Читать книгу: «The Deverry Series»

KATHARINE KERR
Dragonspell

The Southern Sea

The fool sees peaks rising above the water and says, ‘Look, many islands!’

The wise man knows that all are connected under the Southern Sea.

The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid

Copyright

Voyager

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by GraftonBooks 1990

Copyright © Katharine Kerr 1990

Cover design and illustration by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019

Katharine Kerr asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is published in the United States of America under the title The Dragon Revenant

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780586207871

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2014 ISBN: 9780007391455

Version: 2019–07–15

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Map

Dedication

In memory of

Howard ‘Jake’ Jacobsen

1934–1988

He is, and will be, sorely missed.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Map

Dedication

A Note on the Series

A Note on the Pronunciation of Deverry Words

Prologue: Eldidd, 1063

Part One: Bardek Autumn, 1063

Part Two: Deverry and Bardek Winter, 1603

Epilogue: Bardek and Deverry Summer, 1064

Keep Reading

Glossary

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

A Note on the Series

Over the past few years, readers have asked me various questions about the Deverry series. Usually these questions are asked in noisy rooms at conventions where no one can really hear the answers, but now my publishers have kindly given me a chance to answer some of them in print, where it’s always quiet. The two things you all most want to have clarified, it seems, are the kind of magic the characters use and the way I’ve organized the books.

Deverry dweomer is very loosely based on the ‘real magic’ of the Western tradition, a field of study that can best be defined, perhaps, through its history. First, though, let me define one thing that magic isn’t, popular belief and oft-repeated clichés to the contrary. Magic is most emphatically not a substitute for technology nor is it the equivalent of technology. No more will the true magician study it only for personal gain. As a very wise man recently defined it, ‘Magic is the art of producing changes in consciousness at will and of using these changes to expand the consciousness of all humanity.’ Notice the emphasis on consciousness here. This is not to say that magic never produces any effects in the so-called ‘real’ or physical world – quite the contrary – simply that in true magic, consciousness is always central and these physical effects secondary. In Deverry, since I’m writing adventure stories first and foremost, the physical effects are quite spectacular, but this is one reason that I say the magic is very loosely based upon the Western tradition.

What is this tradition, then? Over the past two thousand years, thanks to the invective of the various churches and more recently of the scientific community, magic has had to lie hidden in the West, practised in secret, persecuted in public whenever the inquisitors got wind of it, and because of that persecution what should be an organized body of philosophical thought and spiritual practice has become maimed and garbled, conflated in the popular mind with superstition, devil worship, and the tricks and silly stories of con men and hucksters. In Asia, where no one organized religion ever got the whip hand over the soul of humanity, the situation is different. Most of you know about Yoga, for instance, a truly spiritual discipline reaching back thousands of years, or have heard about the monastic life of Buddhism and the intense spiritual insights and powers that its devotees attain after years of meditation. Western magic should have been no less.

Let me say here that when I talk about Europe and Asia, I don’t mean to deny the existence of the native spriritual systems of Africa and the Americas. I simply don’t know enough about them to discuss them intelligently. The roots of all these spiritual disciplines, however, including what should have been the European, probably lie in some common ground: the developing shamanism of Palaeolithic hunters some fifteen thousand years ago, or maybe even further back than that – I doubt very much that anyone will ever know, and you should all be extremely sceptical of anyone who says they do, particularly if these claims involve flying saucers, the lost continent of Atlantis, or other such sensational plot elements. What we do know is that by the time the art of writing was slowly spreading through the Eurasian continent, round about 2000 BC or so, shamanism had developed into a vast variety of spiritual practices, which in Asia had the good fortune to become firmly woven into the religious life of their cultures.

In Europe, Mediterranean Africa and the Middle East these spiritual disciplines flourished only until the spread of monotheism. We know their remnants as pagan mystery cults, such as those of Eleusis; we see fragments in Hellenized Egyptian religions such as the worship of Isis; we have a handful of texts of the Gnostic mystery schools, some Christianized, others not, that have miraculously survived the organized persecutions and suppressions of the Orthodox, whether Christian or Moslem, of later years. But what we have are, by and large, hardy fragments of root left from a mangled plant, cut down before its full flowering by the sort of priest who put his temporal power above the spiritual health of his flock. The one true magical system we do have is the Jewish cabbala, kept alive by a people of enormous courage in the face of slander and persecution. In those dark years, Judaism was the only major Western religion to realize that different kinds of souls have different needs, that there will always be some who want to know and to experience the truth for themselves and who are willing to leave safe territory behind to do so. Those of us who believe the same owe it and its people a huge debt.

There is no space here to give the convoluted history of the various magicians and alchemists, Christian cabbalists and Rosicrucians, to say nothing of the Sufis on the Moslem side of the equation, who struggled to keep Western magic alive during the last eighteen hundred years or so. (If you’re interested, you can find books by the historian Frances Yates in any good public library.) That they succeeded at all is amazing enough; to point out that a lot of strange weeds took root and grew in the field cleared but never sown with proper seed seems unfair, but not everyone who claimed to be a follower of the true path was one. And of course the lies and slanders continued and still continue: that magic damns you or drives you insane, that witches worship the devil, and, most recently, that magic is nothing but New Age occult-babble on the one hand or illusion and fraud on the other. As readers, you’ll all have to make up your own minds on the truth of these things. It should be clear enough by now where I stand.

As for the structure of the Deverry books, a lot of people have muttered, either to themselves or directly to me, ‘Why do you use all those damn flashbacks?’ Well, there is in this world more than one way of organizing a story – or a body of factual information, for that matter. The ‘start at the beginning and go through to the end’ principle that we’ve all been raised with dates back to classical Greek thought as transmitted by the Romans, and, as part of Aristotelian logic, it forms the basis of modern science and the scientific world-view (though one that modern physics is beginning to undermine). In this way of looking at the world, Time’s arrow flies straight and in one direction only. The magical tradition, however, teaches that you don’t necessarily have to move in a straight line to reach your destination.

