Voices

Ansul was once a city of libraries, schools and temples. Then the Alds conquered it. They hold that demons hide inside words, so reading and writing are now banned, and anyone caught at either is put to death.

A few books survive, hidden in the Waylord's House. They are guarded by the Waylord, a man crippled by years of torture, and by Memer, the girl he treats as his own daughter. She grows up in an occupied city where owning a page is a deadly secret.

Then the Uplands poet Orrec Caspro arrives with his wife Gry. His voice carries a call that begins to rouse the conquered townspeople, and the order the Alds have imposed starts to shift.

This is the second book of the Annals of the Western Shore. It follows Memer as she comes of age amid violence, intolerance and magic, in a mood that is dark and haunting. The question it turns on is what the hidden books and the poet's words can do against an occupier who fears language itself.