Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Chapter 1 - Autumnwood
Chapter 2 - Conflict
Chapter 3 - Chevalier
Chapter 4 - Reflections
Chapter 5 - Transformation
Chapter 6 - Luc
Chapter 7 - Heart
Chapter 8 - Pyre
Chapter 9 - Contemplations
Chapter 10 - Fulfillment
Chapter 11 - Idyll
Chapter 12 - Shadow
Chapter 13 - Desolation
Chapter 14 - Riddles
Chapter 15 - Outset
Chapter 16 - Wing-to-Wing
Chapter 17 - Pocks
Chapter 18 - Caillou
Chapter 19 - Free Rein
Chapter 20 - Nixies
Chapter 21 - Croft
Chapter 22 - Lure
Chapter 23 - Village
Chapter 24 - Secrets
Chapter 25 - Musings
Chapter 26 - Castle
Chapter 27 - Gwyd
Chapter 28 - Troll Hole
Chapter 29 - Moor
Chapter 30 - The Wild Hunt
Chapter 31 - Rede
Chapter 32 - Vital Trek
Chapter 33 - Inference
Chapter 34 - Garden
Chapter 35 - Desperate Journey
Chapter 36 - Black Mountain
Chapter 37 - Iniquí
Chapter 38 - Recovery
Chapter 39 - Château
Chapter 40 - Birthright
Chapter 41 - Homeward
Epilogue Afterthoughts
Afterword
About the Author
Praise for the Novels of Dennis L. McKiernan
Once Upon an Autumn Eve
“McKiernan’s latest entry in his four-part fairy tale cycle goes beyond the reworking of the classic fairy tale ‘The Glass Mountain’ to depict a world of magic and enchantment.”
—Library Journal
“McKiernan inverts the traditional fairy tale motif of ‘knight rescues damsel’ by having Liaze undertake the quest to rescue Luc. . . . She’s a terrific character. . . . As for the setting, McKiernan’s Faery draws heavily from the French fairy tradition . . . . Although it may seem a small flourish, this adds greatly to the setting’s otherworldly nature and demonstrates McKiernan’s mastery at evoking the tiniest details of such a dreamlike land. . . . Recommended.”
—SFRevu
“Delightful . . . fast-paced . . . with a terrific twist involving Luc and a fabulous female champion.”
—Midwest Book Review
“No one beats McKiernan at the traditionally styled adult fairy tale, with something for everyone: beautiful princess oblivious to all states of personal dishabille, handsome prince, impossible challenges, despicably evil creatures, and romance, romance, romance! Quite simply, enchanting.”
—Booklist
Once Upon a Summer Day
“An interesting twist. . . . McKiernan’s writing is evocative. . . . He paints vivid landscapes and provides lots of good action sequences. The book is valuable as much for the journey as for the destination.”
—The Davis Enterprise
“Romantics rejoice! McKiernan’s retelling of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is the way it should have been done the first time around. . . . The lines between good and evil are clear, and romance and chivalry and true love are alive and flourishing.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“McKiernan embellishes another classic fairy tale in this enjoyably frothy fantasy . . . keep[s] the reader turning the pages.”
—Publishers Weekly
“McKiernan takes the tale in some unexpected directions. He also offers an engaging, clever, and resourceful hero in Borel, as well as entertaining sidekicks in Flic, Buzzer, and Chelle herself. Recommended.”
—SFRevu
“Steeped in tradition and timelessness, and should appeal to fairy tale lovers of all ages.”
—Library Journal
“McKiernan always manages to enchant his readers with his fabulous fantasy novels.”
—Midwest Book Review
Once Upon a Winter’s Night
“Exuberant . . . never less than graceful . . . a solid, well-rounded fantasy that readers will enjoy as much on a summer beach as on a winter’s night.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Engaging.”
—Locus
“Intelligently told, romantic . . . and filled with the qualities of the best of the traditional fairy stories.”
—Chronicle
“Prepare to be transported to the fairyland of childhood . . . enchanting.”
