Tamora Pierce - The Will of the Empress

VIP免费
2024-12-05 0 0 1.46MB 220 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
THE WILL OF THE
EMPRESS
Tamora Pierce
Calendar
January Wolf
February Storm
March Carp
April Seed
May Goose
June Rose
July Mead
August Wort
September Barley
October Blood
November Snow
December Hearth
Sunsday, Moonsday, Starsday, Earthsday, Airsday, Firesday, Watersday
A • Dancruan, the capital
B • Clehamat Landreg, Sandry's home estates
C • Sablaliz Palace,, one or the imperial summer homes
D • Dragonstone, former home before Berennene was empress
E • Canyon. Inn on Deepdene Road (where Shan ambushes Sandry's Group)
F • Blendroad Inn, intersection of Deepdene Road witg Imperial Highway
G •.Imperial hunting lodge in Carakathy Mountains
H • Border crossing into Olart by Lake Olaiso
I • Kugisko
A DF Books NERDs Release
1
The 12th day of Wort Moon
The year 1041 K.F. (after the Fall of the Kurchal Empire)
In the palace of Duke's Citadel, Summersea, Emelan
Lady Sandrilene fa Toren sat in the room that was her study in her uncle's palace. In her
hands she held a thread circle, one that included four lumps spaced equally apart. It was a
symbol not just of her first magical working, but of the magical bond she shared with her
foster-brother and two foster-sisters, who had been away from home for many months. Today
was Sandry's birthday, and she missed them. Once she could have reached out through their
connection without even touching the thread, and spoken with them, magic to magic, but not
in the last two years. They had traveled far beyond reach, into lands and experiences Sandry
couldn't share.
"Daja at least should have been here," she said, and sniffed. "She was supposed to come
home a year ago. But no. She wanted to see more of Capchen, and Olart —"
Someone knocked on her door. Sandry hid the circle under a fold of her skirt. "Come in,
please," she called, her voice light and courteous.
A footman entered. He carried a parcel wrapped in oiled cloth and tied with ribbons
secured by a large wax seal. "My lady, this has come for you," he said with a bow.
Sandry's mouth trembled. Her hope that the package might be from her brother or sisters
evaporated at the sight of its seal. Only Ambros fer Landreg sends packages like this to me,
she thought, cross. No gifts or nice, long books and letters from him. Only dreary old
accounts from my estates in Namorn.
"Please set it here," she ordered, patting her desk. The footman obeyed and left her alone
with the parcel.
Other people get to have parties and presents and outings with their friends when they
turn sixteen, Sandry reflected unhappily. I get another fat package of dry old reports about
cherry crops and mule sales from Ambros.
I'm not being fair, she told herself. I know that. I also know I don't want to be fair.
Wearily, she gave the thread circle a last check, pressing each lump between her thumb
and forefinger. Each one stood for a friend. Each was cool to the touch. The others were too
far away for their presence to even register in the circle.
Sandry tucked the thread into the pouch around her neck and hid it under her clothes.
She blinked away tears as she thought, I was just fooling myself, hoping they'd be home by
now.
She returned her attention to the package. Ambros probably had no idea his tedious
reports would arrive today, she reminded herself in her prudent cousin's defense, propping her
chin on her hand. And Uncle Vedris and Baron Erdogun gavc me presents at breakfast.
There's to be a get-together with my Summersea friends tonight. I'm just being petty, sulking
over this, too. But really, who wants to go over crop reports and tax documents on her
birthday?
With bright, cornflower blue eyes set over a button nose, she stared longingly out of the
open windows. Her pale skin still bore the light bronze tint it always picked up in the
summer, just as her light brown hair, neatly braided and pinned in a coronet on her head, was
gilded with sun streaks. Her cheeks were still girlishly plump, but any touch of youthful
shyness those cheeks gave her face was offset by her round and mulish chin. Even at sixteen,
Lady Sandrilene fa Toren knew her own mind.
