The Sorcerers' Plague: Book One of Blood of the Southlands - Hardcover

Coe, David B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765316382 ISBN 13: 9780765316387

Publisher: Tor Books, 2007

Synopsis

David B. Coe enthralled readers and critics with his Winds of the Forelands, an epic fantasy full of political intrigue, complex characters, and magical conspiracy. Now he takes the hero of that series to new adventures across the sea on a journey to the Southlands.
 
Grinsa, who nearly single-handedly won the war of the Forelands, has been banished because he is a Weaver, a Qirsi who can wield many magics. He and his family seek only peace and a place to settle down. But even on the distant southern continent, they can't escape the tension between his magical folk and the non-magical Eandi. Instead of peace, they find a war-ravaged land awash in racial tension and clan conflicts. Worse yet, his own people try to harness his great power and destroy his family.
 
Amid the high tension of clan rivalry comes a plague that preys on Qirsi power across the Southlands with deadly results. When the disease is linked to an itinerant woman peddling baskets, one old man takes it upon himself to find answers in the secrets of her veiled past.
 
With wonderfully creative magic, dark secrets, and engaging characters faced with a world of trouble, Coe deftly weaves an epic tapestry that launches a richly-entertaining new saga in an unknown land.

About this title

About the Author

David B. Coe is a winner of the William L. Crawford Award for his first series, The LonTobyn Chronicle. He is also author of the popular Winds of the Forelands series, and currently resides in Sewanee, Tennessee.

Reviews

Coe follows the Winds of the Forelands series (Weavers of War, etc.) with this absorbing trilogy opener set across the sea in the Southlands, where a mysterious plague is heightening tensions among three groups: the Qirsi, who wield life-draining magic; the Mettai, who cast spells with blood and earth; and the nonmagical Eandi. Decades earlier, the plague destroyed the Mettai villagers of Sentaya, leaving only young Lici alive. No one in Lici's adopted village of Kirayde realizes the depth of her mental scars until she disappears 64 years to the day after her arrival, intending to use blood magic to punish the Qirsi she feels were responsible for the plague. Fans will cheer on Forelands series hero Grinsa, a powerful but pacifist Qirsi, who ties the two series together as he strives to understand Lici's motivation and aims to find a peaceful resolution to the escalating Qirsi-Eandi strife that follows in her wake. (Dec.)
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Excerpt


What are we, Grandfather?” 


 Besh sat back on his heels, wiping beads of sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and looking over at the boy. “What are we?” he repeated. “We’re sheep, of course. Why else would we live in the highlands and eat roots and greens?”


Mihas giggled, but quickly grew serious again. Whatever had taken hold of the boy’s curiosity didn’t want to let go.


“You know what I mean,” he said. “What kind of people are we?”


The old man leaned forward again, his knees and elbows cushioned in the soft black earth as he pulled clover and thin sprays of grass out of his garden. The goldroot looked healthy, the tops of the tubers firm and plump. In another half turn he’d harvest them. The time for pulling weeds had long since passed. Was it then vanity that had him crawling about in the dirt, peering into the shadows of the root greens? Ema would have thought so. She would have teased him day and night had she seen him now, an old man too proud to share the earth with clover and grass.


“Grandfather?”


“We are Mettai, Mihas. You know that.”


“But what does that mean?”


Besh sat up again. “Why are you asking me this?”


Mihas looked down at the ground, kicking at a clod of dirt with his bare foot. His fine long hair, black as a raven’s feathers, hung over his forehead, concealing his eyes.


“Do you remember the peddler who came through here just after the dark of the moons?” the boy asked.


“The old Qirsi?”


“Yes, him. He said something.”


“Come here,” Besh said, waving the boy over to him.


Mihas walked to where his grandfather was kneeling and sat beside him, looking solemn.


Besh smiled to show the boy he wasn’t angry with him. “What did he say to you?”


“He said we were like the creyvnal, that we really didn’t know what we were.”


“Perhaps he meant it as a compliment. The creyvnal is a powerful beast. Wouldn’t you like to have the body of a lion and the head of a wolf?”


He smiled; Mihas didn’t.


“The creyvnal isn’t real, Grandfather. Even I know that.”


“You’re right. It’s not real. But still, the peddler was also right, in a way. The Mettai are like the creyvnal.”


“How?”


“Well, we’re Eandi. We have dark hair and dark eyes, we live long lives, we’re strong like other Eandi. But like the Qirsi, we can use magic.”


“But did he mean that we’re not real? I mean, I know we are. But was he saying that our powers aren’t real?”


Besh eyed Mihas briefly. Then he reached for one of the clovers he had pulled from the ground and held it out to the boy.


Mihas frowned.


“Take it,” the old man said.


The boy held out his hand and Besh placed the clover in his palm.


“What does ‘mettai’ mean?” he asked. “Do you know?”


“You mean the word?”


“Yes.”


“It means blood of the earth.”


“Good. Put some dirt in your hand with the clover.”


