id="uc0fa5151-0f38-5c85-88ad-c6580d7586e6">
KATHARINE KERR
Darkspell
New Revised edition
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by GraftonBooks 1988
Copyright © Katharine Kerr 1987
Revised edition © Katharine Kerr 1994
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
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Source ISBN: 9780007333813
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2015 ISBN: 9780007391936
Version: 2017-04-25
For my father, Sergeant John Carl Brahtin, 1918–44, who died fighting to free Europe from a worse evil than anything a novelist can invent.
CONTENTS
Appendix A: The Characters and their Incarnations
The language spoken in Deverry, which we might well call Neo-Gaulish, is a member of the P-Celtic family. Although closely related to Welsh, Cornish, and Breton, it is by no means identical to any of these actual languages and should never be taken as such, just as the Deverrians themselves are quite different from any historical Celts.
VOWELS are divided by Deverry scribes into two classes: noble and common. Nobles have two pronunciations; commons, one.
A as in father when long; a shorter version of the same sound, as in far, when short.
O as in bone when long; as in pot when short.
W as the oo in spook when long; as in roof when short.
Y as the i in machine when long; as the e in butter when short.
E as in pen.
I as in pin.
U as in pun.
Vowels are generally long in stressed syllables; short in unstressed. Y is the primary exception to this rule. When it appears as the last letter of a word, it is always long whether that syllable is stressed or not.
DIPHTHONGS generally have one consistent pronunciation.
AE as the a in mane.
AI as in aisle.
AU as the ow in how.
EO as a combination of eh and oh.
EW as in Welsh, a combination of eh and oe.
IE as in pier.
OE as the oy in boy.
UI as the North Welsh wy, a combination of oo and ee.
Note that OI is never a diphthong, but is two distinct sounds, as in carnoic (KAR-noh-ik).
CONSONANTS are mostly the same as in English, with these exceptions:
C is always hard as in cat.
G is always hard as in get.
DD is the voiced th as in breathe, but the voicing is more pronounced than in English. It is opposed to TH, the unvoiced sound as in thin or breath. (This is the sound that the Greeks called the Celtic tau.)