Kendadh and the Moving Star

About the Book

Kendadh and the Moving Star takes place in the distant future. It is set in the Kingdom of Alban, which once had a high civilization but has degenerated into a land of terror and disorder with only a few places where calm prevails. One of these is the Abbey of Truila in the largely lawless province of Galividia. There lives a boy named Kendadh.

Kendadh is twelve years old. He was left as an infant in the care of the monks of the Abbey, a place where unquestioning obedience is the most prized virtue. The fact that he is a fatherless foundling means that he is not well treated. To make matters worse, he has four noticeable qualities: a loud, infectious laugh that makes all adults within hearing distance very nervous; an independent mind that always makes him ask, “Why?” in a place where unquestioning obedience is the most prized virtue; a love of daydreaming, especially when he should not be doing it; love of a good fight. It should come as no surprise that he is in constant trouble at the Abbey, and on one bright May morning he decides to run away. He does not get far.

About three miles from the Abbey, he encouters a divergent, as the Albanach call grotesquely mutated variations on normal life forms, this one an outsized cat with huge claws and fangs. His life is saved by the sudden appearance of three strangely clad, black-skinned strangers. One of them kills the divergent. When he and the strangers have established that they have no language in common, Kendadh, for want of anything better to do, leads them to the Abbey.

There, on instructions by the Lord Abbot, Kendadh, who has a gift for learning languages, learns theirs, teaches them the High Tongue of Alban, the one used by the upper classes, and becomes their interpreter and companion. He learns that the strangers have come from an orbiting space craft that that the local people have been calling, “the moving star.” Their lander has been damaged, and they seek a tensile metal needed to repair it. Unable to give them advice, the Abbot suggests that they travel to the capital, and only, city of Alban where they might find what they need.

To Kendadh’s delight, the three strangers take him with them as their interpreter of the commonspeak, the language used by the ordinary folk of Alban. From Truila, Kendadh and his three new friends set out on a perilous journey. It takes them to the Court of the High King of the Albanach, then through a beautiful but danger filled land of mountains, forests, lakes, and brawling rivers. After many adventures, they reach the Wingèd Isle. On that island, Kendadh has to make a hard choice, one that reveals the kind of person he truly is.

About the Author

David Wyllie taught English and social studies to seventh and eighth graders for 32 years. After he retired, he published A Blink in Time’s Eye: Teaching in the Middle School and took up the writing of adventure novels. When he is not writing, he likes oil painting, playing the piano, cooking, gardening, hiking, and traveling, mainly to Scotland, Provence, and Ecuador.