"Brian Daley - Doomfarers of Coramonde" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daley Brian)

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For
Fred, Jim* JudyтАФand
anyone else with the breadth of
spirit to embrace dreams
A Del Key Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright ┬й 1977 by Brian Daley
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the
United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously
in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto, Canada.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-30343
ISBN 0-345-30972-3
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition: March 1977 Fifth Printing: August 1982
First Canadian Printing: April 1977
Map by Robert C. Giordano Cover art by Darrell K. Sweet
T
Of Deaths, Of Departure
Chapter One
Man is soul and body, formed for deeds of high
resolve.
SHELLEY, Queen Mab, iv
"EARTHFAST," that place was called, aspiring skyward from roots of caverned bedrock. There was
nothing that a palace demanded that it didn't boast, and no feature it lacked that was required in
a fortress. From it, the sovereigns of Coramonde ruled.
Earthfast's formal gardens were extensive and elaborate, and so it took Queen Fania's personal
guardsmen some time to find Prince Springbuck as he brooded near an orchid bower on an out-of-the-
way path. He passed his time resisting despair, for he now lived under a death sentence of sorts.
Not particularly noteworthy to see, he was slightly under average height; at nineteen, he hadn't
yet come into his full growth. He was an open-faced young man with straight, dark hair, some of
his late mother's swarthlness of skin, and eyes a light brown like that of his dead father
Surehand. He kept his sparse facial hair self-consciously clean shaven and had no scar or other
feature, as yet, to set him apart in a crowd.
Sollerets rang across marble and two soldiers, a captain and a ranker wearing gilt corselets of
the Household, came to him there. The Prince resigned himself to a mandate to appear in his
stepmother's Court,
There was a modest bow and a barely concealed command to accompany them. He did so with a sinking
feeling, and some true premonition told him that blood would soon be let. That this was to happen
was no fault of the Prince's, though it stood as high probability that the blood in question would
be his own.
4 THE DOOMFARERS OF CORAMONDE
When Springbuck's father, Surehand, had died, he'd made no clear provision as to his chosen
heirтАФwho should, by custom, have been Springbuck. The old Suzerain's second wife meant to see her
son on the throne and had garnered a good deal of support. There'd been dispute, argument and, in
the end, a decision that the matter must be settled in combat.
Events had coalesced in such short order that Springbuck, a good-natured unaggressive young man,
found himself under a tacit house arrest, slated to measure swords with his half brother
Strongblade. It was disheartening enough that the ferocious Strongblade, at seventeen, was the