The names were mere inventions of obscure, scheming little men whose sole ambition was to get one step higher on a miserable official ladder or obtain a place among the palace lickspittles or a little extra money to satisfy some petty vanity. And the origins were laborious artifacts constructed to display some influential personage as a descendant of the hero who was supposed to have founded it in a fit of divine madness. Lighthouse of the Desert, it was called, and Jewel of the North; Star, Mother, Guide, Cradle. All those words, which you will have noticed are closely related, were worked up into pompous, hollow descriptions. Thus, the younger brother of Ylleädil the Great, starving and half frozen, pursued by the men who had dethroned the Warrior Emperor, coming to the foot of the mountains unsheathed the imperial sword in order to take his own life, but instead of plunging the blade into his heart he thrust it into the ground and cried, “Here shall arise the new capital of the new Empire!”—That’s one of the stories.