—Booklist
Red Slippers: More Tales of Mithgar
“Alternating between high tragedy and earthy humor, the twelve stories in this fantasy collection from bestseller McKiernan entertain while touching on complex moral and philosophical issues . . . appealing.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Elaborates on old themes and introduces new motifs in the richly developed world of Mithgar. . . . Filled with likable protagonists, this volume is an excellent choice.”
—Library Journal
“Those who seek long, absorbing yarns in the classic mode will honor and enjoy [Red Slippers].”
—Booklist
“Terrific . . . a powerful anthology that will leave a grateful audience wanting to share more pints with the crew of the Eroean.”
—Midwest Book Review
Silver Wolf, Black Falcon
“McKiernan brings his Mithgar series to a triumphant conclusion.”
—Publishers Weekly
“In the tradition of Tolkien, the author blends lore and prophecy with vivid battle scenes and emotional drama. A tale of high fantasy that should appeal to most fans of epic fiction.”
—Library Journal
. . . and His Other Novels
“Once McKiernan’s got you, he never lets go.”
—Jennifer Roberson
“Some of the finest imaginative action. . . . There are no lulls in McKiernan’s story.”
—The Columbus Dispatch
“McKiernan brews magic with an insightful blend of laughter, tears, and high courage.”
—Janny Wurts, author of Traitor’s Knot: Alliance of Light
By Dennis L. McKiernan
Caverns of Socrates
BOOKS IN THE FAERY SERIES
Once Upon a Winter’s Night
Once Upon a Summer Day
Once Upon a Spring Morn
BOOKS IN THE MITHGAR SERIES
The Dragonstone
Voyage of the Fox Rider
Hél’s Crucible:
Book 1: Into the Forge
Book 2: Into the Fire
Dragondoom
The Iron Tower (omnibus edition)
The Silver Call (omnibus edition)
Tales of Mithgar (a story collection)
The Vulgmaster (the graphic novel)
The Eye of the Hunter
Silver Wolf, Black Falcon
Red Slippers: More Tales of Mithgar
(a story collection)
ROC
Published by New American Library, a division of
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Published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin
First Roc Mass Market Printing, May 2007
Copyright © Dennis L. McKiernan, 2006
All rights reserved
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Once again to all lovers,
As well as to lovers of fairy tales . . .
And to the Roses
Acknowledgments
My dear Martha Lee, my heart, once more I am most grateful for your enduring support, careful reading, patience, and love. I know I have said this many times before, but it most surely bears repeating, ma chérie.
And again I thank the members of the Tanque Wordies Writers’ Group—Diane, Katherine, John—for your encouragement throughout the writing of this Faery tale.
And thank you, Christine J. McDowell, for your help with the French language. (I would add, though, that any errors in usage are entirely mine. Of course, the errors in English are mine as well.)
Foreword
If you have read the forewords of the first two tales of my Faery series—Once Upon a Winter’s Night and Once Upon a Summer Day—you will know my thesis is that once upon a time many (if not most) fairy tales were epics of love and seduction and copious sex and bloody fights and knights and witches and dragons and ogres and giants and other fantastic beings all scattered throughout the scope of the tale as the hero or heroine struggled on.
Bardic sagas were these, but as the minstrels and troubadours and sonneteers and tale-spinners and bards and other such dwindled, and common folks took up the task of entertaining one another with these well-loved sagas, I believe bits were omitted—fell by the wayside—and the stories grew shorter, or fragmented into several stories, or changed to fit the current culture or religion or whatever other agendas the tale-tellers might have had.
And so, if I’m right, the grand and sweeping tales bards used to keep their royal audiences enthralled for hours on end became less and less as the tales were spread from mouth to mouth.
As the years went on, the stories continued to dwindle, until they became what the collectors of those tales—Andrew Lang, the Grimm brothers, and others—finally recorded and produced for others to read . . . or so it is I contend—
—pale reflections of what they once were—
—mere fragments—
—holding a small portion of the essence—
—and so on.
But guess what: they still hold audiences rapt.
They still charm.
They still are much admired by many, and certainly I am among those.
Even so, I would really like to hear some of these stories such as I have imagined them once to have been: long, gripping, romantic, perilous epics of love and hatred and loss and redemption and revenge and forgiveness and life and death and other such grand themes.
