle Greyhawk, where he had been imprisoned since 505cy. Having his freedom, he hated Greyhawk and its friends. When he saw them frightened by monsters and ineffective against the puny Hierarchs of the Horned Society, it gave him ideas. Did he not have, if he could command them, the Horned Society’s army of discontented hobgoblins at hand? He did. This was his time.

The dismay of good folk following the prince’s disappearance would have seemed to Iuz, a god they had dared imprison and then failed to contain, much like the eternal goading by good folk of vanquished evil everywhere, like our disparagement the “red glowing eyes of the Pomarj that had look back to their ‘birthright’ and sought to reclaim it.” Directed at the demigod, we may as well have boasted:

To the Imp Lord Iuz.

In the Enfeebled Palace of Insanity Where He Squats over Sewers and Shit-gutters Wretchedly Shovelled in Hell.

In the Vaporous Stink and Cesspool's Belch of his Capital, Doraka’a.

In the Deranged Empire of the Identical Demented Enemy Doomed to Die Spitting Bile from the Wounds the Righteous Shall Visit upon His Deformities Moral and Physical.

Dear Sir, come and get us.

So, he did.

~The canonical apotheosis

In 438cy, after eighty-six years of military occupation, liberation from Keoland came to Veluna but did not restore the archclericy immediately. In the interum, a return to secular government was favored by Furyondy, the liberator, whose victorious armies had been formed into a cauldron "keeping Veluna safe" from its enemy by commanding strategic locations in the Fals Gap, the Velverdyva River basin, the Lortmil Mountains, and the Viscounty of Verbobonc. All of these were occupied by the King of Furyondy's men.

The ensuing contest between king and canon over the political future of Veluna lasted for eight years, until a conclave of Raoan bishops gathered in the Eademer Battistero to warn Veluna that she was choosing "apostasy” in her fling with secular government. The Velunar people were abandoning their god. The accusation was the last resort of the theocrats, whose political and spiritual powers had been spent by eighty years of national calamity. But the popularity of the bishops in contrast was high, especially in the south, and almost no one wanted to see the canon humiliated irredeemably. Chastened, the folk of the vale repented from secularism. But the Eademer Concordat, published by the bishops, did not return power to the archclericy as it had been. Public discontent with theocracy was rife. The people's love for the Raoan church and their grievances against the archclericy were a crucible in which a new archclericy would be formed at the behest of the bishops. The Raoan theocracy's restoration was equally its reformation.

The preparations for this historical crucible were depicted in my concave illusion. In 254cy, Veluna’s double-faced declaration of sovereignty—first turned toward Rauxes, then toward Dyvers—was never formally acknowledged by any other nation: not by the Great Kingdom, by Furyondy, by any of the other former vassal states, or even (except begrudgingly) by the archclericy’s own aristocratic Celestial Order of the Moons. Any acknowledgement of Veluna’s independence would have jeopardized the feudal trade routes between Furyondy and the Great Kingdom that every nation depended on; an economic jeopardy that took two centuries of wars and trade wars to resolve, until Furyondy’s liberation of Veluna ended the ambitions of both the Great Kingdom and Keoland in the central Flanaess.

Despite all this trouble, the timing of Veluna’s bid for sovereignty in 254cy had had been remarkably serendipitous in some ways. The Great Kingdom’s empire, against all expectations, was discovered to be politically unstable and militarily incapable of suppressing rebelion. Yet the cleanliness of the many rebellions that followed must not be overstated. The king of Furyondy had intended to be the prince of Veluna, and the consequence of that failure was fifty years of trade war between two imperfectly sovereign nations. Their troubles spilled over into other bids for independence by nations nearer Rauxes and the heartlands of Ahlissa that, in Keoland, prompted territorial ambitions north of the Lortmil Mountains

When Furyondy afforded its supposed ally, Veluna, no support or protection against it, Keoland settled in to occupy half the archclericy. Veluna's discontent with being anyone's vassal had surprisingly resulted in temporary sovereignty for the archclericy but also in instability there and throughout much of the continent.

The subsequent eight decades of occupation were enough for political struggles that were rending the Great Kingdom to stablize and for newly independent nations to come to terms. During those decades, Furyondy offered no fight against Keoland but worked with it as a trading partner. The posibility that trade might lead to their alliance forced other governments to settle scores and make peaceful arrangements. But Keolands attempt at militarily swallowing the whole of Veluna threatened an advance on Furyondy’s border. Furyondy committed to driving Keoland out and, surprisingly, managed it easily in the Short War (436-438cy).

Some historians suspect that the canon had had an influence on the king's decision, but their suspicion is surely delusional:

In 436cy, Keoland publicly threatened to annex the whole of Veluna. Whether the king of Furyondy decided to act due to agents dispatched by the canon or because the looming threat of Keoland had simply become too large to ignore, act he did.

Aside from informing the king when the looming threat became imminent, however, the canon had nothing to offer except bribes and other petty inducements; eighty years of continuous trade with the occupying forces absolutely prove it, and in fact, the king's reasons for liberating Veluna are inducible from the course of further events. To ensure independence for Veluna,

Bissel was conquered by the forces of Furyondy in 438cy, when the Furyondians and their armies advanced south to nearly the city of Hookhill, in Gran March. The throne in Chendl retained the office of Bissel's margrave but replaced the ruling family with nobles sympathetic to the affairs of the east. Distance from the Furyondian capital left Bissel practically independent, however, and in 477cy King Hugh III declared Bissel a "March Palatine" owing fealty to Veluna.

The palatine marquis was a ruler under the Furyondian king with the exercise of royal powers within the mark, so the fealty pledged to Veluna is an extra obligation. It amounts to power sharing, the palatine marquis owing fealty to Veluna's canon while ruling the mark on authority from Furyondy's king. Milary forces from Furyondy and Veluna alike continued to occupy Bissel's capital, Thornward, until long after 477cy because of the continual threat of invasion by Ket from the west. The power-share shows that the cooperation and the supposed alliance of Furyondy and Veluna were enforced as well as trusted.

In the view of the commensurate folk of the Lortmil Mountains, the Kron Hills, and the Gnarley forest, Furyondy’s military presence offered protection not only against Keoland but against the monsters that constantly threatened the environs, a threat that became acute when Keoland retreated from those places. After the Short War, the viscount of Verbobonc went so far as to request that Furyondian soldiers be permanently stationed in the viscounty. Verbobonc had been a vassal to Voll (later, Veluna) ever since the Great Kingdom made it so in 119cy. Effectively, then, the request declared that the archclericy was unwelcome to return to Verbobonc following deliverence from Keoland.

The commensurate realms felt similarly. Traditionally, the dwarves, elves, and gnomes associated more readily with Verbobonc than with Veluna. Further, and obviously, the commensurates along with the humans of Verbobonc, Furyondy, and Veluna were the same “six nations” that Prince Thrommel the romantic would centuries later form into an alliance against the Elemental Evil. The politics at Castle Estival, where the Furyondian prince also met Jolene of Samprastadar, were rooted, old, and deep.

After Thrommel’s victory at Tor Fens, five of the six nations (and half of Veluna) favored dispensing with the Archclericy and creating the Unified Kingdom. This closely approximated to public sentiments following Furyondy’s victory in the Short War too. Many of the political instituions—such as the Gnome Assembly of the Kron Hills—in fact remained the same.

There is this difference, though, that after Tor Fens the six nations were pressed to ally against Iuz, while after the Short War there was no necessary arrangement at all. Peace reigned and, for a while, so did a measure of independence from the Archclericy of Veluna. For Veluna's canon it was a challenging time. The serene and eternal Shepherd of Veluna that we know today was not then in reputation. He was politically unpopular and spiritually suspect. The Celestial Order of the Moons and the Velunar merchant classes were against him because the trade wars and the occupation had cost them dearly. The bishops did not favor him because theocracy was a detraction from the primacy of the dioceses. Episcopal collegiality existed from long ago, but the College of Bishops was a novelty invented for the conclave in the Eademer Battistero. The canon claimed a special relation to the Church of Rao, the nation of Veluna, the Crook of Rao, and even to the deity, but to sustain the claim in public he neede to appear reasonable, peaceful, and serene while vying for political power.

We have come, at last, to the Canon of Veluna’s moment in history.

~County, nobility, diocese, and bishop

Shipmates—I mean, jury of the court—to understand the Eademer concordat we must know a little more about the provinces of Veluna, about the dioceses and counties, which are distinct but intertwined. Their names and geographical extents correspond exactly, the diocesan cathedrals are in the county towns, and our histories and sources all presume a basic knowledge of them. I may quote this, for example, from a sermon given in 440cy by the bishop of, in the cathedral of, in the attendance of the count of, in the diocese of, in the town of, and in the county of Devarnish:

In 355cy, Keoland’s Second Expeditionary Force captured Devarnish and the Crook of Rao with it. But today, praise god, the Keoish army has been dispatched from Velunar soil. Devarnish and its diocese are once again part of greater Veluna, and we rejoice for it. Yet this state of affairs may last but briefly, if Count Devarnish’s words were spoken in earnest.

Here, as you see, "Devarnish" signifies county, diocese, town, cathedral, count, and bishop. You need to understand this, although what immediately matters is rather the sermon’s reference to “greater Veluna.”

You, my historiographical percipients, will understand by now that when a Velunar cleric says that something existed “but briefly” it may mean that it never existed at all. And indeed, in 440cy, “greater Veluna” was actually unreal, merely a projection cast from Mitrik by prominent theocrats. Although it nominally included Verbobonc, Veluna City, and the southern counties of Devarnish, Valkurl, Kempton, Lorrish, and Falsridge, these could be considered parts of “greater Veluna” only by a stretch of the canonical imagination after the liberation of those places from Keoland's occupation. Even in Mitrik, not everyone was committed to the vision of "greater Veluna." The Celestial Order of the Moons was by then in Mitrik as well, forced to flee Veluna City when the Keoish army was poised to seige the capital in 355cy. After (or because of) eighty years of occupation, the Celestial Order was implacably opposed to the archclericy. Its grievances, which had brought Veluna to the brink of civil war when Keoland had first attacked, were still unresolved. Although northern Veluna during the occupation had remained under Mitrik’s jurisdiction, there was considerable doubt about the loyalty of its people to the archclericy. The northerners' repeated their affirmations of allegiance "to Mitrik," but that did not mean much when the Celestial Order was also in that city.

Keoland’s policy in the southern counties was to leave the functional institutions intact. The nobility's lands and titles were still inherited, the bishops continued to annoint new priests, and the participation of the northern bishops was encouraged in religious ceremonies. Keoland further encouraged the participation of the southern nobility when free Veluna held elections for plar and to the Celestial Order, causing some consternation among theocrats about the loyalty of the Order to the archclericy.

References to the plar and the Celestial Order appear very early in Veluna's recorded history, and the twin institutions are likely descended from the secular government of Voll when that had been in service to the overking and viceroy. The plar’s principle function had been a vow of fealty to the overking; his (or her, in the instance of a Supreme Mistress) authority was to ensure that the emperor’s instructions were respected. When the theocracy broke troth with the overking, the office of the plar became pointless, yet the nobility continued to elect one repurposed as their chief representative to the canon. The Celestial Order underwent a similar transformation: what had been a representative body in service to the plar and on behalf of the overking became a representive body in service to the archclericy but loyal to the plar, to the nobility, and to the work of secular government where it continued in the counties.

Because the plar and the Celestial Order were continuously associated with the governments of Voll and Veluna, a fair amount is known or surmisable about their history; that is not true, however, of the broader nobility, the counties, the dioceses, and the bishops, whose institutional origins predate vassalage in Voll and thus theocracy in Veluna as well. Local institutions were not of any evident concern to the historical (and mostly theocratic) sources that are available to us today. It is evident, nonetheless, that the counties and dioceses were remarkably egalitarian or, to respectivley apply more accurate descriptors, fraternal and collegial. Episcopal collegialtiy is inherent to the status and purpose of a bishop and was, as far as can be seen, indigenous to the old Vale of Luna. The bishops had ever been elected by their dioceses or by other organized groups that had very anciently taken on a diocesan form. The land and titles of the nobility were inherited, of course, not inherent, but the members of the Celestial Order and the plar had always been elected, indicating a collective authority paralleling that of the bishops.

During Keolad’s occupation, the southern counties and dioceses had been dissassociated from Veluna’s national superstructure—from the Celestial Order, the plar, and the archclericy—and Keoland had sought to subsume them under its monarchy. Keoland’s governors promoted the participation of southern lords in elections for plar and to the Celestial Order, and they allowed northern bishops to participate in annointing new bishops to fill vacant southern sees. The canon and the archclericy had no legislative or ecclesiastical standing to prevent it, and therefore, there was no guarantee that following liberation a majority of nobles and bishops would welcome the return of theocracy. This was true even in the north.

Indeed, had the archclericy’s restoration been widely agreeable, the Eademer conclave and concordat would not have been necessary. But that was far from the case; the work of the conclave was equally as decisive and definitve of modern Velunar history.

In conclusion; I submit to you, my fair-minded jurors, that the evidence stands in favor of the plaintiff, Professor Annalo Bifurcati, in accepting the greater importance of Veluna’s second declaration of independence from Furyondy, at the Eademer Battistero by a conclave of bishops in 440cy, over its first, at Mitrik, in 254-, by the defendant, the Canon of Veluna, aka Shepherd of the Faithful. Case dismissed.

§

~Leading to the Eademer Battistero: The Diocese of Verbobonc

I find it expedient to remind you, my meandering coterie, that the route you are taking to Doraka’a goes indirectly. Traipsing the Fellreev Forest adds weeks to your journey. You might have gone by good, straight roads from Law’s Forge to Ixworth and then to Kin Dell, taken the Long March to the Opicm River's mouth, followed the Whyestil Lake shore to the gates of the blighted city, and, if you had, by now I would probably be free of my horrid contractual obligations, which are void on the event of the death of the last of you.

Had that happened—should it yet, even partially—I doubt I could go on. Seeing you arrive at the Sewers and Shit-gutters of Doraka'a is important to me. Not much else matters anymore. There is another thing, yes, that I might have done, a place and a someone I know, but that’s likely over. There’s only you, the road we take, and what the next turn will bring.

It's gonna be great, Professor!

Undoubtedly. And to ease the burden of thinking about it, I will tell you something you do not know. If, right now, you vere east for ten miles off your current trackless way, you will come to a broad path going north. Take it, and you will be granted two boons. One: you will soon depart from the domain of Verithmirax, the terrible green dragon, where you are right now without knowing it, and avoid the castle of Dahlvier, the vampire, where you are headed unawares. This will lower the odds of a fatal bereavement among you. Two, the northern path will take you to the precarious, impecunious, yet widely renowned outpost of Grimwood-under-Sky, wherewith in a scant clearing in the forest’s depths you may find food, rest, and entertainment at the High Moon Inn, a destination for storytellers, fantasists, adventurers, and various exponents of alternative truth. Will you go there? If you need further encouragment you need, I promise to provide you with a tale to tell at the High Moon.

(A general shrug)

I suppose, why not?

Excellent. And regarding your group's use of forestrial misdirection on your way to Doraka'a, I approve and even find it exemplary. It has convinced me that duly appreciating the Eademer Battistero concordat will come easier if, as on your way to Grimwood-under-Sky, I take you on a topical detour, too, leaving the main highway of canonical history to make a local stop at the Diocese of St Cuthbert, in Verobonc Town. St Cuthbert's is the only diocese in all the Flanaess that exists outside Veluna, and the reasons for it are significant. Plus, you ought to see some of Verbobonc, a leafy locale caught up in the magic of elves and gnomes and, therefore, not much given to written history apart from aureate verse and practical joking. Fifteen years ago, Gary Gygax (a human, you know) wrote that “The history of Verbobonce is hardly worth a mention.” He was wrong; he would have done better to say, it is not not much written; because, although humans do live in Verbobonc, they are too content in their environ to apply themselves to it properly.

