Eight Arms and the Mask

  This work is well-known to the scholar from frequent references in our near-complete sources, particularly the magisterial "Peregrina Prodigiosa Uleria" (Pilgrimage of the Prodigious "Uleria", for a discussion of the meaning of this see my article in the 'zine TILTED TILNTA ). But while it is not totally lost, it has only returned to us in definitely incomplete sources, primarily individual fragments preserved in the Jonstown Library and the Hilltown Cache. All of these are, of course, from variant manuscripts. After some extensive reconstruction and textual criticism, I am pleased to offer the first corrected text of a portion of "Personal Recollections of a Sutler with the Warm Sisters", (one of the few surviving examples of that finest of literary genres, the pornographic memoir,) what is generally accepted as Fragment 9.    We- Xorshid, Yanranda, Soritha White-mane, and myself- had been engaged in practice, what would be called "drill" ...

I met this woman in Elz Ast at the dockyards, where she was explaining to wide-eyed soldiers how to survive in a land like Eol, as they prepared to sail up the White Sea for some expedition or another. Probably not a Kalikos one, I think.  She told me later, "What do I know about Eol? But those boys and girls feel safer, don't they?" I admired her ability to reconcile truth and lies, though not so bluntly, and she said, "Ah, I've been doing it for long enough." At that point I began taking notes. This is part of what I wrote down.  Within the cities, they say that Aether Primolt had four sons. That Dayzatar was a being of pure thought, that Lodril was a being of pure emotion, and that Yelm had to mediate between them, and so he ruled over both. And Arraz was his servant in this. They say that Lodril never forgot Yelm ruled over him, and that he had to sometimes fight his sons to get them to remember this. They say that Dayzatar never forgot Yelm'...