Extract from The Anile Heir ©2017.
 
I, Ysabel Jehan Howard, hereby assert and give notice of my right under s.77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this book.
 
​Cantilip:  Hi, I’m Cantilip from Van-senok.  I too am sure curious to know more of the model standard in the south - but I do have to say some of you guys are a little out on earthpower, confusing it with womanspirit, invented by modern Harn. We do not do healing crystals! Look forward to talking to you.
“Meh,” said Vanya.  “Is that a suitable response?”
“Three out of five,” said Tar, “is generally held to be a majority.”
Harnwitch:  Now, excuse me, a whole lot of scholarship went into re-creating the ancient belief-system of our foremothers and womanspirit is nothing if not authentic.  What do you think you are talking about?
Cantilip: The Cult. 
Harnwitch: That does not seem to me to be an answer.
                       Cantilip: That’s the point.  I’m renowned for my tact.  Let me say at least I do understand where women in Harn are coming from.  They burned us, too.  When they caught us, which wasn’t often.  As I understand womanspirit, it’s a pacifist reaction to High Harn, than which of course there was nothing lower.  Earthpower is non-aggressive.  Pacifist, not.  When we caught them, we killed them.  The other thing is that earthpower is balance.  If you take a list of opposites, strong-weak, passive-active, rational-irrational   The third thing, of course, is that the Cult only crossed the water to Kadun after the fall of High Harn and it sure wasn’t healing crystals and non-violence which caused that.
                       Harnwitch: I can sure see that, at least.  But if you are saying your earthpower caused the collapse of High Harn - that makes no sense!  Everyone knows the darned Cult took over Kadun.
                       Various:          Burned you???  WTF?
                       Cantilip:          Better than the cage.
                       Various:          The what?
                       Cantilip:          You don’t want to know.
                       Harnwitch:      I know.  It was beyond obscene.
                       Cantilip:          Longbows and cannon caused the collapse of High Harn.  As we know, the Cult has certain mind-control techniques, like hypnosis.  You do have to be in range, so to speak. Pacifism was not on the menu. Exactly what am I saying?  The Mosai Wars could not have happened if the indigenous culture of Harn had been pacifist.
                       Harnwitch:  I am following that bit, but you are still not making any sense, if you will forgive my saying so!  Then the same must be true of Kadun and everyone knows it took Narulis to free Kadun.
Cantilip:         Aaaaargh!  No, no, no!  Some of us call it the Fidubi scam.  The Cult landed on our west coast.  We failed to push them back into the sea.  We drove them east.  Perhaps I should fill in a few gaps.  Narulis did not arrive in Carlin to find irturbi passive under the heel of tyranny!  He arrived to find Kadun in a state of war.  His general position appears to have been is this a private war or can anyone join in.  The armies of west and east met broadly in the middle.
Asdinan: That’s the broad picture.  To colour it in a bit, it’s more that all hell was breaking out in the west/ - literally - and rumour reached us in Carlin, people fleeing east to escape ye foe.  The second time it was because the Anile Court turned rotten.  This current infestation is more complicated.  There are three strands.  Industrialization and a poorly educated and plain poor population of workers to prey on.  Technology, spreading the word.  Behind both: apparently limitless capital from the banks in the City.  They snare people.  With sex, with drugs, with the promise of power for the powerless.  I know someone who answered some grubby little ad pretending to be a working-class guy.  He doesn’t know if it was Cult or not, being wise enough to get out before he found out, but it was all there, women at your disposal, promises of wealth and power. 
           Nontia-li:  Hi guys, I’m Vasuculi, heard this was worth a look and wow, what do I find!  I’m reckoning if anyone can answer my question it’s you guys.  Why is Kadun susceptible to the Cult.  With all due respect, it seems to me there must be a vulnerability in this earthpower.  It doesn’t take any great knowledge of human nature to know that if people do not fight the bad guys take over but it has been emphatically stated earthpower is not pacifist.
Karula sat back grinning madly at her monitor.
Cantilip:  The doctrines of the Cult are a foul inversion of earthpower.  Earthpower holds everything is in some sense alive, has energy, the Cult holds everything is in some sense dead, is inert, or if it isn’t now it will be.  Death is the one true reality of existence.  All life is to be lived in fear of death and if you’re not afraid of death the Cult will rectify that.  The torments they inflict in life will be yours to enjoy for eternity.  The relationship between that and inertia is not immediately apparent: what is inert is you.  You have no will, no choice, no hope.  Certainly earthpower is non-aggressive: we do not seek war.  Certainly it is not pacifist.  What one may call the vulnerability lies in the doctrine of being.  In earthpower, people simply are, at one with the universe.  This loss of self is perverted by the Cult into submission to its will, deemed co-terminous with the reality of the universe. 