Classical writers like Diodorus Siculus and Polybius state that the Celts who were their contemporaries believed in reincarnation, among other doctrines that are today part of the magical tradition. Certainly the art of the Gauls and the later flowering of Celtic art in the early Christian era are clear enough evidence that here is a people who organized information in a non-classical, non-Aristotelian manner. Since I’m writing about ancient Celts, after all, I’ve borrowed their way of looking at the world, too, in the loops and spirals of my story line as it laces between and laces up the various lifetimes of the characters. I promise, on the gods of my people if you like, that I do have a plan in mind, even if it isn’t a linear one, and I honestly do think that if you try to see it as it unfolds, you’ll get some small reward, even if it’s only a taste of what it means to think in a non-linear manner. If you’ve never seen any Celtic art, the flowing spirals and triskelia of the Gauls, the beautiful lacings and braidings of the Irish monks, by all means do yourself a favour and browse through a book about them in a library or bookshop. My own small craft is, I promise you, nothing compared to theirs.

A Note on the Pronunciation of Deverry Words

The language spoken in Deverry is a member of the P-Celtic family. Although closely related to Welsh, Cornish, and Breton, it is by no means identical to any of these actual languages and should never be taken as such.

Vowels are divided by Deverry scribes into two classes: noble and common. Nobles have two pronunciations; commons, one.

A as in father when long; a shorter version of the same sound, as in far, when short.

O as in bone when long; as in pot when short.

W as the oo in spook when long; as in roof when short.

Y as the i in machine when long; as the e in butter when short.

E as in pen.

I as in pin.

U as in pun.

Vowels are generally long in stressed syllables; short in unstressed. Y is the primary exception to this rule. When it appears as the last letter of a word, it is always long whether that syllable is stressed or not.

Diphthongs generally have one consistent pronunciation:

AE as the a in mane.

AI as in aisle.

AU as the ow in how.

EO as a combination of eh and oh.

EW as in Welsh, a combination of eh and oo.

IE as in pier.

OE as the oy in boy.

UI as the North Welsh wy, a combination of oo and ee. Note that OI is never a diphthong, but is two distinct sounds, as in carnoic (KAR-noh-ik).

Consonants are mostly the same as in English, with these exceptions:

C is always hard as in cat.

G is always hard as in get.

DD is the voiced th as in thin or breathe, but the voicing is more pronounced than in English. It is opposed to TH, the unvoiced sound as in th or breath. (This is the sound that the Greeks called the Celtic tau.)

R is heavily rolled.

RH is a voiceless R, approximately pronounced as if it were spelled hr in Deverry proper. In Eldidd, the sound is fast becoming indistinguishable from R.

DW, GW, and TW are single sounds, as in Gwendolen or twit.

Y is never a consonant.

I before a vowel at the beginning of a word is consonantal, as it is in the plural ending -ion, pronounced yawn.

Doubled consonants are both sounded clearly, unlike in English. Note, however, that DD is a single letter, not a doubled consonant.

Accent is generally on the penultimate syllable, but compound words and place names are often an exception to this rule.

I have used this system of transcription for the Bardekian and Elvish alphabets as well as the Deverrian, which is, of course, based on the Greek rather than the Roman model. On the whole, it works quite well for the Bardekian, at least. As for Elvish, in a work of this sort it would be ridiculous to resort to the elaborate apparatus by which scholars attempt to transcribe that most subtle and nuanced of tongues. Since the human ear cannot even distinguish between such sound-pairings as B> and <B, I see no reason to confuse the human eye with them. I do owe many thanks to the various elven native speakers who have suggested which consonant to choose in confusing cases and who have laboured, alas often in vain, to refine my ear to the elven vowel system.

PROLOGUE
Eldidd, 1063

Alaf yn ail; mail am lad;

Llithredawr llyry; llon cawad,

A dwfn rhyd; berwyd bryd brad.

Cows in the byre, beer in the bowl.

Rain floods the fierce-flowing ford

And slick paths. A soul stews over treason.

Llywarch the Ancestor

Even though dark clouds hung close to earth all day in what might have been either a heavy fog or an outright drizzle, out in the sacred grove beyond the city walls of Aberwyn the ancient oaks glowed with a light of their own, the autumnal splendour of their scarlet and gold leaves. A few sparks of that flame had fluttered down to lie in the muddy grave like golden offerings to match the grave goods already in place, jars and ewers of mead and oil, loaves of bread, a fine sword in a gilded scabbard, pottery statues of the gwerbret’s favourite horses, all set around the wicker-work chariot. Although Deverry men had stopped fighting from chariots some thousand years earlier, their memory persisted as a thing belonging to heroes, and great men were buried in them, but lying down, unlike their ancestors, who were sometimes propped up in a parody of action that seemed indecent to Deverrian minds.

Lovyan, Tieryn Dun Gwerbyn, regent to the gwerbretrhyn of Aberwyn, stood at the edge of the grave and watched the shaven-headed priests of Bel clambering around in the mud as they laid the body of Rhys Maelwaedd, her eldest son, down for his last rest. By then the rituals were long over, and most of the huge crowd of mourners gone, but she lingered, unable to cry or keen, weary to the very heart, as they arranged his fine plaid, the silver, blue, and green of Aberwyn, around him. Once they began to fill in the grave, she would leave, she decided. She had watched wet earth fall on the faces of other men she had loved, her husband, her second son Aedry, the third son dead in childbirth that they’d never even named; she had no need to watch it again.

Beside her Nevyn laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. A tall man, with a shock of white hair and piercing blue eyes, he had skin as wrinkled as one of the fallen leaves and hands spotted all over from age, but he stood as straight and walked as vigorously as a young warrior. Although everyone who knew him considered his energy a marvel, Lovyan was one of the few who knew the truth, that he owed it to the dweomer of light, because he was one of the greatest sorcerers who had ever lived in Deverry. Just lately he had come into her service as a councillor, but in truth, she assumed, she was the one who was serving his particular ends. It mattered not to her, because not only did she trust him, but their particular goals were, for the moment at least, the same.

‘It’s cold out here, Your Grace,’ he said, his voice soft with sympathy.

‘I’m well aware of that, my thanks. We’ll be leaving soon.’

