Читать онлайн «The Briar King»
Автор Грегори Киз
Gregory Keyes
Prelude
Prologue
Part I
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Part II
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Part III
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Part IV
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Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Gregory Keyes
The Briar King
For my brother,
Timothy Howard Keyes
Know, O Proud Heart of Fear, that in those days there were no kings and queens, no lords and vassals. In the countless millennia before Everon, known also as the Age of Man, there were only masters and slaves. The masters were ancient, as practiced at cruelty as the stars at shining. They were more powerful than gods, and they were not men.
Their slaves were innumerable, but all of our mothers and fathers were among them. Humans were their cattle and their playthings. But even slaves of a thousand generations may be born with hearts bright enough to hope and dark enough to do what must be done. Even a slave may rise from the dust, and whet his gaze into a knife, and tell his master, “You will never own me. ”
Prelude
The Born Queen
The sky cracked and lightning fell through its crooked seams. With it came a black sleet tasting of smoke, copper, and brimstone. With it came a howling like a gale from hell.
Carsek drew himself up, clutching his bloody bandages, hoping they would keep his guts in until he saw the end of this, one way or another.
“She must order the charge soon,” he grunted, pushing himself to his feet with the butt of his spear.
A hand jerked at Carsek’s ankle. “Get back down, you fool, if you want to live until the charge. ”
Carsek spared a glance at his companion, a man in torn chain mail and no helm, blue eyes pleading through the dark mat of his wet hair.
“
“You’ll see death waving hello,” Thaniel said. “That’s what you’ll see. Our time will come soon enough. ”
“I’m sick of crawling on my belly in this filth. I was trained to fight on my feet. I want an opponent, one with blood I can spill, with bones I can break. I’m a warrior, by Taranos! I was promised a war, not this slaughter, not wounds given by specters we never see, by ghost-needles and winds of iron. ”
“Wish you may and might. I wish for a plump girl named Alis or Favor or How-May-I-Please-You to sit on my lap and feed me plums. I wish for ten pints of ale. I wish for a bed stuffed with swandown. Yet here I am still stuck in the mud, with
“I see fields smoking to the horizon, even in this pissing rain. I see these trench graves we dug for ourselves. I see the damned keep, as big as a mountain. I see—” He saw a wall of black, growing larger with impossible speed.
“Slitwind!” he shouted, hurling himself back into the trench. In his haste he landed face first in mud that reeked of ammonia and gangrene.
