The Black Raven Read online

  PRAISE FOR KATHARINE KERR’S

  THE BLACK RAVEN

  “Kerr has written … to her usual standard, which is among the highest for Celtic-derived fantasy sagas currently in progress. Faithful fans will be gratified, and any newcomers intrigued.”

  —Booklist

  “Kerr is one of the best of the current crop of fantasy writers. The Black Raven is a lyrically written and enchanting tale of love, politics, and magic.”

  —SFX

  “All you Katharine Kerr fans out there, get psyched! If you’re into Celtic fantasy and folklore, Kerr’s Dragon Mage quintet (and for that matter, her whole Deverry series) is a must-read.”

  —Barnes and Noble Explorations

  BY KATHARINE KERR

  Her novels of Deverry and the Westlands

  DAGGERSPELL

  DARKSPELL

  THE BRISTLING WOOD

  THE DRAGON REVENANT

  A TIME OF EXILE

  A TIME OF OMENS

  DAYS OF BLOOD AND FIRE

  DAYS OF AIR AND DARKNESS

  THE RED WYVERN

  THE BLACK RAVEN

  Her works of science fiction

  RESURRECTION

  PALACE

  (with Mark Kreighbaum)

  for my grandmother, Elsa Petersen Brahtin

  1889-1985

  The courage in her life amazed me

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks again to Barbara Denz, master of ferret lore.

  A NOTE ON THE DEVERRY SEQUENCE

  It occurs to me that readers might find it helpful to know something about the overall structure of the Deverry “series.” From the beginning of this rather large enterprise, I have had an actual ending in mind, a set of events that should wrap up all the books in dramatic conclusion. It’s merely taken me much longer to get there than I ever thought it would.

  If you think of Deverry as a stage play, the sets of books make up its acts. Act One consists of the “Deverry” books proper, that is, Daggerspell, Darkspell, The Bristling Wood, and The Dragon Revenant. The “Westlands” books, A Time of Exile, A Time of Omens, Days of Blood and Fire, and Days of Air and Darkness, make up Act Two, while Act Three will unfold in the current quintet, “The Dragon Mage,” that is, The Red Wyvern, The Black Raven, which is the volume you now have in hand, and its “sister,” The Fire Dragon. The Gold Falcon and eventually The Silver Wyrm will bring the sequence to its end at last.

  As for the way that the series alternates between past and present lives, think of the structure of a line of Celtic interlace, some examples of which have decorated the various books in this set. Although each knot appears to be a separate figure, when you look closely you can see that they are actually formed from one continuous line. Similarly, this line weaves over and under itself to form the figures. A small section of line seems to run over or under another line to form a knot.

  The past incarnations of the characters in this book and their “present tense” story are really one continuous line, but this line interweaves to form the individual volumes. Eventually-soon, I hope-the pattern will complete itself, and you will be able to see that the set of books forms a circle of knots.

  —Katharine Kerr

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Part One—Deverry

  Part Two—Deverry

  Epilogue

  Appendices

  Glossary

  Table of Reincarnating Characters

  PROLOGUE

  WINTER 1117

  Bardek

  Always the sorcerer must prepare for hindrances and setbacks. Before any working of great length and import, he must spend long nights in study of the omens, for if the Macrocosm can find a way to defeat him, it will, preferring in its laziness the natural order over any change wrought by our arts, no matter how greatly that change will be to its benefit.

  —The Pseudo-Iamblichos Scroll

  Marka, dearest?” Keeta said. “I’m sorry. There’s something wrong with him.”

  Marka tried to answer, but her throat filled with tears. Her youngest son, not yet two years old, sat on a red-and-blue carpet in a patch of sunlight that spilled through the tent door. He was frowning at the edge of the brightness; over and over again he would reach out a pale brown hand and touch the shadow next to it, then draw his hand back and frown the harder. Tight brown curls hung over his forehead; now and then he would bat at them as if they bothered him, only to forget them again in an instant.

  “He does know his name,” Marka said. “He may not have any other words, but he does know his name.”

  Keeta sighed and sat down next to the boy, who ignored her. They made an odd pair, Keeta so massive and dark, Zandro so slender and pale. Even though she had taken over the business end of managing their travelling show, Keeta still juggled, and her long arms sported muscles many a man had envied over the years. In her curly black hair, which she wore cropped close to her skull, grey sprouted at the temples.

  “I’ve been afraid for months,” Marka said at last. “He still can’t use a spoon.”

  “Is it that he can’t use one?” Keeta held out her hand to Zandro. “Or that he simply won’t?”

  Zandro whipped his head around and bit her on the thumb. Calmly, without speaking, Keeta put her other hand under his chin, spread her fingers and thumb, and pressed on both points of his jaw. With a squeal he opened his mouth and let her go.

  “That’s better,” Keeta said to him. “No biting.”

  His head tilted to one side, he considered her. She pointed to the teeth marks on her thumb.

  “No! No biting!”

  All at once he smiled and nodded.

  “Very good,” Keeta said. “You understood me.”

  This he ignored; with a yawn he returned to his study of the edge between light and shadow.

