Master of the Cauldron
|
|
 Hardcover
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. First printing, November 2004 Distributed by Simon & Schuster Printed in the United States of America |
ISBN: 0-3128-7496-0Copyright 2004 by David Drake All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. A Tor Book Tor Books on the World Wide Web: Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. Electronic version by WebWrights |
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTSDorothy Day and the Seattle Weavers Guild more generally were enthusiastically helpful on this one. They provided not only advice but many hanks of yarn dyed with berries, etc (which draped my clothes line for weeks as I checked lightfastness), and also some remarkable swatches of double weave and other exotic fabrics. Believe me, what a skilled hand-weaver can do really is magical. Dan Breen was as usual my first reader. He pointed out not only where I dropped words but also where sentences I thought were clear did not appear so to an intelligent and educated person outside my head. My webmaster, Karen Zimmerman, and Dorothy Day both archived my text at stages in the process. One can never tell when one's computer will die. Which brings me to the fact that No Computers Were Killed in the Writing of This Novel. However a couple of them got very sick. My son Jonathan, with Mark L Van Name and Allyn Vogel as his backup, kept me going. I don't ordinarily mention secondary sources I've used in writing (and I use a lot of them), but Dr Andrea Berlin is still alive to thank. Her What's For Dinner?, in the Nov-Dec, 1999, Biblical Archeology Review was not only informative but evocative. I got two separate settings from the article. My British editor, Simon Spanton, provided me with some Lord Dunsany material that wasn't already on my shelves. Any reader of Master who's already familiar with Dunsany will realize how great my debt is to the Tales of Wonder. Those of you who aren't familiar with Dunsany really ought to give him a try (and Orion Books will accommodate you). My wife Jo kept everything going at home while I was writing Master; which, given that the process of writing coincided with the repainting of the interior of the house, is pretty remarkable. My thanks to all of you. Dave Drake AUTHOR'S NOTEThose of you who've read previous books in the Isles series will note some repetition in these notes, but I go to a good deal of effort to make each book accessible to people who've never read anything of mine. Bear with me. The religion of the Isles is based on that of Sumeria. The magic, however, is derived from that of the Mediterranean Basin during classical times (and probably originally Egyptian). The words of power are the voces mysticae of real spells, intended to get the attention of demiurges whom the wizard is asking for aid. I don't believe in magic myself; but a lot of other people, folks who're just as smart as I am, did and do. I'm not comfortable speaking the words of power aloud. I use classical models for the literature of this series. For the most part this isn't important for Master of the Cauldron, but Celondre is modeled on Horace; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles were the template for some of the documents; and there's a brief echo of the Ullman-Henry texts on which I learned to love Latin a very long time ago. Dave Drake |
|
