Tharax · Aethorra

The Realm at a Glance

Territory: The high valleys and plateaus of the southern Karzhan Spine, holding the Tharaxi Gap (the only good pass between Castavar and the Heartlands).
Capital: Tharxa — unwalled, and on purpose. Their saying: "Our walls are men."
Government: Dual kingship. Two kings from two ancient bloodlines rule together and lead in war. The Thirty (a council of elders over 60) hold them in check, and so do five Skekar, chosen each year, who can arrest a king.
Rulers: King Kenithor Deneskid (44), a brilliant commander in the field, and King Lekakor Sastorid (38), a cold schemer who wants Tharax to stop renting itself to Caelvenne.
Society: Only about 60,000 men are full citizens, the Phymun ("the Equals"). Every Phymon boy leaves home at seven for the Anvil, the brutal school of war. The rest of the people are the Bound (a laboring class, born to it, who work the land) and the Outdwellers (free craftsmen and traders who are not citizens). The women of the Phymun own most of the land and run the house and the market while the men train and fight.
Religion: Worship of the ancestors and of the war god Kharnoth the Unbroken, lord of the shield wall. The honored dead are believed to stand behind the living in battle.
Economy: Farming for bare need (by the Bound), goat and sheep herding, mountain iron. They despise trade and luxury. At home they use iron bars for money, heavy and worthless abroad, to keep wealth from rotting the citizens. For dealings abroad they hold gold and silver, grudgingly.
Military: A heavy infantry phalanx with long spears, bronze-faced shields and steel breastplates. They fight in total silence until the lines meet. Picked rosyrk pike blocks, cart-mounted ballistae, and mountain skirmishers drawn from the Bound. Almost no cavalry, no navy.
Architecture: Plain stone and timber. Barracks halls, open training grounds, bare temples. Nothing decorated.
Currency: Iron bars at home; foreign gold and silver held by the state.
Strengths: The finest heavy infantry on Aethorra, fearsome discipline, a mountain homeland all but impossible to take, and a name that wins battles before they start.
Weaknesses: Too few citizens to replace their dead. Bread that depends on the Bound, who far outnumber the Phymun and are always one bad year from rising. No navy, no cavalry, no money, and they despise talk at tables.

Plates

**Our Walls Are Men**The Phymun in phalanx; Tharax builds no walls

**The Anvil**Every Phymon boy leaves home at seven for the Anvil

**Iron Is Honest**Mountain iron, smelted to bars that are money in Tharax and worthless anywhere else

**One of the Bound**The hereditary laborers who feed Tharax and outnumber its citizens

**Denekt**The eagle town on the Deneskid Heights, with the Stair beyond

The sketchbook: crest, arms, landmark and heraldry sheets

The Land

**The Karzhan Spine**High cold valleys, scree and alpine meadow; ibex on the ledges and bears in the high woods

Realm map of Tharax. Tap to open it full size.

Provinces

Tharxa Vale

The central province of Tharax is the valley around the capital, Tharxa. The Anvil's training grounds lie at its eastern side, and the approach to the Tharaxi Gap lies to the southwest.

The northern highland province of Tharax bears the name of the Deneskid royal line, one of the two royal bloodlines of Tharax, each of which claims descent from the realm's founders. It holds the town of Denekt, the Temple of Kharnoth and, on its southern edge, the Kokekt Mines.

Sastorid Crags

The rugged southern province of Tharax bears the name of the Sastorid royal line, the house of King Lekakor and of King Drimor Sastorid, who was assassinated by a Bound servant in 520. It holds the town of Sastorra, the fort of Lokon and the ruin at the Field of the Gap, and it faces both Castavar and Zarvand.

The Lowfields

The lowest and most farmed country in Tharax is the heartland of the Bound, who work its barley terraces for the Phymun. It is the realm's most dangerous ground.

Voices of Tharaxxeithos

King Kenithor Deneskid

King of Tharax (Deneskid line) · 44

Shaved head, close black beard, a body made entirely of scar tissue and muscle. The Anvil's brand, a spear-point, is burned into his right shoulder like every Phymon. A deep dent in his left forearm where a Castavari bolt broke the bone at Faashab-Talodin while he stood guarding the crusaders' flank under the Iron Contract.

King Lekakor Sastorid

King of Tharax (Sastorid line) · 38

Slighter than Kenithor, quick, with gray eyes that miss nothing and a long straight nose broken once. Was a mediocre soldier and knows it; is a brilliant politician and hides it. Speaks more than any Phymon should, which the Thirty resent.

Skekir Sirtys Gonamik

Senior Skekir, head of the Tyrthas · 58

A hard gray woman with a face like a hatchet and a limp from a childhood fall in the Kokekt mines. Widow of a king's brother, mother of three dead soldiers. She runs the secret watch over the Bound and has done for eleven years, longer than any Skekir is supposed to hold anything.

Tandox the Bound

Bound field-foreman, secret organizer · 29

Big, quiet, with the flat calloused hands of a man who has worked barley terraces since he was six. The Bound's slave-brand, a plain bar, on the back of his neck. A whip scar across his shoulders from a Tyrthas patrol when he was nineteen, for looking at a Phymon girl too long.

Krirtys Sastorid

Lekakor's daughter, Anvil-trained · 17

Tall, rangy, cropped dark hair, the Anvil brand on her shoulder and the grin of someone who has not yet lost. Girls of the Phymun train in the Anvil too, though they do not fight in the line. She wants to.

Cities and Townsxakrikh

Tharxa

The road climbs out of the Lowfields or comes down from the Wrunvos country, and the traveler waits for the wall that every capital has. It never comes. Barley terraces give way to goat-folds, goat-folds to plain stone houses, houses to long timber barracks halls, and he is in Tharxa without having passed a gate, a toll-post or a tower. The only thing that stops a stranger is a pair of young men in red cloaks standing at the roadside with spears. They look at him, say one word, and wait for his answer.

