Katherine Kerr - Deverry 04 - Dragonspell

Dragonspell

The Southern Sea

The fool sees peaks rising above the

water and says, ‘Look, many islands1’

The wise man knows that all are connected

under the Southern Sea

The Secret Book ofCadwallon the Druid

KATHARINE KERR

GRAFTON BOOKS

A Division of the Collins Publishing Group

LONDON GLASGOW TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND

Grafton Books

A Division of the Collins Publishing Group 8 Grafton Street, London W1X 3LA

Published by Grafton Books 1990

This novel is published in the United States of America

under the title The Dragon Revenant

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0-246-13558-1 ISBN 0-246-13637-5 (Pb)

Photoset by Deltatype Ltd, Ellcsmere Port, Cheshire

Printed in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, Glasgow

transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

without the poor permission of the publisher.

In memory of Howard ‘Jake’ Jacobsen

1934-1988 He is, and will be, sorely missed.

Note on the Series

Over the past few years, readers have asked me various questions about the Deverry series. Usually

these questions are asked in noisy rooms at conventions where no one can really hear the answers, but

now my publishers have kindly given me a chance to answer some of them in print, where it’s always

quiet. The two things you all most want to have clarified, it seems, are the kind of magic the characters

use and the way I’ve organized the books.

Deverry dweomer is very loosely based on the ‘real magic’ of the Western tradition, a field of study

that can best be defined, perhaps, through its history. First, though, let me define one thing that magic

isn’t, popular belief and oft-repeated cliches to the contrary. Magic is most emphatically not a substitute

for technology nor is it the equivalent of technology. No more will the true magician study it only for

personal gain. As a very wise man recently defined it, ‘Magic is the art of producing changes in

consciousness at will and of using these changes to expand the consciousness of all humanity.’ Notice the

emphasis on consciousness here. This is not to say that magic never produces any effects in the so-called

‘real’ or physical world - quite the contrary -simply that in true magic, consciousness is always central

and these physical effects secondary. In Deverry, since I’m writing adventure stories first and foremost,

the physical effects are quite spectacular, but this is one reason that I say the magic is very loosely based

upon the Western tradition.

What is this tradition, then? Over the past two thousand years, thanks to the invective of the various

churches and more recently of the scientific community, magic has had to lie hidden in the West,

practised in secret, persecuted in public whenever the inquisitors got wind of it, and because of that

persecution what should be an organized body of philosophical thought and spiritual practice has become

maimed and garbled, conflated in the popular mind with superstition, devil worship, and the tricks and

silly stories of con men and hucksters. In Asia, where no one organized religion ever got the whip hand

over the soul of humanity, the situation is different. Most of you know about ioga, for instance, a truly

spiritual discipline reaching back thousands of years, or have heard about the monastic life of Buddhism

and the intense spiritual insights and powers that its devotees attain after years of meditation. Western

magic should have been no less.

Let me say here that when I talk about Europe and Asia, I don’t mean to deny the existence of the

native spriritual systems of Africa and the Americas. I simply don’t know enough about them to discuss

them intelligently. The roots of all these spiritual disciplines, however, including what should have been the

European, probably lie in some common ground: the developing shamanism of Palaeolithic hunters some

fifteen thousand years ago, or maybe even further back than that-I doubt very much that anyone will ever

know, and you should all be extremely sceptical of anyone who says they do, particularly if these claims

involve flying saucers, the lost continent of Atlantis, or other such sensational plot elements. What we do

know is that by the time the art of writing was slowly spreading through the Eurasian continent, round

about 2000 BC or so, shamanism had developed into a vast variety of spiritual practices, which in Asia

had the good fortune to become firmly woven into the religious life of their cultures.

In Europe, Mediterranean Africa and the Middle East these spiritual disciplines flourished only until

the spread of monotheism. We know their remnants as pagan mystery cults, such as those of Eleusis; we

see fragments in Hellenized Egyptian religions such as the worship of Isis; we have a handful of texts of

the Gnostic mystery schools, some Christianized, others not, that have miraculously survived the

organized persecutions and suppressions of the Orthodox, whether Christian or Moslem, of later years.

But what we have are, by and large, hardy fragments of root left from a mangled plant, cut down before

its full flowering by the sort of priest who put his temporal power above the spiritual health of his flock.

The one true magical system we do have is the Jewish cabbala, kept alive by a people of enormous

courage in the face of slander and persecution. In those dark years, Judaism was the only major Western

religion to realize that different kinds of souls have different needs, that there will always be some who

want to know and to experience the truth for themselves and who are willing to leave safe territory

behind to do so. Those of us who believe the same owe it and its people a huge debt.

