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Conqueror’s Moon: Part One of the Boreal Moon Tale
Julian May
A powerful fantasy adventure filled with dark magic and deadly intrigue, from the worldwide bestselling author of the Saga of the Pliocene Exile.Conrig Wincantor, Prince Heritor of Cathra, has a vision: to unite the whole island of High Blenholme under Cathran sovereignty.He has so far been thwarted in this ambition by his cautious, aging father, King Olmigon, who, though weak with illness, still clings firmly to the reigns of the government.Now Conrig has hit upon a scheme that will convince the Lords that his plan can suceed. He has formed an alliance with Ullanoth, princess of the remote northern province of Moss and a fearsome sorceress. With her help his army will have the advantage it needs to subdue the only domain refusing to sign his Edict of Sovereignty.But before Olmigon will give his consent he insists on making a pilgrimage to the Oracle of Emperor Bazekoy, there to ask the one question permitted to a dying monarch, which the Emperor must answer truthfully.Meanwhile, Ullanoth tends her own schemes. Posessing the talent to call on the unearthly powers of the Beaconfolk, mysterious otherworldy beings who appear as lights in the sky, her power is undeniable. But the Lights are fickle, and their interference in human affairs unpredictable. If Ullanoth calls on them to help Conrig, they are likely to extract an unforeseeable price.
Voyager
Conqueror’s Moon
THE BOREAL MOON TALE
BOOK ONE
JULIAN MAY
Copyright (#ulink_548af704-65dd-56fd-8265-b67ffe44b2b9)
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.
Harper Voyager An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
This paperback edition 2004
First published in Great Britain by Voyager 2003
Copyright © 2003 by Starykon Productions, Inc
The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN © 9780007123209
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 9780007378173
Version: 2018-07-30
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Table of Contents
Cover (#u123cf075-82a2-5e00-a4c1-658b0222e274)
Title Page (#u9f1c3ea4-5f94-5395-9e94-8bb7b29cf062)
Copyright (#u6a447530-5707-5f6d-ba45-23623673f84a)
PROLOGUE: The Royal Intelligencer (#u4673a3ef-95f0-5a57-b185-c41ff19ad6a2)
ONE (#u9ce5807f-f70e-5414-b5b9-b95f602e911b)
TWO (#ue8f3af4d-fed0-5908-aa92-548538269000)
THREE (#u0cda395d-1baa-5dfc-ac0f-d98326969361)
FOUR (#u27877383-5ca1-5e64-885a-5fdc9d876d6d)
FIVE (#u334f95eb-5232-59c1-b061-603375a6e012)
SIX (#u35bb0978-b02e-5a6b-af89-9a3e3c562c8a)
SEVEN (#u70a66258-769d-54e7-992c-47ae1f37ec71)
EIGHT (#ufcab1324-9bfb-5e93-9c3c-f09b46a1dacb)
NINE (#u71438e62-e0c4-53b3-9aed-372f62205e85)
TEN (#u9548b6d7-ef5d-5948-be68-2997777e2d7e)
ELEVEN (#u21e3d13c-40f9-5937-b36c-ccfc1b26b3c6)
TWELVE (#u3f6a5793-eb70-59be-a825-2cb4ec035137)
THIRTEEN (#u8c96722a-3ac4-555c-99d0-752d58adfde5)
FOURTEEN (#u071ca204-365d-5a41-993b-9d360fbf8ccf)
FIFTEEN (#ue06c0fb1-951e-57a7-981a-7513acb74ad7)
SIXTEEN (#u00be8d1e-ca0c-50d2-85f9-f26679e00f03)
SEVENTEEN (#u29892ef8-8b75-5fbd-acea-7bded901e3f5)
EIGHTEEN (#u54878bc8-5229-5e78-ba7e-6c4247a728b8)
NINETEEN (#u7cf375a0-50f2-56d5-87ae-632be6f29c09)
TWENTY (#u0ffff488-58e9-5efd-acf1-335bc224b5c6)
TWENTY-ONE (#ue5116d44-6a36-5809-abf3-0b44687272f0)
TWENTY-TWO (#u04eb3594-0bb0-5e67-8adb-036bbe6c601a)
TWENTY-THREE (#ua3ad944d-b70c-546c-b488-99cc5d190088)
TWENTY-FOUR (#u1fd9501b-221d-58e1-9144-51233a098bf7)
TWENTY-FIVE (#u82c45a5d-50a0-5db4-8b1d-b2645bb12059)
TWENTY-SIX (#ud53739b3-41a0-5275-8c05-5ed6a9c8ade7)
TWENTY-SEVEN (#u55731818-541b-5049-af02-fb5d8bc9932a)
TWENTY-EIGHT (#u2994e95e-f495-5ad4-9d8e-5612db73f2ef)
TWENTY-NINE (#u9b7d05f6-6284-5c41-bb25-682f0bf12fb4)
THIRTY (#ud07020d6-7a8b-5452-b291-9909dff16368)
THIRTY-ONE (#ubcaa2c9c-6d67-54d1-8e66-73a8d51afde2)
