On Wed, 5 May 2004, Caliann the Elf wrote: >>> One of the reasons I believe this is that, in Paresh's telling, he states that Aerich said to him, "Inform your master that the Duke of Arylle will see him." By saying this, Paresh is subtly re-stating how the nobility has no clue who inhabits their lands. However, Aerich knew full well that Tazendra was female, and in the Paarfiad version, Aerich is said to ask for the Baroness. <<< We can also hypothesize a grammatical explanation, similar to one that has already been proposed and has gained Steve's stamp of approval (http://cracksandshards.com/deaths.html#Zerikas_Parentage). Briefly, Vlad and Paarfi seem to disagree about Zerika's parents, swapping the names Vernoi and Loudin between the father and the mother. The passage in Five Hundred Years After speaks of Loudin's pregnancy, but the one in Taltos has only the names and the pronoun "she". Since we know that at least sometimes Dragaeran pronouns do not distinguish between male and female, I suggested that, when translating Taltos, Brust had had to guess and had guessed wrong. Steve wrote to me: "You nailed me good on at least one inconsistency: the sexes of Vernoi and Loudin. That was a fuckup. But I really like the explanation you give, and I think I'll now make it official. <g>" We can guess that the same thing may have happened here with the pronoun "him". As for "master", something similar may well apply; after all, "Dragonlord" and "Dzurlord" apply to women as well as men (Aliera, Tazendra). ("Hawklord" probably does too, but I can't think of any examples offhand.) [This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It was certainly... interesting... correcting the misrecognitions of all the names. "Vlad and Paarfi" came out as "flat and parsley".] -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel http://cracksandshards.com a Steven Brust Dragaera fan website