Kay, Guy Gavriel - Last Light Of The Sun

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Book Information:

Genre: Epic Fantasy

Author: Guy Gavriel Kay

Name: The Last Light of the Sun

======================

The Last Light

of the Sun

ROC

Published by New American Library, a division of

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand,

London WC2R ORL, England

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road,

Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,

Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads,

Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL,

England

First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division

of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, March 2004 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

REGISTERED TRADEMARK-MARCA REGISTRADA LIBRARY OF

CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Kay, Guy Gavriel.

The last light of the sun / Guy Gavriel Kay.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-451-45965-2 (alk. paper)

1. Europe, Northern—Fiction. 2. Northmen—Fiction.

3. Vikings—Fiction. I. Title.

PR9199.3.K39L37 2004

813'.54—dc22 2003019316

Printed in the United States of America

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of

this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval

system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission

of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and

any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments,

events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO

PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO

PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC., 375

HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet

or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and

punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and

do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

for George Jonas

I have a tale for you: winter pours

The wind is high, cold;

its course is short

The bracken is very red;

The cry of the barnacle goose

Cold has taken

Season of ice;

a stag bells;

summer has gone.

the sun is low;

the sea is strong running.

its shape has been hidden.

has become usual.

the wings of birds.

this is my tale.

-FROM THE LIBER HYMNORUM MANUSCRIPT

CHARACTERS

(A PARTIAL LlSTlNG)

The Anglcyn

Aeldred, son of Gademar, King of the Anglcyn Elswith, his queen

Athelbert

Judit his children

Kendra

Gareth

Osbert, son of Cuthwulf, Aeldred's chamberlain

Burgred, Earl of Denferth

The Erlings

Thorkell Einarson, "Red Thorkell," exiled from Rabady Isle

Frigga, his wife, daughter of Skadi

Bern Thorkellson, his son

Siv. Athira, his daughters

Iord, seer of Rabady, at the women's compound

Anrid, a woman serving at the compound

Halldr Thinshank, once governor of Rabady Isle, deceased

Sturla Ulfarson "Sturla One-hand," governor of Rabady

Gurd Thollson

Brand Leofson

Carsten Friddson Jormsvik mercenaries

Garr Hoddson

Guthrum Skallson

Thira, a prostitute in Jormsvik

Kjarten Vidurson, ruling in Hlegest

Siggur Volganson, "the Volgan," deceased

Mikkel Ragnarson his grandsons

Ivarr Ragnarson

Ingemar Svidrirson, of Erlond, paying tribute to King Aeldred Hakon

Ingemarson, his son

The Cyngael

Ceinion of Llywerth, high cleric of the Cyngael, "Cingalus"

Dai ab Owyn, heir to Prince Owyn of Cadyr

Alun ab Owyn, his brother

Gryffeth ap Ludh, their cousin

Brynn ap Hywll, of Brynnfell in Arberth (and other residences), "Erling's

Bane"

Enid, his wife

Rhiannon mer Brynn, his daughter

Helda, Rania, Eirin, Rhiannon's women

Siawn, leader of Brynn's fighting band

Other

Firaz ibn Bakir, merchant of Fezana, in the Khalifate of Al-Rassan

ONE

A horse, he came to understand, was missing. Until it was found

nothing could proceed. The island marketplace was crowded on this grey

morning in spring. Large, armed, bearded men were very much present, but

they were not here for trade. Not today. The market would not open, no

matter how appealing the goods on a ship from the south might be.

He had arrived, clearly, at the wrong time.

Firaz ibn Bakir, merchant of Fezana, deliberately embodying in his

brightly coloured silks (not nearly warm enough in the cutting wind) the

glorious Khalifate of Al-Rassan, could not help but see this delay as yet

another trial imposed upon him for transgressions in a less than virtuous life.

It was hard for a merchant to live virtuously. Partners demanded

profit, and profit was difficult to come by if one piously ignored the needs—

and opportunities—of the world of the flesh. The asceticism of a desert zealot

was not, ibn Bakir had long since decided, for him.