She was dressed simply in a loose blue summer gown of her own weaving, sewing, and
design, a gown that would never show a wrinkle or stain, no matter what she had done with
her day. Sandry was a thread mage, with the right to practice as an adult. She tolerated no
wayward behavior in any cloth in her presence. Her stockings never dared escape their
garters, any more than her gowns dared to pick up dirt. Every woven scrap in Duke's Citadel
had learned the girl's power since she had come to look after her great-uncle Vedris.
The day's fading, Sandry told herself. I should do something before dinner besides pout.
She thrust the bulky package aside.
"Do you know, the only time I ever see you shirk your duty is when Ambros's packages
arrive." While Sandry daydreamed, Duke Vedris IV had come to stand in the study's open
door. He leaned there, a fleshy-faced, powerfully built man in his mid-fifties, dressed in blue
summer cotton of her weaving and stitching. While his clothes were plain and his jewelry
simple, there was no denying his aura of power and authority. No one would ever mistake
him for a commoner. Neither would they mistake his obvious affection for the great-niece
born of his wayward nephew and a wealthy young noblewoman from Namorn.
Sandry blushed. She hated for him to see her at any less than her best. "Uncle, he's so
prosy," she explained, hearing the dreaded sound of a whine creep into her voice. "He goes on
and on about bushels of rye per acre and gross lots of candles until I want to scream. Doesn't
he understand I don't care?"
Vedris raised his brows. "But you care about the accounts for Duke's Citadel, which are
just as thick with minutiae," he pointed out.
"Only so you won't," she retorted. When Vedris smiled, she had to fight a smile of her
own. "You know what I mean, Uncle! If I don't stop you from worrying over every little
detail, you might fret yourself into a second heart attack. At the rate Ambros goes on, I'm the
one who will have a heart attack."
"Ah," said the duke. "So you need an altruistic reason to take an interest, rather than the
selfish one that this is your Own inheritance from your mother, and your own estates." Sandry
opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. Something about that sounds like he just turned it
head over heels on me, she thought. I just can't put my finger on what.
"Very well, then," Vedris continued. "I submit that by looking so conscientiously after
your affairs and his own — I know he has properties in his own right — it is quite possible
your cousin Ambros courts a heart attack." He straightened. "Just because your Namornese
inheritance is in land, and in Namorn, is no reason for you to treat it lightly, my dear." He
walked off down the hall.
Sandry put her hands up to cool her cheeks, which were hot with embarrassment. I've
never gotten a scolding from him before, she thought with dismay. I don't care for it at all!
She glared at the ribbons on the package of documents. They struggled, then ripped free
of the wax seal and flew apart. With a sigh, Sandry grasped the edges of the folded wrapping
and began to remove it.
The 18th day of Blood Moon
The year 1041 K.F.
The Anderran/Emelan border
After several side trips following their original journey to Kugisko in Namorn,
Dedicate Initiate Frostpine of Winding Circle temple and his student Daja Kisubo finally
crossed back into Emelan. Although it was late in the year, the weather still held fine. The
skies were a brilliant blue without a single cloud, the breeze crisp without being cold. Daja
sighed happily.
"Another week and we'll be home," she commented, turning her broad, dark face up to
the sun. She was a big young woman with glossy brown skin, a wide mouth, and large,
perceptive brown eyes. She wore her wiry black hair in masses of long, thin braids wrapped,
coiled, and pinned at the back of her head, an elegant style that drew attention to the muscled
column of her neck. Her traveling garments were light brown wool with orange patterns,
sewn into a tunic and leggings in the style of her native people, the Traders. "I'll be close
enough to mind-speak with Sandry any day — well, I could now, but I'd have to strain to do
it, and I'd rather wait. She'll have a million questions, I know."
Frostpine grinned. He was brown like Daja, but where her build was solid, his was wiry,
his muscles cables that lined his long body. He wore his hair wild around a perfectly bald
crown and kept his beard in the same exuberant style. His Fire dedicates crimson robes were
every bit as travel worn as hers. "You can't blame Sandry," he pointed out. "We were
supposed to be home the summer before this."
