Bloodwinter: A Tale of Eron (Bantam Spectra Book) - Softcover

Deitz, Tom

 
9780553378634: Bloodwinter: A Tale of Eron (Bantam Spectra Book)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0553378635 ISBN 13: 9780553378634
Verlag: Spectra, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

The discovery of a powerful gemstone leads to a desperate conflict between Ixti, an overpopulated desert kingdom, and Eron, a snowy land trying to cope with a deadly plague. Original.

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Aus dem Klappentext

fantasy of passion, power, and the most perilous enchantment of all....<br><br>From a master of contemporary fantasy comes an unforgettable tale of heroes, heroines, and rogues whose two rival nations are scarred by suspicion, shadowed by war, and summoned to destiny by a magic that is both gift and curse.<br><br>In the icy northern realm of Eron, three young artisans bound by an unspeakable act of violence arrive at an isolated gem mine on a special commission for their king. They are the arrogant but talented Eddyn; Avall, his archrival; and beautiful Strynn, newly wed to Avall...but carrying Eddyn's child.<br><br>Meanwhile, to the south, in the heart of Ixti's scorpion-riddled sands and sensuous cities, a horrible accident has forced Prince Kraxxi into exile with blood on his hands and a price on his head.<br><br>The four will be drawn together--and torn apart--by a magnificent find: a gem with magical properties beyond anyone's imagining or control. It is a struggle in whic

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Spring, Amalian concluded, had arrived not an instant too early.

It had snowed as late as yester morn: thick, heavy flakes that had come wafting out of the northwest, as though the mountains in Angen's Spine were airing out their linens for the Light. Which, she supposed, made her and the trek she mastered among the larger, more recalcitrant motes of accumulated detritus. If The Eight dwelt in those gloomy peaks behind her, which she doubted--or if the rocks themselves were subtly alive, which some of Common Clan averred--they'd have to rise early indeed to loathe the cold season as much as she.

Oh, it had been beautiful enough in Stone-Hold-Winter, where the Fateing had sent her last Dark Half. The head-high drifts had made a fabulous backdrop for the statuary in the forecourt: warriors this rotation, carved in ruddy catlinite that contrasted nicely with the dark green hollies. Still, the cliffs and crags so prevalent thereabouts were harsh, naked rock that had as its primary virtue its many grades and colors, most of which were good for carving--which Amalian had spent all winter doing, and which was another thing she wouldn't miss with the turning of the year.

At least she hadn't been cold. Some of the winter holds were absolutely frigid, in spite of the steam-springs with which they were heated. Besides, Gory had been posted with her, and he was furry enough to keep several people warm--even through those wild solstice storms when three strong sets of walls and doors between living quarters and the cold without failed to stave off winter's fingers.

But she'd missed people, curse it! People in all their variety--any people beyond the same double-hundred-odd she'd seen day in and day out at the hold. And over half of those were her kin, whom she saw most of the year anyway.

Which was why, when Stone-Hold's weather-witch predicted an early spring and the Ekkon River broke through its ice a whole eight-day sooner than expected, she'd determined to take the risk.

So far it had been worth it, with far more color in the first-blooms than usual. Why, the gold stars that named this place almost glowed, and the ferns and bracken were particularly bright and frothy in the hollows among the pines. And the skies! Clear for days (yester morn notwithstanding) and so blue she wanted to reach up and chip away a chunk to carve into something precious.

Something for the twins, perhaps. Carmil and Egin: girl and boy. Thirteen now, and poised on the chisel blade between the children they'd been last Sundeath, when the journey north had begun, and the adults they were fast becoming. Both were a hand taller than when they'd left the lowlands, and Carmil had breasts and a woman's bleeding. Egin's voice was shifting so that his singing, which had been so sweet, was now rather more like croaking. And Gory, who'd seen him daily in the baths, had confided that their little boy now had hair in all men's places--matching that on his head, which was the same red-lit black as his sire's. Carmil's mirrored Amalian's own rare tawny gold.

