Ysabel Read online

  Praise for Ysabel

  “The past and the present are intertwined in this stylish novel … Kay tells a vivid and satisfying tale, with moments of sublime eeriness.”

  —The Washington Post

  “Kay is at his finest … There are many writers who have shown us the gods walking among us, the age-old stories alive in the modern world. Rare are those able to demonstrate that those gods, those stories, live within us, and are as essential to our existence as oxygen. Guy Gavriel Kay is one of those rare few, and Ysabel is a splendid addition to his body of work.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “Kay is such an excellent writer. He establishes a potent challenge for his modern characters, who are well-drawn and consistently believable in their reactions. He gives them no option but to follow this course of fantastical events to its logical conclusion. This book is exciting—a real page turner.”

  —The Gazette (Montreal)

  “The story is compelling, the pace is tantalizing and Kay makes the most of the splendid south of France. You can just about taste it.”

  —Calgary Herald Review

  “Ysabel, as much as the trilogy Kay was first known for, is an unpredictable, sometimes disquieting adventure—a Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for adults.”

  —Winnipeg Free Press

  “Kay has fashioned a taut and moving thriller, which also happens to be a powerful story of the complexities of family love and loss … The suspense will hold readers in thrall to the surprising conclusion. As Guy Gavriel Kay’s first venture into contemporary fantasy, Ysabel is just fantastic.”

  —Edmonton Journal

  “Ysabel is a bizarre and complex mix of themes, told with surprising ease; the winding tale reads almost effortlessly, concealing Kay’s doubtless hours of research and work to keep the layered stories together … This is unquestionably the work of a master.”

  —Monday Magazine

  “Infused with actual history and actual settings … If only more fantasy were like this book.”

  —The Province (Vancouver)

  “[Ysabel] reads like a perfectly cut jewel … The plot is necessarily complex, but is told with meticulous and merciless speed, like a really fine thriller … And Kay is [so] superb on the landscape and the artifacts of Provence … that one remembers being there.”

  —Science Fiction Weekly

  “Kay has a special affinity for the people behind the largerthan-life legends that persist through time. His latest fantasy blends time and place in a crossing of worlds and universal truths. Highly recommended.”

  —Library Journal

  “Outstanding characters, folklore, and action add up to another Kay must-read.”

  —Booklist

  “Evocative writing … fascinating characters … Will enthrall mainstream as well as fantasy readers.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Kay brings a touch of the otherworldliness to present-day France … A powerful, engrossing read, which will satisfy Kay’s many fans and newcomers alike.”

  —Quill & Quire

  PENGUIN CANADA

  YSABEL

  GUY GAVRIEL KAY is the author of ten novels and a volume of poetry. He won the 2008 World Fantasy Award for Ysabel, has been awarded the International Goliardos Prize, and is a two-time winner of the Aurora Award. His works have been translated into more than twenty languages and have appeared on bestseller lists around the world.

  Visit his Canadian website at www.guygavrielkay.ca and his international website at www.brightweavings.com.

  ALSO BY GUY GAVRIEL KAY

  The Fionavar Tapestry

  The Summer Tree

  The Wandering Fire

  The Darkest Road

  Tigana

  A Song for Arbonne

  The Lions of Al-Rassan

  The Sarantine Mosaic

  Sailing to Sarantium

  Lord of Emperors

  The Last Light of the Sun

  Beyond This Dark House

  (poetry)

  Under Heaven

  YSABEL

  GUY

  GAVRIEL

  KAY

  PENGUIN CANADA

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700,

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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  New Delhi – 110 017, India

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  Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,

  Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada),

  a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2007

  Published in Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada),

  a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2007

  Published in this edition, 2010

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (OPM)

  Copyright © Guy Gavriel Kay, 2007

  Author representation: Westwood Creative Artists

  94 Harbord Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 1G6

  Epigraph on page ix from “Juan at the Winter Solstice,” Complete Poems in One Volume, by Robert Graves. Reprinted with permission of Carcanet Press Limited.

  Epigraph on page 507 from G: A NOVEL by John Berger, copyright © 1972 by John Berger. Used by permission of Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book 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, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the U.S.A.

  * * *

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Kay, Guy Gavriel

  Ysabel / Guy Gavriel Kay.