There is no space here to give the convoluted history of the various magicians and alchemists,

Christian cabbalists and Rosicrucians, to say nothing of the Sufis on the Moslem side of the equation,

who struggled to keep Western magic alive during the last eighteen hundred years or so. (If you’re

interested, you can find books by the historian Frances Yates in any good public library.) That they

succeeded at all is amazing enough; to point out that a lot of strange weeds took root and grew in the

field cleared but never sown with proper seed seems unfair, but not everyone who claimed to be a

follower of the true path was one. And of course the lies and slanders continued and still continue: that

magic damns you or drives you insane, that witches worship the devil, and, most recently, that magic is

nothing but New Age occult-babble on the one hand or illusion and fraud on the other. As readers, you’ll

all have to make up your own minds on the truth of these things. It should be clear enough by now where

I stand.

As for the structure of the Deverry books, a lot of people have muttered, either to themselves or

directly to me, ‘Why do you use all those damn flashbacks?’ Well, there is in this world more than one

way of organizing a story - or a body of factual information, for that matter. The ‘start at the beginning

and go through to the end1 principle that we’ve all been raised with dates back to classical Greek

thought as transmitted by the Romans, and, as part of Aristotelian logic, it forms the basis of modern

science and the scientific world-view (though one that modern physics is beginning to undermine). In this

way of looking at the world, Time’s arrow flies straight and in one direction only. The magical tradition,

however, teaches that you don’t necessarily have to move in a straight line to reach your destination.

Classical writers like Diodorus Siculus and Polybius state that the Celts who were their

contemporaries believed in reincarnation, among other doctrines that are today part of the magical

tradition. Certainly the art of the Gauls and the later flowering of Celtic art in the early Christian era are

clear enough evidence that here is a people who organized information in a non-classical, non-Aristotelian

manner. Since I’m writing about ancient Celts, after all, I’ve borrowed their way of looking at the world,

too, in the loops and spirals of my story line as it laces between and laces up the various lifetimes of the

characters. I promise, on the gods of my people if you like, that I do have a plan in mind, even if it isn’t a

linear one, and I honestly do think that if you try to see it as it unfolds, you’ll get some small reward, even

if it’s only a taste of what it means to think in a non-linear manner. If you’ve never seen any Celtic art, the

flowing spirals and triskelia of the Gauls, the beautiful lacings and braidings of the Irish monks, by all

means do yourself a favour and browse through a book about them in a library or bookshop. My own

small craft is, I promise you, nothing compared to theirs.

Acknowledgements

For my translations from the Llywarch Hen corpus I used Patrick Ford’s edition of the text in his The

Poetry of Llywarch Hen, University of California Press, 1974. Since I was also swayed by his arguments

in the introduction to that edition, 1 have translated ‘hen’ in this context as ‘the ancestor’. Any errors in

these translations are of course mine alone, as are such minor acts of magic as my turning winter into

summer for the epilogue’s epigraph.

My special thanks go to:

John Boothe of Grafton Books for his support of and enthusiasm for this

entire project.

Judith Tarr for sage advice and encouragement at the line of battle. Eva, Jean, Linda, and Elaine of

Future Fantasy Books in Palo Alto,

California, for backing my books early on and for running a splendid

bookshop. And as always, my husband, Howard Kerr, for everything.

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.

0 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.

1 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 on the Greek rather than the Roman model. On the whole, it works

quite well for the Bardekian, at least. As for Elvish, in a work of this sort it would be ridiculous to resort

to the elaborate apparatus by which scholars attempt to transcribe that most subtle and nuanced of

tongues. Since the human ear cannot even distinguish between such sound-pairings as B> and <B, I see

no reason to confuse the human eye with them. I do owe many thanks to the various elven native

speakers who have suggested which consonant to choose in confusing cases and who have laboured,

alas often in vain, to refine my ear to the elven vowel system.

PROLOGUE

Eldidd, 1063

Alaf yn ail; mail am lad;

Llithredawr llyry; lion cawad,

A dwfn rhyd; berwyd bryd brad.

Cows in the byre, beer in the bowl.

Rain floods the fierce-flowing ford

And slick paths. A soul stews over treason.