Nontia-li: I thank you.  I am learning so much!  But how can any sane person believe you spend life after death in agony?  I personally would not be sure I believe in life after death at all, but I sure think that if I did it would be a field of flowers.
Cantilip:  Evil grin.  What, not Va, the Silver Homeland?
Nontia-li: More Fidubi scam?
Cantilip: We can be detached and academic about this or we can scream.  It’s a very simple scam.  When the empire was good it was Fidubi.  When it was evil, it was irturbi. 
Mel: And of course what the good guys in Kadun believe and think is what Fidub believes and thinks.
Cantilip: !!!!
Mel: My innocent Dabidan mind was severely jolted by Carlin.
Asdinan: Evillest grin.
Mel: The essence of what the Cult teaches is that people are filth. You will see that going around  merely telling people they are filth is not the most obvious way to win followers.  For that you need to refer back to what As said about sex and drugs.  By corrupting people you can get them to see themselves as filth.  By terrorizing them, you can get them to do filthy things.  Filth deserve punishment.  If I can just correct one thing Cantilip said, in the more - I use the term advisedly - diseased reaches of the adept’s brain it is possible to escape eternal pain by begging for ever greater torment.  At a certain level of self-abasement, not surprisingly ill-defined, one is released and subsumed into the Great Master.
                       Hass to Sarat: Another old friend of the family pitched up at Mel’s Place. That’s three of them.
                       Sarat to Hass: I can count! I guess I’m going to have to talk to these guys.
                       Hass to Sarat: Nothing like looking up long-lost friends.
                       Sarat to Hass: If I post the whole freaking world assumes.
                       Hass to Sarat: You need to talk to them first.
                       Sarat to Hass: I need to be clear what I have to say! 
 
For the record, Sarat did not think he was a tree.  He liked NoZone for the same reason he liked CLIK: they were radical, they didn’t faff around, there were no accommodations.
 
           After a while, Mitch said: “Two things.  1) I do not think you have a high opinion of irturbi  who have been sitting on our damn asses in the City.  2) Is more interesting.  Do you consider yourselves irturbi at all?”
“Why did you not go to PANTHER?”
“That is a long story.”
“Start telling it.”
Progressive, hip, cool, egalitarian that Mitch is, he is not accustomed to peremptory orders.
“We had certain issues,” said Karula smoothly.
“Questions,” acknowledged Mitch. “Cho answered them.”
 “Get some of the cats.”
“You work with cats?” asked Mitch
The Sardun guy, whose name by the way, was Siltas, gave him a look that said what kind of a bloody fool are you.
“It’s a learning-curve,” said Mitch.
The cats listened.  Good questions.  Good to clarify.  We think you should post them.
“Is that appropriate?” asked Karula.
The cats grinned.
“Ask the host.”
Siltas seemed markedly more friendly.
A very familiar figure was approaching.
Mitch jumped up.
“Qine, you bastard!”
Qine smiled
“Heard you were in the neighbourhood.  Joined up, have you.”
“Pretty well,” said Mitch.
But Qine seemed very slightly ill at ease and Mitch grinned to himself as he computed it as roughly the best of guys in Kadun may be unfamiliar with the company of the female of the species, even if they work with them the ladies if lucky get categorized as honorary males.
“This is Karula,” he said.
“I am so pleased to meet you at last,” said Karula
“Mitch’s lady has to be a good friend of mine,” said Qine.  “I would assume you think alike on many things.”
Oh I see! thought Mitch.
“I should not say my views have materially altered.  Matured, perhaps!”
“I would say the same meself,” said Qine.  “Some of the lads and lasses, we wondered if you might like to have a bite of supper with us and perhaps share some of those views.”
Kick myself, kick myself, kick myself.
“OK,” Mitch said to Marula, “just how many people thought I’d backed out.”
“Too bloody clever for your own good,” said Marula.
And so it came to pass that Karula lay on her stomach with a netbook in front of her and prepared to continued her silly female prattle at Mel’s Place in a sort of hut in the forest. Right cosy, mind, Qine had said, needs to be with weather up here.
“I think – “ said Varulin.
“Awfully interested to see the response. Sergeant.”
Mitch sat figuring out the shortest route to Zur that didn’t involve crossing Kadun. Eek, said Karula, don’t go yet!
You must imagine all that follows punctuated by repeated attempts to crash the server.
