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Master of the Cauldron


Garric or-Reise was born the son of an innkeeper in Barca's Hamlet on the isle of Haft but through valor and determination became first a prince and then the Regent and successor to the feeble Valence III, King of the Isles. But the Kingdom is weak, its rule barely extending past the island of Ornifal.

The Isles need a strong king to bring unity, because danger is coming. Magic is stronger now than at any time since the fall of the Old Kingdom in a cataclysm of uncontrolled magic. Evil is growing in the spaces beyond the world, waiting to complete the destruction begun a millennium before. Only if the Isles are united into a strong New Kingdom can humanity survive.

Garric has sworn to become a true Lord of the Isles. Standing with him are his sister, Sharina; his friend and Sharina's lover, the shepherd Cashel; and Cashel's sister, the weaver-witch Ilna. They have been to Hell and back together in their quest.

The four friends and the armies of the Kingdom have undertaken a Royal Progress to renew the bonds of fealty among the Isles. Now they come to Sandrakkan, which fought a long and bloody war with Haft less than a generation ago.

On Sandrakkan, Wildulf's Countess, Balila, schemes with her court wizard to destroy the boy king from the hated isle of Haft. Strange evils lurk on demon-haunted Volita, and she will wake them all if necessary to make her husband the new King of the Isles.

Rich with action, guile, and heroism in the face of dangers both physical and moral, Master of the Cauldron stands alone or as part of a groundbreaking fantasy epic.

"Drake's ambitious high-fantasy saga, Lord of the Isles...is emerging as the author's most important work."
Publishers Weekly on Mistress of the Catacombs

Jacket art by Donato
Jacket design by Carol Russo Design


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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

First printing, November 2004

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 0-3128-7496-0

Copyright 2004 by David Drake

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
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New York, NY 10010

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Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

Electronic version by WebWrights
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DEDICATION

For Dorothy Day
A friend, resource and archive
Also a darned good cheering section

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dorothy Day and the Seattle Weavers Guild more generally were enthusiastically helpful on this one. They provided not only advice but many hanks of yarn dyed with berries, etc (which draped my clothes line for weeks as I checked lightfastness), and also some remarkable swatches of double weave and other exotic fabrics. Believe me, what a skilled hand-weaver can do really is magical.

Dan Breen was as usual my first reader. He pointed out not only where I dropped words but also where sentences I thought were clear did not appear so to an intelligent and educated person outside my head.

My webmaster, Karen Zimmerman, and Dorothy Day both archived my text at stages in the process. One can never tell when one's computer will die.

Which brings me to the fact that No Computers Were Killed in the Writing of This Novel. However a couple of them got very sick. My son Jonathan, with Mark L Van Name and Allyn Vogel as his backup, kept me going.

I don't ordinarily mention secondary sources I've used in writing (and I use a lot of them), but Dr Andrea Berlin is still alive to thank. Her What's For Dinner?, in the Nov-Dec, 1999, Biblical Archeology Review was not only informative but evocative. I got two separate settings from the article.

My British editor, Simon Spanton, provided me with some Lord Dunsany material that wasn't already on my shelves. Any reader of Master who's already familiar with Dunsany will realize how great my debt is to the Tales of Wonder. Those of you who aren't familiar with Dunsany really ought to give him a try (and Orion Books will accommodate you).

My wife Jo kept everything going at home while I was writing Master; which, given that the process of writing coincided with the repainting of the interior of the house, is pretty remarkable.

My thanks to all of you.

Dave Drake
david-drake.com

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Those of you who've read previous books in the Isles series will note some repetition in these notes, but I go to a good deal of effort to make each book accessible to people who've never read anything of mine. Bear with me.

The religion of the Isles is based on that of Sumeria. The magic, however, is derived from that of the Mediterranean Basin during classical times (and probably originally Egyptian). The words of power are the voces mysticae of real spells, intended to get the attention of demiurges whom the wizard is asking for aid. I don't believe in magic myself; but a lot of other people, folks who're just as smart as I am, did and do. I'm not comfortable speaking the words of power aloud.

I use classical models for the literature of this series. For the most part this isn't important for Master of the Cauldron, but Celondre is modeled on Horace; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles were the template for some of the documents; and there's a brief echo of the Ullman-Henry texts on which I learned to love Latin a very long time ago.

Dave Drake
david-drake.com

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