C. J. Cherryh - Notes on Fortress part 2

The Provinces and their lords:

Guelessar, province, and Guelemara, the Marhanen capital: the Marhanen kings originated here and rule from here. The banner of the Marhanen is red field, gold dragon. There are lesser lords within Guelessar: lord Brysaulin is one. The Quinalt also has its chief site in Guelemara.

It is agricultural, and maintains a heavy cavalry and contingents of heavy infantry. It has done so from the last Sihhe dynasty, and was chief in the rebellion against the Sihhe King.

Amefel, province, and Henas'amef, the Aswydd capital: the Aswyddim ruled as kings not only over Amefel but over certain portions of Elwynor under the halfling Sihhe. The banner is a red field and a black eagle. The Duke of Amefel, Heryn Aswydd, holds it as a duchy from the Marhanen king, but is the only Amefin lord who bears direct fealty toward the Marhanen. Other lords, styled earls, hold their lands from the Aswyddim, who continue to call themselves 'aethelings,' the local term for 'royals'. The earls of Amefel have as their vassals various thanes of various villages. The muster of Amefel is both light cavalry and light foot. Their styles and titles of lordship, their devices, their accent, their laws and their religion have far more to do with Elwynor than with Guelenfolk. This province contains the old capital of Althalen. It is chiefly Bryaltine in faith, where it is not outright pagan.

It is a land of farms and sheep, of isolate communities spiritually foreign to the eastern provinces and only marginally to be considered among the southern lords, whom it generally and for historical reasons stretching back into Sihhe times, despises. The Aswyddim, after all, were kings. And the province of Amefel was traditionally at war with the south.

Inheritance in this land is often through the female line.

Instead of dukes, one has earls and thanes and ealdormen; and you will not ice that the highest rank confirmed by the Guelen court is Heryn's rank as Duke of Amefel. However, the Duke of Amefel is reckoned as a royal duke or a petty king by his own folk. Hence the confusion of precedences, trying to work out whether an Amefin or Elwynim earldom amounts to some of the smaller duchies among the Guelenfolk, whose province contains more than one duke and, of course, the king in Guelemara. It isn't hard to say that, for instance, Heryn's rank is that of a provincial lord, a baron of the realm, a duke---but when one tries to figure the relative rank of Guelenfolk and the distaff- side inheriting Amefin some of whom are earls with land and some of whom have more complicated situations---plus the custom of granting sons certain titles, and the system by which the Amefin villagers connect to the old Aswydd royalty, Cefwyn's headache has its reasson.

The older name of the castle of the Aswydds is the Kathseide, but the dialect has changed, a change which has also taken place across the Lenualim in Elwynor, as can be seen by the name Ormadzaran. The Kathseide is now just the Zeide, the z- sound only belatedly making its way into the language. The Old Kingdom name of the capital was not Henas'amef but Henas'amrith.

The Southern Barons

Lanfarnesse, whose symbol is a white heron, was the first province to declare for the Marhanen, but somehow never ended up fighting. Lanfarnessemen are woodsmen and archers, and rarely commit to pitched battle. They live on the verge of the haunted forest of Marna, and have reasons to be fey, elusive, and occasionally mendacious. Their lord is Duke Pelumer, and he moves about a great deal among the several holds of Lanfarnesse. The people of Lanfarnesse are, like some of the folk of Ivanor, tall and slender more than than the average of, say, Guelenfolk.

Ivanor, which has, like the Lanfarnessemen, a series of capitals or strongholds, uses Toj Embrel most of the year. The wealth of the Ivanim is its horses and its pastures. Cattle and horses and a loose federation of lords is the rule in the south. They were once upon a time the light cavalry of the Sihhe and were very often used in the southern wars. The white horse is their emblem. Duke Cevulirn is their ruler.

Olmern is a small river barony, and its emblem is the wolf. Its wealth is ships, as the Olmernfolk have little land. Their lord, Sovrag, is not noble by birth. Some of his neighbors are rude enough to call him a common pirate. But Sovrag was confirmed in his taking of the place he holds, since it is easier for the Marhanen to make a lord of a pirate than to mount a campaign that would have Imor Lenualim grabbing for land and Ivanor doing the same, to each other's detriment. He is also useful to the Marhanen, as a diversion which keeps the ire of the southern lords focussed on him, rather than on other concerns.

Imor Lenualim (there are Imorim and Ivanim, and they not only are not the same, they don't like each other) is a region enriched both by agriculture and shipping, by land as well as water. His Grace Umanon, Duke of Imor, considers himself spiritually a closer relative of the central provinces than of the south, and therefore more noble than anyone except, possibly, the Marhanen. The Duke might have been king---if anyone had followed his ancestor.

The Northern Lords<p> Llymaryn, a cattle-rich province and a rich grain producer, is Quinalt in faith and ethnically very close to the Guelenfolk. The Duke of Llymaryn is Sulriggan, a pious and important man.

The northern lords as a group are tightly bound to Guelessar, but there are ethnic divisions along the border with Elwynor, which is uneasy enough to keep the northern lords' attention on their mutual defense.

The eastern lords (whether one rates oneself northern or eastern sometimes depends as much on the issue under discussion as on geography) are most concerned with the mountain folk, who are the principal danger to their fields and farms. They are loyal to Guelessar, but have been independent-minded since before the fall of the Sihhe. The Marhanen rules them to a certain extent because the Marhanen is the only power that can bring the district to act with any effectiveness against the hill bandits-- -which was true before the Sihhe fell. The eastern lords had the least to do with the Sihhe and neither disputed the throne nor greatly care who sits on it as long as their borders remain unraided. They were the source of the Quinalt faith but never practiced it with as great a political fervor as has happened in Guelessar. The Quinalt belief is one of those things like the bandits and the weather which has always explained but never cured their problems.

The religious orders:

The Quinalt: a faith that has reached its greatest orthodoxy in Guelessar under the Marhanen and its greatest fervency on the borders nearest Elwynor, where it preaches separation of Men from the Old Magic.

The Teranthines: a moderate and philosophical order more interested in inquiry than orthodoxy, more interested in study and philosophy than in holding power.

The Bryaltines: a mostly Amefin group that couples Quinalt and Teranthine practice with the Old Religion, the Wizards' Gods, and anything else that might be efficacious. Amefel is mostly Bryalt, and the sect has made inroads into Elwynor, where it holds the most power.

The Nineteen: called the Wizards' gods---not widely understood but generally condemned as a set of powers to whom wizards pray and who grant wizards their powers. This is not actually the case, but this is the belief among the established orders. They are held to be devils by the Quinalt and this is givne as the justification for burning witches and such. Practicioners of the worship of the Nineteen who are too overt or who do not make some apology to the Quinalt's sensibilities may be burned, a practice of religious zealotry by the Quinalt and allowed as a very practical curb on the possibile actions of magic-users. The Marhanen are well aware they have wizardous and magical enemies who have never been caught.

Wizardry: operates by learning as well as innate talent.

Magic is innate only.

Sorcery is a bad use of magic or a bad use of wizardry: what is sorcery and what is wizardry or magic is somewhat dependent on who is describing the activity, but it is certain that certain wizards have defined certain boundaries of behavior that they are prepared to defend with extreme action, and sorcery is what they use to describe activity they don't approve.