AKADUNNCO:
SUBJECT: Women in Kadun
My lass, she’s 14.  Right bright she is.  She’s got ambition and I want her to get on. Only she can’t.  There’s a phrase she got off the Grid.  She says to me, Dad, I know there’s a glass ceiling. Too young to understand.  Strikes me, some folk in the south don’t quite understand. Of course there’s grunting sexist pigs, she got that off the Grid too!  I would not hear of a woman in the Army as is it right now.  Can’t control where she’s posted.  What do people think would happen to a girl posted to a Cult regiment?  Army, civilian, no difference.  A girl wants to do politics, just run the flower-show, love.  Cos if she gets anywhere near the top anywhere she’s going to run into them. You’ll maybe say that’s true for boys too.  Worse for girls. Much worse.  I don’t know as I have the exact words but a lad – as long as he behaves himself.  A lass – some of them just look at her and see something they want to hurt, humiliate.
ALLATSEA: Dabidan Fleet.  Ah-ah-ah.  I think some of us might have said stuff we should retract
Apologies, guys.  I guess a lot of you have daughters.
AGOU:  We are Kadun officers.  I think it may broadly be said none of us – no-one sane – wishes his children to grow up in Kadun as currently constituted. 
KARULA: There is the question of what comes after. 
AGOU: Is that not what we are here to discuss?
KARULA: ROTFL.
AGOU:  We should imagine many people would be most interested to hear the views of the Dabidan military on the more sordid aspects of male-female relations. Let us be frank.  In Cult regiments pornography is freely circulated no human being should contemplate. Mere nakedness?
FINA: Dabidan Army.  We take the piss.  No-one ever had boobs that big.
AGOU: That of course depends on an absence of hierarchy enabling you to speak freely.
FINA: That of course depends on an absence of hierarchy enabling us to speak freely.
ALLATSEA:   I think it’s also – all of us are affected by the existence of the Cult, just in reverse.  There’s a feeling that it’s inadequate to want to look at even soft porn – but then you guys don’t have our nudist beaches to satisfy your aesthetic desires!
AGOU: Brochures are available on the Grid?
MITCH: Micheal ban-sarndiq-vaq.  My father is Master of Var-sega’.  I’m Karula’s other half.  My friend call me Mitch, my enemies that damned anarchist Var-sega’ Among the repeatable.  We are currently in Van-senok with the resistance. My own analysis is that our noble army is in revolt against barbarism.  I freely accept all do not see democracy as co-terminous with civilization. I would also say there is a confusion over what are the indigenous values of Kadun; these are commonly held to be those bacilli, and they are not.  Cantilip has told us a little of earthpower, which is the true indigenous culture of Kadun.  She has also mentioned my favourite, the Fidubi scam: when the empire was good it was Fidubi, when it was bad, it was irtubi.  I do not think people refer to Jaizal as our last Fidubi emperor.  Narulis and his guys joined with irturbi because they had shared values. The unfortunate consequence of the unwitting assault on our indigenous values is to have squeezed them out of Kadun on the pretext they were the Fidubi import and so alien, the true culture of Kadun being held to be that of bacteria. You will see this is a little annoying. 
AGOU:  We have reached much the same conclusions ourselves.  It is not that we dislike Fidubi by any means, but they can be extraordinarily irritating.
MITCH: Think they own the damn’ world!
AGOU: That is the sort of thing we have in mind.
FIDUBIFLIER: Spare our blushes!
MITCH: Mock horror!  Not FAF
FIDUBIFLIER: Never ones to miss a good party.
AGOU: Of course they make excellent pilots.
MITCH: I would suggest you have to be a really special sort of person to valiantly uphold the regime in Azt and that fortunately for the human race few of its members are quite that special.  In the south they are generally confined to psychiatric prisons.  A  number of elements is in play, not least of course nationalism and conservatism. To have reservations about women and gays, about democracy itself, is not necessarily to be a creature from the pit of desecration. There is something called evil against which I should hope all sane people anywhere on this continemt are united.”
AGOU: You mix with persons of a feline disposition.  Some of us, it must be said, are rather dog men
KOLA: Sardun.  Some of you are bloody fools.  We in Sardun are not bloody fools.  Of course we take the point about the Cult regiments.  Women are fighting for Kadun.  Do you understand that?  Cats, trees, silly little girls are wandering around with machine-pistols.  Silly little girls are being obscenely tortured and ending up dead, though only occasionally, because we are very, very good.
AGOU: You have been in combat?
KOLA: Yes.
AGOU: And a person of the feminine gender?
KOLA: Yes.
AGOU: Evil grin.  Then we must address ourselves solely to the gentlemen.  Gentlemen, the desire to protect a lady does not impede efficiency?
