A Guile of Dragons

Published 2012 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books

A Guile of Dragons.
Copyright © 2012 James Enge. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover illustration © Steve Stone

Map by Rhys Davies

Cover design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke

Inquiries should be addressed to

Pyr

59 John Glenn Drive

Amherst, New York 14228-2119

VOICE: 716-691-0133

FAX: 716-691-0137

WWW.PYRSF.COM

16 15 14 13 12    5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Enge, James, 1960–

A guile of dragons : tournament of shadows I / by James Enge.

p. cm. — (Tournament of shadows ; bk. 1)

ISBN 978-1-61614-628-3 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-1-61614-629-0 (ebook)

I. Title.

PS3605.N43G85 2012

813′.6—dc23

2012013638

Printed in the United States of America

To Patrick,

who deserves a book of real history but instead gets this.

Laudato si, mi Signore, per frate Focu,

per lo quale ennallumini la nocte:

ed ello è bello et iucundo et robustoso et forte.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

Kierkegaard's
Either/Or
is quoted from the translation by David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson (revised by Howard A. Johnson) (Garden City, NY: Doubleday/Anchor, 1971).

The quotation for Dostoevsky's
Notes from Underground
is from David Magarshack's translation
(Dostoevsky's Best Stories
[New York: Modern Library, 1955]).

All translations from the Dwarvish and Wardic in the text are from H. N. Emrys' magisterial commentary on Von Brauch's
Liber Glaucus
(Musopolis: Euphemia State University Press, 1952). They are used here by gracious permission of her estate.

C
ONTENTS

P
ART
O
NE
: A
LL
S
UCH
E
NEMIES

Chapter One: In a Dark Wood

Chapter Two: Conversations in Broceliande

Chapter Three: The Sea of Worlds

Chapter Four: The Witness Stone

Chapter Five: Tyr's Grasp

P
ART
T
WO
: U
NDER
THE
G
UARD

Chapter Six: Earno Goes North

Chapter Seven: Knife

Chapter Eight: Settlement

Chapter Nine: Fire and Thunder

P
ART
T
HREE
: E
NVOY
TO
D
RAGONS

Chapter Ten: The Deep Roads

Chapter Eleven: Challenge

Chapter Twelve: Maijarra

Chapter Thirteen: Voices

P
ART
F
OUR
: A
GAINST
E
VERYTHING

Chapter Fourteen: Control

Chapter Fifteen: Guardians

Chapter Sixteen: Tunglskin

Chapter Seventeen: Under the Mountains

Chapter Eighteen: Guile

E
PILOGUE
: C
YMBALS

A
PPENDICES

A. The Lands of Laent during the Ontilian Interregnum

B. The Gods of Laent

C. Calendar and Astronomy

D. The Wardlands and the Graith of Guardians

The day of wrath, that day

will shatter the centuries in fire.

—Dies Irae

PART ONE

A
LL
S
UCH
E
NEMIES

I have the courage, I believe, to doubt everything: I have the courage, I believe, to fight with everything; but I have not the courage to know anything, not the courage to possess, to own anything. Most people complain that the world is so prosaic, that life is not like romance, where opportunities are always so favorable. I complain that life is not like romance, where one had hard-hearted parents, and nixies and trolls to fight, and enchanted princesses to free. What are all such enemies, taken together, compared to the pale, bloodless, tenacious nocturnal shapes with which I fight, and to whom I give life and substance?

—Kierkegaard,
Either/Or

C
HAPTER
O
NE

In a Dark Wood