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KATHARINE KERR
THE RED WYVERN
Book One of The Dragon Mage
Voyager
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
77-85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
First published in Great Britain by Voyager 1997
Copyright © Katharine Kerr 1997
Katharine Kerr asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is 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.
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Source ISBN: 9780006478607
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007378319
Version: 2014-08-15
For Jo Clayton
I must apologize to the faithful readers of this on-going project who have had to wait so long for the volume now in hand. I have been much distracted of late by legal matters, in particular the suits and counter-suits concerning a certain Elvish scholar of Elvish and his libellous attacks upon me. When Gwerbert Aberwyn ruled in our favour in Malover, my publishers and I hoped that the matter had ended at last, but alas, our opponent saw fit to appeal to the High King himself. After an ennervating journey by coach and barge on the part of myself and a representative of my publisher, we settled into a suite at a public guesthouse in Dun Deverry and filed our counter-suit. While we waited for our proceedings to be summoned, I once again applied myself to the craft for which I am better suited than legal wrangling, that of writing novels.
Some months later, we are still waiting. Let us hope that the High King’s courts take up and dispose of this matter soon.
CONTENTS
Prologue: Winter, in a Far Distant Land
Epilogue: Spring, in a Far Distant Land
Some say that all the worlds of the many-splendoured universe lie nested one within the other like the layers of an onion. I say to you that they lie all braided and wound round and that no man nor woman either can map all the roads of their twisting.
The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid
Domnall Breich knew the hills around Loch Ness well enough to know himself lost. The hunting accident that had killed his horse and separated him from his companions had happened some two miles straight south, or at least, in that direction and at that distance as closely as he could reckon. By now he should have reached the frozen dirt road that led back to the village and safely. He stopped, peering through the rising mists at the snow-streaked valley, stippled here and there with pines. The gathering dark of the winter’s