Some of them do, of course. One man, in particular, wrote volumes (and volumes) (and volumes) about mid-fifth-century Verbobonc. His career there as a Cuthbertine priest and bishop extended from ten years prior to the Short War to forty years beyond it and featured prominently in the events leading to and from the Eademer Concordat. He was that pleasantly rare type of man, a Cuthbertine memoirist. Lights and Shadows of a Loooong Episcopate was lent to me fifteen years ago by an elf that lives in an ipt treehouse in Verbobonc, where he keeps a private library. He (elf, not bishop) hosts parties of mixed elven and human company and is fascinatated by humanity because he sees it for much longer than we do. In 479cy, he purchased the entirety of ◒Lights and Shadows◓ (at the time, it was momentarily topical) and finished it eighty-two years later. He assured me that the opus, although widely unread and tedious, contains a wealth of information in the same way mud flats contain pearls. He knew how accustomed I was to wading the murky shallows of tedium to obtain nuggets of information, because my academic specialty is . . .

Wait a sec, Professor. Who was the memoirist you mentioned? I didn’t get the name.

No doubt, my dear, because I forgot to mention it. He was Cornelius Speiknhammer, the initial Bishop of Verbobonc and a grand pedantic in the Cuthbertine style. The Cudgelites employ common sense by rote, you know, and it is a great labor to pry the tough shells of their prose open and look for a morsel of writ. And because you, my heroes now hastening to doom, have little time to spare, I have husked ◒Lights and Shadows◓ for you and strung its salient points together. Here, then, is the nacre of the seventy-eighth through hundred-and-sixth chapters of the forty-seventh volume of Speiknhammer’s memoir:

St Cuthbert’s Diocese of Verbobonc was created by the stroke of my appointment as its bishop. Its constitution was such: Subsequent candidates for bishop would be nominated by the viscount subject to approval by Cuthbertine monastics and the temple priests. Rao's Titular Bishop of Veluna was banished from the viscounty along with his overseers. The eight Cuthbertine abbots continued as heads of the Cuthbertine monasteries and were given supplementary appointments as the Bishop's Abbot-executives. In the future, the monks would elect abbots subject to the bishop’s approval of the consequent abbot-exec. The abbot-execs were to appoint one Bishop’s High Knight-protector and one Bishop’s High Ministerial to each of the provinces of Verbobonc under their assigned jurisdictions, and they in turn would appoint staffs of knight-protectors and ministerials to protect and serve the citizens of Verobonc. Such appointments would be made from among St Cuthbert’s Billets, a chivalric order dedicated to ordinary service, not combat.The bishop was vested with the power to dismiss an abbot-exec (subject to the monks agreeing to dismiss their abbot) and, also, any billet under the authority of an abbot-exec, on the grounds of being unsuited to the viscount. To cap the arrangement, a magisterial power was vested in the viscount to abolish the bishopric and diocese wholesale on grounds of their being unsuited to him. Taken as a whole, the constitution satisfied all concerned parties by assuring that: the temples and churches remained free of the bishop; the monasteries remained free (in part) of the bishop; the bishop had control (in part) of the monasteries and the Billets; the billets were established as protectors and ministerials serving the people of Verbobonc; and the viscount, if he deemed it necessary, could repent of the infliction on his viscounty of the entire Cuthbertine establishment.

Marvelous agreement! I am proud to be a Verboboncan, where at least I know the Cudgel.

As you will understand, this literary oyster must be opened to be digested. Therefore:

In those days, as today, great numbers of St Cuthbert’s adherents lived everywhere in the Flanaess and many bishops of St Cuthbert were dispersed throughout Veluna—but the lone Cuthbertine diocese among them was the one in Verbobonc. Apart from it, there were (and are) no dioceses of any kind save the eight in Veluna, which were Raoan and differently constituted. St Cuthbert's bishops oversaw temples in Veluna, not cathedrals, and were appointed to the office, not consecrated. The only geniuinely diocesan system—comprehending a catholic church organized into dioceses and united in episcopal collegiality—in the Flanaess was the Church of Rao: seven dioceses and an archdiocese overseen by seven bishops and an archbishop. There were Cuthbertine bishops resident in Veluna— one for each of the saint’s temples—but they were not consecrated in episcopal collegiality. They were temple head priests, appointed by the other priests and the acolytes.

A Cuthbertine bishop in Veluna resembles, quite remarkably, a Raoan high canon at the head of a chapter of junior canons on a cathedral staff. The whole profusion of temples, churches, monasteries, bishops, cathedrals, canons, high canons, and chapter houses may even have originated in an ancient, proto-episcopal, Raoan tradition native to the Flan when Rao was still Lord of Peace in the great Vale of Luna.

In Verbobonc, St Cuthbert's diocese was synthetically conceived, a hybrid. Its bishop was appointed by the viscount, not consecrated by fellows, and extraordinarily, priests of St Cuthbert were not all under episcopal oversight. The churches, temples, and monasteries were not, either, and abbots were overseen only in their capacity as abbot-executives. Episcopal authority in clerical matters was restricted to abbot-executives, High Knight-protectors, High Ministerials, and billets on staff. The viscounty's citizens, however, were each and every one members of the diocese by law whether they worshipped the deified saint or not.

We may say, to sum up, that Verbobonc had established the diocese of St Cuthbert but not the faith. It differed in this from the Raoan establishment, although the two resembled one another in other repects. They alike provided for the spiritual and temporal welfare of their nations' citizens by supervisizing a network of religious and political institutions that together met the nations' needs. Certain taxes, for example, were collected by the religious establishments on behalf of the political states, which was also true vice-versa. Sacred and secular things categorically cannot be mixed, yet in life, religious and political authorites do mix spiritual and temporal activities. They do it all the time. That's the whole point.

Goodness, Professor. The whole point of what?

Of an establishment—what I'm saying. Try and keep up. In the early third century, the Canon of Veluna began dispatching a Raoan titular bishop (a bishop with no diocese) to Verbobonc as the archclericy’s political representative to the viscounty. The titular bishop, although he had no see, was collegial with the diocesan bishops in Veluna. His office was politically significant because he and his network of "overseers”—some of whom were priests of St Cuthbert—were the archclericy's only representative presence in the viscounty, where the Raoan church was little known and the faith of St Cuthbert was predominant. The dismissal of His Titularity (as the monks began to call him) from Verbobonc was tantamount to a rejection of the archclericy's right to rule following Verbobonc's liberation' from Keoland. It left the Raoan establishment with no authority in Verbobonc beyond the old feudal allegiance of the viscount and the canon, which the occupation had reduced to vestigial.

The point, if you will, is that St Cuthbert’s diocese resembled Veluna's episcopal system for a reason. Verbobonc wanted to become something like an eighth province of Veluna and dissolve their feudal allegiance. It seemed a good idea (if you were not an archcleric) because Verbobonc was working with Furyondy and the Celestial Order of the Moons to replace the archclericy with a secular government that would likely be organized into counties and dioceses as old Voll had been. The best opportunity to advance this revolution peacefully within the archclericy was to create a Verboboncan bishop roughly equivalent to Veluna's and, therefore, eligible for participation in episcopal collegiality. This was the original motive for what later became the archclericy's College of Bishops, a representative house of congress reserved to Raoan bishops only.

The viscount wanted to be a member of the Celestial Order of the Moons, too, which was easily achieved when the plar proposed it and the members voted for. Like the College of Bishops, the Celestial Order would also be refashioned as a house of congress comprising representatives of the seven noble families, although it differed from the College in not being exclusively Velunar. The viscount gained a place in the Order while Verbobonc's bishop had none in the College.

Those of you capable of paying attention will have noted that these developments gave the projected secular government of Verbobonc an attainable form. Episcopal collegiality was a way to unite Veluna and Verbobonc by letting bishops and aristocrats share temporal and spiritual power in replacement of the archclericy. This was consistent with Velunar government as it had been in Old Voll. The unsettled details . . .

Oi! That's just like the Unified Kingdom! I do pay attention!

No, it isn't. Would you like to try again? Please, keep up. It isn't like the Unified Kingdom because the it didn't formally involve Furyondy, granted the bishops a measure of temporality, and proposed an interfaith episcopal collegiality that sowed the seeds of a potent dissent. The Raoan bishops promulgated their objections in the Eademer Concordat, calling the plan a national apostasy and turning the political tide against secular government. The Unified Kingdom's constitution was intended . . .

I do keep up! The whole point of the new government, obviously, was to make the bishops secular.

Not even nearly.

What, not even?

The bishops wouldn't be secular, silly. Only temporal.

Same thing!

Not! When a bishop act spiritually, that's one thing, and when he acts temp . . .

Yes—but before we make a fuss over it, let's conclude my lecture. Shall we? In 445cy, five months before the Eademer conclave, Furyondy announced the king’s intention of withdrawing his military forces from Verbobonc, which left the viscounty in need of an independent militia to serve and protect its citizens. The billets of St Cuthbert had by then been established as knight-protectors and bishop's ministerials organized for public service and therefore a likely resource for the militia. But St Cuthbert’s creed is notoriously belligerent about making people follow Cuthbertine precepts. The billets were the least militant of the saint's priestly chivalric orders, but even so, the bishop had sworn them to “protect and minister to the faithful” of the viscounty, a broad mandate in a polytheistic society where everyone was by law included among the faithful whether or not they worshipped the saint. If the billets were to serve the people, not the faith, the notorious Cuthbertine zeal (“the Cudgel”) must be curbed.

This was a matter of distinguishing “Cudgelite values” from those of the larger society and subsuming the former under the latter. The priests of the Chapeaux and the Stars—St Cuthbert’s other chivalric orders—objected to the subsumption, but most billets viewed public service as a feather in the cap of an order often looked down on as servile. To pluck the prestigous plume, however, the billets of the “civil diocese” (as the establishment was commonly called) needed to compromise civic duty and the fervency evident everywhere in St Cuthbert's temples, churches, and monasteries. But according to the diocean civil constitution, these groups were not within the episcopal jurisdiction. Bishop Speiknhammer could not control . . .

(Another interruption, this time from the front row . . .)

Professor?

(. . . and more welcome)

Yes, sweetheart?

Don’t call me that. If they were all free of the bishop’s oversight, what was the bishop for?

Well, young lady, that’s right. Good question. He was “for” a police force and a civil service but must be a bishop to mingle and convene with Raoans in Veluna. Ordinarily, a diocese will encompass the faithful within a particular geographical area. But there was precedent for its utility in defining a political encompassment, not a spiritual one. Since the second century, Raoan ecclesiastics had . . .

Who cares about that? If an abbot, in his new capacity as an abbot-executive, deliberately appointed knight-protectors that would minister to St Cuthbert’s faithful favorably to other citizens, that’s a problem. The way things are, according to Speiknhammer’s ◒Lights and Shadows◓, the viscount might object to the billets but only the bishop could fire them; the bishop might fire them but could not object. O! what’s to be done? What help for the people that suffer the blows of the ungovernable cudgel; that might complain to the abbot—except, he’s the abbot-exec; that might complain to the bishop—although he waits on the viscount; that might complain to the viscount—who may think to have a word with the bishop; that might complain to the monks—who might rebuke the abbot-exec if they weren't so fond of the abbot; that might complain to the churches, to the temples, to the chapeaux, to the stars, and to the heavens—which are none of them part of St Cuthbert's diocese. The Verboboncan sky grows desolate—the universe grows cold. For the life of me, I . . .

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. . . . Well, yes. Really, it was done by expediency and precedent, not by legislation. For two hundred years, the titular bishop of Verbobonc had been sending Raoan overseers into the Cuthbertine monasteries to press Raoan interests into training Cuthbertine billets. Traditionally, the monks urged the Cudgel's priests to true zealotry, so, the overseers encouraged the billets to be particularly zealous in keeping the viscounty peaceful and serene, as the Imperial Raoan Church had done in the old viceroyalty except by chudgel this time, not by reason. The viscount had co-opted the authority of the titular bishop by establishing a diocese and substituting abbot-executives for Raoan overseers. The abbot-execs eagerly pledged loyalty to the bishop because the abbot's wanted to be rid of any association with the overseers. The billets substituted the viscount’s desire for “peace and quiet” for Raoan for peace and serenity because they wanted to become knight-protectors. No one asked how it worked because it was ready to go. Everyone gained an advantage even if the advantages were contradictory. None of it dimmed the heavens; it was a gods’send to all.

(A general lack of conviction)

Every citizen in the diocese was defined as “faithful,” so the billets had no reason to convert anyone to a faith none need profess. Marvelous contraption! The diocese was launched like a ship with a water-tight hull so long as none opened a portal. Everyone was already aboard in berths they already had. The thing set sail in ship shape. Keeping it afloat depended on the captain (the viscount) and his XO (the bishop), which tied their hopes to the same mast and gave them a unanimity of command although they sailed in somewhat different directions.

But why bother with any of it? If the viscount wanted to be in the Celestial Order, why not just abolish the theocracy and give allegiance to the plar? Why did he make a bishop when he wanted a secular government?

Not secular, temp...

Why not? Verbobonc had been a vessal—I mean a vassal—to Veluna for three centuries.The ancestors of the commensurate folk, of the Vale of Luna, and of St Cuthbert's cudgelites had been sailing like ancient mariners under the stars of the Flanaessian sky from before the continent bore that name: from before the Twin Cataclisms, the Great Migrations, the Oeridian Conquest, and the Great Kingdom had first come about. While voyaging that vale, the Raoans and the Cuthbertines had created spiritual and temporal institutions that were much alike despite their episcopal variations. And all the while . . .

Oh! Oh! I think I get it! You mean the spiritual and the temporal had always gone together!

They'd been both all along!

See! Told you.

Oh, shu . . .

Professor?

Yes, sweetheart?

Don’t call me that. What about the monks? We've never heard anything about them before, and now, suddenly, they are so important.

Actually, St Hermiod of Laudine was a monk and the first Canon of Veluna was too.

But that beast had two heads; only one was a monk.

Whatever. He was the original Canon of Veluna—spiritually and temporally the same man, that ordained the titular bishop to oversee Cuthbertine monks that trained knight-protectors to protect and serve the people.

So, there might be a connection. The canon, the titular bishop, the theocrats—they could all be connected to the monks.

Why not to the Celestial Order? The Order could have donated to the monasteries.

And to the temples!

But temples are run by priests, not monks.

Or—by bishops!

Wow.

Ooooh.

Aaaah.

I’m confused.

Indeed, it's confusing. I could explain it to you in detail, but that would only lead to a detailed confusion. The Archclericy of Veluna was born to, and has lived in, a great confusion of fidelity split between the Great Kingdom and Furyondy, of a collapsing empire’s troubles, and of a proliferation of free nations not in an "independence movement” but in a broken series of seized opportunities.

Following their liberation from Keoland, the bishops and the monks in Verbobonc and Veluna were curiously placed. They were proffered independence from the archclericy by choosing a secular government, and of course, they remembered the old ways of the Vale, when bishops hhad taken precedence over their canons and monasteries had been free of overseers. But the bishops and the monastics reclaiming power was not what happened. The Archclericy instead worked a reformation and a restoration.

