C. J. Cherryh - The Dreamstone

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THE DREAMSTONE

by C.J. Cherryh

Book One of Ealdwood

Editorial Reviews

Ingram

Journey to a transitional time in the world, as the dawn of mortal man brings about the

downfall of elven magic. But there remains one final place untouched by human hands--

the small forest of Ealdwood, in which dwells Arafel the Sidhe, who has more love of the

earth than any of her kind. This is a moving, compelling tale of the last stronghold of

immortality struggling to survive the rise of man. Ads in "Locus".

Spotlight Reviews

The Dreaming Tree is great!, January 8, 1999

Reviewer

My dad loves C. J. Cherryh books, so he has all these copies of her books. The

dreaming Tree used to be called Arafel's Saga, and I have a copy of that. I've read

the first book The Dreamstone, and now I'm in love with C.J.Cherryh's books! Arafel

is the last of the Dione Sidhe, or elves, who lives in the last part of a magical forest

called Eald, a forest that once covered the entire earth. Everything in this book

centers around Eald, and many magical things happen. Every fantasy lover should

read it!

Fairy tale like..., January 9, 2002

Reviewer

Composed of 2 books, _the Dreamstone_ and the _Tree of Sword and Jewels_

this book has undergone multiple incarnations. Done in a tone similar to McKillips'

_Forgotten Beasts of Eld_ the story has a certain richness that is perfectly contained

in two volumes. The characters probably could have used more detailed development

but that is a minor quibble.

It is definitely NOT for those who like fast pacing and detailed descriptions of

battle so, the traditional sword and sorcery junkie will be left dissatisfied. On the

other hand, for those who like a little more depth to their fantasy suffused with a

certain melancholy then this book is for you.

I read this book when I was much younger and found it a bit slow, but after

some time have picked it back up and now can appreciate it better. It is slow but

worth the read nonetheless. Besides, how can one resist a book where Death is an

actual character with his own motives and affections?

Anyway, if you are into slow melancholy toned Celtic fantasy than this is for

you. Otherwise, you maybe disappointed in this work in which wizards, gory battle

scenes and ludicrous love moments are absent.

All Customer Reviews

Hauntingly Atmospheric Fantasy, December 19, 2002

Reviewer

This novel is unlike any of the other fantasy books I have read- and I have read

several hundred. I have read it a half dozen times, and I'm sure I will do so again.

Rather than give plot spoilers- because spoilers are really what they would be- I'd

like to make some more general remarks.

This book conveys a sense of the tragic and the melancholy missing from the

normal sword-and-sorcery affairs. (Elves have /never/ been handled better.) Cherryh

makes an atmosphere that is nearly palpable, and subtly and lightly sketches the

characters and their cares. The shifts of narrative pacing serve to place the

importance where it ought to be, and the deft handling of scene and dialog allows

the characters to express themselves without hammering the reader over the head

with self-exposition and historical monologues. The overall affect is like that of a

dream, or a beautiful tale you once heard- and all of this is only heightened by

Cherryh's research and careful treatment of Celtic/Welsh folklore and language.

Perhaps most remarkable, she has made in one volume a fantasy which most other

authors would have felt the need to butcher over eight and who still would have been

unable to equal let alone approach this effort.

Elven folklore mixed with ancient Celtic realism and fantasy,

April 7, 2002

Reviewer

Though I am not a fan of most of her work, Cherryh's "The Dreaming Tree"

duology captured my heart as an adult like nothing since some of Orson Scott Card's

work when I was in college. It's a rare fantasy book that sticks close to the harsh

realities of ancient Celtic life, mixed with Elven folklore and narrative surprises

(namely, that as the point of view moves to the elf, time rushes by so that human

characters have suddenly died and theirs war long over and we're moving on to their

descendents' lives and their wars and intrigues), expertly done. Some have said in

their reviews that there's not enough action. This surprises me. I find most fantasy

novels more build-up than execution, and The Dreaming Tree is an exception.

