Dawnspell. Katharine Kerr
d="ub5de47bd-7c74-5686-9be0-d67b0eddc228">
KATHARINE KERR
Dawnspell
The Bristling Wood
For the profit of kins, well did he attack the hosts of the
country, the bristling wood of spears, the grievous
flood of the enemy…
The Gododdin of Aneirin, Stanza A84
Voyager An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Previously published in paperback by Grafton 1990 reprinted six times and by HarperCollins Science Fiction & Fantasy 1993 reprinted two times
First published in Great Britain by GraftonBooks 1989
Copyright © Katharine Kerr 1989
Cover design and illustration by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN 9780007404384
Version: 2019-07-15
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:
Change of font size and line height
Change of background and font colours
Change of font
Change justification
Text to speech
In memoriam
Raymond Earle Kerr, Jr, 1917–87,
an officer and a gentleman
Contents
A Note on the Pronunciation of Deverry Words
Part One: Deverry and Pyrdon, 833–845
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