§

~The Eademer Concordat

By 445cy, the King of Furyondy believed he had enough support in Veluna to overthrow the archclericy. In a gesture of good will, he withdrew his military forces surrounding Veluna and promised benevolence and independence to the reprieved nation, whose gratitude, he believed, would make him Prince of Veluna at last. The unpopular canon's last hope was to rally the bishops, whom he gathered in conclave to decide the issue. We follow events by excerpting ◒Lights and Shadows◓:

There had been no episcopal conclave since before the Archclericy's independence from Furyondy, and never before had one been summoned by a canon. For these reasons it was called an extraordinary conclave, not because it was great but because it was unprecedented. It was not at first even expected to happen because it required a majority of bishops in favor, which was uncertain. There was no archbishopric yet, and the titular bishop was a recent, canonical innovation of uncertain standing. In the end, because the titular had been consecratted to office by his fellows his voice was heard, making him the fourth bishop in favor of conclave with four opposed; in the interest of episcopal collegiality, this was deemed sufficient.

The Exraordinary and Episcopal Conclave of 446cy was convened in the Eademer Battistero, in Mitrik, to discuss the fate of Veluna, which many religious men believed was controlled by greedy Furyondians driven by secular goals. Although cool heads opened the conference, a contingent of orthodox Cuthbertine overseers rallied the more conservative Raoans to their cause, urging that Veluna formally cede from Furyondy to oppose the growing apostasy being fomented by wartime expansionism and imperialism. In an agreement known as the Eademer Concordat, the members of the college voted overwhelmingly to break from the kingdom.

The vote was not overwhelming; it was unanimous, eight to nothing—but Speiknhammer had taken sixteen chapters to explain that

although seven diocesan bishops plus a titular went into the Conclave of Eademer, yet seven diocesan and an arch- had come out, tit- being translated to arch-”,

and he wanted to elaborate the point. The comment drew violent objection from Raoans when it was published for reasons that must be understood; they explain the vote's unanimity and . . .

Oh! Oh! Professor, I’ll explain it! I’ll explain it!

Really, my dear? But you haven’t . . . well, have a go.

Only diocesan not titular bishops traditionally had a vote in the conclave, which had been in existence since the beginning of Voll. But of the seven dioceses, four had been under Keoland’s occupation and only three had not, so the vote to reform and restore the archclericy would likely have been four to three against. To avoid this, the titular bishop had to be given a voice, but even at that, the bishops were likely at a stalemate, four to four, which would fail to gather the conclave, denounce the apostasy, and resolve the political crisis. The tit- had to be an arch-; the arch- would break the tie and be reliably pro-Canon. But if the tit- were translated the theocracy's only representative office in Verbobonc would be vacated, and consecrating his successor would be controversial. The tit- must be an arch- in some other way, but no manner was ever decided; the arch- was simply proclaimed. When Speiknhammer called it translation, objections were brought loudly without really saying anything, and since people stopped reading ◒Lights and Shadows◓ soon after it was published, the controversy passed quietly away. Calling the vote “overwhelming," not “unanimous,” let Speiknhammer point out that the bishops had not been in agreement; they had followed the episcopal custom of having minority protestants switch their votes in the interests of apparent fraternity. Eight to nothing!

Oh, my. My dear girl. That was simply bril . . .

But Professor, there’s so much more!

Really, my boy? You too?

Astonishing, isn’t it? The Cuthbertine Bishop of Verbobonc’s request to be collegial among the Raoans could have been restricted to the College of Bishops, a temporal house of congress without any properly spiritual function. But the college was at first an extraordinary conclave; so, proposing the inclusion in fellowship of a Cuthbertine bishop could be seen as a renunciation of Raoan faith, the sharpest point of apostasy's dart lodged in the heart of Veluna. This proved that seclular government meant the renunciation of sacred power from within —a sacrilege. Accusing Veluna of apostasy was, at the moment closest to its surrender, the archclericy’s final thrust, a reaffirmation of the original unity (although apocryphal it may have been) of Velunar government and Raoan faith.

Denouncing this national apostasy required more than denying the Cuthbertine bishop’s collegiality with the Raoans and remedying the ill itself. “Greedy Furyondians with secular goals” were denounced by the Eademer Concordat as instigators of a “growing apostasy fomented by wartime expansion and imperialism.” The denunciation avoided a condemnation of Veluna's vassal, Verbobonc, and restyled Furyondy’s liberation as a sacrilege barely eight years after the happy event. Liberation had become desecration in the interests of secular rule, but sacred Veluna was spared by a divine authority in exercise of its temporal power, theocracy's vindication.

Had the accusation of apostasy failed, the archclericy would have ceased to exist. But Veluna repented at the call of its shepherds. The King of Furyondy and the Viscount of Verbobonc prized political stability in Veluna above all else and quietly conceded. Resistance would only have widened the “overwhelming break from the kingdom” the bishops had propsed and the triumphant archclericy could have arranged.

Dear me! Oh, my! My wonderful adventurers, my armor plate against error, you perhaps believe that these, my tears, are of the joy that only pupils can bring to a teacher’s eye, but you are mistaken! I cry, I weep, because you have spoken so concisely what I had intended to lecture at considerable length! O! what misery. What use for my long night spent making this lesson?

(Disbelief and amazement)

It's hardly fair to complain. You never weary and you need no sleep.

That’s hardly the point. My notes must not be wasted. Let me see, there must be . . .

Oi! You forgot to mention that ever since the Eademer Concordat the Raoan archbishop has been chosen by the canon for consecration, not elected by the priests and the citizens of Veluna City. By commanding the archbishop, and by establishing the Celestial Order of the Moons and the College of Bishops as representative houses of his congress, the canon reached his full stature. At last he condescended to the nobility and the episcopacy, an odd thing for a canon to do, and what he had not been sure of before.

Yeah, yeah. We would have thought of it. I mean, it took you all night, right?

The Archclericy of Veluna depended on the Eademer Battistero in 446cy. It is not eternal, therefore, and the Canon of Veluna likewise is not. The Eademer Concordat, the Archbishop of Veluna City, and the subordination of the Celestial Order and the College of Bishops were each a product of the battistero conclave. Look deeper, and you will further see that the authority of the conclave rested only on itself. It was an original, like Raoan scripture, the Crook of Rao, the foundation of Voll, and the independence of Veluna. These things' origins are murky, and the murk hides the canon's origins too.

And so, dear students, you confront the Canon of Veluna’s foundational dilemma: How to costume his ambition in guises of Reason, Peace, and Serenity. Having reached an immovable, mountainous height in these regions, yet his supremacy must be hid for the unhappiest of qualms. His canonical peace was well endowed (speaking metaphorically) by an olive branch so large no fig leaf will conceal it. His reasoning bulges with a passion so concupiscent no euphemism will trouser it. His serenity burns with a desire so unsavory that only some like it hot. What would you, my salacious readers, have done in his stead? Bare your magnificence (supposing you possessed it) to the world—or pants it modestly and closet your perfidious abundance? Deflate the extremity of your longest extent—or measure it proudly amongst the mighty? Arouse the high standard of your pride—or leave it corpuscularly diminished? Fortunately for us without the stamina to requite such questions, the canon has wrestled the horns of the dilemma and straddled it:

Maintain your public modesty at all costs; treachery is a boast made more massive in private.

~The prince and the kidnappers

“About Prince Thrommel everyone knows three things: his last words; he did not die, he disappeared; and becase there is no body, there is no tomb. Plans for an empty mausoleum were mooted when Lucidides, Thrommel’s biographer, had boasted that ‘A hero like Prince Thrommel has the whole earth for his tomb.’Every year since, on Whole Oerth Day, Furyondians have planted trees and cleaned the environment.

“Lucidides also wrote the official account of Thrommel’s last words, which is this:

“After his victory against the Sea Princes, the prince’s wounds were dressed and he was given a sedative. As he fell asleep, his captains debated ‘whether His Highness’s civil or military excellence was the superior example of his virtue.’ Thrommel sat up and rebuked them, saying, “I boast only one thing, that no Furyondian ever wore mourning because of me.” Thousands of men, women, and children had died at the marshal’s command, but Thrommel believed he had been a scrupulous soldier and only fought when necessary. Popular sentiment and historical judgement have agreed.

“That night, unknown assailants overcame the night watch and abducted the prince, leaving witnesses to the event and purportedly alternative last words. Singling out the most commanding, villainous, and brutal of the assailants, Thrommel had said, ‘Et tu, amica?’ Which means, in the common tongue,

‘You too, girlfriend?’

Something was wrong. I awoke but could not rise. My hands (in their dreaming) gripped the wrist of my attacker but could not force his hand from my mouth. His strength and weight were on me, keeping me down. I could not scream. Yet his eyes (this was odd) were reassuring to me; the forefinger that he brought to his lips soon obviated my struggles.

Who was he? What was he? He looked left, he looked right.

So did I. Our tent admitted no heaven; everything was dark within. Yet shapes of absolute darkness were there that lacked any fathom and sound. Under their weight were other, more cognizable things held prone. I looked again to my assailant, who was becoming intelligible to me.

It was Victoro, captain of our second battalion. A knife in the grip of a void notched his throat, and we, a moment ago Victoro's fellow captains and dreaming of victory’s delights, were now captured. Our tent was a hatchless dungeon.

Which (nonetheless) hatched a torchbearer bringing three further figures in tow. They wore the black costume of their comrades, two adorned by flaps on their hoods like the ears of Nubian goats, the third with a tiara of satin strips falling over his head like a skirt of pheasant’s feathers. The torchbearer cleared a way to the only man in the tent still sleeping: our sedated prince, ignorant as a napping babe.

‘Rouse him.’

The Nubians brought him to his feet, and with eyes still sealed Thrommel gave the atmosphere two sniffs. ‘Rosenrantz and Gildenstern, as I breathe,’ he professed, unlidding his eyes with disdain for the attackers. ‘Hooded? For real? None of these men know you. Are you bigger fools for admitting that I do?’

One of the goats removed its ears. ‘Yo, prince. Rejoice! You see me happier this night than I have been this past year, may it ever be forgot.’

‘Your friend is reluctant.’

‘He’s just stubborn. I’ll help him.’

The second man, unwillingly unmasked, brought a lecherous grin to his cleft lip; a wound that, on his face, denoted an ill spirit.

‘How are you, my lord? Perhaps you’ve had better evenings?’

‘All that saw nothing of you,’ reconsidered the prince, who next attended to the pheasant, the chief, who stood three steps back, a man of ponderous strength like an anchor of malice. The prince grew disenchanted.

‘You too, girlfriend?’

There was no reply. The pheasant was still; slowly, slowly, hope and meaning diminished.

‘Rope up his friends.’

We captains were herded and cinched together, shuffling our feet in maintenance of an awkward common balance. The pheasant spoke words, raised a forefinger, drew a circle in the air, sealed his lips, and stunned the tent into a silence so profound that I could not find my thoughts. The torchbearer pulled a bomb from his garment, lit the fuse by the torch's flame, and tossed the device at our feet, which were combined so we could not kick it out. The pheasant incanted again, and with Thrommel, the clefted lieutenant, and the torchbearer he vanished. The prince, guessing our fate, grimmaced as he disappeared.

The remaining assassins withdrew and left us captians in a magical zone of silence. The fuse burned down, and—

Nothing. We lived. The tale is told. And I, Captain Lorenza D’Amico, swear that it is true. You have been a wonderful audience.

“The tavern cheered. The innkeeper served me a beer that I pushed at the drunken sage in the corner as I sat down beside him.

“‘He won’t take it unless he drinks in a coma,’ said the innkeeper, who had followed me there.

“‘How long will he be like this?’

“‘Two days.’

“‘Why?’

“‘The brew don’t wear off; he stays lost in his thoughts.’

“‘What are they?’

“‘That he once lived in Doraka’a, and it gives him bad dreams,’ said the High Moon’s proprietor, leaning toward me and winking confidentially. ‘I’ll tell you. He has stories to tell. The clientele is mad for them. He’s worth a bit to me and mine. I got a wife, you know. I got kids.’ He grew more confidential, his eyes gleaming bright like the lamp of a miner you see trapped way down. ‘The folk liked your story a lot. How many more of ‘em you got in that book?’

“‘None. I want to know what he says about Doraka’a.’

“‘That there’s demons and necromancers and goblins and graveyards and citadels of terror. But if he’s talking about Doraka’a, he always ends up talking about Iuz. He says he’s seen Iuz.’

“‘I need more detail.’

“‘Why don’t you stick around? Let him tell you. Maybe read a few more stories from that book?’

“Impossible. We have an appointment to keep. Come on, tell me more.’

“‘He’s mad. You can’t believe his stories. The wildest one’s are about Halga. You know, the High Priestess of Iuz? the Bloody Hag? The Witch-lover of the cambion god? Now, get this.’ I hadn’t thought anyone could get so confidential. ‘The Sage says she’s innocent. He says its lies about her and that we got her wrong.’ The fat man set down his belly, half on the table and half on me, and leaned across to take hold of the drunken Sage still sleeping opposite. He reached inside the Sage’s shirt, fondled for something down there, and pulled out a hideous, veined, dried, flesh-and-blood eyeball on a string. ‘This is a Iuz’s Eye. Iuz’s priests got them and use them to see things, to scry far off. That’s true enough. The Sage says he got this one from Halga. But Iuz’s Eyes move and blink when they look about, and this one hasn’t moved in the twenty years I seen it. The Sage just found it somewhere in the forest, picked it up, and brought it here. He showed it to us. I gave him a beer. He told us a story. I gave him a beer. He told another one, and—you get the picture. He’s pretty imaginative. He’s told hundreds of stories. But they’re starting to get repititious. The best ones are about Halga, and now he’s gotten peeved. He won’t hardly tell them no more. He’s drunk all the time, and his imagination’s run dry. People are noticing.’ The proprietor scraped his belly off me and gave a heavy sigh. ‘I got the future to think of. The Sage is unreliable. How much do you think that book is worth?’

“‘Nothing. How do you know that he makes them up?’

“‘Because Halga visits these parts. People have seen her. She’s tall. And we’ve seen what she does. She’s into bowellismsm.▽Bowellism – not to be confused with disembowelment – is removing the innards from the body cavity while leaving the organs functional although external. The objective is to keep the patient alive and perambulatory for as long as possible. In principle, this is similar to (and may have inspired) the architectural school of Bowellism, which places the functional systems of a building – ducts, elevators, stairwells, et ecetera – on the outside, e.g. the Centre Pompdou, in Paris. Anatomical bowelsim is more difficult to achieve, and magically prolonging the viability of victims is cheating. (Eds) That guy’s sister was boweled. And Halga disembowels too. You know the intestines on the walls of Wormhall, right? That’s not a hundred miles from here. Folks have seen it. Halga put them there. She still does. People can see her because she does it right out in the daylight. She has a glue made of mostly human innards and demon’s blood. Nowadays, she goes about hooded on account of her eyes. Blood drips from the witch’s eyes, you know, a little more each time she kills. It’s buckets by now. So, she hides her face but it soaks through her cloak. Does that sound innocent? People don’t like him saying Halga’s innocent. They know better. They jeer him for it, and it makes him mad. He gets peeved. He’s starting to clam up. After twenty years! So, I’m telling you, friend: that story about Thrommel is new. There’s plenty of tales about Thrommel’s last words, but that one is new. Original, like. How many more you got in that book? Because, I think that it must belong to the High Moon, one way or another. See?”

“No. But I have one more tale to tell. I’ll tell it, and then we’re leaving, and you are not going to mind, friend, because I’m telling you: We’re not innocent either. Not any more.”

