Alarmed horses tossed heads and kicked up heels. Many Old English words have gone out of use: wer meaning “man” survives only in “werewolf.” Others have survived unchanged-a hwæl is still a “whale.” Cniht, which originally meant “boy,” (cnihtcild was a “boy child”) became “knight,” and that k was still being pronounced when English spelling was standardized a couple of hundred years ago.ĪMBROSE I 1 “T he King is coming!” The excited cry rang out over the sun-bright moorland and was picked up at once by a half-dozen other shrill trebles and a couple of wavering baritones. Haligdom would be pronounced “holy dome” and Suðecg not far from “South Edge.” Cwicnoll means “quicknoll,” “live summit,” which seems apt enough for a volcano. Some of the place names should now make a sort of sense if you puzzle at them. As “shire-reeve,” this metamorphosed into modern “sheriff.”) G : is tricky! It could be hard (Græggos would sound very close to “gray goose”), but it could sound like j, as in hengest (“stallion”) thus hengestmann was a stable hand and gave us “henchman.” If a lord arrived with his stallion men, look out! The suffixing (meaning “son of” or “descendant of”) was probably sounded like the same letters in our word “finger,” so Radgar Æleding would be “Rad-gar Al-ed-ing-g.” However g before e was usually sounded as “y” as in our “sign” or “thegn.” Gea! survives as “Yea!” (ge was a common and meaningless prefix attached to many words such as refa in scir-gerefa. Three letters have since been abandoned: eth (D, ð) and thorn (ð, þ) are both pronounced like the English th, while the ligature Æ is a separate vowel sounded between a and e (roughly a as in “bade,” æ as in “bad,” e as in “bed”).Ĭ : before e or i, c is prounced like our ch (cild was “child” after s pronounced like our sh (scip was “ship”) otherwise, c was pronounced k (Catter was “Kater”). Every letter is pronounced, even when this seems impossible, as in cniht or hlytm. TheĪlphabet contains twenty-four letters. Notes on Baelish An archaic form of Chivian, Baelish is written much as English was written a thousand years ago. I knew him, Horatio-a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy…. This one is for Samuel Joseph Duncan May he enjoy it years hence and carry the family name on into the far reaches of the next century, or even beyond. These days I seem to be accumulating grandchildren faster than I write books, but I am very happy to be able to dedicate the longest of the latter to the latest of the former. If you read any two, you will note certain discrepancies that can be resolved only by reading the third. However, the three taken together tell a larger story. The same is true of the upcoming third volume, Sky of Swords. They both cover much the same time interval and certain characters appear in both, but you can read either without reference to the other. Lord of the Fire Lands A TALE OF THE KING’S BLADES DAVE DUNCAN Warning This book, like The Gilded Chain, is a stand-alone novel.
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