Katherine Kerr - Deverry 03 - Dawnspell

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THE BRISTLING WOOD
THE BRISTLING WOOD
aka DAWNSPELL
by Katherine Kerr
Book Three of the Chronicles of Deverry
Scanned by Keleios; proofed by Nadie
For the profit of kings, well did he
attack the hosts of the country, the
bristling wood of spears, the grievous
flood of the enemy.
—The Gododdin of Ameirin, Stanza A84
Contents
• A Note on the Pronunciation of Deverry Words
• Prologue: Spring 1065
• Part One
• Deverry and Pyrdon,
833-845
• ONE
• TWO
• THREE
• FOUR
• Part Two
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THE BRISTLING WOOD
• Summer,
1065
• ONE
• TWO
• THREE
• Appendices
• CHARACTERS AND THEIR INCARNATIONS
• GLOSSARY
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
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THE BRISTLING WOOD
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.
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THE BRISTLING WOOD
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 labored, alas often in vain,
to refine my ear to the Elven vowel system.
A Note on Dating:
Year 1 of the Deverry calendar is the founding of the Holy City, or, to be more
accurate, the year that King Bran saw the omen of the white sow that instructed
him where to build his capital. It corresponds roughly to 76 C.E.
Prologue
Spring, 1065
Often those who study the dweomer
complain that it speaks in riddles.
There is a reason for this riddling.
What is it? Well, that happens to be a
riddle of its own.
—The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid
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THE BRISTLING WOOD
Out in the grasslands to the west of the kingdom of Deverry, the concepts of “day”
and “month” had no meaning. The years flowed by, slowly, on the ebb and swell
of the seasons: the harsh rains of winter, when the grass turned a bluish green
and the gray sky hung close to the earth; the spring floods, when the streams
overflowed their banks and pooled around the willows and hazels, pale green
with first leaves; the parching summer, when the grass lay pale gold and all fires
were treacherous; the first soft rains of fall, when wildflowers bloomed briefly in
purple and gold. Driving their herds of horses and flocks of sheep, the People
drifted north in the summer’s heat and south in the winter’s cold, and as they
rode, they marked only the little things: the first stag to lose his antlers, the last
strawberries. Since the gods were always present, traveling with their folk in the
long wandering, they needed no high holidays or special feasts in their honor.
When two or three alarli, the loosely organized traveling groups, happened to
meet, then there was a festival to celebrate the company of friends.
Yet there was one day of the year marked out from all the others: the spring
equinox, which usually signaled the start of the floods. In the high mountains of
the far north, the snows were melting, sending a tide down through the
grasslands, just as another tide, this one of blood, had once swept over them from
the north in the far past. Even though individuals of their race lived some five
hundred years on the average, by now there were none left who’d been present in
those dark years, but the People remembered. They made sure that their children
would always remember on the day of the equinox, when the alarli gathered in
groups of ten or twelve for the Day of Commemoration.
Even though he was eager to ride east to Deverry, Ebañy Salomonderiel would
never have left the elven lands until he’d celebrated this most holy and terrifying
of days. In the company of his father, Devaberiel Silverhand the bard, he rode up
from the seacoast to the joining of the rivers Corapan and Delonderiel, near the
stretch of primeval forest that marked the border of the grasslands. There, as
they’d expected, they found an alardan, or clan. Scattered in the tall grass were
two hundred painted tents, red and purple and blue, while the flocks and herds
grazed peacefully a little distance away. A little apart from the rest stood ten
unpainted tents, crudely stitched together from poorly tanned hides.
“By the Dark Sun herself,” Devaberiel remarked. “It looks like some of the Forest
Folk have come to join us.”
“Good. It’s time they got over their fear of their own kind.”
