Days of Blood and Fire
ANGWIDD (Dev.) Unexplored, unknown.
ASTRAL The plane of existence directly “above” or “within” the etheric (q.v.). In other systems of magic, often referred to as the Akashic Record or the Treasure House of Images.
AURA The field of electromagnetic energy that permeates and emanates from every living being.
AVER (Dev.) A river.
BARA (Elv.) An enclitic that indicates that the preceding adjective in an Elvish agglutinated word is the name of the element following the enclitic, as can + bara + melim = Rough River, (rough + name marker + river.)
BEL (Dev.) The chief god of the Deverry pantheon.
BEL (Elv.) An enclitic, similar in function to bara, except that it indicates that a preceding verb is the name of the following element in the agglutinated term, as in Darabeldal, Flowing Lake.
BLUE LIGHT Another name for the etheric plane (q.v.).
BODY OF LIGHT An artificial thought-form (q.v.) constructed by a dweomermaster to allow him or her to travel through the inner planes of existence.
BRIGGA (Dev.) Loose wool trousers worn by men and boys.
BRIGHT COURT, DARK COURT I’ve chosen these terms for the traditional divide between the groups of Fair Folk rather than using Seelie and Unseelie Court, names that are localized in our own world to Scotland.
BROCH (Dev.) A squat tower in which people live. Originally, in the homeland, these towers had one big fireplace in the center of the ground floor and a number of booths or tiny roomlets up the sides, but by the time of our narrative, this ancient style has given way to regular floor with hearths and chimneys on either side of the structure.
CADVRIDOC (Dev.) A warleader. Not a general in the modern sense, the cadvridoc is supposed to take the advice and counsel of the noble-born lords under him, but his is the right of final decision.
CAPTAIN (trans, of the Dev. pendaely) The second in command, after the lord himself, of a noble’s warband. An interesting point is that the word taely (the root or unmutated form of -daely,) can mean either a warband or a family depending on context.
CWM (Dev.) A valley.
DAL (Elv.) A lake.
DUN (Dev.) A fort.
DWEOMER (trans, of Dev. dwunddaevad) In its strict sense, a system of magic aimed at personal enlightenment through harmony with the natural universe in all its planes and manifestations; in the popular sense, magic, sorcery.
ELVES I have chosen this common name for the people the Deverrians call Elcyion Lacar (literally, the “bright spirits,” or “Bright Fey”). They are also known as the Westfolk among men and dwarves, though the Dwarvish name for the race is Carx Taen. To the Gel da’Thae they are the Children of the Gods, Graekaebi Zo Uhmveo, while they call themselves, quite simply, Impar, the People.
ENSORCEL To produce an effect similar to hypnosis by direct manipulation of a person’s aura. (True hypnosis manipulates the victim’s consciousness only and thus is more easily resisted.)
ETHERIC The plane of existence directly “above” the physical. With its magnetic substance and currents, it holds physical matter in an invisible matrix and is the true source of what we call “life.”
ETHERIC DOUBLE The true being of a person, the electromagnetic structure that holds the body together and that is the actual seat of consciousness.
GEIS, GEAS A taboo, usually a prohibition against doing something. Breaking geis results in ritual pollution and the disfavor if not active enmity of the gods. In societies that truly believe in geis, a person who breaks it usually dies fairly quickly, either of morbid depression or some unconsciously self-inflicted “accident,” unless he or she makes ritual amends.
GEL DA’THAE Also known as the Horsekin, they are a humanoid, naturally psychic race that lives to the north and west of Deverry proper. Their psychic talents manifest mostly as an enormous empathy with animals. To the elves they are the Meradan (lit. demons) or Hordes, because they destroyed the elven civilization of the far western mountains in ages past.
GEOMANCY A system of divination, codified during the late Middle Ages, involving the element of earth. The names of the figures used in this book having the following meanings: Rubeus, the Red One; Puer, the Boy; Amissio, Loss; Puella, the Girl; Via, the Road; Career, the Prison; Caput Draconis, the Dragon’s Head.
