Alborandi
The Alborandi are a masked monastic order of Usmai whose defining function is the severance of matrimonial bonds through a public rite called the Cleansing, and whose deeper purpose is the guardianship of the Waygrove - a jungle stand of trees that serves as a portal to other places and the origin of the armoured beasts, sapient lizards, and other servants that made Usmiat civilisation dominant. Members wear eyeless painted masks and nondescript encompassing robes; they are described not as an institution with authority but as an identity unto themselves, "these men and women, were the Grove." Their order operates outside the normal hierarchies of Usmai, answered to by no one but the Alkhands, who alone hold a formal treaty with the Waygrove and supply the monks to tend it.
Across the two books the Alborandi move from the periphery of state ritual to its violent centre. In the first book they are the anonymous recipients of a wife's severance and the keepers of a mystery no one around them fully understands; a princess rides to their compound and is ignored, then quietly handed back the jewellery of a woman who will never return. In the second book the same order becomes the site of an Alkhand's disappearance during the mask rite, the staging ground for a coup, and a literal doorway through which fugitives, scholars, and monsters pass in and out of the world of Usmai. The annual ritual that once sustained the Alkhand's bond with the Grove collapses into panic and political murder, and the order's neutrality is tested as the Waygrove becomes a contested escape route in wartime.
The Group
Composition
The Alborandi are monks and priests - men and women - who wear simpler encompassing robes and eyeless painted masks, rendering them individually unidentifiable and collectively the Grove itself rather than an association of persons. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 7; Days of Shattered Faith, ch 13. New members are recruited through the rite of the mask: blank masks are offered as gifts to the order, and those who step into them are consecrated as Alborandi-in-waiting. - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 13. The Alkhands alone formally treaty with the Waygrove and supply the monks to tend it, making the order's composition a matter of state obligation rather than open recruitment. - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 13. The Tesemer, a fierce martial people, serve the Alborandi as an escort force but are "forever subordinate" to them, because the Alborandi are the Grove itself. - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 13. Within the broader Usmiat custom of the Alborandi severance, the order represents the strongest option available to any artisan or labourer seeking to dissolve a marriage, though the mechanism of entry and the irreversibility of membership remain opaque to outsiders. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 9.
Purpose & Method
The Alborandi exist to perform the severance of matrimonial bonds through the public ceremony of the Cleansing, at which a petitioner removes personal tokens, dons a mask, and walks away as one of the monks. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 7. Their deeper charge is the guardianship and propitiation of the Waygrove, the portal-grove from which the species and servants of Usmai originate; the queen-lizard broods within the Grove, and the monks give themselves into its service as its keepers of language. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 10. The annual ritual cycle obliges the Alkhand to travel to the Waygrove after the Day of Milk and Flowers to renew bonds with the order and the Grove. - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 13. The rite of the mask - a person stepping into a wooden mask and sometimes re-emerging cleansed, sometimes never - enacts the Alborandi mystery that those who don the mask are unmade, their former selves, debts, and identities entirely erased. - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 14-15. Once a year the monks unmask so that freed members may go free, though whether a severed member can ever be identified again is treated as unknowable. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 9.
Standing
The Alborandi answer to no authority within Usmai except the Alkhands, who alone hold a formal treaty with the Waygrove and are bound to visit it annually. - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 13. The Tesemer escort them in martial display but are perpetually subordinate; the monks receive the escort's violent performance with apparent indifference. - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 13. Outside Usmai, the Waygrove's reputation in Pel is that "The Grove led everywhere save the place you wanted to get to," and both the Warden and Under-warden of the House of Hard Angles emerged from the Alborandi monastery at the Grove's edge before being co-opted as prison rulers. - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 7, ch 11. The order's rites are described as "encrusting the state," coral building over a sunken ship - a structure that holds together long after the civilisation it wraps has decayed. - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 14. In the second book, as the old political order collapses, the Alborandi compound becomes a site of coup, the Waygrove a passage for fugitives and the Correct Speech Inquirer, and the monks' protections in the wood beyond rendered obsolete by the Warden's monstrosity. - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 15, ch 29, ch 49.
History
Lives of Bitter Rain
The Alborandi are a masked monastic order of Usmai, described as monks of last resort whose primary function is the severance of matrimonial bonds - a role the book introduces through the public ceremony known as the Cleansing - ch 7. At the ceremony in Alkhalend, two masked Alborandi priests appear at the pool's edge and hand Kaleithi a mask after she removes her necklace, unbinds her hair, and bends until the water touches her forehead; she dons the mask and walks away as one of them - ch 7. Tarcomir announces the rite's public meaning, declaring - "And so it is, that the Blessed Kaleithi severs herself from the side of His Tranquillity, the Alkhand Oparan, dissolving their bonds of thirty years and taking on the mantle of the Alborandi." - ch 7. The order's members wear simpler encompassing robes and are eyeless behind their masks; they are the recipients of severed marital bonds and, in taking a new member, absorb the petitioner entirely - ch 7. What "taking on the mantle" entails in practice, and whether a severed member can ever be identified again, is left unresolved - ch 7.