The priests were fastening the enormous golden ring-brooch to the plaid and clasping it closed around the dead gwerbret’s neck. She looked away and saw two men pushing a slab of stone, balanced on a hand-cart, towards the grave. The epitaph was already carved, an englyn of praise for the ruler of Aberwyn, lost to a hunting accident, but of course, it never mentioned the true cause of his death: evil dweomer. She shuddered, remembering the day when they’d ridden out together to fly their hawks. They’d been calmly trotting down the river road when Rhys’s horse had gone mad, bucking and rearing, finally falling to crush its rider. Even at the time the accident had seemed inexplicable; later she had learned that dark dweomermen had caused the horse’s madness and thus had murdered Rhys as surely as if they’d used a sword. Why? That, no one knew.

The priests climbed out of the grave and signalled to the diggers, leaning on their shovels nearby. Lovyan blew a kiss at her dead son.

‘Sleep well, little one,’ she whispered, then turned away. ‘Come along, all of you. We’d best get back to the dun.’

Nevyn took her arm, and the small crowd of pages and serving women fell in behind her as they made their silent way to the edge of the grove, where her escort was waiting. Twenty-five men of Rhys’s warband and fifteen of her own stood at respectful attention beside their horses. As she approached, her captain, Cullyn of Cerrmor, led over her horse, a beautiful golden mare with a silvery mane and tail, and held it for her as she mounted and adjusted her long dresses and cloak over the side-saddle.

‘My thanks, captain.’ She took the reins from him, then turned in the saddle to make sure that the rest of her retinue were ready to ride. ‘Well and good, then. Let’s get back home.’

At the captain’s signal the men mounted, and the procession set off, Lovyan and Nevyn at the head, her women and pages just behind, and bringing up the rear, the warbands. As they rode up to the high city walls, the men on duty at the gates snapped to smart attention, but Lovyan barely saw them, so wrapped in numb grief was she. It’s all been too much, she thought to herself; simply too much to bear. Yet in her heart she knew that she could indeed bear it, that she would somehow find from somewhere the strength to see her through the difficult months ahead. Many noblewomen, it seemed, lived lives that allowed them the luxury of hysterics; they could wallow in fits of weeping, or shut themselves up dramatically in their chambers and get sympathy from half the kingdom with no one being the worse for it; she, however, had always had to stifle her griefs and rise above her weaknesses. At times, such as that moment in the chilly drizzle, she resented it, but even in her resentment she knew that she’d been given the better bargain by the gods.

As the procession wound through the rain-slick cobbled streets of Aberwyn, the townsfolk came out of house and shop to pay their respects quite spontaneously to the tieryn, who had been well-liked here when she’d been the wife of the then gwerbret, Tingyr, before their son Rhys inherited the rhan. Their heads bared to the drizzle, the men bowed and the women curtsied, and here and there someone called out ‘Our hearts ache for you, Your Grace’, or ‘Our sorrows go with you’. Lovyan’s heart ached more for them. Soon, unless she and Nevyn were successful in averting it, war would ravage Aberwyn’s prosperous streets, and these people would have more to sorrow over than her mourning.

The rank of gwerbret was an odd one in the Deverry scheme of things. Although by Lovyan’s time the office passed down from father to son, originally, back in the Dawntime, gwerbrets had been elected magistrates, called ‘vergobretes’ in the old tongue. A remnant of this custom still survived in the Council of Electors, who met to choose a new gwerbret whenever one died without an heir. Since the rank brought with it many an honour as well as a fortune in taxes and property, every great clan and a few optimistic lesser ones as well vied among themselves to be chosen whenever the line of sucession broke, and more often than not, the contest turned from a thing of bribes and politicking into open war. Once the Council got to fighting among themselves, the bloodshed could go on for years, because not even the King could intervene to stop it. Any king who marched in defiance of the laws would find himself with long years of resentment and rebellion on his hands. The most his highness could do was use his honorary seat on the Council to urge peace if he were so minded, or to politick along with everyone else for the candidate he favoured. The latter was the more usual occurrence.

Since Rhys had died childless, the members of the Council were already jockeying for position at the starting line of this possible horse race. Lovyan knew full well that they were beginning to form half-secret alliances and to accept gifts and flatteries that were very nearly bribes. She was furious, in a weary sort of way, for though Rhys had no sons, he did leave a legal heir, one marked with the approval of the King himself, Rhodry, Rhys’s younger brother and her last-born son. If only Rhodry were home safe in Aberwyn there would be no need for Council meetings disguised as social visits, but he had been sent into exile some years before by a fit of his brother’s jealousy and no better cause. Now, with the King’s own decree of recall published and all Aberwyn waiting for him as heir, he had disappeared, as well and thoroughly gone as a morning mist by a hot noontide. When the King had made his proclamation of recall, some days before, his highness had set the term as a year and a day – just a year and a day for them to find the heir and bring him home. Less than that now, she thought; an eightnight’s almost gone.

Although she was certain that Nevyn knew his where abouts, the old man was refusing to tell her. Every time she asked, he put her off, saying that someone was on their way to bring Rhodry back home and no more. She knew perfectly well that her son was in some grave danger. By trying to spare her feelings, Nevyn was making her anxiety worse, or so she assumed, thinking that her troubled mind would no doubt make up worse dangers than her lad was actually in. She suspected that some of those who coveted Aberwyn had kidnapped him, and she lived in terror that they would kill him before Nevyn’s mysterious aide could rescue him. If, however, she had known the truth, she would have seen the wisdom in Nevyn’s silence.

That night the drizzle turned into a full-fledged winter storm, a long howl and slash of rain pounding out of the south. It was only the first of many, Nevyn knew; the winter promised to be a bad one, and the Southern Sea impassable for many a long month. In his chamber, high up in the main broch of Aberwyn’s dun, the shutters strained and banged in their latches, and the candle-lanterns guttered in the draughts. Although the charcoal brazier was glowing a cherry-red, he put on a heavy wool cloak and arranged the peaked hood around his neck to ward off the creeping chill. His guest was even more uncomfortable. A Bardekian, close to seven feet tall and massively built, Elaeno had skin so dark that it was as blue-black as ink, a colour indicating that he was at home in hot climates, not this damp draughtiness. This particular night he was muffled up in two cloaks over a pair of linen shirts and some wool brigga that had been specially sewn to fit him. Even so, he shivered at each gust of wind.