Read the full chapter on Tharxa →

Denekt

Denekt comes into sight all at once: a gray town on a shelf of the Deneskid Heights, scree above it, pine woods below, and the white ridge of the Stair beyond it to the north. The wind never quite stops. It carries goat-bells, pine smoke and the whistle of marmots. The town is built like every Tharaxi town, of plain stone and timber with nothing carved or painted, and it looks as though it expects snow in any month. The Tharaxi hear *denesk*, "eagle," in its name, and the eagles are there to prove it, riding the updrafts over the scree.

Read the full chapter on Denekt →

Other towns and strongholds: Sastorra, Lowfields, Lokon. Every town on the continent →

Great Houses and Armsspetom

Deneskid

Three Days More

Sastorid

The Point Goes First

Gonamik

Watch, and Say Nothing

The Eagle Kin of Denekt

Under the Feathers

Tryner of the Lowfields

Count the Sheaves

The Barsmiths

Iron is honest

The houses in full: descent, heads, heirs, feuds

Succession law

Tharax has two kings at all times, one from each royal line, and both lines claim descent from the realm's founders. When a king dies, the Thirty choose his successor from the grown men of his own line. The Skekar can arrest a king, and have: Phospor Deneskid died in their prison in 741. Phymon land passes from mother to daughter, which is why the women own most of Tharax. A son inherits his father's spear, shield and seat in the mess-hall, and nothing else. A Bound family passes with the land it works. Tharax has no lords. It has households instead, and their weight comes from the land their women hold and the halls their men fill.

The ruling lines: Deneskid and Sastorid

text The founders of Tharax (unnamed; both lines claim them) │ ├── THE DENESKID LINE (the north house) │ ⋮ │ ├── Tothakhor Deneskid, king; held the Gap three days, 212 │ ⋮ │ ├── Phospor Deneskid, king; arrested by the Skekar, died in prison, 741 │ ⋮ │ └── Kenithor Deneskid, born c. 1102, king 1130 │ └── THE SASTORID LINE (the south house) ⋮ ├── Drimor Sastorid, king; killed in his tent by a Bound servant, 520 ⋮ └── Lekakor Sastorid, born c. 1108, king 1130 │ └── Krirtys Sastorid, born c. 1129, Anvil-branded

The chronicles name only five kings of the two lines. Kenithor and Lekakor took their thrones within a year of each other, in 1130.

Deneskid

Seat: The Eagle Hall in Denekt (denekt) and the north house of the Two Houses in Tharxa (tharxa); the Deneskid Heights (deneskid-heights).
Arms: A single eagle feather cut upright into the bronze face of the shield, just under the rim. Denesk is the Tharaxi word for eagle.
Words: Three Days More.
Head: King Kenithor Deneskid (44), the best field commander alive, with a dent in his left forearm where a Castavari bolt broke it at Faashab-Talodin.
Heir: None named. The Thirty will choose among the grown men of the line.
Wealth and power: The line holds the Deneskid Side of Tharxa, the old households of Denekt, the Temple of Kharnoth, which Denekt's old men call theirs, and the loyalty of most of the army.
Allies and feuds: Kenithor is the heart of the Old Anvil, and tired of it. He is an Iron-Breaker who signed the Iron Contract himself, because Tharax needed the gold. The line has been the Sastorids' rival since 1108.
History:
212 — Tothakhor Deneskid holds the Tharaxi Gap for three days against 40,000. His feather hangs in the Eagle Hall.
741 — The Skekar arrest King Phospor for taking Caelvennois gold. In the Eagle Hall's row of feathers there is a gap where his would be.
1108 — The Reforms split the Thirty, and the rivalry with the Sastorids begins.
1131 — Kenithor signs the Iron Contract.
Hooks: Prince Faasheer's agents have offered Kenithor Faashab-Talodin if he will close the pass to Durkaad's friends. Kenithor's feather is not yet in the Eagle Hall.
Direction: FADING.

Sastorid

Seat: Sastorra (sastorra) and the south house in Tharxa (tharxa); the Sastorid Crags (sastorid-crags).
Arms: A spear laid level, point to the right, cut into the bronze under the rim. Sastor is the Tharaxi word for spear.
Words: The Point Goes First.
Head: King Lekakor Sastorid (38), a middling soldier and a brilliant hand at council, who sleeps four hours a night.
Heir: None named. Krirtys is his only named child, and the law gives the throne to the line's grown men.
Wealth and power: The line holds the Sastorid Side of Tharxa, newer and poorer in stone, and the southern crags that face both Castavar and Zarvand. For three centuries Sastorra has looked across at the Zarvani fortress of Faashab-Talodin, built on its own ground.
Allies and feuds: Lekakor leads the Wide Anvil and the younger Phymun. He is an Iron-Breaker who wants out of the Contract, and he will use the Tyrthas for his own ends.
History:
520 — King Drimor Sastorid is killed in his tent by a Bound servant in the Second Bound Rising. No Bound servant has carried a knife in Tharxa since.
After 1108 — Sastorid women begin renting lower rooms to Outdweller families. The Deneskid Side calls it a scandal.
1131 — Lekakor loses the vote on the Iron Contract by two.
1145 — He proposes that Tharax leave the Contract when it ends in 1147. The vote is put off.
Hooks: A Caelvennois envoy has offered Lekakor double the Contract's gold to garrison the Tsanha fords. Krirtys wants to stand in the line.
Direction: RISING.