But told as a fairy tale.
Especially a favorite fairy tale.
Expanded to include all the above.
With Once Upon an Autumn Eve again I take a favorite of mine (in fact several favorites of mine woven together) to tell the tale as it once might have been told—as an epic, a saga, a story of length.
As with my other stories, since it is a romance in addition to being an adventure, once more you will find French words sprinkled throughout, for French is well suited to tales of love.
By the bye, the best-known version of the central story is but a few pages long. Once again, I thought that much too brief, and, as is apparent, I did lengthen it a bit. But then again, I claim that I am telling the “real” story, and who is to say I am not?
I hope it holds you enthralled.
Dennis L. McKiernan
Tucson, Arizona, 2004
Nothin be certain, m’lady
1
Autumnwood
Separated from the mortal world by looming walls of twilight is a wondrous place called Faery. It is now quite difficult a to find, though once upon a time is it wasn’t. Faery is a place of marvel and adventure and magic and peril, populated by mythical and mystical creatures and uncommon beings . . . along with ordinary folks—if anyone who lives in Faery can be said to be ordinary. Yet the creatures and beings of Faery aren’t the only things of enchantment, for there are items of magic within—grimoires, amulets, swords, rings, cloaks, helms, and the like, most of them quite rare. Even the lands of Faery are numinous, for Faery itself is composed of many mystical realms, rather like an enormous and strange jigsaw puzzle, the individual domains all separated from one another by great tenebrous walls of twilight. And like a mystifying riddle, some of the realms touch upon many others, while some touch upon but few. Caution must be taken when stepping through these dusky walls in going from one place to another, else one might end up somewhere altogether different from where one intended. Too, directions in Faery do not seem to be constant; there may be no true east, south, west, and north, though occasionally those compass points are ascribed by some therein, for when one goes from realm to realm, bearings seem to shift. Instead it may be more accurate to say that east, south, west, and north respectively align with sunup or dawnwise, sunwise, sundown or duskwise, and starwise. Whether or not this jigsaw puzzle makes an overall coherent picture is questionable, for each of the pieces, each of the domains, seems unique; after all, ’tis Faery, an endless place, with uncounted realms all separated from one another by looming walls of shadowlight, and with Faery itself separated from the common world by twilight as well.
Among the many remarkable domains within this mystical place are the Forests of the Seasons. In one of these four woodlands eternal autumn lies upon the land; here it is that crops afield remain ever for the reaping, and vines are overburdened with their largesse, and trees bear an abundance ripe for the plucking, and the ground holds rootstock and tubers for the taking. Yet no matter how often a harvest is gathered, when one isn’t looking the bounty somehow replaces itself. How such a place can be—endless autumn—is quite mysterious; nevertheless it is so.
On one side of this magical realm and separated from it by a great wall of twilight is another equally enigmatic
province, a domain graced by eternal summer, and it is a region of forests and fields, of vales and clearings, of streams and rivers and other such ’scapes, where soft summer breezes flow across the weald, though occasionally towering thunderstorms fill the afternoon skies and rain sweeps o’er all.
Likewise, on a different side of the autumnal realm, beyond another great wall of half-light, there stands a land of eternal winter, where snow ever lies on the ground, and ice clads the sleeping trees and covers the still meres or, in thin sheets, encroaches upon the edges of swift-running streams, and the stars at night glimmer in crystalline skies.
And farther on and past yet another twilight border lies a place of eternal springtime, where everlasting meltwater trickles across the soil, and trees are abud and blossoms abloom, where birds call for mates and beetles crawl through decaying leaves and mushrooms push up through soft loam, and where other such signs of a world coming awake manifest themselves in the gentle, cool breezes and delicate rains.
These four provinces are the Autumnwood and Summerwood and Winterwood and Springwood, four of the many magical domains in the twilit world of Faery.
And as to these four regions, a prince or a princess rules each—Liaze, Alain, Borel, and Celeste—siblings all: the sisters Liaze and Celeste, respectively having reign o’er the Autumn- and Springwoods; their brothers Alain and Borel respectively the Summer- and Winterwoods.
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