‘How do you barbarians manage to survive in this godforsaken climate?’ Elaeno inched his chair a bit closer to the brazier.

‘With great difficulty, actually. You should be glad we’re here on the coast, not way up north, say in Cerrgonney. At least it rarely snows in Eldidd. Up to the north they’ll be over their heads in the stuff in another month.’

‘You know, I’ve never seen snow. I can’t say I’m pining away from the lack.’

‘It wouldn’t ache my heart if I never saw the nasty stuff again, either. I’m cursed grateful you’d winter here.’

‘You don’t need to keep saying that.’

‘My thanks, but ye gods, I feel so weary these days. There’s so blasted much riding on our Rhodry, and there he is, off in Bardek where we can’t reach him till spring, and the gods only know how he’s faring. When I think of the worst possibilities – ’

‘Don’t think of them. Just don’t. There’s naught we can do now, so don’t dwell on what might be. Easier said than done, I’ll admit.’

With a sigh Nevyn took a scoopful of charcoal out of the bucket and scattered it into the brazier, where the Wildfolk of Fire were dancing and sporting on the pinkish-red coals. Although he wasn’t sure who had hired them, Nevyn knew that Rhodry had been kidnapped by one of the Bardekian blood guilds, who permanently removed little problems like rivals for an inheritance for those that had the coin to hire them. He could only hope that the lad was still alive, and that if he were, he hadn’t been put to the – resolutely he turned his mind away. The blood guilds were known to amuse themselves with their prisoners in ways that did not bear thinking about. When he heard distant thunder crack, he jumped like a startled cat.

‘I’ve never seen you this worried,’ Elaeno remarked.

‘Naught’s come along to worry me this badly in close to a hundred years.’

‘I keep forgetting just how long you’ve lived.’

‘It’s a hard thing to remember, no doubt. I tend to forget it myself. Along with a great many other things about the past, let me tell you. It all blurs together after a while.’

‘I see.’ Elaeno hesitated for a long while on the edge of a question. ‘You know, I’ve often wondered what’s given you your – well, I suppose it’s none of my affair.’

‘Hum? Haven’t you heard that tale? You see what I mean about my ancient mind? I’d been thinking I’d told you already, and here I’d forgotten I hadn’t. All those long years ago when I was young, and, truly, I was indeed young once no matter what I look like now, I loved a woman named Brangwen, and I got myself betrothed to her. But I thought I loved my dweomer studies more.’ Nevyn heaved himself out of his chair and began to pace by the brazier. ‘There are a great many ins and outs to this story, most of which I’ve forgotten, but in the end, I betrayed her. Because of me, Brangwen died, and her brother, and an innocent man who loved her, too. That part I’ll never forget. And it fell to me to dig her grave and bury her. I was beside myself with guilt and grief that day, well and truly shrieking mad with shame. So I swore a vow, that never would I rest until I’d put things right. And from that day to this, I’ve done my best to put them right, over and over as Brangwen and the others were reborn and crossed my path, but I’ve failed every time, and so I’ve never gone to my rest.’

‘Are you telling me that the Great Ones accepted a vow like that?’

‘They did. Well, I’d broken one vow, hadn’t I? I suppose they wanted to see if I could keep the new one.’ He laughed, but there was no mirth in it. ‘Does it seem wonderful to you, living over four hundred years?’

‘It doesn’t, and especially not when I hear the weariness in your voice.’

‘Good. You’ll go far in the dweomer, Elaeno.’ Nevyn sat down again and sighed with a heavy exhaustion. ‘But keep that vow I will. Brangwen belongs to the dweomer, and by every god in the sky, I’ll make her see it this time or die trying – Oh by the hells, what a stupid excuse for a jest!’

‘This time? She’s been reborn, then, has she?’

‘She has. Jill, Cullyn of Cerrmor’s daughter.’

Elaeno gaped.

‘The same lass that’s off with that lackwit Salamander,’ Nevyn said. ‘On her way to Bardek after Rhodry. The very same one indeed.’

The storm blew itself out finally after two long days of rain. Everyone was glad to get free of the enforced leisure of drowsy hours spent huddled near the hearths in the great hall, and the ward was a-bustle that morning when Cullyn went out just to be going out, walking in the fresh and rain-washed air. He was strolling across the ward, aiming for the main gates merely to have a goal, but about halfway there he paused, struck by some odd observation that for a moment he couldn’t identify. Someone he’d passed, back by the wash-house, was somehow out of place. He turned back and saw a young man he vaguely recognized, Bryc by name, one of the undergrooms, but he was carrying a load of firewood, and his walk was wrong, not the shuffle or scramble of a servant, but the confident stride of a warrior. Cullyn hesitated only a moment before following him. Sure enough, Bryc carried the anomalous firewood right past first the wash-house, then the cookhouse as well. There was no other building where that firewood might belong between him and the outer walls.

Such a case was this matter of Rhodry Maelwaedd. If he’d been capable of it, the Old One would have gone to Deverry himself to supervise this crucial kidnapping and the disposition of its victim. As it was, since he’d had to entrust the job to a disciple on the one hand and hired assassins on the other, now he fretted constantly, wondering if the job had been done right. He couldn’t simply scry them out to see because all the important actions had happened either in Deverry itself or on another island, and not even the greatest dweomer minds in the world could scry across large bodies of open water. The exhalations of elemental force, particularly over the ocean proper, quite simply obscured the images like a fog. If he had tried to travel across them in the body of light, the waves and poundings of this same force would have broken up his astral form and led to his death.

