Ashes of Man: The Sun Eater: Book Five - Hardcover

Buch 5 von 7: Sun Eater

Ruocchio, Christopher

 
9780756416607: Ashes of Man: The Sun Eater: Book Five
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0756416604 ISBN 13: 9780756416607
Verlag: DAW, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

The fifth novel of the galaxy-spanning Sun Eater series merges the best of space opera and epic fantasy, as Hadrian Marlowe continues down a path that can only end in fire.

The galaxy is burning.
 
With the Cielcin united under one banner, the Sollan Empire stands alone after the betrayal of the Commonwealth. The Prophet-King of the Cielcin has sent its armies to burn the worlds of men, and worse, there are rumors...whispers that Hadrian Marlowe is dead, killed in the fighting.
 
But it is not so. Hadrian survived with the help of the witch, Valka, and together they escaped the net of the enemy having learned a terrible truth: the gods that the Cielcin worship are real and will not rest until the universe is dark and cold.
 
What is more, the Emperor himself is in danger. The Prophet-King has learned to track his movements as he travels along the borders of Imperial space. Now the Cielcin legions are closing in, their swords poised to strike off the head of all mankind.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Christopher Ruocchio is the internationally award-winning author of The Sun Eater, a space opera fantasy series, and the former Junior Editor at Baen Books, where he edited several anthologies. His work has also appeared in Marvel comics. He is a graduate of North Carolina State University, where he studied English Rhetoric and the Classics. Christopher has been writing since he was eight and sold his first novel, Empire of Silence, at twenty-two. His books have appeared in five languages. Christopher lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife, Jenna.

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CHAPTER 1

THE SAILS OF CHARON

Day.

Day was breaking over dark waters, Colchis's white sun still low and golden at the horizon. Salt wind blew lank hair from my brow, stung my face.

In the end, I had not left Gibson's tomb with Valka and the others. They had gone down to the old camp by the shore, had left me kneeling in the dirt before the new-raised cairn. The oldest tradition held that the body of any lord must-after the cathars had washed it, embalmed it, and cut away the organs for the canopic jars-lie in state for three days, and that his heirs should keep vigil the while, sleeping in shifts if they slept at all. Gibson once told me my father had done it alone, kneeling in the chapel at Devil's Rest before the body of Lord Timon, my grandfather. I could remember my grandmother, Lady Fuchsia, lying in the purple chamber set aside for her. We had not been permitted to see her, though we had. It was in that violet chamber that I first met Death, and the stench of her has never left me.

We did not have three days for the proper vigil, nor any cathars or canopic jars. That was just as well. Palatine Gibson plainly was, but he had died a scholiast, and the Strictures of their order prescribed that all scholiasts were to be burned, their ashes scattered to the winds.

Ashes.

No ashes, as there was no time.

I had taken all the time we had.

Had I slept there, kneeling on the hard-packed earth? Or only dreamed?

I had seen a different ocean, had watched it recede along a shore of crushed bone. Mirrored knights stood silent sentinel about a bed draped in red silk in which a man lay dying. I lay in that same bed, Selene beside me. Selene and Valka. Valka alone.

Myself alone.

Alone.

A woman with eyes like black suns sat draped in cloth of gold. The vision turned, and Dorayaica, the Shiomu Elusha, strode along beneath the colonnades of the Eternal City, Vati and Attavaisa beside it. It turned again: the Emperor's face smiled down at me, then-as if in a kaleidoscope-split in two. I blinked, and saw Alexander's face and mine looking back at me, each of us on golden thrones. The ocean receded again, waters running from my advancing feet, and I stared out into darkness. A square of darkness framed in light, blacker than anything I'd ever seen, blacker than the stones of Annica, blacker than the Howling Dark.

A window onto night.

Why should a darkened window fill me with such fear and sorrow?

I blinked.

Through it all, I remember the salt wind raking, tousling the tall grass that grew along the black edge of the bluffs. Whitecaps glowed orange in the night off the glow of the gas giant, Atlas, whose limn hung low over the horizon, vaster than any moon.

"It's time to go, Had." A hand clapped my shoulder, and turning from Gibson's cairn I blinked up at Pallino. The old myrmidon grinned down at me, grizzled as when I first knew him, the scuffed old leather patch obscuring one eye. "You been at this long enough."

