The Briar King: The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone - Hardcover

Buch 1 von 4: The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone

Keyes, J. Gregory

 
9780345440662: The Briar King: The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0345440668 ISBN 13: 9780345440662
Verlag: Del Rey, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

Two millennia after the Born Queen had defeated the Skasloi lords, freeing humans from the tyranny of slavery, deadly creatures once again terrorize the land as the Briar King, a legendary portent of death, reawakens, and the fate of the kingdom lies in the hands of the king's woodsman, a rebellious girl, an adventurers, a young priest, and a new-made knight.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Greg Keyes was born in Meridian, Mississippi to a large, diverse, storytelling family. He received degrees in anthropology from Mississippi State and the University of Georgia before becoming a full-time writer. He is the author of the Age of Unreason tetrology, The Waterborn, The Blackgod, and the Star Wars New Jedi Order novels–Edge of Victory I: Conquest and Edge of Victory II: Rebirth. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.

Aus dem Klappentext

Starts off with a bang, spinning a snare of terse imagery and compelling characters that grips tightly and never lets up . . . A graceful, artful tale from a master storyteller."
ELIZABETH HAYDON
Bestselling author of Prophecy: Child of Earth

It has been two thousand years since the Born Queen defeated the last of the Skasloi lords. In doing so she freed the race of humans once taken from their distant homes and forced to wear the bitter yoke of slavery. Thus begins the saga of the Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, an epic tale of war and virtue, sorcery and betrayal. . . .

THE BRIAR KING
Book One of The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone

In the kingdom of Crotheny, two young girls play in the tangled gardens of the sacred city of the dead. Fleeing an imaginary attacker, the girls one of whom is the reckless young daughter of the king discover the unknown crypt of the legendary, ancestral queen, Virgenya Dare.

In the wilds of the forest, while investigating the slaughter of an innocent family, king s holter Aspar White weaves his way through a maze of ancient willows and comes face-to-face with a monstrous beast found only in folk tales and nightmares. Meanwhile, traveling the same road, a scholarly young priest begins an education in the nature of evil, found festering just beneath the surface of the seemingly peaceful land.

The royal family itself comes under siege, facing betrayal that only sorcery could accomplish. Now for three beautiful sisters, for a young man made suddenly into a knight, and for a woman in love with a roguish adventurer a rising darkness appears, shattering what was once certain, familiar, and good. These destinies and more will be linked when malevolent forces walk the land. For Crotheny, the most powerful nation in the world, is shaken at its core. And the Briar King, harbinger of death, has awakened from his slumber.

Imbuing his tale with richness, pathos, action, and passion, Greg Keyes begins an amazing new epic that takes fantasy fiction to a new level. At the heart of the story, Keyes has placed a remarkable young woman, Anne Dare, the youngest daughter of a royal family . . . and the one person upon whom the fate of this world may depend.

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The Born Queen

The sky cracked and lightning fell through its crooked seams. With it came a black sleet tasting of smoke, copper, and brimstone. With it came a howling like a gale from hell.

Carsek drew himself up, clutching his bloody bandages, hoping they would keep his guts in until he saw the end of this, one way or another.

"She must order the charge soon," he grunted, pushing himself to his feet with the butt of his spear.

A hand jerked at Carsek's ankle. "Get back down, you fool, if you want to live until the charge." Carsek spared a glance at his companion, a man in torn chain mail and no helm, blue eyes pleading through the dark mat of his wet hair.

"You crouch, Thaniel," Carsek muttered. "I've done enough crouching. Fourteen days we've been squatting in these pig holes, sleeping in our own shit and blood. Can't you hear? They're fighting up front, and I'll see it, I will." He peered through the driving rain, trying to make out what was happening.

"You'll see death waving hello," Thaniel said. "That's what you'll see. Our time will come soon enough."

"I'm sick of crawling on my belly in this filth. I was trained to fight on my feet. I want an opponent, one with blood I can spill, with bones I can break. I'm a warrior, by Taranos! I was promised a war, not this slaughter, not wounds given by specters we never see, by ghost-needles and winds of iron."

"Wish you may and might. I wish for a plump girl named Alis or Favor or How-May-I-Please-You to sit on my lap and feed me plums. I wish for ten pints of ale. I wish for a bed stuffed with swandown. Yet here I am still stuck in the mud, with you. What's your wishing getting you? Do you see your enemy?"

"I see fields smoking to the horizon, even in this pissing rain. I see these trench graves we dug for ourselves. I see the damned keep, as big as a mountain. I see-" He saw a wall of black, growing larger with impossible speed.

"Slitwind!" he shouted, hurling himself back into the trench. In his haste he landed face first in mud that reeked of ammonia and gangrene.

"What?" Thaniel said, but then even the smoke-gray sun above them was gone, and a sound like a thousand thousand swords on a thousand thousand whetstones scraped at the insides of their skulls. Two men who hadn't ducked swiftly enough flopped into the mud, headless, blood jetting from their necks.

"Another damned Skasloi magick," Thaniel said. "I told you."

Carsek howled in rage and frustration, and the rain fell even harder. Thaniel gripped his arm. "Hold on, Carsek. Wait. It won't be long, now. When she comes, the magicks of the Skasloi will be as nothing."

"So you say. I've seen nothing to prove it."

"She has the power."

Carsek brushed Thaniel's hand from his shoulder. "You're one of her own, a Bornman. She's your queen, your witch. Of course you believe in her."

"Oh, of course," Thaniel said. "We believe whatever we're told, we Bornmen. We're stupid like that. But you believe in her, too, Carsek, or you wouldn't be here."

"She had all the right words. But where is the steel? Your Born Queen has talked us all right into death."

"Wouldn't death be better than slavery?"

Carsek tasted blood in his mouth. He spit, and saw that his spittle was black. "Seven sevens of the generations of my fathers have lived and died slaved to the Skasloi lords," he sneered. "I don't even know all of their names. You Bornmen have been here for only twenty years. Most of you were whelped otherwhere, without the whip, without the masters. What do you know of slavery? You or your redheaded witch?"

Thaniel didn't answer for a moment, and when he did, it was without his usual bantering tone. "Carsek, I've not known you long, but together we slaughtered the Vhomar giants at the Ford of Silence. We killed so many we made a bridge of their bodies. You and I, we marched across the Gorgon plain, where a quarter of our company fell to dust. I've seen you fight. I know your passion. You can't fool me. Your people have been slaves longer, yes, but it's all the same. A slave is a slave. And we will win, Carsek, you bloody-handed monster. So drink this, and count your blessings we got this far."

He passed Carsek a flask. It had something in it that tasted like fire, but it dulled the pain.

"Thanks," Carsek grunted, handing it back. He paused, then went on. "I'm sorry. It's just the damned waiting. It's like being in my cage, before the master sent me out to fight." Thaniel nodded, took a swig from the flask himself, then stoppered it. Nearby, Findos the Half-Handed, deep in a fever, shrieked at some memory or nightmare.

"I've always wondered, but never asked," Thaniel said pensively. "Why do you Vhiri Croatani call us the Bornmen, anyway?"

Carsek wiped the rain from his eyes with the back of his hand. "That's a strange question. It's what you call yourselves, isn't it? Vhiri Genian, yes? And your queen, the firstborn of your people in this place, isn't she named Genia, 'the Born'?"

Thaniel blinked at him, then threw back his head and laughed.

"What's so funny?"

Thaniel shook his head. "I see now. In your language that's how it sounds. But really-" He stopped, for a sudden exclamation had gone up among the men, a mass cry of fear and horror that moved down from the front.

Carsek put his hand down to push himself up, and found the mud strangely warm. A viscous, sweet-smelling fluid was flowing down the trench, two fingers deep.

"By all that's holy," Thaniel swore.

It was blood, a river of it.

With an inarticulate cry, Carsek came back to his feet.

"No more of this. No more!"

He started to clamber out of the trench.

"Stop, warrior," a voice commanded.

A woman's voice, and it halted him as certainly as the spectral whip of a master.

He turned and saw her.

She wore black mail, and her face above it was whiter than bone. Her long auburn hair hung lank, soaked by the pestilent rain, but she was beautiful as no earthly woman could be. Her eyes sparked like lightning in the heart of a black cloud.

Behind her stood her champions, clad much as she, bared fey- swords gleaming like hot brass. Tall and unafraid, they stood. They looked like gods.

"Great queen!" Carsek stammered.

"You are ready to fight, warrior?" she asked.

"I am, Majesty. By Taranos, I am!"

"Pick fifty men and follow me."

The forward trenches were filled with milled meat, with few pieces still recognizable as human. Carsek tried to ignore the sucking his feet made, somehow different from walking in ordinary mud. He had less success ignoring the stench of opened bowels and fresh offal. What had killed them? A demon? A spell? He didn't care. They were gone, but he was going to fight, by the Twin and the Bull.

When they halted in the foremost trench, which was half again as deep as Carsek was tall, he could see the black walls of the fortress looming above. This was what nearly a month and two thousand or more sacrifices had gained them-a hole at the foot of the fortress.

"Now it's just a brisk walk to the wall that can't be broken and the gate that can't be breached," Thaniel said. "The battle's nearly won!"

"Now who's the skeptic? Here's a chance for glory, and to die on my feet," Carsek said. "It's all I ask."

"Hah," Thaniel said. "Myself, I intend not only...

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Verlag
Del Rey
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345440668
ISBN 13 
9780345440662
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
552
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Del Rey
https://www.penguin.co.uk/company/publishers/cornerstone/del-rey-uk

Attn: Andrea T Sheridan 1745 BROADWAY, 14-1
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USA
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