The Naming (49 page)

The dual system—which only roughly parallels the medieval division of secular and religious power between church and state, although it is a tempting syllogism—was considered to be at its most ideal in the community of the Dhyllin, where Bards and the community lived and worked closely together, to their mutual benefit and pleasure. It was not in practice always ideal, and at times disagreements or rivalries led to bickerings and even war, sometimes between Bards and monarchs, sometimes between rival regions. All such occurrences were regarded by the Wise as a corruption of the Light.
¹²

THE
 
SPEECH:

SOME
 
GENERAL NOTES

The Speech behaved like a language, with certain crucial differences, and could in fact be learned; it was, for example, spoken by the Dhyllin people as their first tongue. But in the mouths of those who learned it, rather than in those with the Gift, it had no Bardic virtue.

Bards used it when speaking of matters of gravity and importance, because it was considered impossible to lie in the Speech. This was, in fact, not accurate: Hulls used the Speech and were able to lie, although this usage was not considered to be the Speech proper, and was sometimes called Dark or Black Speech. There was also the question of those who attained the Speech but were never taught the Knowing of the Light and, more crucially, never came into their Bardic or Secret Name (also known as their Truename). This was a circumstance that usually had tragic consequences, since such people were unable to properly understand or channel their powers, and were never able to enter their full Gift. This, generally, was rare, if more common as the Schools fell into disrepute after the demise of the Monarchs of Annar. There were also the cases of those who had only a slight Gift. Such people might have been village witches (hence the expression "witch-speak"), and they generally spoke a truncated and bastardized version of the Speech, with no more than a few words of potency, although sometimes they could attain considerable, if limited, power; but they were not considered to be Bards, since they did not attain the
whole of the Speech, nor did they know their Names. Consequently, they were sometimes referred to as the Unnamed, which is to be distinguished from the Nameless, who had rejected his Name.

This clearly makes possession of the Speech less straightforward than it might at first appear. The fact that the Speech could be learned by those without the Gift suggests that the virtue of the Speech was not inherent in the words themselves, as was argued by many Bards in the Middle Years, but that it expressed the mysteries of the cosmos itself within its syntactic relationships and the vibrations of its utterance, from which were drawn its unique powers.
¹⁴
The chief reason given for the argument that potency was inherent in the words themselves was the priority and importance given to Names in the Speech, and to Bardic Names. The truth quite possibly resides in an amalgamation of both arguments, as was pointed out by other Bards.

Bards were the only people who bore Secret Names, and a Bard's Name was and remains a central mystery that can only be partially discerned and puzzled over. The only complete written record of an instatement and Naming ceremony occurs in
The Riddle of the Treesong,
which confirms rather than negates the ritual's crucial importance. Other writings indicate that the most important mysteries were not written down but kept in the "rings of living memory." In the
Treesong
¹⁵
text the authors felt compelled to defend their choice to record it, remarking that since entire forests of knowledge had been hewn down by the Dark, "it is necessary to preserve, even in such a crude way, such Secrets as are known to us, in case the Knowing vanishes from the earth."
¹⁶

It appears that a Bard's Name was much more than a mere appellation or signifier of status or origin: it
was
a Bard's being, and its achievement was a sign of a Bard's maturation into full power. One who knew a Bard's Secret or Truename had power over him or her, and thus Names were guarded closely and given only to intimates as a sign of ultimate trust. Rejecting one's Name was unheard of until Sharma's Spell of Binding, and was regarded as the ultimate
blasphemy. Sharma of Den Raven, however, remained the only Bard to successfully do so. Hulls did not use their Names, but were unable to reject them completely, and those who possessed the Names of Hulls could still destroy them.

Because the Speech was not learned in the normal way, and so was not subject to the same forces of change or cultural variety, it remained more constant than other human languages. Bards from vastly differing regions had no difficulty understanding each other if they used the Speech, despite the gulfs in tradition and culture that separated them. Nevertheless, the fact remains that there were variations in the Speech; although it sprouted, as it were, always from the same stem, different environments encouraged its growth in differing ways. There was, for example, a noticeable, if slight, difference between the Speech of Afinil and the Speech of Maerad's day; and, to Maerad's ear, Saliman's Speech, being from far south of her region, would have had the equivalent of an accent.