MALU: Male!  We have lived rough, we have been cold.  Male and female, we have huddled together.  For warmth! When the quarry of the hebade geralis, sex is not on your mind.  When your entire being is dedicated to staying alive. To speak of the foul thing that as has been said influences everything, yes, I knew one who sacrificed himself to save a woman, but that was not - only one could survive, both of equal value.  The fate of a woman at the hands of the geralis is worse than the fate of a man. He made himself a target so she could get away.  On other occasions I have known women risk themselves to save men.  Equally it is – inefficient a woman go back to save a male comrade, a woman worry more about a man wounded beside her than about the fight.  It is human.  Or we are as vile as they.
BEIA: Concur. PANTHER.  I’ve been in fire-fights in Kadun.I think we have to yet again consider the enemy.  If for some bizarre and inconceivable reason we were at war with Vasucula, I should know the wounded would be treated in a civilized fashion.”
SERIAN-TA: You mean we are not VILE?   I too have experienced the thrill of the chase. Vaudos, as you know, is  not a nice place.  And of course on our border.  Certain activities too close to the border for comfort came to our attention.
MALU: That was Godan?
SERIAN-TA: Indeed it was.  Some folks may not be familiar with border between Vasucula and Var-sega’ but it is narrowed by a dog-leg, an intrusive triangle of what is formally Kadun but which we in Vasucula and Var-sega’ consider our own.  Also vital to getting guys in and out.
MITCH: I thank you.
SERIAN-TA: The pleasure is ours.
SALYA:  Dabidan.  Please, someone, what’s geralis.
MITCH: ROTFLMAO.  Hebade geralis.  It’s irtubi.  Fucking cunts.  Doesn’t it sound so much more civilized.  Many in the south of course use hebade to evade the charge of impolite language in polite company.
HASS: In Carlin it’s CTTLs.  Change The Third Letter.
Short pause
AGOU: I trust we are entirely welcome.
HASS:  Entirely.
KARULA
SUBJECT: PANTHER
Mitch and I had many questions about PANTHER. We had done a certain amount of research on the Grid and I have to say that we found the history of PANTHER mightily confusing.  This  sure would seem an appropriate time to share our new knowledge! I am sure there are many cats here who will correct me if I get it wrong.
We learned that all PANTHER is Kadun PANTHER.  PANTHER spread to Fidub from Kadun, not as is so often held the other way round. Unless you go back even further. The heart, the soul, the DNA of PANTHER lie in the shrine at Maona-Pri but there was no organization.  It was Narulis’ idea to gather guys round him capable of defeating the Cult and those guys were primarily irturbi.  As you must know, Narulis had 22 men with him, total.   The learning came from Fidub but it was only later the guys in Fidub saw the point of having PANTHER as an arm of government.
Is this not all quite fascinating?  We learned also that central to the ethos of PANTHER is that when push comes to shove they obey no-one.  It is necessary to put this in the context of what is referred to as the Kadun cock-up - when the empire turned rotten.  Initially, PANTHER were paid by the empire. Narulis was a scion of the House of Fire and originally it was the House of Fire who took up the idea of PANTHER.  I guess it had never previously occurred to them that any defensive organization was required.  At that point the three big isles, Sohenisle, Leolisle, Utmost Isle were basically self-governing.  The amalgam was called Fidub but there wasn’t really much idea of a nation-state. Maona-Pri of course existed, but you couldn’t really call it the capital because it didn’t do the things capitals do. That came from Kadun too. Narulis made Azt pretty much the hub of the known world. . 
At that point, therefore, it is fine to say there was a Fidubi PANTHER and it became paid by what was roughly the State of Fidub.  But PANTHER was always adamant that it was Narulis’ cub
When the empire went pear-shaped, PANTHER were no longer paid.  You may imagine poor half-starved stray cats! Of course some cats or those sympathetic to them were well-off in their own right and helped out. Some had ordinary jobs.  Some of them took any work they could get.  After the defeat of Jaizal - hat-tip to our hosts! – PANTHER  limped back to Fidub to rethink.  The House of Fire really did not want to know that Sonny had screwed up and what for the purposes of the argument we can call Fidubi PANTHER were not impressed by that. PANTHER, sat down to rethink themselves.  First and foremost they set about making themselves financially secure.
VARIOUS: That’s nonsense!  WTF!  Etc.
AGUO: So the essence would appear to be that any future leadership in Kardun, would have to be backed by PANTHER.  Indeeed that sounds somewhat dramatic but is hardly more than we knew already.  Shall PANTHER and of course Sardun defeat the third letters to bolster a government of which they disapprove.  Unless of course that government be democratically elected.
