Shaman’s Crossing. Робин Хобб

      

      Shaman’s Crossing

      Book One of the Soldier Son Trilogy

      Robin Hobb

Copyright

      HarperVoyager An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

       www.harpervoyagerbooks.com

      Published by Voyager 2006

      Copyright © Robin Hobb 2005

      Cover illustration © Jackie Morris

      Map by Andrew Ashton

      Robin Hobb 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

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      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 e-book 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 e-books.

      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: 9780007196128

      Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780007236886

      Version: 2014–12–03

Dedication

      To Caffeine and Sugar, my companions through many a long night of writing.

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

One: Magic and Iron

Two: Harbinger

Three: Dewara

Four: Crossing the Bridge

Five: The Return

Six: Sword and Pen

       Seven: Journey

       Eight: Old Thares

       Nine: The Academy

       Ten: Classmates

       Eleven: Initiation

       Twelve: Letters From Home

       Thirteen: Bessom Gord

       Fourteen: Cousin Epiny

       Fifteen: Séance

       Sixteen: A Ride in the Park

       Seventeen: Tiber

       Eighteen: Accusations

       Nineteen: Intervention

       Twenty: Crossing

       Twenty-One: Carnival

       Twenty-Two: Disgrace

       Twenty-Three: Plague

       Twenty-Four: Vindication

       Acknowledgments

       Keep Reading

       Also by the Author

       About the Publisher

       Map

ONE

       Magic and Iron

      I remember well the first time I saw the magic of the plainspeople.

      I was eight and my father had taken me with him on a trip to the outpost on Franner’s Bend. We had arisen before the dawn for the long ride; the sun was just short of standing at noon when we finally saw the flag waving over the walls of the outpost by the river. Once, Franner’s Bend had been a military fort on the contested border between the plainspeople and the expanding Kingdom of Gernia. Now it was well within the Gernian border, but some of its old martial glory persisted. Two great cannons guarded