Страница 1 из 127
The Assassin’s Edge
The Fifth Tale Of Einari
Juliet E. McKe
For Marion and Michael, Cori
So much support, in so many ways, for so many years.
Acknowledgements
The truth always bears repeating, so once again, I am grateful to Steve, Mike, Sue, Helen, Robin, Lisa, Pe
The support network continues to evolve and Gill and Mike have proved true friends time and again. As always, I remain indebted to Ernie and Betty for their help beating the tyra
I couldn’t wish for better than the teams at Orbit, in sales, publicity and most of all, editorially. Sincerest thanks go to Tim, Simon, Ben and Julie, Kirsteen, Adrian, Richard, Bob and Nigel. There isn’t space for me to list all the booksellers who’ve impressed me with their professionalism, nor yet all the readers who’ve brightened up my day with a few lines of appreciation, either personally or in a review. That doesn’t mean I’m not grateful, because I most certainly am.
Finally, I would like to thank all those curators and custodians of museums, stately homes and assorted castles who’ve answered my questions, offered up fascinating extra snippets and been intrigued rather than baffled when I explain just what it is that I do.
CHAPTER ONE
To all Resident Mentors and Scholars
By long tradition festivals at the turn of every season are a time for this university to welcome visitors from other seats of learning. We are accustomed to do so with every courtesy and luxury afforded by this city’s extensive trade, our contribution to the commerce that is Col’s lifeblood. Students and scholars alike mingle with visitors and townsfolk, broadening their experience of life. Accordingly, the Prefects of this university will not tolerate any repetition of the incidents disgracing this most recent spring Equinox.
In choosing a life of study, we all suffer accusations of idleness, and rebuke for perceived failure to produce anything of tangible worth to the unscholarly mind. We rise above such taunts, secure in the knowledge that learning outlasts any achievements of merchants and architects, artisans and their guilds. All of which tolerance is rendered worthless when students, scholars and even several mentors are clapped in irons by the Watch for brawling with visitors from Vanam’s university in taverns frequented by common dockers.
Worse, word now circulates that these arguments were not over money, some business disagreement or a lady’s favours, but over points of scholarship. This university has become an object of ridicule among the populace. The Prefecture considers this an offence graver than all of the damage done around the city. Broken windows, doors and wine bottles may be redeemed with gold. A reputation once tarnished may never recover its lustre.
To obviate any recurrence of such offences, the Prefecture offers the following for the immediate consideration of mentors and scholars and the judicious guidance of students.
Denying Temar D’Alse
However, and notwithstanding the overweening arrogance of certain scholars of Vanam, the return of Temar D’Alse
D’Alse
Granted, it seems likely that the as yet only partially explained deterioration in the usages of aetheric magic contributed to the collapse of the Empire. Judging the impact of such a blow, set alongside the attested assaults of famine, civil strife and the recurrent devastation of the Crusted Pox will certainly be a fruitful area for study. Similarly, a full assessment of the role of this aetheric magic in the governance of the Old Empire must now be made. We of Col should not be laggard in undertaking such enquiries. We need not concern ourselves with boasts from Vanam that their mentors’ links with Planir’s expeditions to Kel Ar’Ayen give their scholars unassailable superiority tn such studies.
Col is the main port through which travellers to and from Hadrumal pass. We should set aside our habitual reserve in dealing with wizardry and invite mages to refresh themselves in our halls and join in our debates. We may usefully encourage our alchemists to correspond with those wizards studying the properties of the natural elements. This university was founded by those scholars who salvaged all they could from the burning of this city’s ancient temple library during the Chaos. It is now evident that such temples were centres of aetheric learning in the Old Empire. Resident scholars and mentors must seek out such valuable lore hidden in our own archives. We can claim more peripatetic scholars than Vanam and many now tutor the sons and daughters of Tormalin Houses as well as the scions of Lescari dukes and Caladhria’s barons. All such archives may yield invaluable material for further study and this prefecture is writing to enlist the aid of all entitled to wear this university’s silver ring.
Rather than wasting time and effort in vain attempts to prove this university’s supremacy over Vanam through fisticuffs, it is the duty of every mentor, scholar and student to establish our preeminence through the ineluctable authority of our scholarship.