VAX:  PANTHER.  To clarify, some PANTHER are of course citizens of the Republic of Fidub.  Most are not.  Irtubi cats cannot be regarded as subject to the government in M-P.
AFALIN: :I’m Fidubi and this is doing my head in.  Are you quite sure of this?
VAX: Quite sure.  I run Cho’s office.
AFALIN: Ah-oo.  But 22 guys.  How’d he get to be emperor?
Assorted, on line and off line both: now you come to mention it, I don’t exactly know!
KARULA: The key to that is probably silver.  Contact between Fidub and Kadun along our east coast long predated Narulis. When guys whose belief-system was the power of the earth arrived on islands not only powerful but vocal, they naturally regarded them as their spiritual home. What is fascinating is the critical role of silver.  I know it is all myth, but that myth dominated a more superstitious age.  Silver was seen as a kind of universal warder-off of evil.  Fidub believed she was  clean because of her silver-lodes and the singing of the Isles came from the native silver.  In myth silver destroys evil.   In fact, it's an anti-bacterial.   It's really easy to see that the medical use of silver could have been seen as magic.  We have silver, but for some reason we didn't know it.  If there is one thing Fidub taught us it is the mining, refining and casting of silver. I was researching the Dacunine  Window! Silver was and is used in the making of stained glass, particularly the yellows and golds.
MEL: To some irturbi at least the Fidubi belief-system was simply a particular kind of earth-power.   The archaeological evidence is fascinating.  Goes back to forever.  There’re Fidubi pottery, coins, weapons in the museum in Car-sandis and equally there’s a whole gallery in the National at M-P devoted to irturbi artefacts from the Utmost Isle.
AFALIN: Make note to self: go to museum!
Sarat padded off to see Cho.
“Mitch fought for a segani.”
“Use it and be heard!”
“Two things at the same time.  I mean he didn’t - I guess he didn’t - sigh and - “
“Regard it as his tedious duty as my lord Var-sega’?”
“But if he wasn’t he’d have got nowhere.”
“What both of you want is the rule of law, in which it is not necessary.
“I suppose,” said Sarat slowly, “I kind of resent it.  It’s in the way.  What is the big deal about what I want to do?  The big deal is it’s a big deal!”
“Nonetheless, without it you would get nowhere.”
“It does my head in.  What is the difference?”
“Between what?”
“Between Mitch and me.”
“A loud-mouthed Fidubi brat who doesn’t give a damn.”
Right in the middle and totally outside.  Poor kid, no wonder it confuses him!
Enough! screamed Azt.  Intolerable insolence! screamed Azt.  We must strike! screamed Azt.  Corsin sighed. 
OK, we test.
Vampires appear to be taking a drunken stroll along the border, lurching over to the other side, oops, where are me manners, back to their own side.
They become aware they are being watched.
Are you lost?
Can we help at all?
Kadun is that way.
What the fuck! Pastel starburst streaked across the skies of Ciletij.  How girly...This cannot fucking be!  Birds!  They narrowly avoid a flock of geese.  Real?  Illusion?  That depends.  Some minds create illusions as wispy as paper, others illusions with physical form.  Some of the vampires risked it, flew through the geese, paper-panthers. Called your bluff, fuckers. TAke this! Sky apparently black, rain, hail, fog
More pastel starburst
FAF are behind the vampires and firing, but what were they firing, some of it was very real, very genuine, automatic fire.  Stupid cunts can’t even shoot straight! Who says we want to hit you?
 What the fuck are they firing. Look like little boxes.  Instruments don’t work.  Something  capturing their minds and it’s bloody hard to dislodge, at least and fly at the same time, auto-pilot while we deal with, at  Jammed.  We are being herded.  I repeat we are being herded. Don’t fucking tell everyone! 
They expected to be shot. Sardun expected to shoot them.  There is in theory no adept so utterly lost that he cannot heal himself and be healed but by the time you’re Corsin chance would be a fine thing and this is a war not an experiment in psychotherapy.
Some guys in Fidub want to talk to them, said FAF.
There are worse fates.  Being handed over to Ciletij.
May we ask what internment in bloody Fidub entails?
Hours of interrogation on our sun-drenched shores of Vasucula surrounded by people in shorts who can fry your brains if you so much as blink out of place.
I do not doubt it.
If you want to return to Kadun to take your chances, we shall be happy to oblige.
 There remains the matter of leaving Kadun.
We have that figured.
Why did I doubt it?
You want to know how it’s done, said FAF.  It wasn’t a question. And possibly you think of incinerating half PANTHER  and returning to Azt with the goodies.  It ain’t gonna happen.