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COPYRIGHT

       Voyager

      An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by Voyager 2006

      Copyright © Katharine Kerr 2006

      Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

      Cover illustration by Andrew Davis

      Katharine Kerr asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      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 e-book on-screen. 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.

      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.

      Source ISBN: 9780007128723

      Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780007371150

      Version 2020-03-02

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author’s Note

The Poisoned Root Of It All

Arcodd Province Summer, 1159

       Keep Reading

       Glossary

       Appendices

       About the Author

       Other Books By

       About the Publisher

DEDICATION

      For Peg Strub, M.D.,

       whose sharp eyes saved my life.

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, Dawnspell, Dragonspell.

      Act Two, or ‘The Westlands’: A Time of Exile, A Time of Omens, A Time of War, A Time of Justice.

      Act Three, or ‘The Dragon Mage’: The Red Wyvern, The Black Raven, The Fire Dragon, The Gold Falcon.

      There will be two more books to be published soon: The Spirit Stone, The Shadow Isle.

THE POISONED ROOT OF IT ALL

      In the year 643, deep in the Dark Ages of the kingdom of Deverry, a loose coalition of clans allied with the few merchants and craft guilds that existed at that time put a new and unstable dynasty on the throne of the high king. In those wars the Falcon clan lost most of its men, noble-born and commoners both. In gratitude the king betrothed his third son, Galrion, to the last daughter of the Falcon, Brangwen. But her brother, Lord Gerraent, loved her far more than a brother should, and Prince Galrion loved the magical dweomer power more than he did his betrothed. When Galrion broke off the betrothal, his father the king banished him from the royal line forever. The prince took the name of Nevyn, which means ‘no one’ in the Deverrian tongue, and went off to study the dweomer with the master who had hoped to teach his craft to Galrion and Brangwen both.

      As for Brangwen, left heartsick and shamed, she fell into her brother’s arms and bed. Soon enough, she was with child. Only then did Nevyn realize how greatly he loved her and how badly he’d failed her. Although he tried to get her away from her brother, he failed to stop the inevitable tragedy. When she drowned herself in shame, at her grave he swore a rash vow. Once she was reborn again on the wheel of life and death, he ‘would never rest’ until he put right the evil he’d done, by bringing her to the dweomer power which should have been hers. Little did he realize that fulfilling this vow would take him four hundred years of a single dweomer-touched lifetime, while the other actors in their tragedy were reborn and died again and again.

      During his long life other souls would find themselves tangled in the chains of his and Brangwen’s wyrd (fate or karma). Some were people he helped; others became his enemies. Nevyn took apprentices, such as Aderyn and Lilli, and made contact with other masters of the dweomer, such as Dallandra, one of the Westfolk, elven nomads who wander the plains to the west of Deverry proper.

      Eventually Brangwen was reborn as Jill, the daughter of a mercenary soldier named Cullyn of Cerrmor and of Seryan, a tavern lass. After more than a few adventures she finally saw her true destiny and went with Nevyn to study the dweomer as she should have done all those years before. Only then could Nevyn die.

      Jill outlived him by many years. With the help of the elven dweomermaster, Dallandra, and her bizarre lover, Evandar, a powerful soul who had never been incarnated at all, Jill captained

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