This was one of the sayings. After a time, most of them were forgotten, and anything that sounded obscure or foolish was said to be 'a saying of the wizards.' After the Departure there was a thousand-year period of violence, famine, war, and ignorance. Literacy was preserved only in Tchent and Orena and perhaps in a few other isolated places. Some say this period of darkness was foreseen by the wizards. Others say that the period was caused by the Departure. Whatever the cause, the lives of the people were brutish and brief, and history existed only in legend and stories passed from generation to generation.

Into this dark world came the Thiene, no one knew from where or why. They were people of marvellous persuasive powers, people of great skill and knowledge, and they joined tribe after barbarian tribe together into a skeletal civilization. They coaxed the archivists out of Tchent and sent them among the people as teachers, sent them to distribute copies of books newly printed in the languages then spoken. The Thiene founded the Choirs of the Sisterhood, insisting that members should be recruited to live full but sequestered lives spent in the study of the Powers, that is the natural powers of the earth and the universe. Taniel was the best known of the Thiene of that time since she actually lived and worked with the first Sisters to compose the discipline of their Order. It was to these Sisterhoods that the history of the First Cycle was given, including the story of its destructive end, prior to the Departure. Taniel taught that the First Cycle ended, at least in part, because of the worship of Firelord to the exclusion of all other of the Powers. This imbalance had brought the world to ruin, and the Sisterhoods were established that the balance might be restored.

The Thiene provided a number of the lost years, giving the date of their entry into the affairs of the world as 1200 SC, Second Cycle. The Thiene were said to be the donors of certain artifacts and tools which they called 'fairy godmother gifts.' What was meant by this phrase is uncertain, though it is certain that the Thiene regarded it as humorous.

It is thought that there was some intermarriage between the Thiene and other people of earth. Tar-Akwith often bragged of having had a Thiene great-great-great-grandmother. His wife was a woman of Tchent, among whom there was rumoured to be quite an admixture of the line of Thiene. Certain there is no recorded contact with the pure Thiene after about 3500 SC, though some of the Choirs are said to have been visited by Taniel long after that time.

The name of this people has been rendered variously as Thiene, Diane, Diona, or even Thynys or Dynys. Some place names around the Inner Sea, itself often called the Sea of Thienezh, indicate that the people may have come from there, or gone there. The Straits from the Inner Sea are called Thien Straits. The city of Sushuba was formerly called Dynysa. The River Talthien is still known by that name.

The history of the Second Cycle went on in a generally peaceful vein after the loss of the Thiene for some hundreds of years. In the year 40'0, Tar-Akwith VII established the Northkingdom, an extensive federation of subordinate states which extended from Tharsh across the settled lands to the edge of that forbidden circle which girdled Tharliezalor in the east. He died in 4110, to be succeeded by his son, Dynys-Akwith I. Sud-Akwith, later called The Great, was born in 4115. In 4150, Dynys was killed in battle, and Sud-Akwith succeeded to the sword, the Akwithian symbol of sovereignty. Sud-Akwith engaged in several wars of conquest, seeking to incorporate isolated areas which had not previously become part of the Northkingdom. Among these was the area around Tchent, which was taken in 4162, arid the far eastern City of the Mists, taken in 4180. In 41'0, Sud-Akwith sought to memorialize the centennial of the establishment of the Northkingdom by rebuilding Tharliezalor, the ruins of which had been undisturbed by men for over three thousand years.

Among the documents in Tchent were some which were purported to be prophecies of the Thiene, warnings against disturbing the ruins of Tharliezalor. The archivists brought these to the attention of Sud-Akwith, quoting the ancient sayings of the wizards to indicate that a half life of shadows dwelt with Tharliezalor. Sud-Akwith heard the archivists out, but he was determined commemorate his reign of the Northkingdom with some great accomplishment.

He entered Tharliezalor with a great troop of armed men and battalions of workers. 'Those who dwelt beneath the city' attacked almost at once. These creatures of darkness were called serim by the people of the Northkingdom. In the language of the Fales they were called Hlaflich, or Mot ditch. The people of the Axe King, much later, referred to them as dumma d'rabat, animals of the depths, or hagak d'tumek, beasts of stone. Whatever they were called, they were grey, cold, ravenous, and hard to kill. Sud-Akwith and his army was driven from Tharliezalor and pursued, with great loss of life, into the west, the serim laying waste and poisoning the land they crossed.

Had it not been for the discovery of the miraculous Sword of Power or Sword of Fire, an instrument divinely designed for the killing of serim, the Northkingdom would have ended then. The Sword is identified with the Lord of Fire and with the gifts said to have been laid in store for mankind in the dawn of time by the Powers. Others of the gifts were said to be the Vessel of Healing, the Girdle of Binding, the Crown of Wisdom, the Gate of Time, the Eternal Goad, the Chair of the Oracle, and a long list of lesser marvels. These gifts, including the Sword, were said to be imbued by the will of the Powers with qualities necessary for the salvation of mankind and the earth. Certainly, Sud-Akwith was saved by the Sword though he was driven out of the east.