So he could only sit in his villa and wait and brood. What particularly worried him was the complexity of the plan. If nothing else, he’d learned from his days in government that the more complex any project was, the more likely it was to fail, and this one had as many twists and turns as a bit of Deverry interlace. If he’d had a couple of years to spend, he would have thought and meditated until he’d honed some scheme as sharp and simple as a sword-blade, but time had been short and the threat too present to allow such a luxury. Over the past decades various followers of the dark path had worked hard to establish a secure foothold in Deverry, particularly in the court of the High King himself. Just when their plans were maturing, Nevyn ferreted them out and in one ugly summer destroyed much of their work. In many other ways the old man was a threat to the very existence of the dark dweomer as well as a hated personal enemy of Tondalo’s. As he considered all these things, the Old One had resolved, the winter before, that Nevyn should die.

An easy thing to resolve, of course; not so easy to execute. First of all, the Old One would have to act mostly alone, because he quite simply couldn’t trust anyone to help him. Those members of the Dark Brotherhood who coveted his place and prestige were more than capable of betraying him to Nevyn at the last moment simply to get rid of him. If he wanted reliable allies, he would have to pay for them in cold cash and keep his real intent secret as well. There were highly skilled assassins available for hire in the islands – at least to a man who knew where to find them. The summer before, the Old One had hired a guild of these Hawks of the Brotherhood, as they were called, to carry out part – but only part – of his plans.

Since sending a simple killer against a man of Nevyn’s power would have been laughable, the Old One had figured out a way to lure him to the islands, where his powers, drawn as they were from the Deverry soul and the Deverry earth, would be greatly lessened, and he would be far from the secular aid of such as Gwerbret Blaen. By all the laws of magic, in Bardek the Old One should be striking from the position of strength, the mental high ground, as it were, especially since Nevyn always seemed to work alone and thus would most likely come alone. When he looked around for bait for his trap, he fixed upon Rhodry, who was important to the barbarian kingdom’s future as well as one of Nevyn’s personal friends. Although his first thought was to merely kill the lad after using him to lay a false trail, he knew that Nevyn might be able to scry on the highest mental plane and discover that Rhodry was dead. It was most improbable that the Master of the Aethyr would come barrelling across the seas just to give the boy a decent burial or suchlike. On the other hand, keeping him prisoner in his villa would have been dangerous, too, once Nevyn came ferreting around on the track of the bait. The Old One had no desire to go running – or waddling, as he wryly told himself – for his life like a badger flushed out of his hole.

No, it had seemed best to bring Rhodry to Bardek, wipe his memory clean so that he couldn’t simply go to one of the law-abiding archons and announce his true identity, then turn him loose, hidden in plain sight as an ordinary slave, drifting wherever his fate or his luck took him. Sooner or later, Nevyn would follow. And when he did, the Old One would be waiting for him.

PART ONE
Bardek Autumn, 1063

Gorddyar adar; gwlyb traeth;

Eglur nwyfre; ehalaeth

Ton. Gwyw calon rhag hiraeth.

A bright sky, seabirds mewling;

A wide wave, soaking the shore;

A heart, withering from hiraedd.

Llwyarch the Ancestor

Although most people in Deverry thought of Bardek as one single country like their own, in truth it was an archipelago, and only the smallest islands were under the rule of a single government. The bigger ones, like Bardektinna and Surtinna, were divided into a number of city-states. Some of these consisted of only the city itself and barely enough surrounding farmlands to feed it; others controlled hundreds of square miles of territory and even other cities, either as colonies or as subject states. Myleton, on Bardektinna, was one of the biggest city-states at the time of which we speak, ruling the city of Valanth as well as a good half of the island. It was a beautiful city, then, too, perched high on a cliff overlooking a narrow harbour. Walking through the gates in the pure white walls was like walking into a forest.

Everywhere there were trees, lining the wide, straight streets and covering them with a shady canopy of interlaced branches, growing thick around every house and building: palms, both the tall date-bearing variety and the squat ornamentals, spicy-leaved eucalyptus, purple-flowered jacarandas, and a shrubby variety, with tiny red flowers like a dusting of colour over the leaves, known only in Bardek and called benato. Flowering vines twined around the trees and threatened to smother the various wooden and marble statues scattered in the small public squares or at the intersections of streets. Among the greenery stood the rectangular longhouses with their curving roofs like the hull of an overturned ship, some guarded by tall statues of the inhabitants’ ancestors; others, by pairs of wooden oars, large enough for a giant.

Sauntering down the streets or crossing from house to house was a constant flow of people, all dressed in tunics and sandals, men and women alike. The men, however, had brightly coloured designs painted on one cheek, while the women wore brooch-like oddments tucked into their elaborately curled and piled hair, but both ornament and paint identified the wearers’ ‘house’ or clan. Things were so safe then that the children could run loose in packs down the streets, playing elaborate games in the public spaces and private gardens alike without anyone saying a cross word to them or causing them a moment’s worry.

Of course, all this splendour was paid for dearly in human lives, because Myleton was the centre of the slave trade in the northern islands. With enough money and a little patience a buyer could find any sort of person there, from a scribe to a midwife to a labourer – even, on occasion, a barbarian from Deverry, though they were rare. The laws were very strict on such matters: Deverrians could be sold into slavery only for certain limited offences against the state, such as non-payment of very large debts, destruction of public property on a grand scale, or cold-blooded, premeditated murder. The archons of the various city-states had no desire to see a war fleet of blood-thirsty barbarians sailing their way on the excuse of rescuing some unjustly treated kinsman.

Thus, such exotic purchases were best made not in the public slave markets down near the harbour, where prisoners of war, criminals, and the offspring of state-owned slaves were auctioned off according to a registered bidding schedule, but in the smaller, private establishments scattered around Myleton. There was one such not far from the harbour, on the other side of the Plaza of Government, where a narrow, treeless alley twisted between back garden walls. As it went along, the walls grew lower until they disappeared altogether, and the houses, smaller and poorer until they degenerated into a maze of huts and kitchen gardens, with here and there pigsties, each home to a clutch of small grey-haired pigs.

Finally the alley gave a last twist and debouched into an open square where weeds pushed aside sparse cobbles and chickens scratched, squawking every now and then at the small children who played among them. On the other side was a high wall, striped in blue and red and obviously part of a compound, with an iron-bound door in the middle. Although there was no sign or name carved into the soft wood, those who knew about such things would recognize the place as Brindemo’s market. Those who didn’t know were best off leaving it alone.