The Alborandi are also the keepers of a sacred grove intricately interwoven with Usmai's history, a place of historical and magical interest where their Mystery strikes awe - ch 9. They maintain this grove and process down from it to stand masked in the pool water outside, where once a year they unmask so that freed members may go free - ch 9. The broader Usmiat custom, called the Alborandi severance, permits any artisan or labourer to pick from static or mendicant monastic lives to dissolve a marriage, and the Alborandi are characterised as the strongest option within that system - ch 9. Angilly does not understand the order and has pressed both Tarcomir and Dekamran for an explanation, receiving none sufficient to dispel her confusion - ch 9. Three years after Kaleithi walked into the pools to join them, the Alkhand Oparan keeps his annual vigil at the water's edge; the masked monks unmask and none of them is his former wife - she has not returned, and the text states she will never be his wife again regardless - ch 9.
The order's true locus is the Waygrove, a stand of trees deep in the jungle near Alkhalend, reached by a road past the pleasure houses where Angilly rides an armoured beast with a lizard mahout - ch 10. The Waygrove is described as a gateway to other places and the source of the species and servants that made Usmai dominant: the armoured beasts, the sapient lizards, and other special servants all originate there, and the queen-lizard broods within the Grove - ch 10. The Alborandi give themselves into the service of the Waygrove and are its keepers of language - ch 10. At the Waygrove compound the monks ignore Angilly completely; she cannot be seen, touched, or acknowledged, and the narration states flatly that she is not there and that they owe her nothing - ch 10. A heavyset, scarred Alborandi eventually sits beside her and mocks her posture in mime, then listens without expression as she confesses - Kaleithi's death, the Alkhand's paralysis, Dekamran's flaws and worth - in words that are inappropriate, undiplomatic, and unsanctioned - ch 10. A shorter, stockier Alborandi then blocks her path and thrusts Kaleithi's necklace into her hand: a necklace of gold and amber in the spiralling shape of a tree, Kaleithi's personal jewellery, returned to Angilly as the order's way of confirming that the wife will not return - ch 10.
Days of Shattered Faith
The Alborandi are an order of masked monks who tend the Waygrove, a stand of trees beyond the border of Usmai whose original name is a long awkward word "from elsewhere," rendered in Pel as "Waygrove" - ch 11. The monks wear eyeless painted masks and nondescript robes, and their presence is defined not by institutional authority but by identity: "these men and women, were the Grove" - ch 13. The Tesemer, though fierce and martial, are "forever subordinate" to the Alborandi, who are the Grove itself - ch 13. The Waygrove's reputation in Pel is that "The Grove led everywhere save the place you wanted to get to, they said" - ch 11. Things come out of the Waygrove - monsters, people, lost things - and at the start of the war both the Warden of the House of Hard Angles and the Under-warden of the House of Hard Angles emerged from the masked monks' monastery there, caused trouble, and were co-opted as the prison's rulers - ch 7.
The Alborandi maintain a compound near the Waygrove, outside Alkhalend: a simple palisaded enclosure with huts and gardens, with no gate, only gaps in the stakes, the back one opening into the Waygrove - ch 13. The annual ritual cycle obliges the Alkhand to travel to the Waygrove after the Day of Milk and Flowers to renew bonds with the Alborandi - ch 13. The order is unique in that only the Alkhands formally treaty with the Waygrove and provide the Alborandi monks to tend it - ch 13.
Kaleithi, wife of the Alkhand Oparan, left her husband and four children for the Alborandi - called "Grove monks" in common speech - and never returned - ch 5. Her daughter Enshili barely knows her - ch 5. Seven years after her departure, during the annual visit, Oparan and his son Dekamran watch the monks hoping to glimpse her face, but the Warden of the House of Hard Angles's associate Sorthist assures the Alkhand that Kaleithi cannot be seen behind any mask - ch 13, ch 14. "the weight of her absence destroys him, day to day" - ch 10.
The Alborandi's rites are described as "encrusting the state," coral building over a sunken ship - ch 14. During the annual visit, the Tesemer escort performs a violent martial display on their Hooklopers before the compound, which the Alborandi monks barely acknowledge - ch 13. Oparan, guided by Dekamran, presents offerings: sacred carvings made by the Beast Artists and three blank masks - the Alborandi's most desired gifts, new Alborandi-in-waiting to be consecrated - ch 13. The monks receive the offerings and continue their work with apparent indifference - ch 13.
