Читать онлайн «Mistress of the Empire»
Автор Раймонд Фейст
RAYMOND E. FEIST and JANNY WURTS
Book Three of the Empire Trilogy
This book is dedicated to Kyung and Jon Conning, with appreciation for giving us insights and friendship
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One: Tragedy
Chapter Two: Confrontation
Chapter Three: War
Chapter Four: Adversity
Chapter Five: Machinations
Chapter Six: Gambits
Chapter Seven: Culprit
Chapter Eight: Interrogation
Chapter Nine: Miracle
Chapter Ten: Interval
Chapter Eleven: Bereavement
Chapter Twelve: Warning
Chapter Thirteen: Twist
Chapter Fourteen: Revelation
Chapter Fifteen: Secrets
Chapter Sixteen: Countermoves
Chapter Seventeen: Advice
Chapter Eighteen: Evasion
Chapter Nineteen: Captive
Chapter Twenty: Council
Chapter Twenty-One: Decision
Chapter Twenty-Two: Challenge
Chapter Twenty-Three: Contest
Chapter Twenty-Four: Homecoming
Chapter Twenty-Five: Assembly
Chapter Twenty-Six: Battle
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Defiance
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Retribution
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Destruction
Chapter Thirty: Pursuit
Chapter Thirty-One: Kentosani
Chapter Thirty-Two: Emperor
Chapter Thirty-Three: Imperial Council
Epilogue: Reunion
Acknowledgments
About the Author
By The Same Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
• Chapter One •
The morning sun shone.
Dew bejeweled the lakeshore grasses, and the calls of nesting shatra birds carried sweetly on the breeze. Lady Mara of the Acoma savoured the air, soon to give way to the day’s heat. Seated in her litter, her husband at her side and her two-year-old son, Justin, napping in her lap, she closed her eyes and breathed a deep sigh of contentment.
She slipped her fingers into her husband’s hand. Hokanu smiled. He was undeniably handsome, and a proven warrior; and the easy times had not softened his athletic appearance. His grip closed possessively over hers, his strength masked by gentleness.
The past three years had been good ones.
For the first time since childhood, she felt safe, secure from the deadly, unending political intrigues of the Game of the Council. The enemy who had killed her father and brother could no longer threaten her. He was now dust and memories, his family fallen with him; his ancestral lands and magnificently appointed estate house had been deeded to Mara by the Emperor.Superstition held that ill luck tainted a fallen family’s land; on a wonderful morning such as this, misfortune seemed nowhere in evidence. As the litter moved slowly along the shore, the couple shared the peace of the moment while they regarded the home that they had created between them.
Nestled between steep, stone-crested hills, the valley that had first belonged to the Minwanabi Lords was not only naturally defensible, but so beautiful it was as if touched by the gods. The lake reflected a placid sky, the waters rippled by the fast oars of a messenger skiff bearing dispatches to factors in the Holy City. There, grain barges poled by chanting slaves delivered this year’s harvest to warehouses for storage until the spring floods allowed transport downriver.