Yet, on the inside the compound was no dark and sinister house of horrors. There was an open yard with scruffy grass and ill-tended flowers where during the day the slaves could take the sun, and clean if somewhat shabby dormitories where each piece of valuable property had his or her own bed, and a wash-house where anyone who wanted could bathe at his or her leisure. Although the food was by no means of the same high quality as would grace a rich man’s table, there was plenty of it, and Brindemo and his family ate from the same batch as the merchandise. It was just that Brindemo was known in certain circles for buying slaves that other traders would refuse, slaves whose bills of sale were perhaps not quite in order, slaves who came to him drugged and unable to protest their condition – that sort of thing, perhaps legal, most likely not. Occasionally some unsuspecting beggar lad with no family to miss him had gone into Brindemo’s for a hand-out of bread and never been seen again.

It was, then, a good measure of the strictness of the laws governing the sale of barbarians that when one came his way with a bill of sale that was less than perfect, Brindemo hesitated to sell him. Ordinarily he would have shopped such a prize around to the great houses of Myleton straightaway and asked a good high price for him, too. The barbarian was in his early twenties, extremely handsome with raven-dark hair and cornflower-blue eyes, courteous with a grace that bespoke some contact with the aristocracy, and best of all, he already knew a fair amount of Bardekian and was learning more with a speed that indicated a rare facility for languages. He would make, in short, a splendid footman with a chance to work his way up to majordomo someday, a valued member of the household who would eventually be given his freedom and adopted into the clan.

Unfortunately, there was that bill of sale, and the profoundly uncomfortable fact that the slave couldn’t even remember his own name. Taliaesyn, his previous owners had called him, but he readily admitted that the name meant nothing to him. He could remember nothing at all, not his family, not his home city – indeed, no more than a few scraps about his life beyond the day he’d been sold. Since his previous owners had been giving him opium to keep him docile, Brindemo made sure that he had plenty of nourishing food and all the sleep he wanted. Unfortunately, this decent treatment had no effect; Taliaesyn could remember no more than he had before.

‘You exasperate me, Taliaesyn of Pyrdon,’ Brindemo remarked, in Deverrian, one evening. ‘But then, no doubt you exasperate yourself.’

‘Of course.’ The slave gave him one of his oddly charming smiles. ‘What man wouldn’t want to know the truth about himself?’

‘Hah! There are many men who hide the truth about themselves deep in their hearts, where they will never have to face it. Perhaps you are one of those. Have you done somewhat so horrible that you wipe the mind clean to forget?’

‘Mayhap. Do I look like that sort of man to you?’

‘You don’t, though I think for all your charm you are a dangerous man. I would never give you a sword nor a dagger neither.’

Taliaesyn looked sharply away, his eyes gone cloudy, as if his thoughts had taken a strange turn.

‘A dagger,’ Brindemo whispered. ‘The word means somewhat?’

‘Somewhat.’ He spoke slowly, almost reluctantly. ‘I can’t find the memory. It just twitched at my mind, like.’

Brindemo sighed with deep drama.

‘Twenty-five zotars! Easily I could sell you for twenty-five golden zotars if only we could find the truth. Do you know how much a zotar is worth?’

‘I don’t, at that.’

‘It would buy ten pigs, and five of them fertile sows, even. So twenty-five zotars … ai!’

‘My heart bleeds for you.’

‘Ah, the sarcasm, and how can I blame you? It is a good sign. Your mind is coming back to life. But, I tell you, I have a guest coming tonight. He has spent many years in Deverry as a wine merchant. He might recognize you, or know somewhat to jog your mind. I cannot stand this. Twenty-five zotars, and here you sit, unsaleable. It aches the heart, as you say in your country.’

While they waited for Arriano to arrive, Brindemo taught the slave the proper method of pouring wine and passing a tray of cups around to guests. Taliaesyn took the lesson with a grave interest that had a certain charm, rather like an intelligent child who has decided to please his parents by doing something they want even though it strikes him as ridiculous. Yet Brindemo was always aware that he was docile only because his memory had gone. Taliaesyn moved like a knife fighter (the professional athletes of the arena were Brindemo’s only cognate for that particular gliding walk, the stance that was both relaxed and on guard at the same time), so much so that seeing him fussing over the silver tray was unsettling, as if a lion were wearing a collar and padding after its mistress like a pet cat. I never should have bought him, he thought miserably; I should have told Baruma no. Yet his misery only deepened, because he knew full well that he was in no position to deny the man known as Baruma anything.

Arriano came promptly when the temple bells were chiming out the sunset watch. Brindemo met him at the door himself, then ushered him into the main hall, a long room with a blue-and-white tiled floor and dark green walls. At one end was a low dais, strewn with many-coloured cushions arranged around a brass table. After they settled themselves on the cushions, Taliaesyn passed the wine-cups around, then perched respectfully on the edge of the dais. Arriano, a wizened little man who hid his baldness under a white linen skullcap, looked him over with a small, not unfriendly smile.

‘So, Taliaesyn,’ he said. ‘Our Brindemo here says you come from Pyrdon.’

‘So I’ve been told, master.’

One of Arriano’s bushy eyebrows shot up.

‘Talk to me in Deverrian. Oh, what … ah, I know. Describe this room.’

As Taliaesyn, somewhat puzzled, obligingly gave him a catalogue of the furniture and colours in the room, Arriano listened with his head cocked to one side. Then he cut the list short with a wave of his hand.

‘Pyrdon? Hah! You come from Eldidd, lad. I’d wager good coin on it – the Eldidd sea-coast, at that.’ He turned to Brindemo and spoke in Bardekian. ‘They have a very distinctive way of speaking there. As you might have expected, Baruma was lying like a scorpion.’

‘May the feet of the gods crush him!’ Brindemo felt sweat run down his back. ‘I don’t suppose you recognize this supposed slave?’

‘Not as to give you his real name, no. From the way he moves and all, I’d say he was a member of their aristocracy.’

‘What? I was thinking of him as a knife-fighter or boxer or some other performer like that.’

‘You forget, my dear old friend, that in Deverry, the aristocrats are all warriors. They start training for it when they’re little children.’

