Eugeniusz Paukszta - Srebrna lawica 01 - Srebrna lawica, Paukszta Eugeniusz
Estrada i Studio 01 2008, Do czytania, Estrada i Studio, 2008
Erikson Steven - Malazańska Księga Poległych 01 - Ogrody Księżyca, Malazańska Księga Poległych
Ethos Magazine 01, Podreczniki RPG, Ethos Magazine
Erikson Steven - Malazańska Księga Poległych 07 - Wicher smierci 01 - Imperium, Malazańska Księga Poległych
Erikson Steven - Malazańska Księga Poległych 04 - Dom łańcuchów 01 - Dawne dni, Malazańska Księga Poległych
Eugeniusz Paukszta - Zlote korony ksiecia Dardanow 01, Paukszta Eugeniusz
Essential Mix - Simian Mobile Disco [09.01.2010], MUZYKA, !! ESSENTIAL MIX !!
Europejska koncepcja zapewnienia bezpieczeństwa związanego z maszynami, 01. Maszyny i urządzenia - wymagania ogólne i minimalne
Evangeline Anderson - Ostatni mężczyzna na Ziemi (+18), ⣠ROMANSE E- BOOKI (hasło=123)
Eresse - Chronicles of Ylandre 01 - Sacred Fate,
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]Sacred Fate
Chronicles of Ylandre
Eresse
(c) 2009
Sacred Fate
Chronicles of Ylandre
Eresse
Published 2009
ISBN 978-1-59578-595-4
Published by Liquid Silver Books, imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, 10509
Sedgegrass Dr, Indianapolis, Indiana 46235. Copyright © 2009, Eresse. All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of the author.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Liquid Silver Books
Email:
raven@LSbooks.com
Editor
Devin Govaere
Cover Artist
Anne Cain
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of
the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual
events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
Blurb
In the dual-gendered realm of Ylandre, the great divide between the high-born True
Bloods and the lower-ranked Half Bloods is deemed impassable by most. Rohyr Essendri
dared to cross it when he took young Lassen Idana from his provincial town and made
him his paramour. Lassen perforce learned how to navigate the intricate byways of life at
court. What he never expected, however, was to fall in love with Rohyr, a most
inadvisable and impractical thing to do when one’s lover is sovereign ruler of the land.
But anything worth having is worth fighting for, both figuratively and, as Lassen
discovers, literally speaking. Contains hermaphrodism and explicit homoerotic sexual
encounters.
Note: Glossary of terms at end of book.
Prologue
Genesis
Ylandre, in the 1009th year of the Common Age
She left with a sigh so faint the physician almost did not hear it. Her chest barely
heaved with that final breath; her wrinkle-framed lips scarcely moved. The healer gently
pressed his fingers to the loose flesh at the sides of her throat then lifted her thin wrist. He
shook his head and looked up.
Veiron Essendri curtly nodded. He watched the family gather around her in
mourning.
It was no coincidence that the Ardan of mighty Ylandre had attended an old female
on her deathbed. She was just a commoner but she was also the last of her kind in the
land. And so he had come as soon as word reached him of her imminent passing. Veiron
looked at the kinsfolk she had left behind—brothers, cousins, nephews, great-nephews.
Not a one sprung from her for no one had taken her to mate. How could they when her
form had no longer found favor with the folk of her township or even her own blood
relations? She, whose ancestors were the firstborn of Aisen, had lived her life and
departed it a virtual stranger in the world of her birth.
Veiron signed to his counsellor to give her family a bag of coins to help defray the
cost of the funeral. They received it in timid silence, the eldest thanking the king in
hushed tones. Veiron acknowledged their gratitude then stepped out of the chamber.
When he returned to the capital he retreated to his study and took out his journal. He
needed to record the demise of the last female not only in his realm but also in the entire
continent. He was not the only sovereign to do so. Female-kind vanished in the continents
of Lydan and South Vihandra during his sire’s reign. Arvalde had only a scant handful
left and Khitaira maybe twice that number at most. But they were all in their twilight
years, these spouseless, childless, kindredless daughters of Aisen. They would leave the
world before Veiron’s eldest came to the throne.
It was a death knell for their race. Their passing would herald the extinction of
Aisen’s first offspring. And the irreversible ascendancy of her adopted heirs.
Unsure how to begin his account, Veiron glanced at the nearby shelf that housed the
journals of his predecessors for inspiration. He recalled an entry he had read when he was
just a lad. He rose and retrieved his grandsire’s journal. Sitting at his writing desk once
more, he quickly flipped through the crisp pages. He soon found what he was seeking and
began to read.
* * * *
They came in that time before written history in this world. A wondrous race of great
daring and spirit. It seemed their fate to suffer extinction. They defied fate instead and
won their battle to prevail against impossible odds.
The ancient scribes wrote that their world began to die. The climate slowly changed.
An unending winter set in, killing plants and beasts alike. They realized that sickness and
starvation would destroy them if the cold did not. And so the sharpest, most farseeing
minds amongst them gathered together and strove to discover a way for their people to
escape oblivion.
They were masters of the mind arts. They harnessed mental energy to heal or wound,
to save or slay. They could communicate without speaking though they never forsook
speech. Language was important to them for they were a highly cultured people who
revered their teachers as much as their soldiers.
Yet they were first and foremost a warrior race. Their history was marked by
conflict, the extension of borders routinely realized through the use of force and the
attainment of power and property more oft than not achieved by conquest. Fortunately,
by the time of the Great Frost, they had learned to eschew war for the most part and live
in harmonious coexistence.
It was this general peace, this conscious will to cooperate, that won them salvation.
They were learned enough to surmise that they were not alone in existence. At the behest
of their scholars and leaders, they joined their consciousness in a shared endeavor to
discover if there was another place to which they could relocate their race.
They saw it in that collective mind’s eye. A world similar to theirs that appeared
untouched by sentient life. It held the hope of survival and promised a future for their
kind. And so they came together on the last continent that could still sustain them. And
for the second time, and likely the last, they joined minds, each and every survivor of that
deadly winter. They harnessed the energy generated by that joining and channeled it into
the creation of a corridor by which they could pass through the void to their new home.
That was how they came to the world they named Aisen.
It was only upon their advent that they discovered the presence of a nascent
homegrown race alike to theirs in appearance and intelligence. They called themselves
the gelra.
The colonists had to make a choice. They were numerous, long-lived and strong. And
they were possessed of a power with which they could easily overcome and supplant the
gelra. But these ancient ones were wise. They comprehended that the indigenous
population possessed what was needed to thrive in this strange new world. They chose
assimilation over extermination, breeding with the native inhabitants over many
generations until the distinctions between them blurred and finally disappeared.
We are the progeny of that wondrous era. The children of the Inception. A people
hewn from the threat of extinction, the harshness of survival, the hardships of wholesale
migration, the relentless toil of civilization started anew and the inevitable adversities of
evolution. A mercurial race, as capable of bringing down empires as raising them,
undertaking both with equal fervor. We are the result of the journey upon which those
long ago gallant hearts embarked in a desperate bid to preserve their kind.
They were the Naere and we, the Deira of Aisen, are forever indebted to they who
were our forebears, sprung from a world that no longer exists except in blessed memory.
Joram Essendri
Rikara, Ylandre
Year 825 C.A.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
