Tales of King's Blades 02 - Lord of The Fire Lands Read online

  LORD OF THE FIRE LANDS

  A Tale of the King's Blades

  by

  DAVE DUNCAN

  Scanner'S NOTE

  Where ae or oe appears in text as

  ligatured, we have altered it ae or

  oe.

  `ed Print symbol inciator and capital edh

  or eth.

  `ed Print symbol inciator and lower-case edh

  or eth.

  @th Print symbol inciator and capital

  thorn.

  @th Print symbol inciator and lower-case

  thorn.

  If somebody could replace these with their correct symbols I would appreciate it.

  BOOK JACKET INFORMATION

  FANTASY

  "Duncan is an expert at producing

  page-turning adventure."

  Locus

  "SWASHBUCKLING ADVENTURE DOESN'T

  GET MUCH BETTER THAN TH."

  Locus

  A ritual of magical steel thrust through the

  heart binds them to their noble lords for eternity ...

  DAVE DUNCAN'S

  THE KING'S BLADES

  As unwanted, rebellious boys, they found

  refuge in Ironhall ... Years later they

  emerged as the finest swordsmen in the realm--

  THE KING'S BLADES

  Once bound, a Blade's life is no

  longer his own. Only death can break the gilded

  chain of enchantment that binds the bodyguard to the man

  he is sworn to defend. And never in living

  memory has a candidate refused the honor of

  serving his king ... until now.

  Young Wasp never intended to be a rebel.

  Yet, at the sacred ceremony of binding, he

  follows the lead of his friend Raider, and together they

  spurn the wishes of King Ambrose himself. Now

  Raider and Wasp are outlaws hunted by the very

  Blades whose ranks they were a breath away from

  entering, and joined together by a destiny that binds them more

  securely than any knot tradition and sorcery

  might tie. Amid the turmoil their "treachery"

  has inspired, Wasp and Raider must undertake a

  desperate journey into the heart of the dreaded

  Fire Lands. And the outcome of their terrifying

  confrontation with dark truth and darker magic in this

  realm of monsters, ghosts, and half-men will

  ultimately determine the fate of two

  kingdoms.

  "Exceptional. ... Duncan can

  swashbuckle with the best, but his characters feel more

  deeply and think more cleverly than most, making his

  novels, especially this one, suitable

  for a particularly wide readership."

  Publishers Weekly (starred

  Review)

  www.avonbooks.com/eos

  Praise for

  DAVE DUNCAN

  and the

  TALES OF

  THE KING'S BLADES

  "Just the sort of marvelous yarn that lured me

  into reading fantasy."

  Anne McCaffrey

  "A fantasist of most sophisticated

  subtlety."

  Locus

  "Duncan's people are marvelously believable, his

  landscapes deliciously exotic, his

  swordplay breathtaking."

  Publishers Weekly (starred

  Review)

  "The author's unique vision reinfuses the

  genre with freshness and genuine wit."

  Library Journal

  "He explores heroism, betrayal, and

  sacrifice, all within the context of breakneck

  adventure ... But in a Dave Duncan

  story, "rollicking" should not be mistaken for

  "insubstantial.""

  Calgary Herald

  "The estimable Duncan manages, somehow,

  to be in tremendous form every time out."

  Kirkus Reviews

  DAVE DUNCAN is an award-winning

  author whose fantasy trilogy, The Seventh

  Sword, is considered a sword-and-sorcery

  classic. His numerous novels include The

  Gilded Chain, Strings, Hero, the popular

  tetralogies A Man of his Word and A

  Handful of Men, and the remarkable, critically

  acclaimed fantasy trilogy The Great

  Game.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

  places, and incidents are the products of the

  author's imagination or are used fictitiously

  and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance

  to actual events, locales, organizations, or

  persons, living or dead, is entirely

  coincidental.

  Also by

  Dave Duncan

  from Avon Books/eos

  The King's Blades

  The Gilded Chain

  The Great Game

  Past Imperative

  Present Tense

  Future Indefinite

  Warning

  This book, like The Guilded Chain, is a

  stand-alone novel. They both cover much the same

  time interval and certain characters appear in both, but you

  can read either without reference to the other. The same is

  true of the upcoming third volume, Sky of

  Swords. However, the three taken together tell

  a larger story. If you read any of the two, you will

  note certain discrepancies that can be resolved

  only by reading the third.

  These days I seem to be accumulating grandchildren

  faster than I write books, but I am very

  happy to be able to dedicate the longest of the latter

  to the latest of the former.

