Raymond E. Feist - Riftwar Legacy - The Assasins

VIP免费
2024-12-03 0 0 682.89KB 463 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
This book is the outgrowth of a lot of imaginations besides my own. I am
indebted to the following people: John Cutter, Neal Halford, Bill Maxwell,
Andy Ashcraft, Josh Kulp, Craig Bollan, and Erik Wycheck at Dynamix, 7th
Level, and Pyrotechnix, for creating interesting characters and situations
for the games, Betrayal at Krondor and Return to Krondor, which provided
characters, situations, and ideas that coalesced into this novel.
Also, and as usual, I stand in debt to the imagination and creative
support given me by the usual suspects, also known as the Friday
Nighters. Without them, Midkemia wouldn't exist and I would have had to
find another job.
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to all the editors who have put up with, inspired,
corrected, and aided me, to the ends of improving the work and making me
look good: Adrian Zackheim, Nick Austin, Pat Lobrutto, Janna Silverstein,
Malcolm Edwards, and my current guides: Jennifer Brehl and Jane
Johnson.
Also, to Peter Schneider, who has done far more on my behalf than he
realizes.
CHAPTER SIX: Confusion 111
CHAPTER SEVEN: Ambush 128
CHAPTER EIGHT: Attack 148
CHAPTER NINE: Decisions 163
CHAPTER TEN: Revelation 179
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Stealth 195
CHAPTER TWELVE: Improvisation 211
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Concealment 229
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Murders 252.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Desperation 275
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Discovery 292
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Misdirection 305
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Unmasking 322
EPILOGUE: Encounters 341
campfires
as they were extinguished. The rising sun streamed through the haze,
orange and pale gold, lances of color in an otherwise gray morning. In
the distance birds sang, ignoring the aftermath of battle.
Arutha, Prince of Krondor and ruler of the Western Realm of the
Kingdom
of the Isles, sat on his horse, taking a moment to enjoy the majesty of
the sunrise and the serenade of the birds as he watched his men
heading
home. The fighting had been blessedly short but bloody, and while
casualties were lighter than anticipated, he still hated to lose even
one solider under his command. He let the beauty of the vista before
him
soothe his frustration and regret for a few moments.
Arutha still resembled the youthful man who had come to the throne of
Krondor ten years before, though lines around his eyes and a small
scattering of gray through his otherwise black I hair revealed the toll
rulership had taken on him. For those who knew him well, he was still
much the same man, a competent administrator, military genius, and
silent price, pain kept within, for each injury done a man who served
Krondor and the Kingdom.
Arutha pushed aside his regrets and considered the victory. The enemy
had been in full retreat for two days, a relatively small force of dark
elves. A much larger force had been prevented from reaching the
Dimwood
when a rift machine had been destroyed by Arutha s two squires, James
and Locklear. It had cost the life of a magician named Patrus, but his
sacrifice had allowed the invaders to fall prey to their own internal
conflicts. Delekhan, the would-be conqueror, had died beside Gorath, a
moredhel chieftain who had proven as honorable and worthy a being as
Arutha had ever met, while they struggled to seize control of the
Lifestone. Arutha cursed the existence of that mysterious and ancient
artifact under the abandoned city of Sethanon, and wondered if its
mystery would ever be understood, its danger removed, in his lifetime.
Delekhan's son Moraeulf had died from a dagger thrust home by Narab,
once an ally of Delekhan. As agreed to by Narab, the retreating
moredhel
north to the border baronies. They would start moving later in the
morning. The previously secret garrison north of Sethanon would be
moved
to another location and reprovisioned.
Sunlight began to bathe Arutha as the morning mist burned off, leaving
only the smoke and dust to cloud the air. The day was already growing
hot, and the cold of the previous winter was fading from memory. Arutha
kept his distress deep inside as he considered the latest assault upon
the tranquillity of his Kingdom.
Arutha had taken the Tsurani magicians at face value after the end of
the Riftwar. For nearly ten years they had been free to come and go
between worlds, via several magic rifts. And now he felt a profound
sense of betrayal. He fully understood the rationale that had driven
Makala, a Tsurani Great One, to attempt to seize the Lifestone at
Sethanon, the belief that the Kingdom possessed a great weapon of
destruction, some engine of power that would give predominance in war
to