~Tranquility College and the Tranquility movement

Despite the one thousand years that have passed since its origin in the Vale of Luna, the popular Raoan faith that people experience today remains tethered to the faith of the Flan pastoral folk from long ago. The valley is more settled, of course, and the people are too. The land they lived on in common is now all privately owned, and their ancient shrines and temples have been incorporated into churches, so an apse or a sanctuary in use today may be a temple’s relic. These old “blisters”—so called because they often look like bubbles swelling from a church’s exterior walls—accommodate ordinary festive and occasional days in popular ceremonies that do not require a priest: personal prayers, private remembrances, talismans, thanksgivings, and feasts such as hock‑carts, may‑poles, mid‑winter, and mid‑summer. Priests may be present on these occasions but they do not preside. A harvest‑ king, a may‑queen, or any such a one takes the lead by popular acclaim and gives thanks to Rao on the day.

The distinction between church and blister is of consequence. It exhibits the gradual imposition of church manners onto earlier Raoan things: first, on a shrine, a temple, a church, a parish; then, on a diocese, an establishment, a cathedral; later, on a high canon and, at last, on a government. Church and blister exhibit how local customs, occasions, ceremonies, and rites have survived with a national church superimposed— a diverse but still catholic Raoanism.

Keoland’s occupation of Veluna lasted from 355‑438cy and prompted a transformation of Raoan religion. Actually, there were three remarkable transformations, one each in the free north, the captive south, and the restored “greater Veluna” following liberation. In the north, during occupation, the archclericy persisted as the national government but the perception and nature of its authority were changed. At its founding, the theocracy’s authority had been vested in the canon (and many lesser high clerics) and was dependent on the cooperation and tolerable good will of the dioceses and counties. But occupation reduced the theocracy's extent to a lesser fraction of itself, and though it still claimed to legitimately rule all the seven counties and Veluna City, the difference between claim and reality was apparent to everyone and had a corrosive effect. After liberation, the theocrats suspected disloyalty everywhere, and to suppress it, they exerted political power forcefully top down. The immediate vertical control was felt everywhere, prompting the mocking overtone of most contemporary references to “the free north.”

In the south, the bishops (other than Kempton, who fled to the unoccupied portion of his diocese) had remained in their cathedrals even as Keoland’s armies closed in. But they ceased excercising their authority ostentatiously. On the contrary, at first they had expected to be arrested each passing day. But the Keoish governors discovered the ambivalence of Velunars toward theocratic government. They tempted the southern bishops to separate their sees from the archclericy while maintaining continuity in provincial parish life. Popular local customs—especially those tied to the blisters—were encouraged while great national observances were not. The theocracy in Mitrik took the opposite approach; the bishops were caught between the local and the national Raoan faith. We may say that, in the south, the faith of the blisters would be invited into the churches; in the north, the faith of the churches would expell the blisters.

Consequently, in the south the bishops came to embody unity in the variety of popular rites, while in the north, they represented ritual conformity. Two very different understandings of episcopal authority had taken hold. Southern bishops were styling themselves as equals and believed that Raoan catholicism was embodied in episcopal collegiality; the northern bishops derived their authority from the Canon of Veluna and understood catholicism as proceeding from canonical good graces.

After liberation, these two ecclesiologies were synthesized by the episcopal conclave in the Eademer Battistero. But the synthesis was neither clean nor clinical. The big losers were the local parishes in Veluna City that during occupation had been treated as a rabble (they had no bishop) and been placed directly under the canon’s authority. But the three northern bishops (Whitehale, Grayington, and Kempton) were also submitted to canonical authority, and they would support the canon’s man, the titular bishop of Verbobonc, when he was made the Archbishop of Veluna City.

The southern bishops accepted their archbishop after gaining two concessions. First, the canon’s authority would not be superior in the dioceses and the archbishop would not be a monarch among bishops. Second, each of the southern bishops was given something he wanted. Falsridge received assurance that his county would not be involved in Furyondy’s annexation of Bissel. Lorrish obtained the official sanction of his liturgical reforms (we will discuss these later). Valkurl—the poorest diocese— received a permanent financial consideration from the archclericy. And Devarnish—the see of Bromides Authenticeus— was granted Tranquility College.

It was because Authenticeus got so little—a college founded by a donation from the canon’s treasury—that he was understood to have been the canon’s man. But Canon Raowen had wanted to found what he had proposed to call “Canon’s College,” and Authenticeus' Tranquility would prove—as his great‑great‑great‑grandson Authenticrates maintained— more important to Velunar history than the other concessions combined.

The difference between Canon’s and Tranquility was not a school by another name; it was a different system of patronage. Canon’s would be funded by the archclerical treasury; Tranquility would be funded by diocesan bequest. Everyone understood the difference, but Raowen conceded because the canonical coffers were poor and Bishop Authenticeus’ signature to the concordat was the last one needed to restore the archclericy.

Canon Raowen did not expect the emphatic commitment of the southerners to Tranquility—not to its endowment and construction alone but to the supply of its faculty, administration, and student enrollment. Within thirty years Tranquility College was large and rich, almost Veluna’s pre‑eminent institution, third only to the Canonry and the Archclericy.

In 461cy, Tranquility’s great rival was at last founded in Mitrik. Canon’s quickly became a minor priestly seminary and a major school of law, while Tranquility flourished as a humanist school centered on the Raoan tradition. The rivalry would inform the first of the great sixth‑century troubles that befell the western Nyr Dyv region:

The Tranquilitarian controversy.

~The Free Lands of Dyvers: A precursory Mistress and Prince

Although it has proved (I have private information showing it to be so) greatly significant, historians still gloss Dyvers’ independence in the way it had seemed to be at the time—so nearly unaccountable and insignificant that it almost need not have happened:

The city had contributed heavily in money, goods, and men to the establishment and prosperity of Furyondy. But because of Fuyondy’s alliance and close ties with Veluna, whose policies the Gentry of Dyvers saw as restrictive, the city declared its independence in 526cy. King Thrommel Ⅱ allowed this act to pass unchallenged.

The city had been an important trading center, with lake and river traffic from Bissel, Nyrond, Urnst, and even lands as far away as Perrenland and the Theocracy of The Pale. But Dyvers proclaimed itself a free city in 526cy,/span>. alleging that it was uncomfortable with Furyondy allying with a state (Veluna) whose policies Dyvers found overly restrictive. This was probably just a pretext, but King Thrommel Ⅱ of Furyondy allowed the secession to pass in return for Dyvers continuing to contribute taxes and levies to Furyondian coffers.

Dyvers had been the capital of the Viceroyalty of Furyondy and still served as a welcome port to goods and travelers. The palace of the viceroy rivaled that of his colleagues in the west, and its domed central structure and austere stone towers are cited in travelogues as among the finest examples of Oeridian architecture. But Furyondy's relationship with Veluna troubled the freethinking folk of the city, as Veluna's clerical rulers were highly principled, rather ascetic, and encouraged great donations to church coffers. When many cities in Furyondy established a code of "canon law," replete with church courts stocked with Raoan doctrine and Cuthbertine punishments, the Gentry of Dyvers decided that enough was enough. Preparing for the worst, they informed the crown of their intention to split from Furyondy in 526cy. Perhaps because Furyondy feared the growing power of Greyhawk and felt it needed to ally more deeply in the region, Thrommel Ⅱ, the reigning monarch, allowed the secession to pass unchallenged.

This is nonsense. No king or kingdom allows its largest, most prosperpous city to declare independence so casually. True, Furyondy’s political relations with Veluna were as much the pretext as the reason for Dyvers’ independence, and, true again, ever since the Eademer Concordat the difference between “canon law" and secular law had grown thin in Veluna. But this would not have been a problem for Furyondy and Dyvers except on other, historical considerations.

Although the archclericy of Veluna and the secular kingdom of Furyondy have been separate and sovereign governments since Veluna declared its independence in 254cy,/span>. many Raoan churches continued to exist in Furyondy although not as part of Veluna's Church of Rao. These churches had originally composed the Imperial Church of Rao in the viceroyalty and been reconstituted as the Raoan Churches of the Kingdom of Furyondy—one in faith (they claimed) with Veluna's church although unbeholden to the archclericy, which the Raoan Churches regarded as an ecclesiological institution, a matter of church polity inessential to faith.

But differences of polity often settle into differences of faith; the Imperial Raoan Churches had always appealed and continue to appeal to wealthy and aristocratic citizens primarily, while in Veluna, due to the archclericy’s political volatility, the church leans heavily on popular faith. But the social values of elites and populations will differentiate very quickly, so that today, for example, the elite and liberalized Raoan Churches ordain women while the popular Church of Rao does not. Similarly, the liturgical reforms that over the past century have incorporated most blisters in Veluna into churches only recently reached Furyondy where, historically, blisters had barely existed.

A great gap, nearly unbridgeable, had been opened between the Church of Rao and the Raoan Churches by the Eademer Concordat's declamation against “greedy Furyondians fomenting the apostasy of imperialism in Veluna.” Thoroughly in disagreement, Furyondy’s elites had decried the archclericy for its abuse of sacred power in attaining secular ambition. As Canon Raowen’s legal and tax reforms were more and more interwoven into Veluna’s civic affairs, the Raoan Churches objected in the interest of Furyondian liberality in politics and religion.

But the reforms that were initiated by the Eademer Concordat did not concern only law and taxes. They brought liturgical reform as well and a reconsideration of how tariffs may benefit not only lawyers and merchants but the Archclericy of Veluna and the Church of Rao. In Furyondy—where Raoan faith remained more influential than elsewhere in the former Ahlissan empire—the new tarriffs offered liberal elites in the Raoan Churches a way to make money by importing from Veluna the material and practical aspects of a spiritual reform.

Sir Porrish Poundless’s journal at Belickling Hall captured the first retraceable currents of these reforms in Furyondy: a litigation before the Furyondian Crown’s Court Civil over new legal principles for importing and retailing liturgical appurtances in Kissail, a city and Raoan Churches stronghold on the north side of the Velverdyva River. By the day of the trial, in Reaping, 514cy,/span>. the spread of “old Raoanism” in Furyondy had reached from Kissail along the river north to Caronis and Baranford and south to Verbobonc and Dyvers. The wealth and influence of the Raoan Churches brought this to the attention of Prince Thrommel Ⅱ, who went to Kissail to see for himself.

~Liberalism and liturgical reform

The spread of Raoan reform went less noticed in other places, but Dyvers was an extraordinarily mercantile and free-thinking city with centuries of settled commercial law that resisted the innovations. The City of Sails disparaged the Raoan mixture of ritualism, legalism, and commercialism as “liberal religion,” a reference to the “liberties” taken in theology and law by wealthy Raoan Churches merchants under the influence of canonical law and liturigical reform formulated, in Mitrik, at Canon’s College and taught, in Devarnish, at Tranquility College. These two schools were opposed to each other in Veluna but were identified as one and the same in mercantile, free-thinking Dyvers.

I do not know the city that well know people that do. Dyvers is generally considered a fine place; I count among its admirers. Its libraries and museums contain the most important of the ancient documents and artifacts of historical significance to the central Flanaess, stowed away centuries ago and far from where they had been looted in the interest of “preserving viceregal heritage.” These warehouses are frequently the starting points of my historical research. The earliest documents and artifacts (among which I prowl) are erratically catalogued and may take days, weeks, months, or—may Lendor anesthetize me, the memory hurts!—so long as a semester to discover.

I have been urged by medical researchers to advise you, my adventurous documentarians, of the following item: Anyone disinterring the recumbent dust and particulate aerosols of those deathly scrolls will contribute to experimental knowledge of the effects of the Acari (a subclass of the Arachnida) on pervious human tissues (the lungs, eyes, hands, nose, and scalp) that said Acari might otherwise never perv. Such is the consequence, my neophyte paleographers, of boldly going where no one has been in a long, long time.

There is a close community of freethinkers in Dyvers where I presented—in 574cy—a letter of introduction allowing me to room and board among them for seven months while I researched my dissertation thesis. And, please, no gossipping among you, my class of snickering Snearwells and Snakes at my private school for scandal, about the cankerworm of freethought having infected my brain at that time. The sweet species had eaten its way into me years earlier, as you know, during my undergraduate days at Grey even before I applied to study with Prof Daesnar Braden, the infamous skeptical philosopher and my dinner companion (you may recall) in Luekish one night with also George Byron, Lord Gordyn, the poet of Missolonghi. Prof Braden had provided me the recommendation letter I mentioned above, so, you will understand that I was thinking pretty freely well before I arrived in the City of Sails.

Besides, my research is far too dry for catching and spreading the infection of licentious academia. My area of expertise . . .

Whoa, Professor. Go back to that bit about Raoan ritualism and commercialism being “liberal religion.” You didn’t cite any evidence, so, how do you know?

Because, as I was saying, I study the history of commercial shipping on the Nyr Dvy and tributary and distributary rivers as far back in time as I can manage. I may assure you that, although there is much to be learned by raising sunken ships and decyphering decayed bills of lading, it isn’t going to free shackled minds if it wanted to. What it may do is affirm facts that lie sunk under volumes of wishy-washy misconceptions. So it is that I possess evidence that specific sixth-century shipping practices that are usually presumed to be the natural consequence of Furyondian trade actually began with the importation of Raoan ritualist apurtanences from Veluna into Furyondy. So it was that when I was shown the Belickling Hall journal of Sir Porrish Poundlace I recognized at once the significance of the litigation it describes taking place in Kissail.

Sir Porrish’s journal is, in fact, a rich store of historical significances, so perhaps I ought to tell you how I came to read it.

One day, when the acari in the crypts of the Mouseion Library had pervaded me with particularly injurious abandon, and I (having no hands clean of the infection) was sanitizing my eyes lacrymositously and encouraging my recovery through pitiful sobs while seated, head between knees, on the steps to the library floors, I felt a comforting parental hand on my shoulder and heard what was, in the circumstances, the kindliest voice imaginable to me.

“My poor fellow, can I help?”

“It’s nothing,” I cried, “only the dust. I’m not emotional.”

“Of course not, and I have just the thing,” affirmed the good Samaritan, producing a stopped bottle that he displayed to me. “Eye drops,” he said, “of my own concoction. They do wonders against mites.”

“Really?” said I, weeping like a hopeful child.

“Really and truly.” The old man seated himself beside me with an easy dexterity that made him familiar at once. “I explore the crypts myself, you know, and always bring this with me. Look to the ceiling!”

I watched the dropper emerge at the corners of my eyes, the liquid bead as clear as water. What could go wrong?

Plop. Plop.

I was relieved! I betokened my thanks through better tears while reaching for my handkerchief.

“Oh, no, wipe not with that infested rag. I have a clean one. Tell me, what errand took you below?”

I told him of my research and so was introduced to Professor Authenticrates Minerva, the Divergent Undergound’s Doctor Authentic. Of course, I would not know him by that sobriquet until after he had introduced me to the Quiblers, the informal society from which the DU soon emerged. Prof Minerva had fled from Greyhawk College to Dyvers in advance of the growing scandal over his Tranquility bifolium and the consequent antagonism of his employer, the Historical Conservancy. I knew about it from him even before I met the Quiblers. Mutual suspicion was rife among them because of the pursuit by the police of the professor at the behest of the Conservancy. The authorities were being continually informed of Minerva’s actions and whereabouts, and the Divergent Underground was formed out of the need for a reliable subset of Quiblers to privately aid him. I was a founding DU member, not because they trusted me on short acquaintance but because Minerva had given me the first and last sheets of the autograph Belickling Hall journal as evidence of the journal’s existence should it ever be impounded. The professor had obtained the journal autograph by virtue of being Sir Porrish Poundlace’s nephew, and because I was marginally connected to the Quiblers and came recommended by Prof Braden, Minera trusted me on a two-month acquaintance, believing that the paired sheets would be safer with me than any other.

