The Price of Redemption (Tides of Magic, Band 1) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 2: Tides of Magic

Carpenter, Shawn

 
9781668033739: The Price of Redemption (Tides of Magic, Band 1)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1668033739 ISBN 13: 9781668033739
Verlag: Saga Press, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

A debut swashbuckling fantasy following a powerful sorceress, the Marquese Enid d’Tancreville, as she is forced on the run where she meets a vast cast of characters including a young sea captain who has need of a sea mage. Perfect for fans of Patrick O’Brian, Naomi Novik, and Brian McClellan.

Despite her powerful magic, Marquese Enid d’Tancreville must flee her homeland to escape death at the hands of the Theocratic Revolution. When a Theocratic warship overtakes the ship bearing her to safety, Enid is spared capture by the timely intervention of the Albion frigate Alarum, under the commend of Commander Rue Nath.

These circumstances make for an odd alliance, and Enid finds herself replacing the Alarum’s recently slain sea mage. Now an officer under Nath’s command, Enid is thrust into a strange maritime world full of confusing customs, duties, and language. Worse, as she soon discovers, the threat of revolution is not confined to shore.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Shawn Carpenter is a new author in an old skin. His colorful work history includes cowboy, airman, chicken guard, game designer, and corporate cog. Ships and the sea have enamored Shawn since his childhood in tragically landlocked Oklahoma, where, after peregrinations to all corners of the US, he now lives with his amazing wife, two sons, three dogs, and a cat. His three adult daughters keep tabs on his antics from a safe distance.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1
Chapter 1

At any other time in her twenty-five years, Enid would have found her circumstances invigorating. Blue water crowned with snowy foam sang past the hull as the sails and rigging snapped and hummed in accompaniment overhead. A fine spray peppered her angular face and left a brisk trace of its salt perfume as it passed. A part of her recognized the perfection of the day as it unfolded beneath a rare clear sky over the Straits of Albion, but the rest of her was conscious of only one thing: the hostile frigate closing in on her ship from the starboard side.

Without the impromptu tutelage of the vessel’s master, a rotund fellow named Arnaud Efarge, Enid wouldn’t be able to put a name to the type of ship pursuing them, nor the quarter from which it approached. She was a student of True Art, not of ships and the sea. As far as she could discern, there was no real difference between the merchantman carrying her toward a destiny she prayed was rich in vengeance and the predatory warship that snapped at its watery heels. Certainly, this “frigate” carried more cannon. That was obvious to even her untrained eye. Still, reason seemed to decree that their smaller ship, with its rakish lines and gallant spread of sail, could bear her past the reach of those guns.

Unfortunately, reason held little sway over the affairs of wind and wave. The frigate grew visibly larger with each passing moment, despite the frantic activity of the sailors in the merchant’s rigging and the master’s grim concentration as he paced the rail of the quarterdeck. As he passed, she put out a hand to stay him and asked how so large a vessel could close on a smaller, fleeter ship, something as incongruous to her as an ox running a hare to ground.

“She has the gauge of us,” Master Arnaud snapped, even as he gently scratched between the ears of the long, six-legged otterkin draped over his shoulders like a living stole. Seeing the blankness in Enid’s eyes, he said in a softer tone, “The weather gauge. It means she has the favor of the wind. She can match our every move and still close on us.”

“But surely its sheer bulk will slow it! We are smaller, lighter, and faster, are we not?”

The master’s fatalistic chuckle did not please Enid or the otterkin, which chittered nervously. Arnaud soothed it absently as he explained.

“Milady, we are smaller and lighter, of that there can be no doubt. But faster than a frigate under a full press of sail?” He chuckled grimly and shook his head at her naivete. “Size has its advantages in many things, milady, and sailing is one of them. All those yards and yards of canvas she spreads would tear the masts from our poor Marie, but they push the frigate there along at a pace we can never outstrip without abandoning all our cargo, water, and passengers to the sea.”

