Katherine Kerr - Deverry 03 - Dawnspell.pdf

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THE BRISTLING WOOD
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
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Part One
Deverry and Pyrdon,
833-845
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Part Two
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THE BRISTLING WOOD
Summer,
1065
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Appendices
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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