Nameless Magery (Del Rey Discovery) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 3: The Ways of Magic

Turner, Delia Marshall

 
9780345424303: Nameless Magery (Del Rey Discovery)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0345424301 ISBN 13: 9780345424303
Verlag: Del Rey, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

A young sorceress raised to be queen flees her native land, plagued by a terrible invasion, to a realm where only men are allowed to wield power, where she is tutored in the magical arts by the handsome Kaihan, King and Wizard. Original.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Delia Marshall Turner is an educator who lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter. She is a nationally ranked saber fencer.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

It was winter. I was half-starved and so wet my armpits were starting to
mildew. My father's finger bone hanging on a thin metal chain was the only
thing left of my life--all seventeen years of it, but that was forever to
me then--and it seemed my future was going to end shortly in a dismal pile
of my own bones.



I knelt down in the slush of half-frozen mud. Stretching as far as I could
to avoid leaving a scent, I spread my awkwardly constructed snare next to
the hole in the tree. I placed the tiny lump of rotting meat that I'd kept
back from the last meal in the center of the snare. Paying out the
trip-line, I backed up on my knees through the mud until I was out of
sight behind a bush. I settled myself to wait. The bush was leafless and
gave no shelter from the relentless rain, but I was already so wet and
cold it made no difference. Sooner or later the ratlike thing that lived
in the tree would let its hunger overcome its caution and come out, and I
would have something to eat for today.



I tried to meditate, but I couldn't separate my mind from the slithery
feeling of the wetness between my skin and the tattered old robe I wore.
Meditation was meant to be sung aloud, on a sunny day, with friends and
family singing with you, and food set out warm and smelling good at the
worship table. My Voices, muttering in the caverns at the back of my mind,
had no prophecies to give and were reduced to nonsense, mostly
speculations on the spiritual significance of the number four.



My nose was running, the eye I had injured the week before was beginning
to water again, my feet were falling asleep, and the rain felt like it was
getting colder, but I didn't move. Food was too hard to get in the cold
season, and I was hungry. At least the Enforcers' casual blows had finally
taught me what my Guardian couldn't, how to keep quiet when it was
necessary. The Living God never had to be cold or hungry or even in pain,
except at the end of the year. The rain fell, and I waited, watched, and
listened to the hiss and crash of water on the tree branches.



Later, some time after I lost sensation in the fingers holding the
trip-line, I heard a sound that was not caused by the winter rains.
Something big was crashing up the hill from the stream, something with
four feet, that didn't care about the underbrush. I snatched the snare
back to me with a quick motion and rolled it up. There had been no large
animals in the forest in the year I had been hiding there. Were there
things that ate flesh here? It was very heavy, whatever it was. The ground
thumped beneath me to the heavy steps. I peered through the stems of the
bush, crouched and ready to run if my numbed limbs would let me.



When the source of the noise surged through the underbrush on the other
side of the clearing, it was the last thing I expected to see on this
god-lost planet: an ordinary big bay horse with a whiskered nose and furry
fetlocks, and a tall man riding on it. He was wet and grouchy with a
dripping nose and sod-den leathers, not looking where he was going and not
particularly caring. He could have been an ordinary traveler in any
backcountry on Mennenkaltenei, except for the wispy streaks of blue flame
I could see trailing from his head and questing about him.



I almost stood, almost ran to intercept his horse as it plodded wearily
by, almost shouted to him to stop and help me. I didn't. I held my breath
and stayed crouched behind the bush, watching him go and cursing myself.
How many times had I promised myself that if anybody found me I would grab
them by the knees and beg them to adopt me? I had thought I would even
welcome Enforcers, endure their dead cruelty for the sake of food and
warmth and human company, however hateful that company had been. But I
couldn't do it.



When the horse had passed behind the nearer trees, and the sound of its
steps receded toward the top of the hill and the narrow path there, I
stood painfully and followed after. I had to know where he was going. I
had seen no people since I'd sacrilegiously escaped the Enforcers,
stranding myself on this strange world. I looked up at the top of the
hill, and saw distant flickers of the man's cold flame disappearing into
the darkening sky, and found myself hurrying. I moved as silently as I
could, though. If he turned out to be an enemy, I could always fade back
into the forest. The woods were not always against me, only in winter, and
spring might come again.



The walking horse and its weary rider were unaware of me as I stole along,
always a few trees behind in the gather-ing dusk. I watched him as closely
as I could. The horse, if shaggy, was well fed, unlike most servants of
the Enforcers. The man was not dressed like an Enforcer, either. He had
obviously been traveling for some time; his leathers were well worn and
cracked in places, and the boots on his long legs were creased and coming
apart at the seams. Though he kept his head down to keep the rain out of
his eyes, his shoulders were strong. He was neither a starving ascetic nor
an overfed parasite. He did not treat the horse badly. He never struck her
in the hours that followed, and though she must have been terribly tired
and cold, she kept on willingly.



After a time I followed them only by the blue wisps of light, the fire
that only a few spirit-born Mennenkalts could see. Lle fluttered and
flicked about his face, veining and forking, looping and whirling, never
still, always seeking, but he paid ller no mind. If lle was so attached to
him, he could only be an Adept himself. Why, then, was he dressed so? My
mind was not working very well by now, what with pain and tiredness and
water running down my face. I'd forgotten the Adepts were all dead.



Puzzling woodenly over the problem he posed, I nearly ran into the back
end of the horse when she came to a halt at a fork in the path. With a
gasp of fear, I took a step backward, but the rider wheeled the horse
around at the sound and, startled, stared at me in the light of his
spirit-fire.



In that moment, before I lurched away, I saw his face clearly. Then I
bolted off the path, through the whiplash switchings of the wet bushes,
hearing a tired baritone chuckle behind me.I kept running for a long time,
longer than I needed to, until the pain in my chest and my hoarse
breathing forced me to stop. For the rest of the long cold night, as I
crouched inside a rotten stump far from the path, I saw behind my closed
eyes the straight nose, the wide arrogant mouth, the high cheekbones, and
the dark lock of hair falling slantwise across a high forehead. It would
have been an attractive face, the first face I'd seen in two years, if the
amused and astonished eyes had not glowed a ghastly, cold, phosphorescent
green. I'd seen the like only once before, in the face of a possessed
woman being ritually exorcised. Toward dawn, exhausted and
half-hallucinating, I fell asleep in a crouching position, braced against
the rotting wood.



There were no birds in this winter-shriveled forest to sing the approach
of morning, and what insects there were didn't buzz or whine, but crawled
about their business silently. The weak winter sun, rising high enough to
glance through the top of the hollow trunk, finally woke me from my dismal
and uneasy slumber. When I opened my eyes, I could see the sad true
sunlight, but my spirit sight drowned it out with a sulfurous, pulsating
glow. Gentle languid streamers of...

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Verlag
Del Rey
Erscheinungsdatum
1998
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345424301
ISBN 13 
9780345424303
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
231
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