Brindemo groaned, a long rattle that gave him no relief. Taliaesyn was listening with an understandable intensity.

‘One of the noble-born?’ the slave said at last. ‘Here, this Baruma fellow said I was a merchant’s son.’

‘Baruma lies as easily as the rain falls,’ Arriano said. ‘If I were you, Brindemo, I’d stop babbling about zotars and get rid of this man as fast as you can – but to a decent master, mind. If his kin come storming through here with blood in their barbarian hearts …’

‘I know, I know.’ Brindemo could barely speak out of sheer frustrated greed. ‘But twenty-five zotars! Ai!’

‘Will all the gold in the world sew your head back onto your shoulders if …’

‘Oh shut up! Of course you’re right. Baruma wanted me to sell him to the mines or the galleys, but that’s completely out of the question if the man’s an aristocrat.’

‘I should think so! May Baruma’s sphincter loosen and his manhood plug itself!’

‘And may diseased monkeys feed some day upon his heart! Very well, then. I’ll sell him as soon as I can find the right sort of buyer. If you hear of someone, let me know – for a commission, of course.’

‘Of course.’ Arriano held out his hand. ‘More wine, Taliaesyn.’

Even though Taliaesyn served the wine exactly as he’d been taught with all the proper courtesies, the harsh, brooding look in his eyes made Brindemo profoundly uneasy. I’d best get him out of here soon for my own sake, he thought, but ai! twenty-five zotars!

Taliaesyn had been given a cubicle of his own to sleep in, because Brindemo was afraid to have him gossiping with the other slaves. If Baruma came back, neither the slave nor the slave merchant wanted him to know that they’d been trying to unravel his secret. Although the cubicle had room for nothing more than a straw pallet on the floor, and a tiny niche in the wall for an oil-lamp, it was private. After he’d been locked in for the night, Taliaesyn sat on the pallet for a long while, considering what Arriano had told him. Even though the lamp was out of oil, he could see perfectly well in the moonlight that streamed in the uncurtained window. It occurred to him, then, that it was peculiar that he could see in the dark. Before he’d been taking it for granted.

A few at a time, Wildfolk came to join him, a gaggle of gnomes, mostly, all speckled and mottled in blue and grey and purple, quite different from the ones in Deverry, or at least, so he remembered. At the moment, he was disinclined to trust anything he ‘remembered’ about himself. Who knew if it were real or some lie of Baruma’s? He did, however, have a clear memory picture of solidly coloured gnomes, in particular a certain grey one who was some sort of friend. Apparently he’d been able to see these little creatures for some time.

The ability to befriend spirits was so out of character for what he knew of Deverry aristocrats that he considered this strange fact for a good long time. Although he remembered little about himself, his general knowledge of the world seemed to be intact, and he was certain that your average warrior-lord did not go around talking to Wildfolk. Yet here was a particularly bold gnome, a dirty-green and greyish-purple with an amazing number of warts running down its spine, who was climbing into his lap and patting his hand with one little clawed paw as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

‘Well, good eve, little brother.’

The gnome grinned to reveal bright purple fangs, then settled into his lap like a cat. As he idly stroked it, scratching it behind the ears every now and then, Taliaesyn felt something pricking at his mind like a buried splinter trying to force its way out of a finger. The Wildfolk, the very phrase, ‘little brother’, both meant something profound, something that would give him an important key to who he was if only he could find the lock. It was a secret, a very deep, buried secret, hidden even from Baruma, perhaps.

‘I wish you lads could talk. Do you know who I am?’

The pack all shook their heads in a collective yes.

‘Do you know my name, then?’

This time the answer was no.

‘But you somehow recognize me?’

Another yes. He wondered if he’d ever been an introspective man – probably not, if he reminded people of a warrior-lord or a knife-fighter. The bits of truth he was finding made less sense than all the lies. One of the noble-born, or an athlete, but either way, he saw the Wildfolk, and they considered him a friend. Again came that twitch at his mind. One of their friends or one of their kin? The hairs on the nape of his neck prickled as he said it aloud.

‘Or one of their kin. I should know what that means, curse it all to the third hell!’

But he couldn’t remember. All at once he was furious, furious with his mind, with Baruma, with the twisted fate that had stripped him of himself and dropped him here, a piece of human trash in Brindemo’s market. He slammed his fist into the wall, and the pain and the rage mingled to force a brief moment of clarity out of his maimed consciousness. The Westfolk. The Elcyion Lacar, the elves. They saw the Wildfolk; they called them little brothers. He’d known the elves once – hadn’t he? Hadn’t he ridden to war with some of them for allies? Once, a very long time ago.

‘Or one of their kin,’ he whispered like an exhalation of breath.

He went cold all over in the warm night. It was a hard thing, after all, for a man to realize that he wasn’t completely human.

Taliaesyn stayed at the market for two more days of drowsy boredom. Although he did his best to probe his mind, he found the work hard going, confirming his own thought that he’d never been a man who paid much attention to his mind. He did, however, remember one small thing, the matter of the piece of jewellery. Although he couldn’t remember exactly what it was, Taliaesyn was sure that Baruma had stolen a valuable piece of silver jewellery from him, some heirloom, handed down to him by some member of his clan or by someone he admired – he wasn’t sure which. He did know, however, that having lost that piece of jewellery was a shameful thing, that he would be dishonoured forever if he didn’t find Baruma and get it back. The shame fed his hatred until at times he daydreamed for long hours about killing Baruma in one or another hideous way.

On the mid-morning of the third day he was sitting out in the grassy courtyard when Brindemo brought a customer to see him. He was a tall man, quite dark, with close-cropped curly black hair and two green diamonds painted on his left cheek. The straight-backed way he stood suggested that at some time he might have been a soldier, and his shrewd dark eyes often flicked Brindemo’s way in contemptuous disbelief as the trader chattered on, singing Taliaesyn’s praises and creating a false history for him all at the same time.

‘Very polished manners, sir, a merchant’s son and very well-spoken, but alas, he had a terrible taste for gambling, and fell in among bad company over in Mangorio, and …’

‘Are you good with horses?’ The customer broke in, speaking straight to Taliaesyn. ‘Most Deverry men are.’