Those with the Gift used the Speech for all the Arts of the Knowing. The use of the Speech was central to healing, to song— which was held high as an art of wisdom—and to all spells, as well as to investigations—such as astronomy or natural science—we would be accustomed to thinking of as scientific. The Bards made no distinctions, as we do, between art and science, considering them parts of a single Knowing. The Speech also enabled those with the Gift to converse with animals and, less frequently, plants. The Speech did not need to be physically spoken to be potent; Bards could use it effectively merely as a mode of thought. This raises the most important and difficult differences between the Speech and other languages, which are the subtleties of its registrations as a mode of mental communication. These, crucial as they are, cannot be explained, and here must be glanced over by reference to the Bardic paradox that the "center of the Speech is Silence." It is also why, despite the fact that Bards had a very sophisticated written culture, orality, and the mnemonic arts that go with it, still held precedence.

History

It was generally considered that those with the Gift, known as the Starpeople—the
Dhillareare
—or the Singers, first appeared in the Inner Kingdom at the end of the Age of Elementals, some five thousand years before the events recorded in
The Naming.
¹⁷
"
Records or even a count of years were not kept until the founding of Afinil during the Dawn Age, more than a thousand years after the end of the Age of Elementals. There was a tradition that claimed that as the Elementals withdrew into their natural forms, "somewhat of their power dispersed from them and was taken up in human form; and so there appeared, in all places where the Elementals had dwelt, the Starpeople. And they were so named because their eyes held a distant fire, as if they had themselves come from the stars, and they delighted in the fire of the stars and so, unlike other peoples who feared and cursed the Darkness, they loved the Night, and called it sacred."
¹⁸

There were, of course, other traditions, including a durable theory that Bards arrived from the west shortly after the disastrous Wars of the Elementals reshaped the lands of Edil-Amarandh. Another account held it that the Bards appeared first in the north, being forced there from the lands now inhabited by the nomad peoples of Zmarkan. The truth behind these competing theories, which became popular after the Restoration, might well be that many Bards of Annar found their linking with the Elementals, however far back, to be disreputable, for the Elementals had been held in distrust by Annarens since the alliance of the Ice Witch with the Nameless One. It was this alliance that led to the defeat of Recabarra, Queen of Lirion, and
Laurelin, last King of Imbral, and the evils that followed: the slaughter of the Dhyllin, the razing of Lirion and Imbral, and the tyranny over the Inner Kingdom that came to be known as the Great Silence.

The Restoration of the Monarchy and the Bards was chronicled many times. "The story of the downfall of the Nameless One is long and hard and desperate, and many parts of that tale never returned from darkness," wrote Ghoran of Desor. "I have often thought of those who fought him, lonely and afraid and hopeless, knowing no whisper of their courage would meet any new dawn. For many generations the land was in thrall, and the Keepers of the Light fled and hid in far places, keeping secret the Knowing, the Lore, the Singing, the Speech. And in time a King appeared from the west, where the bloodline of Laurelin, last King of Imbral, had been kept alive in hiding. Maninae, helmed with Light out of the deeps of time, took up his fell inheritance, and through great suffering the powers of the Nameless were turned against him, and at last the realm of Annar was released from slavery and the Balance restored. That was a time of great joy."
¹⁹

Maninae is credited with the establishment of the Schools (the Libridha) around Annar, and decentralizing the influence of the Bards: "And at that time Maninae determined to make his seat in Norloch, southward in Annar at the mouth of the Aleph River, and he built a great and fair city, and appointed the Circle of the High Bards, and there he and the Queen Marva dwelt in peace. But neither did he wish that the Lore and the Singing should become hidden and secret, the knowledge only of a select priesthood. He decided the Lore would be more safely kept in many centers, and so across Annar he established the Schools."
²⁰

Twenty-five Schools were established in every region of Edil-Amarandh and became centers of learning and culture. To an extent this was merely a formalization of a situation that had already occurred: communities of Bards existed in all the Seven Kingdoms, where they had been driven during the Great Silence, and had been instrumental in the defeat of the Nameless One.