GREAT ONES Spirits, once human but now disincarnate, who exist on an unknowably high plane of existence and who have dedicated themselves to the eventual enlightenment of all sentient beings. They are also known to the Buddhists, as Bodhisattvas.
GWERBRET (Dev. The name derives from the Gaulish vergobretes.) The highest rank of nobility below the royal family itself. Gwerbrets (Dev. gwerbretion) function as the chief magistrates of their regions, and even kings hesitate to override their decisions because of their many ancient prerogatives.
HOB A male ferret. The females are called “jills,” though for obvious reasons I’ve chosen not to use the term.
LWDD (Dev.) A blood-price; differs from wergild in that the amount of lwdd is negotiable in some circumstances rather than being irrevocably set by law.
MALOVER (Dev.) A full, formal court of law with both a priest of Bel and either a gwerbret or a tieryn in attendance.
MAZRAK (Gel.) A shape-changer. A magician who can turn him or herself into animal form and back again at will.
MELIM (Elv.) A river.
MOR (Dev.) A sea, ocean.
PECL (Dev.) Far, distant.
RHAN (Dev.) A political unit of land; thus, gwerbretrhyn, tierynrhyn, the area under the control of a given gwerbret or tieryn. The size of the various rhans (Dev. rhannau) varies widely, depending on the vagaries of inheritance and the fortunes of war rather than some legal definition.
SCRYING The art of seeing distant people and places by magic.
SIGIL An abstract magical figure, usually representing either a particular spirit or a particular kind of energy or power. These figures, which look a lot like geometrical scribbles, are derived by various rules from secret magical diagrams.
TAER (Dev.) Land, country.
THOUGHT-FORM An image or three-dimensional form that has been fashioned out of either etheric or astral substance, usually by the action of a trained mind. If enough trained minds work together to build the same thought-form, it will exist independently for a period of time based on the amount of energy put into it. (Putting energy into such a form is known as ensouling the thought-form.) Manifestations of gods or saints are usually thought-forms picked up by the highly intuitive, such as children, or those with a touch of second sight. It is also possible for many untrained minds acting together to make fuzzy, ill-defined thought-forms that can be picked up the same way, such as UFOs and sightings of the Devil.
TIERYN (Dev.) An intermediate rank of the noble-born, below a gwerbret but above an ordinary lord (Dev. arcloedd).
WYRD (trans, of Dev. tingedd) Fate, destiny; the inescapable problems carried over from a sentient being’s last incarnation.
YNIS (Dev.) An island.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KATHARINE KERR spent her childhood in a Great Lakes industrial city and her adolescence in a stereotypical corner of southern California, from whence she fled to the Bay Area just in time to join a number of the various Revolutions then in progress. Upon dropping out of dropping out, she got married and devoted herself to reading as many off-the-wall, obscure, and just plain peculiar books as she could get her hands on. As the logical result of such a life, she has now become a professional story-teller and an amateur skeptic, who regards all True Believers with a jaundiced eye, even those who true-believe in Science.
Kerr is the author of the Deverry series of historical fantasies; Polar City Blues; Resurrection; and the new series, The Dragon Mage, of which The Red Wyvern is the first volume.
A Special Preview of
Days of Air and Darkness
the sequel to
Days of Blood and Fire
by Katharine Kerr
As Rhodry and Arzosah make their way sout
h, Cengarn lies besieged by the Horsekin. Though the city is under Jill’s powerful protection, there are things that even such a consummate master of the dweomer as she cannot prevent. In the following excerpt from Katharine Kerr’s latest novel, Days of Air and Darkness, which starts in the next breath after Days of Blood and Fire, both Jill and the reader encounter for the first time the true scope of the threat she and the city face….
Jill went up to the roof. Although she’d just renewed the dweomer seals that noon, she wanted to check them on the off chance that they’d been breached. She stood in the middle of the roof, faced east, and raised her inner sight to etheric level.
