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Raven's Ladder: A Novel (The Auralia Thread, Band 3) - Softcover

Buch 3 von 3: The Auralia Thread

Overstreet, Jeffrey

 
9781400074679: Raven's Ladder: A Novel (The Auralia Thread, Band 3)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1400074673 ISBN 13: 9781400074679
Verlag: PRH Christian Publishing, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

A DEADLY MENACE IS BREAKING THROUGH THE GROUND. THE PEOPLE OF ABASCAR MUST ABANDON THEIR STONE REFUGE AND FLEE INTO VULNERABILITY IN THE FOREST. BUT THEIR KING HAS HAD A VISION…
 
Following the beacon of Auralia’s colors and the footsteps of a mysterious dream-creature, King Cal-raven has discovered a destination for his weary crowd of refugees. It’s a city only imagined in legendary tales. And it gives him hope to establish New Abascar.
 
But when Cal-raven is waylaid by fortune hunters, his people become vulnerable to a danger more powerful than the prowling beastmen––House Bel Amica. In this oceanside kingdom of wealth, enchantment, and beauty, deceitful Seers are all too eager to ensnare House Abascar’s wandering throng.
 
Even worse, the Bel Amicans have discovered Auralia’s colors, and are twisting a language of faith into a lie of corruption and control.
 
If there is any hope for the people of Abascar, it lies in the courage of Cyndere, daughter of Bel Amica’s queen; the strength of Jordam the beastman; and the fiery gifts of the ale boy, who is devising a rescue for prisoners of the savage Cent Regus beastmen.
 
As his faith suffers one devastating blow after another, Cal-raven’s journey is a perilous climb from despair to a faint gleam of hope––the vision he sees in Auralia’s colors.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jeffrey Overstreet is the author of The Auralia Thread, the fantasy series which begins with Auralia’s Colors, a thrilling adventure twice-nominated for a Christy Award, and Cyndere’s Midnight. He is an award-winning film critic and columnist, his work appearing in many publications including Image and Paste. He is also the contributing editor for Seattle Pacific University’s Response magazine.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

CHAPTER 1
CAL-RAVEN IN FOUR KINDS OF TROUBLE
 
Auralia reached out to Cal-raven. As he approached, the flame of the candle he carried flapped like a flag in a hard wind.
 
Her smile was mysterious, just as he remembered it. That detail had proved most difficult. Other aspects had come easier as his hands sculpted the stone. Her humble stature. The tiny knob of her chin. Her feet—ten small toes emerging like a row of beads beneath a leafy skirt.
 
Cal-raven was not a tall man, and yet Auralia, slight for sixteen, had stood only to his shoulder. He could see her open hands pressing through the span of fabric that she offered to any visitor.
 
Almost a year had passed since he’d found her in the Abascar dungeon, wrapped in a magnificent cloak. Their fleeting conversation was burned in his memory more vividly than yesterday. Unflinching, Auralia had voiced her faith in phantoms dreamed and legends whispered––like the Keeper, that benevolent creature who haunted dreams, a silent guardian, a listener.
 
Cal-raven had sculpted, erased, and then reshaped Auralia’s lips, her eyebrows with their question pinched between them, her whole face filled with trembling hope that others would receive and understand her vision. She had been more than human. Or better, she had been more fully human than anyone around her.
 
The king’s hunting hound, his golden tail wagging, sniffed at the statue’s ankles. “Hagah.”The dog slumped down to the floor and sighed, resigned to wait.
 
That fabric the statue held––Cal-raven had not even tried to give it the textures and colors of Auralia’s cloak. How could he? Its threads had glimmered with colors no eyes in Abascar had ever seen.
 
“Tell the Keeper,” he whispered, “that I don’t know where to go from here.” He ran his fingertips along the span that spilled like a waterfall from her upturned hands. “When I was a child, I’d have called out myself. It was easier then to believe.”
 
Auralia’s expression did not change; it would not unless he changed it. Her polished eyes would not return his gaze for, in the tradition of House Abascar portraiture, they lacked detail. While each statue in the cavern was distinct––the beloved and the burdensome, the wise and the foolish, the soldiers and the miscreants––they shared that same indecipherable gaze, an affirmation of something altogether unnamable, inimitable. The mystery of the heart.
 
