Icefalcon’s Quest. Barbara Hambly

Читать онлайн.
Название Icefalcon’s Quest
Автор произведения Barbara Hambly
Жанр Ужасы и Мистика
Серия
Издательство Ужасы и Мистика
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007469208



Скачать книгу

d="uf830bf92-0448-5e2e-9759-e8b34d680d77">

      BARBARA HAMBLY

      Icefalcon’s Quest

       Copyright

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

      www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Copyright © 1998 by Barbara Hambly

      The Author 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 nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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: 9780006483038

      Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780007469208 Version: 2016-12-22

       Dedication

       For Neil Gaiman

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Chapter 7

       Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Chapter 20

       Chapter 21

       Chapter 22

       Chapter 23

       Keep Reading

       About the Author

       By the Same Author

       About the Publisher

       Map

       Chapter 1

      Had the Icefalcon still been living among the Talking Stars People, the penalty for not recognizing the old man he encountered in the clearing by the four elm trees would have been the removal of his eyes, tongue, liver, heart, and brain, in that order. His head would have been cut off, and, the Talking Stars People being a thrifty folk, his hair taken for bowstrings, his skin for ritual leather, and his bones for tools and arrowheads. If it was a bad winter, they would have eaten his flesh, too, so it was just as well that his misdeed occurred in the middle of spring.

      The Icefalcon considered all this logical and justified: the laws of his ancestors were not the reason that he no longer lived among the Talking Stars People.

      All the horror that followed could have been avoided had he minded his own business, as was his wont. Sometimes he felt that he had spent entirely too much time living among civilized people.

      It had been a bad year for bandits. The summer following the Summerless Year had seen more than the usual bloody strife in the rotting kingdoms that once made up the empire of the Alketch in the South, and bands of paid-off warriors, both black and white, drifted north to prey on the small communities along the Great Brown River. It was said they had penetrated far to the east, into the Felwoods, though few came so far north as the Vale of Renweth. Now it was spring again. When a woman’s screams and a man’s thin cries for help sliced the cold, sharp air of the Vale, the Icefalcon guessed immediately what was going on.

      In