Devaberiel nodded in agreement. He was an exceptionally handsome man, with
hair pale as moonlight, deep-set dark blue eyes, slit vertically like a cat’s, and
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gracefully long pointed ears. Although Ebañy had inherited the pale hair, in other
ways he took after his mother’s human folk; his smoky gray eyes had round irises,
and his ears, while slightly sharp, passed unnoticed in the lands of men. They
rode on, leading their eight horses, two of which dragged travois, loaded with
everything they owned. Since Devaberiel was a bard and Ebañy, a gerthddyn—
that is, a storyteller and minstrel—they didn’t need large herds to support
themselves. As they rode up to the tents, the People ran out to greet them, hailing
the bard and vying for the honor of feeding him and his son.
They chose to pitch the ruby-red tent near that of Tanidario, a woman who was
an old friend of the bard’s. Although she’d often given his father advice and help
as he raised his half-breed son alone, Ebañy found it hard to think of her as a
mother. Unlike his own mother back in Eldidd, whom he vaguely remembered as
soft, pale, and cuddly, Tanidario was a hunter, a hard-muscled woman who stood
six feet tall and arrow-straight, with jet-black hair that hung in one tight braid to
her waist. Yet when she greeted him, she kissed his cheek, caught his shoulders,
and held him a bit away while she smiled as if to say how much he’d grown.
“I’ll wager you’re looking forward to the spring hunt,” he said.
“I certainly am, little one. I’ve been making friends with the Forest Folk, and
they’ve offered to show me how to hunt with a spear in the deep woods. I’m
looking forward to the challenge.”
Ebañy merely smiled.
“I know you,” Tanidario said with a laugh. “Your idea of hunting is finding a soft
bed with a pretty lass in it. Well, maybe when you’re fully grown, you’ll see things
more clearly.”
“I happen to be seventy-four this spring.”
“A mere child.” She tousled his hair with a callused hand. “Well, come along. The
gathering’s already beginning. Where’s your father gotten himself to?”
“He went with the other bards. He’ll be singing right after the Retelling.”
Down by the river, some of the People had lashed together a rough platform out
of travois poles, where Devaberiel stood conferring with four other bards. All
around it the crowd spread out, the adults sitting cross-legged in the grass while
restless children wandered around. Ebañy and Tanidario sat on the edge near a
little group of Forest Folk. Although they looked like the other elves, they were
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dressed in rough leather clothes, and each man carried a small notched stick,
bound with feathers and colored thread, which were considered magical among
their kind. Although they normally lived in the dense forests to the north, at
times they drifted south to trade with the rest of the People. Since they had never
been truly civilized, the events that they were gathered to remember had spared
them.
Gradually the crowd quieted, and the children sat down by their parents. On the
platform four bards, Devaberiel among them, took their places at the back, arms
crossed over their chests, legs braced a little apart, a solemn honor guard for the
storyteller. Manaver Contariel’s son, the eldest of them all, came forward and
raised his arms high in the air. With a shock, Ebañy realized that this would be
the last year that this bard would retell the story. He was starting to show his age,
his hair white and thin, his face pouched and wrinkled. When one of the People
aged, it meant death was near.
“His father was there at the Burning,” Tanidario whispered.
Ebañy merely nodded his acknowledgment, because Manaver was lowering his
arms.
“We are here to remember.” His highly trained voice seemed to boom out in the
warm stillness.
“To remember,” the crowd sighed back. “To remember the west.”
“We are here to remember the cities, Rinbaladelan of the Fair Towers,
Tanbalapalim of the Wide River, Bravelmelim of the Rainbow Bridges, yea, to
remember the cities, and the towns, and all the marvels of the far, far west. They
have been taken from us, they lie in ruins, where the owls and the foxes prowl,
and weeds and thistles crack the courtyards of the palaces of the Seven Kings.”
The crowd sighed wordlessly, then settled in to listen to the tale that some had
heard five hundred times or more. Even though he was half a Deverry man,
Ebañy felt tears rise in his throat for the lost splendor and the years of peace,
when in the hills and well-watered plains of the far west, the People lived in cities
full of marvels and practiced every art and craft until their works were so perfect
that some claimed them dweomer.