"I didn't hear you coming, old man," I said, going to one knee.

It was only then that I remembered Pallino was dead, and found myself staring up at empty air. I shut my eyes, opened them again.

I was alone.

My knees ached from the kneeling, and my whole body complained as I struggled to rise. My ruined shoulder protested, and I used my left arm-the arm with hollow bones-to push myself to my feet. I could scarce remember when last I had been so tired. It must have been that first night aboard the Ascalon, after Valka and I had escaped from Akterumu. Thinking of Akterumu, of Pallino-who had died there with some many thousand others-and of Dorayaica's coronation darkened the newborn day, as though gray clouds buried the pale sun.

But I reached out and laid my hand-my three-fingered, right hand-upon the top stone of Gibson's cairn. No words came to me, no final speech, no promise. What could I say to him that I had not already said? That he did not already know?

Nothing.

I only brushed the dew from the top stone, baring the faint inscription I had made with the point of my fishing knife. I smiled down at it a long moment, and raised my face to the sun.

It was time.




Valka saw me returning before any of the others. I wondered if she had been sitting up for me in the old camp, sleepless as I'd remained sleepless beside Gibson's tomb. Wordless, she embraced me, cool fingers on my face. We drew apart, and she asked, "Are you all right?"

Looking round I saw Imrah standing-so like Siran-in the door to one of the dormitory pods my Red Company had left upon the beach centuries before. "Too many ghosts," I said, and smiled.

"You look like hell," Valka said, drawing my attention away from the young Keeper of Thessa.

"It was a long night," I said, putting my hands on her shoulders. I did my best to smile once more.

Valka stepped back. Her golden eyes swept me up and down, evaluating. "You should clean yourself up. I've got most everything on the boat. Imrah says we can leave when you're ready."

"I am ready," I said. "I can wash on the Ascalon. We shouldn't linger. The Empire knows we're here?"

Valka gave a small nod. "They must. I had to use my name to call for Gibson's doctor. They're bound to notice."

I looked out to sea, toward the gray shape on the brightening horizon that was the isle of Racha. Presently I turned to Imrah. "I fear I've brought the hammer down on you and your people," I told her.

The Sevrastene native swore an oath in her language whose meaning I could well guess, and she gestured as if to throw something away. "They will not bother us. It's you they want."

"All the more reason for us to go now," I said to her and Valka both. I would never forgive myself if any harm befell the islanders.

"What will you do?" Imrah asked.

Valka and I held one another's gaze a long moment then, neither speaking. We had rehearsed our plan before, several times. I had intended to go straight to Aea and the athenaeum at Nov Belgaer after we visited Thessa and the other islands, but the discovery that Gibson was alive-against all hope and reason-had shredded what thin resolve we had. After so many years alone aboard the Ascalon, after that black day on Eue and all that I had suffered on Dharan-Tun, I had not been able to bring myself to return to the Imperium proper, to place myself in their power, at their mercy.

I had not wanted to leave Gibson.

Still, I had always known I must.

Not taking my eyes from Valka, I answered Imrah, saying, "We'll leave directly for the city. They probably won't expect that. I mean to land at Nov Belgaer and speak to the scholiasts . . ."

My voice trailed off as I remembered Gibson's muttering in his fevered dreams. He had spoken of his son-his true son-and thought me him. He had cried out in turn for Alois and Livy, and had thought he was on Belusha, the most feared of the Emperor's prison planets.

"Is Arrian still the primate at the athenaeum?" I asked.

"Arrian?" Imrah asked, dark brows knitting. It was not impossible. Tor Arrian had been young enough when last I'd come to Colchis, and he was of the Aventine House, of the Blood Imperial. The centuries would have weathered him, but they need not have cut him down. "The name sounds familiar? The Emperor's cousin or some such? We don't have much dealing with city folk, but I think that's right."

"Good."

By announcing myself to one of the Emperor's own family, I would make matters that much harder for the Chantry and those other forces within the Imperium that would leap at the opportunity to make me disappear.

The governor-general in Aea had a telegraph containing a particle directly entangled with one aboard the...

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Verlag
DAW
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0756416604
ISBN 13 
9780756416607
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
544
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