The Dragon Ring by Maggie Secara- 4 stars
This was a ride to a faerie land that I’ve never visited
before. There’s superb description that gave me a vivid picture, lots of
action, and a fair bit of guessing in terms of what the tasks set for Ben
Harper were all about. I’d love to meet the King and Queen of Faerie, though
not if Titania is in one of her bad moods. There’s humour in The Dragon Ring
that softens some of the darker aspects of the novel; music for the expert and
those like me who just like to listen; and a great blend of language - modern
and ancient - as the protagonists travel back though time. My favourite character of all has to be
Raven, a great friend to help you through a bad day! If you're looking for a time-travel novel to lands of old, manipulated by good and less-good faeries, then you'll love The Dragon Ring.
Excerpt from The Dragon Ring
Saturday
Kingdom of Wessex, Yule,
876 AD
 |
| Wikimedia Commons |
They rode out of
Faerie through a riot of bluebells and hawthorn blossom that gradually gave way
to an autumnal shower of golden leaves and a sky loud with migrating geese.
Finally with some meandering they emerged on a hilltop at the edge of a frozen
winter woodland stitched with barren trees, piled and layered and silent with
snow. Nothing but foraging animals and a pair of red-eyed wolves would ever realize
that their hoof prints had come out of nowhere.
Where the hill
broke to a shallow cliff, the wood thinned and broadened out under layers of
leaden sky into the tree-studded down lands of ninth century Wiltshire, at
least Ben thought it was Wiltshire, where a light snow was falling. There they
halted, surveying the land spread out below.
“Wow!" His
voice shook with the sudden cold and the plain wonder of what he had done, and
where he was. “Just, wow!”
“Well done, sir,”
Raven said, drawing up beside him. “I’ve never come through the gates quite
like that before.”
“You want to
lead?”
They were a
thousand years—a thousand years!—in the past, and he, Ben Harper, had brought
them here! He couldn’t stop grinning. They were also, Ben guessed, another
frozen hour’s ride from their goal—plenty of time to arrive as weary travelers
in some plausible way at the fortified house or whatever it was. No, not a
house exactly. A hunting lodge, or what his pioneer forbears might have called
a fort. He had a sense of wooden palisades, but nothing more detailed. He only
knew that somewhere down there in the densely wooded valley of the Avon, one fragment of the dragon ring had landed.
Clad now in the
tunics and gartered hose of royal servants, armed for the road, both Ben and
Raven were bundled in double layers of furs, woolen cloaks, hoods, and scarves
appropriate to the age and the weather. Even their sturdy ponies had grown a
shaggy winter coat, and their breath steamed under coarse blankets.
Ben puffed frosty
breath and settled the reins in his gloved hands.
“Cold?” the raven
boy asked.
“Kind of warm,
actually,” said Ben, finally noticing the costume change. The history buff
buried under the efficiency expert beamed with pleasure. “But good! Great,
even! Good thing I’m not allergic to wool.”
“You have your
skills, I have mine.”
Ben couldn’t stop
staring around, though the pony was getting restive. The countryside lay so
still and unreal, if it hadn’t been for the piercing cold, Ben would have
thought they stood in a film set, or in a painting. He listened, really
listened to the silence, and awe swept over him again. Except for the hiss of
their breathing, and his own heartbeat drumming in his ears, nothing stirred, nothing
at all. Nowhere in his own time was the mark of the modern world ever utterly
absent—this absent. No underlying electronic hum, no distant highway rumble,
not in the whole world. And when the winter night fell, it would be utterly
dark under the overcast, lacking even starlight or moonshine or urban glow.
He sat back in the
saddle with a dopey grin stretching his face in awe, touched with a little
fear.
Raven noticed, and
cuffed his shoulder lightly. “No gawking, sir, if you please,” he said.
“Y’know, you might have brought us in a little closer to the mark, if you don’t
mind my saying so.”
“Are you kidding?
And miss this?” Ben pounded the saddle horn with sheer glee. “I mean,
seriously! Wow!”
“The ponies are
getting cold, sir.”
“Oh, right.”
As they turned to
pick a path down from the cliff edge, Raven added. “You do have some idea where
we are, then?”
The shout of Ben’s
laughter rang in the frosty air. “The Middle Ages?”
“It is, yes,” said
the boy, patiently. “And we are in England. I believe that will be
Chippenham.” He waved a hand in the general direction of a smudge away over the
horizon, a smoky patch of sky, as always, indicating a living community. “If we
can get down from here without breaking our necks, we’ll be somewhere on the
Roman road from Bath—the
A4, more or less. And it’s just about...” He drew a deep breath as if tasting
the air. “Yes, Christmas Eve.”
