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By Root 716 0

the Schools of Annar, retaining the word Bard to refer specifically to Bards of the Schools. As those familiar with Annaren mores will be aware, people born with the Speech who did not gain their true or secret Bardic Name were unable to come into their full Gift and were considered unfortunate and, in some cases, dangerous individuals. However, there were many Dhillarearën in cultures outside Annar who did gain their true Names by other means, and were therefore able to access their full powers. Their mores and cultural assumptions were often very different from those taught in the Annaren Bardic traditions of the Balance and the Three Arts, and so it seemed useful to make a distinction between the different Dhillarearën in this way.

As before, I have included appendices with further information on the cultures of Edil-Amarandh, drawn from the ongoing translation of the Annaren Scripts after their spectacular discovery in Morocco in 1991. Annaren studies have grown exponentially since then, and now exist in almost every academic discipline. It is a full-time job simply to keep abreast of the latest discoveries in the field, and while I have attempted to the best of my ability to ensure that the information contained in the appendices is from the most recent scholarship available, I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies that may have resulted from my inadvertently overlooking an important new development. For the amateur reader, however, the definitive studies for those interested in the background of the Naraudh Lar-Chanë remain Uncategorical Knowledge: The Three Arts of the Starpeople by Claudia J. Armstrong and Christiane Armongath’s authoritative L’Histoire de l’Arbre-chant d’Annar.

As always, a work such as this translation owes much to the contributions of others, many of whom I am unable to name here. Above all, I need to thank my husband, Daniel Keene, who contributed his proofreading skills yet again and bore with patient good humor the myriad inconveniences of living with a translator obsessed with such a long-term project. My children, Joshua, Zoë, and Ben, demonstrated a similar grace. I also owe thanks to Richard, Jan, Nicholas, and Veryan Croggon, who read the rough drafts with attention and enthusiasm and whose encouragement has meant a great deal. My thanks are also due to Suzanne Wilson and Chris Kloet for their excellent counsel on all aspects of the text. Last, I wish to record my gratitude to Professor Patrick Insole of the Department of Ancient Languages at the University of Leeds, who has been unfailingly generous with his expertise on the Treesong and most kindly permitted me to publish parts of his monograph on the subject in the appendices.

Alison Croggon

Melbourne, Australia

MOST Annaren proper nouns derive from the Speech, and generally share its pronunciation. In words of three or more syllables, the stress is usually laid on the second syllable: in words of two syllables (such as lembel, invisible) stress is always on the first. There are some exceptions in proper names; the names Pellinor and Annar, for example, are pronounced with the stress on the first syllable.

Spellings are mainly phonetic.

a — as in flat; ar rhymes with bar.

ae — a long i sound, as in ice. Maerad is pronounced MY-rad.

aë — two syllables pronounced separately, to sound eye-ee. Maninaë is pronounced man-IN-eye-ee.

ai — rhymes with hay. Innail rhymes with nail.

au — ow. Raur rhymes with sour.

e — as in get. Always pronounced at the end of a word: for example, remane, to walk, has three syllables. Sometimes this is indicated with ë, which also indicates that the stress of the word lies on the e (for example, ilë, we, is sometimes pronounced almost with the i sound lost).

ea — the two vowel sounds are pronounced separately, to make the sound ay-uh. Inasfrea, to walk, thus sounds: in-ASS-fray-uh.

eu — oi sound, as in boy.

i — as in hit.

ia — two vowels pronounced separately, as in the name Ian.

y — uh sound, as in much.

c — always a hard c, as in crust, not as in circle.

ch — soft, as in the German