Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [0]
Arzosah roared and dropped, down and down in a rush of wind that tore at Rhodry’s clothes and tried to grab him from her back. He clung to the straps, his hands stinging and aching from the effort. Just as he felt he was bound to be torn off and sent falling, the dragon leveled with a huge roar, answered from below by the screams of horses and riders alike. Rhodry risked sitting up and leaning to the side to look down. Horses were plunging through one of the gaps, trampling the spearmen as they surrendered to an orgy of herd fear no matter how hard their riders yelled and beat at them with quirts and the flat of blades. Rhodry started to laugh, then swore as something sped by his face.
“Arrow!” he screamed. “They’ve got archers! Climb!”
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
Her works of science fiction
POLAR CITY BLUES
RESURRECTION
For my aunt,
Beatrice Regina McClellan
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Round up the usual suspects …”
Many thanks to Alis Rasmussen, Mark Kreighbaum, Elizabeth Pomada, and Howard Kerr, for invaluable advice and support.
CONTENTS
A Note on the Pronunciation of Deverry Words
I. Prologue—Albus
II. Past—Conjunctio
III. Present, Rising—Fortuna Minor
IV. Present, Falling—Tristitia
V. Future—Cauda Draconis
VI. Epilogue—Populus
A Note on
the Pronunciation of
Deverry Words
The language spoken in Deverry, which we might well call Neo-Gaulish, 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 breath, but the voicing is more pronounced than in English. It is opposed to TH, the unvoiced sound as in th or breathe. (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, Dwarvish, and Elvish alphabets as well as the Deverrian, which is, of course, based upon the Greek rather than the Roman model. As faithful readers of this series know, my decision to use this simple approach rather