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
  

• 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 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 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

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 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 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.