"Janny Wurts - The Cycle of Fire 2 - Keeper of the Keys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wurts Janny)

JANNY WURTS

KEEPER OF
THE KEYS
BOOK TWO OF THE CYCLE OF FIRE
This book is an Ace
original edition, and
has never been previously
published.

KEEPER OF THE KEYS

An Ace Book/published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY
Ace edition/August 1988

All rights reserved.
Copyright й 1988 by Janny Wurts.
Cover and interior art by Janny Wurts.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,
by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.

ISBN: 0-441-43275-1

Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
The name "Ace" and the "A"
logo are trademarks belonging to
Charter Communications, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

10 987654321
For Virginia Kidd in admiration, respect, and warmest friendship
Acknowledgments

Special thanks to: My youngest sister, for proofing,
and two extraordinary friends,
an author from the West Coast and a sailor from the East,
for support and suggestions respectively.
Lastly, to the friend no longer living,
who reviewed the preliminary draft.

Prologue
Chilly wind slapped the swells into whitecaps off the west shores of Elrinfaer, where, a lone fleck of color
under frowning cliffs, a fishing sloop spread tanbark sails beneath the leaden gray of the overcast. She was
an aged craft, patched and stained with the wear of her labors, but now her nets hung slack. Her occupants,
two brothers, leaned idle on the landward rail. Grizzled and gray and dour, they squinted shoreward at a dark
bundle of cloth sprawled on the sand above the tide mark.