I couldn’t help looking over at Ganelial Crade to see how he was reacting. I saw no trace of the old fuming resentment that had used to come over him when he felt that we were disrespecting his beliefs. Something had changed for him at Orithena.
“We are gathered at a place named after Fraa Orolo, who was a fid of mine for a little while,” Paphlagon continued. “When he was only a little older than some of you,” and here he looked at me and Ala, then Jesry, Tulia, and the others who had come from Edhar or from the Convox, “he spoke to me once of why he had made Eliger with my Order. For he could have left the mathic world at Apert and found a life in the Sæculum, or, having decided to remain a fraa, he might just as well have joined the New Circle. Orolo said that the more he knew of the complexity of the mind, and the cosmos with which it was inextricably and mysteriously bound up, the more inclined he was to see it as a kind of miracle—not in quite the same sense that our Deolaters use the term, for he considered it altogether natural. He meant rather that the evolution of our minds from bits of inanimate matter was more beautiful and more extraordinary than any of the miracles cataloged down through the ages by the religions of our world. And so he had an instinctive skepticism of any system of thought, religious or theorical, that pretended to encompass that miracle, and in so doing sought to draw limits around it. That’s why he’d chosen the path that he had. Now the coming of our friends from Urnud, Tro, Earth, and Fthos has demonstrated certain things about how the polycosm works that we had only speculated about before. We must all of us re-examine everything we know and believe in the light of these revelations. That is the work that begins here now. It is a great and gradual beginning that encompasses many smaller but no less beautiful beginnings—such as the union of Ala and Erasmas.”
I almost missed my cue. But I felt Ala swinging around toward me. We came together, there on the rubble, and found each other. You might find it odd that a story like this one ends with a kiss, as if it were a popular speely, or a comedy acted out on a stage. But in that we started so many things in that moment, we brought to their ends many others that have been the subject matter of this account, and so here is where I draw a line across the leaf and call it the end.
GLOSSARY
A.R.: Year of the Reconstitution. Arbre’s dating system defines Year 0 as the year in which the Reconstitution took place; any year prior to that is assigned a negative number, any year that is expressed as a positive number or, equivalently, followed by A.R., happened afterwards.
Adrakhonic Theorem: An ancient theorem from plane geometry, attributed to Adrakhones, the founder of the Temple of Orithena, stating that, in a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Equivalent to the Pythagorean Theorem on Earth.
Allswell: A naturally occurring chemical that, when present in sufficient concentrations in the brain, engenders the feeling that everything is basically fine. Its level may be artificially adjusted by, e.g., consuming blithe.
Analemma: A shape like a slender, elongated figure eight, observed by astronomers who track the way the sun’s apparent movement across the sky varies from day to day over the course of a year.
Anathem: (1) In Proto-Orth, a poetic or musical invocation of Our Mother Hylaea, used in the aut of Provener, or (2) an aut by which an incorrigible fraa or suur is ejected from the mathic world.
Apert: The aut in which a math opens its gates for a period of ten days, during which time the avout are free to come and go extramuros, and Sæculars are free to come in, sightsee, and talk to the avout. Depending on the math, Apert is celebrated every one, ten, hundred, or thousand years.
Arbortect: One who genetically engineers new species of trees.
Arbre: The name of the planet on which Anathem is set.
Ark: Equivalent to a church, temple, synaogue, etc., on Earth.
Atlanian: See Liaison, Atlanian.
Aut: A rite observed in the mathic world. Some of the more important and commonly celebrated auts are Provener, Eliger, Regred, and Requiem. Rarely celebrated rites include Anathem, Voco, and Inbrase.
Avout: A person sworn to the Cartasian Discipline and therefore dwelling in the mathic, as opposed to Sæcular, world.
Baritoe, Saunt: (1) A noblewoman of the mid-Praxic Age, the hostess and the leader of the Sconics. (2) A concent of the same name, one of the Big Three.
Baz: Ancient city-state that later created an empire encompassing the known world.
Bazian Orthodox: The state religion of the Bazian Empire, which survived the Fall of Baz, erected, during the succeeding age, a mathic system parallel to and independent of that inaugurated by Cartas, and endured as one of Arbre’s largest faiths.
Big Three: The Concents of Saunt Muncoster, Saunt Tredegarh, and Saunt Baritoe, all relatively old, wealthy, distinguished, and close together.
Blithe: A weed that was genetically altered to produce the brain chemical known as Allswell. Forbidden to the avout.
Bly, Saunt: A theor of the Concent of Saunt Edhar who was Thrown Back and lived out the remainder of his days as a Feral on a butte, later known as Bly’s Butte. According to legend, he was worshipped as a god by the local slines, who eventually killed him and ate his liver.
Book, The: A tome filled with subtly incoherent material, which misbehaving avout are forced to study as a form of penance. Divided into chapters, the difficulty of which grows exponentially.
Bulshytt: Speech (typically but not necessarily commercial or political) that employs euphemism, convenient vagueness, numbing repetition, and other such rhetorical subterfuges to create the impression that something has been said.
Calca: An explanation, definition, or lesson that is instrumental in developing some larger theme, but that has been moved aside from the main body of the dialog and encapsulated in a footnote or appendix.
Cartabla: A portable location-finding and map-display gadget, like a GPS unit on Earth.
Cartas, Saunt: An educated Bazian noblewoman who, after the Fall of Baz, founded the first math and created the Discipline that was followed all throughout the Old Mathic Age and, with certain renovations, in the mathic world following the Reconstitution.
Cartasian Discipline: The set of rules prescribed by Saunt Cartas, who is credited with having brought the mathic world into being following the Fall of Baz. An avout is a person who has taken an oath to observe the Discipline.
Causal Domain: A collection of things mutually linked in a web of cause-and-effect relationships.
Centenarian: An avout sworn not to emerge from the math or to have contact with the outside world until the next Centennial Apert. Informally, “Hundreder.”
Chapter: Local organizational unit of an Order of avout. Orders generally span the entire mathic world, and may have local Chapters in any number of different maths and concents. Commonly, as for example at Edhar, a math will comprise two or more distinct Chapters, belonging to different Orders.
Chronicle: Log of all events, great and small, taking place within a math or concent. Assiduously maintained and archived by hierarchs.
Chronochasm: In Mathic architecture, the space in the interior of a clock tower housing the workings of the clock and related equipment such as dials, bells, etc.
Cnoön: According to Protan metatheorics, the pure, eternal, changeless entities, such as geometric shapes, theorems, numbers, etc., that belong to another plane of existence (the Hylaean Theoric World) and that are somehow perceived or discovered (as opposed to fabricated) by working theors.