Within five years after this defeat, the people who had lived in the eastern lands came pouring into the west. They came in terror, saying they could not breathe in the east, that shadows oppressed them, that an unknown and horrid world was closing upon them. The people continued to come westward until there were no human settlements remaining east of Tchent and eastern Lakland. A curtain of shadow seemed to fall over the eastern lands, and only a few hardy explorers attempted to travel there from time to time. Soon, even this exploration ceased, for the lands were known to have fallen under a Concealment. There were rumours at this time that the Thiene had returned or were about to return; in particular there were stories concerning visitations made by Taniel to the Choirs and to Orena. Certainly there was some understanding of the Concealment in Orena which was not current elsewhere.

The story of Sud-Akwith's growing pride and intransigence is too well known to detail here. In 4200, Sud-Alcwith cast the miraculous Sword into the Abyss of Souls, at Seathe, dying almost immediately thereafter. Following his death, the kingdom should have descended to his only son, Widon the Golden. Widon, however, said that he would not pick up what his father had cast down unless it returned to him of its own will or the will of the Powers. Instead, he gathered a great host of his followers around him and went away into the north along the river which is still called Akwidon, or King's Road. TTie fall of the realm of the Northlords, the dislocation caused by people fleeing from the Concealment, even the rumours that the Thiene had returned, all served to create a vast disorder. The world entered another period of unnumbered years, and fell into general barbarity. Warrior bands sprang up, conquered small territories, moved to and fro across the land. One such band became stronger than others, and the Third Cycle (TC) is said to have started with the time of the Axe King who numbered his reign from the birth of his grandfather, as Sud-Akwith had done.

The Axe King began his rule in 102 TC, in 135 attacking the archives at Tchent, long the only bastion of learning in the encircling dark. The archivists fled the complex of Tchent through ancient escape tunnels, taking most of the archives with them. It is generally supposed that they went to Orena, though some are known to have entered the Sisterhoods. Many of the treasures stored in Tchent were abandoned by the archivists and taken by the Axe King, including the legendary Girdle of Our Lady which had been brought there from the City of the Mists in the time of Sud-Akwith. The Girdle is mentioned as a feature of the 'Search of Chu-Namu,' an almost legendary quest said to have started in 140 TC and to have continued for five hundred years during which Chu-Namu did not age. Thus the Girdle was identified as the Girdle of Binding, one of thegifts of the Powers.

The reign of the Axe King ended with his death in 164 TC, and the warrior bands he had led split into factions led by one or another of his sons or nephews. At least one of his sons was known to have led a great band of the D'Zunalor into the northlands in emulation of Widon the Golden. The D'Zunalor had an exaggerated veneration for the legends of the Akwith Kings.

In 210 TC, He from Gahl [Obnor Gahl Whip Valley] began his teachings in the town of Soolenter in the Savus Mountains. During the early centuries of Gahlism, cities and towns were slow to change, but the teaching began to have far reaching effects by the ninth century TC. In 990 a woman of Hanar, later identified as Geraldhis, a prophetess, brought a prophecy to the Sisterhood at Gerenhodh and to Orena later in that year.

In the year 116' TC, the world was changed.

THE ROAD OF THE AXE KING.

The ancient route taken by the Axe King in his conquests of the lands lying to the east of the Outer Sea was called the Road of the Axe King. The rule of die D'Zunalor began in Rochagam D'Zunabat, the Plain of the people of the Axe, the native land of several tribes of nomadic, warlike herdsmen. These tribes were united under Zunabat, the Axe King, in 102 TC. Taking advantage of the general disorder, Zunabat gathered the tribes into his own system, governing through local 'Axemen' sworn to his service, the Rochazuna.

The Road included the cities of Gombator (River City), Labat Ochor (King's Tower), Tachob (Granary), a city in the valley of the Del which may have been called Hanar (Camp), Obnor Gahl (Whip Valley, named for the punishment of dissident troops which took place there), the Ochor D'Batum (Towers of Stone, i:e., the World Wall Mountains) and finally the city of Dochor ('Of Towers'), now called M'Wandi. These cities, together with intermediate stations, made up the road of the Axe King, and it was said a message could be sent from Gombator to Dochor in twelve days through post riders.

There was no true city of die Axe King. He lived always as he had as a child, in the squat, hide tents of the nomad peoples of the High Plain, surrounded on three sides by the mountains of Tharsh, the Jaggers and Savus Ranges, and edged on the fourth side by the Rochagam, High River, which emptied into the lakelands of the south. Zunabat made forays into the far south being soundly defeated at the delta of the Wal Thai, and into the far north being as soundly victorious in the Fales.

It is thought that the people of the Fales are directly descended from the Axe King's people, with some admixture of other peoples who invaded the Fales from islands in Wasnost, to the west. After the death of Zunabat, however, the tribes lost cohesive structure, the cities of the road became gradually autonomous, and the many of the D'Zunalor moved away to the northlands beyond Tranch. Gombator is now called Tanner.' Tiles' is the current name of Labat Ochor.

Sheri S. Tepper (1929 ).

Sheri Stewart Tepper was born in Colorado in 1929 and is the author of a larger number of novels in the areas of science fiction, fantasy, horror and mystery, and is particularly respected for her works of feminist science fiction. Her many acclaimed novels include The Margarets and Gibbon's Decline And Fall, both shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, A Plague Of Angels, Sideshow and Beauty, which was voted Best Fantasy Novel Of The Year by readers of Locus magazine. Her versatility is illustrated by the fact that she is one of very few writers to have titles in both the Gollancz SF and Fantasy Masterworks lists. Sheri S. Tepper lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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