Ace Books by Patricia A. McKillip THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD THE SORCERESS AND THE CYGNET THE CYGNET AND THE FIREBIRD THE BOOK OF ATRIX WOLFE WINTER ROSE SONG FOR THE BASILISK RIDDLE-MASTER: THE COMPLETE TRILOGY THE TOWER AT STONY WOOD OMBRIA IN SHADOW IN THE FORESTS OF SERRE ALPHABET OF THORN An Ace Book Published by The Berkley Publishing Group A division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2004 by Patricia A. McKillip. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc. First edition: February 2004 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McKillip, Patricia A. Alphabet of thorn / Patricia A. McKillip.—1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 0-441-01130-6 1. Teenage girls—Fiction. 2. Translators—Fiction. 3. Orphans—Fiction. I. Title. PS3563.C38A78 2004 813'.54—dc22 2003062912 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 CONTENTS ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN TWELVE THIRTEEN FOURTEEN FIFTEEN SIXTEEN SEVENTEEN EIGHTEEN NINETEEN TWENTY TWENTY-ONE TWENTY-TWO TWENTY-THREE TWENTY-FOUR TWENTY-FIVE TWENTY-SIX TWENTY-SEVEN ONE O n Dreamer’s Plain, the gathering of delegations from the Twelve Crowns of Raine for the coronation of the Queen of Raine looked like an invading army. So the young transcriptor thought, gazing out a window as she awaited a visiting scholar. She had never been so high in the palace library, and rarely so warm. Usually at this time of the morning she was buried in the stones below, blowing on her fingers to warm them so they could write. Outside, wind gusted across the vast plain, pulling banners taut, shaking the pavilions thrown up for the various delegations’ entourages of troops and servants. A spring squall had blown in from the sea and crossed the plain. The drying pavilions, huffing like bellows in the wind, were brilliant with color. The transcriptor, who had only seen invading armies in the epics she translated, narrowed her eyes at this gathering and imagined possibilities. She was counting the horses penned near each pavilion, pelts lustrous even at a distance after the rain, and as clear, silhouetted against one another’s whites and grays and chestnuts, as figures pricked on a tapestry, when the scholar finally arrived. A beary man, he shed a fur cloak that smelled of damp and an unusual scent of tobacco. He carried a manuscript wrapped in leather that he laid upon the librarian’s desk as gently as a newborn. As he unswaddled the manuscript, the transcriptor standing silently at the window caught his eye. His hands stilled. He stared at her. Then his head, big, dark, and very hairy, jerked toward the librarian who had shown him in. “Who is this?” “We called her Nepenthe,” the librarian said in his austere voice. His name was Daimon; Nepenthe had known him all her life, for he had found her and named her. Of the child she had been before she became Nepenthe, neither of them knew a thing. In sixteen years since then, she had changed beyond recognition, and he had not changed by a moment, being the same dispassionate, thin-haired wraith who had picked her up with his bony hands and tucked her into a book bag to add to the acquisitions of the royal library. “She is one of our most skilled and creative translators. She has a gift for unusual alphabets. Such as you say you have, Master Croysus?” “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” Master Croysus said. He continued unwrapping the manuscript, still tossing glances at Nepenthe. She stood quietly, her long fingers tucked into her broad black sleeves, trying to look skilled and creative, while wondering what the scholar found wrong with her face. “It looks like an alphabet of fish. Where did you come from?” “Don’t let her youth deceive you,” Daimon murmured. The scholar shook his head absently, squinting at Nepenthe until she opened her mouth and answered. “Nowhere, Master Croysus. I was abandoned on the cliff edge outside the palace and found by librarians. The last foundling they took in was named Merle. N was the next available letter.” Master Croysus made an incredulous trumpet sound through his nostrils. “I’ve seen that face,” he said abruptly, “on a parchment older than Raine. I don’t remember what it was, except that the ancient kingdom it came from lay far beyond the Twelve Crowns and it no longer exists except on paper.” The librarian looked curiously at Nepenthe; she wished she could take off her head and look at herself. “A clan of wanderers,” he suggested, “remnants of the forgotten kingdom. Perhaps they were passing through Raine when Nepenthe was born.” “There was no one—?” “No one,” Daimon said simply, “came looking for her.” He paused, added to clarify and end the subject, “It was assumed that whoever left her in that precarious spot—her mother, most likely—flung herself for her own reasons into the sea. The child was left in hope, we also assumed, of a less difficult life, since she was left alive and wailing with great energy when we found her.” The scholar grunted, which seemed his last word on the subject. He laid the manuscript bare and gestured to Nepenthe. She stepped to the desk. They all gazed at the strange, elongated ovals neatly imprinted on something that Nepenthe did not recognize. She brushed it with her fingertips. It was supple and tough at once. Some kind of pelt, it seemed, though it was white as birch and strangely unwrinkled. “What is this?” she asked puzzledly. The scholar regarded her with more than fantastic interest. “Good question. No one knows. I’m hoping that the contents may indicate the tools.” He was silent a moment, his bushy brows raised inquiringly at her, and then at the librarian. “I can stay only as long as the delegation from the Ninth Crown stays after the coronation. I’m traveling in the company of Lord Birnum, who will pay his respects and go home to civilization as soon as he can. It is a powerful gesture and a stirring custom for rulers to be crowned in the palace of the first King of Raine, but not even he, with all his ambitions, imagined the rulers of Twelve Crowns under his ancient roof at the same time.” “Are you with Lord Birnum in the palace?” Daimon asked delicately. “No,” Master Croysus sighed. “In a leaky pavilion.” “We can offer a bed of sorts among the books.” The scholar sighed again, this time with relief. “I would be immensely grateful.” “I’ll see to that, while Nepenthe takes you down to show you where she will be working on your manuscript. Transcriptors dwell in the depths. As well, I must warn you, as do visiting scholars.” “I trust the depths don’t leak.” “No.” “Then I’ll sleep happily buried in stone.” He wrapped his manuscript again in leather and himself in fur, and followed Nepenthe. She led him down and down until mortared stone became solid stone, until they left even the green plain above them and the only light came from windows staring across the sea. Until then, he questioned her; she answered absently, wondering about the fish wrapped in his arms. “You don’t remember anything of your life before the librarians found you?” “How could I? I had no teeth; I didn’t know words for anything. I don’t even remember—” She stopped to light a taper, for the stairways had begun to plunge into hand-hewn burrowings. “I do remember one thing. But I don’t know what it is.” “What is it?” She shrugged. “Just a face, I think.” “Whose?” he demanded. “I don’t know. I’m an orphan, Master Croysus,” she reminded him patiently. “A foundling. The librarians have always taken us in; they train us to become scribes and translators. We get accustomed early to living and working in stone suspended between sky and sea.”