At the same time, it would be entirely unfair to suggest that he lived a

life of idleness and comfort. He had just endured (with such composure as

Ashar and the holy stars had granted him) three storms on the very long sea

journey north and then east, afflicted, as always at sea, by a stomach that

heaved like the waves, and with the roundship handled precariously by a

continuously drunken captain. Drinking was a profanation of the laws of

Ashar, of course, but in this matter ibn Bakir was not, lamentably, in a

position to take a vigorous moral stand.

Vigour had been quite absent from him on the journey, in any case.

It was said among the Asharites, both in the eastern home-lands of

Ammuz and Soriyya, and in Al-Rassan, that the world of men could be divided

into three groups: those living, those dead, and those at sea.

Ibn Bakir had been awake before dawn this morning, praying to the

last stars of the night in thanks for his finally being numbered once more

among those in the blessed first group.

Here in the remote, pagan north, at this wind-scoured island market of

Rabady, he was anxious to begin trading his leather and cloth and spices and

bladed weapons for furs and amber and salt and heavy barrels of dried cod

(to sell in Ferrieres on the way home)—and to take immediate leave of these

barbarian Erlings, who stank of fish and beer and bear grease, who could kill

a man In a bargaining over prices, and who burned their leaders—savages

that they were—on ships among their belongings when they died.

This last, it was explained to him, was what the horse was all about.

Why the funeral rites of Halldr Thinshank, who had governed Rabady until

three nights ago, were currently suspended, to the visible consternation of an

assembled multitude of warriors and traders.

The offence to their gods of oak and thunder, and to the lingering

shade of Halldr (not a benign man in life, and unlikely to be so as a spirit),

was considerable, ibn Bakir was told. Ill omens of the gravest import were to

be assumed. No one wanted an angry, unhoused ghost lingering in a trading

town. The fur-clad, weapon-bearing men in the windy square were worried,

angry, and drunk, pretty much to a man.

The fellow doing the explaining, a bald-headed, ridiculously big Erling

named Ofnir, was known to ibn Bakir from two previous journeys. He had

been useful before, for a fee: the Erlings were ignorant, tree-worshipping

pagans, but they had firm ideas about what their services were worth.

Ofnir had spent some years in the east among the Emperor's Karchite

Guard in Sarantium. He had returned home with a little money, a curved

sword in a jewelled scabbard, two prominent scars (one on top of his head),

and an affliction contracted in a brothel near the Sarantine waterfront. Also, a

decent grasp of that difficult eastern tongue. In addition—usefully—he'd

mastered sufficient words in ibn Bakir's own Asharite to function as an

interpreter for the handful of southern merchants foolhardy enough to sail

along rocky coastlines fighting a lee shore, and then east into the frigid,

choppy waters of these northern seas to trade with the barbarians.

The Erlings were raiders and pirates, ravaging in their long-ships all

through these lands and waters and—increasinglydown south. But even

pirates could be seduced by the lure of trade, and Firaz ibn Bakir (and his

partners) had reaped profit from that truth. Enough so to have him back now

for a third time, standing in a knife-like wind on a bitter morning, waiting for

them to get on with burning Halldr Thinshank on a boat with his weapons

and armour and his best household goods and wooden images of the gods

and one of his slave girls . . . and a horse.

A pale grey horse, a beauty, Halldr's favourite, and missing. On a very

small island.

Ibn Bakir looked around. A sweeping gaze from the town square could

almost encompass Rabady. The harbour, a stony beach, with a score of Erling

ships and his own large roundship from the south—the first one in, which

ought

to have been splendid news. This town, sheltering several hundred

souls perhaps, was deemed an important market in the northlands, a fact

that brought private amusement to the merchant from Fezana, a man who

had been received by the khalif in Cartada, who had walked in the gardens

and heard the music of the fountains there.

No fountains here. Beyond the stockade walls and the ditch

surrounding them, a quilting of stony farmland could be seen, then livestock

grazing, then forest. Beyond the pine woods, he knew, the sea swept round

again, with the rocky mainland of Vinmark across the strait. More farms

there, fisher-villages along the coast, then emptiness: mountains and trees

for a very long way, to the places where the reindeer ran (they said) in herds

that could not be numbered, and the men who lived among them wore

antlers themselves to hunt, and practised magics with blood in the winter

nights.