And so it is that straight from the horse’s autograph I know the tale: “liberal religion” was originally a term for the ritualist and commercial innovations introduced into Furyondy through the connection of the Raoan Churches and the Church of Rao. The term had been coined earlier by lawyers at Canon’s College for whom “liberal” had been a reference to policies instituted by the Archclericy of Veluna after the Eademer Concordat had “liberated” the archclericy from greedy Furyondian heretics. Liberal religion was uniquely unwelcome in Dyvers but spread easily to other cities with well established Raoan churches. It moved inland from Baranford on the Royal Highway to Worlende and Fountainspring, where canonical law became important not only to commercial legislation but to all aspects of Furyondian civil trial and litigation. In Fountainspring, a lawsuit brought by the Baron of Littleberg against Lord Plimpson, Duke of the Reach, opened a public controversy over Old Furyondian versus the new canonical law, and the long time affair of Plimpson’s estranged wife and King Thrommel Ⅱ lifted the proceedings to a national scandal.

Overnight, the Duchess of the Reach was demeaned to “the notorious Mrs Plimpson,” and more details of her half decade of love with the king were exposed every day or week. The scandal forced the king to quietly and gradually allow independence for Dyvers, where opposition to liberal religion and to the Plimpsons had been strongest. But the scandal’s original impetus had been the civil trial in Fountainspring, so, “liberalism” soon lost the association with religion that it had in Dyvers in favor of an only political and economic connotation. In the end, Old Furyondian law was largely reaffirmed, although social, political, and economic liberalism retain a place in civic debate that persists today. Mrs Plimpson was remade a lady when the king bought and transferred to her her husband’s entitlement, the Barony of Broile, which was his from before he became Duke of the Reach. Mrs Plimpson then assumed the name of her barony, and today, Lady Liberta Broile’s descendents own lovely Belickling Hall on the beautiful Temton Water.

This was the first (although now less remembered) occasion when a Velunar mistress and a Furyondian prince nearly upset the establishment. I leave it to you to decide whether you like the one or the other better.

I like Mrs Plimpson!

I like Jolene!

I don’t see much difference between them.

Really?

What the hell do you mean by that?

One was a princess, the other was a slut!

One had a love life, the other gave up.

Princess . . . duchess . . . who gives a f– . . .

. . . you see that, because liberalism quickly lost its association with religion, the significant roles played by the Church of Rao, the Raoan Churches, and canonical law in the Mrs Plimpson affair were publicly suppressible—and it suited the authorities on all sides to see them suppressed. Professor Minerva reached a silent, uneasy agreement with the Historical Conservancy to keep a secret and returned to Greyhawk to resume his academic career. The secret is kept today by the Democratic Underground, probably. After Doctor Authentic’s death nine years ago, I do not know what became of Sir Porrish Poundlace’s Belickling Hall journal apart from the two sheets in my possession.

For a while, the true but strange history (as I told it) was more widely known. By 526cy, public recognition of the informal and ancient alliance of Furyondy and Veluna had reached a low ebb; especially in the kingdom the esteem of it had soured. But when King Thrommel allowed the independence of Dyvers, he brought cryptic references to the Mrs Plimpson affair back into currency. Furyondians referred to the scandal by way of the cryptic symbol the “obscure D.”

By using the "D" journals, newspapers, and public jesters mooted jocund, even farcical allusions to the kings infamous (d)alliance with his Raoan Churches friends, a pun played just as well on (d)allying with his (d)ally. You may refer to the nearest excerpted blockquote from above to see how it was done.

~Conspiracy and theory

You, my historical newbies, will be suspecting that my history seems, at times, in its methods and conduct, to be a vast conspiracy theory comprehending centuries, overturning everything, and written to suit myself. Is it so? Is everyone else in error and only Bifurcati correct?

Apart from their application to me, your doubts go to the heart of the historiographical arts. How far ought we to rely on our reasoning? When ought we to accede to the authority of others? How should we account for our biases? How far should we depend on experience? What do we really know? What methods are adequate to an appreciation of the past? Do we make it all up?

I, more than anyone?

Here there is so much to say, and this is hardly the time. Your months in my tutelage draw to a close. Your thoughts turn from me to the darkness ahead. Doraka’a! The terrible god Iuz! And although your doom is relentless, mine is relenting. We—you and I—have arrived at the Greyhawk Wars. Only five years remain to the end of my monograph on canonical infamy. And although my judgement awaits per the terms of my contract (I must be honest and withhold nothing evident), so much has been written that by now things are likely to be finally settled in the mind(s?) of my unnatural judge. I have done my best. But who may be assured of their personal integrity? What punishments justly await those that . . .

Oh, come on, Professor.

Yeah. It’s not that bad.

Cheer up. It’s been fun!

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

You don't, for real? How about that. It won’t, I suppose, be on your final exam when proctored by the demons of the abyss and graded by their lords and masters. Yet, should I be worried? Are you really as free from doubt as you profess? How . . . wonderful. I commend you to my point of view, of course, in good conscience. Where else would you look? But even so, doubts are to be expected. Yet, I would not plague you with them. Yet, ought I to have had so much influence on you?

Oh, well, you’ll figure it out. Only this much will I say: imagination, intuition, veracity, and fidelity are greater powers than reason, but we must never break our engagement with the sovereign Queen of All Veritable Things, who will never admit that something is right or wrong, true or false, good or evil, on the ground of a private conviction. You cannot reason by private conviction. Our categories of thought are unstable, our definitions equivocal, and when they are not persuasive to Reason she makes the absolute claim to withhold her consent.

It is not exceptional for a church, a nation, a government, a war, a great venture, an institution, a corporation, a company, an investment, a bank account, a reputation, a cause, a hope, an expectation, a belief, a savior, a love, a fear, a faith, a promise, or a romance to exist in half-life, in a state of active decay, where our convictions soon underweigh their lost radiation, their actual diminishment. Consider, in the end, that radiation wins out; doubt and decay are inevitable.

That is what it means to stand in the light of reason. Reason is not our answer, but she endures over time, and in the end, she measures our decay and reaches for new knowledge. Whether we ever reach it seems impossible, but that is the reason for historiography: the differential quest that explores change over time.

Despite all existing opinion, then, it is not impossible that the Canon of Veluna has fabricated history, not I. The allowance for it equals my point of departure.

~The Nyr Dyv

Professor! It's the Nyr Dyv!

Hmm? Yes, dear, so it is.

It's magnificent!

It's water.

Aghh! How can you be so dull!

Dull? That seems uncall . . . ah. It is your first time seeing the lake. How dull of me not to have realized.

Does it go on forever? Is it always perfect?

Pretty near. A wee bit short, and dull.

Those sails, like floating ivory towers! Those birds, like soaring ivory ships!

They ferry a lot of rats, though.

Rats? How can you be so unenthused?

I live in Nyrstran. My rooms are ten minutes from the lake and the rats are everywhere. They are, of course, very dull rats and very dull rooms.

Professor . . .

I've been on the lake, in the lake, under the lake, over the lake, along the lake, across the lake . . . It's probably very dull to think of what I've done with the lake.

Are somebody's feelings hurt?

If so, I can't say whose. I can only say that it was dull of me not to take you there sooner.

Oh, dear. My good Professor. Your history is a bit unnerving at times, but if you let me sit beside you and link your arm, I will tell you that you were dull about the lake, not in your character. It matters very much that you took me to see it. I would else be in the shadow of Iuz, which is no fun.

Iuz? Shadow? Oh, my dear . . .

Did you say shadow? My friends! I had forgotten it for a moment. Sometimes words run me round like legs a little child lost in fun. But it is reprehensible to have forgotten where you really are while we seem cozy by the lake. Did you eat today while you travail in the fruitless Lands of Iuz? Are you well and safe? Do morbid pestilences plague you? Perhaps you believe that I forget what you do and where you are, but I don't for long, because much the same is on my mind.

We have only one question among us: Does a devil or something better run our little show? Who sends you to Doraka’a? What contracted me to write this history of sketchy things? Have you, have I or have we all together been fooled by false saviors and left for damned? What awful blind man’s buff is this?

For me, the game is already played. I have committed my version of events to parchment, and my judgment—whatever way it skews—awaits. But you still read. Your game is still on. You could call it quits, abandon your quest, return to Law’s Forge, and be part of the fate of the thorpe once again. It could happen.

I cannot recommend it. In my experience, the devil you know is no worse than the angel you don’t. A reputation for good will hide a wealth of ills; a reputation for ill may go either way.

~Fog bound

Bay's Stop gathers fog from the Nyr Dyv, brought by onshore winds that blow through the town, rebound off the mountain cliffs, and envelop the place again. The fogs off the lake are stirred by rivals that drift off the slow Selintan River, and local folk can tell which sort—river or lake—of fog beclouds them, although outsiders bide an undifferentiated soak, beseeching the afternoon sun to disperse the fog of the morning before the evening fog is in. And other than the fog there is nothing here. No prospects, no aspects, no features. Bay’s Stop is stolidly built to resist the seep and decries architectural interest.

It is my favorite place on Oerth. It sees me regretful, sad, hopeful, and lovely. (There are more feelings—but those may represent the rest.) We have only five minutes before the coach wheels past the Stop, a village so small to be at the heart of the world.

Of course, I am not really here. This, my fantastical friends, is a half way house between Nyrstran and Verbobonc, between where I instruct you from my rooms at Olde Maurian and where we go searching for Jolene of Samprastadar and her phantasmal plot against the Archclericy of Veluna. Of course, my instruction may be phantasmal, too, a fictional distraction from your deceitful trek through a healthless empire. Are any of us sure?

The coach swifts us past a familiar place having a public sign. Who is it, there, just the other side of that door? I hesitate, the chance is lost, the coach carries on. That’s fine, because I am no longer here. I never was, perhaps, although—between yesterday's phantasms and those of tomorrow there is a difference that keeps sorrow at Bay and hope alive to be dashed, perhaps, another day.

~Verbobonc Town in summer

Why are we hacking through this thorny thicket? The girls will tear their summer dresses or scratch their arms left bare in the sun.

That, my boy, is why we go first. Be gallant and clear a path. Thwack!

Right, Professor. Chivalry is not dead. Although, the absurdity of our situation seems undiminished. Thwack!

Absurdity? Soon you will be wondering how a place without access could be known to me, just wait and—see!

By the gods! What a sight!

Yes, but my boy, the ladies are in peril. Turn your back to the scene and put it to work. Thwack!

Pardon. Thwack! Ladies, after you.

Ladies, observe!

(Ladies cheering collectively) Verbobonc! It must be Verbobonc! Let us see!

Yes, its Verbobonc. Or, more properly, Verbobonc Town, which is older than the viscounty.

Professor? Did you bring any bandages? I've pricked myself awfully while hacking the thorns.

No, my boy. Girls, within the walls you see, the town is substantially unchanged for five hundred years. Many of its elements—the high, fluted, wooden towers, the ipt treehouses, and the odd stone lintels built into the hillsides and leading into dwellings that the gnomes call “rents” (although they own them—are one thousand years old and almost as pretty as you.

One thousand? (Big eyes) We were told about elvish things that old in the Fellreev Forest, but I laughed at it! (Giggles becomingly)

No, no. At Lake Aqal there are elves . . .

Uh, Professor? This particular stab right here in my wrist may have popped a vein. I can't bind it with only my other hand. Would you . . .

Not now, boy. As I was saying, girls, the elder elves at Lake Aqal may themselves be two or more thousand years old.

But Professor, how do you know this place? (Quizzical smiles, enraptured poses)

Well, ladies, that's a tale. Or a long sentence. This panorama is figured by a second century van Valckenborch landscape that happens to hang in the Museum of Nyr Dyv Antiquities, which I happen to curate, and so, it was only a matter of . . .

I've removed the thorn, Professor. At least, I think I got it all. But it's made the bleeding worse.

Uggg. Ahhh. Ouuu. Ladies, if I may trouble you to loosen your arms from mine. Delightful. Now, son, let me wrap that for you.

Sally's mine.

She is?

I've liked her since we were kids.

Oh. Have you told her?

Grrr. Bark! I think she knows.

“I think she knows”—the four most dangerous words a man may speak. I'm sure she likes you. Stay alive, get out of Doraka’a, and tell her. Understand?

Yes, sir. Oww. Hey. Owww!

Don't make me come after you about it.

~Verbobonc Town and the Cathedral of the Holy Cudgel

The problem with Saint Cuthbert is that common sense—which he is the god of—is too self-congratulatory and lacks self-awareness. Cuthbertines believe they are right and are ready to discipline us over it. Their faith is a horrible mix of well-sounding phrases and deplorable practices. Here is a catechism they recently published and that speaks for itself:

The words of St. Cuthbert are wise, practical, and sensible. The word of the Cudgel is law, and the word must be spread so that all may benefit from his wisdom. Weakness in faith and acting against the Saints [sic] teachings are intolerable in believers. Unceasing effort should be made to bring unbelievers into the fold. Honesty, truthfulness, practicality, and reasonability are the highest virtues.

The Cuthbertines believe that their god is common sense, so they see no difficulty in declaring that the Cudgel should be spread to everyone and that, after it has been spread to you, independent thinking is intolerable. Their zeal seems sensible, practical, and reasonable to them. No use remonstrating—many have tried—because they have common sense, which outfoxes reason without having to explain how.

Professor, are you sure you've got that right? Back in Law's Forge, we used to smelt the armor of dead Cuthbertines the demons dragged in. I know the corpses were Cudgelites by that symbol over there, which they wore. The demons believed the Cuthbertines were good knights, which is why they ate them alive—slowly.

Well, lad, zeal for good and for ill are arbitrary things. If you go around saying, “I'm good,” and wearing a white tunic, then demons tend to believe you. Spotting that symbol was keen, though. What do you suppose the building is that bears it?

A Cuthbertine armory?

Hoot! Your answer is better than the truth. This inauspicious construction is the Cathedral of the Holy Cudgel, looking like a warehouse dropped among the horse carts at the bottom of a hill rather than set aloft in the usual way.

The location is instructive. In Verbobonc, the Diocese of Saint Cuthbert was established to aid the anticipated abolition of the Archclericy of Veluna one hundred fifty years ago. The basic functions of the diocese were to place a Cuthbertine episcopate within the Raoan College of Bishops and to replace Raoan clerics with Cudgelites in governmental positions. But the viscount was wary of disposing of Raoan troublemakers by creating Cuthbertine ones and of the cudgel’s dogmatic insistence on interfering in peoples' lives. Consequently, the civil authority of the new diocese was restricted to the government postings, to a small militia of about two hundred clerics patroling the forests and hills, and to the new, twinned orders of civil servants, the Bishop’s Ministers and the Knight-protectors, which we read about in Lights and Shadows: “Marvelous agreement! I am proud to be a Verboboncan, where at least I have the Cudgel.”

The civil diocese and its cudgel are still helpful to the viscounty. Verbobonc's troubles with monsters and evil cults are as primordial as the ipt trees and elves. The viscounty worries about spies, especially, because its reduced connection to Veluna and the Church of Rao is promoted jealously by those insidious factions. Cuthbertine dogma —with its emphasis on laws, cudgels, and unceasing application—serve to keep other troubles at bay because St Cuthbert’s zeal for religious conversion is now equivalently dedicated to service as the viscount’s lawful civil deputy.