Enid’s brow furrowed slightly at the mention of abandoning passengers to the sea and her hand strayed toward the hilt of the small sword dangling from her hip.

Master Arnaud raised a hand in apology and was about to speak when a fluttering noise floated down from above. The broad-faced commoner cursed under his breath as he squinted up at the sails.

“We’re losing our wind, milady.”

A glance at the frigate revealed it was more fortunate in finding loyal zephyrs. Her sheets still bellied with wind and a great spume of spray greeted her blunt prow each time it rose above one wave to fall upon the crest of another.

The sailors high in the little merchantman’s rigging whistled tunelessly like a flock of artless birds.

“What is the meaning of that racket?” Enid asked absently as she allowed her will a looser rein. She grew lightheaded as her being encompassed both more and less than her physical shell. The coppery taste of magic welled up in her throat and she felt the other sorcerer in the depths of the frigate, in some dark place below the waterline. Dying sylphs surrounded him, slowly suffocating in that dark place. He was literally killing their wind.

“To call up a wind, milady,” the master answered. “Whistling for a fair wind is a common practice at sea.”

“I do not think the winds can hear them. I will see what I can do to help.”

The master took a cautious step backward and muttered his thanks as she closed her eyes and reached out toward the foam-wreathed frigate with her hand and will.

There he was: a small man in more than physical stature, the sort who reveled in such small cruelties as extinguishing the spark of minor spirits. Still, he was strong in his own element, and she doubted she could counter his workings without time to properly prepare. So be it. If she could not stop him, she would lend her strength to him. She felt his terror as the surrounding sylphs began to expire more rapidly than he could control. Each sylph took some of itself with it as it perished in a dying inhalation, each leaving the small room more airless with its passing.

Enid’s outstretched arm tensed, and her hand curled into a fine-boned claw. The master backed into the quarterdeck’s rail and his thick-fingered hand clutched the prayer beads around his thick neck as she drew in a seemingly endless, whistling breath. She barely noticed him. She was somewhere else, across a narrowing expanse of tumbling waves, and while she saw a face sinking into a mask of fear, it was no common sailor’s.

Here was a petty sorcerer. A mage of the fifth or sixth rank, she reckoned, highly capable at the casting of a few rote processes, but no true practitioner. It was disheartening to see how low the Theocracy had brought the greatest nation in the world, a nation once famed and feared for the prowess of even its lowest-ranking mages. Still, she had no pity for this traitorous wretch and worked against him with a will. There was a moment when, if he had known more, he could have made their encounter a true duel, but, in the face of an Institut-trained mage he was all but unarmed. Still, she grinned in wolfish delight at sending one more Theocrat to hell.

As she came back to herself, she was aware of the cheers of the surrounding sailors. The wind had slipped from the Artagny’s sails, which now hung limp like so much laundry on a charwoman’s lines. The little merchantman’s topsails scratched up a breeze and filled with a satisfying snap of canvas. Even in such light airs, she was pulling away from the becalmed frigate. The Marie’s crew and passengers voiced their joy as the distance between the two ships widened.

The celebration was short-lived. The Marie did not make more than a mile before the frigate’s topsails filled and she began to make way again.

Enid raised an inquisitive brow at the master, but he shook his head.

“She will still run us down, milady. Even without a mage, her natural advantage over us is too great. We have gained some time, but not much. I expect we’ll be under her guns before dark. Then the killing will begin.”

“It has already begun,” Enid said, the little mage’s blue face in her mind’s eye, his hands clawing at his throat as he struggled fruitlessly to draw one breath past his last in an airless chamber beneath the waves.

It seemed the ardent pursuit of revenge was as poor a shield against Fortune’s indignities as hope. The frigate closed steadily...

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Verlag
Saga Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1668033739
ISBN 13 
9781668033739
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
368
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Sinextesis
info@artcommunication.it

C.da Patrella, 22
Mottola
TARANTO
74017
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