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Queen of Storms. Raymond E. Feist
Читать онлайн.Название Queen of Storms
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007541355
Автор произведения Raymond E. Feist
Жанр Ужасы и Мистика
Серия The Firemane Saga
Издательство HarperCollins
QUEEN OF STORMS
THE FIREMANE SAGA: VOLUME TWO
Raymond E. Feist
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Copyright © Raymond E. Feist 2020
Map © Jessica Feist
Jacket design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Jacket illustration © Larry Rostant (from cover), Shutterstock.com (all other images)
Raymond E. Feist asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007541331
Ebook Edition © July 2020 ISBN: 9780007541355
Version: 2020-07-14
To Rebecca and James,
This book is dedicated to the start of your great adventure together.
Love, Dad
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Prologue: A Voice from within Shadows
Chapter One: Hunting and an Unexpected Encounter
Chapter Two: An Unplanned Event and A Surprise Reunion
Chapter Three: More Mysteries and a Short Journey
Chapter Four: Reflections and Bloodshed
Chapter Five: Celebration and Murder
Chapter Six: Destruction, Abduction, and Rage
Chapter Seven: Loss and Determination
Chapter Eight: Recovery and Resolve
Chapter Nine: Disasters and Questions
Chapter Ten: Captives and Mysteries
Chapter Eleven: Investigations, Discoveries, and the Unexpected
Chapter Twelve: Changes on Fate’s Tides
Chapter Thirteen: Plans and Consequences
Chapter Fourteen: Reversals and the Unexpected
Chapter Fifteen: Appraisals, Guesswork, and Repurposing
Chapter Sixteen: Revelations and Secrets
Chapter Seventeen: Voyages and Disasters
Chapter Eighteen: Choices, Chaos, and Change
Chapter Nineteen: Betrayal, Acceptance, and Piracy
Chapter Twenty: Planning and Resolutions
Chapter Twenty-One: Triumph and Escape
Epilogue: Reunion and Dark Harbingers
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
• PROLOGUE •
He was known as Bernardo Delnocio of Poberto, which was the first of many lies about him. His birth name had not been Bernardo, nor was he from a family named Delnocio. That family had been famous and powerful until a war took the last son; he claimed to be a distant cousin, from a lesser branch of the family, with no claim to any legacy but a once-noble name. Nor had he been born in Poberto, a prosperous town surrounded by the villas of the wealthy and powerful. That notable community rested just outside Brojues, the capital city of the Kingdom of Fondrak, home to the Church of the One. Instead, he had come from the poorest squalor of Aliestes, a minor city on the far continent of Enast many miles from the splendour of Brojues.
As a boy, the man calling himself Bernardo had been an abandoned guttersnipe, raised by a gang of urchins. He had grown up roaming the streets, surviving in a vicious world that provided few respites from struggle, living by his wits and a brutal determination to survive, until he had been recruited by the Church.
His natural combativeness and will to survive had been recognized and his early training had been channelled effectively into serving the Church. He had spent nearly ten years as a member of the Order of the Church Adamant, the martial arm of the Servants of the One, soldiers willing to die unquestioningly to defend the faith and, more importantly, attack its enemies without hesitation.
His will to survive had elevated him above the other soldiers, first by avoiding duty that would have trapped him in a permanent role, as a pioneer, engineer, or gynour, though he had been clever enough to learn a bit about building advanced entrenchments, rigging bridges and repairing roads, or operating siege engines, so he became as well-rounded as possible.
He had a knack for accents, and quickly improved his speech so that his common origins faded as he learned to adopt more refined rhetoric and behaviour. He soon became the youngest minor officer in the Church Adamant.
After only three years as a unit commander, he realized the true power wasn’t in the army, but being a cleric in the Church, and that was when his urge to survive had been transformed into a desire to thrive, rise, and become more powerful at every turn. He