9780345423603: The Silver Wolf
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0345423607 ISBN 13: 9780345423603
Verlag: Del Rey, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

The sister of novelist Anne Rice revisits the legend of the werewolf in a novel set in decaying ancient Rome, where a beautiful young woman with supernatural powers finds herself surrounded by intrigue and threats to her life.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alice Borchardt shared a childhood of storytelling with her sister, Anne Rice, in New Orleans. A professional nurse, she has also nurtured a profound interest in little-known periods of history. She published her debut novel, Devoted, in 1995. She lives in Houston.

Aus dem Klappentext

historical romantic fantasy of stunning originality and scope, Alice Borchardt breathes life into a bygone age, brilliantly recreating a sensuous, violent world--and the men and women whose grand ambitions, betrayals, and passions shape the era in which they live and die.

Decadent Rome at the dawn of the Dark Ages is mired in crumbling grandeur. Now, into the Eternal City comes Regeane, a beautiful young woman distantly related, through her dead mother, to Charlemagne. Regeane's regal blood renders her an unwilling pawn in the struggle for political power. But unknown to those plotting against her, the blood she has inherited from her murdered father makes her much more than a child of royalty. Possessed of preternatural agility and strength, primal memories extending back thousands of years, and senses so keen they can pierce the veil of death itself, Regeane is a shapeshifter: woman and wolf, hunter and hunted.

Betrothed by Charlemagne's command to a barbarian lord she has

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The sun was going down. The fiery circle shone past the acanthus-crowned
columns of a ruined temple. They cut the incandescent ball into slices of
red radiance. Almost night, the girl thought. She shivered
in the chill autumn air gusting through the unglazed casement window.



It was barred--heavily barred. One set of bars ran horizontally, the
other vertically. They were bolted into the stone walls of the tiny room.



She knew she should close the window. She should reach out through the
bars, pull the heavy shutters shut, and seal them with the iron bolt. But
she pushed the idea out of her mind with a sort of blind obstinacy. The
sight of freedom, even an unattainable freedom, was too sweet to give up.



Not yet, she told herself, only a little longer. Not
yet.



The air that raised goosflesh on her arms was sweet to her nostrils. Oh
no, more than sweet. Each vagrant increase in flow, each slight change in
direction, each passing movement sent images to the deepest part of her
mind.



She could sense the fragrance of thyme. The delicate scent was mixed with
the heavy smell of wet marble and granite. These scents and others stood
out against the tapestry of odors given off by the flowers and greenery
that cloaked the ruined palaces and temples of the ancient emporium.



The vast restless spirit of this place, the greatest of all empires,
seemed at last brought to rest at the soft hand of the great green mother
herself.



Regeane hadn't known what to expect of the once-proud mistress of the
world when she'd come to Rome. She didn't expect what she found.



The inhabitants, descendants of a race of conquerors, lived like rats
squabbling and polluting the ruins of an abandoned palace. Oblivious to
the evidence of grandeur all around them, they fought viciously among
themselves for what resources remained. Indeed, little was left of the
once-vast river of gold that flowed into the eternal city. The gold that
trickled in these days gilded the altars of the churches and the palms of
papal officials.



Regeane's mother, desperate to save her daughter's soul, pawned what few
jewels she had left. The money paid the bribes necessary to obtain a
papal audience and finance the equally expensive papal blessing.



Regeane had gone into the awesome presence, her body drenched in a sweat
of terror. If her ailing mother said the wrong words to the church's
leading prelate, she might find herself being burned or stoned as a
witch. But, as she approached the supreme pontiff, she realized just how
foolish her fears had been.



The man before her was a ruin. Ready to be taken by age and sorrow. She
doubted if he understood much of anything said to him. Weeping, her
mother implored the intercession of God's chief minister on earth with the
Almighty. As the ever-dutiful Regeane knelt, she kissed the silken
slipper and felt the withered hands pressed against her hair.



In addition to the thick smell of incense and Greek perfume that pervaded
the room, she detected the musty, dry smell of aging flesh and human decay.



God, it was powerful. He is ready to die, she
thought. He will go to speak on Mother's behalf to God in person very
soon. However, she knew this blessing, as all other blessings
her mother, Gisela, had traveled so far and squandered so much of her
wealth to gain, would do no good.



This was the end. Regeane knew it. She was frightened. If the pope
himself could not lift this strange curse from her and let her live as a
woman, to which earthly power could she turn? More to the point, to which
power could her mother turn?



Gisela was fading as quickly as the only-too-human man on Saint Peter's
throne. Though a comparatively young woman, Gisela was worn down by the
fruitless journeys she had taken with Regeane and by a secret sorrow that
seemed to fill her mind and heart with a bottomless wellspring of grief.



Regeane lied. Her mother believed. And for the first time in many years,
Regeane felt the tiny woman who had traveled so far and borne so many
burdens was at peace. Regeane's lie carried Gisela through till the end.



Three days after the papal audience she had gone to awaken her mother and
found Gisela would never wake again--not in this world.



Regeane was alone, staring through the bars.



She watched with greedy eyes as the sun became a half circle that faded
into a glow silhouetting the tall cypresses of the Appian Way. The deep
blue autumn twilight emerged. Then, and only then, did she turn from the
window and wrap herself in an old woolen mantle and return to her pallet
bed. With the exception of the low bed and a small, covered, brown
terra-cotta pot in the corner, the room was bare.



Regeane sat on the bed, her shoulders against the stone wall, her legs
dangling, head thrown back, eyes closed. She waited silently for
moonrise. The silver disc would be lifting itself above the seven hills
now. Soon, very soon, its journey across the sky would bring it to her
window where it would throw a pool of silver light on the floor. Ignoring
the cross-hatched black lines of bars, she could drink at that pool,
allowed once more to breathe in the air of freedom.



The door to the outer room slammed shut. Damnation. The
girl on the bed scoured her mind for oaths. No...curses. As
a young girl, she was never allowed to speak them, but she could think the
words. And she often did. Oh, how she did when those two were present.
There were worse things than loneliness. Overall, Regeane felt she
preferred silence and emptiness to the presence of either her Uncle
Gundabald or Hugo, his son.



"I pissed blood again this morning," Hugo whined. "Are all the whores in
this city diseased?"



Gundabald laughed uproariously. "All the ones you find seem to be. It's
as I told you. Pay a litte extra. Get yourself something young and
clean. At least young--so all the itching and burning a few days later
are worth it. That last you bought was so old, she had to ply her trade
by starlight. What you save on whores goes out in medicines for crotch
rot."



"True enough," Hugo said irritably. "You always seem to do better."



Gundabald sighed. "I'm sick of instrucing you. Next time, retain a bit
of sobriety and get a look at her in a good light."



"Christ, it's cold in here," Hugo said angrily. A moment later Regeane
heard him shouting down the stairs for the landlord to bring a braizer to
warm the room.



"It's no use, my boy," Gundabald told him. "She's left the window open
again."



"How can you stand it?" Hugo grumbled. "She makes my skin crawl."



Gundabald laughed again. "There's nothing to worry about. Those planks
are an inch thick. She can't get out."



"Has she ever..." Hugo asked fearfully.



"Oh, once or twice, I believe, when she was much younger. Then I took
matters in hand. Gisela was too soft. That sister of mine was a fine
woman--she always did as she was told--but she was weak, my boy, weak.
Consider the way she wept over that first husband of hers when the
marriage was so abruptly...terminated."



"She divorced him?" Hugo asked....

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Verlag
Del Rey
Erscheinungsdatum
1998
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345423607
ISBN 13 
9780345423603
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
451
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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