whoever held it. Had he been in Makala s place, with the same
suspicions, he might have acted in the same way. But even so, he could
Arutha glanced to his right and saw two very fatigued young men sitting
astride their horses. He permitted himself one of
3 his infrequent smiles, a bare upturning of the sides of his mouth,
which served to soften the often somber expression on his still-youthful
face. "Tired, gentlemen? " he asked.
James, senior squire to the Prince, returned his ruler s gaze from eyes
surrounded by dark circles. James, and his companion Squire Locklear,
had ridden a punishing ride, abetted by magic herbs which had kept
them
awake and alert for days in the saddle. The after-effects of the
prolonged use of the draught was to unleash all the pent-up fatigue and
body-ache on the young men at once. Both had slept through the night,
upon cushions in Arutha s tent, but had awakened tired and bone-
weary.
Summoning up his usual brazen wit, James said, "No, sire, we always
look
like this when we wake. Usually you don t see us until after our morning
coffee. " Arutha laughed. "I see none of your charms have faded, squire.
" A short man with dark hair and beard walked over to where the Prince
Sethanon cause me great concern. I need to ensure that they were the
only magicians involved, and that those who still reside at my Academy
are free of any guilt. " Arutha looked at the retreating wagons again as
he said, "We do need to talk about the role played by the Tsurani in
your Academy, Pug. But not here. "
4 Pug nodded agreement. Even though everyone within earshot was
privy to
the secret of the Lifestone which sat beneath the city of Sethanon, it
was wise to talk only in private. And Pug also knew that Arutha had
grave concerns about the betrayal by the Tsurani magician Makala
which
had led to this last battle between the Prince s army and an invading
army of moredhel warriors. He expected that Arutha would insist on far
more stringent controls over who and what came through the rift the
magic gateway between Midkemia and the Tsurani homeworld of
Kelewan.
"We will, Highness. First, I must see to the safety of Katala and
Gamina. "
"There
s nothing I can do about William, but I can ensure that Gamina and
Katala are safe at Stardock. "
"William is a soldier, so by the nature of his craft he is at risk. "
Then Arutha smiled at Pug. "But he s as safe as a soldier can be,
surrounded by six companies of the Royal Krondorian Household
Guard.
Anyone attempting to blackmail you through William will find him
difficult to reach. " Pug s expression showed he didn t approve. "He
could have been so much more. " His look silently implored Arutha to do
something. "He still can. It s not too late for him to return to
Stardock with me.
Arutha regarded the magician. He understood Pug s frustration and his
parental desire to see his son back with his family.
5 But his tone left no confusion as to his willingness to intercede on
Pug s behalf. "I know you two have had your differences about his
choice, Pug, but I ll leave it for you to work out at your own leisure.
As I told you when you first objected to William coming into my service,
Locklear in the recent struggle.
"At first light. He said he must mend fences with his father. " Arutha
motioned toward Locklear, though he kept his eyes on Pug. "I have
something for you. " When Locklear failed to respond to the gesture,
Arutha shifted his gaze to Locklear. "Squire, the document? " Locklear
had been on the verge of falling asleep in the saddle but he snapped to
attention as the Prince s voice penetrated his muzzy thoughts. He
moved
his horse to where Pug stood and handed a parchment down to him.
Arutha said, "Over my signature and seal, this names you the final
authority over all issues of magic as they affect the Western Realm. "
He smiled slightly. "I should have no trouble convincing His Majesty to
ratify this for the entire Kingdom. You ve had our ear in this area for
years, Pug, but this gives you authority if you ever find yourself
having to deal with another noble or King s officer without me at your
shoulder. It names you official magician of the court of Krondor. "
6 "My thanks, Highness, " said Pug. He seemed about to speak, but
hesitated.
摘要：

Thisbookistheoutgrowthofalotofimaginationsbesidesmyown.Iamindebtedtothefollowingpeople:JohnCutter,NealHalford,BillMaxwell,AndyAshcraft,JoshKulp,CraigBollan,andErikWycheckatDynamix,7thLevel,andPyrotechnix,forcreatinginterestingcharactersandsituationsforthegames,BetrayalatKrondorandReturntoKrondor,whi...

展开>> 收起<<
Raymond E. Feist - Riftwar Legacy - The Assasins.pdf

共463页,预览10页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：463 页 大小：682.89KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-03

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 动力学连接体 力的合成 配电装置 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 463
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注