THIRTY-TWO (#ucdf81758-bed5-5fcf-b17b-655482ec86bd)
THIRTY-THREE (#ub2c299f2-fbf3-5dbc-83f8-801e42695efa)
THIRTY-FOUR (#uf8319678-d60c-55d5-a6f9-1f4a58c6532a)
Conqueror’s Moon (#ue49e51b8-ddd9-56e1-b78e-ba2f54f27fad)
By Julian May (#u8245ec9b-6227-50f4-9c3a-3e55d15bc6e1)
THE TWELVE MOONS RHYME SUNG BY CATHRAN CHILDREN (#ud7ac46b7-d93e-5015-bb86-e991bac79260)
About the Publisher (#u042e5b8a-0542-5f69-b71d-2e480cb9c3d8)
PROLOGUE The Royal Intelligencer (#ulink_d3cde597-84a2-5527-8c9d-c4c9161e624d)
In obedience to a command from the throne commuting my death sentence, the Lord Chancellor of Blencathra banished me to the continent two years ago, with an adequate stipend that will continue so long as I keep my mouth shut. Left unsaid was what would happen if I did not. Cutting off my pension would doubtless be the least of it; and I fear it’s only a matter of time before my silence is ensured by more economical means.
Well, if I’m caught, so let it be. I value my life, as every man does, but there’s also a great fatigue having nothing to do with bodily weariness that tempts me to release my grip and allow all the burdens to fall away.
But not yet, I think. Not quite yet.
For prudence’s sake, every morning I perform a shortsighted windsearch encompassing a dozen leagues or so round about my dwelling. I’ve not yet found anything or anyone suspicious. The one minor sigil I managed to take away with me from the palace at Cala Blenholme remains under my bed in a locked lizardwood box. It’s called Night Preserver, one of the non-hurting sort, hardly worthy of the Lights’ notice, primed for defense against assassins dispatching me in my sleep. But a truly competent cut-throat would have little difficulty getting at me during waking hours, so of late I have had to review my situation and decide whether or not I want to retain control of it, or surrender at last.
Surrender is such a seductive option when one is very old.
My years number four score and one, and I’ll certainly die soon of something, whether it be the infirmities of age or foul play. But shall I go unregarded and unsung, in the manner that I lived most of my life … or is there a more amusing option?
The gold of my royal pension has bought me a comfortable house in southern Foraile along the River Daravara, five rooms furnished well, with a peg-legged manservant to cook and keep the place from getting too squalid. This is a pleasant land, warm throughout most of the year and kind to old scars and bone breaks, where the breezes blow soft and musk-fragrant, and folk having arcane talents such as mine are so rare as to be the stuff of peasant legends. But I never before lived a tranquil life, and perhaps my attempt to do so now lies at the root of my present mental unease. Tranquillity, to one of my stripe, is boring. No one is so pitiable as a derring-doer put out to pasture, no one so frustrated as a tired old spy without an audience to impress with his cleverness.
When I first arrived in this over-placid exile, I spent some time each day overseeing my old haunts, especially Cala Palace and its ants’ nest of scheming courtiers and retainers. Not for curiosity’s sake or with any hope of learning fresh secrets, but out of a pathetic longing for those hazards and intrigues that once caused my blood to sing even as my stomach wrung itself like a bile-soaked sponge.
The diversion was a dangerous one, for I am no longer the peerless scryer I used to be, and my own unique talent shielding me from other windwatchers is fading fast, like the other arcane abilities I inherited, all unknowing, from my strange ancestor. If Cathran magickers should catch me spying on the palace, my blood would surely be forfeit. I had to ask myself if this rather tepid species of fun was worth the risk. At length, I decided that it was not.
