"Cook, Glen - Dread Empire 05 - All Darkness Met" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

CHAPTER TWELVE: Spring, 1011 AFE; The Stranger in Hammerfest 109
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Spring, 1011 AFE; Regency 115
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Spring, 1011 AFE; Lady of Mystery 123
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Spring, 1011 AFE; The Stranger's Appointment 133
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Spring, 1011 AFE; Deaths and Disappearances 138
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Spring-Summer, 1011 AFE; Michael's Adventure 148
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Spring, 1011 AFE; The Unborn 161
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Summer, 1011 AFE; Funerals and Assassins 169
CHAPTER TWENTY: The Years 1004-1011 AFE; The Dragon Emperor 177
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Summer, 1011 AFE; The King Is Dead. Long Live the King 189
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Summer, 1011 AFE; Eye of the Storm 195
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Summer, 1011 AFE; The Hidden Kingdom 204
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Summer, 1011 AFE; Kavelin A-March 211
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Summer, 1011 AFE; The Assault on Argon 221
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Summer, 1011 AFE; Battle for the Fadem 229
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Summer, 1011 AFE; Mocker Returns 238
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Summer, 1011 AFE; A Friendly Assassin 249
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Winter, 1011-1012 AFE; A Dark Stranger in the Kingdom of Dread 261
CHAPTER THIRTY: Summer, 1011-Winter, 1012 AFE; The Other Side 267
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Spring, 1012 AFE; Baxendala Redux 271
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Spring-Summer-Autumn, 1012 AFE; Defeat. Defeat. Defeat. 284
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: Winter, 1012 Spring, 1013 AFE; Itaskia 291
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: Spring, 1013 AFE; The Road to Palmisano 301
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: Spring, 1013 AFE; Palmisano: The Guttering Flame 312
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: Spring, 1013 AFE; Home 318

ONE: 0 Shing, Ehelebe

The woman screamed with every contraction. The demon outside howled and clawed at the walls. It roared like a wounded elephant, smashed against the door. The timbers groaned.

The physician, soaked with perspiration, shook like a trapped rabbit. His skin was the hue of death.

"Get on with it!" snarled the baby's father.

"Lord!..."

"Do it!" Nu Li Hsi appeared undisturbed by the siege. He refused even to acknowledge the possibility of fear, in himself or those who served him. Would-be Lord of All Shinsan, he dared reveal nothing the Tervola could call weakness.

Still the physician delayed. He was hopelessly trapped. He couldn't win. A demon was trying to shatter the sorceries shielding his surgery. Inside, his master was in a rage because the mother couldn't deliver normally. The child was just too huge. The woman was a friend, and the surgeon doubted she could survive the operation. The only assistant permitted him was his daughter. No fourteen-year-old was ready to face this.

Worse, there were witnesses. Two Tervola leaned against one wall. These sorcerer-generals, who managed Shinsan's armies and made up her nobility, were waiting to see the product of the Dragon Prince's experiments.

The goal was a child who could develop into a super strong, super competent soldier, thinking, yet with little ability to become a personality in his own right, and immune to the magicks by which foes seized control of enemy soldiers.

"Start cutting," Nu Li Hsi said softly, with the "or else" transmitted by intonation, "before my brother's attacks become more imaginative."

For a millennium Nu Li Hsi and his twin, Yo Hsi, had battled

for mastery of Shinsan, virtually from the moment they had murdered Tuan Hoa, their father, who had been Shinsan's founder.