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A Working of Stars (Mageworlds S.) - Hardcover

Doyle, Debra; MacDonald, James D.

 
9780312864118: A Working of Stars (Mageworlds S.)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0312864116 ISBN 13: 9780312864118
Verlag: St Martin's Press, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

Since the publication of THE PRICE OF THE STARS, Debra Doyle and James D. MacDonald's Mageworlds novels have been among the finest swashbuckling SF adventures in the field. In the most recent volume, THE STARS ASUNDER, Arekhon sus - Khalgath, sus-Peledaen abandoned his native planet for a new life on the far side of the Gap Between - the starless rift separating the Eraasian worlds from the rest of the galaxy. Now, on the planet Entibor, he has found shelter and domestic tranquillity with his old love, Elaeli Inadi, at the price of what he may have left behind: a dispersed and shattered Mage-Circle, an estranged brother who had tried to kill him, and a homeworld on the cusp of massive cultural upheaval. Arekhon finds himself impelled homeward by strange dreams and prophetic visions. The Great Working - the effort to do the unthinkable and reunite a galaxy long sundered by the Gap Between - remains incomplete, left unfinished in the aftermath of the dissolution of Arekhon's Mage-Circle. But too much energy and too many lives have been poured into the Working already; and it cannot end so long as any of the Circle members remain alive and bound into it.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald live in Colebrook, New Hampshire. Their previous SF novels include The Price of the Stars, Starpilot's Grave, By Honor Betray'd, The Gathering Flame, The Long Hunt, and The Stars Asunder. Their fantasy novel, Knight's Wyrd, won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award.

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A Working of Stars
1:
ERAASI: DEMAIZEN OLD HALL; DEMAIZEN TOWN; ERAASIAN FARSPACE ENTIBOR: ROSSELIN COTTAGE
Herin Arayet sus-Dariv took his rented groundcar around the last curve on the uphill drive to Demaizen Old Hall. The burnt-out shell of the ruined building reared up against the sky ahead of him. A little later, he saw a line of rusting metal hulks drawn up in good order on the overgrown gravel driveway, with clingvine spreading over them and tall stalks of field weeds springing up around their treads.
He slowed the groundcar into a careful approach. He'd taken his usual precautions before setting out on today's errand--a pocket-pistol concealed inside his jacket, a knife hidden up his sleeve, a note to the family's Agent-Principal filed among his personal effects--but he knew that against Magecraft, such measures would do him little good. And whatever had happened to the line of blasted and shattered assault vehicles had been a Mage's work.
Nobody knew, or at least nobody admitted in public to knowing, exactly who had sent the private assault team up against Garrod syn-Aigal and his Circle. The incident had taken place during the period of civil unrest that had disturbed Eraasi's main continent over ten years before; but Demaizen had been an independent Circle duringthat period, supported by Garrod's private fortune and not tied formally to any particular faction or institution. True, they'd had an informal connection to the sus-Peledaen fleet-family--Lord Natelth's younger brother had been one of the Demaizen Mages, and members of the Circle had taken part in the sus-Peledaen exploratory voyage to the far side of the interstellar gap--but such a connection should have given Demaizen more protection, rather than less.
The one thing Herin could say for certain about the attack was that neither side had survived the encounter, and that no guilty parties had revealed themselves by coming in to clean things up afterward. The house and grounds had passed into the hands of the Wide Hills District Wildlife Protection League, according to Lord Garrod's testamentary wishes; and the League so far had operated strictly within the boundaries of its charter, leaving the ruined Hall untouched.
Herin wasn't surprised. What the Mages wanted had a way of happening. Garrod had wanted the Old Hall left alone, and alone it stayed, unaltered except by the elements. No graffiti marked its smoke-stained walls, and no empty cans or broken bottles littered the shadowed ground beneath. Even the local adolescents, it seemed, chose to go elsewhere for their amateur debaucheries.
He left his groundcar parked in the driveway and made his way up the front steps of the Hall and through the great, broken doors. Inside was more destruction, cracked brick and burnt wood and more than once a disturbing glimpse of something that looked like bone. He found the door that his contact had told him about, a small one that opened onto a service stairway, and started down the narrow steps into the basement.
"Syr Arayet."
The voice came from the darkness ahead of him. It was low and not unpleasant--a woman's voice, he thought. A moment later, a light came on in the corridor. After a few seconds, he realized that the pale, apparently sourceless glow actually came from a Mage's staff in the woman's right hand. He couldn't see her face, and it took him another few seconds to realize that the blank, reflective darkness underneaththe hood of her black cloak was in fact a spacer's ship-combat hardmask.
"Etaze," he said, using the term of respect for a Magelord of high rank. Maybe this one was merely somebody's Circle-Mage, disaffected enough to send along a request for a personal meeting. But if she was not--if she was the First or even the Second of a major Circle, whether in Hanilat or in one of the fleets--then she would need polite and careful handling. "Your message reached me only a short while ago. I came as soon as I dared."
The woman chuckled, a surprisingly warm sound to come from behind the dark plastic of a combat hardmask. "You mean you came as soon as you'd made sure that my message was genuine. Nobody's ever called you a fool, Syr Arayet."
"I must need to work more on my presentation," he said. "What is it you wanted to talk with me about?"
"I heard that you were interested in what became of the Demaizen Circle."
Herin nodded. "I've only heard the rumors, and I'm curious."
"That all happened a long time ago. Why start asking questions about it now?"
"Call it a hobby," he said. "The past informs the present, and so forth."
There was a long pause. Herin could feel the woman's gaze assessing him from behind the unrevealing hardmask.
"A present," she said finally, "in which the sus-Dariv are debating whether or not to deploy private ground security forces as an auxiliary to their fleet arm."
He said nothing, though he was uncomfortably aware that the damp, cobwebby basement of Demaizen Old Hall was the sort of place in which a too-curious researcher could conveniently disappear. Lord Garrod's Circle had died there, as far as anyone could tell, and nobody had come to gather up their bones. Another body moldering away in the dark would probably never be noticed.
"Don't worry," she said, as if his hidden trepidation had somehowmanifested itself around him like an aura. For all Herin knew, it could have. Mages saw things like that, where other people saw nothing but plain air. "I still have some standards. If I'd wanted to do you harm, I wouldn't have come up with anything half as melodramatic as this."
"I'm relieved to hear it, etaze."
"I'm sure you are," she said. "Now for the reason you came here: Ask me your questions, and I'll answer them. At least, as much as I can and may."
"Very well," said Herin. "What happened to Lord Garrod's Circle?"
"Who sent the killers, do you mean?"
"Well, yes."
She shrugged. "The first time? No one knows. They're all dead."
"Yes, I know ... what do you mean, 'the first time'? There was a second attack?"
"When the rest of the Circle came back from across the Gap Between. But the Hall had already burned down by then."
Herin felt a brief flicker of intellectual vindication. Investigating the destruction of the Old Hall had been a personal project. If he'd made it official, he would have had some trouble justifying his interest in a bit of recent history that the family's less irregular agents had chosen to overlook. Already, though, he had retrieved an interesting bit of previously uncollected knowledge--two bits, if he counted the implication that the identity of the second group of attackers, unlike that of the first, was not unknown.
"You must have a theory about why the initial attack failed," he said.
"You think that this--" she used the hand that held the glowing staff to describe a vague circle, presumably meant to include the entirety of the Hall "--was a failure?"
"If the attack had been a complete success, somebody would have taken credit for it. Nobody ever did." Herin paused. He'd never intended to keep up his current pose as a hobby-researcher for very long--it was a means of gaining entry, and little more--but he shied away from revealing his true interests quite so bluntly. "I think thatwhoever sent in the strike team was afraid. Those assault vehicles up there were blasted by Magecraft. They had to have been; there's no record anywhere of the Demaizen Circle having weapons. If one of Lord Garrod's Mages survived long enough to do something like that--"
"--then he or she might still be alive," said the woman. "And still angry."
"Yes."
"A good...

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Verlag
St Martin's Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0312864116
ISBN 13 
9780312864118
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
368
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Procter & Gamble Service GmbH, Braun
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