A Time of Omens - Katharine Kerr [0]
KATHARINE KERR
Her novels of Deverry and the Westlands:
DAGGERSPELL
DARKSPELL
THE BRISTLING WOOD
THE DRAGON REVENANT
A TIME OF EXILE
A TIME OF OMENS
DAYS OF BLOOD AND FIRE
DAYS OF AIR AND DARKNESS
THE RED WYVERN
THE BLACK RAVEN
THE FIRE DRAGON
Available from Bantam Spectra Books
TRAPPED
“Think we can hold off a small army? We might have to. I’ll wager they’re on their way to fetch a few friends.”
Carra was too spent to be frightened. She leaned back against a rock and looked straight in front of her with eyes that barely saw.
“Is there any water?” she whispered.
“There’s not,” Otho said. “Nor food, either. The horses bolted.”
“Ah, I see. We’re still going to die, aren’t we?”
No one said a word.
Dedication
For Nance Jordan Ashton
My Grandmother
Acknowledgments
As usual, I owe a lot of friends a lot of thanks.
Some are:
Brian Carnright, who keyboarded above and
beyond the call of duty,
Elizabeth Pomada, who once again performed
wonders of agenting,
Alis Rasmussen, who understands what plot
problems mean,
Mark Kreighbaum, who helped me
fine-tune the manuscript,
and as always, my husband, Howard Kerr,
who is Himself.
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 upon the Greek rather than the Roman model. In spite of the ridiculous controversy still continuing in certain university circles, I see no reason to confuse the ordinary reader with the technical method of Elvish transcription in common use among linguists and scholars. Anyone who wishes to learn this system may of course refer to the standard works upon the subject available from the University of Aberwyn Press; the average reader of popular fiction would no doubt rather forgo