"She'd have questions anyway," Daja said comfortably. Before Sandry had moved to
Duke's Citadel, she had shared a house at Winding Circle with Daja and their other foster-
brother and foster-sister, Briar and Tris. "She always has questions. Well, she's going to have
to come to Discipline lor answers. I won't spend forever mind-speaking, and once I get back
in my own room, I'm not coming out for a week."
Frostpine reined his horse up. "Discipline?"
Daja halted her own mount and turned to smile at her scatterbrained teacher. "Discipline
cottage?" she asked, gently reminding him. "My foster-mother Lark? I live there when you're
not dragging me everywhere between the Syth and the Pebbled Sea?"
Frostpine ran a big hand through his flyaway hair. "Daja, how old are you?"
She rolled her eyes. "Sixteen," she said even more patiently. "On the thirtieth of Seed
Moon, the same day I mark for my birth every year."
"I should have thought of it sooner," he said mourn-fully. "But I swear, as I get older, the
harder it gets to think. . . . Daja, Winding Circle has rules."
She waited, running a finger over the bright piece of brass that wrapped the palm and
back of one hand. The metal was as warm and supple as living skin, a remnant of a forest fire,
powerful magics, and Daja's ill-fated second Trader staff.
Frostpine said, "You probably know the rule already, at least for most of the temple
boarding students. At sixteen, they must take vows, pay for their boarding and classes, or
leave. And only those who have not attended temple school as children may attend as paying
adults."
"Of course," Daja said. "There's a ceremony, and they give the residents of the
dormitories papers to show they've studied at Winding Circle. But that's not for Sandry or
Briar or Tris or me. We aren't temple students. We study with some temple dedicates, but not
all of our teachers are temple. We live with Lark and Rosethorn at Discipline, not in the
dormitories. And we're proper mages. We're — we're different."
Frostpine was shaking his head. "My dear, if you four still needed a firm education, we
might be able to make a case, at least until you earned a medallion as the adult mages do," he
said quietly. "But the fact is that you have your mage's medallion. As these things are
measured, you were considered to be adult mages when you received them, fit to practice and
to teach. Of course, you were too young to live on your own then. But now? Unless you are
prepared to give your vows to the gods of the Living Circle, you will not be permitted to stay
at Discipline."
Daja put her hand on the front of her tunic. Under it, hanging on a cord around her neck,
was the gold medallion that proved that the wearer was a true mage, certified by Winding
Circle to practice magic as an adult. She, Sandry, Tris, and Briar had agreed not to show it
until they were eighteen unless they had to prove they were accredited mages. It was almost
unheard-of for one thirteen-year-old to receive it, let alone four. Their teachers had been
careful to let them know they had gotten it not only because they were as powerful and
controlled as adults. Possession of a medallion also meant they had to answer to the laws and
governing mages of Winding Circle and the university at Lightsbridge. "A leash," Briar had
described it, "to prove to the law we won't run loose and pee on their bushes." Their teacher
Niko had replied that his description was "crude, but accurate." Given that warning, and the
fuss people made when they learned she had the medallion, Daja showed it as little as
possible.
Frostpine bit his lip, then went on. "I can put you up over my forge for a week or two,
but after that they'll make a fuss. You should be able to stay with Lark for a couple of nights,
but she does have at least one new student living with her. Perhaps you could go to
Sandry's?"
Daja was a smith, with intense bonds to fire, but for all that, she was normally slow to
anger. Something in what he had said lit the tiniest of sparks. I don't know if he realizes it
sounds like he wants me out of the way, she thought, heat tingling in her cheeks. Or like I can
throw myself on my foster-sister's charity. Of course he didn't mean it to sound as if he wants
me out of the way. Even if we have been living in each other's pockets for longer than we'd
first expected to. We didn't intend to stay so long in Olart, or Capchen, or Anderran. We
didn't plan to spend a whole extra year and a half away after Namorn.
"Daja?" Frostpine asked hesitantly.
I can't look at him, she thought. I don't want to cry. I feel all... lost. Funny.
"We should get moving," she said, nudging her horse into motion. The sky remained
cloudless, but now the day felt gray. Her eagerness to go back had faded.
"Daja, please talk to me," Frostpine said. "You can stay with me or with Sandry.