Embarrassed at his habit of addressing this likeness, he knuckle-knocked Auralia’s forehead. “Last visit. Watch over these worn-out people for me, will you?”
 
Something shifted in the cavern behind him. Hagah lifted his head and followed his master’s gaze through the long rows of statues.
 
“Wynn?” Cal-raven waited.
 
Hagah’s huge black nose emerged from flabby rolls of fur and sniffed. Then the dog set his chin back down on the ground.
 
“You’ll catch our pesky shadow in a dream, won’t you?” Cal-raven said, but he gave another look back.
 
Why am I so agitated tonight? he wondered.
 
Because some of them are turning against you, replied his father’s ghostly voice. It’s been almost a year. You’ve mentioned New Abascar, but you still haven’t shown them a plan.
 
The statues that crowded the Hall of the Lost listened. These extravagant stone monuments gave shape to Cal-raven’s promise that he would never let his people forget the lessons they’d learned and that they would build a new house to honor those lost in Abascar’s cataclysm.
 
But the name grudgers, once given to those who had rebelled against their previous king’s oppressive ways, now applied to people distrustful of Cal-raven. Grudgers objected to his embrace of the foolish along with the wise; his equal concern for the weak and the strong; his insistence that every person, no matter how “useful,” be fed and shown the care of their healer. Moreover, grudgers grumbled about the way Cal-raven gambled their futures on possibilities revealed to him in dreams.
 
Tonight Cal-raven had taken the firewalk. Lesyl’s turn had come, but he had offered to patrol the passages for her. He wanted to hear her sing the Evening Verse one last time before his departure the next sundown.
 
“I’ve written a piece that can only be played by two,” Lesyl had said when the firewalk brought him to the chamber of Auralia’s gallery. Sitting against the wall decorated by an array of colorful weavings, she tuned the twelve-stringed tharpe, a formidable, sonorous instrument. She seemed relaxed, even happy, and oblivious that this was a farewell.
 
“Here.” She picked up a wooden spiral. “You remember how to play the hewson-pipe, don’t you? Oh, come now, don’t tell me you lack the time. You need the practice.” When he did not approach, she persisted. “Scared?” “No,” he laughed. Yes, he thought.
 
He had torn himself away from that conversation to continue the firewalk for fear of losing his fragile restraint. Not now. Not yet.
 
So while she sang, he paced that routine progress, ensuring that torches would not spark any mishaps, that candles burned within the spheres prescribed, that everything was in its right place.
 
He had led these survivors through a hostile winter and a dispiriting spring. Just as they had begun to define a possible departure, a visit from the mage sent him scrambling in another direction. Tomorrow he would slip away and venture north to pursue the vision his teacher had given him.
 
The day will come, Cal-raven, when you’ll have no choice but to leave Scharr ben Fray’s
imagination behind and live in the real world. His father’s fury buzzed in his ear like
a skeeter-fly. If you don’t, the ground will crumble beneath you. Facing his father’s likeness, Cal-raven felt his throat tighten. “Whose inventions plunged into the earth?”
 
Listen to me, boy! You’re too old for toys. Who will lead the people when I’m gone? Someone whose head is full of children’s stories?
 
“Show me someone better prepared for the task,” he said. “I do not enjoy the burdens you’ve left me.” He took the shield from where it was draped over the shoulder of the king’s likeness.
 
The statue’s lips were parted, and a strange feeling of discomfort crept up Cal-raven’s spine. He did not know what scared him more—the thought of the stone speaking or the thought that his dreams might prove false.
 
Hagah’s inquisitive nose bumped the edge of Cal-marcus’s shield, and he woofed.
 
“You’re not waiting for him anymore, are you?”
 
A rough tongue exploded from the hound’s expansive smile, and his tail thumped against the floor.
 
“You’ve given up on them both.” Cal-raven’s gaze strayed to the statue of his mother. The runaway.
 
It was a good likeness, or so he’d been told. Jaralaine’s appearance seemed an echo lost in time’s clamor. But troubled scowls from older folk told him that they recognized this imperious beauty.He did remember occasional tenderness and sighs of insatiable loneliness before her disappearance. He also remembered a fury against any suggestion of a...

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Verlag
PRH Christian Publishing
Erscheinungsdatum
2010
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1400074673
ISBN 13 
9781400074679
Einband
Taschenbuch
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
400
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
preigu
mail@preigu.de

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