  ISBN 978-0-14-317449-3

  I. Title.

  PS8571.A935Y83 2010 C813’.54 C2010-900454-X

  * * *

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.penguin.ca

  Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see www.penguin.ca/corporatesales or call 1-800-810-3104, ext. 2477 or 2474

  For

  Linda McKnight

  and

  Anthea Morton-Saner

  There is one story an
d one story only

  That will prove worth your telling,

  Whether as learned bard or gifted child;

  To it all lines or lesser gauds belong

  That startle with their shining

  Such common stories as they stray into.

  —ROBERT GRAVES

  YSABEL

  PROLOGUE

  The woods came to the edge of the property: to the gravel of the drive, the electronic gate, and the green twisted-wire fence that kept out the boars. The dark trees wrapped around one other home hidden along the slope, and then stretched north of the villa, up the steep hill into what could properly be called a forest.

  The wild boar—sanglier—foraged all around, especially in winter. Occasionally there might be heard the sound of rifle shots, though hunting was illegal in the oak trees and clearings surrounding such expensive homes. The well-off owners along the Chemin de l’Olivette did what they could to protect the serenity of their days and evenings here in the countryside above the city.

  Because of those tall eastern trees, dawn declared itself—at any time of year—with a slow, pale brightening, not the disk of the sun itself above the horizon. If someone were watching from the villa windows or terrace they would see the black cypresses on the lawn slowly shift towards green and take form from the top downwards, emerging from the silhouetted sentinels they were in the night. Sometimes in winter there was mist, and the light would disperse it like a dream.

  However it announced itself, the beginning of day in Provence was a gift, celebrated in words and art for two thousand years and more. Somewhere below Lyon and north of Avignon the change was said to begin: a difference in the air above the earth where men and women walked, and looked up.

  No other sky was quite what this one was. Any time of year, any season: whether a late autumn’s cold dawn or midday in drowsy summer among the cicadas. Or when the knife of wind—the mistral—ripped down the Rhone valley (the way soldiers had so often come), making each olive or cypress tree, magpie, vineyard, lavender bush, aqueduct in the distance stand against the wind-scoured sky as if it were the first, the perfect, example in the world of what it was.

  Aix-en-Provence, the city, lay in a valley bowl west of the villa. No trees in that direction to block the view from this high. The city, more than two thousand years old, founded by Romans conquering here—surveying and mapping, levelling and draining, laying down pipes for thermal springs, and their dead-straight roads—could be seen on spring mornings like this one crisply defined, almost supernaturally clear. Medieval houses and modern ones. A block of new apartment buildings on a northern slope, and—tucked into the old quarter—the bell tower of the cathedral rising.

  They would all be going there this morning. A little later than this, but not too much so (two alarm clocks had gone off in the house by now, the one woman was already showering). You didn’t want to linger of a morning, not with what they were here to do.

  Photographers knew about this light.

  They would try to use it, to draw upon it as someone with a thirst might have drawn from an ancient well—then again at twilight to see how doorways and windows showed and shadowed differently when the light came from the west, or the sky was blood-red with sunset underlighting clouds, another kind of offering.

  Gifts of different nuance, morning and evening here (noon was too bright, shadowless, for the camera’s eye). Gifts not always deserved by those dwelling—or arriving—in a too-beautiful part of the world, where so much blood had been shed and so many bodies burned or buried, or left unburied, through violent centuries.

  But as to that, in fairness, were there so many places where the inhabitants, through the long millennia, could be said to have been always worthy of the blessings of the day? This serene and savage corner of France was no different from any other on earth—in that regard.

  There were differences here, however, most of them long forgotten by the time this morning’s first light showed above the forest and found the flowering Judas trees and anemones—both purple in hue, both with legends telling why.

  The tolling of the cathedral bells drifted up the valley. There was no moon yet. It would rise later, through the bright daylight: a waxing moon, one edge of it severed.

  Dawn was exquisite, memorable, almost a taste, on the day a tale that had been playing out for longer than any records knew began to arc, like the curve of a hunter’s bow or the arrow’s flight and fall, towards what might be an ending.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER I

  Ned wasn’t impressed. As far as he could tell, in the half-light that fell through the small, high windows, the Saint-Sauveur Cathedral of Aix-en-Provence was a mess: outside, where his father’s team was setting up for a pre-shoot, and inside, where he was entirely alone in the gloom.

