What was I doing?
I am a prince of the realm,
not a beast in the night.
Lynan laughed wryly at his own pride. Some prince of the realm: exiled to the Oceans of Grass, with a future only the greatest optimist would find any hope in, and now plagued by desires that were inhuman. Areava would not be surprised, of course, she always thought of him as almost less than human. He could remember vividly their last conversation on the palace’s south gallery only hours before Berayma was murdered; he had seen in her eyes then how she truly thought of him.
With that memory came a very human anger, and the emotion threw out the last vestige of his unnatural hunger. This is how I control it, he thought with surprise. By never forgetting the first cause of my exile and transformation.
His confidence renewed if not wholly restored, Lynan walked back past the sentry and into the camp. He reached his tent and looked east, back toward civilization, back toward his enemies. He imagined Areava in her throne room, thinking he was dead and celebrating the fact, Berayma’s murderers by her side.
If only she knew what had truly become of him.
The Keys of Power
INHERITANCE
FIRE AND SWORD
SOVEREIGN*
* coming soon from DAW
Fire and Sword
Book Two of Keys of Power
SIMON BROWN
DAW BOOKS, INC.
DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, FOUNDER
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEIM
SHEILA E. GILBERT
PUBLISHERS
http://www.dawbooks.com
Copyright © 2001 Simon Brown
All Rights Reserved.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1287.
Cover art by Romas.
DAW Books are distributed by the Penguin Group (USA).
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
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First Printing, March 2004
123456789 10
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
—MARCA REGISTRADA
HECHO EN U.S.A. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
Contents
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 21 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
For Guy Miklenda, Janet Delfosse,
and Del Delfosse.
Also family.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
All my thanks to my readers, Alison Tokley and Sean Williams, and to my editors, Julia Stiles, Stephanie Smith and Debra Euler. Thanks to them this is a better book than it would otherwise have been. Many thanks also to my agents, Garth Nix and Russell Galen, for all their wondrous efforts on my behalf.
Hverr of kom Heráss á
hí a land gotna?
Fiskr ór fjanda vim svimandi,
fogl a fjanda lith galandi.
As whom came the god of war
to the land of men?
A fish from the torrent of enemies swimming,
a bird against a troop of enemies screaming.
—from the Eggjum gravestone, Sogn, Norway (based on translation by Peter Foote & David M. Wilson)
Chapter 1
In autumn, when the hot summer winds have passed and the fierce winter storms are yet to come, the Oceans of Grass is the most silent place on the continent of Theare. The occasional breeze will brush the yellow land but make no more sound than a lover’s whisper, a dying enemy’s curse. Even insects stop their chirruping and burrow deep underground, waiting for spring and fresh rain.
On this day the sun, still with its summer strength, arced high over the plain, making the air above the ground shimmer like silk. The only water hole for leagues around was nothing more than a silted puddle, and the tracks of a hundred animals crisscrossed its muddy ring. A family of karaks drank from the hole, their long ears drooping with thirst. The heat had made them careless and they had not caught scent of the grass wolf carefully studying them from the fringe of growth not more than fifty paces away.
The wolf had been following them for over two hours, always keeping behind, waiting for her chance to charge in and take one of the calves. She sensed the time had come. A sow had moved farther into the water hole and started to roll in it, leaving her calf behind. The wolf measured the distance, carefully noting how far the big boar had wandered from the main group, and tensed her muscles.
And then came a sound so deep it was first felt by the wolf as a vibration in the ground. The karaks sensed something as well. Their ears pricked up, their nostrils flared. The boar grunted and the herd hurried to join him; younger males took up their positions on flank and rear.
The sound swelled in the still air like the thunder of a distant storm. The wolf was puzzled. She had heard something like it many years ago, when she was not much older than a cub, but she could not remember what it meant.
The karaks were getting skittish. The calf the wolf had set on squealed and broke from the group. Again the wolf tensed, ready to take advantage of the herd’s confusion.
And then the terrible riders appeared. Their gray mounts kicked up sods of mud, screaming as bits were pulled deep into their mouths. The riders shouted. There was a flurry of javelins and arrows. A young male karak went down, and then another. A sow, trying to protect a calf, took a spear through the neck.
The wolf watched in a daze. The calf she had selected was pierced by two arrows, and squealed for the last time. Her confusion gave way to a great and sudden anger. She leaped from the bushes, charging not toward the karaks, but toward the riders.
The crookback Ager Parmer was flushed with excitement. A crazed laugh escaped from his lips. He wheeled his horse to the right of the group and retrieved his short spear from the flank of a still panting boar. He looked up and saw Lynan corner a karak and pierce it with a javelin. The prince caught Ager’s glance and grinned wildly. Ager laughed again, overjoyed to see the pale young man starting to enjoy life once more. Lynan was joined by his Chett friend and guardian Gudon, and the two of them went off in pursuit of more prey. Another rider cut behind them, and Ager turned to see Korigan, the Chett queen. He watched in admiration as she used only her knees to direct her mare, keeping her hands free to shoot with her recurve bow.