Converting religion to nationalism is not that difficult; it may even happen spontaneously, as with the subject of this monograph. As a rule, faith will convert by believing that it is a civil authority’s sacred accoutrement. Believing that they wield St Cuthbert’s cudgel, many of the militant’s saints zealously transform themselves into a national security service: vigilant, honest, truthful, and opposed to anything that distresses civil order, such as evil cults, rumours of spies, monsters in civilized places, and outsiders generally speaking.

This explains the depression and architecture of the cathedral. The seemingly functional structure and its location on a low-lying thoroughfare represent the dependability, accessibility, and inevitability of St Cuthbert's service to the diocese. There is no escaping the Cudgel, so you may as well accept it.

Most citizens believe that Verbobonc’s has a tempering influence that softens the force of the cudgel by comparison to the damage it dealt elsewhere in the Flanaess by that blunt instrument, and they are partly correct. But even so, nationalism is never an innocuous thing; it can turn virulent at any moment. It remains necessary to watch the vigilant, and the viscount keeps an eye on the cudgel.

Nonetheless, the humble cudgel is not without grandeur. If you direct your gaze to the top of the hill that rises behind the cathedral, you will see a kind of villa or chateau made of mullioned glass and—judging by the tower on this side that can be seen straight through—vast rooms and impressive spaces. The vines creeping up the villa’s walls are in harmony with the park that encircles it, and althat make an architectural unity with it. Behind the houses there are walls enclosing gardens that reach up the hill to the park and that delineate what is, comprehended in its entirety, a luxurious compound finely displayed on a landscaped high pedestal.

It is Billets Palace, the residence of the Bishop of Verbobonc, the chief of St Cuthbert’s diocese. The Billets is reached from the cathedral by the long street with houses and gardens; the gates to the compound are barred at the low entrance adjacent to the cathedral.

The supremacy of The Billets over the cathedral communicates an idea: in Verbobonc, the glory of the diocese is the bishop, not the church. This unusual ecclesiology reflects the diocese's role in the social and political world here. The palace and its cathedral were built following the establishment of the diocese by the viscount. Although the viscount’s lineage is not Cuthbertine, the accord of viscount and bishop is foundational to Verbobonc’s exemption from vassalage to Veluna. There had never been a bishop of Verbobonc before the installation of Cornelius Speiknhammer, in 446cy, which ironically led not to the abolition of the archclericy but to its restoration. Verbobonc’s bid to become a part of Veluna had failed, and from that time, the viscount has looked to the plar of the Celestial Order rather than to the Canon of Veluna as his representative in the theocracy.

St Cuthbert’s faith in Verbobonc, as we know, is not an established religion; it is an established civil diocese, marking a clear distinction of the cudgel’s civil and religious aspects. Viscount Langard will not condone an overlap lest he be accused of a two-fisted assault on his citizens. The current occupant of Billets Palace, Bishop Haufren, is a religious reformer that may be seeking to reduce the role of the civil diocese and return to cudgelite values of faith. He supports Langard’s proposal of a Verboboncan branch of the Knights of the Hart because the knights could relieve that viscounty's dependence on the civil knight-protectors and bishop's ministers. The idea is making headway, and his continued support could be crucial.

The wonders of Verbobonc’s architecture are equalled by its politics, which resemble a brainless nervous system where everything does on.

~Reymend Town and the Romantics

I know where we are!

Hey, now?

I know where we are.

Is that so?

I do too.

So do I!

That's Concordance Stack!

That's the Velverbridge's Old Lane, Viscounty Park, and Leeward House. It's Reymend Town, from Mistress and Prince!

Oh, I don't think so. The growing darkness deceives you.

Stop it. May we go across?

That’s a collective decision, but we are headed to dinner, which awaits on this side of the river.

(Crossing over)

There's a fire in the Stack.

A new one is laid every night in homage to the missing prince. He may still live, and this light would guide him home to his lost Unified Kingdom.

Could that be construed as anti-Raoan sentiment?

Could be, generally isn't.

So, there's really nothing left of what happened at Reymend Town? At Leeward House? In Viscounty Park? Even here, in Leeward’s ballroom?

Tomorrow we will see what is left.

The ballroom is grand and brilliant, with dancers and an orchestra. It's fabulous and terrible. They were here and are swept away!

At Leeward, the Romantics were happy sometimes. They thought they'd won.

May we see the garden where Ferrica and Edmore waited for their friends after the smoke signal from the Stack?

It's out here.

It's beautiful!

Not as it was, though. It's been relandscaped.

Now there's a metaphor.

Class, I am pleased that you chose to cross to Reymend. It was in my heart, but I did not want to drag you along. The attendance is voluntary and warm or it is nothing. And now, spiritually fed, we may attend other fare.

Actually, Professor, there's a pub right there, and the customers seem to relish the food.

Maybe. But the braised lamb my stomach craves is served over that bridge.

Can this be a collective decision?

Oh, I don't think so. The college pays for our trip, and I am the college.

Autocrat!

Don't walk so fast. I can't keep up!

Don't stress, my dear. We have passed the point of no return and may go at our leisure now. Here we are! Let me get the door.

That’s very considerate for a tyrannical old man.

I heard that. Doesn't this look nice?

I'm having the lamb and it had better be worth it.

No lamb yet. Drinks? Shall we say, five bottles of wine to share before dinner?

(Eyebrows raised)

As you know, young padawans, a war of propaganda was waged by Edmore Wunsay and Ferrica Aposnos in the taverns of these towns on behalf of Prince Thrommel and his princess, Jolene of Samprastadar.

They rock.

They do. And for all we know, this identical vintage was consumed by them in the course of their conspiracies. There is no greater utility to a literary man and his sister than a bit of inebriation before song.

Say it loud!

Who may gainsay?

I'm switching to ale!

Mostly, these spontaneous songs and recitations concerned the prince and princess, whose love for one another gave hope to the desperate in the way this refilled goblet gives hope to me. The joy of the people was especially Jolene, who remained their princess while bearing the burdens of birthing their new world.

Go Jolene!! (Megaphone hands) Rrriot Grrrrrl!!

One of Wunsay's most famous compositions was not his own. Right here, in this tavern where we lose our inhibitions, he heard a song sung and declared it “the new national anthem.” It was published the following day.

Wunsay! Wunsay! Wunsay!

The anthem is not sung anymore and its sheet music is treasurably rare. But even so, if you possess one copy you might make others, and I have a sheet each for you. The song sums up the spirit of the times—if you are crocked when you sing it.

. . . two, three, four:

(All)

I AM AN ATHEIST!

I AM A SECULARIST!

That’s bitchin'!

That’s bestest!

It’s off the chain!

Why does it sound like Anarchy in the UK?

I'm hungry. Can we order?

I second that.

Epilogue: A night at Olde Maurian

I saw the world dissolve in an engrossing malady until I too dissipated and none remained but you. Scholars! you had turned your backs to me and witnessed the illness around you. The derangement of the elves that bayed the moons was resounding in the darkness from the twisted windows of Meanders, barred like a prison; the Velverdyva was stopped, clogged, and sickened like a defecation pot; the timeless ipts had fallen ro rise again (disbelieving) leafless and garled within the sewers, the din, the wails, and the walls of Doraka'a. You are at the city's gate!

Except, I am unsure whether you were. The vision ended. I was restored to my rooms at Olde Maurian with our manuscript open to me and ending at the words "he has an insistant eye." Where does that leave you? On the Barren Plains beside the Opicm River, I suppose, the last place I knew you to be.

That was a week ago. You might have reached the east branch of the Opicm River by now, confiscated a boat from a kobold fishing there, reached the rapids east of Ghulford, and ridden the swift current to Whyestil Lake. You may have reached the gates of Doraka'a, as I had seen.

There's the rub. I was to have finished my monograph before you arrived and have been trying. The consequences of failure may be severe. I have been earnestly trying, but the magic won't work. There is no spirit in the pages to transport my meaning. I have tried again and again every hour for a week and nothing happens. It petrifies me. It haunts my heart. Are you dead? Am I?

I had considered the book complete, that you would get the last of it from me as you had formerly done, in spirit and in person. "Finis" was written and ready to be read by us in common. The death of the magic seems quite general. Every day finds me wearier and needing to sleep. I fear I will never awake.

What is a book without the end? Does it count for nothing? I am too disturbed to write a conclusion, and I am, I fear, out of time.

A decision must be made. If I cannot write, perhaps I may transcribe. Not what I wanted but the best I can do, which my contract says will be good enough.

The transcription is an excerpt from (suitably enough) From the Greyhawk Wars to the Present, written by my old friend and nemesis, Roger Moore. This is well and good. Moore's book is reliable because it is, in his words, "widely referenced by a thousand colleagues as the definitive study on the subject."

I had intended to critique it, but the time has expired. You must do it for yourselves, and that, too, is suitable because you, my wandering adventurers of a perilous school, are a graduated class.

A word of advice. My history has focused on one great doubt: Would would Iuz have been and the Greyhawk Wars if there had been no Canon of Veluna? Was this good shepherd the efficient cause of many ills? Has this turbulent priest led us into so much delusion, war, and fear that we must doubt his salvation?

History, remember, is not what is said; it is what happens. The Canon of Veluna is—what he has been, what he is, and what he may be. What he has been, I have tried to tell. What he is and may be are less amenable to reason: they will either change him or be more of the same. The only certainty is that history resolves in time, and then the historian's work begins.

What happened in the aftermath of the Greyhawk Wars? It is an open question. If an ally has worked a miracle tot start a war without warning his friends, was he an ally? If nations went to war against an undead army and there was no army of the undead, should they have admitted and gone home? If no one in our history is telling the truth, does history tell it anyway?

Those questions were in my mind when I signed the contract commencing this book. I leave them with you now.

PS. I would prefer to know whether you have received this, but things are quiet at the end, I am so tired, and . . . zzzzzzzzzzz

Postscript One—Interview with the priestess

Nothing went as they expected. Having left their boat in the mouth of the Opicm River, they hiked along Whyestil Lake's northern shore, and when they first saw Doraka'a, they thought the city must be near. It was not. The black walls were rising fifty feet above their foundations on the gray cliffs above the lake on the far horizon.

Eventually reaching the exterior walls, the hero adventurers went in a half circle to the south past two closed gates before arriving at the open one, thirty feet high, twenty-five wide, watched but not guarded from the ramparts, and passable to all who went there, friend or foe.

But were any foes of Doraka'a present apart from these young ones? Did good hearts ever pass beyond these walls? Had a benign intent ever entered that place?

The little heroes edged through the gate where loiterers comprised every sort of villainy: demonic, monstrous, humanoid, human. But the scholars knew well all these, having lived in the empire from birth. Wearing the common clothes of Law's Forge, outfitted in battered armor they had pillaged from hobgoblin graves in the western lands, encrusted with the filth and blood of ninety days adventuring, the group had never appeared more native to their environment. All they needed was to act like citizens of the Empire (which they were) come to worship Iuz on his festival Night of the Splintered Bone Moon.

Three months of wondering how they would enter the city had become, in a moment, the unconsidered question of what to do now. But they need not rush. They could appear to be tourists, as others really were.

Their travel visas, metaphorical as they were, were confiscated at the gate even before they got through immigration.

"Oi! You there! Yes, them there," came a screetch from the crowd. It sounded from behind the scholars, and only after the eyes of all villainy had gathered on them did the children turn to discover that "you" and "them" were they and no others. Rarely had hero adventurers been reduced to tyros so soon.

"You simply appear to me! Truly, I am favored by Iuz," the devil said. Her unfolded wings lofted her fifteen feet; she hovered to clear a space for herself and confronted the students among the crowd. Her leer was familiar, her screetch was familiar, her stench was familiar, and so, too, her ludicrous pride. She was H'Rothka'a, gaoler of Law's Forge, come to make their day.

"Oh, what is to be done?" she quized the onlookers. "Should I torture them slowly right here at the foot of this gate for your amusement, then return them to my village to enjoy it some more? Should I gift them to the priests in Agony Fields, confectioners of pain whose delectible arts exceed my own? I would do, if the priests would let me stay near while they pinned the bowels of these children to their arms and stitched their lungs to their nipples. This group is dear to me. From their births I had raised them, and they repaid me by running away. Humans do not know filial obligation, not even to me"—she dropped her voice to a sultry purr—"H'Rothka'a, the celebrated Imprisoner of Law's Forge."

"Hurray!" shouted the assembly. "H'Rothka'a, wiley devil among demons! Forget the priests, O queen. Do it yourself. We will applaud!"

"Instead of that, I think you should stand back and stay clear," spoke another voice. The crowd, so boisterous a moment before, doubted itself and made way for the captain of the Boneheart Citadel guard.

"Well, well. Peter!" said the devil. "How is Halga, your witch, whom all her kind hate? Are you on her mission, or is it by your own authority that you interrpt this orderly assembly?"

"H'Rothka'a is excited and tempts her fate," stated Peter, the captain, a dark knight of Iuz, pale and angelically blonde.

H'Rothka'a hesitated but had backers at the moment, and the crowd, noticing that the captain was unusually alone, took heart and looked at H'Rothka'a encouragingly.

"These children are my escaped denizens," the malebranch cooed. "You have no jurisdiction. I will, however, allow you to watch while I do with them what I will."

"Your denizens are in my den, and you will behave as you ought or you, H'Rothka'a, devil resident of the demonic empire from time untold, will be nothing but a memory from this day on."

H'Rothka'a howled, and the crowd closed in not on Peter but on the adventuring band whose fate they could decide by virtue of being in the majority. Peter drew his sword, and there would have been blood, much of it his, until everything was changed.

"No matter how great the instruction, you will never learn," came a woman's voice (I think). It echoed eerily—as though the oerth had been hollowed to a sounding board. "You have no privileges anywhere in this world that are not premised on fear of me!

"Which of you most desires to be the object of this great lesson?" the woman continued, her eyes (I think) surveying each in the crowd from within a collapsed cowl, her hands trembling in the eagerness of hate.

"We all desire it equally, High Priestess," bowed H'Rothka'a, "but we swear on the holy day that brought you to Doraka'a, we do not need to be taught what is etched on our hearts."

The crowd was peeling away, outer layers first, hoping the high priestess would not notice. Soon they had abandoned the malebranche, who did not dare straighten her bow before she had been permitted.

"Priestess," suggested H'Rothka'a, "my humiliation approaches moral discomfort."

"Am I reduced to a priestess now like a child? Oh, H'Rothka'a; you are a nuissance."

"I serve you to the ends of the Oerth, Priestess, as I did your people before you."

"You are their last vestige, and therefore you live. But remember that vestiges are unnecessary, strictly speaking."

(Exit, H'Rothka'a)

"Actually, High Priestess, there is another vestige," said a hero adventurer while the band was being taken to the citadel and the pedestrians on the street pretended that nonexistence did not yawn where Halga walked.

"What is it?" said she.

"It's an old man living in a village in the forest."

"You mean Bingley Darc? Are they mistreating him?"

"Yes."

"I commission you on pain of death to go and straighten them out."

"Of course. Although, we will have to be alive to carry out your commission."

"That's true. You were not sent here to die, although you are doing your best."

"It was kind of you to rescue us."

"Not at all."

Vendors on the Jade Streets were selling food that did not appear to induce vomitting, disease, perversity, torpidity, or frenzy among the orcs, hobgoblins, bandits, and drow that were served. "Should we try it?" whispered one of the girls to a classmate. "I mean, who knows what Halga will have."