Llywarch the Ancestor

Even though dark clouds hung close to earth all day in what might have been either a heavy fog or an

outright drizzle, out in the sacred grove beyond the city walls of Aberwyn the ancient oaks glowed with a

light of their own, the autumnal splendour of their scarlet and gold leaves. A few sparks of that flame had

fluttered down to lie in the muddy grave like golden offerings to match the grave goods already in place,

jars and ewers of mead and oil, loaves of bread, a fine sword in a gilded scabbard, pottery statues of the

gwerbret’s favourite horses, all set around the wicker-work chariot. Although Deverry men had stopped

fighting from chariots some thousand years earlier, their memory persisted as a thing belonging to heroes,

and great men were buried in them, but lying down, unlike their ancestors, who were sometimes propped

up in a parody of action that seemed indecent to Deverrian minds.

Lovyan, Tieryn Dun Gwerbyn, regent to the gwerbretrhyn of Aberwyn, stood at the edge of the grave

and watched the shaven-headed priests of Bel clambering around in the mud as they laid the body of

Rhys Maelwaedd, her eldest son, down for his last rest. By then the rituals were long over, and most of

the huge crowd of mourners gone, but she lingered, unable to cry or keen, weary to the very heart, as

they arranged his fine plaid, the silver, blue, and green of Aberwyn, around him. Once they began to fill in

the grave, she would leave, she decided. She had watched wet earth fall on the faces of other men she

had loved, her husband, her second son Aedry, the third son dead in childbirth that they’d never even

named; she had no need to watch it again.

Beside her Nevyn laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. A tall man, with a shock of white hair and

piercing blue eyes, he had skin as wrinkled as one of the fallen leaves and hands spotted all over from

age, but he stood as straight and walked as vigorously as a young warrior. Although everyone who knew

him considered his energy a marvel, Lovyan was one of the few who knew the truth, that he owed it to

the dweomer of light, because he was one of the greatest sorcerers who had ever lived in Deverry. Just

lately he had come into her service as a councillor, but in truth, she assumed, she was the one who was

serving his particular ends. It mattered not to her, because not only did she trust him, but their particular

goals were, for the moment at least, the same.

‘It’s cold out here, Your Grace,’ he said, his voice soft with sympathy.

‘I’m well aware of that, my thanks. We’ll be leaving soon.’

The priests were fastening the enormous golden ring-brooch to the plaid and clasping it closed around

the dead gwerbret’s neck. She looked away and saw two men pushing a slab of stone, balanced on a

hand-cart, towards the grave. The epitaph was already carved, an englyn of praise for the ruler of

Aberwyn, lost to a hunting accident, but of course, it never mentioned the true cause of his death: evil

dweomer. She shuddered, remembering the day when they’d ridden out together to fly their hawks.

They’d been calmly trotting down the river road when Rhys’s horse had gone mad, bucking and rearing,

finally falling to crush its rider. Even at the time the accident had seemed inexplicable; later she had

learned that dark dweomermen had caused the horse’s madness and thus had murdered Rhys as surely

as if they’d used a sword. Why? That, no one knew.

The priests climbed out of the grave and signalled to the diggers, leaning on their shovels nearby.

Lovyan blew a kiss at her dead son.

‘Sleep well, little one,’ she whispered, then turned away. ‘Come along, all of you. We’d best get back

to the dun.’

Nevyn took her arm, and the small crowd of pages and serving women fell in behind her as they made

their silent way to the edge of the grove, where her escort was waiting. Twenty-five men of Rhys’s

warband and fifteen of her own stood at respectful attention beside their horses. As she approached, her

captain, Cullyn of Cerrmor, led over her horse, a beautiful golden mare with a silvery mane and tail, and

held it for her as she mounted and adjusted her long dresses and cloak over the sidesaddle.

‘My thanks, captain.’ She took the reins from him, then turned in the saddle to make sure that the rest

of her retinue were ready to ride. ‘Well and good, then. Let’s get back home.’

At the captain’s signal the men mounted, and the procession set off, Lovyan and Nevyn at the head,

her women and pages just behind, and bringing up the rear, the warbands. As they rode up to the high

city walls, the men on duty at the gates snapped to smart attention, but Lovyan barely saw them, so

wrapped in numb grief was she. It’s all been too much, she thought to herself; simply too much to bear.

Yet in her heart she knew that she could indeed bear it, that she would somehow find from somewhere

the strength to see her through the difficult months ahead. Many noblewomen, it seemed, lived lives that

allowed them the luxury of hysterics; they could wallow in fits of weeping, or shut themselves up

dramatically in their chambers and get sympathy from half the kingdom with no one being the worse for it;

she, however, had always had to stifle her griefs and rise above her weaknesses. At times, such as that

moment in the chilly drizzle, she resented it, but even in her resentment she knew that she’d been given

the better bargain by the gods.