As Mihas did this, Besh pulled his knife from the sheath on his belt and dragged the blade across the back of his own hand. His skin there, tanned and brown from the Growing sun, was scored with dozens of thin white lines, all of them running parallel to the cut he had just made; evidence of a life spent drawing upon earth magic. Like rings within the trunks of the great firs and cedars growing in the forests around Kirayde, the lines on a Mettai’s hand could be used to judge his or her age.


A man could even trace the history of all his years, if only he could recall the conjuring made whole by the blood that flowed from each of those scars. Some would claim that unnecessary conjurings like this one were a waste of blood and earth, that they were frivolous expressions of Mettai power. But wasn’t there value in helping a boy find pride in his heritage and in the power that flowed in his veins? Besh had been conjuring for most of his sixty-four years. This, it seemed to the old man, was as valid a reason as any for drawing forth his blood.


He let the blood well from the wound for several moments before carefully gathering some on the flat of his blade. He held the knife over Mihas’s hand, balancing the blood on the steel.


“Blood to earth,” he murmured. “Life to power, power to thought, color to clover.”


He tipped the blade, allowing the blood to drip off the knife and onto the boy’s hand, where it mingled with the earth and the flower. For a moment nothing happened. Then the blood and soil, blended together now in what looked like rich crimson mud, began to swirl slowly in the palm of the boy’s hand. Four times it went around, and then it vanished into the roots of the flower.


An instant later, the soft pink hue of the clover gave way to brilliant sapphire. The flower appeared to come to life again, its color dazzling, its leaves opening once more. In the center of the bloom, amid the blue, there appeared a small spot of bright yellow, as perfect and round as the sun in Morna’s sky.


Mihas laughed aloud.


“If our magic isn’t real,” Besh said, “how do you explain that?”


The boy reached for another clover. “Do it again, Grandfather!”


“No. Once is enough. One should never trifle with Mettai magic.”


“Can you teach me?”


“Not yet. You know that. When you begin your fourth four you can start to learn. And when you complete that four, you’ll have earned your blade. All right?”


Mihas nodded, looking glum. No doubt five years seemed an eternity to the child. Little did he know how quickly the time would pass.


Besh glanced at his hand. The bleeding had slowed. Another scar to mark the years.


Sixteen fours. How quickly they’d gone by. Many among his people lived to be this old. He wasn’t so unusual in that respect. If anything, he was more fit than most. Sixty-four was said to be a powerful age for those who reached it, a time of wisdom and enhanced magic. For most it was actually a year of endings. How many men had he seen live out their sixteenth four only to weaken and die soon after?


Besh had no intention of being one of them. He planned to guide Mihas into his power. Better him than Sirj, the boy’s father. The man would make a mess of it, and in the process he’d do the same to the boy. Besh had never liked Sirj’s father—he was as stubborn as he was stupid, and he could never manage to keep his mouth shut. It was bad enough that the man had built his house just next to Besh and Ema’s back when she still lived and Besh still worked as the village cooper. But that Elica should marry the man’s son . . . Besh shook his head. He would have spit at the thought of Elica’s fool of a husband had Mihas not been there, watching him. No, Besh couldn’t die yet. Once Mihas came of age he could go and join Ema in the Underrealm, but not before.


He licked the blood from the back of his hand and from his blade, as was proper. A Mettai never wasted blood, and by licking the wound, he stopped the bleeding. From what he’d heard over the years, he gathered that this wasn’t true for other Eandi or for the sorcerer race. But it worked for a Mettai every time.


“Can I see your knife again, Grandfather?”


“Have a care with it,” he said, handing it to Mihas, hilt first.


Mihas’s brown eyes danced in the sunlight. “I always do. You’re the one who’s always cutting himself.”


Besh had to laugh.


Clever boy. His mother’s child. Dark-skinned and long-limbed, like Elica and like Ema, and as quick as both of them. Ema would say that the father of such a child couldn’t be all bad. As far as Besh was concerned it meant only that Elica’s blood was stronger than her husband’s.


The old man turned his attention back to the clover and grasses intruding upon his goldroot, and for a long time he and the boy said nothing. The sun burned a lazy arc across the sky, blue save for a few feathered clouds. Swallows darted overhead, wheeling in the light wind, chattering and scolding like children at play.


“Are you the oldest person in Kirayde?” Mihas asked suddenly.


The boy was sitting in the dirt, still toying with the knife. The blue-and-gold clover lay on his knee, a prize that he would show his mother and father.


Besh laughed at the question. “No,” he said. “I’m not the oldest.”


He turned and sat, stretching out his stiff legs. An old man shouldn’t kneel for so long, Ema’s voice scolded in his head. If you’re not careful, you’ll wind up bent and lame.


“That little girl you play with, the one with so many older brothers.”


“Nissa?”


“Yes, Nissa.”


“She only has four brothers.”


“Only four?” Besh said. “I thought it was more than that. Anyway, her grandmother is older than I am. And so is the herbmistress.”


“She is...

Edition details

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0765316382
• ISBN 13: 9780765316387
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400