The Dream Gatherer (Green Rider) - Hardcover

Britain, Kristen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0756414962 ISBN 13: 9780756414962

Verlag: DAW, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the New York Times bestselling Green Rider series, this short volume introduces readers to new sides of Sacoridia in two new short stories and a novella.

In The Dream Gatherer, Kristen Britain presents a novella and two short stories set in the universe of her best selling Green Rider series in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the publication of her first novel, Green Rider.

The Dream Gatherer
Dreams can be dangerous. A visit with the eccentric Berry sisters turns dangerous when an arcane device is discovered in their house that can summon dreamers through their dreams, and one of them is a nightmare.

Wishwind
Finding peace during the Long War. Raised in an orphan camp, Green Rider Danalong has known only war and strife, until a shipwreck leaves him stranded on a mysterious island.

Linked, on the Lake of Souls
A story of friendship within a story of friendship. In the sixth volume of the Green Rider series, Firebrand, a wounded Karigan G'ladheon asks her friend Estral to tell her a story to take her mind off her pain. This is that story.

The book includes illustrations and backstory on the creation of Green Rider by the author, and a special introduction by award-winning science fiction and fantasy author, Julie E. Czerneda.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kristen Britain is the author of the New York Times bestselling Green Rider series. She lives in an adobe house in the high desert of the American Southwest beneath the big sky and among lizards, hummingbirds, and tumbleweeds.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Wishwind
 
Danalong’s nostrils flared with the scents of the ocean and his own blood. He staggered inland shedding droplets of seawater on the forest floor. Step by painful step, he was guided only by the pale gleam of moonlight.

Wet and racked by chills, he gasped for breath as if drowning, but he was on dry land. It was his comrades, his people, who had drowned. The sea had lashed out and the wind had twisted around, thrusting Windswift onto a hidden shelf, gutting it of cargo, crew, and soldiers. The cries and shouts, horses screaming as they spilled into the waves, the crack of masts as they splintered and toppled. The roar of ocean filling Danalong’s ears. Swallowing great gulps of water, swirling in the waves, drowning, drowning . . .

Then his flailing hands had fallen upon a plank of wreckage that appeared out of the darkness like a gift bestowed upon him by the gods, and on this he floated to the shore of an unknown island.

The surging ocean had slammed him into barnacle- clad rocks that shredded hands, elbows, and knees. Now the cool night air stung the raw wounds.

He shoved aside tree limbs and crashed through underbrush with drunken momentum, driven inland by instinct, or some force he could not name. Abruptly the thick forest gave way and he stumbled into a moonlit clearing. A vision appeared before him of an ivory-haired woman singing of autumn apples to a fawn as its mother and a bobcat watched on.

Impossible! he thought, and the world darkened.

Danalong thrashed in the water, waves crashing over his head. The current tried to pull him back under and fill his nose and mouth. The sea took young Jaren and Avery, and Drake and the others.
Drawn under one by one, their pale faces and limbs faded beneath the water’s dark surface.

“No!” he cried and realized he wrestled with blankets and not the ocean. Sunshine and the scent of evergreens flowed through a window above where he lay on a coarse mattress and eased his panic. He was in a one-room croft of stone and the hearth crackled with a day fire. Dried herbs hung from the rafters above. A table laden with bread, honey, and berries occupied the center of the room. All else was obscured in contrasts of sunlight and shadow.

Might this be Coutre Harbor, he wondered, and the wreck no more than a nightmare? He listened for a time to the piping song of a thrush outside and the rustling of leaves in a breeze. No, not Coutre Harbor, he decided, which would be rank and noisy as a busy seaport always was. The wreck had been no nightmare. The Windswift was truly gone.

“No,” he whispered. He’d been on a vital mission for King Jonaeus to gather Lord Arey’s troops and lead them to the coast of Coutre, where intelligence said Mornhavon’s forces planned an assault. If Mornhavon took the eastern provinces, it would cost the Sacor Clans the war, and all the years of suffering and slaughter would be for naught. Now with the ship’s loss, the king would receive no reinforcements at all, for Windswift’s sister ship, Wishwind, carrying additional troops and supplies, had vanished in a gale days ago.

