The Falconer's Daughter - Liz Lyles

THE FALCONER’S DAUGHTER

Liz Lyles

The Falconer’s Daughter: Book 1

© 2015 Liz Lyes

EPUB Edition

The Tule Publishing Group, LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

978-1-942240-74-7

For my father.

I am yours,

the falconer’s daughter,

carrying you forward

your words forever

entwined with mine.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Preface

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Preview from The Falconer’s Daughter: Book II

The Falconer’s Daughter Saga

About the Author

Acknowledgements

A very big thank you to the incredible publishing team at Tule for taking this book of my heart and bringing it to life!

Thank you to my editors Danielle Rayner and Lindsey Stover for your time and attention. Editing and copy editing this huge saga was a labor of love (and sometimes just pure labor!) and I am immensely grateful you cared so much about this story and devoted so much energy to getting it right.

Thank you to Meghan Farrell, Managing Editor, and the rest of the team for taking risks and being willing to experiment with my sprawling saga. I have loved working with you all.

Thank you to Lee Hyat for the beautiful cover. I couldn’t love it more!

And lastly, endless love and appreciation to my grandmother, who read this story when I was in graduate school and went through the book with her pencil circling typos and misspellings, including the word pensi, which should have of course been, penis. Grandma, you are a trooper and my inspiration every single day.

Preface

Set in the late Middle Ages, The Falconer’s Daughter is a story about a woman’s search for meaning. I began the novel as an attempt to understand relationships, particularly those between families and one’s tie to history. We all have a history—ancestry—and this history brings both problems and promise to our definition of self.

Like Cordaella in The Falconer’s Daughter, my father died when I was young and his death forced me to look beyond my immediate family to the larger world for answers, directions, resolution. I found that the larger world weaves a pattern of birth, marriage, family, and death: this pattern repeating itself endlessly, from generation to generation without regard to class or gender.

No two characters in The Falconer’s Daughter have the same life experience, each character is affected by fate and choice. Fate isn’t always just, or kind. What is left then? Choice. My characters must choose to accept, fight, or deny the demands and changes brought by their world.

These elements—fate and choice—are the key elements that have shaped my protagonist, Cordaella Buchanan. She was born to one set of circumstances and later asked to adapt to another. As a woman in the Middle Ages, she holds a position of limited power. As an intelligent woman in the Middle Ages, she learns to use her strength within the confines of society, enabling her to be more powerful.

Yes, The Falconer’s Daughter is fiction and the larger-than-life story of one woman. But the novel is also about courage and passion, conviction, hope, and acceptance. The setting may be medieval but the themes are timeless. What does it mean to be human? To be a woman? To find happiness? Meaning?

I like my heroine. I have given her qualities I would have wanted. I have given her a world filled with intrigue and drama, peopled by those who are both brilliant and broken, generous and complex. I also gave her story a conclusion that promises good, something better in the future. In short, when the novel ends, I wish for Lady Cordaella Buchanan Fernando much love, many years of life, and continued adventure.

THE FALCONER’S DAUGHTER

Book 1

PROLOGUE

London, Britain 486 A.D.

ON THE BATTLEFIELD, his left hand cradled against his chest, blood caked on his brow, Leir slowly lifted his head to the sky. Fine streaks of light—the sheerest yellow—began to shine through the clouds. Light.

With the emergence of the sun, it all came back to him, words he had heard but ignored, words that could have perhaps prevented this. Now, two daughters lay dead. The third—Cordaella—would she ever forgive him?

Light. Truth. Words disdained. And bleeding, Leir, who once was the greatest of the great Kings, remembered wisdom too late. How had it been? What had the sage said?

The sage’s eyes opened, the watery gray depths focusing