KNIGHTS OF DARK RENOWN

David A. Gemmell

Dedication

True friends are rare, but without them life would lack all quality.

Knights of Dark Renown is dedicated with love to Val and Mike Adams, good neighbours, good friends. And also to Ivan Kellham, Sue Blackman, and the staff at Village Video, Hastings, who put up with a quirky author serving behind the counter whenever he feels the need to run away from his word processor.

Acknowledgements

As always grateful thanks to Liza Reeves for the guidance, Jean Maund for the copy editing, and Stella Graham, Tom Taylor, Edith Graham for the test reading. Special thanks to Roger Garland for the inspired cover art.

And to Val, the safe haven in the sometimes treacherous sea of life.

Prologue

He was nine years old, torn between grief and joy, and he was flying beneath the stars and above a land bathed in moonlight. It was a dream. Even at nine years old he knew that people did not really fly. But still, at this moment, dream or no, he was alone and free.

No one to chastise him for stealing a honey-cake, no one to beat him for failing to see a finger-mark on the silver as he polished and polished hour upon hour.

Somewhere - though he knew not where - his mother lay cold in death, and the grief was like hot knives in his soul. But, as children will, he forced it from his mind and looked to the bright, diamond stars. They seemed so close and he tried to soar towards them. But ever they remained, glittering and cold, far from his reach. He slowed in his flight and gazed down.

The land of the Gabala was so small now, and the world so large. The Forest of the Ocean lay beneath him like a wolf pelt, the mountains merely wrinkles in an old man�s skin. He dropped lower, falling, spinning towards the ground, and screamed in his fear as the mountains roared up towards him, jagged and threatening. His dizzy fall slowed and he floated once more. On the sea beyond Pertia Port he could see the great triremes with their square sails, their oars lifted - and on the land the lights of the towns and cities. Four huge braziers were lit on the walls of Mactha fortress, twinkling like candles on a cake. He sped away from the lights towards the distant mountains.

He wished he might never go home; wished he could float like this for ever, safe from the many tortures of slavery. While his mother had been alive there had been someone who cared for him - not as a slave boy but as Lug, the child, flesh of her flesh. Her arms had always been open to him.

Grief and pain swamped him once more. When she had become ill Lug had been told she needed rest. . . but it did not help. They had sent for the healer, Gwydion, but he was away in the city of Furbolg. Lug had watched the flesh vanish from his mother�s features, seen her change from a living, loving woman to a skeletal creature whose eyes could look at him without recognition, and whose arms did not have the strength to open for him.
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