‘I am. I’ve been riding all my life.’ As he spoke he remembered another scrap of his earlier life: a sleek black pony that he’d loved as a child. The memory was so vivid, so precious that he missed what the customer said next while he groped and struggled to remember the little beast’s name.

All at once the customer swung at him, a clean hard punch straight at his face. Without thinking Taliaesyn parried with his left wrist and began to swing back. Brindemo’s horrified scream brought him to his senses. He could be beaten bloody for swinging on a free man, but the customer only laughed and gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder.

‘I think you’ll do. I’m leading a caravan into the mountains. One of my muleteers fell ill, and I’ve no time to hire a free man to take his place.’

‘What, honoured sir?’ Brindemo’s jowls were shaking in indignation. ‘A valuable barbarian, used as a muleteer?’

‘Only for a while. I’m quite sure I can resell him at a profit later on. Arriano told me that he needed to disappear, for your sake and his, and I can manage that.’

‘He told you what?’ The trader’s voice rose to a wail.

‘You can trust me. Eight zotars.’

‘You have larceny in your heart! You wish to drive me out of business!’

The haggling was on in earnest. For a good long time they insulted each other’s motives and ancestry at the top of their lungs until at last they settled upon sixteen zotars. Out came the original bill of sale, which Taliaesyn’s new master read over quickly with a bitter twist to his mouth, as if he were amazed at the clumsiness of the forgery.

‘I’ll make out a new bill, of course,’ Brindemo said.

‘Of course. My name is Zandar of Danmara.’

When Brindemo waddled off inside the house to write out the new bill, Zandar crossed his arms over his chest and considered Taliaesyn carefully and coolly.

‘You deal honestly with me, boy, and I’ll do the same with you. When your relatives catch up with us I’ll sell you back for little more than I paid – provided you work hard and cause me no trouble. Is it a bargain?’

‘Yes. I don’t suppose free men shake hands with slaves here, or I’d offer you mine.’

‘No one shakes hands the way you do in your country, so don’t take it as an insult. Unsanitary custom, it always seemed to me, rubbing palms with someone you barely know. You’ll have a quarterstaff like the other men. Will you swear to me you won’t turn it against me?’

‘On the gods of my people.’

‘All right, then. We won’t mention it again.’

In spite of himself Taliaesyn felt a grudging respect for the man. He would have liked him, he decided, if they’d met in other circumstances. Zandar went on with his slow scrutiny.

‘Silver dagger,’ he said abruptly. ‘That mean anything to you, boy?’

Taliaesyn felt his head jerk up like a startled stag’s.

‘I thought it might. You look the type. It would fit what little I’ve been told about your mysterious circumstances.’

‘So it does. Oh by every god!’ He spun around on his heel and began to pace back and forth in sheer excitement as memories crowded at the edge of his mind. He could feel the weight in his hand, the perfect balance of the dagger, see the pommel with the three silver knobs, the device graved on the blade, a striking falcon. All at once tears sprang to his eyes, as he saw another picture in his mind, the grim, scar-slashed face of a man with grey-shot blond hair and ice-blue eyes, a cold man, hard as steel, but one who loved him. ‘I think I remember my father, and by the hells, he was no merchant.’

‘We were all sure of that, boy. What’s his name? Think.’ He let his voice drop to a whisper. ‘Try to remember his name.’

Taliaesyn felt it rising, just out of reach, tried to remember, and lost the memory cold.

‘I can’t.’ Then he felt the stomach-wrenching cold of a loss of hope. ‘Well, if I was a silver dagger, you don’t need to worry about my kin coming to ransom me back. Doubtless they’ll be glad enough to be rid of me forever.’

‘Many a man’s worked his way out of slavery, you know. All it takes is a little shrewdness and a willingness to take on paying jobs after your duties are done.’

Taliaesyn nodded in agreement, but in truth he barely heard him. He was remembering the dagger again, and he knew now what Baruma had stolen from him, knew what he had to take back at the cost of Baruma’s life. Although he would never harm Zandar, he’d sworn no vow against escaping the first chance he got. Even though he would be torn to pieces as an escaped slave, he would take his revenge first, then die knowing he’d earned his manhood back again.

On the other side of the city from the harbour, Myleton sprawled along a shallow though broad river. Beside the water lay a tangle of alleys, tumbledown warehouses, and wooden jetties, where brightly-coloured punts bobbed in the flow. Beyond this disorderly district was a flat open pastureland where merchant caravans could camp with their pack-animals. Zandar’s caravan was waiting there, camped around two stone fire-circles and a pair of rope corrals. It was a big caravan, too: thirty pack mules and twelve riding horses, tended by nine freemen and now, of course, one slave.

Eking out his knowledge of the language with gesture and pantomime, the men introduced Taliaesyn to his new life. The extra horses were his responsibility, as well as all the odd pieces of work unworthy of freemen: cutting firewood, fetching water, stacking gear, and serving the food at meals, though one of the other men did double as the cook. Although everyone treated him decently, no one spoke to him unless it was to give him an order. As a slave he seemed to be almost invisible, like a tool or a cook-pot, hung up out of sight when not in use. When dinner time came, Taliaesyn was fed last and sat behind the others at a respectful distance. Afterwards, while they lounged talking around the fire he scrubbed out the cooking pots and washed the bowls. Even though he’d had some days at Brindemo’s to recover, he was still so weak from the long ordeal in the ship that by the end of the evening his head was swimming with exhaustion. As he fell asleep, he realized that it would be some time before he could seriously consider escape.

When the caravan broke camp the next morning, it headed out to the southeast, following the line of the river. After a few miles Taliaesyn realized why Zandar didn’t seem worried about his new slave escaping. The countryside ran perfectly flat, perfectly featureless, mile after mile of small farms with only a few shade-trees to break the monotony. Before noon they turned away from the river to head straight south and soon left the settled farms behind to follow a narrow caravan track through grassland. A runaway slave would have no place to hide, no food to forage, no true road to follow. Well, by the gods of my people, Taliaesyn thought, I’ll have to wait and see what the mountains bring me, then.