Thursday, 2 January 2020

The Trader Team On Merseia

After the audience chamber, Falkayn sees a little more of Merseia. See:

In And Around Castle Afon

The trader team allows us to see Merseia through the eyes not only of a Hermetian human being but also of a Cynthian and a Wodenite. The Cynthian, Chee Lan, flies to a night-time rendezvous. See:

Chee Lan In Flight

Before that, she watches, on the spaceship viewscreen, as:

night falls;
Neihevin rises, full, Luna-sized and copper-colored;
Lythyr, already risen, is a small, pale crescent;
forests glisten with frost;
Rigel blazes in the middle of a constellation called the Spear Bearer.

While she flies:

the chill air feels liquid;
the hum of her gravity harness is lost in an enormous silence;
she sees campfires and hears a song from the Merseian troopers guarding the ship;
a hovercraft passes athwart the Milky Way;
she flies above wilderness covered in snow, then above fields, villages and castles, then above a seacoast and the city of Ardaig with its phosphorescent paving and River Oiss.

Ardaig, unTechnic, neither gleams nor brawls. The bay has a triple moonglade as Wythna rises. Machines murmur. Chee Lan lands in the darkling Old Quarter.

There is more but maybe not now. 

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And yet again I noted that baffling use of "glade" by Poul Anderson when I recently reread "Day of Burning." Ever dictionary I've looked up that word in says it means ONLY an open space within a wooded area. And nothing about "glade" meaning any kind of light shining on waters!

I simply don't understand where or how Poul Anderson came up with this idiosyncratic use of "glade"!

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
I knew you would spot that one.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And it was because of how YOU commented on this puzzling use of "glade" in Anderson's works that I came to pay attention to his use of that word! I had hitherto simply accepted without thought how he used "glade."

Now I have a tendency to kind of notice it whenever I see that word! Maybe I'll even see Anderson using it in its ordinary meaning of an open space in a wooded area. (Smiles)

Ad astra! Sean