Because of the way time can suddenly jump ahead, I find a great deal of action

relative to the fantasy norm. The second book is a bit slower in this regard,

admittedly (as it sticks pretty much to one set of characters), but on the whole I

found the content swiftly communicated, highly original, and lacking the usual

fantasy cliches.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

The Gruagach

ONE

Of Fish and Fire

TWO

Beorc’s Steading

THREE

The Harper

FOUR

The Hunting

FIVE

The Hunter

SIX

Setting Forth

SEVEN

Meara

EIGHT

The Luck of Niall Cearbhallain

BOOK TWO

The Sidhe

NINE

Midsummer and Meetings

TEN

Branwyn

ELEVEN

Dun na h-Eoin

TWELVE

The Faring of Ciaran Cuilean

THIRTEEN

The Tree of Stones and Swords

FOURTEEN

Caer Wiell

FIFTEEN

Of Fire and Iron

SIXTEEN

The Paths of Eald

SEVENTEEN

The Summoning of the Sidhe

EIGHTEEN

The Battle before the Gates

NINETEEN

The End of It All

AFTERWORD

On Names

BOOK ONE

The Gruagach

ONE

Of Fish and Fire

Things there are in the world which have never loved Men, which have been in

the world far longer than humankind, so that once when Men were newer on the

earth and the woods were greater, there had been places a Man might walk where

he might feel the age of the world on his shoulders. Forests grew in which the

stillness was so great he could hear stirrings of a life no part of his own. There

were brooks from which the magic had not gone, mountains which sang with

voices, and sometimes a wind touched the back of his neck and lifted the hairs

with the shiver of a presence at which a Man must never turn and stare.

But the noise of Men grew more and more insistent Their trespasses became

more bold. Death had come with them, and the knowledge of good and evil, and

this was a power they had, both to be virtuous and to be blind.

Axes rang. Men built houses, and holds, rooted up stone, felled trees, made

fields where forests had stood from the foundation of the world; and they brought

bleating flocks to guard with dogs that had forgotten they were wolves. Men

changed whatever they set hand to. They wrought their magic on beasts, to make

them dull and patient. They brought fire and the reek of smoke to the dales. They

brought lines and order to the curve of the hills. Most of all they brought the chill

of iron, to sweep away the ancient shadows.

But they took the brightness too. It was inevitable, because that brightness

was measured against that dark. Men piled stone on stone and made warm

homes, and tamed some humbler, quieter things, but the darkest burrowed deep

and the brightest went away, heartbroken.

Save one, whose patience or whose pride was more than all the rest.

So one place, one untouched place in all the world remained, a rather smallish

forest near the sea and near humankind, keeping a time different than elsewhere.

Somewhen this forest had ceased to be a lovely place. Thorns choked it,

beyond its fringe of bracken. Dead trees lay unhewn by any woodman, for none

would venture there. It was a perilous place by day. By night it felt far worse, and

a man did well not to build a fire too neat the aged trees. Things whispered here,

and the trees muttered with the wind and perhaps with other things. Men knew

the place was old, old as the world, and they never made peace with it.

But on a certain night a man was weary, and he had seen very much of horror

and of the world’s hard places, so that a little fire to cook by seemed a very small

hazard against others he had run this day, the matter of a few twigs to cook a bit

to eat.

He had come and gone a great deal on the banks of the river Caerbourne and

in the fringes of this forest, for five whole years. If there were outlaws hereabouts

he knew them all by name. And if there were other dangers he had never met

them, so they failed to frighten him, this night, and on other nights when he had

come this far beneath the aged boughs and heard the rustlings and the

whisperings of the leaves. He made his little fire and cooked his fish and ate it,

which seemed to him like a feast after his famine of recent days. He felt home

again; he felt safe; he looked forward to a bed among the leaves where no two-

legged enemy would be likely to come on him.

But Arafel had noticed him.

She had little interest in the doings of Men in general. Her time and her living

were very much different from the years of humankind, but she had seen this

Man before as he slipped about the margins of her wood. He was deft about it and

did no harm, and he was wary and hard for harm to come to: such a Man never

quite disturbed her peace.

But this night he took a fish from the Caerbourne’s stream and built a fire to

cook it, beneath an ancient oak. And this was far too great a familiarity.

So she came. She stood watching for a while unnoticed in her gray hooded

cloak, in the shadows among the oaks. The Man had had his fish, leaving only the

naked bones in the fire, and now knelt, cherishing the warmth of the tiny flame

and heap of ash, cupping his hands close above it. He was rough-looking, with a

weathered countenance and gray-streaked hair—a lean and weary Man with the

taint of iron about his person, for a sword lay close beside his knee. She had been

apt to anger when she came, but he sat so small and quiet for so tall a Man,

clinging to so small a warmth in the great dark of the wood, that she wondered at

him, how he had come, or why, presuming so much for so little comfort. She was

not the first to come. The shadows moved beyond his little fire and hissed in

indignation. He never seemed to notice, deaf to them and blinded by the light he

clung to.