Ibn Bakir had written these stories down during his last long journey

home, had told them to the khalif at an audience in Cartada, presented his

writings along with gifts of fur and amber. He'd been given gifts in return: a

necklace, an ornamental dagger. His name was known in Cartada now.

It occurred to him that it might be useful to observe and chronicle this

funeral—if the accursed rites ever began.

He shivered. It was cold in the blustering wind. An untidy dump of

men made their way towards him, tacking across the square as if they were

on a ship together. One man stumbled and bumped another; the second one

swore, pushed back, put a hand to his axe. A third intervened, and took a

punch to the shoulder for his pains. He ignored it like an insect bite. Another

big man. They were all, ibn Bakir thought sorrowfully, big men.

It came to him, belatedly, that this was not really a good time to be a

stranger on Rabady Isle, with the governor (they used an Erling word, but it

meant, as best ibn Bakir could tell, something very like a governor) dead and

his funeral rites marred by a mysteriously missing animal. Suspicions might

fall.

As the group approached, he spread his hands, palms up, and brought

them together in front of him. He bowed formally. someone laughed.

Someone stopped directly in front of him, reached out, unsteadily, and

fingered the pale yellow silk of ibn Bakir's tunics, leaving a smear of grease.

Ofnir, his interpreter, said something in their language and the others

laughed again. Ibn Bakir, alert now, believed he detected an easing of

tension. He had no idea what he'd do if he was wrong.

The considerable profit you could make from trading with barbarians

bore a direct relation to the dangers of the journey—and the risks were not

only at sea. He was the youngest partner, investing less than the others,

earning his share by being the one who travelled . . . by allowing thick,

rancid-smelling barbarian fingers to tug at his clothing while he smiled and

bowed and silently counted the hours and days till the roundship might leave,

its hold emptied and refilled.

"They say," Ofnir spoke slowly, in the loud voice one used with the

simple-minded, "it is now known who take Halldr horse." His breath, very

close to ibn Bakir, smelled of herring and beer.

His tidings, however, were entirely sweet. It meant they didn't think

the trader from Al-Rassan, the stranger, had anything to do with it. Ibn Bakir

had been dubious about his ability, with two dozen words in their tongue and

Ofnir's tenuous skills, to make the obvious point that he'd just arrived the

afternoon before and had no earthly (or other) reason to impede local rites

by stealing a horse. These were not men currently in a condition to assess

cogency of argument.

"Who did it?" Ibn Bakir was only mildly curious.

"Servant to Halldr. Sold to him. Father make wrong killing. Sent away.

Son have no right family now."

Lack of family appeared to be an explanation for theft here, ibn Bakir

thought wryly. That seemed to be what Ofnir was conveying. He knew

someone back home who would find this diverting over a glass of good wine.

"So he took the horse? Where? Into the woods?" Ibn Bakir gestured at

the pines beyond the fields.

Ofnir shrugged. He pointed out into the square. Ibn Bakir saw that

men were now mounting horses there—not always smoothly—and riding

towards the open town gate and the plank bridge across the ditch. Others ran

or walked beside them. He heard shouts. Anger, yes, but also something

else: zest, liveliness. The promise of sport.

"He will soon found," Ofnir said, in what passed here in the northlands

for Asharite.

Ibn Bakir nodded. He watched two men gallop past. One screamed

suddenly as he passed and swung his axe in vicious, whistling circles over his

head, for no evident reason.

"What will they do to him?" he asked, not caring very much. Ofnir

snorted. Spoke quickly in Erling to the others, evidently repeating the

question.

There was a burst of laughter. One of them, in an effusion of good

humour, punched ibn Bakir on the shoulder.

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======================Notes:ThisbookwasscannedbyMoneyforBloodIfyoucorrectanyminorerrors,pleasechangetheversionnumberbelow(andinthefilename)toaslightlyhigheronee.g.from1.0to1.1orifmajorrevisions,tov.2.0etc..Currente-bookversionis1.0(formattingerrorshavebeencorrected(forthemostpart,wasagoodscan);semip...

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