He recalled strong currents and high waves as they approached the Northern Sea Archipelago. It had been the shipmaster’s plan to use the islands to conceal their approach from Mornhavon’s spies despite the archipelago’s dangerous tides and currents. Even more perilous in the minds of some sailors was the archipelago’s reputation for the uncanny. Rife in the dark berths of ships and the taverns of every port town were tales of witches casting spells over unwary mariners and sinking ships, and of the ancient sea kings who were said to slumber in island caves until they awoke once more to dominate the lands.

The shipmaster of Windswift scoffed at superstition and was confident in his ability to navigate the archipelago’s hazards and the night’s fickle winds. His miscalculation, however, not only cost countless lives aboard ship, but possibly the war itself.

Both ships lost. No hope.

The croft’s door opened, and the willowy, ivory-haired woman of Danalong’s previous vision stepped inside and appraised him with granite- gray eyes.

“You should eat, child,” the woman said, and she gestured at the table.

“Who are you?”

“I am Marin. Eat. It is late noon and your stomach is empty.”

“I must go to the shore,” he said. “We were wrecked— my ship. I must help my people.” Then he added more quietly, “If any survive.” He held little hope that any others had survived the violence of the sea.

“Eat,” Marin told him. “If there are survivors, you are in no condition to aid them at the moment.”

Danalong wrapped the blanket around himself for underneath he wore only his own skin. His clothes dried before the fire. When he sat at the table he just stared at the food unable to actually eat. Marin broke off a piece of bread and spread it with honey and placed it in his hand.

“You must find your strength again. You are no good to anyone right now, Green Rider, least of all yourself.”

He obeyed but did not taste the food. His mind was too full of the previous night’s disaster and wondering about this Marin woman who seemed to know who, or at least what, he was, though his green cloak and winged horse brooch would’ve given that away. Still, her manner was knowing. He felt no threat from her, but found her penetrating gaze and silence uncomfortable.

Finally, when he finished, Marin spoke. “Your clothes are dry if you choose to wear them.”

He hadn’t much hope for his uniform to be in any condition to wear, but discovered the tunic and trousers had been stitched and patched, and the cloak was in fine shape. Once dressed, he exhaled in relief, feeling more himself.

Marin led him outside for fresh air. The croft, cloaked by flower-specked vines, sat by a lake. It was as placid as the sea had been furious.

Marin scurried to and fro inspecting flowers and trees, chattering to them like old friends. Danalong followed slowly and stiffly, shoulders erect and hands clasped behind his back. He wondered how this Marin woman had come to live on this island the charts indicated was uninhabited, and found her obvious joy in the surrounding nature eccentric.

Danalong had been born into war, had grown up in an orphan camp, his own face mirrored in those of the other children—pinched with starvation as they were forced to fletch arrows, or labor in forges and tanneries in service to the war effort. When they grew strong enough to wield the weapons they made, they were sent off to fight. Child warriors returned as grim veterans missing limbs and eyes, haunted by all they had witnessed. If they returned at all.

To Danalong, nature was important only in how it affected troop movements and strategy, how it could prove an advantage or disadvantage in a given battle. How it could sustain armies. In and of itself, he had given it little consideration, and the only flowers he ever noticed were those placed on graves.

“I heard how the ocean carried you ashore.” Marin could have been speaking to the trillium blossom she cupped in her hand.

“My people . . . ” Their screams echoed like a fresh wound in Danalong’s mind. All he could see were bodies with familiar faces floating among the wreckage.

“It happens.” Marin sighed. “Your shipmaster misjudged the wind.”

Danalong clawed back a wisp of hair. “The wind turned on us.”

“Don’t blame the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: DAW
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0756414962
• ISBN 13: 9780756414962
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 176
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: DAW; https://www.aeuln.top/; ; Kl?nenfeldstr. 22; Muttenz; 4132; Schweiz
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar