from the lecture series "A True History of the Duchy of Null" by the scholar Hanif Hanursidd, delivered in weekly installments at Speaker's Rock in Black's Square by the naval yards, transcribed by Young Jerlyn

We come here today, all of us, with an eye to the future: we of the Universal College to teach, and you, the citizenry, to learn. But in none of our hearts is a true vision of tomorrow, a hopeful ray of sun that illuminates what will be. None here sees clearly, because over our heads hangs a cloud, and under our feet flows a black river. The face of this cloud is the red masque of the Ancrite. The name of this river is the cold hiss of the Ancrite.

There is no need for me here to recite their infamy; all here know of the vile legacy these sons and daughters of Nihil have endowed our city. You who are students know of their mindless anarchies, their ideology of hate and overthrow for its own sake. You who are traders are all too aware of the predations of their pirate forces, disrupting trade from Sarmunad to Benar. You who are sailors tell tales to your children of how their thirst for blood and lust for carnage shake and pale even the Hentilar. You who are merchants sell charms to keep them distant, locks to keep them out, swords to keep them down; and each year at High Naspilay, you sell scarlet shawls so that we may drive away our terror by dressing as what we fear most. You who serve the city guilds, who plan its festivals and manage its buildings, spend half the year trying to find them and the other half hiding from them. They plotted the overthrow of Estan Orlili, on which so much of our history has hinged; they were behind the massacre in the Sanctuary Cloud-Galen, the name of which is still invoked to spell what is worst in the human character. Each of us here, pedant and scholar and worker and tradesman and guilder and soldier, have our differences, but we must form an unbroken band against the unthinkable fate we face should the Ancrites not be defeated.

So I begin this lecture with another truth, one less known: that there are no Ancrites. There are not now, and there never were.