Chapters (44)
- Cover
- OTHER BOOKS BY STEPHEN R. DONALDSON
- Dedication
- PROLOGUE
- PART ONE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- PART TWO
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- PART THREE
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- PART FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next onyour reading list?
Springing upright, she flung a dagger into an eye of one priest. He was still dying as she slashed the throat of the other.
A hole marred the blur of sorcery.
Bifalt wanted to shoot then, but she was moving too fast. He feared hitting her. Helpless, he watched as she ran at the nearest servant, broke his neck with a single punch.
Unsure of their peril, priests from both sides rushed to guard the servants. They gathered around the running men, forced the servants to halt in their midst.
Other sorcerers ran at the devotee. Now Bifalt could fire. He dropped one of them. Another.
Too late, he saw a globe thrown toward her. Yelling to warn her, he jerked his aim higher, fired, missed: an impossible shot for him. Jaspid could have hit the ball, but he was concentrating on his own task.
Deaf to Bifalt’s shout—deaf or oblivious—Amandis crouched to leap at the nearest clutch of priests, to hurl herself among them and try for the servant they protected. There the grenade of sorcery struck her.
The blast killed priests. At that range, it shredded the servant and his burden.
The same force transformed the most holy devotee into a cloud of blood and guts, torn limbs, pieces of bone.
Raging, Bifalt fired until he emptied his clip. He did not see where his shots went. No more priests fell.
Three servants had been killed. Only three of ten. Two of their burdens had been destroyed. A priest had already retrieved the third. Shimmering shielded the rest. Bullets melted or skidded away. Lightning and fire touched no one.
Bifalt’s cursing echoed in his mind. Aloud, he ordered his people to withdraw. He did not know what else to do. He had exposed his riflemen and Magisters as well as himself. A few globes might kill them all.
In a broken run, he fled back down the ridgeside.
Estie had called him Beloved—and he had failed her again.
THIRTY-TWO
THE GIFTED AND THE UNGIFTED
From the balcony outside the librarian’s workroom, Magister Rummage watched the Great God’s preparations with Avail, Threnody, Oblique, Bleak, and every Decimate-wielding Magister and apprentice that the Repository could muster. Spread out along the parapets, they waited for the signal to strike. Even the seventh Decimate was there in the hands of two sorcerers, an older Magister and his apprentice, a young woman. Only the eighth was not represented. Despite Sirjane Marrow’s ambiguous morals, the Repository had never tainted itself with the sorcery of coercion. As for Hexin Marrow’s Final Decimate, no one studied it for the most obvious of reasons. No one except Rummage himself understood the text.