But the pleasures left to me are so few! I am too frail of body to ride or hunt or even explore the tame jungle surrounding my house. My traitor stomach rebels at rich food. Expensive wines and liquors only put me to sleep without gladdening my spirit. And not even the cleverest bawd from the local house of joy seems able to rekindle the sweet fire in my nethers. There’s really only one source of delight left to me now.
Mischief.
The telling of secrets.
The tearing away of masks.
Why provoke trouble in piddling small ways, when one has the potential to bring on a grand firestorm that will rock a kingdom? Why not stir my sluggish passions by reliving the old dangerous life I loved?
Sitting here on my shaded porch above the languid tropical river, with only indifferent birds and my grouchy housecarl Borve to take note of my labors, I shall write it all down. At the end, if God wills that I finish, I’ll return to the island and publish the story myself. It will be supremely gratifying to revel in the ensuing scandal. Why should I care then if my reward is the sharp blade belonging to an agent of the Cathran throne, cutting my scrawny throat?
Highborn or low, the people of High Blenholme would all know who I am at last.
I was born in Chronicle Year 1112, in the Cathran capital city that was called simply Cala in the days preceding the Sovereignty. My name is Deveron Austrey. Although rumor had it in latter days that I was the by-blow of some wizard, the truth is that my father was a harnessmaker in the palace stables, as was his father before him. This would have been my work as well, had not fate decreed otherwise. My mother was a laundress, and my memories of her are scant, for she died in childbirth when I was five, taking her unbreathing babe with her. Apparently, neither of my parents showed any evidence of arcane talent. My own didn’t evidence itself until I began crossing the threshold of manhood, and I was slow to recognize it for what it was.
My father perished of wildfire fever when I was eleven years old, so I became apprenticed to my grandsire, irascible and half-blind, but still one of the most ingenious leather-workers in the royal household. I had not a tenth of his artistic skill, but I labored dutifully at my trade, urged on by the occasional smack on the ear, one more among scores of insignificant crafters in the stables, until an alert head groom took note of an odd thing.
Horses were uncommonly docile when I fitted them out in harness. Even the most fractious destrier gentled when I took him in hand, and before long I was the one called to saddle up the huge, evil-tempered stallions trained to fight in tourneys with hooves and teeth, as well as the mettlesome coursers preferred by Prince Heritor Conrig and his high-spirited young band of Heart Companions. My gift with horses was really a species of wild talent, the first to manifest itself.
The second talent to bloom was nearly the death of me.
When Prince Conrig was an unbelted youth of nineteen, not knowing what else he was, and I was twelve, still working with leather but also filling in as an undergroom, I had occasion to lead His Grace’s skittish horse to him before a hunt. He spoke to me kindly, and after looking him in the eye. I dared to answer back with what I thought was an innocent observation.
Horrified by what I told him so casually, the prince thought at first to have me killed. (And told this freely to me later, as he swore me to secrecy with a formidable oath.) But even then I possessed a glib tongue and a winning manner, and after close questioning and deep thought Conrig realized that I could be supremely useful to him in a singular way. So he made me his fourth footman, in time dubbing me Snudge because of my artful sneakiness, and thus my later patrons also styled me.
My crabby grandsire, deprived of a useful dogsbody by my promotion to the royal household, predicted that nothing good would come of me aspiring beyond my God-given place. He died a few months later, by which time I had completely forgotten his dire prophecy. Whether it was true or not I leave to the judgment of those who read this tale of mine.
I was Royal Intelligencer throughout most of my life. I fought and fled and skulked and snooped and committed red murder and magical mayhem in the service of King Conrig Ironcrown and his three remarkable sons. I was condemned and reprieved by another of that family, who continues to rule peaceably enough in the wake of the Sovereignty’s dissolution.
I was perhaps the most humble of their arcanely talented servants, but so insidious and necessary that I witnessed — and even secretly helped to bring about — many a regal triumph and defeat. That was in times long past, four thousand leagues to the north, on an island where sorcery was once taken for granted and inhuman presences still share the world with mankind.
Continental readers unfamiliar with my former home may appreciate a brief description of it, and they would also do well to consult a map as the story unfolds. Others may skip directly to the first part of the tale, here following.