  He was supposed to feel cool about being by himself in here. Melanie, his father’s tiny assistant, almost ridiculously organized, had handed him a brochure on the cathedral and told him, with one of her winks, to head on in before they started taking the test digitals that would precede the real photographs for the book.

  She was being nice to him. She was always nice to him, but it drove Ned a bit crazy that with everything else she had to deal with, Melanie still—obviously—made mental notes to find things for the fifteen-yearold tag-along son to do.

  Keep him out of the way, out of trouble. She probably knew already where the music stores and jogging tracks and skateboard parks were in Aix. She’d probably known before they flew overseas, googling them and making notes. She’d probably already bought a deck and gear on Amazon or something, had them waiting at the villa for just the right time to give them to him, when he looked completely bored or whatever. She was perfectly nice, and even cute, but he wished she didn’t treat him as part of her job.

  He’d thought about wandering the old town, but he’d taken the booklet from her instead and gone into the cathedral. This was the first working day, first set-up for a shoot, he’d have lots of chances later to explore the city. They were in the south of France for six weeks and his father would be working flat out almost the whole time. Ned figured it was just as easy to stick around the others this morning; he was still feeling a bit disoriented and far from home. Didn’t have to tell anyone that, though.

  The mayor’s office, in the city hall up the road, had been predictably excited that they were here. They’d promised Edward Marriner two uninterrupted hours this morning and another two tomorrow, if he needed them, to capture the facade of their cathedral. That meant, of course, that any people wanting to go in and out to pray for their immortal souls (or anyone else’s) were going to have to wait while a famous photographer immortalized the building instead.

  As Greg and Steve unloaded the van, there had even been a discussion, initiated by the city official assigned to them, about men going up on ladders to take down a cable that ran diagonally across the street in front of the cathedral to the university building across the way. Ned’s father had decided they could eliminate the wire digitally if they needed to, so the students weren’t going to be deprived of lights in their classrooms after all.

  Nice of us, Ned had thought.

  Pacing back and forth, his father had started making crisp decisions, the way he always did when finally on location after the long buildup to a project. Ned had seen him like this before.

  Barrett Reinhardt—the publisher’s art director for the book—had been here in Provence two months ago, preparing a list of possible photographs, emailing jpegs back to Edward Marriner in Montreal, but Ned’s father always preferred to react to what he saw when he got to a place he was shooting.

  He’d pointed out a balcony off the second floor of the university, right above the square, opposite the facade, and decided they’d shoot with the digital camera from the ground, stitching a wide shot on the computer, but he wanted to go up to that balcony and use large-format film from there.

  Melanie, following him around with her binder, had scribble
d notes in different-coloured inks.

  His father would make his photo selection later when he saw what they had, Ned knew. The challenge would probably be getting the tall bell tower on the left and the full width of the building into one shot. Steve had gone with the guy from the mayor’s office into the university to see about access to the balcony.

  A crowd had gathered to watch them setting up. Greg, using adequate French and a smile, was making sure the spectators stayed around the edges of the square, out of the shots. A gendarme had come to assist. Ned had watched, sourly. His French was better than the others’, but he hadn’t actually felt like helping. He’d left at that point, and gone inside the cathedral.

  He really wasn’t sure why he was in such a bad mood. On the face of it, he ought to have been really cool with this: out of school almost two months early, skipping exams (he did have three essays to write here and deliver in July back home), staying in a villa with a swimming pool while his dad and the others did their work . . .

  Within the dark, high-vaulted cathedral, he abruptly removed his iPod buds and hit the off button. Listening to Houses of the Holy in here wasn’t quite as clever as he’d thought it would be. He’d felt silly and even a little bit nervous alone in a place this shadowy and vast, unable to hear anything around him. He could imagine the headlines: Canadian Student Stabbed by Led Zeppelin–Hating Priest.

  The thought amused him, a little. He’d put it in an email to the guys back home later. He sat down on a bench halfway up the central aisle, stretched out his legs, and glanced at Melanie’s booklet. The cover photo was taken from a cloister. An arch in the foreground, a sunlit tree, the bell tower behind against a really blue sky. It was postcard pretty. It probably was on a postcard.

  His father would never take a picture like it, not in a million years. Not of this cathedral. Edward Marriner had talked about that yesterday, while they’d watched their first sunset from the terrace.