  “Ah ye gods!” Marka said. “Just when I think it’s hopeless, he’ll do something like that. Understand a word, I mean, or even do something kind. When Kivva fell and cut herself yesterday? He came running and kissed her and tried to help.”

  “I saw that, yes. At times he’s really very sweet.”

  Marka nodded. In the twenty years since her marriage, she’d borne nine pregnancies, not counting the miscarriages. Six of the children had lived past infancy-Kwinto, their firstborn son; Tillya, the eldest daughter; Terrenz, born so soon after Tillya that they loved each other like twins; their sisters Kivva and Delya, named after Keeta’s longtime companion, who had died in the same fever that had killed another infant son. Zandro would, she hoped, be the last. She wondered how she was going to find the love and strength to deal with him, who would demand more of both than all the rest of them put together. Keeta must have been thinking along the same lines.

  “It’s not like you don’t have enough troubles on your mind already. What with Ebañy’s”-a long pause-“illness.”

  “Oh, come right out and say it!” Marka snapped. “He’s gone mad. We all know it. And now his youngest son is obviously mad, too. Why are we all being so coy?

  How would Ebañy put it? He’s demented, lunatic, deranged, insane-” Tears overwhelmed her.

  Marka was aware of Keeta getting up, then kneeling again next to her. She turned into her friend’s embrace and sobbed. Keeta stroked her hair with a huge hand.

  “There, there, little one. We’ll find a way to heal your husband yet. We’ll be playing in Myleton next. They have physicians and priests and the gods only know who else, and one of them will know what to do.”

  “Do you think so?” Marka raised a tear-stained face. “Do you really think so?”

  “I have to. And so do you.”

  The tears stopped. Marka sat back on her heels and wiped her face on the sleeve of her tunic. A sudden t
hought turned her cold.

  “Wait—where is Ebañy?” Marka scrambled to her feet. “Here we are, on the coast, with the cliffs—”

  “I’ll stay here with the child.”

  Marka ducked out of the tent, then stood blinking for a moment in the bright sunlight. Around her the camp spread out, a grand thing of white tents and painted wagons, the biggest travelling show that Bardek had ever seen. At the moment, however, the camp seemed curiously empty. Most of the performers had retired to their tents to sleep away the noon heat. Since she could see none of their animals, some of the men must have led them to the water trough by the public fountain, hidden from her sight by trees. Nowhere did Marka find Ebañy, but in the far view, at the edge of the caravanserai, between the palms and the plane trees, she could see the cliffs and distantly hear the sea pounding on rocks below.

  Marka trotted off, panting a little for breath in the hot sun. All those pregnancies had buried the slender girl acrobat somewhere deep inside a thick-waisted matron who had to bind up her heavy breasts for comfort’s sake. At those moments when she had the leisure to remember her younger self, Marka hated what she had become. Especially when she looked at her husband—as she hurried along the cliffs, she saw him at last, strolling along and singing to himself a good safe distance back from the edge. Her relief mingled with anger, that he would still look so young and so handsome, with his pale blond hair and his pale grey eyes, his pinkish-white skin just glazed with tan and as smooth as a young lad’s. When he saw her, he smiled and waved.

  “There you are, my love,” he called out. “Do you have need of me for something?”

  “Oh, I was just wondering where you were.”

  “Enjoying this glorious day under the dome of the sky. The sea’s full of spirits, and so is the wind, and they’re all enjoying it with me.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  Not of course that she did see the spirits teeming. He often spoke of spirits, as well as demons, portents, and visions, all of them invisible to everyone else. Still, she had to agree about the glory of this particular day, with the sea a winter-dark blue, scoured into whitecaps by the fresh wind.

  “I’ve been thinking about the show,” Ebañy said. “I want to add something new to my displays, in the parts with the colored lights. I’m just not sure what yet.”

  “It’ll come to you. I have faith.”

  “Well, so do I.”

  They shared a smile. Hand in hand they walked back to the camp while he sang in the language of far-off Deverry.

  “A love song,” he said abruptly. “For you, my beautiful darling.”

  And he did love her, of that she was sure. Never in their years together had he spurned her, never had he amused himself with the young women who performed in the troupe, not even once, no matter how old and thick and worn she’d become. For that alone she would always love him, even though at times, such as now, when he studied her face with a strange intensity, she wondered what he was seeing when he looked at her.

  With a squeal of delight Zandro came trotting to meet them. Keeta strolled after, shaking her head, as if to say that he was beyond her control. It was one of the strangest things about the boy, that he could walk as well as a much older child, yet not be able to form a single word.

  “Well!” Marka pointed them out. “Look who’s coming.”

  “I see him, and a fine sight he is.”

  When Marka said nothing, Ebañy paused to look at her.

  “You’re frowning,” he said. “Why?”

  “I’m just so worried about our Zan. He’s not right. We can’t go on hiding it from ourselves. I mean, he should be talking more, and then—”

  “What? No, he’s fine for what he is. He’s a very young soul, just born for the first time. And he’s not human, truly. You can see it in his aura.”

