This is the first book in a Fantasy Series called Exiles by Melanie Rawn. It is well worth the time you spend on it because it is one of the best fantasy books I have read recently.
The musician is initially nameless, but very soon, we learn that his name is Collan..
As a boy of four, he was battered by the wind and while he was in the ditch, his family was destroyed. He was picked up by a strange woman who he thought rescued him, only to wake up in a cage. He was fed and clothed and his bruises were attended to, though.
He is sold as a slave (he is a four year old boy when his mom was killed and he was captured by a brigand family; they sold him to Flornat, the slavemaster who sold him on) to Scraller Pelleris. Scalar gained his wealth when everyone in his family conveniently and mysteriously died and he improved it with a deal with the First Counselor Aviva Anniayas. He became rich, with a cut to Aviva, and then was given the Blood Title and the right to use the symbol of the Golden galazhi.
Our boy was clever and was taught to read and write in a limited fashion commensurate with slaves. He also found that he had great musical talent. He starts as a young boy in menial tasks. Helping in the kitchen and so on.
His boss is thrilled with his good looks and his singing voice and also with his rich cadence and has him read out pornographic books to him. His music teacher is alarmed because he knows that the boy will be castrated to protect his voice from growing gruff. But right when it seemed that Collan was about to be sexually exploited by an aroused Scalar one day, a mage, introducing himself as Gorynel Dessi, saves him with a time freezing spell and takes him away.
But Collan cannot be contained. He steals a horse and runs away and is on the verge of starvation and survives by petty thievery and busking. One day Gorynel finds him and takes him to meet the great bard and port – Collan’s idol – Falundir. The latter had his fingers shortened and his tongue but by the authorities for some treasonous (in their eyes) poem he had written and Collan was employed to care for him. Slowly, he gains the trust of Falundir who gives him all his songs as well as his old lute to practice and guides him patiently.
He is finally sent on his way with a fake identity, the lute of Falundir and all songs of Falundir learnt by heart.
The story shifts to a father daughter duo who are separated from the girl’s mother. The daughter Glenin, realizes that she has magic she inherited from her father Feiran. She is Mageborn, and her father is a Mage in disguise. A teacher is sent from afar (arranged by her father) to awaken the magic in her and help her control it.
The teacher is sent to protect the mages and Ambrai is destroyed, shockingly, by Aurel Feiran himself. We learn that he was expelled for being a Mage, even though he married into the royal fold. The grandmother never liked him. However, he was ordered by the ruling class to destroy Ambrai and he did. The mages in there escaped through ladders though some mages decided to stay back and die. One of them was her teacher. The teacher had left her a trick trunc within which was hidden a book of magic. Glenin secretly learns magic. She chooses to marry the feckless son of Annias, called Goric. She knows that it is only a matter of time before she takes over but for now, she should lie low.
Meanwhile, Glenin’s sister Sarra and mother who is pregnant have fled to the waste as guests of Lady Lilen. There Sarra’s mother gives birth to a baby. They name her Cailet but Sarra is heartbroken when she is told that Sarra and her mother must leave Cailet in The Waste with Lady Lilen and move, for their safety. The bearer of the news was Gorynel Desse. Sarra could not take her mother either because Maichen Ambrai, her mother, died after childbirth.
Her new home was with a woman called Lady Velira Witte is a rustic house in Penderon. Sarra now assumed the name Liwellan.
When Taig visits her during dinner, she instantly recognizes him as one who has just joined the society of Mages – the hidden ones who escaped from the torching of Ambrai. He asks her to be patient – she will eventually join the club.
Sarra goes to a brothel with Oriel, another elder man who is also with the mages and tries to rescue a singer who belongs to the Guild but is in grave danger as the soldiers are hunting down anyone with association with Mages. He is a marked man. (Taig is protecting him but he, Taig, is himself in danger)
When she tries to rescue the minstrel, he takes her instead and uses the horse to escape. Then he leaves her in the midst of desert for her to walk back. Taig is also gone.
Meanwhile Cailet is growing up and her magic, despite the great Gorynel Desse’s attempt to make her forget. Alin is injured and Desse himself had to make the dangerous jouney to save him and send him away. Lilen cannot afford to have her loyalties known while Anniyas was hunting Mages.
With Glenin ironically on the establishment side, marrying into royalty, Sarra and Cailet growing separately with Mage sympathies and Sarra unable to believe that her own father was the cause of destruction of Ambrai and the reason for them to go into hiding, the story takes an interesting plot path.
Cailet shows signs of having a really powerful magic and to protect her, Gorynel puts a powerful ward of forgetfulness on her.
Meanwhile Sarra is finally taken by Alin and his boyfriend – as in lover – Val to collect the Mages together. She is now ready to know the truth. Sarra finds a new ladder (the portal that takes mages instantly from place to place) and Val, Alin and Sarra use it to validate the destination they think it has. They arrive at a supposedly abandoned castle, which was being used by the powers at Ambrai.
They don’t know that they are noticed, and Glenin meets with the chief and is told of their trip. She guesses that with Sarra was Alin Ostin but does not know who the other one (Val) is. She has been watching the Mages’ hideout in the hopes of catching Gornyl himself but now that she knows there is very little chance, orders the chief to kill all the mages. She knows Sarra will come to the capital to plead for her inheritance and plans to get her there. Interesting to read the sister vs sister conflict brewing.