Over and around her the golden dome shimmered unbroken with all its seals of the Elemental Kings still safely in place. Jill turned in a slow circle, studying each seal and segment, but she found not the slightest sign of tampering. Yet danger pricked at her like a touch of ice, a deep stab of dweomer-warning. She sat down cross-legged, because she would have to be in a stable position if she should need to go into a trance, then considered the sky beyond the dome. To her etheric sight it hung silvery and alive, swirling with energy and the darting forms of innumerable Wildfolk. The long beams of light from the setting sun shot through, seemingly as solid as silver rods.
In the midst of all this confusion it was hard to see, yet Jill felt the warning intensify when she peered out to the east. She waited, on guard, until all at once she saw a white mist forming high in the sky. She dropped her sight down, found no trace of the mist on the physical, and brought it back up to the etheric in time to see the opalescent mass billowing outward from some other plane, as if an invisible blacksmith were using a bellows to blow smoke through a crack in the wall of sky. Jill went tense and rose to a kneel. Light-shot and pearly, it sank toward the golden dome in a single cloud.
All at once the cloud cracked open like a tapped egg in a cook’s strong fingers. Out stepped the figure of an enormous woman as calmly as if she were stepping onto solid ground instead of midair. She was dressed like an elven huntress in tight doeskin trousers and a belted tunic, with a quiver of arrows slung at her hip and a bow held loosely in her hands. Her honey-blond hair hung to her waist in swept-back Horsekin fashion, laced with little charms and thongs, but it had to be Alshandra. Like Evandar and indeed most of their race, she preferred to appear in elven form, mostly because those incorporeal beings had no true form of their own. Here on the etheric she shimmered in an aureole of silver light.
Jill forced herself to breathe calmly, slowly, to gather power from the Light and to focus her mind as Alshandra drifted over the apex of the dome and looked down at the seal set there. Jill was expecting this powerful being to banish the thing with ease, and she knew she’d have but a bare moment to set it back before an attack, but Alshandra moved on with a toss of her honey-blond mane. She drifted around the dome widdershins, moving slowly and deliberately, pausing every now and again to study one of the lesser sigils or the seal of a quadrant.
Moving slowly herself, Jill got up and turned to follow her as the Guardian—or so the elves called Alshandra’s and Evandar’s race—made her survey of Cengarn’s magical defenses. She was unsure if Alshandra even saw her until the Guardian stared in her direction and sneered with a curl of her lip before turning away and resuming her slow drift around.
Well and good, then, Jill thought. This gives me a moment to arm myself.
Slowly, casually, glancing around as if she were interested in naught more than the weather, Jill walked over to one of the bundles of arrows, all tipped with good steel points, and slowly crouched down to pick one up. The thong around the oiled hides had soaked up oil. Swearing under her breath, Jill drew her silver dagger and slashed the thong, but the flash of magical metal caught Alshandra’s attention. With a howl of rage the Guardian swung around and rushed over the top of the dome, sliding down to stand facing Jill and just a bit above her. Jill thrust the bundle of arrows up, holding it like a two-handed torch, right through the dome—which, of course, remained unharmed.
With another shriek, this one of pain, Alshandra flung herself backward, but she stopped her inelegant tumble to hover some twenty feet away. The touch of iron, and its magnetism, only worked against her kind at close quarters. For a long moment they faced off, Jill on her side of the dome, Alshandra on hers. Alshandra sneered, tossing her head again, then turned and drifted off through the sky. The mist began to form around her, a few wisps at first, then a streak here, a puff there, until the egg-shaped cloud hung huge in the sky. For a few beats of a heart it drifted, then began to sink earthward and eastward, heading for the red-bannered tents upon the ridge. As it moved, it changed, growing solid and steady, gleaming with the silver touch of real water-drops as it swelled and billowed into fog.
Jill dropped her sight to the physical plane. Sure enough, the mist now hung visible, and every man on town walls and out among the Horsekin camp to the east had seen it, too. In Cengarn the alarum went up—men yelled, temple bells clanged, silver horns blared. Armed men poured out of the dun below Jill’s perch and rushed for the walls. The Horsekin began to cheer, or at least to make a sound that seemed to be their version of cheering. Halfway between a wail and a bark, the sound could perhaps be best written as “Hai! Hai!” over and over. More and more took up the cry; some drew daggers and raised them in salute. Down in the besieging army a vast swell of movement began, as the Kin began turning and surging toward the mist in a roar of their barking cheer.