As the procession wound through the rain-slick cobbled streets of Aberwyn, the townsfolk came out

of house and shop to pay their respects quite spontaneously to the tieryn, who had been well-liked here

when she’d been the wife of the then gwerbret, Tingyr, before their son Rhys inherited the rhan. Their

heads bared to the drizzle, the men bowed and the women curtsied, and here and there someone called

out ‘Our hearts ache for you, Your Grace’, or ‘Our sorrows go with you’. Lovyan’s heart ached more

for them. Soon, unless she and Nevyn were successful in averting it, war would ravage Aberwyn’s

prosperous streets, and these people would have more to sorrow over than her mourning.

The rank of gwerbret was an odd one in the Deverry scheme of things. Although by Lovyan’s time the

office passed down from father to son, originally, back in the Dawntime, gwerbrets had been elected

magistrates, called ‘vergobretes’ in the old tongue. A remnant of this custom still survived in the Council

of Electors, who met to choose a new gwerbret whenever one died without an heir. Since the rank

brought with it many an honour as well as a fortune in taxes and property, every great clan and a few

optimistic lesser ones as well vied among themselves to be chosen whenever the line of sucession broke,

and more often than not, the contest turned from a thing of bribes and politicking into open war. Once the

Council got to fighting among themselves, the bloodshed could go on for years, because not even the

King could intervene to stop it. Any king who marched in defiance of the laws would find himself with

long years of resentment and rebellion on his hands. The most his highness could do was use his honorary

seat on the Council to urge peace if he were so minded, or to politick along with everyone else for the

candidate he favoured. The latter was the more usual occurrence.

Since Rhys had died childless, the members of the Council were already jockeying for position at the

starting line of this possible horse race. Lovyan knew full well that they were beginning to form half-secret

alliances and to accept gifts and flatteries that were very nearly bribes. She was furious, in a weary sort of

way, for though Rhys had no sons, he did leave a legal heir, one marked with the approval of the King

himself, Rhodry, Rhys’s younger brother and her last-born son. If only Rhodry were home safe in

Aberwyn there would be no need for Council meetings disguised as social visits, but he had been sent

into exile some years before by a fit of his brother’s jealousy and no better cause. Now, with the King’s

own decree of recall published and all Aberwyn waiting for him as heir, he had disappeared, as well and

thoroughly gone as a morning mist by a hot noontide. When the King had made his proclamation of

recall, some days before, his highness had set the term as a year and a day - just a year and a day for

them to find the heir and bring him home. Less than that now, she thought; an eightnight’s almost gone.

Although she was certain that Nevyn knew his whereabouts, the old man was refusing to tell her.

Every time she asked, he put her off, saying that someone was on their way to bring Rhodry back home

and no more. She knew perfectly well that her son was in some grave danger. By trying to spare her

feelings, Nevyn was making her anxiety worse, or so she assumed, thinking that her troubled mind would

no doubt make up worse dangers than her lad was actually in. She suspected that some of those who

coveted Aberwyn had kidnapped him, and she lived in terror that they would kill him before Nevyn’s

mysterious aide could rescue him. If, however, she had known the truth, she would have seen the

wisdom in Nevyn’s silence.

That night the drizzle turned into a full-fledged winter storm, a long howl and slash of rain pounding out

of the south. It was only the first of many, Nevyn knew; the winter promised to be a bad one, and the

Southern Sea impassable for many a long month. In his chamber, high up in the main broch of Aberwyn’s

dun, the shutters strained and banged in their latches, and the candle-lanterns guttered in the draughts.

Although the charcoal brazier was glowing a cherry-red, he put on a heavy wool cloak and arranged the

peaked hood around his neck to ward off the creeping chill. His guest was even more uncomfortable. A

Bardekian, close to seven feet tall and massively built, Elaeno had skin so dark that it was as blue-black

as ink, a colour indicating that he was at home in hot climates, not this damp draughtiness. This particular

night he was muffled up in two cloaks over a pair of linen shirts and some wool brigga that had been

specially sewn to fit him. Even so, he shivered at each gust of wind.

‘How do you barbarians manage to survive in this godforsaken climate?’ Elaeno inched his chair a bit

closer to the brazier.

‘With great difficulty, actually. You should be glad we’re here on the coast, not way up north, say in

Cerrgonney. At least it rarely snows in Eldidd. Up to the north they’ll be over their heads in the stuff in

another month.’

‘You know, I’ve never seen snow. I can’t say I’m pining away from the lack.’

‘It wouldn’t ache my heart if I never saw the nasty stuff again, either. I’m cursed grateful you’d winter

here.’

Katherine Kerr - Deverry 04 - Dragonspell

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: