Silencio

Silencio lies in the north of Taziondale and is counted a country of Erôth on its own account, which is not the contradiction it looks. Taziondale draws on a map as one great nation and is not one: it is a union of smaller states holding together for their mutual gain, with no single crown over the whole of it, and a confederacy can lose a piece of itself without the outline changing.

What happened to the region was the Sil. They did not conquer it and they do not govern it: there is no seat there, nothing installed, nobody to treat with. They changed the land instead, and went on changing it, until nobody goes there any more.

More than a few years ago, Professor Ashanti al-Hassan was home from the university and had gone up to the coast for a few days from her town, which sits about a day’s ride inland. One night there was a light off the coast to the north, so bright and so profound that it took the sight of everyone facing it. Some in the town cannot see at all now; others have had their vision blurred ever since. She was not looking that way and saw only the sky, which is the whole of why she still has her eyes. She lays it at the Sil, who by her account are corrupting and destructive, and take and warp what they touch.