  He bent down and scooped the boy up. Laughing, Zandro buried his face in his father’s shoulder.

  “What do you mean, aura?” Marka said.

  “Look for yourself.” Ebañy waved his free hand around the boy’s head. “All the colors are wrong. What are you, my son? One of the Wildfolk, seeing what flesh feels like? Did you choose this, or did we trap you, my wife and I, when we were making a body for someone else to wear?”

  Marka felt her hands clenching into fists as if she could pummel his madness into silence. When Ebañy looked into Zandro’s eyes, the boy stared steadily back.

  “Not one of the Wildfolk,” Ebañy said at last. “But some spirit whose time has come to be born. You’ve a lot to learn, my darling, but now the world is yours and all its marvels too.”

  Carrying Zandro, Ebañy walked back toward their tent. Marka lingered, fighting back tears, until Keeta laid an enormous hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “It’s so sad.”

  “Yes.” Marka wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “It came on so slowly, didn’t it? I wonder now how long he’s been this way, and why I never would let myself notice.”

  “None of us wanted to notice. Don’t berate yourself.”

  “Thank you. When he’s not—well, when he’s not saying peculiar things, I can pretend that we still have our wonderful life. But then he’ll come out with something, like just now, and I don’t know what to say.”

  “There probably isn’t anything to say. Ah well, we’ll see what Myleton brings us.”

  Wherever Ebañy walked, the Wildfolk went with him, sylph, sprite, and gnome, and in the water undines, rising up to beckon him into the waves. In the fires the salamanders played, rubbing their backs on the logs like cats, leaping up with the flames. At one time in his life he’d called himself Salamander, back in the land of his birth. That he did remember, though a great many other memories escaped him. The world teemed with visions that drove out the ordinary details, such as the names of the cities they visited and at times even the names of his wife and children. That they were his wife and children he never forgot.

  At night when he slept, his dreams took him to strange worlds filled with stranger spirits. On purple seas he travelled in a barge while a sun of poison green hung at the zenith. Enormous undines followed and held out long grey hands while they asked him questions in a language he’d never heard. Other nights he climbed mountains of crystal where the rivers ran with blood, or he would ride six-legged beasts like emerald insects across sand dunes to the ruins of cities.

  Every dream ended the same way. He would reach his destination, whether a city of gold by a harbor or a cavern glittering with sapphires and emeralds, and walk into a building—a temple, perhaps, to unknown gods or a tavern filled with incense smoke and plangent music. The room would annoy him, and he would leave it, going from chamber to chamber or down long halls until at last he would see the door. It was always the same, this door, a solid thing of dark wood bound with iron. He would remember that in the room behind this door lay a magical book. If he could read that book, he would once again know who he was.

  When he pushed on it, the door opened easily, but instead of a room, he would find himself in a large canvas tent, lying on a sleeping mat. Usually sunlight would glow through the walls, and he would see wealth around him: brightly colored tent bags and carpets, rolled mats, wooden stools, big pottery jars. Sometimes people with dark skins and black hair would be sitting nearby. He would find his clothes lying beside him on the floor cloth, and he would dress, looking round at the objects in the tent and trying to remember their names while the Wildfolk flocked around him or chased each other back and forth.

  Some while later, he would realize that he was awake.

  A city of trees and broad avenues, Myleton lay on the northern seacoast of Bardektinna, the biggest island in the vast and complex archipelago that Deverry men call Bardek, lumping all the islands together with a fine disregard for their inhabitants’ politics and geography both. It was a rich city, too, where the public buildings gleamed with pale marble and the homes of the prosperous aped them with white-stucco walls. Just to the sou
th stood a public caravanserai with good deep wells and shade trees. After Keeta bargained with the archon’s men—public servants in charge of the campground—the troupe pulled in and got itself settled. Since the rainy season had begun, they had the caravanserai to themselves.

  “At least there won’t be strangers,” Marka said. “Sometimes when Ebañy’s babbling, and there are strangers listening, I just want to die.”

  “Now, now, little one,” Keeta said. “It’s no fault of yours, and who cares what strangers think? I’m more worried about the children, myself. Their father’s madness—it can’t be good for them to see him like this.”

  “It’s not, no. I try to talk with Kwinto, but he just shrugs me off. After all, he’s almost a man now, he keeps things to himself. But Tillya—she’s truly upset. She loves her father so much, and she’s old enough to understand.”

  Marka and Keeta were walking through the public bazaar, which, here in winter, stayed open through the midday. In the center of the white plaza, public fountains gushed and glittered in the cool sunlight. Around them a sea of brightly colored sunshades rippled in the wind over the hundreds of booths. Close to the fountains lay luxury goods such as silverwork and brassware, oil lamps, silks, perfumes, jewelry, strangely shaped knives, and decorative leatherwork, while the practical vegetable and fish stands stood at the downwind edge of the market. Here and there a few performers struggled to get the crowd’s attention—inept tumblers, a clumsy juggler, a pair of musicians who showed talent but needed practice.

  “There’s nothing here to compete with us,” Marka said. “Good. And Myleton knows us. Everyone will come running to see us. Particularly Ebañy’s act.”