Over a thousand years ago, so long that some doubted when the Burning had
begun, whether it was a thousand and two hundred years or only a thousand and
one, several millions of the People lived under the rule of the Seven Kings in a
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long age of peace. Then the omens began. For five winters the snows fell high; for
five springs, floods swept down the river. In the sixth winter, farmers in the
northern province reported that the wolves seemed to have gone mad, hunting in
big packs and attacking travelers along the road. The sages agreed that the wolves
must have been desperate and starving, and this coupled with the weather meant
famine in the mountains, perhaps even some sort of blight or plague that might
move south. In council the Seven Kings made plans: a fair method of stockpiling
food and distributing it to those in need, a small military levy to deal with the
wolf packs. They also gathered dweomerfolk and sages around them to combat
the threats and to lend their lore to farmers in need. In the sixth spring,
squadrons of royal archers went forth to guard the north, but they thought they
were only hunting wolves.
When the attack came, it broke like an avalanche and buried the archers in
corpses. No one truly knew who the enemies were; they were neither human nor
elvish, but a squat breed like enormous dwarves, dressed in skins, and armed
only with crude spears and axes. For all their poor weapons, their warriors fought
with such enraged ferocity that they seemed not to care whether they lived or
died. There were also thousands of them, and they traveled mounted. When the
sages rushed north with the first reinforcements, they reported that the language
of the Hordes was utterly unknown to them. Half-starved, desperately fleeing
some catastrophe in their homeland, they burned and ravaged and looted as they
came. Since the People had never seen horses before, the attackers had a real
advantage, first of surprise, then of mobility once the elves grew used to the
horrifying beasts. By the time that they realized that horses were even more
vulnerable to arrows than men, the north was lost, and Tanbalapalim a heap of
smoking timbers and cracked stone.
The kings rallied the People and led them to war. After every man and woman
who could loose a bow marched north, for a time the battles held even. Although
the corpse fires burned day and night along the roads, still the invaders marched
in under the smoke. Since he pitied their desperation, King Elamanderiel Sun-
Sworn tried to parley with the leaders and offered them the eastern grasslands
for their own. In answer, they slew his honor guard and ran his head onto a long
spear, which they paraded in front of their men for days. After that, no mercy was
offered. Children marched north with bows to take the places of their fallen
parents, yet still the Hordes came.
By autumn the middle provinces were swept away in a tide of blood. Although
many of the People fell back in a last desperate attempt to hold Rinbaladelan on
the coast, most fled, taking their livestock, rounding up the horses that had given
the invaders such an edge, loading wagons and trekking east to the grasslands
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THE BRISTLING WOOD
that the Hordes despised. Rinbaladelan fought out the winter, then fell in the
spring. More refugees came east, carrying tales the more horrible because so
common. Every clan had had its women raped, its children killed and eaten, its
houses burned down around those too weak to flee. Everyone had seen a temple
defiled, an aqueduct mindlessly toppled, a farm looted then burned instead of
appropriated for some good use. All summer, refugees trickled in—and starved.
They were settled folk, unused to hunting except for sport. When they tried to
plant their hoarded seed grains, the harsh grasslands gave them only stunted
crops. Yet in a way few cared whether they lived another winter or not, because
they were expecting that the enemy would soon follow them east. Some fled into
the forests to seek refuge among the primitive tribes; a few reached what later
became Eldidd; most stayed, waiting for the end.
But the Hordes never came. Slowly the People learned to survive by living off
their flocks and herds while they explored what the grasslands had to offer them.
