Fantasy

Review from Science Fiction Book Club
Sixteen years have passed since the maligned sorceress Tarien Aswydd was imprisoned in a high tower and her baby taken away from her, years in which King Cefwyn of Ylesuin sired an heir—Aewyn, now 15—and a daughter, still a babe in arms. During those years, the king’s illegitimate son, Elfwyn—called Otter—grew up happily in the countryside, his very existence a thorn in the side of the Quinaltine priests.

From Otter’s birth, the king had been advised not to make this half-Aswydd bastard his younger son’s enemy—or his own. He had let Aewyn and Otter become friends, though he worried that Otter would show signs of magic, which would mean his certain death. Wizardry had had a hand in the boy’s life: he had been conceived through magical guile and was raised by a trusted hedge-witch. With his heritage, the boy bears close watching, so despite his misgivings, Cefwyn brings him to live at Guelemara.

Unsure of his future, Otter walks a fine line between the suspicions of the priests and the affections of his royal family. When he starts having Sendings, compelling visions that surely would condemn him in the eyes of the priests, he struggles to hide it lest he upend the household—but to no avail. For, as dark magic snakes around him, the bonds of family and the peace of the realm strain against forces that would see them undone. Into this maelstrom step two sorely missed friends—Lord Tristen the Shaping, and Cefwyn’s old tutor, the wizard Emuin, whose guidance will be needed in the trouble yet to come…. Jacket art by Matt Stawicki. (402 pp.) 2006.