Gonamik

Seat: A Phymon house in Tharxa (tharxa).
Arms: A small round shield inside the rim of a larger one, cut in the bronze. Gonam is the Tharaxi word for shield.
Words: Watch, and Say Nothing.
Head: Skekir Sirtys Gonamik (58), senior skekir, head of the Tyrthas, and the name of the year 1146.
Heir: The chronicles name no daughter, and her three sons died as soldiers. Who holds the Gonamik land after her is an open question.
Wealth and power: She commands the Tyrthas, which knows the name of every Bound headman in the Lowfields. Her name stands on the recent Year Posts more often than any name in living memory.
Allies and feuds: She is the iron of the Old Anvil. She is the widow of a king's brother, and the chronicles do not say which line he was of. Both lines would like to claim her, and she has let neither.
History:
Childhood — A fall in the Kokekt mines leaves her with a limp.
c. 1135 — She takes charge of the Tyrthas, and she has held it eleven years, longer than any skekir is meant to hold anything.
Hooks: The Bound tell a tale called Gonam's Fox about the Tyrthas, and they hear her house's name in it. She is counting heads for the Contract vote.
Direction: CONTESTED.

The Eagle Kin of Denekt

Seat: The Upper Town of Denekt (denekt).
Arms: None painted. Each house keeps an eagle feather over its inner door.
Words: Under the Feathers.
Head: No single head. The eldest women of the Upper Town speak for the families.
Heir: By the mother-to-daughter law, each house's terraces pass to its daughters.
Wealth and power: The families hold the best terraces for a day's walk around Denekt, and the pride of families who claim kinship with the Deneskid line.
Allies and feuds: The families are split. Some in the Eagle Hall want the old families to stand behind Kenithor against Lekakor on the Contract vote, and some want them to stand behind no one.
Hooks: Their Bound can see the Stair, where freedom lies a few days' climb away, and each year some of them go.
Direction: FADING.

Tryner of the Lowfields

Seat: The terraces around Lowfields town (lowfields), in the Lowfields province (the-lowfields).
Arms: A barley ear cut into the edge of the household's tally-boards. Tryner is the Tharaxi word for grain.
Words: Count the Sheaves.
Head: Kirrar the Landholder, a Phymon woman of about fifty who holds more Lowfields terrace than any other household.
Heir: Her eldest daughter.
Wealth and power: The household holds barley terraces and several hundred Bound families who pass with the land. The Tryner terraces send barley to a dozen mess-halls.
Allies and feuds: The household is Old Anvil. The Tryner women are among the quiet defenders of the Contract's gold, because they count it.
History:
520 — The Bound of the Lowfields kill three hundred Phymun in one night. The Tryner women remember which houses burned.
938 — "The quiet year." Two thousand Bound are put to death on land the Tryner household still holds.
Hooks: Tandox the Bound has men on the Tryner terraces, one trusted man at a time, and Kirrar has not seen it.
Direction: CONTESTED.

The Barsmiths

Seat: The Bar Forge in the Smoke Yards of Tharxa (tharxa).
Arms: Outdwellers bear no arms. The family's mark is the forge's stamp, a bar scored in ten.
Words: None of their own. The Smoke Yards say iron is honest.
Head: Dunox the Barsmith, the Outdweller master of the Bar Forge, the only place in Tharax where iron bars may be cast.
Heir: His eldest son. His second son is in the Anvil under the Reforms of 1108.
Wealth and power: The Barsmiths make Tharax's money and may not use it as a citizen does.
Allies and feuds: The family stands with the Wide Anvil. If Outdwellers' sons ever become Phymun in numbers, this family will be among the first to own land as well as a forge.
Hooks: Dunox's son is one of the two young Phymun sent into the high woods after a Karzhan bear, and only one will come back.
Direction: RISING.

Tharax's households are CONTESTED. The two lines have been rivals in council only since 1108. The Contract vote in 1147 will decide which of them leads.

Faith, Myth and Folklorexokork

Myths

Kharnoth and the Wall of Men. In the Century of Fire, when every kingdom's walls fell, Tharax's walls fell too.

Kharnoth and the Wall of Men. In the Century of Fire, when every kingdom's walls fell, Tharax's walls fell too. Kharnoth, then a mortal captain, set the survivors in a line where the wall had stood, had them lock shields, and told them: "Now we are the wall." They held for nine days. On the ninth Kharnoth died on his feet and did not fall, and the line did not know he was dead until the enemy left. The Phymun hold that he still stands somewhere behind every phalanx, and that the last man in any line who does not step back is, for that moment, Kharnoth.

The Mountain That Was Given. The Bound tell it otherwise. The Karzhan Spine was a sleeping mother, and the Phymun came and told her they would guard her while she slept if she gave them her back to stand on. She agreed. They have never let her wake. This is the Furrow's first story, and to repeat it aloud is death.

The Iron Coin. A Tharaxi king of old was offered a chest of gold by a Caelvennois merchant to let a caravan through the Gap. He took one coin, melted it, and poured it into the pass road, saying gold was for the ground. The road is said to have a gold vein under it that no Phymon will dig. The saying "gold has a smell" comes from this: the king could smell the merchant coming a mile off.

Folk tales

The Boy Who Would Not Cry. Every Anvil boy hears it his first night: a boy of seven, sent to the Anvil, was told he could go home if he cried once.

The Boy Who Would Not Cry. Every Anvil boy hears it his first night: a boy of seven, sent to the Anvil, was told he could go home if he cried once. He did not cry for eleven years, became a Skekir, and at sixty, at his mother's grave, cried for the first time. The Anvil says: "He earned it."

Gonam's Fox. A fox stole a whole company's rations in the night, and the company hunted it for a year and never caught it. It is told to teach patience, and it is also told, quietly, among the Bound, as a tale about the Tyrthas.

The Skekir's Wife. Told by the women of the Phymun: a Skekir tried to give his wife orders in her own house, and here are the six ways she made him sorry. The men laugh at this one carefully.

Old wives' tales

A spear that falls with its point toward the Gap means Castavar is coming. A spear that falls toward the Lowfields means something worse.
Never count the men in a phalanx; the count will be wrong by one, and Kharnoth does not like being counted.
Bound women say: a furrow cut crooked in the morning is a Tyrthas man lying in the next field.
If an eagle circles Tharxa three times, a king will die; twice, a king will lie.
A child who laughs before the age of one will not survive the Anvil. Phymun mothers pinch their infants when they smile.

