Notes from Amanath Ayende:
The following text is one of the most prized possessions of the Licalara of Oak, for all its strangeness. It was found in the ruins of an alfar city of unknown name in the remains of the Athalustera Mountains, which once separated the Tableland from the Euras Verar. It was not at first regarded as very important, being written in the Arilar script, the common set of fifty-eight phonetic symbols used to represent the words of Aril and other descendants of the ancient land Elwen tongue once spoken in the Rivadan Valley, and no stranger alphabet. It was therefore put aside for later study by the Linguist-Historians who found it, shuffled into place among other fragments in the Licalara when finally transported there, and then forgotten about. It was found tucked into the back of a larger book; possibly those now-dead researchers imagined it belonged there.
When Taloros Kariel, its discoverer, tried to translate it, being something of an expert on the Arilar script, he found to his dismay that the language thus represented was not actually Aril, or indeed land Elwen at all. It seemed to be an obscure dialect of Primal- save that, when he resumed the translation assuming this, it still did not work. Years of dedicated work went by before the Lord Taloros finally stumbled- by accident, as he said, or fortune- on K'ator, a jargon consisting of both obscure Primal words and wholly invented ones, that the machrai or lore Elwens had created to hide their most important inventions and discoveries of lore, those they wished to record but thought would fall into the wrong hands outside their own communities. The fragment turned out to be written in ancient K'ator, or so the Lord Taloros surmises, because even using the best K'ator grammars available failed to turn up all the secrets of the document. Some of the words seemed to be in a more modern dialect of Primal, as if the "author" of this fragment were copying from a still more ancient document (as seems likely, considering the subject matter) and substituted his best guesses, in the modern language, for words that had become illegible. And a few words have proven completely foreign; these may well be Alfarian.
To complicate the puzzle further, though the language of the fragment is certainly K'ator (the title of the fragment, Lanimemec, meaning simply "Of the Lanime") and the alphabet Arilar, those Linguist-Historians expert in the history of calligraphy down the years have told us the handwriting itself is more typical of small, isolated mist Elwen communities still extant in the former Parsepi Menua. Thus it seems that it was written by a member of one race, in the alphabet of a second, in the hand of yet a third, and left in the ruined city of yet a fourth.
Not all the mysteries of the Lanimemec can be solved, and in presenting this text I have chosen not to try. They are merely mentioned, to acquaint the reader with the fragment's fascinating history, and to prepare him for some of the notes that follow.
This fragment seems to concern the history of the lanime, the strange, half-mythical race of black-skinned corame who died at the hands of their kin early in the Age of Dawn. What has made it surprising and deeply interesting to Linguist-Historians- beyond the puzzles mentioned above- is that it seems to tell the story of the further history of the lanime, past the point at which they were thought to have been destroyed.
Alas, the text is so fragmentary that it is hard to be certain.
LANIMEMEC
(The fragment begins in the middle of a sentence).
....reached the havens of the west on the first day of spring. No news of them has come to us, and we must pray that they are safe, that nothing yet has come to hinder them. The hirisime {1} who brought them will return soon, and it may be the end for all of us.
I place these words on the page, therefore, in the sincere {2} hope that someone will find them someday and know what a great treasure {3} they possess.
What shall I write, for a people I cannot see, cannot know of, in the memory and name of a people long since vanished?
But they are {4}...
I will write as much and as swiftly as I can.
The lanime were satis {5} by the alfari. A great number of them came and took from the field the last remnants of the dispossessed, gathering them under their wings and carrying them to far shores, where they would not be touched or harmed ever again, under the cover of the sia {6} they loved. Though in spirit only they endured, still they endured, and their spirits sing in the darkness still.
The lanime were a people gentle and wild, both at once, most like in the color of their skins and their love for the darkness to their supposed father, the Prince of Night. They knew not, as did other corame, the lifara {7} that moved all souls of the Corameatel. They loved the veleth {8} and often made their homes among them. They wandered in the wild places of the...{9}
No crafts, was it said, they had. No art, even, but song, and that untutored and wandering, with none of the theories that were so beloved of the corame. They did not say of music, "We must tame it," or "We must study it," or anything other than Fantalme arasa {10}, "We must love it."
Fierce they were, and terrible in battle; they fear death not. They killed, or so they claim, as do the cat and the wolf, terrible in their innocence, but slaying for no malice. They ate of the bodies of their enemies, and even of their own kind, and they wrapped garlands of flowers about the heads of the dead {11}.
Wild, they lived. Wild, they live. The spirit of the lanime is abroad still, and I hear them singing ouside my window at night. The children of the Sunsister and the Prince of the Night dwell...{12}
This part of the document, or so the handwriting-skilled tell me (for I have no such knowledge myself) is written with many smears and half-finished letters, as if in great haste.
We must pass. All is gone, and we must pass. Beyond the Four Mountains, beyond the Vale of Flowers, we must pass. We will flee, and take the kusisia {13} with us.
May thou findest...
Here the text ends.
One final note in the history of the Lanimemec may be recorded. Though not disastrous, as the Licalara by this time possessed many fair copies made by interested Linguist-Historians, the vanishing of the original struck many as odd. The Lord Taloros left it among his papers when he died, and it was retrieved and placed in the archives once more. The next time that a handwriting expert who did not believe in the theory of menudi calligraphy went to examine it, however, he was unable to find the fragment. As noted above, this is not disastrous; the library possesses many other copies now, exact to the letter. And the fragment has most probably simply been misfiled again, stuck into a book and forgotten as it was before. There is no reason to give credence, as some do, to the tale that three days before the fragment was found missing, a strange bolt of purple lightning was seen to strike the library. I myself was awake at the time, and observed no bolt.
Linguist-Historians, one who is proud to be one may still sorrowfully say, are as superstitious as anyone else, despite all our great efforts devoted to the task of eradicating such things.