Halga threatened to have ground slave's innards in a paladins' penis-skin sausauge, and then, within her quarters in the citadel, her armed servant—whose docility was ensured by the excised portion of his brain—presented hamburgers so succelent and fresh that our heroes were nearly converted to evil.

"Ground on the premises and served within the hour," laughed Iuz's favorite.

Bingley Darc had been right. With her cowl pushed back, her hair was dirty and excessively fine but definitely straw blonde. She pushed back her bangs, the filth on her hands left a smudge on her forehead, and there, in the corner of her eye, was no effluence of victims' blood but the teardrop birthmark of her former god.

The apostate of Erythnul in favor of Iuz.

"You must hand me the book," she said. The walls of her chambers were saturate with a nauseating rust, but there was not one limb, head, or torso in sight. ("I've had the place swept," she said. "A trove of live ones will be delivered tonight.")

"What book?" said a hero.

"Professor Bifurcati's autograph. Hand it here." Her hands shook, her lip curled, and her expression became clouded and transitional. Terrible.

"Just give it to her," another hero said.

She took it with an intake of breath. Or was it a sigh? No one could tell what she was thinking.

After a minute skimming the pages, Halga took the book to her desk and removed two stamps from a drawer. "Is that why we're here, to deliver the book?" The High Priestess depressed the stamps into the ink pad—only, it didn't look like ink—her hands shaking so violently that the liquid splattered red. She raised the first stamp over the manuscript but, trembling greatly, could not aim it down.

"Here. I'll do it for you!" a student cried, alarmed. But an incomprehensible word from the witch's mouth and a gesture knocked the interloper back without an ostensible touch. Halga looked at nothing but the autograph, turned to its final page.

She held her right wrist with her left hand and stabbed. Drops splattered her hands, her arms, the page, and the desk. The stamp made a blurry mark, and the student that had been knocked down ran up to read it.

"'Vero est.'What's does it mean?"

"It is true."

"What is?"

"The scholar's work. It is honest and sincere. He meant it."

She repeated the red stab with the second stamp. A little cleaner, it was easier to decipher: "Halga High Priestess of Iuz."

"What's going on?"

Halga returned the book but looked distracted. "Your quest is attempted and completed. Law's Forge is freed. You are released."

"But what's going on?"

"I will take you out of the citadel."

They were to leave via the basements and the tunnels of Undercity, but at the high window of the citadel's southwest wing outside Halga's quarters, from out of the black night the crying of the Saturnalia of Pain in Agony Fields could be heard, the tossing mass of dark worshippers could be seen, the dais of dark celebrants flickered in an orange light, and the unmistakable divinity of Iuz could be gazed on, manifest beneath its corpse of mottled gray-black skin: the only god the scholars had ever seen, and the only one they would ever see.

"Why aren't you down there too? Won't you be missed?" a scholar mocked the high priestess, pointing to a paladin of Pelor that the archmage Null was tormenting from his place at the god's left hand, much to the divine delight.

"I am summoned by Lolth; my Lord may not object. My absence is excused."

"By the spider goddess of the drow?"

"One and the same," said Halga brightly with a coy smile. "We ought to move on. What a shame if you were to die so soon after winning your right to life."

Undercity was a fright. It is one thing to see demons and drow on the city streets and another to be where they live. The creatures below had less respect for Halga than the surface dwellers, although she was an emissary from her god to theirs and they dared not exhibit discontent.

Two small, magical doors led first to and then from a tunnel that ascended over a difficult terrain of boulders serving as stairs to the palace of Iuz. Here, for the first time, in a darkness that their eyes would never be accustomed to, fierce Doraka'a met the scholars' misinformed expectations. It was not as they had thought. It was not foul, rotted, and putrid; it did not infest your hollow places; it cut precisely to the nerve, splintering bone and spitting marrow. You were not sickened but harrowed by the immense, sculpted things of terrible reputation that escaped the blackness and glowered with intentions you might guess but could never devise.

The throne room was open but they did not see in. Halga did not go that way. She passed north to the Blackspear Chamber where there was a portal to the abyss. Formerly a travelled highway, this gate was less busy since the Flight of Fiends. Now, only Halga regularly traversed the worlds where no bridge was meant to be. The Blackspear guards saluted her entry and admitted her guests, who stood awfully before the abyss.

"Are we going in?" said a little voice.

"You would not get out alive. The guards are instructed to take you to the citadel gates, and from there you may attempt your escape. Perhaps it will go well.

"I have something to tell you." The priestess tried to focus her thoughts and steady her hands. "The gods are not essences of faith. We get that wrong. They are obsure, personal things. For our benefit, they haphazardly promte ideas that we make into religions suiting their personalities to some degree, but they are not closed books. We may sway them or risk losing their attention and suffering the consequences. Do you see?"

"I'm not sure, but I'll remember. Are you going to be ok?"

"What?"

"Will you be alright?"

"I don't think anyone has ever asked me that. What should I say?"

Halga spoke a word and stepped through the portal. Dark gaseous winds engulphed her, held back on the scholars' side of the barrier by a force clearer and less permeable than glass. Her image appeared on it like a moon among thin and intervening clouds.

"I liked her."

But other adventurers were less sure.

"Where is she now?"

"It's not Lolth's lair. It isn't spidery."

"Are those mushroom things, or fungal ones?"

"They don't seem to like her much."

"It's Shedaklah, realm of the mushroom witch, Zuggtmoy."

"How do you know?"

"My mom picked mushrooms in Law's Forge."

"What has she taken in her hand?"

"Some kind of rock. It's hard to see because of the cloud spores."

"Oh, my gods! It's a soul gem—Iuz's soul object."

"What the hell?"

"I read about it in Osgold's Epitome in the library at Meanders. If Iuz knows where the object is, his spirit will abide within it if he is killed on the material plane so does not die."

"Gosh."

"She's leaving Shedaklah and flying in a sort of silver place."

"She's floating."

"She's blown away."

"What are all those swirling colors far off?"

"Whoa. They got close really fast."

"She threw the object in."

"Did Iuz just get mortal on the material plane?"

"Gosh."

"She's flying again."

"She's blown awa . . . actually, these clouds look thicker. I think she's standing on them. She's running toward us!"

"But those beasts chasing her don't look good. I know she's got abyssal friends, but those don't look amiable."

"I think she's going to make it!"

"I don't think she's going to make it."

Blood spurts from Halga's mouth and onto the portal's perfect clarity. A sort of talon pokes through of her ribs on the side her birthmark is on, which is evident because her face has smashed the glass and is sliding to the stones at its base.

"Horrors!"

"We should save her!"

"Are you sure?

"Don't be dim. We have to fetch her."

"How, exactly?"

"We say what she said, the password."

"That will never—work."

"Pull her through. Close it up."

"It closed itself."

"Don't stick your tongue out at the demons."

"Is she dead?"

Postscript Two—Romantic Bay's Stop

The crowd at Wolfie's was lively and Cass was busy, but she slipped into the booth opposite her customer to glare: "Won't you stop coming here? I thought I made it clear."

"Although, my opacity remains. Won't you forgive me?"

"No."

"But I like Wolfie's coconut salmon stew and can't do without it. You never know, we may have to tolerate one another forever."

"Visitors don't stay long. The stew?" said she, leaving the table.

"Not this time. Let's try the Cairn Hills moles with fennel. They're local and it will support the goblin market. Or maybe the . . ."

"Piss off."

". . . with the garnet Côt. Two glasses."

"We'll see."

(Exits and enters to serve the wine)

"It's your break time. Let's leave here. The fogs are romantic at night."

"When it's busy I don't get a break."

"Cassandra, take a break."

"Shut up, Wolfie."

(On the docks, in a white bank)

"Did you come back for the fog?"

"In a manner. It's not bad. It's like the smoke off White Plume Mountain with its uncontacted tribe of gnomes."

"You remember what I said? Why didn't you say anything?"

"I was afraid you'd be disappointed. I couldn't prove it."

(Huffs and stomps) "Men are unreliable."

"To one thing constant never."

"Why are you here? Where did you go?"

"I feared thy kisses, gentle maiden."

"Will you be serious? I'm supposed to figure that out, I I suppose. Who said it?"

"How does a barmaid know I didn't? 'I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion. Thou needest not fear mine. Innocent is the heart's devotion with which I worship thine.'"

"Why do you fear my mien?"

"How does a barmaid know what a mien is?"

"Oh, please." (Stops their walk) "It wasn't innocent when you went."

"I know it. At the time, I was sure our lives together would be spoiled by me."

"So, you made sure of it. You were right, then."

"But I no longer think so. I took a risk. By right, you should have met someone else by now; Wolfie would tell me you were gone. By right, I would not have the occasion to ease my conscience before granting you my absence. But nothing is by right, and I have something more to say. (Producing a ring) I won't ask you to marry me; that would be the end of my stay. But if, at any time, you are inclined to accept, take the ring. I hold it for that purpose."

"If I understand this rightly, you are proposing to blight my life now because you didn't before?"

"I no longer think I am a blight. Some friends have convinced me otherwise."

"Who?"

"They are far away. I'm not sure where, but I made this for them."

(Producing a needlepoint pattern)

"That's . . . nice. What is it supposed to be?"

"It's near here. This is Verbobonc Town, this is Luna, and these are stars, one each for my friends. I used to watch you stitch when things were slow at Wolfie's. Do you remember when we went to Bay's Stop Needling on a Starday?"

"Do you?"

"We went to buy supplies. The shopkeeper said I'm a natural and should stick to it. I have, although I'm going to a place where supplies will be hard to find. I'll stock up before I go."

"Annalo."

"Have you ever been to the Moon's vale? There's a place where I imagine you to be."

"Annalo."

"Are you crying? I'm sorry. What did I say?"

The middle-aged barmaid took the ring, holding it by the thumb and forefinger of one hand. Professor Annalo Bifurcati went down on one knee, clasped the hand that cusped the ring, and doubted how close he was to joy.

"Wife, may I place that on your finger?"

In the stitched light of of the moon, Cassandra replied,

"Husband, yes, you may."

Postscript Three—The Divergent Underground

The scholars carried Halga's lifeless body from the Blackspear Chamber, but the guards were unsure. Ought they to fear her even now? Were they her rescuers, her executioners, or at her command?

"You have the High Priestess' order to let us by," said a scholar.

"Something seems wrong," observed a guard. He stooped to hold a finger to Halga's nostril. "She lives," he said doubtfully, "and there is a lot of blood. Perhaps a nearby priest could assist her?"

"We attempted divine healing. The demon's wound was unaffected."

"Our priests are great experts. Young lords and ladies, you are free to go as the High Priestess commanded, but she is one of us."

Untrue, thought the scholars in their sunken spirits. But was it? Who was the witch Halga? What was happening? Choices are made much too soon when you make them without knowing the consequences.

The guards' captain arrived. "Is there a problem?" asked Peter, the dark knight of Iuz.

"Not really. The High Priestess ordered us to let them go, not let them carry her away half dead. We're taking her to the priests."

"The High Priestess' command implies—and I happen to know—that she wants them safely away. If you take her to the priests they will send guards to capture them before they escape. You will fail her command, a fearful thing if she survives. Alternatively, you don't send her to the priests and she dies in your custody. But, if you return to your post immediately and let her guests take her away alive, you will at least have obeyed the highest command that exists apart from Lord Iuz."

"Dear gods," said the guard.

Reaching the docks of Doraka'a, Peter called to a hobgoblin and said, "Get a crew. Put these people in a worthy boat and take them where they wish to go."

"Where's that?"

No one had any idea, and an anxious moment passed before someone spoke at last.

"To Molag!"

"To Molag?" wondered the hobgoblin and the other scholars.

"Via Delaquenn, not Grabford," Peter seconded.

The scholars climbed aboard, but—"I'll have a look to see who this is" the goblin said, displacing the cowl from the dying figure's face and looking at Peter.

"Better for our cause that she gets to the other side," the captain affirmed.

"Of life?" gasped a scholar.

"No," the hobgoblin japed, "of the lake. Furyondy."

"Oh."

"What cause?" someone asked.

"Take this," said Peter, handing him a vial. "A healing potion, good for that evil wound."

They shoved off, keeping the lakeshore out of sight while going south before heading east to Delaquenn. When they came within sight of land, the hobgoblin pointed ashore.

"There's our cause, the western plains of the old Horned Society, a home at one time to hobgoblins and their human friends."

"You mean intersettlement?"

"Interwhatlement?"

"Nothing, only history."

"I don't know much about that."

"No, but we once knew someone that did."

"Delaquenn is ruled by Iuz and occupied by orcs but there are many hobgoblins there, which is good for you because goblin teamsters drive wagons going to Molag that leave from the wharf over there. You can hire one of them, so long as it's a union gig.

"But don't mention this one's name; it would cause a fuss," he added, watching the scholars lift quiet Halga onto a pallet for taking ashore.

"Your beauty still sleeps, which probably isn't good, although I think she's looking better."

"You think she's beautiful?"

"I do. But I'm a hobgoblin."

(Scholars and Halga go ashore)

"Are you coming along?"

"Standing orders from Doraka'a are to not go ashore in the western lands. Farewell."

(Shoves off)

"To the Teamsters' Union?"

"Yes. Go on."

"Something's not right there, there, and there. Those aren't ordinary guards, they're watchers, and they can see the entire wharf, especially the Teamsters building."

"We're trapped on the wharf!"

"Lying on this pallet and covered by this canvas, Halga will look like freight."

"Freight that wiggles. Right now, she's curling her legs."

"Couldn't we carry her into the Teamsters' like this? Its only that far."

"They will have watchers in the Union and at the exits from town, I'll give you ten to one."

"So, we'll take them out!"

"That's what they want. A ruckus, an alarm, and Iuz knows where we are."

"We were told, right, that the teamsters are on our side. That means the union is on our side, so the union leader is on our side, who is probably in that building right now. So, we go in and ask."

"It's your idea, you know what to do, so you should go."

"She's off."

"We should look busy, like we're not just standing here."

"I'll get lunch to bring back. That way, we'll look natural."

(Exit all but one and Halga. Enter with lunch)

"Hold the sandwiches. She's coming back."

"How did it go?"

"Great! The boss is taking care of it. A wagon drives up, hoists a Teamsters flag, there's a disturbance, we load up, and we're off."

"Here's the wagon."

"There's the flag."

"It's Halga! Over here! She's got bloody eyes! This way!"

"On time and on cue. Up we go, Halgs."

"Halgs?"

"Why not? She's out like a light."

(Exit)

(Enter watchers arresting someone on a nearby street)

"Oh, hell, this isn't Halga. It's a hobgoblin tranny."

"Maybe it's her in a magical illusion."

"Nah. That's Riedlbroban. He's a tranny teamster."

"That's not blood, its mud."

"This is a stupid town."

"Let's get beer to drink on watch."

(Exit)

(Enter scholars and a teamster on a wagon stopped by watchers at the edge of town)

"We need a plan."

"Girls, act jaded."

"Hello, officers. Looking for some fun?"

(Inspecting the women)

"Who's the one lying down."

"Best not to see her. She's Mayor Illgotts' personal traffick and not taking it well. If you look at her, you'll recollect her later under a truth spell and incrimminate yourself."

"Where's my tariff?"

"Six percent!"

(Exit watchers)

"You know, that tariff's more than my wages. Normally, we traffick contraban books and artifactual loot, yet my wage is my wage, all the same."

"There's no justice."

"Where are you going in Molag?"

"To Nlessie's bookstore."

