The King's Name

The warrior Sulien ap Gwien and her lord King Urdo have finally united the land of Tir Tanagiri into a kingdom ruled by justice under a single code of law. But where many see a hopeful future for the land, others believe they sense the seeds of a new tyranny. Soon Tir Tanagiri faces the blight of civil war, and Sulien ap Gwien must take up arms against former comrades and loved ones, fighting harder and harder to hold on to Urdo’s shining dream.

Continuing the epic begun in The King's Peace, this new novel brings the story of Sulien ap Gwien to a rousing and moving conclusion.

"War is a tough subject to do well, but in this gritty, moving second and final book in the saga of Tir Tanagiri, British author Walton makes the strife of civil war not only believable but understandable....Fine work."

—Publishers Weekly (starred review) on The Kings Name

"The King's Peace beautifully and thought-provokingly tells a story set in a world and a history almost like ours, but different enough to be in itself a kind of elvenland. It's good to know that there will be more."

—Poul Anderson on The King's Peace

"Proof that no matter how mined-out a subject may seem, a dedicated writer can dig down to a true vein of legend and hammer out gold."

—Robin Hobb on The King's Peace

By Jo Walton from Tom Doherty Associates

The King's Name

The King 's Peace

The Prize in the Game

THE KING'S NAME

JO WALTON

TOR® fantasy

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE KING'S NAME

Copyright © 2001 by Jo Walton

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

Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN: 0-765-34340-1

First edition: December 2001

Page 1

First mass market edition: November 2002

Printed in the United States of America

0987654321

CONTENTS

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Here's the rest of it, Gangrader. I hope it's what you wanted.

This volume is especially for the participants of the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.composition, both for specific help and for just being there, a community where it's normal to want to talk about writing.

Thanks once again to Graydon and Emmet and Hrolfr for reading chapters as they were written, Julie Pascal for suggesting the title of this volume, Michael Grant for all the semicolons, Mary Lace for having such appropriate reactions, David Goldfarb, Mary Kuhner and Janet Kegg for helpful readings, Sketty Library for getting me books, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden for doing all the difficult stuff.

I greet the appearance of this second volume of the translation of the Sulien Texts with the same pleasure with which I greeted the publication of the first. (The King's Peace, Tor Books, New Caravroc, 2753.) It was past time for a translation of the work into modern Yalnic, more than a hundred years after the discovery of the text and the publication of the first Vincan edition. This is not an unapproachable work; indeed it is an exciting and readable one. The delay in translation is for reasons of political controversy which we would all do well to put behind us in these more liberal times.

This, like the first volume, consists of merely the text, with no scholarly annotations.

Serious students seeking such will be able to read the Vincan and would be better to purchase my The Complete Sulien Text

(2733, rev. 2748, Thurriman University Press, New Caryavroc). I am honored, however, to say a few words about the work, for those unscholarly readers who read this vernacular edition for pleasure but for whom the bare text is not enough.

The book, whoever wrote it and for whatever purpose, is set against the troubled and all-but-undocumented history of the thirteenth century. It deals with a period that we know better from myth and legend than from sober historical accounts. The Vincan legions had departed the island of Tir Tanagiri forty years before the opening events of the book. The time between had been one of chaos, invasion, and civil war, as the island became once more a collection of petty kingdoms and as the barbarous Jarns crossed the sea to raid, invade, and settle. King Urdo, as every Tanagan schoolchild knows, united the island and brought peace.

In the first volume published in this edition were the first two "books" of a document which claims to be the memoirs of Sulien ap Gwien, one of the legendary armigers of King Urdo. This second volume contains the third, longest, and last "book." The first "book," The King's Peace, begins with the assertion that the writer is

Sulien ap Gwien, Lord of Der-wen, writing at ninety-three years of age for the purpose of setting records straight.

At the time of writing, she says, the Jarnish invaders from overseas were at peace with the Tanagan and

Vincan inhabitants of Tir Tanagiri, and she wishes to give an account of how they came to be one people. The book documents Sulien's career, beginning with her brother's murder and her rape by the young Jarnish raider

Page 2

Ulf Gunnarsson, the nephew of Sweyn, king of Jarnhohne. She was then dedicated against her will to the

Jarnish god Gangrader, and left to die of exposure, which she escaped by her own efforts. Unknowingly pregnant by Ulf, she entered into the service of the High King Urdo ap Avren. The baby was bom and named, shockingly, Darien Suliensson in Jarnish fashion.

Many people believed this child to be the son of Urdo, because of a night Sulien and Urdo spent in the same room in Caer Gloran. He was fostered in the monastery of Thansethan, whereupon Sulien returned to one of Urdo's cavalry regiments, or "alae,"

and became leader of a pennon of twenty-four riders. After an invasion of the island by Sweyn and a disastrous battle at Caer Lind, in Tevin, she became praefecto, or general in command, of the ala. Meanwhile she earned the enmity of and later killed Morwen, witch, queen of Demedia, and sister of Urdo. There followed six years of war, culminating in a great victory for the High King's forces at Foreth Hill. At this victory Urdo did not accept a truce from the defeated Jarnish kings, but forced them into making an alliance and recognizing him as High King, with all the island henceforward to live under law.