High Blenholme, an island in the Boreal Sea, is a rugged, roughly oblong landmass with a broad north-westerly extension. It is about four hundred leagues in width and measures roughly six hundred leagues from north to south. Blenholme means ‘moon island’ in the old Forailean tongue. At that northern latitude, a trick of the eye makes the heavenly orb seem much larger than normal at certain times of the year, and so the moon enjoys a prominent place in local religion and folklore.
What with the wildness of the waters surrounding the island, the reefs and frowning precipices that guard its approaches, and the Salka, Green Men, Small Lights, and Beaconfolk who haunted the place in prehistoric times, High Blenholme was shunned by Continental explorers and would-be settlers until the mighty invasion fleet of Bazekoy the Great sailed into Cala Bay, and he himself planted his standard at the mouth of the River Brent. That portentous event marked Year 1 of the Blenholme Chronicle.
The emperor’s heavily armed, disciplined forces drove the sluggish Salka monsters beyond the central mountain ranges and the Green Men into the Elderwold. The Small Lights were only a minor threat to humankind and learned the virtue of staying inconspicuous, while the mighty Beaconfolk unaccountably gave no resistance at all to the invasion. Perhaps they were in the mood for fresh amusements!
Bazekoy named the fertile southern part of the island Blencathra, ‘moon garden,’ and it soon attracted hordes of farmers, herders, and hunters from the teeming mainland. The discovery of iron ore in the west and rich copper deposits along the River LiAt led Bazekoy to establish mining and smelting operations, and even facilities for manufacturing weapons and armor to further his continental conquests. By the time of the emperor’s death in Chronicle Year 62, Blencathra was a thriving province, exporting not only metals but also grain and many other kinds of valued goods to Foraile, Stippen, and Andradh, and even to other nations more distant.
After Bazekoy’s incompetent successors allowed his empire to disintegrate, Cathra became an independent kingdom — although still attractive to continuing waves of immigrants from the politically turbulent Continent. Over the next thousand years the entire island was gradually taken over by humankind and most of the surviving Salka forced into the fens or the dreary Dawntide Isles far to the east.
Geography divides Blenholme naturally into four realms; but Cathra, south of the dividing range, has always remained the richest, most populous, and most fortunate.
The second kingdom to be established was Blendidion (‘moon forest’) in the north-central part of the island, more austere of clime and having soil mostly thin and poor. It was settled in the mid-500s by rude barbarian adventurers from Stippen, who subdued the scattered Cathran settlements, then married into them. The vigorous newcomers exploited Didion’s vast woodlands and established their fortunes through forestry products and shipbuilding. The land also possessed valuable furs and deposits of tin, which it exported to Cathra as well as to the Continent. In time, it became a prosperous, loosely knit nation of quarreling dukedoms and isolated robber-baronies owing reluctant fealty to the Didionite monarch at Holt Mallburn.
The windswept northwestern peninsula of the island was explored late in the Seventh Century by marine marauders of Andradh who called themselves Wave-Harriers. They discovered gold nuggets and valuable opals along the pebbled shore of Goodfortune Bay, settled the area, and defended it successfully against the navies of Cathra and Didion, which lacked the Harriers’ fighting prowess at sea. Later, the Andradhian incomers discovered the sources of the gold — enormous living volcanos whose effusions warmed certain rivers and created temperate valleys in what was otherwise an arctic wilderness. Sulphur deposits from the geyserlands and saltpetre exuding from rocks in the White Rime Mountains inspired an anonymous alchymist to invent tarnblaze. That eerie weapon, immune to magical defenses, ensured that the upstarts now calling themselves the Sealords of Blentarn (‘moon pool’) and their descendants would keep their bleak but wealthy homeland safe against all attackers.
The fourth island kingdom, tiny Moss in the chill northeastern marshes, was born almost by chance in Chronicle Year 1022. Originally a precarious outpost of Didionite sealhunters, fishermen, and amber-traders, the fortified castle of Fenguard came under the control of a mighty sorcerer named Rothbannon Bajor. He had acquired Seven Stones from the Salka, sigils carved from moonstone capable of high sorcery that drew their power from the Beaconfolk. This man’s demands for tribute from the locals, enforced by hideous atrocities, energized the Didionite authorities, who condemned Rothbannon to death in absentia and sent a warship to carry out the sentence.
