Daggerspell - Katharine Kerr [0]
“I can know and I do know,” Aderyn said. “We’ve got to do something, or we’ll be slaughtered on the road.”
“How many of them are there?”
“At least thirty, and they seemed to be as well armed as a lord’s warband.”
“We might be able to hold them off long enough for Jill to get back from Cannobaen with some of the tieryn’s men,” Cullyn suggested.
“What?” Jill snapped. “You can’t send me away!”
Cullyn slapped her across the face so hard she staggered.
“You’ll follow orders. You’re riding to the tieryn and begging for aid. Do you hear me?”
“I do.” Jill rubbed her aching cheek. “But you’d best be alive when I ride back.”
The way Cullyn smiled, a cold twitch of his mouth, told Jill that he doubted he would be. For a moment she thought that her body had turned to water, that she was going to flow away and dissolve like one of the Wildfolk. Cullyn grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.
“You’re riding for the life of every man in this caravan. Do you understand me?”
“I do,” Jill said. “Truly, I do.”
DAGGERSPELL
BY 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
Available wherever
Bantam Spectra Books
are sold
For my husband, Howard,
who helped me more than even he can know.
Without his support and loving encouragement,
I never would have finished this book.
Contents
Cover Page
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Map
Prologue - In The Year 1045
Chapter 1 - Cerrgonney, 1052
Chapter 2 - Deverry, 643
Chapter 3 - Deverry, 1058
Chapter 4 - Deverry, 698
Chapter 5 - Eldidd, 1062
Chapter 6 - Eldidd, 1062
Glossary
About the Author
Copyright
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a lot of thanks to a lot of friends:
Barbara Jenkins, who gave me a whole career in a box when she gave me my first fantasy role-playing game many Christmases past,
Elizabeth Pomada, who took on an admittedly eccentric project and then actually sold it,
Conrad Bulos, the fastest typewriter repairman in the West.
And especially, Jon Jacobsen, the best gaming buddy a girl ever had.
PRONUNCIATION NOTES
The Deverrian language, which we might well call neo-Gaulish, looks and sounds much like Welsh, but anyone who knows this modern language will see immediately that it differs in a great many respects, as it does from Cornish and Breton. All these languages are members of that subfamily of Indo-European known as P-Celtic.
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