Chapter 44: Charms and Tokens

Chapter 45: A Nighttime Sun

Chapter 46: River Man

Chapter 47: Hidden Chambers

Chapter 48: The Little Boats

Chapter 49: Blood as Black as Night

Chapter 50: Several Matters of State

Chapter 51: Stolen Scales

Chapter 52: Homecoming

Chapter 53: Their Masters’ Folly

Chapter 54: Voices Unheard, Faces Unseen

Afterword

Appendix

Acknowledgments

It’s always extremely hard to properly acknowledge all the people who contributed to a book, but with this one it’s even harder, because so very many people kindly contributed their time and effort to make it possible.

Here are as many of them as I can be certain about, since the process started more than two years ago. If you’re one of the deserving and I failed to mention you here, definitely consider yourself thanked, but please write to me so I can make sure to get a proper acknowledgment into the next book.

First off, my sincere gratitude to all who took the time to read a very long, very early manuscript and give me their impressions and suggestions, or who worked to make sure the index was comprehensive, accurate, and also jibed with the previous books. Each name represents hours of work that I didn’t have to do!

Charlotte Cogle; Ron Hyde; Ylva von Löhneysen; Eva Maderbacher; Devi Pillai; Cindy Squires; Linda Van Der Pal; Angela Welchel; and Cindy Yan.

You guys are my heroes. Thanks and thanks and thanks.

As always, I need to mention those who have done the most for me for the longest. The crucial help that my wife Deborah Beale and my publishers Sheila Gilbert and Betsy Wollheim provided for this book is discussed in the dedication, but I wanted to say again how much they rock my world.

My agent Matt Bialer has been his usual smart, helpful, and amusing self throughout this process. You’re in a rut, Matt.

Lisa Tveit has managed no matter what befell to keep my website (and other online aspects of my career) wonderful and working—as always, thank you so much, Lisa.

MaryLou Capes-Platt, who is copyediting the new Osten Ard books, is both a stern taskmistress and a charming muse, commenting in the margins of the proofs, giving me happy little reactions when I do well or gently pointing out when my writing is sloppy, confusing, or otherwise not up to par. Her sharp eye and wit, and her kind heart have strongly influenced the final version of the story.

Isaac Stewart has not only contributed brilliant new maps, but spent long, difficult hours trying to get all the details exactly right so that they match the geography from the earlier books as well. (He had help with this, but I’ll get to that in a moment.) The results are obvious—and gorgeous.

Michael Whelan’s doing the paintings for these books—’nuff said, really—and as always, he worked really, really hard to take what’s in the story and expand it with his great talent into more than I could ever have imagined.

Joshua Starr has labored long and hard to keep me on schedule and (more or less) out of trouble—as have many other people at DAW Books and Penguin Random House. Josh makes coping with the eye-crossing minutiae of publication a pleasure. Many thanks, Josh!

And my British and German publishers, Oliver Johnson at Hodder & Stoughton and Stephan Askani at Klett-Cotta, read and supported this newest Hideously Long Tad Book with their usual kindness and savvy. I am very fortunate in my publishers worldwide.

And of course I must mention those most loyal and kind friends a writer could have, the gang on the tadwilliams.com message board, many of whom are already listed here by name—but by no means all. Let’s party in the Mint, dudes. I’m buying.

Last, but decidedly not least, I have to thank two people who have put in so much work on this return to Osten Ard that I hardly know where to begin to praise them.

Ron Hyde has basically become the official Osten Ard Archivist, not just reading and consulting on the manuscript, but putting in many hours with Isaac Stewart and the maps too, as well as answering questions from me at all times of the day or night, because I wrote the original books thirty years ago, and Ron knows the details of the land and its history better than I do. Trying to keep all the details consistent in a million words written that long ago (and a background even larger, also constructed back then) with what will probably be another million words when I finish the new ones, is a Herculean task. Without help like his, I’d be writing this acknowledgment about two years from now.

Ylva von Löhneysen has also gone above the call of duty and probably even sanity to help this book come into existence, doing many of the same things as Ron and making other contributions of her own, reading all the drafts, commenting extensively, and her own vast knowledge of Osten Ard to help keep me on the right track. (Yes, Ylva also knows more about my creation than I do.) She sent me notes constantly during the rewrite process with reactions to this or that scene she had just read, helping me keep my courage (and page production) up, not to mention aiding with ideas and suggestions that, like Ron’s and the others mentioned above, in many cases directly influenced the version of The Witchwood Crown you hold in your hands.

I salute you all. I could not have done it without you. May blessings shower upon you.

Author’s Note

Many of you reading this are already aware that this book is part of a return to Osten Ard, a world I created in an earlier set of books. If you weren’t aware, don’t panic, but read the following:

You do not need to have read the earlier works to enjoy the new series—it takes place some three decades later, and I have done my best to explain crucial pieces of information within the current story—but of course you may want to go back and read them anyway. (I did. I had to, to write the new ones.) You can find a synopsis of the previous series, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn in several places, including the DAW Books website, dawbooks.com, or on my own website, tadwilliams.com.

There will NOT be a test.

The first series, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, consists of these books:

The Dragonbone Chair

Stone of Farewell

To Green Angel Tower (divided into Part One and Part Two in the mass market editions)

The new books, titled as a whole The Last King of Osten Ard, will be the following:

The Witchwood Crown

Empire of Grass

The Navigator’s Children

as well as two short novels not directly part of the new story, but with many of the same characters and historical events from the other books. The first of these, The Heart of What Was Lost, is already published. The second, tentatively called The Shadow of Things to Come, is not yet written, but will probably be published sometime before The Navigator’s Children.