"Nlessie?"

"The Molag bookseller. You remember. The Divergent Underground."

"Nlessie and the DU are our best outlets. Her shop's by the wall of the Exactly Equal Cathedral. Not a nice place, but I can take you there, no problem."

"Halga's waking up!"

"Are you feeling any better?"

"She looks uncomfortable."

"She looks undead."

"Let's unpack her from the pallet. Take the canvas off."

"So much blood."

"Ooohhh, ooohhh . . . Did I hear someone calling me Halgs?"

(Exit)

(Enter the teamster's wagon at the door of Nlessie's Old Books, where Nlessie peeps through)

"What's the password?"

"The password? We don't know it."

"Annalo Bifurcati sent us."

"Everyone knows I know that fool. What's the password?

"Stop asking. We don't know."

"'Hoodwink!' It's 'hoodwink!'"

(Nlessie unbolts the door)

"How come your so good at passwords?"

"Wait. Why does she look half dead? Is she reanimated?"

"No. Would you let us in, please. It's a PASSword, right? And there are lots of awful priests walking around this church."

"It's a cathedral. My rent is calculated on the distinction. And those priests raise the dead, which look a lot like her. Wait. Is that Halga? You brought the High Priestess here?"

"She's not the High Priestess anymore. She's apostate."

"Oh, thank goodness."

"She's not dead now. You should have seen her before. I don't think death likes her."

"Oh, that's nice. That was gallant. You never liked her."

"I didn't say that. It's just . . . it's that . . . just look at her. I mean, Nlessie has a point. She was taloned by a demon."

"You should be on her side. She killed Iuz."

"She threw his soul object somewhere. It's not the same thing."

"Is his soul object lost? Because of her?"

"Is that a big deal?"

"It changes everything. He can be killed on the material plane. He'll have to leave. He won't be a god on Oerth anymore, just another god. I think you should sit by the fire, dearie."

(Later, by the fire)

"It's quite a manuscript."

"Why did he need to write it?"

"You will need to ask him."

"He doesn't know."

"But if the book were to be believed, it would do to Hazen, in a moral and intellectual way, what Halga did to Iuz. It would banish him. Just imagine. A world without the Canon of Veluna!"

"The hobgoblins are taking over the western plains."

"I'll bet they are. And Jolene is supplanting the Archclericy. The Flanaess will be different, like nothing since the Oeridian conquest of the monsters. No wonder Hazen wants an eternal war."

"We want you to publish the professor's book."

"I would do, but it's his. There's a contract. He has to say."

"No, he doesn't. We "have power of attorney to disseminate in any manner we please the contents of this book."

"Truly? I knew this shop wasn't for nothing, and no one runs me out of Molag. If you're sure, then it's simply a matter of getting the initial printing quickly into all the wrong hands. I can do it from here."

Postscript Four—The Vale of Luna

“It’s not very convincing,” the scholar said to the mirror, looking at his hobgoblin nose.

“It doesn’t have to be convincing,” Nlessie responded. “It a signal. It will be good enough at dusk.”

“What kind of signal?”

“I’ll tell you on the way. Let’s go.”

Nlessie led her assembled hobgoblins out of Old Books and into the shadow of the ruined Necromonium, the inverted temple of Nerull, where Death’s worshippers were wont to descend to heaven from oerth before making their ritual ascent, through the infinite necrotic dungeons, to the deepest depths of Tarterous. Tonight, though, the depths are open to the stars, because ten years ago the Necromonium’s ceiling had risen to the streets of Molag in a firey crash, the citizens had burned down part of the cathedral, and Iuz’s bloody coup had deposed the thirteen Dread Presences, the Hierarchs of the Horned Society.

The disguised adventurers took a path undulating to the docks, up into dry spots and down into mud, while while keeping low enough to be inconspicuous under the rivergrass of the endless plain. The little hobgoblin troop followed Nlessie to what she called Old Town, a collection of barns, warehouses, and shacks housing wagons, horses, teamsters, and dock hands. The more sentient here led isolated and miserable lives because Molag was not the lively place it had once been. The dusky hours of morning and evening were often the most entertaining in Old Town when they brought surreptitious guests, and the hobgoblins were already drinking coffee as dawn brightened the east.

“This is bad,” thought the scholars, obviously humans in hobgoblin disguises. But a signal of some sort had been sent. No one on the dock took notice of them, and two orcs walked off the dock and one hundred feet upriver to fish for their breakfast. Nlessie chatted easily with her Old Town acquaintance while a small boat, piloted by two other hobgoblins, came across the river from the Furyondian side.

Nlessie’s urchin adventurers handed an elderly woman that passed with their assistance into the arriving boat. They climbed in after. Nlessie boarded, too—which she usually did not do—and went with the old woman across.

“When you came to Molag you thought of my connection to the Divergent Underground,” Nlessie said to the others, “but in Molag I operate with respect to what you may call an underground economy. It isn’t really underground; it goes in plain sight, as you see, at definite times and under certain conditions. It is the remaining economy of Molag from a century ago, before Iuz and the Horned Society took over. It was a hobgoblin and human trade then, but today, humans come to Molag that cannot be trusted, so older residents like me signal our affiliation to the old ways by sticking close to the hobgoblins’ habits. At dusk we move with them and for some purposes dress as they do. The authorites leave us alone, because without the old economy there is nothing profitable in Molag. The undergound will get the former High Priestess out of the empire and into Furyondy.

(Politely) “Halga, you are looking well this morning.”

(A cough)

“Across the river, you leave the empire, Molag, and our ways. But if Furyondy spots the High Priestess, the kingdom will redouble its hatred and hunt her down. It doesn’t matter that she has avenged herself on Iuz. Furyondy’s hatred has needs, and so does Veluna's.

“First, we get you out of Molag. The underground economy is a transfer system running from Molag to Furyondy. We use it to get Halga to the Divergent Underground on the other side. From there, you will be in human hands. It's alright. I know them well.

“Your intention is still to get to Annalo? Good. I know how to do that. He is in Shandalanar.”

“Shandalanar? Where’s that?”

“It’s an old elven temple to the moons in a remnant of the Asnath Copse, in the Vale of Luna. Here’s your ride. Up you go.”

(Doubtful looks)

“Is that a Furyondian soldier to take us to Veluna? Whose insignia is on the coach door?”

“The insignia of the Marshal of the Armies of Furyondy, Jemian, Baron of Littleberg,” said Nlessie, closing the door firmly on the heroes, “and Edmore Wunsay’s brother. Goodbye, my loves.”

Wunsay?

Another woman was seated within, middle-aged, a little plump, a little frumpy.

“You’re human, so, I take it we are now in care of the Divergent Underground?”

“I am sent to meet you by Sir Edmore on behalf of the Supreme Mistress of the Celestial Order of the Moons, Jolene of Samprastadar.”

“Jolene? Your kidding!”

“No. Why?”

“She doesn’t know we exist. What is happening?”

“Shhh. Halga has fallen asleep.”

(Whispering)

“I don’t really know. Eddie said something about her having a friend in Molag. Which of you is it?”

“It isn’t. We aren’t.”

“Eddie? Who did you call Eddie?”

“Why? Don’t you know him? I assumed you did. I am Edmore Wunsay’s sister,” the woman replied, “Ferrica Lamsher.”

“Ferrica Aposnos?”

“At one time.”

“We know you!”

(Puzzlement)

“No, we feel as though we do.”

“Yes, that last. Because of Professor Bifurcati.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He wrote a book about you.”

“No, he put you in his book.”

“What book?”

“We don’t have it anymore. We gave it to Nlessie.”

“I see. Well, I guess that’s alright . . .”

“So, you’re with the Divergent Underground?”

“I’ve never heard of it. Eddie said that Jolene said.”

“Oh, boy.”

(A moment of silence)

“Perhaps I should go with you to Shandalanar. Maybe that would be best.”

(Moon’sday, 17 Patchwall, at Shandalanar)

“She doesn’t look well, Annalo.”

“Scholars, this is my wife, Cassandra. Cassie, my scholars.”

“Wife? (Giggles) Things have changed.”

“In a manner.”

“She took a turn for the worse in Veluna, Professor. She got sickly again in Furyondy, although she was so well in Molag.”

“Are you sure it’s the right thing bringing her here? I mean, the High Priestess of Iuz.”

“She’s not the High Priestess anymore! She’s apostate.”

“Well, I am relieved.”

“Cassandra is right. A priestess who is apostate before two gods might bring plots against us.”

“She’s not apostate before Erythnul.”

“How so?”

“She told us about it in Molag, before she got worse.”

“When Iuz’s soldiers killed her bandit tribe in the western lands, Erythnul, the god of the bandits, appeared to her and offerred revenge on the cambion.”

“Halga told us that gods are not allowed to interfere directly on oerth, but St Cuthbert had violated that injunction a long time ago, and Erythnul had been given permission to reset the balance. Really, he wanted to avenge his bandit followers, but formally, he had to do something about Iuz.”

“I suppose Halga’s in a position to know . . .”

“Yes, and she replied to Erythnul that she would be his avenger if she were rid of the gods forever after. She was tired of their service.”

“Erythnul agreed to set her free, but not necessarily of Iuz.”

“So, you know, she cannot be apostate before Erythnul because he had beggged her to serve Iuz out of vengeance, and anyway, you cannot be apostate before a god who sets you free.”

“I suppose not . . .”

“So, she’s only apostate before Iuz, and who cares? He’s not a god on Oerth anymore.”

“Oi. Cass, does that sound right?”

“Can you imagine, Annalo. In service to Iuz for twenty years in Doraka’a and waiting for her chance.”

“Is that good?”

“Of course. Her chance came when Lolth agreed to help her in the Abyss. As a goddess, Lolth knew what Halga was doing the whole time, but it took twenty years to get her assent.”

“What about Iuz? How could he possibly not have known Halga’s intentions?”

“Halga said that he read her heart, but it only confused him. That was the first thing she learned in Doraka’a.”

“Poor thing. Twenty years.”

“So, we have to keep her safe with us in Shandalanar, right?”

“I think you’re right, scholar. By the light of the moons!”

“Wait! Someone’s coming.”

(Enter someone)

“’Rica! I was afraid you wouldn’t be here when I arrived. I brought a book sent with me by Wilna Pummenford. It’s a first edition.

(A scholar takes the book)

“Where is Halga? Is she well?”

“She’s in there, but no.”

“I sometimes think the world will not end happily.”

(Exit someone)

(Consternation)

“I don’t get it.”

“What’s that?”

“This book. I don’t get it. How can it be a first edition when what we’re saying is in it?”

“What?”

“See, we’re right here, saying what we're saying . . .”

(Enter someone into Halga’s tent, in the light of the moons, where Halga is thinking)

“Why, you don’t look so poorly!”

“Dearest Jo!” (Hugs, kisses)

“What are you thinking about, Halgs?”

“Someone left this beside my bed. It’s Countess Osgold of Baranford’s Historical Epitome of the Empire of Iuz. I think I could annotate a new edition.”

fini est

Vero est
Halga, High Priestess of Iuz

Nlessie’s Old Books, Molag
Brewfest, 591

Fantasy references

The books and booklets linked below represent the fantasy world background of The Veil of Lunacy. Since they were not written or published by me and are widely and publicly known, they have in some sense an existence independent of my fiction, and in fact, their relation to my fantasy novel and narrator is like the real relation of historical texts to history books and historians. A second significance of the novel—almost another book—will be disclosed to anyone comparing the fantasy world of the linked references to their interpretation by Professor Bifurcati in The Veil of Lunacy. I do not anticipate anyone doing this, but anyone could.

Although many of the people and much of the politics that the published references presume to be virtuous are revealed by the novel to be vicious, the Professor’s exegetical procedure is in general historiographically correct: a reality check. The author hopes that his readers will be more used, having read the novel, to understanding that historians are usually wrong and always dangerous when they write as though certain times, places, and peoples were more progressive and virtuous than others. What a delusion! It is too late, perhaps, for civilized westerners to benefit from this realization—we have yet to even accept it—but I do not believe we will do what we ought by neglecting our literary traditions. Reading and writing are a foundational technology, never innocent but nearly indispensable, and further, there are no universal and inherent human values. Values and meaning are cultural; we lose them if we do not keep them, nothing lives in a vacuum, and so, we ought to keep (and read) our most valued books without eulogizing them.

Nearly every page of the linked references has been taken into account by The Veil of Lunacy, but interested readers would benefit most from The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer. Its pages of general interest to the fantasy world Greyhawk and of specific interest to the fantasy realms Veluna, Furyondy, the Empire of Iuz, the Horned Society, the Bandit Kingdoms, the Shield Lands, Verbobonc, and the Great Kingdom of Ahlissa are referenced after the link.

Several additional titles have been listed and marked by the symbol ◓—◓ (as they appear in the text of the novel). These are not real books but are composite passages of extracts from the published sources and additions, alterations, and interpolations by me. Their contents are more than half fictional but are presumed in the novel to be as original and primary as the source publications. The briefest way to judge how The Veil of Lunacy has turned a fantasy world to real account would be to examine the contents of the composite passages. Even more fun would be to read the specific composite “Paragons of War” and compare it to its critical review by the novel’s own Doctor Daesnar Braden.

LGGP—
The Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, https://archive.org/details/living-greyhawk-gazetteer:
Heavens and Oerth, p. 2-4; The Major Races, p. 5-11; The Path of History, p. 13-16. Ahlissa, p. 21-25. The Bandit Kingdoms, p. 25-32. Furyondy, p. 45-47. The Empire of Iuz, p. 58-63. The Shield Lands, p. 102-05. Veluna, p. 128-31. Verbobonc, p. 131-33. Horned Society, p. 156-57.

GWG—
A Guide to the World of Greyhawk, https://archive.org/details/tsr010151sted.addworldofgreyhawkboxedsetfull

FAAF—
From the Ashes: Atlas of the Flanaess, https://archive.org/details/tsr01064fromtheashesatlasoftheflanaess

IE—
Iuz the Evil, https://ia800108.us.archive.org/16/items/tsr09399wgr5iuztheevilnotoriginal/tsr09399%20-%20WGR5%20-%20Iuz%20the%20Evil%20%28not%20original%29.pdf

GAB—
Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins, https://archive.org/details/the-adventure-begins-complete-version/The%20Adventure%20begins%20complete%20version

PGG—
Greyhawk: Player’s Guide, https://ia801703.us.archive.org/31/items/greyhawk-players-guide/Greyhawk%20-%20Player%27s%20Guide_text.pdf

“Paragons of War,” Dragon, Issue 309, July 2003, https://archive.org/details/DragonMagazine260_201801/DragonMagazine309/page/53/mode/2up

◒Gygax◓: GWG p 8-10.

◒A History of the Flanaess◓: PGG p 9.

◒Primum narratio◓: GWG p 8-10. FAAF p 3. PGG p 9. GAB p 18, 54-56. LGG p 13, 22-24.

◒The Ashes◓: FAAF p 3. IE p 3-4. PGG p 10. GAB p 19.

◒Voll◓: GWG p 8-10. FAAF p 4. PGG 9. GAB p 18, 58. LGG p 41, 46, 77, 85-86, 129-30, 131-32.

◒Histoire◓: GWG p 8-10. FAAF p 4-5. PGG 9-10. GAB p 18-19, 58-59. LGG p 14, 41, 46-47, 64-66, 77-78, 85-86, p 93, 103-04, 129-30, 131-32.

◒Lights and Shadows◓: LGG p 129-32.

◒Bifolium◓: LGG p 129-32, 181-82.