Out of the mist and some forty feet above the ground Alshandra appeared, hovering in the air, her arms flung high in benediction. The Kin within sight of her began to scream and stamp their feet; the Kin on the other side of the town began to moan, as if they knew what vision was being denied them, but their discipline held and they kept to their posts. Alshandra called out three words in their language, then disappeared as suddenly as she’d come. The Kin began to moan and sway, holding their hands up high in imitation of her gesture.
Yet, nearly forgotten, die mist continued to billow and swell up on the east ridge. It drifted this way and that, touching the tents, then pulling back, until at last it came to rest on a long and level spit of land. Jill could only swear helplessly as out of that mist poured warriors, men of the Horsekin all, rank after rank of them upon their enormous horses, the riders glittering with mail and waving their long swords aloft as their allies below began to cheer again, surging back from the ridge to make room for the muster. All over Cengarn silence fell. No horns, no yells of defiance rang out; only silence as deep as if the very walls held their breath.
On and on the line marched, five abreast, the horses setting down their tufted feet with fine precision as they negotiated the slope and strode down the side of the ridge. Jill lost count quick enough—some hundreds of riders, maybe even a thousand in all, riding into camp, while the sun sank a fair degree lower in the sky, and Cengarn neither spoke nor cursed. At last the final rank reached the flat, but something that was perhaps worse came after: wagons rumbling through laden with supplies, to pull up behind the tents on the ridge, and scrawny packhorses after that, bringing bundles of provisions down to the waiting warriors. At the very end came lowing, bleating herds of frightened animals—cows, sheep, a few goats—chased along by human-looking herdsmen. So. This detachment had been plundering farms. Jill felt sick, wondering where the steadings lay. She could guess that the farm folk were long past her help.
Twilight began to turn the east gray while the sun sank to touch the western horizon. At last, at long last, the final cow and herder came through. The mist blew away, breaking into long tendrils touched pink by the dying light, and disappeared. From the remnants flew one last figure: an enormous raven, circling around the tents once with a flap of its wings, then settling to disappear among them.
“Jill?”
Jill yelped and spun around to find Dallandra standing some feet behind her.
“My apologies!” Dalla said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s all right. Have you been here long?”
“I have. Too long. I saw the whole thing. Jill, answer me honestly, will you? What kind of omens have you received? Are we all doomed?”
“No omens at all. Thing still must hang in some balance.”
Dallandra walked to the edge of the roof and stood looking down. Far below, the town was beginning to come out of its enchantment. A vast susurrus of talk and cursing and tears rose around the hill as, a few at a time, the men began returning to the dun. Most walked head down and silent.
“If Alshandra can bring her men through on the mother of all roads,” Jill said at last, “can’t Evandar help us the same way?”
“I’m sure he could, if he would. To tell you the truth, I’ve been trying to contact him, but I can’t seem to reach his mind.” Dallandra’s voice shook badly. “I hope she hasn’t— well, got the better of him.”
“Could she? I thought he was much the stronger of the pair.”
“Of the pair, truly. But she has allies.”
“I see. But can’t you open roads?”
“Of course, but not on that scale. I can open a gate, like, for a few brief moments, long enough for a few people to slip through. I could never bring in an army or lead the town folk out. And I don’t dare leave you alone for long, anyway. It’ll take more than one dweomermaster to defend Cengarn against”—Dallandra waved her hand in the direction of the tents—“that.”
In the growing darkness they picked their way downstairs, shutting the trap after them. Jill sent Dallandra off to the great hall to talk with the gwerbret and, with luck, reassure him and his men both. She herself went to consult with Meer, the Gel da’Thae bard, who knew lore as valuable as another warband. Although the Gel da’Thae came from the same racial stock as the Horsekin tribes, they were a civilized people, living in the towns they’d made for themselves near the ruins of the elven cities in the Westlands.