Ben just kept
grinning, though the snow was swirling and the temperature dropping, and Raven sighed.
“Are we there yet?”
“Soon, yes. Very
soon.”
When they found
the road, they urged the ponies to a quicker step. He was humming the ancient
tune that had brought them here, which wouldn’t be written for another 600
years, and was for a while completely, thoughtlessly happy.
The world was not
only silent, he noticed, but remarkably empty. They passed now and then the odd
steading dug in against the freeze, its presence betrayed only by a thin stream
of hearth smoke. Here and there rose other signs of human use, sometimes no
more than a herdsman’s bothy, abandoned for the season, squatting like a dirty
snowball in a hazel break. But no traffic, no people.
Away south
across the frozen river, clinging to the swell of a hillside, a monastery and
its low, stone church huddled with its back to the road, keeping its stinks and
its treasures to itself. A single iron bell clanged a few sorry times, breaking
the air.
Raven flinched a
bit at the sound. “They’ll be ringing for Tierce,” he muttered. “And what
else?” He didn’t look happy.
“Is it true,” Ben
asked, seeing the reaction. “That the fae can’t bear the sound of church
bells?”
“Only when they’re
out of tune. Stop talking, will you?” All the wry humor had gone from him like
pinching out a candle.
“What? Why? I’m
enjoying—”
“Hark!” the boy
snapped, and Ben stopped, attention focused. They waited, Raven with his head
tilted, birdlike, listening.
“What is it?” Ben
whispered at last. “What do you hear?”
“Breathing, and
something else.”
“I’m breathing.”
“Please, sir!
Dogs, maybe. No, wolves—two or three of them. And the queen’s magic out of
tune.”
“Shit.”
“Quite.” The boy
shook himself, took a long look back over his shoulder, humming a pattern of
five or six notes breaking crisp in the crisp air.
Ben watched him,
noting how the youthful patina fell away as one by one Raven threw off all the
useless scarves and pelts, and the glimmer of Faerie intensified around him.
And when he turned to look ahead again, three massive black wolves, red-eyed
and grinning, blocked their way. His giddy happiness vanished, and his mouth
tasted of ashes.
Sleek and well fed
in spite of the bitter season, one paced the width of the road, whining,
disturbed by the Romans’ iron road buried long beneath the snow. One hunkered
down, as wolves do when stalking prey, one watching behind. The largest sat
staring at Ben from the middle of the path, secure and quiet as a watch dog.
Ben’s pony backed nervously.
“Do you know how
they used to hunt the wolf, Ben Harper?” said the raven boy, drawing the
shining long sword at his side.
“How’s that?”
“With traps and
snares, and dogs. Today, I am your dog. Draw your sword.”
Fumbling briefly
through the bundling layers, Ben felt the hilt come into his grasp with an ease
he did not deserve. It had been too long since he’d last handled a sword, and
never one like this. The blade gleamed as he brought it up into position,
easier in the hand than he expected. Light spilled off its sharpened edges.
“I don’t know if I
remember how.”
“I don’t expect
you to use it.” The fae’s eyes never left those of the animal before them,
though he had marked the other two to right and left. “But I want it in your
hand. Your job is to find the artifact. Mine is to keep you alive to do it. So
when I say ride, you ride, d’ye understand? You’ll hear things behind you, but
do not look back. And whatever else you do, do not leave the iron road.”
“What about you?”
Ben’s voice, unlike his companion’s, trembled more than he liked.
“I believe,” said
Raven, thoughtfully, “I shall sing. Now, ride!”
The Dragon Ring and King's Raven are isted on both Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1632490.Maggie_Secara
and on my Amazon Author’s page http://www.amazon.com/Maggie-Secara/e/B001JS6NTY/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1359140862&sr=8-1
Link on Amazon
The Dragon Ring
Blurb
Reality TV host Ben Harper has a problem: he owes the king
of Faerie a favour. So now he has to track down the three parts of a Viking
arm-ring, and return them to their place in time. This takes him through the
wolf-haunted forests of Viking Age Wessex, the rowdy back streets of
Shakespeare’s London,
and a derelict Georgian country house. Partnered with caustic, shape-changing
Raven and guided by a slightly wacky goblin diary, Ben must rediscover his own
gifts while facing his doubts and the queen of Faerie’s minions, who will do
anything to stop him.
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