A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [0]
“My Lord! Look back!”
With Odyl there to guard his flank, Danry could turn his head for a look just as a plume of dust began to rise among the trees, and a new set of horns and shouts broke out. The rest of the Deverry army was battling up the other side of the rise. Doubtless they’d merely been trying to hit the rebel army from the rear, but all at once Danry realized that they were getting themselves a splendid prize indeed.
“The king!” he screamed. “Odyl!”
Screaming and cursing, they tried to turn their horses and rally the rest of their men, but the Deverrians were all over them….
“No one does real, live, gritty Celtic fantasy better than Katharine Kerr.”
—Judith Tarr, author of The Dagger and the Cross
BY KATHARINE KERR
Her novels of Deverry and the Westlands
THE BRISTLING WOOD
THE DRAGON REVENANT
A TIME OF EXILE
A TIME OF OMENS
DAGGERSPELL
DAYS OF BLOOD AND FIRE
DAYS OF AIR AND DARKNESS
DARKSPELL
THE RED WYVERN
THE BLACK RAVEN
THE FIRE DRAGON
Table of Contents
Cover
Rebellion
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue: The Eldidd Border 1096
Part One: Deverry and Eldidd 718
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Part Two: The Elven Border 719–915
Chapter 3
Part Three: Eldidd 918
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Epilogue: The Elven Border Summer 1096
Appendices
Glossary
About the Author
A Special Preview of A Time of Omens
Copyright
DEDICATION
tibi, Dea, nominis pro gloria tuae
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.
THE PRONUNCIATION OF DEVERRY WORDS
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.
This is, of course, the same system of transcription used in the earlier volumes of these chronicles—a fact that may surprise some few readers. I refer to those scholars of Elvish, as well as one well-known Elvish scholar, who have taken time better employed elsewhere to criticize my decision to dispense