Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [203]
As those who have been following the earlier works in this series know, a certain Elvish professor of Elvish has chosen to waste his supposedly valuable time by disputing this obvious point. Since the man refuses to see reason and stop his scurrilous attacks upon us, my publishers and I have been forced to sue for redress in the malover of the gwerbrets of Aberwyn, much as it distresses us to waste the clearly valuable time of this court. Although the case has yet to be accepted for deliberation, readers will be kept apprised of future developments, never fear.
GLOSSARY
ABER (Deverrian) A river mouth, an estuary.
ALAR (Elvish) A group of elves, who may or may not be blood kin, who choose to travel together for some indefinite period of time.
ALARDAN (Elv.) The meeting of several alarli, usually the occasion for a drunken party.
ANGWIDD (Dev.) Unexplored, unknown.
ASTRAL The plane of existence directly “above” or “within” the etheric (q.v.). In other systems of magic, often referred to as the Akashic Record or the Treasure House of Images.
AURA The field of electromagnetic energy that permeates and emanates from every living being.
AVER (Dev.) A river.
BARA (Elv.) An enclitic that indicates that the preceding adjective in an Elvish agglutinated word is the name of the element following the enclitic, as can + bara + melim = Rough River, (rough + name marker + river.)
BEL (Dev.) The chief god of the Deverry pantheon.
BEL (Elv.) An enclitic, similar in function to bara, except that it indicates that a preceding verb is the name of the following element in the agglutinated term, as in Darabeldal, Flowing Lake.
BLUE LIGHT Another name for the etheric plane (q.v.).
BODY OF LIGHT An artificial thought-form (q.v.) constructed by a dweomermaster to allow him or her to travel through the inner planes of existence.
BRIGGA (Dev.) Loose wool trousers worn by men and boys.
BRIGHT COURT, DARK COURT I’ve chosen these terms for the traditional divide between the groups of Fair Folk rather than using Seelie and Unseelie Court, names that are localized in our own world to Scotland.
BROCH (Dev.) A squat tower in which people live. Originally, in the homeland, these towers had one big fireplace in the center of the ground floor and a number of booths or tiny roomlets up the sides, but by the time of our narrative, this ancient style has given way to regular floor with hearths and chimneys on either side of the structure.
CADVRIDOC (Dev.) A warleader. Not a general in the modern sense, the cadvridoc is supposed to take the advice and counsel of the noble-born lords under him, but his is the right of final decision.
CAPTAIN (trans, of the Dev. pendaely) The second in command, after the lord himself, of a noble’s warband. An interesting point is that the word taely (the root or unmutated form of -daely,) can mean either a warband or a family depending on context.
CWM (Dev.) A valley.
DAL (Elv.) A lake.
DUN (Dev.) A fort.
DWEOMER (trans, of Dev. dwunddaevad) In its strict sense, a system of magic aimed at personal enlightenment through harmony with the natural universe in all its planes and manifestations; in the popular sense, magic, sorcery.
ELVES I have chosen this common name for the people the Deverrians call Elcyion Lacar (literally, the “bright spirits,” or “Bright Fey”). They are also known as the Westfolk among men and dwarves, though the Dwarvish name for the race is Carx Taen. To the Gel da’Thae they are the Children of the Gods, Graekaebi Zo Uhmveo, while they call themselves, quite simply, Impar, the People.
ENSORCEL To produce an effect similar to hypnosis by direct manipulation of a person’s aura. (True hypnosis manipulates