The second "book" contained in the first volume, The King's Law, covers the first seven years of Urdo's

Peace. On the first afternoon of the Peace, Ulf Gunnarsson received a trial for rape, before Urdo and Ohtar, a

Jarnish king. He admitted his fault and offered to make reparation, then refused to defend himself in a judicial combat. Sulien decided to let him live, and he entered her ala.

The victory at Foreth was shortly followed by an invasion of three large groups of Isarnagans, the barbarous people who lived in the western island of Tir Isarnagiri. Sulien successfully persuaded one contingent of

Isarnagans, led by Lew ap Ross and his wife, Emer ap Allel, the sister of Urdo's queen, to become vassals and settle in an empty part of her brother Morien's realm of Derwen. During the negotiations Sulien discovered that Emer was secretly involved in an adulterous relationship with Conal ap Amagien, all the more shocking because Conal had killed Emer's mother. The other two contingents of Isarnagan invaders were eventually defeated militarily. One, led by Black Darag and Atha ap Gren, retreated back to Tir Isarnagiri. The other was treacherously slaughtered by Urdo's Malmish praefecto, Marchel ap Thurrig, after they had surrendered.

Marchel was exiled to her father's homeland of Narlahena for her crime: but for Thurrig's long and faithful service she would have been executed for it.

Meanwhile a Feast of Peace was held in Caer Tanaga for all the kings of the lands that made up Tir Tanagiri, Jarnish and Tanagan alike. Not all the kings were happy about this, but an uneasy peace held. A few years later there was an attempt by one of these petty kings, Cinon of Nene, on the life of Sulien's son Darien, still fostered at Thansethan. The attempt was foiled by the intervention of the great boar, Turth, one of the powers of the land. Sulien believed this attempt to have been instigated by Morthu, the son of Morwen, who hated her for killing his mother.

Urdo refused to act against Morthu without proof. Two years later, Urdo's queen, Elenn, miscarried of a son. She suspected this of being Morthu's doing, but he passed the examination of the priest

Teilo, who should have been able to detect a lie. Urdo and Elenn and all their court then made pilgrimage to

Thansethan to pray for a son. This visit, and this volume, concluded with two terrible duels—the first between

Sulien, as the queen's champion, and Conal ap Amagien for the honor of Elenn, whom Conal had jokingly insulted. The second was between Ulf Gunnarsson and Sulien's brother Morien, after Morthu revealed to

Page 3

Morien that Ulf was the killer of their brother. Ulf won his duel, and the news was brought to Sulien as she preserved the queen's honor without killing Conal, that her brother was dead and she must leave the ala and return home to become Lord of Derwen. The present volume takes up the story five years later.

I have here recounted the events of the first volume as if they were indeed the words of Sulien herself, and of definite historicity. Unfortunately, we can by no means be sure that this is the case.

The manuscript we have fills the last seven volumes of the compilation known as The White Book of Scatha.

The history of the White Book would itself fill volumes, but suffice to say that the White Book as we have it came to the island of Scatha sometime in the twenty-first century, and has certainly not been tampered with since that time. It languished, neglected until the first three volumes, consisting of Tanagan prose and poetry, were published with an acclaimed translation by Lady Gladis Hanver in 2564. There was then pressure to publish the rest of the book, and though additional volumes appeared, the "Sulien Text" remained invisible.

The middle volumes of the White Book consist largely of uninteresting Vincan poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and it was generally believed that there was no more of interest in the work. The publication of Professor Malaki Kahn's Vincan edition of The King's Peace: An Extract From the White Book in 2658 came as a complete surprise to everyone.

What was not surprising was that Kahn chose to publish his edition in Vincan. The text, which contradicts almost all known facts about King Urdo and many about the Early Insular Church, could not at that time have been published in Yal-nic. Even in Vincan it was immediately denounced by many as a forgery. Professor

Kahn's application to excavate at Derwen was greeted with derision, and it is true that it would require the destruction of large parts of what is now an attractive twenty-first-century port to discover the

thirteenth-century home (and possibly the original manuscript) the author of the "Sulien Text"

describes.

From stylistic and scribal evidence in the White Book itself it appears that the "Sulien Text" was copied in the mid-twentieth century, probably either at Thansethan or at Thanmarchel, and at the request of the Haver family of Scatha, who commissioned the White Book. The scribal note states that it is a copy of an earlier copy which was certainly made at Thansethan, very probably for the Great King Al-ward. This would be the sixteenth-century Alward of Munew who reunited the whole of Tanager under his leadership while holding off the Norlander invasion. He was a great scholar and may well have been interested in the life of Urdo. There is no intrinsic reason to disbelieve that the White Book scribe told the truth as he knew it. (See Jeyver, The

Scribes of the White Book, 2723.)

It is to Alward's sixteenth-century scribe that we owe the chapter division of the work as we have it, the commonly used title ("I found in the library of Thansethan a work on the King's Peace" the scribal note begins) and also the quotations which are used to head each chapter. Some of these quotations have been described as "of more value than the text itself."