The rite of the mask - whereby a person steps into a wooden mask and sometimes re-emerges cleansed and free, sometimes not, sometimes never - is the mechanism by which the Alborandi incorporate individuals. The old Empire word for a sage implied "one fit to be preserved" - ch 14. The Alborandi mystery holds that those who don the mask are unmade: their former selves, debts, and identities are entirely erased. "Where does the knot go, when the string is pulled loose? Where the song, when the singer falls silent? Not even the ghost of it remains" - ch 15. At the Waygrove ritual, Oparan takes the mask and enters the Grove; his identity is unmade - ch 15. Dekamran runs from monk to monk, staring at their masks, trying to find his father, while the Alborandi continue their business among the ensuing panic - ch 15. The Alborandi palisade is staved in by an ogrodon during the fighting that follows, and Gorbudan seizes the throne in the resulting coup - ch 15. Dekamran dies in the scrum at the Waygrove - ch 18.
News of the Alkhand's disappearance and the brothers' fates at the Alborandi compound reaches as far as a village monastery, where the old man at the monastery is questioned at sword-point and confirms "the Alkhand, the brothers, all of it" - ch 16.
The Waygrove functions as a portal, and the colloquial shorthand "the Grove" is used interchangeably with "the Alborandi place" - ch 29. The two fugitives whom Angilly helps reach the Alborandi - described as "two academics on the lam" - pass through the Waygrove with fetishes for safe passage, and the Correct Speech Inquirer subsequently departs for the Waygrove to investigate - ch 29. Gil later confirms that the scholars Dalry and Annet escaped through the Waygrove ("that demon gate thing") and that arrest papers arrived too late - ch 41. The Under-warden of the House of Hard Angles strikes a deal with the Fever Lodge crew to help "In the Grove. In the wood beyond. Keep them safe there," and tells his centipede-bodied wife to go toward the Waygrove to find home - ch 45.
Weeks after the Waygrove incident, a wagon road through jungle leads from Alkhalend to the compound of the Alborandi at the Waygrove - ch 49. The masked monks tend the Grove and none turn toward the travellers; the Warden of the House of Hard Angles's monstrosity obviates the need for the monks' magical protections in the wood beyond, and the "expensive magical tricks" the Palleseen scholars had relied on for safe passage are no longer required - ch 49. Tally eyes the masked monks suspiciously and wonders whether any Alborandi monk might be Oparan or Kaleithi - ch 49. Tally, the Reckoner, the Under-warden, and the Warden go through the Waygrove portal; Oathan and Jack stay - ch 49.
Relationships
- Kaleithi - Wife of the Alkhand Oparan, she publicly severs thirty years of marriage at the Cleansing and takes on the mantle of the Alborandi, vanishing into the order and never returning. Her daughter Enshili barely knows her. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 7; Days of Shattered Faith, ch 5. The order confirms her permanent absence by returning her necklace to Angilly. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 10.
- Oparan - The Alkhand keeps an annual vigil at the water's edge hoping to glimpse his former wife among the unmasked monks, and receives no confirmation of her fate. Seven years later, during the same visit, he is told she cannot be seen behind any mask. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 9; Days of Shattered Faith, ch 13-14. During the mask rite at the Waygrove he takes the mask, enters the Grove, and his identity is unmade. - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 15.
- Dekamran - He attempts to make sense of the order, pressing for explanations that are never sufficient, and later watches the monks beside his father during the annual visit. He dies in the scrum at the Waygrove after the mask rite. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 9; Days of Shattered Faith, ch 13, ch 18.
- Angilly - A princess who rides to the Waygrove compound seeking understanding and is rendered invisible by the monks; a scarred Alborandi mocks her posture in mime before she confesses, and a second monk thrusts Kaleithi's necklace into her hand as the order's way of confirming the wife will not return. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 10. Years later she helps two academics reach the Alborandi at the Waygrove for safe passage. - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 29.
- Tarcomir - Announces the public meaning of the Cleansing at the ceremony in Alkhalend, naming the severance before the pool. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 7.
- Tally - Eyes the masked monks with suspicion at the compound, wondering whether any of them might be Oparan or Kaleithi, before passing through the Waygrove portal. - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 49.
- the Warden of the House of Hard Angles and the Under-warden of the House of Hard Angles - Both emerged from the Alborandi monastery at the Waygrove before being co-opted as rulers of the House of Hard Angles. The Under-warden later strikes a deal to shelter fugitives In the Grove. In the wood beyond. - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 7, ch 45.
Notable Quotes
- "Where does the knot go, when the string is pulled loose? Where the song, when the singer falls silent? Not even the ghost of it remains" - Alborandi mystery, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 15
- "And so it is, that the Blessed Kaleithi severs herself from the side of His Tranquillity, the Alkhand Oparan, dissolving their bonds of thirty years and taking on the mantle of the Alborandi." - Tarcomir, Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 7
- "these men and women, were the Grove" - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 13
Tags
- monastic-order · #masked · #usmai · #severance