  This one is for

  Samuel Joseph Duncan

  May he enjoy it years hence and carry the

  family name on into the far reaches of the next

  century, or even beyond.

  I knew him, Horatio--a fellow of infinite

  jest,

  of most excellent fancy. ...

  SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet, Act Very,

  Scene I

  CONTENTS

  Notes on Baelish

  I Ambrose

  II Aeled

  III Charlotte

  IV Radgar

  V Geste

  VI Wasp

  VII Yorick

  VIII Fyrlaf

  IX Aeleding

  X Aftermath

  Epilogue

  LORD OF THE FIRE LANDS

  Notes on Baelish

  An archaic form of Chivian, Baelish is

  written much as English was written a thousand

  years ago. The alphabet contains twenty-four

  letters. Every letter is pronounced, even when this seems

  impossible, as in cniht or hlytm.

  j, k, q, x, z were not then in use.

  Three letters have since been abandoned: eth (`ed,

  `ed) and thorn (@th, @th) are both pronounced

  like the English th, while the ligature Ae is

  a separate vowel sounded between a and e (roughly

  a as in "bade," oe as in "bad," e as in

  "bed").

  c: before e or i, c is pronounced like our

  ch (cild was "child," after s pronounced like our

  sh (scip was "ship"); otherwise, c was

  pronounced k (Catter was "Kater").

  g
: is tricky! It could be hard

  (groeggos would sound very close to "gray

  goose"), but it could sound like j, as in hengest

  ("stallion"); thus hengestmann was a stable

  hand and gave us "henchman." If a lord arrived with

  his stallion men, look out!

  The suffix coming (meaning "son of" or

  "descendant of") was probably sounded like the

  same letters in our word "finger," so Radgar

  Aeleding would be "Rad-gar Also-ed-ing-go."

  However g before e was usually sounded as y as in

  our "sign" or "thegn." Gea! survives as

  "Yea!"

  (ge was a common and meaningless prefix attached

  to many words such as refa in scir-gerefa. As

  "shire-reeve," this metamorphosed into modern

  "sheriff.")

  Some of the place names should now make a sort of

  sense if you puzzle at them. Cwicnoll

  means "quick-knoll," "live summit," which

  seems apt enough for a volcano. Haligdom would

  be pronounced "holy dome" and Su`edecg not

  far from "South Edge."

  Many Old English words have gone out of use:

  wer meaning "man" survives only in

  "werewolf." Others have survived unchanged--a

  hwoel is still a "whale." Cniht, which

  originally meant "boy," (cnihtcild was a

  "boy child") became "knight," and that k was still being

  pronounced when English spelling was standardized a

  couple of hundred years ago.

  AMBROSE

  I

  "The King is coming!" The excited cry

  rang out over the sun-bright moorland and was picked

  up at once by a half-dozen other shrill

  trebles and a couple of wavering baritones. Alarmed

  horses tossed heads and kicked up heels. The

  cavalcade on the Blackwater Road was still very

  far off, but sharp young eyes could make out the blue

  livery of the Royal Guard, or so their owners

  claimed. In any case, a troop of twenty

  or thirty men riding across Starkmoor could be no

  one but the Guard escorting the King to Ironhall.

  At last! It had been more than half a year.

  "The King is coming! The King is coming!"

  "Silence!" shouted Master of Horse. The

  sopranos' riding classes always teetered

  close to chaos, and this one was now hopeless. "Go and

  tell the Hall. First man in is excused stable

  duties for a month. On my signal. Get

  ready--"

  He was speaking to the wind. His charges were

  already streaming over the heather toward the lonely

  cluster of black buildings that housed the finest

  school of swordsmanship in the known world. He

  watched to see who fell off, who was merely

  hanging on, who was in control. It was unkind

  to treat horses so, especially the aging,

  down-at-heel nags assigned to beginners; but his

  job was to turn out first-class riders. In a very

  few years those boys must be skilled enough and fearless

  enough to keep up with anyone, even the King himself--and

  when Ambrose IV went hunting he usually

  left a trail of stunned and mangled courtiers

  in the hedges and ditches.

  There went one ... and another ... Ouch!--a

  bad one. No matter, young bones could be

  repaired by conjuration and the mounts seemed to be

  surviving. Unrepentant, Master of Horse

  rode forward to rescue the casualties. On this

  blustery spring afternoon in the year 357, the moor

  had masked its ancient menace behind a

  deceptive glow of friendship, soft and green and

  smelling of clover. The sky was unbelievably

  blue. Broom was bursting into yellow glory.