She wondered where they were now. Riding ahead with Gory, perhaps? Or back swapping tales with the braver folk from Oak, who'd swelled their ranks that morning? She envied them--the children their freedom, the Oak folk their proximity to the northmost of the gorges where the bulk of clan, craft, and kin spent Eron's too-brief summers. It was to that cleft in the coastal plateau that Amalian led the trek now, through melting drifts of knee-deep snow. If luck rode with them, some of them would sleep in their own beds tonight, which would be change enough from the crowded chaos of the way stations that marked the nights between holds, halls, and gorges.

Sighing, she reached back to flip up her cloak's fur-lined hood. A breeze had come whipping out of the gap ahead, and she wondered if the twinge troubling her knees as she resettled them was merely token of a winter's inaction or the first insidious gnawings of old age.

Not the latter, she prayed. She wasn't far past thirty, and the sixty more years she expected to attain would be no great joy if her joints chose to ache through most of them.

And then the wind shifted, riding in from the south, bringing with it a hint of warmth that stirred her heart out of all proportion to its intensity.

But it brought other things as well: the scent of death, and, so faint as to be barely discernible, the scent of burning.

* * *

"I smell death," Amalian informed her husband, reining back the team: golds from Arsten, which had been part of her wedding dower from Gory's clan, who bred them.

Gory slapped his fractious gray gelding and nodded, his breath making blizzards in the air, riming the beard that framed his narrow, blue-eyed face. His cloak twitched in the wind. "Sheep," he grunted, as though that explained everything.

Amalian raised a brow. Gory was a fine man and an excellent mate--and said about ten words an eighth, as though he'd been born with a fixed allotment and treasured them like his clan treasured wagon-cattle.

"Which I presume belong to somebody," Amalian sighed, thinking that perhaps she might get a better account from the spindly pines that flanked the road to the left, or the rough-shelved slate cliffs slanting up to the right.

Gory grimaced. "Haven't been dead long, and there's only two. Margil's spent some time with the sheep folk and says the clan clips on their ears mark them as belonging to a small sept-hall on the south rim of North Gorge."

"A good day's ride from here."

Gory nodded.

"Wolves, then? Or birkits? Or--" She refused to name the other, because there was supposed to be no other. Wisdom said it was too cold for geens--man-sized lizard-things that walked on their hind legs--north of South Gorge. But Amalian wondered. Wisdom also said they were stupid as snakes, and she knew that was a lie.

Gory shrugged. "Just dead. A little rotten, no sign of violence."

"How long?"

Another shrug. "Thawed maybe two days. Beyond that, the only way of knowing is if we had a female, to check the unborn. They tend to conceive close to the same time."

"Lucky for us--if we had one," Amalian snorted. "Still, livestock escapes. And escaped livestock often dies."

"Aye," was Gory's sole reply.



By midday they'd crested Gold Star Gap and were on the last long winding slope before the road poured them out on the plains southeast below them: a patchwork of waving sheep grass and lingering snow, framed by the tips of the flanking pines. By midafternoon North Gorge should be in sight. By sunfall, they should be well on their way to Tir-Mil at the bottom.

But somehow she was uneasy. Not one person in the hundred had offered anything useful about the dead sheep, and they'd seen fifteen now. Speculation over them had been curtailed when they'd found the dead man.

It had been Gory (again) who'd discovered him--poor Gory, whose draw it had been to lead the day's outriders. The man had been dead at least eight days, and scavengers had been at him, so that it was hard to tell much save that he'd sheltered at Sharp Stone Station to bathe in the waters there and succumbed--naked--on the deep pool's stony marge. Heart freeze was possible. Heat could do that, and it was a very hot spring (and one Amalian had looked forward to sampling before their final approach). As best they could tell, the man had been in his early twenties. And, by the clothing flung about and ravaged--likely by the same beasts that had gnawed away his insides--he'd come from a prosperous clan. Beyond that, he'd been unremarkable. Black-haired, lightly bearded, fairly hairy, fit, and of the...

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Verlag
Spectra
Erscheinungsdatum
1999
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553378635
ISBN 13 
9780553378634
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
486
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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Softcover