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Voyager
KATHARINE KERR
A Time of Exile
A Novel of the Westlands
Voyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
First published in Great Britain by GraftonBooks 1991
Copyright © Katharine Kerr 1991
Katharine Kerr asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely 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: 9780586207888
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2014 ISBN: 9780007400980
Version: 2014–08–18
tibi, Dea, nominis pro gloria tuae
CONTENTS
Prologue: The Eldidd Border 1096
Part One: Deverry and Eldidd 718
Part Two: The Elven Border 719–915
Epilogue: The Elven Border Summer, 1096
‘As thrifty as a dwarf’ is a common catch-phrase, and one that the Mountain People take for a compliment. Although they see no reason to waste anything, whether it’s a scrap of cloth or the heel of a loaf, they keep a particularly good watch over their gemstones and metals, though they never tell anyone outside their kin and clan just how they do it. Otho, the silver daggers’ smith down in Dun Mannannan, was no different from any other dwarven craftsman, unless he was perhaps more cautious than most. His usual customer was some hotheaded young lad who’d dishonoured himself badly enough to be forced to join the silver daggers, and you have to admit that a wandering swordsman who fights only for coin, not honour, isn’t the sort you can truly trust with either dwarven silver or magical secrets.
During his long years among humans in the kingdom of Deverry, Otho taught a few other smiths how to smelt the rare alloy for the daggers, an extremely complicated process with a number of peculiar steps, such as words to be chanted and hand gestures to be made just so. Otho would always refuse to answer questions, saying only that if his students wanted the formula to come