Norloch flourished as the center of the Light in Annar, being both the seat of government and the highest School of the Light—two authorities that were at this stage formally separated by Maninae's relinquishment of his Bard status.

Society

It is not only the origin of the Bards that remains shrouded in mystery, but the reason for the appearance of the Gift in any individual. Bloodlines were no guarantee of a Gift, which could die out in a family in which it was previously strong and appear in a family in which it was previously unknown. This characteristic had a profound effect on the social and political organizations of Annar and the Seven Kingdoms.
²¹

Bardic communities, partly for this reason and also by reason of Bards' longevity, sometimes more than three times the lifespan of an ordinary human being, were remarkably tolerant. Bigotries of sex or race were unknown in Afinil, as prejudice of any kind was thought to cloud judgment and was abjured as a sign of corruption of the Mystery of Barding. The Bards also venerated what they called "The Way of the Heart," which was considered a major component of understanding the Silence of the White Flame; there were mystics who wrote long poems on this subject, the most famous being "The Birds of Anakatin" by Lorica of Turbansk. The Bards had a sophisticated culture of erotic art, although the western idea of the libertine was unknown, and romantic love was considered a central mystery. Homosexual love was not considered aberrant, and was never persecuted as it was in some less-civilized regions of Edil-Amarandh. It was celebrated in many popular lays, such as "The Lay of Lamark and Colun," just as the lays of Andomian and Beruldh or Ardina and Ardhor celebrated the love between man and woman, or man and Elidhu.

Bearing children and child-rearing were also honored, and were interestingly related to eroticism in a way that again is unknown in the west, though some vestige of that might be discerned in the Archaic Greek child-god Eros. The long life of Bards—which meant that child-rearing occupied a relatively small proportion of their lives—meant that women were never considered merely procreators of children, as they are in some traditional dogmas; and it appears that child-care was considered a responsibility not only of both parents but of all adults socially connected to a child. The family was a much broader concept than the contemporary nuclear family, or even the older extended family.

This ethos of tolerance lasted better in the Seven Kingdoms than it did in Annar, where the machinations of the First Circle during the Middle Years began certain imbalances, including the appointment of fewer and fewer women to the Circle.
²²
By N945, no women had been appointed as Bards of the First or Second Circle within living memory, and this in itself became the justification for appointing no more. This tendency was strongly resisted in the Schools of the Seven Kingdoms, and was often condemned as a distortion of the Balance.
²³
Nevertheless, from circa N500 on, a patristic ideology was aggressively argued by successive Bards. Studies of Bard lists in the various Schools revealed some fascinating figures. They show that by N700, every member of Norloch's First and Second Circle was male, and there were only three female Bards in the entire School. This contrasts sharply with Schools such as Baladh, Pellinor, and Innail, where the instatement of Minor Bards and appointment of Bards to the Circle largely reflected the demographics of the surrounding population: the proportion of women instated and appointed to positions of authority was generally about 52 percent, and Bards came from all social classes.
²⁴

Moreover, in Norloch the lists reveal that the Bards instated were for the most part from more powerful and wealthy families, and there is evidence that minor Bards from low-status families, such as Pilanel, and women, were sent to try their luck at other Schools— actions that were explicitly against the Charter of Schools set down by Maninae.
²⁵
This shift—which progressed slowly but inexorably over the centuries—began with the incorporation of the Triple
Scepter of the Monarchy into the authority of the White Flame until under Enkir of Norloch at the time of the events of
The Naming,
the writings of women began to be actively suppressed, and women were at first forbidden to be taught the arts of self-defense or warfare, and, finally, any of the Arts at all.
²⁶

Culture

The Bards created an extraordinarily sophisticated culture. It is still almost impossible to comprehend the extent of the Annaren Scripts, which are believed to consist of almost the entire Library of Norloch, itself a repository of many scripts from other Schools. Translation of the scripts has so far barely scraped the surface of what is available and here I can give only the most basic outline of Bardic achievement. While some scholars have wished to compare the Bardic culture with Medieval Europe, citing its relative technological backwardness, its culture was much closer to the humanistic Renaissance in its scientific curiosity and complexity. The truth is that neither comparison applies: both obscure the essential strangeness of the Bards.