  There could be few things finer in all creation than

  having a reasonably good mount and an excuse

  to ride it flat out. As the race faded into the

  distance, he could see that the piebald mare was going

  to win, thanks more to her own abilities than the

  skills of her rider, Candidate Bandit.

  Ten minutes after the sighting, the winner thundered in

  through the gate and yelled out the news to the first people he

  saw, who happened to be a group of fuzzies

  engaged in rapier drill. "The King is

  coming!"

  In seconds the word was everywhere, or almost

  everywhere. The candidates--sopranos,

  beansprouts, beardless, fuzzies, and especially

  the exalted seniors who wore swords--all

  reacted with indrawn breath and sudden internal

  tenseness, but even the instructors narrowed their

  eyes and pursed their lips. The Masters of

  Sabers and Rapiers heard it on the fencing

  ground, Master Armorer in the Forge. Master of

  Rituals got the word in a turret room, where

  he was studying arcane spells, and Master of

  Archives in a cellar, where he was packing

  ancient records into fireproof chests. All of

  them paused to ponder what else they need do

  to prepare for a royal visit. The answer,

  in all cases, was absolutely nothing. They were

  more than ready, because it had been seven months

  since Ambrose had come to the school. In all that

  time, only one candidate had been promoted

  to Blade. The question now--of especial interest to the

  seniors--was: How many would the King harvest this

  time?

  The lowest of the low was the Brat, who was thirteen

  years old and had been admitted to Ironhall

  only two days previously. On the theory that a

  man can get used to anything, he had concluded that this

  must be the third worst day of his life. Down on

  his knees, he was attempting to wash the main

  courtyard with a bucket of water and a small rag

  --an impossible task that had been assigned

  to him by a couple of beansprouts because trying

  to drive the Brat crazy was the juniors'

  traditional pastime. Having all survived

  Brat-hood themselves, they felt justified in

  giving what they had received. Few of them ever

  realized that they were being tested just as much as the Brat

  was and would be expelled if they displayed any real

  sadism.

  An elderly knight passing by when the shout went

  up told the Brat to run and inform Grand Master.

  Grand Master was the highest of the high, but the Brat

  felt comfortable near him, safe from persecution.

  Grand Master did not dunk him in a water trough

  or make him stand on a table and sing lewd songs.

  The old man was in his study, going over accounts

  with the Bursar. He displayed no emotion at the

  news. "Thank you," he said. "Wait, though.

  Bursar, can we continue this another time?" Then, as

  the other man was gathering up his ledgers, he turned

  back to the Brat and absolutely ruined his third

  worst day. "His Majesty will undoubtedly bind

  some of the seniors tomorrow night. You have heard of the

  ritual?"

  "He sticks a sword through their hearts?" the

  Brat said uneasily. It was a sick-making

  thought, because one day it would happen to him.

  "Yes, he does. It
is a very potent

  conjuration to turn them into Blades. Don't

  worry, they always survive." Almost always. "But

  you will have a part in the ritual."

  "Me?" the Brat squawked. Conjury? With the

  King present? That was worse than a hundred

  water troughs, a thousand ....

  "Yes, you. You have three lines to say and you

  lay the candidate's sword on the anvil.

  Go and find Master of Rituals and he will

  instruct you. No, wait. First find Prime and

  make sure he knows about the King." Prime, after

  all, must have more interest in the royal visit than

  any other candidate, for his fate was certain now.

  Whoever else the King took, Prime would be first.

  "He'll be in the library."

  Regrettably, Grand Master was wrong. The

  seniors were not in the library that afternoon. The Brat

  had not yet learned his way around the school and was

  too unsure of himself to ask for help, so he never

  did deliver the message. By the time Raider

  heard of the King's approach, the royal

  procession was at the gates and escape had

  become impossible.

  Even before the King's arrival, that day had been

  a memorable one in Ironhall. Two swords

  had been Returned and three names written in the

  Litany of Heroes. It was the Litany that was

  special. Returns were common enough, for the school

  had been turning out Blades for several

  centuries and they were mortal like other men. Unless

  a Blade was lost at sea or died in a far

  country, his sword came back at last

  to Ironhall to hang in the famous sky of

  swords.

  Every newcomer began as the Brat. The ideal

  recruit was around fourteen with good eyes and fast

  reflexes, either orphaned or rejected by his

  family, and at least rebellious--preferably

  a holy terror. As old Sir Silver had said

  on numerous occasions: "The wilder the better.

  You can't put an edge on soft metal." Some

  of them were driven out by the hazing, a few gave up

  later, and very rarely a boy was expelled. Those