It gets better. When Sarra, even with her cheeky proposal to give male heirs their share causes shock and awe, she does get a majority vote in her favour of inheriting xxx, making her very rich indeed. However, when Glenin gives a parting present of a snow globe with a toy eagle in it, Alin pretends clumsiness and breaks it, causing Val to pick up the pieces and return to Glenin. Later Alin reveals that it was a magical globe, a spy to keep an eye on Sarra from afar. Sarra is stunned.
Colan, in the meanwhile, has been cleverly drawn into the Resistance movement without him being aware of the trickery used to drag him in. He finally ends up with Lady Agatine in her house as a guest.
Sarra almost falls into a trap set by Glenin. Even though the eagle with the magic was destroyed, some residual magic was watching Sarra all the time. A mage gives up her life to save them all and Sarra is able to escape, and Glenin is bound. She barely manages to escape, seething with anger. The fun part is that, even though Sarra knows that she is battling her sister, who she now knows is pure evil, Glenin has no idea who Sarra is, due to the Ward set against anyone recognizing Sarra. Exhilarating to watch the duel between powerful sisters. Sarra now realizes that Glenin is lost to her as a sister forever and has become enemy number one.
It gets better and better. Finally Gornyl Desse dies, and a few others, but not before they impart all their knowledge to Cailet, the youngest of the Feirans. She becomes now Captal and also has all of the power within. People find it strange to treat her any differently than the little girl they knew, especially Taig Ostin to whom she was a little sister.
When they hear that a large number of Mages were captured by Anniyas, the Rising folks (including Collan who has somehow been shepherded into this) go into the maw of the enemy in the uniform of the guards and brilliantly rescue them – despite treachery from a person to whom they showed pity. When Cailet sends out a magical pulse to get all the remaining mages released – many of them were recaptured and executed – Glenin senses it and is surprised because she has proof that both Captal (Elvira) and Gornel are dead. But the father guesses that there is a new Captal now and goes in search.
Sarra and Collan grow closer but could not escape with Cailet so they take refuge in a magical protective castle. When they finally figure out how to escape, they are met by Aurin. Sarra knows that he is her father but he does not, due to Gornel’s ward. In fact, Glenin and Aurin both are even unaware of the existence of Cailet, let alone that she is their daughter.
Brilliant storytelling, lovely confrontations of family members who are on opposite sides (Sarra vs Glenin first and then Aurin, Cailet vs the establishment of Anniyas supported by Glenin and Autin). Nice to read.
And the author Melanie has the proclivity of killing off characters we have come to love, rather like the Game of Thrones.
Collan lets himself be captured by Auvrey and is put in a magical mental torture chamber to extract everything he knows. He hides the fact that Sarra is also with him so Auvrey simply thinks that he got the man he was after. Sarra realizes that she loves Collan and sets out. She is found and rescued by Imli who wants to take her to Cailet
Doriaz, the Fifth Lord, finds Cailet and Taig in a vulnerable place and in a heroic effort to protect Cailet, Taig claims to be the new Captal and dies for his pains, not before Sarra gets Doriaz and he dies.
Then it is time for Glenin to go and meet Collan who dares to defy her and is singed horribly by a shock (metaphorically) before she retreats, putting wards in place of her father’s. She also meets her father and tells him of what Anniyas is planning for them both. She makes him realize that the First Lord, Ambrai, wants her son, and not her, or, his usefulness having ended, Auvry, no matter what she promised.
Later, in the party celebrating her husband’s birthingday (yes, birthdays are called birthingdays in this fantasy novel) which is really an excuse to announce the impending birth of her son, she realizes that Anniyas has gone missing. Knowing that she is up to no good, she runs to the ‘White Box’ or the mental torture chamber, only to find it empty and all her wards cancelled. She realizes that Anniyas is taking her to Ambrai!
Anniyas in the meanwhile takes Collan to Ambrai to meet the new Mage – a blond girl with short hair is all she knows about her. She is amused that the new Captal (Captal! No less!) is a sixteen year old, who is easily captured!
There is a terrific scene where Collan subdues her momentarily and this costs the life of someone Anniyas holds dear!
When she reaches Ambrai, Anniyas is on the verge of overcoming the magic of the young (inexperienced?) Mage when suddenly Collan gets hold of Gornyl Desse’s sword thrown to him by Sarra and shatters the globe of Anniyas.
What follows is an exhilarating confrontation between Glenin and Cailer, who has tricked both Sarra and Collan away. The ending of the confrontation is spectacular and involves the appearance of Auvry Feiran, who comes in and confronts his two daughters trying to kill each other – he realizes who Cailet is, after overhearing an interesting exchange between the two.
Will not spoil the scene for you but read it. The book’s pace and breadth of imagination is wonderful and it reads like the beginnings of an epic series. The narration is tight and strong, and it slowly pulls you into the story.
If there are a couple of annoying nits to pick on this book, it would be the tendency of the author to kill characters as we start to like them a la the Game of Thrones, and the fact that after the story was ‘finished’ in my mind at least, it goes on still for another fifty or so pages.
The last two pages sets you up for the sequel, without a doubt.
Nevertheless a brilliant book and a joy to read. I would give it a 8/10
== Krishna
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