Two instruments from the books, set turning. Everything named on this page is named as the books file it; where a book files no word, the gap is shown, not filled.
The Moon-Walk Wheel
From The Fifty-Six — Book Four of the Black Index — the wheel plate, p. 35, and the accounts around it.
As sung in Sèlanar · The Fifty-Six, p. 15
In the old tongue there is no word for month. There is morilvas: a moon-walk. A month is one walk the white moon takes across the city, from new to full to new again, changing its step every Moonsday. Twenty-eight days is how long the walk is.
The old songs do not name the walks. They tell what happened on them: the walk on which the year opened, the walk of the picnic, the walk of grief, the walk of tea below. The city’s month-names are what those songs became after the clerks heard them and wrote them down. They are not translations. They are filings.
Zipsdier, the songs say, is three walks the moon was made to take in a row, without being allowed to stop at the end of any of them. That is why it is long. That is why the moon, in Zipsdier, looks tired.
This account is not filed by any office. It is only sung.
The wheel plate · The Fifty-Six, pp. 34–35
The engraver was given the filed wheel and one instruction: make it beautiful enough to be believed. He walked the rim once for each of the fourteen walks, and signed nothing.
Twelve moon-walks, fifty-six weeks, one year. The wheel turns. The year is filed.
Outer ring: the twelve months, Zipsdier in red. Inner ring: the fourteen walks of the white moon, three of them in Zipsdier.
Every month is four weeks. Zipsdier is four weeks, three times, and it knows.
● new · ◑ first quarter · ○ full · ◐ last quarter. The white moon keeps the almanac: new on the 4th, full on the 18th, changing its phase every Moonsday. Fourteen moon-walks a year; three of them in Zipsdier.
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Drag the wheel to turn it; it settles on the nearest walk. Arrow keys work when the wheel is selected.
The Seven-Voices Rosette
From Màranven — Book Three of the Black Index — Chapter the Eighth, “The Filing”: the book’s filed circular diagram of a true name.
The Seven Voices · as filed in Màranven
The Primer files seven voices in every song worth naming, each with its word. Listening to a thing (see On Listening) means putting its question to each voice in turn. The answers are songs; the seven together are never the name, only the instruments it is played on.
The seven words and their voices: lenvas DESIRE · vas DRIVE · morhal FEAR · hem FLESH · thuros MINERAL · shara LIGHT · ala WATER.
The caption filed under the plate: “The seven voices of a true name — the instruments it is played on.”
Layers stack. Turn each on and off; the rosette keeps what you leave showing.
Tone marks, as filed. The book’s rule: the mark sits on the first vowel of the word — a grave for low, an acute for high, nothing for mid. Low is the past, sung done; high is the future, yet unsung. The tone layer shows each voice’s low and high forms on that rule, with its syllables and its filed melody beneath. For shara the book files all three forms outright: shàra · shara · shára — and for its verb selen: sèlen, sang · filed; selen, sings · files; sélen, will sing · will file.
Hand-signs, as filed. The book files hand signs for the three tones, not a separate sign for each voice: “A player who will not sing may show the tone instead: hand at the brow for high, the chin for mid, the heart for low, held on the toned word.” The hand-signs layer therefore shows, for each voice, the hand’s place for each syllable of its filed melody — brow for high, chin for mid, heart for low. The book files no further word on signs for these words, and none is invented here.
Root glosses, as filed. In the Lexicon’s parts column, three of the seven voices — hem, shara, ala — and the centre word nar carry a dash, not a root gloss: the book files no parts for them. The dash is the book’s own, and it is kept. Their English glosses and their questions are filed, and the gloss layer shows them.