“You should take more care,” she said.

He snatched at his great sword and came to one knee all in one motion.

“No,” she said quietly, moving forward. “No, I am quite alone coming here. I

saw your fire.”

The sword stayed half-drawn across his knee. He had heard nothing, seen

nothing until now. A gray-mantled figure showed like a trick of moonlight in the

thicket, so dim even the tiny fire might have blinded his eyes, but he had no

excuse at all for his ears. “Who are you?” he asked. “Of An Beag, would you be?”

“No. Of this place. I rarely stir out of it. Put the sword away.”

He was off his balance and not accustomed to that. Why he was sitting still at

all instead of standing sword in hand was not quite clear to him, only that there

had never seemed a moment of clear decision since the stranger started speaking.

The voice was smooth and fair. He could not get the timbre of it in his mind,

whether it was young or old or what it was even when it was just dying in the air,

no more than he could make out the figure in the dark, but he found he had slid

the sword back into its sheath, not having clearly decided to put it back at all. His

hands were cold. “Share if you like,” he said, with a motion toward the fire. “The

warmth, at least. If it’s food you want, catch your own. I’ve eaten all I had.”

“I have no need.” The stranger came nearer, so silently no leaf whispered, and

settled at the side of the tiny clearing on the dead log that fended the wind from

his fire. “What would your name be?”

“Give me yours,” he said.

“I have many.”

Little by little the chill of the ground had come creeping up to him, and now

the fire between them seemed all too dun and small. “And what would one of

them be?” he asked, because he was always a man to want answers even when

they were ill.

“I have marked your coming and going hereabouts.” The answer came so still

and soft the rustle of a leaf might have overcome it. “Other things have seen you,

do you not know? Your step was always soft and quick until tonight; but now you

settle in to stay—is that your hope? No, I think not. I do think not. You are wiser

than that.”

She saw the hardness of his face as he stared at her. It was a face which might

well have been fair once, but years and scars had marred it; and sun and wind

had weathered it, so that it was fit for the rest of him, with ragged hair and ragged

clothes and dark, hopeless eyes. As for him, there was no knowing what he saw of

her: Men saw what they pleased to see, often as not. Perhaps to him she was some

outlaw like himself or some great mail-clad warrior from over the river. His hand

never let go the sword.

“Why do you come?” she asked him last

“For shelter.”

“What, in

wood?”

“Then I will leave your wood, as quickly as I may.”

“There is harm outside this circle—No, it would not be well to look just now.

As for the fish and the fire, both are costly. And what will you offer me for them?”

He gave no answer. If there was any wealth he had besides the sword itself she

could not tell it. And that he did not offer.

“What,” she said, “nothing?”

“What will you have?” he asked.

“Truth. For the fish and the fire tell me truly what you do in my woods.”

“I live.”

“No more than that? It seems to be a hard living. There’s a sorrow about you,

Man. Is there ever joy?”

This was baiting. The Man felt it, and felt his weariness hovering over him like

urging sleep. There was peril in that sleep, and that he also knew. He set the cap

of his sheathed sword on the ground and leaned heavily on it, looking at the

stranger, trying to look more closely, but his sight seemed to dim whenever he

looked hardest, and some fold of the cloak was always casting a shifting shadow

just where he looked, so that he could see nothing that was beneath it. He knew

beyond a doubt that he had met one of the fair folk, and he knew it though the

moment was moonbeams and shadows and something his eyes refused to see. He

had never expected such a meeting in his life, being occupied with his own

business, but he knew it when it was on him and understood his danger, that the

fair folk were fell and deadly with trespassers, and given to dark mischief. But

perhaps it was part of the binding on him that he felt no reticence at all with this

stranger, as if it were the last night of the world and the last friend had come to

listen. “I have come here,” he said, “sometimes. It seemed safe. I brought no

enemy here. An Beag would never follow.”

“Why do they hunt you?”

“I am a King’s man.”

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摘要：

THEDREAMSTONEbyC.J.CherryhBookOneofEaldwoodEditorialReviewsIngramJourneytoatransitionaltimeintheworld,asthedawnofmortalmanbringsaboutthedownfallofelvenmagic.Butthereremainsonefinalplaceuntouchedbyhumanhands--thesmallforestofEaldwood,inwhichdwellsArafeltheSidhe,whohasmoreloveoftheearththananyofherkin...

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