A Time of Omens

Informationen zum Autor Katharine Kerr first became involved in the field of fantasy through role-playing games, feeling so intrigued that she began writing articles for gaming magazines and for some time was a contributing editor to  Dragon  magazine. This interest soon led her into the field of fantasy writing, with her first Deverry novel,  Daggerspell , appearing in 1986. Since then, Kerr has written many more fantasy and science fiction novels. Her Deverry series has hit  The   Times  (London) and the Australian bestseller lists. Klappentext While a dashing young king journeys to his throne in disguise, fulfilling an ancient prophecy, the exiled lord Rhodry travels anonymously as a mercenary.Prologue   Wmmglaedd, 1096   On the Inner Planes, Time as we know it no longer exists. This is why an omen may refer to things which we perceive as long over and done with as well as to things in process at the moment in which the omen is cast and to things which we have yet to perceive at all. Past, Present, Future—these states do not exist in the world from which an omen proceeds, yet there is no denying, of course, that they do exist in ours.… The Pseudo-Iamblichus Scroll   In those days the eastern border of the elven lands lay in the middle of a forest. A traveler leaving the high plains and heading east came down a long gentle decline into the oaks to find several rivers that might mark a border—if only anyone at all had lived on either side of them. In that vast tangle of tree and shrub, bracken and thorn, finding the lands of men (that is, the three western provinces—Eldidd, Pyrdon, Arcodd—of the kingdom of Deverry) was no easy job. If you wanted to go from west to east, the sandy coast of the Southern Sea made a much more reliable road, if, of course, you could fight your way south to reach it. The ancient forest had a way of tricking travelers unless they or their companions knew the route well.   The woman who rode out of the forest late on a summer day traveled with a horde of such companions—not that most human beings would have seen them. Sylphs and sprites hovered round her in the air; gnomes clung to her saddle or perched on the back of the spare horse she was leading; undines rose out of every stream and pool she passed to wave a friendly greeting. Her friends weren’t the only odd thing about Jill. If you looked carefully at her silver hair, cropped short like a lad’s, and the fine lines that webbed her eyes round and latticed her cheeks, you realized that she had to be at least fifty years old if not somewhat more, but she radiated so much vitality, the way a fire gives off heat, that it was impossible to think of her as anything but young. She was, you see, the most powerful sorcerer in all of Deverry.   The first human settlement that any traveler coming from the west reached on the coast was the holy precinct of Wmmglaedd, although in those days, before the silting of the river and the meddling of humans had extended the shore, the temple lay a little ways out to sea on a low-lying cluster of islands. Jill rode along the sea cliffs through meadows of tall grass to a rocky beach, where the waves washed over gravel with a mutter, as if the sea were endlessly regretting some poor decision. A fair mile offshore, she could see the rise of the main island against the glitter of the Southern Sea.   She led her pair of horses down to the two stone pillars that marked the entrance to a stone causeway, still underwater at the moment, though when she looked at the water lapping at the carved notches along the edge of one pillar, she found each wave falling a little lower than the one before. Crying and mewling, seabirds swooped overhead, graceful gulls and the ungainly pelicans that were sacred to the god Wmm, all come to feed as the dropping tide exposed the rocky shallows. At last the causeway emerged, streamin...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Katharine Kerr, Kerr Katharine
• Editore: Random House USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 01.07.1993
• EAN: 9780553290110
• ISBN: 978-0-553-29011-0
• Pagine: 395
• Dimensioni: 106 mm x 173 mm x 28 mm
• Serie: Deverry; The Westlands; The Westlands
• Categorie: Narrativa > Science Fiction, Fantasy; Fantasy, FICTION / Fantasy / General