Foreword

Foreword

We are not a Society. We hold no charter, claim no seat, observe no common liturgy. What we are is a practice — a habit of letter- writing carried on between cold libraries that smell of vellum and tallow. We compare what one kingdom holds true against what its neighbour denies, and set down what survives the comparing.

These pages are meant for the bewildered: the apprentice still struggling with her master’s grimoire, the exile who has lately crossed a border into stranger talk. They are meant also for the man who comes up from a fever to find his household ordered wrong and the lamps burning at the wrong hour. We do not promise comfort. We promise honesty so far as we have managed it.

In three kingdoms we know of, the writing of these pages is sufficient cause for a man’s imprisonment. The careful reader will keep his copy out of the wrong house. We have lost members to such houses. We continue to write.

We will not tell you what the world is. We will tell you what we have seen of it.