"Paul Kearney - Monarchies of God 4 - The Second Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kearney Paul)

Other Ace Books by Paul Kearney

HAWKWOODтАЩS VOYAGE
Book One of The Monarchies of God

THE HERETIC KINGS
Book Two of The Monarchies of God

THE IRON WARS
Book Three of The Monarchies of God

For John McLaughlin



WHAT WENT BEFORE . . .
F IVE centuries ago two great religious faiths arose which were to dominate the entire known world.
They were founded on the teachings of two men: in the west, St. Ramusio; in the east, the Prophet
Ahrimuz.

The Ramusian faith arose at the same time that the great continent-wide empire of the Fimbrians was
coming apart. The greatest soldiers the world had ever seen, the Fimbrians had become embroiled in a
vicious civil war which enabled their conquered provinces to break away one by one and become the
Seven Kingdoms. Fimbria dwindled to a shadow of her former self, her troops still formidable, but her
concerns confined exclusively to the problems within the borders of the homeland. And the Seven
Kingdoms went from strength to strengthтАФuntil, that is, the first hosts of the Merduks began pouring
over the Jafrar mountains, quickly reducing their numbers to five.

Thus began the great struggle between the Ramusians of the west and the Merduks of the east, a
sporadic and brutal war carried on for generations which, by the sixth century of Ramusian reckoning,
was finally reaching its climax.

For Aekir, greatest city of the west and seat of the Ramusian Pontiff, finally fell to the eastern invaders in
the year 551. Out of its sack escaped two men whose survival was to have the greatest possible
consequences for future history. One of them was the Pontiff himself, MacrobiusтАФthought dead by the
rest of the Ramusian Kingdoms and by the remainder of the Church hierarchy. The other was Corfe
Cear-Inaf, a lowly ensign of cavalry, who deserted his post in despair after the loss of his wife in the
tumult of the cityтАЩs fall.

But the Ramusian Church had already elected another Pontiff, Himerius, who was set upon purging the
Five Kingdoms of any remnant of the Dweomer-Folk, the practitioners of magic. The purge caused
HebrionтАЩs young king, Abeleyn, to accept a desperate expedition into the uttermost west to seek the
fabled Western Continent, an expedition led by his ruthlessly ambitious cousin, Lord Murad of
Galiapeno. Murad blackmailed a master mariner, one Richard Hawkwood, into leading the voyage, and
as passengers and would-be colonists they took along some of the refugee Dweomer-Folk of Hebrion,
including one Bardolin of Carreirida. But when they finally reached the fabled west, they found that a
colony of lycanthropes and mages had already existed there for centuries under the aegis of an immortal
arch-mage, Aruan. Their exploratory party was wiped out, with only Murad, Hawkwood and Bardolin
surviving.