by Dave Duncan
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