Frankly, I had expected you would want a house, perhaps even a forge, of your own, since
you're of age. Certainly you can afford it. You haven't taken vows of poverty."
He's smiling at me — I can hear it in his voice, she thought. I should smile back, not
worry him. But I feel empty. Lost, like when the Traders declared me outcast because I was
the only survivor of that shipwreck. Why didn't Sandry warn me, all those letters she's been
writing? She babbled of the duke's health and something or other Lark wove or she
embroidered, but wrote no word of not being able to return to Discipline. Of course not. She
has family. The duke, and her cousins in Namorn. But me ... I'm cast out of my home. If I
don't have Winding Circle, what do I have?
Briar and Tris will be in the same basket when they come home, Daja realized. They'll be
outcasts, too.
I suppose my lady Sandrilene thought we'd be happy to live as poor relatives. She
doesn't know what it's like, always being on the edge of homelessness. She'll expect us to be
one cozy little family again, only living on her money, until she marries, or His Grace dies... .
And I'll be left with no home again.
Daja shook her head. It was all a mess, one she didn't waul to discuss.
She forced herself to smile at Frostpine. "Where do we stop tonight?" she asked. "Let's
worry about the other busi-ness" is when we're closer to Emelan, all right?"
The 26th day of Blood Moon
The year 1041 K.F.
Summersea, Emelan
The first visitor to the house and forge at Number 6 Cheeseman Street was Sandry. Daja
could feel her nearness through the magical connection they shared, though Daja's heart had
been in such turmoil that she had refused to open that connection to speak to her foster-sister.
Now, feeling both apprehensive and angry, she waited for the housemaid to show Sandry into
her study.
Sandry thanked the maid and waited for her to leave be fore she turned on Daja. "I have
to learn from your teacher that not only have you been in Emelan two weeks, but you went
and bought a house of your own?"
Daja scowled at the shorter girl. "Spare me the ballads," she replied. "You knew very
well I was close. I could hardly sleep for you bothering me to open my mind."
"Why didn't you let me in? Why didn't you tell me anything?" cried Sandry.
Daja had bottled up her feelings since Frostpine had said that the home she looked
forward to was home no longer. During the ride to Winding Circle and her reunion with her
foster-mother Lark and her temple friends, Daja had shown a smooth and smiling face. She
had quietly found a Summersea house with a smith's forge already attached, then picked out
furnishings so she could move in as soon as possible. To everyone — merchants, dedicates,
the old smith whose home she had bought, her new servants — she had pretended that setting
up her own household was just what she had in mind.
She was tired of pretending. "Tell you that I was being cast out of Winding Circle
because I no longer fit?" she asked quietly. "Tell you so you might offer me charity, or so His
Grace might offer me charity? How long until that charity ran out, and I was left on my own
again, Sandry? First I lose my family, then the Traders, then Winding Circle. I need my own
place. A home no one can take from me."
Sandry's lips trembled. "So you cast me out. You said I was your saati." A saati was a
true friend of the heart, someone who was trusted without reserve. "I thought the friendship of
saatis lasted forever."
"But first I need to heal. I can't have you picking and prying and worrying inside my
mind," Daja said, her face and voice still under control. "I need to tend to myself." Her voice
rose slightly. "You didn't even warn me. You've been to discipline. Did anyone ever say, well,
you're sixteen, you can't move back here even if you wish?"
Sandry's chin trembled. "I thought you'd want to live with Uncle and me. I thought we'd
all be happy to live at Duke's Citadel."
摘要：

THEWILLOFTHEEMPRESSTamoraPierceCalendarJanuaryWolfFebruaryStormMarchCarpAprilSeedMayGooseJuneRoseJulyMeadAugustWortSeptemberBarleyOctoberBloodNovemberSnowDecemberHearthSunsday,Moonsday,Starsday,Earthsday,Airsday,Firesday,WatersdayA•Dancruan,thecapitalB•ClehamatLandreg,Sandry'shomeestatesC•SablalizPa...

收起<<
Tamora Pierce - The Will of the Empress.pdf

共220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：220 页 大小：1.46MB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-05

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 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 220
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注