"Cook, Glen - Dread Empire 04 - Octobers Baby" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

"I know. And I apologize. He was a brilliant man once. I think you'd find me a more compatible partner." Oh, the suggestiveness she put into her words! "Show me the profit. You have the Demon Throne, but do you have its power? Dare you look beyond your borders? The Dragon Prince, too, had an heir."

"O Shing? I haven't run him to ground yet, but it's only a matter of time.

"Tervola have declared." The Tervola were the sorcerer-generals who commanded Shinsan's armies. Traditionally, they gave no loyalties to anything but Shinsan itself. "Not many yet. Lords Feng and Wu support O Shing. Lord Chin has declared for me. You see that I've captured his token." "The dragon?" "Yes."

"Uhm. And the unicorn? I'd thought the beast pure fable."

"They're rare. Rarer than dragons. But there'll always be unicorns while there're virginsЧthough we're rarer than dragons too."

The Captal stirred nervously. "You're not one of those... those whose power depends on..."

Her perfect lips formed the tiniest pout. "Sir!" Then she laughed. "Of course not. I'm no fool to hinge my strength on something so easily lost. I'm as human as any woman."

The old man felt a twinge of envy for the man who would first reach Mist's bed. "What's your offer?" he asked. "The same as my father's. But I won't cheat you." He was hooked, but he continued to wriggle. "What're your plans?"

"I mean to test my power. On Shinsan's borders there're a few small kingdoms that have been troublesome. And I'll finish O Shing." "And then?"

"Then the great eastern powers. Escalon and Matayanga."

"Ah?" She was ambitious indeed, though only to fulfill what Shinsan considered its destiny. And he saw an opportunity to hedge his bets. "I might be interested. But you haven't convinced me. If you succeed in Escalon, then I'll commit myself." Escalon commanded sorceries as powerful as those of Shinsan.

Mist wanted to reopen the transfer link. She had a friend in the west, an Itaskian named Visigodred. His residence was far from the focus of events and he was completely apolitical. She would leave control of the link in his hands.

iv) Mistress of the night

She looked seventeen. An enemy might have suggested nineteen. But she was old beyond the suspicions of all but the Tervola. She had been an apparent seventeen when Yo Hsi had engineered Varthlokkur into destroying

Ilkazar. She herself was unsure of her age. She had spent centuries cloistered from the temptations of life and power...

Yo Hsi had never forgotten that he and Nu Li Hsi had usurped their father, Tuan Hua. He had always anticipated his own usurpation by descendants... Males he had had murdered at birth. Mist had been allowed life on her mother's promise that she would spend her existence confined to a nunnery.

Survival had been the obsession of her early existence. She had done everything to assure her father that she had rejected ambition.

She succeeded. And cozened him into placing upon her the sorceries yielding eternal youth.

Those victories won, she turned to sorcerous self-education.

With the centuries never ending there was time to learn cautiously, by nibbles, without being obvious. By the time she was exposed she had become as powerful as any Tervola. The Power was in her blood. Still she showed no ambition beyond the scholarly. Her father chose not to destroy her.

But she had ambitions. And patience. Varthlokkur and the destruction of the Empire had shown her that Yo Hsi contained the seeds of his own destruction. She needed but wait.

Varthlokkur had come to Shinsan as a child, a fugitive full of hatred. The master magicians of Ilkazar, trying to evade a prophecy that from a witch would spring the Empire's doom, had burned his mother. Yo Hsi had undertaken his education, forging a weapon with which to demolish the one power capable of challenging Shinsan. But he had not supervised the boy's education himself. He had left that to the Tervola. They had seen no reason to keep him from meeting Nu Li Hsi as well.

Each Prince had thought to use him against the other. He had shaken their mastery, after crushing Ilkazar, and had hidden in the Dragon's Teeth. When, after centuries, they had striven to regain control, he had trapped them both...

Mist had ascended the Demon Throne without risk or effort. Only a little muddying of the thaumaturgic visions of her father and Nu Li Hsi. Just enough to hasten them to their fates.

The conquest of Escalon appeared easy. She needed but overwhelm the magic of the Monitor and Tear of Mimizan. O Shing was on the run. Her back was clear.