Katharine Kerr - The Spirit Stone

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Book Information:

Genre: Epic Fantasy

Author: Katharine Kerr

Name: The Spirit Stone

Series: The Silver Wyrm Cycle 02

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have a great time reading the book...and if you like the book...go BUY it!!!!

Katharine Kerr's

Novels of Deverry,

The Silver Wyrm Cycle

Available from DAW Books:

THE GOLD FALCON THE SPIRIT STONE THE SHADOW ISLE *THE SILVER MAGE

*Coming soon from DAW Books

For all my readers,

without whom this series would have died

long ere I finished it.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I seem to have inadvertently caused some confusion among readers of this series by my system of subtitles for the various volumes in it. All of the Deverry books are part of one long story, divided into four "acts," as it were. Here's the correct order:

Act One: Daggerspell, Darkspell, The Bristling Wood, The Dragon Revenant.

Act Two, or "The Westlands": A Time of Exile, A Time of Omens, Days of Blood and Fire, Days of Air and Darkness.

Act Three, or "The Dragon Mage": The Red Wyvern, The Black Raven, The Fire Dragon.

Act Four, or "The Silver Wyrm": The Gold Falcon, The Spirit Stone, The Shadow Isle, and forthcoming, The Silver Mage.

PROLOGUE

THE NORTHLANDS

SUMMER, 1159

In some sense, every magician is a weaver, merely one who works with invisible strands of the hidden light. With it, we weave our various forms, just as a weaver produces cloth, and then stitch them into the images we desire, just as a tailor sews cloth into a tunic or robe. If we be journeymen in our craft, forces will come to inhabit our forms, just as a person will come to buy the tunic and place it over his body. But if we have plumbed the secret recesses of our art, if we are masters of our craft, then we can both weave the forms and place our own bodies within them.

The Pseudo-lamblichos Scroll

Two men of the mountain Folk sat on a ledge halfway up a cliff and took the sun. Below them, at the foot of a cascade of stone steps, a grassy parkland spread out on either side of a river that emerged from the base of the cliff. Just behind them, a stone landing led to a pair of massive steel-bound doors, open at the moment to let the fresh summer air into the rock-cut city of Lin Serr. Kov, son of Kovolla, was attending upon Chief Envoy Garin, son of Garinna, while this important personage nursed a case of bad bruises and a swollen ankle. A few days previously, Garin had been talking to a friend as they hurried down these same steps; a careless engrossment in the conversation had sent him tumbling down two full flights.

"Sunlight's the best thing for the bruises," Kov told him. "Or that's what the healers told me, anyway."

Garin muttered a brief oath, then continued blinking and scowling at the brilliant summer light. He's getting old, Kov thought, ready to stay in the deep city forever, like all the old people do. At a mere eighty-four years, Kov was young for one of the Mountain Folk and still drawn by life above ground.

"Well," Kov continued, "the sun's supposed to help strengthen your blood."

"Doubtless," Garin said. "I'm out here, aren't I?"

Kov let the matter drop. From where they sat, Kov could look across the parkland and watch the workmen raising stone blocks into position on the new wall. The city sat in the precise middle of a horseshoe of high cliffs, dug out from the earth and shaped by dwarven labor. Eventually, the wall would run from one end of the horseshoe across to the high watchtower at the other, enclosing the parkland. Until then, armed guards stood on watch night and day. Everyone in Lin Serr knew that the Horsekin had been raiding farms on the Deverry border. Although no Horsekin had been sighted up on the Roof of the World in forty-some years, the Mountain Folk always prefer safe to sorry.

"What's that noise?" Garin said. "Sounds like shouting."

Kov rose to his feet and listened. "It's the guards." He shaded his eyes with his hand and gazed across to the wall. "Strangers coming."

A cluster of guards surrounded the strangers and led them acrossfour human men, leading riding horses and a packhorse. As they drew near, Kov recognized the sun blazons of Cengarn. One of the humans, a dark-haired fellow, shorter than his escorts, with the squarish build of someone whose clan had mountain blood in its veins, also looked familiar.

"It's Lord Blethry, isn't it? The equerry at Cengarn."

"I think you're right." Garin held out his hand. Kov handed him his walking stick. With its help, Garin hauled himself to his feet and looked out toward the wall. "Yes, indeed, that's Blethry. Those other fellows look like a servant of some sort and then an armed escort."

Kov rose, too, and watched as dwarven axemen marched the human contingent across the parkland. At the foot of the stairs, they paused and allowed Blethry to shout a greeting in Deverrian. "Envoy Garin! May I come up?"

"By all means!" Garin called back in the same. "What brings you here?"

Blethry waited to answer till he'd panted his way up to their perch, some hundred and twenty steps high. He wiped the sweat off his face with one hand and snorted like a winded horse.

"War, that's what," Blethry said. "The Horsekin are building a fortress out in the Westlands. We figure they want a staging ground for a strike at our borders."

"And if they take over your lands," Garin said, "they'll be heading north, no doubt, for ours."

"No doubt. Gwerbret Ridvar's hoping we can count on your aid to destroy the place. It's called Zakh Gral."

"Our High Council will have the final word about that. Now, as for me, personally, I hope his grace Gwerbret Cen-garn doesn't take this as a slight, but I'll have to send my apprentice here to Cengarn with the news, whatever it may be. I can barely walk." Garin used his stick to point at his wrapped and swollen ankle.

"I'm sure young Ridvar will understand." Blethry turned to Kov and bowed. "My thanks for accompanying us."

"Most welcome," Kov glanced at Garin, who was smiling in what appeared to be relief. It's not the ankle, Kov thought, he just doesn't want to leave the safety of the dark.

"Kov," Garin said, "go down and help his lordship's men tether their animals and set up their tents and suchlike. Then join us in the envoy's quarters."

Lord Blethry had visited Lin Serr several times, but the sheer size of the place always left him awed. The steel doors led into a domed antechamber that could have held Cengarn's great hall twice over. The shaft of sunlight from the open doorway cut across the polished slate floor and pointed like a spear to a roundel, inlaid with various colors of stone to form a maze some twenty yards across. Beyond it, on the curved far wall, tunnels opened into distant gloom and led down to the deep city, forbidden to strangers.