Jude Fisher - Wild Magic (Fools Gold, Book 2)

[Jacket]

For generations, the countries of Eyra and Istria have been enemies, opposed in culture, society, and religious beliefs as well as by ongoing disputes over territory.

The rugged Eyrans of the Northern Isles, driven from the mild climes of their ancient lands long ago? lands now considered part of the Istrian Empire? are a proud and strong people, honed by the harsh islands they have inhabited for centuries. Theirs is an egalitarian, seagoing culture, where men and women work side by side and are equally blessed in the eyes of their god, Sur, who they believe dwells in a great stronghold beneath the waves, deep down on the ocean bed.

The Istrians, however, who live in the warm lands of the south, have little love of the sea, and worship Falla, a goddess who is said to have emerged unscathed from the volcano that birthed her in the Golden Mountains. They call her merciful, yet the Istrians burn unbelievers and wrongdoers by the thousands? sacrifices to appease Falla and hold her at bay in the molten heart of the world. Though their goddess is female, they consider their women little more than chattel, keeping them veiled by a garment that leaves only their hands and their mouths visible.

Once a year these ancient enemies put their differences aside and meet to trade at the Allfair? a gathering to which all peoples are welcome, even the caravans of the magical nomadic tribes called the Footloose. But at the most recent Allfair disaster struck. Open hostilities flared once more between Eyra and Istria, threatening to bring all-out war to the world of Elda. But the opposing countries are not fully at fault, for powerful forces are at work which could change their world and everyone in it. Magic is reawakening, and those caught in the maelstrom of its wild power will be irrevocably altered.

VIRELAI: Once a mighty magician's apprentice on a faraway isle, he has done the unthinkable? poisoned his Master and stolen his greatest treasure of which is a small black cat within whom is hidden some of the world's most potent magic. Now, racked by fear he hides among the Footloose, terrified of retribution and unable to understand or control that which he has stolen.

THE ROSA ELDI: Chosen by the Eyran king to be his bride, she is the most unusual of women, for she has the ability to inspire unquenchable lust in any man who sees her. Yet she is an enigma even to herself, for she has no memory or knowledge of the world around her, nor any understanding of her strange powers.

ARAN ARANSON: Since buying a map from a Footloose sorcerer, he has become a man possessed. For the map shows the way to a mythical arctic fortress called Sanctuary and promises unimaginable treasure. Blinded by the magical pull of the map will he risk all he holds dear: family, home, honor, his life and the lives of his crew on an expedition which only a madman would undertake?

KATLA ARANSEN: Though still a young woman, Aran's daughter is the most accomplished blade-forger in all of Eyra, for she has a magical bond with the earth and can feel the pull of rock, metal, and crystal. Nearly burned by the Istrians for sacrilege at the Allfair, she nonetheless survives. But will her endless hunger for adventure yet prove her undoing?

SARO VINGO: The gentle and sensitive second son of an Istrian nobleman, he has never been his father's favorite. But when a dying Footloose magician imparts to him the ability to read minds and also gives him a mysterious stone with the power to kill, he learns to his horror the true nature of his father, brother and all those around him. Will these terrible gifts destroy his own kind soul?

Caught up in a drama they cannot comprehend, will these players inadvertently change the face of Elda forever?

Jacket painting by Michael Whelan

Jacket design by G-Force Design

WILD MAGIC

Book Two of Fool's Gold

JUDE FISHER

DAW BOOKS INC.

DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, FOUNDER

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York, NY 10014

ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM

SHEILA E. GILBERT

PUBLISHERS

http://www/dawbooks.com

Copyright 2003 by Jude Fisher.

All rights reserved.

Jacket art by Michael Whelan

DAW Books Collectors No. 1260.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Putnam Inc.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

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First Hardcover Printing, July 2003

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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Emma and Fiona for their constant encouragement, to Betsy for her careful eye and incisive suggestions, to the wilds of New Zealand and the Mojave Desert and to the limestone cliffs of southern Spain for inspiration and escape.

And to all those enthusiastic and impatient people who read Sorcery Rising and sent me emails and letters urging me to get on and finish the next book: here it is!

CONTENTS

WILD MAGIC

Prologue

THE Rose of the World hovered over her sleeping husband and the ends of her pale hair grazed his cheek. Wrapped in the strangest of dreams after his night's exertions, King Ravn Asharson? known, confidingly, by the women of Eyra and, enviously, by the men, as "The Stallion of the North"? stirred briefly as those silky fibers brushed him, his eyelashes fluttering like the lift of a crow's wings.

The Rosa Eldi smiled. It was an expression she had been practicing each day in the privacy of these chambers, with the aid of one of her husband's many gifts to her? a mirror of polished silver, glass, and mercury, bought from traders from the Galian Isles: a miraculous thing in itself; but all the more so to the Rose of the World, who had never seen her own face, except as a reflection in the eyes of enraptured men. They told her she was beautiful and rare, the most perfect of women: but she had no means to judge if they meant what they said. She had spent all of the life that she could recall cloistered away in Sanctuary, that remote icy stronghold, whose only inhabitants had been a black cat? Bte

? the mage, Rahe, and Virelai, the Master's apprentice. Rahe had told her she was beautiful over and again, but since he had also given her to believe that he had created her in an image most pleasing to his own eyes, it seemed a subjective judgment.

Then, when Virelai had stolen her away and they had traveled out into the world, she had had the opportunity to assess for herself the concepts of beauty and perfection; but in the beginning the assault on her starved senses had been so overwhelming that she had found everything? from the commonest dungfly to the mightiest tree? beautiful and perfect in and of itself. And yet, at the same time, everything she saw had seemed oddly familiar to her, as if the images that had populated her dreams had suddenly slipped from her head to swarm around her in all their myriad forms and colors.

But people were the most disconcerting. She had no idea of how to react to them, and so usually she said nothing and just drank in their images to recall later in the darkness of the wagon in which she, the cat, and the apprentice had lived while they traveled; but what struck her repeatedly was how women recoiled from her, smiling with their mouths, but rarely with their eyes, as if they mistook her silent gaze for insolence, or a threat. Men, on the other hand, appeared to fall in love with her in an instant and become so helplessly enraptured that they wanted to have congress with her there and then, no matter how inappropriate the time, place, or circumstances. The women did not like that, either. It seemed that in the making of her, the Master had invested her with sufficient magic to seduce every man on Elda (though that had clearly not been his intention, which was surely to keep her to himself alone) and from what she now understood about such matters, it seemed that Virelai had understood her power early in their journey and had made himself a considerable sum of money from these men and their use of her as they traveled across the world.