They ate things—and still did—that would have made the princes of the Vale of
Roses vomit; lizards and snakes, the entrails of deer and antelope as well as the
fine meat, roots and tubers grubbed out wherever they grew. They learned to dry
horse dung to supplement the meager firewood; they abandoned the wagons that
left deep ruts in the grassland that now fed them in its own way. They boiled fish
heads for glues and used tendons for bowstrings as they moved constantly from
one foraging ground to another. Not only did they survive, but children were
born, replacing those killed in flash floods and hunting accidents.
Finally, thirty-two years after the Burning, the last of the Seven Kings, Ranadar of
the High Mountain, found his people again. With the last six archers of the Royal
Guard he rode into an alardan one spring and told how he and his men had lived
among the hills like bandits, taking what vengeance they could for their fallen
country and begging the gods to send more. Now the gods had listened to their
grief. While the Hordes could conquer cities, they had no idea how to rebuild
them. They lived in rough huts among the ruins and tried to plant land they’d
poisoned. Although every ugly member of them wore looted jewels, they let the
sewers fill with muck while they fought over the dwindling spoils. Plague had
broken out among them, diseases of several different kinds, all deadly and swift.
When he spoke of the dying of the Hordes, Ranadar howled aloud with laughter
like a madman, and the People laughed with him.
For a long time there was talk of a return, of letting the plagues do their work,
then slaughtering the last of the Hordes and taking back the shattered kingdom.
For two hundred years, until Ranadar’s death, men gathered nightly around the
campfires to scheme. Every now and then, a few foolhardy young men would ride
back to spy. Even fewer returned, but those who did spoke of general ruin and
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disease still raging. If life in the grasslands hadn’t been so harsh at first, perhaps
an army might have marched west, but every year, there were almost as many
deaths as births. Finally, some four hundred and fifty years after the Burning,
some of the younger men organized a major scouting party to ride to
Rinbaladelan.
“And I was among them, a young man,” Manaver said, his voice near breaking at
the memory. “With twenty friends I rode west, for many a time had I heard my
father speak of Rinbaladelan of the Fair Towers, and I longed to see it, even
though the sight might bring my death. We took many quivers of arrows, for we
expected many a bloody skirmish with the last of the Hordes.” He paused for a
twisted, self-mocking smile. “But they were gone, long dead, and so was
Rinbaladelan. My father had told me of the high temples, covered with silver and
jet; I saw grassy mounds. He told of towers five hundred feet high made of many-
colored stones; I found a broken piece here and there. He told of vast processions
down wide streets; I traced out the grassy tracks. Here and there, I found a stone
hut, cobbled out of the ruins. In some, I found skeletons lying unburied on the
floor, the last of the Hordes.”
The crowd sighed, a grief-torn wind over the grassland. Near the front a little girl
squirmed free of her mother’s lap and stood up.
“Then why didn’t we go back, if they were all dead?” she called out in a clear, high
voice.
Although her mother grabbed her, the rest of the gathering laughed, a
melancholy chuckle at a child’s boldness, a relief after so much tragedy. Manaver
smiled at the little girl.
“Back to what, sweet one?” he said. “The kingdom was dead, a tangle of
overgrowth and ruins. We’d brought our gods to the grasslands, and the
grasslands became our mother. Besides, the men who knew how to lay out fine
cities and smelt iron and work in stone were all dead. Those of us who survived
were mostly farmers, herdsmen, or foresters. What did we know about building
roads and working rare metals?”
Her mouth working in thought, the girl twisted one ankle around the other.
Finally she looked up at the dying bard.
“And will we never go back, then?”
“Well, ‘never’ is a harsh word, and one that you should keep closed in your
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摘要：

THEBRISTLINGWOODTHEBRISTLINGWOODakaDAWNSPELLbyKatherineKerrBookThreeoftheChroniclesofDeverryScannedbyKeleios;proofedbyNadieFortheprofitofkings,welldidheattackthehostsofthecountry,thebristlingwoodofspears,thegrievousfloodoftheenemy.—TheGododdinofAmeirin,StanzaA84Contents·ANoteonthePronunciationofDeve...

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