Traditions

The Brand. Every Phymon is branded with the spear-point on the shoulder at seven, and makes no sound. A sound means another year before he may try again.
The Bear. Two young Phymun, on foot, with spears. One bear. The one who strikes the killing blow gives the pelt to the other.
The Empty Chair. At every Phymon feast one chair is left empty for Kharnoth, with a full plate before it. The Bound clear the plate. The Bound have their own name for the empty chair, and it is not Kharnoth's.
Iron for the dead. A Phymon is buried with an iron bar in his hand, so he will have money in the next world, and it will be worthless there too.

Law and Daily Lifesodakt

Courts, crimes, marriage, food, dress and a day in Tharax

Law

Tharax has almost no written law. The Phymun hold that writing is for treaties with people who cannot be trusted, so their law is custom kept in the memory of the Thirty. The two kings lead in war and share the rule. The Thirty, elders over sixty, decide matters of state, judge every capital case and serve as Kharnoth's priests. The five Skekar, elected each year and seated on Wardens' Day, the 1st of Lokok, oversee everything else, and they can arrest a king. The senior skekir names the year and heads the Tyrthas. In 1146 that is Sirtys Gonamik, a widow of fifty-eight. A Phymon woman can be elected skekir, though no woman sits among the Thirty.

Phymun answer to the Skekar, and the Road Watch, drawn from the mess-halls one hall to each ten days, brings disputes before them. Outdwellers answer to the Skekar through the eldest of each craft yard. The Bound answer to the Tyrthas, the secret watch founded after the First Bound Rising of 199. A foreigner found asleep outside a Strangers' Yard is walked back the first time and thrown out the second.

Crime	Usual punishment
A Phymon who shames his hall	Eats standing at the mess for a set number of tens
A Phymon who steps back in the line	Stripped of his red cloak and eats outside the daipox for a year
A Phymon found holding gold	Tried by the Thirty; King Phospor died in prison for it in 741
An Outdweller hoarding foreign coin	The coin forfeit to the Gold House and a fine in iron bars
A Bound servant carrying a knife in Tharxa	Flogged (the rule dates from 520)
A Bound runaway, caught	Flogged and returned; a second flight is hanged
A Bound who reads, keeps the Furrow or strikes a Phymon	Hanged, and the body left on the Warning Posts
Killing a Phymon	Death, by judgment of the Thirty

Outlawry and debt. Short of death, the worst that can befall a Phymon is to lose his seat at the mess. Every citizen's household sends a share of barley, cheese and iron to his daipox, and a man whose household cannot send it for a full year is struck from the hall and becomes, in law, an Outdweller. Debt is therefore the women's business, since they own the land and keep its tallies. Money is the iron bar, the nisox, scored in ten, and foreign gold belongs to the state. Nobody needs to be banished from Tharax. The Bound go over the Stair by night, and a Phymon who takes Caelvenne's pay or a foreign wife is spoken of in the past tense.

Family

Marriage. Mothers arrange marriages, and a bride wears crag edelweiss. Phymon men under thirty sleep in the mess-halls, so a young husband visits his wife by night and is back for the morning drill. The house, the goat-yard and the terraces belong to the wife. She may send her husband back to his hall for good by setting his spear outside her door, and the Skekar will not hear his complaint. A husband has no such power, and the Skekir's Wife is the story of why.

Inheritance. Phymon land passes from mother to daughter, which is why the women own most of Tharax. A son inherits his father's spear, shield and seat in the hall. When a king dies, the Thirty choose the next from the grown men of his own line.

Women. Phymon women own the land, hold the purse of the realm and keep accounts on tally-boards that nobody counts as writing. Phymon girls train in the Anvil and are branded like the boys, but they live in their mothers' houses and do not fight in the line, which Krirtys Sastorid wants to change. The few who speak for the Iron Contract's gold are mostly women, because they are the ones who count it.

The Bound. The Bound are born to labor, and they far outnumber their masters. A Bound family belongs to the terraces it works. When the land passes, the Bound pass with it. No Phymon may sell a Bound family off its land or kill one without showing cause to the Skekar, though the Tyrthas needs no cause. In the same summer that a Phymon child of seven takes the spear-point brand on the shoulder, a Bound child of seven takes a plain bar on the back of the neck (tokhekh, "brand"). The Bound marry among themselves with the landholder's leave, and their children are Bound. They may not read, carry a knife in Tharxa or keep the Furrow. Each Bound village has a headman, and the senior skekir knows every one of their names. They speak their own field-talk, dasthax. They rose in 199 and 520, and a third rising in 938 was betrayed before it began.

Outdwellers are free but not citizens. They make everything the Phymun need, marry as they like, own their workshops and, since the Reforms of 1108, may send their sons to the Anvil.

Children and schooling. A Phymon boy leaves home at seven for the Anvil. There he is branded without a sound and hears the Boy Who Would Not Cry on his first night. He learns the order of battle, the spear, the ibex hunt and the bear rite, and perhaps one Phymon in ten learns to read. Bound children go to the terraces at six. A Phymon mother pinches her baby when it smiles, because a child who laughs before one will not survive the Anvil.

Daily life

Food and drink. Tharax eats barley, goat and sheep. Wine is for foreigners.

	A Phymon man in the mess-hall	A Phymon woman at home	A Bound family
Morning	Nothing before drill; black barley bread after	Barley bread, goat's milk, cheese	Barley porridge, whey
Midday	Bread and goat cheese on the Drill Field	Bread, cheese, whatever the yard gives	Bread and onions on the terrace
Evening	Mutton-and-barley broth with Anvil thyme, Spine sheep, snow grouse or Kokekt char in season, ale	Broth, cheese, headwater trout in season	Barley broth, a snared snow grouse in winter, the leftovers of the Empty Chair

Dress and houses. Phymon men wear red cloaks dyed with ibex-lichen, women wear red at feasts, and nobody wears gold. Everyone wears coarse Spine wool and hobnailed boots, and the Bound's undyed collars show the bar on their necks. Phymon houses are stone below and timber above, with a walled goat-yard and pine-shingle roofs weighted with stones. The Bound live in fieldstone huts at the terrace ends, or in the back rooms of the houses they serve.

Health and hygiene. Anvil boys wash in snowmelt all year, and warm water is thought a foreign habit. Wounds are dressed with crushed Anvil thyme and bad stomachs with Gap gentian root. All the learning in physic Tharax owns is a few Zarvani books taken in war. Among the Bound the old women keep the herb-lore, and the Tyrthas pays them little mind, which suits the Furrow's Sowers. Stonebane, the purple monkshood of the high meadows, is said to be the Tyrthas's tool when a death must look like fever.

Birth and death. A Phymon child is named by its mother on the tenth day. The Phymun bury their dead in rows on the Ancestors' Slope, facing the city, each with an iron bar in his hand, and kings lie at the top with a Karzhan eagle feather. The Bound bury their dead without markers at the terrace ends, and a Sower scratches a furrow on the underside of the first stone laid over the grave.

Pastimes. Tharax runs, wrestles, throws the javelin, hunts with Gap falcons and tells stories. It has no bells and few songs, because its armies fight in silence. The Bound sing field-songs in dasthax, and the Tyrthas listens to them carefully.

A day. The companies are on the Drill Field before the sun clears the ridge, and the Bound are already on the terraces. At dusk the men go to their mess-halls and the women count the day at home. The week is a ten of numbered days from kaim to dakt, and on dakt every hall eats together.

Where it is going: CONTESTED. Tharaxi law was made to keep sixty thousand men equal and everyone else in their places, and it is failing at both. The citizens grow fewer, the Outdwellers' sons are in the Anvil, the Bound can see the Stair, and the gold the law says has a smell has paid for Tharax's steel since 1131. Something in Tharaxi custom will have to be written down soon, and whoever holds the brush will decide what it says.

Trade, taxes and money

Makes and sells. Barley, goats, cheese and coarse wool, all worked by the Bound; Kokekt iron, hides and Gap falcons, sold only through the Strangers' Yard. Its one great export is its army.

Buys. Salt, which it cannot make; Dunmorrow steel for spear-points and breastplates; grain and Aldmere wool in bad years; wine for the foreigners in the Yard.

Money and taxes. The only lawful money inside Tharax is the iron bar of the Bar Forge, and no Phymon may hold gold. The state takes what it needs in kind: - Each Phymon household sends its mess-share, a fixed measure of barley, cheese and meat, to its man's mess-hall every month. The Bound grow it. - Outdweller craft yards pay a craft levy in bars or finished work, set by the Skekar each year. - Foreigners pay by the Gold House rate of two marks to the bar, which is a tax in all but name, and a Yard fee of a tenth of a bar a night for every beast. At Lokon, caravans pay a pass toll of one bar a beast for the Gap road.

The Gold House lives on the Iron Contract's 100,000 leusores. By the tally of Sithaks the Tally-Keeper it spends about 45,000 a year on Dunmorrow steel, 10,000 on salt, 20,000 on grain in a middling year, and the rest on mules, cart horses and the Yard's business. In 1146 it holds about 135,000 leusores in reserve: three years of steel.

Direction. CONTESTED. The gold ends in 1147, and the only thing Tharax has ever sold abroad is itself.

The Year in Tharaxskamys

Months. Lokok (pass), when the Gap opens, Pharix (goat), Denesk (eagle), Krerk (sun), Xert (heights), Sekhert (barley), Tandox (harvest), Spatok (vale), Serx (fox), Ditherx (bear), Pydin (snow), Sastor (spear), when the Anvil drills for spring.

Week. Three tens to a month. The days are numbered kaim, dru, tirk, pesk, phex, skem, zirk, gour, nysk, dakt (one to ten), and dakt, the tenth, is drill-day in the Anvil and the day the mess-halls eat together. The Accord Days belong to no ten.

Years. Named years (gosris, "a year of office"). The Skekar are chosen each year and take office on New Year's Day, and the year takes the name of the senior skekir. The Thirty keep the list, and it runs unbroken back to the Accord. Tharax writes the Reckoning too, in its treaties and in the Iron Contract.

Festivals:

Wardens' Day (1st of Lokok). The new Skekar take office and the year takes its name.
The Three Days (10th to 12th of Xert). The days of the Battle of the Gap in 212, when four thousand Phymun held the pass for three days. Every mess-hall eats in silence for the three days and speaks the names of the dead on the third.
The Harvest Watch (all of Tandox). The First Bound Rising broke out at harvest in 199, and ever since the Phymun sleep armed for the whole harvest month. The Bound bring in the harvest under their watch.
The Empty Chair has no date: at every Phymon feast, all year long, a chair is left empty for Kharnoth.

Speak Tharaxidomekh

Tharaxi	English
Styn.	Stand. (The commonest word in Tharax, and the greeting.)
Krax.	Hold. (The farewell.)
Psar lokok?	Where is the pass? (No word for "is.")
Mesk bamartek eim.	I don't know. (Verb first: not / know-now / I.)
Psum krekt?	How many?
Khern moxik, brex.	Our walls are men. (The Equals' motto. Walls and men are both plural.)
Nex, turakh.	Yes, king. (There is no "no, king.")
Thikh druter.	A stranger is here. (A warning, not a greeting.)
Todakt xar lulisk.	Honor or death.
Zomek thantakek.	The ancestors stand fast. (Said before battle.)
Tranerkus.	Killed. Or: will kill. (Context decides.)
Kourkus gyr eimot prethaxot.	He gave me the sword. (Verb, doer, then what is given, marked -ot.)
Turakhik sastor	The king's spear. (Owner ending -ik.)
Turakh, turekh	King, kings. (Tharax always has two.)

Tharaxi	English
geryx	person
grakar	father
girerx	husband
turakh	king
gikho	farmer
krerk	sun
krort	wind
thour	lake
khesk	wood (material)
dethin	town
zotarx	door
tharx	day
kekhaks	spring
trirkes	bread
zusekh	wine
korpex	dog
xastax	bird
trinir	nephew
trimisk	parent
menix	carpenter
prerpas	healer
drarax	master (of a house or craft)
skukysk	hail
thothox	plain

The full Tharaxi dictionary

The script of Tharax, with numerals and a sample line

Great Workstouthir

The Phymun hold that writing is for treaties with people who cannot be trusted, so the great works of Tharax are cut in pine and bronze, kept in the memory of the Thirty, or stamped out on the Drill Field, and the one small library behind the Hall holds almost none of them. Nothing in Tharax is long; what cannot be said in a breath, the Anvil teaches, was not worth the breath.

Faith · recited liturgy of nine lines, one for each day of the holding

The Nine Days

Nysk Therx “nine days”

Kharnoth the Unbroken, as the survivors kept it · before 0 R. (the Century of Fire)

Nine lines, each an order given on one of the nine days Kharnoth's line held where the old wall stood, the first of them the words every Tharaxi child knows. The ninth line is a single word, and the Thirty teach that it was spoken by a dead man. It has never been written down; the Thirty keep it in memory as they keep the law, and a Phymon who cuts it on wood or paper is tried for it.

Iloks mox kharn. Thantak.Now we are the wall. Stand fast.

Its author, and how it lives now

Kharnoth the Unbroken, as the survivors kept it. The mortal captain who stood the survivors in a line where Tharxa's wall had fallen and died on his feet on the ninth day; the lines are held to be his orders, one to a day.

Recited by one of the Thirty at the bare Temple of Kharnoth to every company that leaves by the Denekt road, and by the men of the line, under their breath, when the enemy's front rank is a spear's length away.

Chronicle · chronicle cut in Spearmarks on pine posts, ten years to a post

The Year Posts

Kithuk Skamisik “names of the years”

The Keepers of the Posts · 0–1147 R., and continuing

A double row of posts on Elders' Rise carrying the name of every senior skekir since the Accord of Surmave, one name to a year and nothing else: no battle, no king, no Rising. It is the whole of Tharax's official history, and a Phymon who wants to know what happened in a year must find someone old enough to tell him. Its only companion is the scroll of the named years in the library, which adds a line to a year about once a century.

Kourkek oux kithokot. Mesk gorthorek oux.It gives a name. It does not teach.

Its author, and how it lives now

The Keepers of the Posts. One keeper at a time since the Accord, each cutting the new senior skekir's name on Wardens' Day and recutting rotten posts by copying them exactly; the present keeper is Konpax the Keeper.

Every Tharaxi child is brought to find the year of the Battle of the Gap on it; foreigners who stop to read it are walked back to the Strangers' Yard; the keepers' saying above is quoted at anyone who asks a post a question.

Song · marching count, spoken on the left foot, ten words to a cycle

The Count of the Line

Rostesk Tutaktik “number of the shield wall”

Todaktor Soskik · c. 240 R.

Ten numbers, each joined to one order, spoken by the file-leaders and answered by nothing but feet; the phalanx marches to it from the Drill Field to the field of battle. At a hundred paces from the enemy the count stops, and from then until the lines meet Tharax is silent, which is the part foreign soldiers remember. The Anvil teaches that it is not a song, and no Phymon has ever been heard to sing it.

Kaim, styn. Dru, krax. Tirk, thantak.One, stand. Two, hold. Three, stand fast.

Its author, and how it lives now

Todaktor Soskik. A boy in the Anvil during the War of the Gap who became a file-leader; he fixed the count so that a line of men who had never marched together would step as one.

Heard every morning on the Drill Field before the sun clears the ridge; Caelvenne's shore garrisons have taught it to Solvaine's street boys, who count it in the wrong order, and the Tharaxi do not correct them.

Tales · comic tale-cycle in six parts, told aloud

The Skekir's Wife

Skekirik Talyt “the warden's wife”

Dunoxys Spatokik · c. 610 R.

A skekir tries to give orders in his wife's house, and she makes him sorry six ways, each shorter than the last; in the sixth she says nothing at all and sets his spear outside her door. It is the nearest thing Tharax has to a comedy, and it is also the reason the Skekar will not hear a husband's complaint against his wife's door. Tellers may change the ways but never the number.

Tyxik daipox, skekir. Eimik spetom.Your mess-hall, warden. My house.

Its author, and how it lives now

Dunoxys Spatokik. A Phymon landholder of the Deneskid Side whose telling fixed the tale at six ways and gave the wife her lines; the women's yards credit her and the men do not ask.

Told by the Phymon women in their yards and at the loom, repeated on the Sastorid Side by dusk whenever a husband is sent back to his hall, and laughed at by the men carefully; the Skekar cited it to a complainant in Krerk of 1147.

Poetry · single-line verses cut inside the bronze rims of shields

The Shield Cuts

Domikh Gonemik “words of the shields”

Grilokor Meksanik · c. 770–806 R.

Forty-one short verses, each cut in Spearmarks inside the rim of a bronze-faced shield where only its bearer sees it; since a son inherits his father's shield, the verses pass down the halls with the bronze. The Thirty once ordered one ground off for having too many words, and it is the one every mess-hall can recite. The rest are known by the halls that hold them, and a man who reads another's rim is thought to have read his letters.

Gonam kharn. Kharn brex. Brex tyx.Shield, wall. Wall, men. Men, you.

Its author, and how it lives now

Grilokor Meksanik. A shield-bearer of the Deneskid Heights, called the Short for his height and his lines, who cut a verse inside the rim of every shield in his hall and never one on his own.

Thirty-odd of the shields still stand in the racks, and the line above is cut again by Outdweller shield-facers on new shields for boys whose fathers left them none, which the old halls consider cheating.

Song · work-song cycle in field-talk (dasthax), sung in rows on the terraces

The Field-Songs of the Terraces

Prekith Goksik “songs of the field”

The Bound; no names are said · before 199 R.; verses added every year

Hundreds of verses about barley, goats, weather and sleep, sung to the rhythm of the hoe and stopping when a red cloak passes. Whether the sleeping mother in them is a mother is the question the Tyrthas has asked for nine centuries, since the Furrow's first story is death to repeat aloud. The headmen are asked for the words of a new verse most years, and they always answer that it is an old one.

Skoun, drortex. Thak thesakhus tyx.Sleep, mother. Soon you will wake.

Its author, and how it lives now

The Bound; no names are said. Made and remade by the Bound of the terraces; a verse is always said to be old, and whoever made it is never named in front of an Equal.

Sung on every terrace in Tharax from sowing to threshing and heard in the halls of Tharxa, where no one answers; the Tyrthas listens to them carefully and has never hanged a man for a verse, only for what it thought a verse meant.

Chronicle · collection of Tharax's replies to foreign rulers, on one scroll

The Answers

Speix Nanorik “answers of the land”

Phorirkor Lokokik (compiler) · 1109–1112 R. (replies from 206 R. on)

Thirty-seven replies sent by the kings and the Thirty to foreign kings, princes and khaasars over nine centuries, none longer than a line, set down with the demand each one answered. The first is the one word sent to King Clislo II of Castavar in 206, when he asked that the Gap be opened; he came six years later. It is the only Tharaxi book in the library that foreigners ask to see, and the only one Phorirkor was not tried for, since every word in it had already been given to strangers.

Krokh.Come.

Its author, and how it lives now

Phorirkor Lokokik (compiler). One of the Thirty in the years after the Reforms, who wanted the Outdwellers' sons in the Anvil to know what Tharax says to strangers, and who wrote down only what Tharax had already sent.

Read by the one Phymon in ten who reads, and learned by heart in the Anvil by boys who cannot; the old men of the Counting Crag hold that the Khaasar's letter of 1137, lying unanswered in the same room, is its shortest entry.

A Thousand Yearsstomat

Year	What happened
0 R.	The Accord of Surmave. The six surviving great powers and the Tharaxi sign the Accord on an island in Lake Surmave, fixing borders and founding the calendar: Vareth, Wessary, the Marrowmere League, the Twin Crowns of Castavar and Lasdara, the Sarvani Khaasarate, the Three Thrones of the East, and Tharax. Hrodvald sends no envoy and signs nothing.
0–146 R.	The Accord holds. The Accord holds, mostly. Vareth and Wessary spend the first century marrying into each other's royal houses. The Sarvani Khaasareem dig the first great salestoot. The Three Thrones fight each other every generation. Tharax, having lost half its citizens in the Century of Fire, rebuilds the Anvil.
199 R.	The First Bound Rising. The First Bound Rising in Tharax. The Bound revolt during the harvest. The Phymun put it down in eleven days. The Skekar institute the Tyrthas, the secret watch that has policed the Bound ever since.
206–212 R.	The War of the Gap. The War of the Gap. King Clislo II of Castavar-Lasdara marches an army of 40,000 through the Tharaxi Gap to seize the Heartlands' western grain lands. Tharax refuses passage.
212 R.	The Battle of the Gap. The Battle of the Gap. Four thousand Tharaxi Phymun under King Tothakhor Deneskid hold the pass for three days against ten times their number. Clislo II is killed by a thrown spear on the third day. Castavar retreats. The battle makes Tharax's reputation; no army has forced the Gap since.
255 R.	The Marrowmere Wars begin. The Marrowmere Wars begin. The League cities fight each other over lake tolls for forty years, hiring Hrodvald raiders, Tharaxi spears and Castavari knights by turns.
380 R.	The Kingdom Under the Spine. The Dunmorrow Underking Tunand Deepdelver unites the mountain clans and proclaims the Kingdom Under the Spine †. For nearly two centuries Dunmorrow is a true power, selling steel to all sides and fielding armored heavy infantry that even Tharax respects.
520 R.	The Second Bound Rising. The Second Bound Rising. The largest revolt in Tharaxi history. The Bound of the Lowfields kill three hundred Phymun in a night. King Drimor Sastorid is assassinated in his tent by a Bound servant. The Tyrthas's reprisals last a year. The population of the Bound falls by a third.
631 R.	The Peace of the Isle. The Peace of the Isle ends the Hunger Wars. The envoys of the six signer-realms meet on the Isle of the Accord in the Accord Days, the first time since 0 R. Five terms: a signer whose army crosses a border in the Accord Days loses its chair at the Isle for seven years, and Kaishon sits out the first penalty; no realm's soldiers may seize a Qaflan wheel or a Drift keel, the Road Terms; each signer sends an envoy every year to hear the Accord read, the seed of the Sitting; grain in transit is not spoil; and a price is not an act of war. Hrodvald is not asked.
741 R.	King Phospor Deneskid arrested. Tharax's King Phospor Deneskid is arrested by the Skekar for accepting Caelvennois gold and dies in prison. The first Tharaxi king removed by the Skekar, and the origin of the Phymun saying: "Gold has a smell."
822–829 R.	The Lords' War. The Lords' War. The great lords of Aldmere's Westmarch, led by Duke Yornbael Durift, rebel against King Hethminth III over the Moot's right to tax them. The king wins, barely, with Tharaxi mercenaries paid in Caelvennois gold. The Durifts keep their duchy; the Moot keeps its taxes. The Westmarch has distrusted Hethlend ever since.
840 R.	Faashab-Talodin planted. Zarvand's Khaasar Talodeer the Magnificent marches north and takes the Talodin headwaters below the Tharaxi Gap, planting the fortress of Faashab-Talodin on Tharaxi ground. Tharax, weakened by the Lords' War, lets it stand. The fort has been a sore point for three centuries.
892–899 R.	The Ledger War. The Ledger War. After a rotted harvest, Aldmere's Moot halves the Compact measure for 891; the Conclave calls it a breach and seizes forty grain barges and the Drift town of Threeoars at the Wenvorm mouth (the Seizure on the Mirror). Caelvenne's old houses pay Castavar's King Gaduo I to march on Zarvand for the ransom silver of 868. Aldmere, Zarvand and Tharax swear the Compact of Wrunvos in the Seventh Month: no separate peace, Aldmere grain down the Tharax road, Zarvani horse to the lake, the Gap closed to Castavar, and Tharaxi spears paid in twenty years of grain, not gold. Castavar calls it no war, because the Rislo will not call it a crusade.
893 R.	The Summer at Lokon. Refused the Gap, twelve thousand Castavari sit below the pass at Lokon from the Third Month to the Seventh and go home when the Grandees' silver runs short, having fought nobody. King Kraxor Deneskid takes six thousand spears north to Aldmere by the Stair; King Sperxor Sastorid holds the Gap with the Bound rolling stones. No army forces the Gap. Tharax names the year for it.
895 R.	The Battle of the Darthir. The Battle of the Darthir. Caelvenne's galleys land the Lilies, four hundred Castavari knights and two thousand hired Hrodvald crews below Wromthalm to take the Toll House. Kraxor Deneskid's Phymun meet them on the shingle in silence, and three thousand Zarvani horse archers under Khusjiraad shoot the Lilies' horses in the harbor shallows. The Lilies break, the Hrodvald reach the galleys, the Castavari knights are ransomed at fifty larrama a head. Caelvenne holds the water and never lands on it again.
899 R.	The Ledger Peace. The Ledger Peace, sworn on the Isle of the Accord in the Accord Days after a year of Qaflan wheel-letters, with Kaishon's ambassador as go-between. The Grain Compact is restored word for word and the measure is to be set each New Year's Day by Moot and Conclave together; the barges of 892 are paid at the Compact price and the Drift paid a leusore a keel for Threeoars; Castavar's chair at the Isle, empty since 895 for crossing into Daalher on the Khaasar's Day of 894, stays empty to 901 and Castavar swears the Peace standing and gets nothing else; Zarvand keeps Daalher and doubles its gate; Tharax takes its twenty years of grain and resolves never to be paid in gold, a resolution kept until 1131; and the Qaflan and the Drift are given a bench in the Sitting's hall to swear the Road Terms on, which becomes the Bench of the free peoples. Princess Somith Tulvard marries Prince Corenvo of Castavar to seal it. The sentence assigning the banks of the Tsanha fords is written badly, and the War of the Tsanha Fords is fought over it in 911.
938 R.	The Third Bound Rising. Tharax's Third Bound Rising is betrayed to the Tyrthas before it begins. Two thousand Bound are executed in the Lowfields. The Phymun call it "the quiet year."
949 R.	Tharaxi spears on the lake shore. Caelvenne's Conclave formally adopts the practice of hiring Tharaxi spears for lake-shore garrison duty. Tharax accepts, on the condition that no Phymon ever sleep inside Solvaine's walls.
1052 R.	The Bridge Treaty. The Bridge Treaty. Aldmere and Tharax agree that the Stair and Venei's Throat are Aldmere's to garrison, the Tharaxi Gap Tharax's. Duke Durift's Westmarch takes on the western passes and grows rich on the tolls.
1108 R.	The Tharaxi Reforms. The Tharaxi Reforms. The Skekar, alarmed at the shrinking citizen body, allow the sons of Outdweller craftsmen into the Anvil for the first time. The Thirty split over it. The political rivalry between the Deneskid and Sastorid royal lines dates from here.
1130 R.	Kenithor and Lekakor become kings. Kenithor Deneskid and Lekakor Sastorid become the two kings of Tharax within a year of each other.
1131 R.	The Iron Contract. The Iron Contract. Caelvenne, unable to trust its mercenaries after a Castavari company defects mid-siege in a lake-shore raid, signs a treaty with Tharax: gold every year, a Tharaxi army in return. King Kenithor signs it. King Lekakor votes against it in the Thirty and loses by two votes.
1137 R.	The dry summer. A dry summer in the Spine. The Talodin runs low. Khaasar Avisteer III writes to Tharax asking that no dam ever be built on the headwaters. Tharax does not reply.
1139 R.	The Third Crusade. The Third Crusade. Dobarmo IV, urged by Litoto and funded by Farisel, marches 35,000 through the Tharaxi Gap under safe-conduct and down the Talodin. The Zarvani meet them at the Battle of Faashab-Talodin and break the ratorlon with Talodin fire at a river crossing. Eight thousand Castavari burn or drown. Dobarmo escapes. Castavar's debt to Caelvenne doubles.
1145 R.	Lekakor moves to leave the Iron Contract. King Lekakor Sastorid proposes in the Thirty that Tharax withdraw from the Iron Contract when its current term ends in 1147. The vote is deferred.
1145 R.	The saddle on the Bench. In the Accord Days that close 1145, Sarsak Tolmar sends a rider, Kholab, to the Sitting at the Isle, the first Cherüsh envoy in six centuries. Kholab refuses the Bench and demands a chair as the Charnazin's heir; the Sitting refuses, since the Charnazin never signed the Accord. He leaves his saddle on the Bench and rides for the fords. The same Sitting hears the Khaasar's letter of 1137 read into the record without reply from Tharax, the bishop's sermon on the Fourth Crusade, and Selra Stormbrand's letter asking for the Absent Chair, answered as always. Nothing is settled.

Dispatchespiror

From 1 January 2027 the Reckoning runs day by day, and news from Tharax arrives here as it happens: who rode where, who fell, who lied at council.