Mother of Winter. Barbara Hambly

Читать онлайн.
Название Mother of Winter
Автор произведения Barbara Hambly
Жанр Героическая фантастика
Серия
Издательство Героическая фантастика
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007468997



Скачать книгу

id="u135c5ad1-3b8c-5710-8880-b130a3323fa3">

       Voyager

      BARBARA HAMBLY

      Mother of Winter

       Copyright

      HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Published by Voyager 1997

      Copyright © 1996 by Barbara Hambly

      Barbara Hambly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780006482291

      Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780007468997 Version: 2016-12-28

       For Robin

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

       Dedication

       Map

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       Book Two: THE BLIND KING’S TOMB

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

       CHAPTER TWELVE

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN

       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

       CHAPTER FIFTEEN

       CHAPTER SIXTEEN

       CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

       CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

       CHAPTER NINETEEN

       CHAPTER TWENTY

       CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

       CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

       CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

       CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

       Keep Reading

       About the Author

       By the Same Author

       About the Publisher

       PROLOGUE

      In the moonstone dawn, the lone rider dismounted at the top of the steps, passed through the black square open eye where the doors would one day be, and halted on the edge of shadowed abyss. The woman who lay on the obsidian plinth in the chasm’s midst knew by the shape of his shoulders and back, by the way he carried his head, who he was; there was in any case only one person he could be. The wind that brought the smell of the glaciers down to her funneled past him through the passageway and carried on it the stench of blood.

      When he stepped clear of the gate’s collected gloom, she saw he was covered with it, as if he had lain down in a butcher’s shambles. Some of it she knew was his, all mixed with the nitrous grease of torch smoke; there was also mud on his bare left forearm where he had fallen or been thrown from his horse, and on his bare knees above his boot tops, as if he had knelt in gore-soaked earth—to raise someone in his arms, perhaps.

      The great clean-hewed pit of the foundation lay between them, deep as the cliffs that surrounded the Vale, and filled with the night’s last shade. The plinth that rose through it, nearly to the level