They did not distinguish, as we do, between art and science; the alienation of these branches of knowledge in contemporary society would have baffled a Bard, who was accustomed to thinking of all knowledge as part of a single Knowing. A major reason for this was that their system of representation was not based, as Western knowledge is, on Aristotelian notions of categorization, but on systems of relationship.
²⁷
This profound difference accounts, perhaps, for the very sophisticated understanding the Bards had of what are now known as sciences of complexity (the biological sciences, for example). A science that depended on laboratory experimentation, for example, simply didn't exist, although it is known that the Schools of the Suderain included extremely advanced mathematicians and that the Bards of Baladh formulated and used physical laws in their astronomical observations. They were aware of atoms and subatomic particles, and theorized matter and energy as musical vibratory forces, anticipating quantum physics and string theory, and the Bard Thorkon of Turbansk proposed something that looks very like the theory of relativity.
²⁸

More astonishing discoveries include the fact that the Bards had a working theory of evolution and natural selection, which becomes very clear in the many texts written about the game of gis, which was very popular in Bardic culture. Many Bards wrote about the game, but it was Intathen of Gent who first theorized gis as a model of competing populations of species, and even of evolutionary tendencies within a single psyche.
²⁹
Malikil of Jerr-Niken theorized genetic inheritance in N755 in
The Loom of Light,
which recorded her meticulous observations of breeding and cross-pollinating ikil plants. It is even possible, given the prevalence of the symbol of the double helix in Bardic writing, that the Bards knew about DNA.

Unsurprisingly, their medical skills were highly advanced, although many practices also depended on the powers that were associated with the Speech, and so remain mysterious. The Speech, which the Bards considered to be the basis of their magical powers, is something of which we still understand very little. Most experts believe that Bards knew about bacteria and viruses, and some argue it is likely they observed them; there is evidence from astronomical observations that the science and practice of optics was highly developed, and it is possible they may have invented microscopes, although there is as yet no proof of that. It is known that medical practice stressed the importance of hygiene to prevent infection and that Bards practiced inoculation against disease. There even exist instructions for producing antibiotic potions to "extinguish the invading disease-spores."
³⁰

Bardic literature and arts are astonishing in their variety and profusion, and include great masterpieces of music, poetry, and painting. Bards had developed a complex system of notating music, which they venerated as the art closest to the Light, and much of the music so far deciphered sounds very "modern" to the listening ear. They delighted in metrical and linguistic inventiveness and employed a wide range of forms in their poetic literature; their aesthetic abhorred dogmatism of any kind as a "dimming of the Light." Only the beautiful illuminations of the scripts now remain as reminders of their visual art, although the writings tell of extraordinary architecture and signal the widespread prevalence of murals and sculpture in all Bardic communities. The most complete picture of Bardic culture yet discovered is in the
Riddle of the
Treesong,
³¹
and it is widely speculated that this book was written to combat misinformation about Bards then widespread in Annar.

Unfortunately the central spiritual tenets of Barding—what was meant by the Light, for example, or much beyond general and extremely ambiguous notes about their idea of the afterlife—remain beyond our understanding at present. In part this was because of the Bardic practice of communicating the most important mysteries orally: it is crucial to remember that in Bardic culture orality and literacy ran side by side, as occurred in Classical Greece during the few centuries of its greatest achievements.

It is also critical to understand that pivotal concepts like the Light and the Balance did not imply an anthropomorphic notion of God. Without disputing the spiritual significance given to the Light and the strong moral imperatives contained in the Balance, it seems fair to say that they were much closer to forces of nature than to monotheistic notions of a punishing and rewarding Creator.
³²
It is tempting, if perhaps anachronistic, to speculate that, despite their magery, the Bards may have created one of the most genuinely secular societies ever known.