Elsewhens (2) (Glass Thorns, Band 2) - Hardcover

Rawn, Melanie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765328771 ISBN 13: 9780765328779

Verlag: Tor Books, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Theater, magic, art, and politics all blend in Elsewhens, the second installment of the amazing high-fantasy series, Glass Thorns, from the imagination of Melanie Rawn.

Touchstone, the magical theater troupe, continues to build audiences. But Cayden is increasingly troubled by his "elsewhens," the uncontrolled moments when he is plunged into visions of the possible futures. He fears that his Fae gift will forever taint his friendships; his friends fear that his increasing distance will destroy him.

But worldly success follows them-an apparent loss in the Trials leads to Touchstone being selected to travel to the Continent with a Royal Embassy to collect Prince Ashgar's new bride. They are the first theater artists to appear outside Albeyn for at least seventy years-for magic is suspect and forbidden elsewhere, and the Kingdom's easy race mixing and magic use horrifies the people they are to travel among.

The Glass Thorns Series
#1 Touchstone
#2 Elsewhens
#3 Thornlost
#4 Window Wall
#5 Playing to the Gods (forthcoming)

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

MELANIE RAWN is the three-time Locus Award–nominated author of the bestselling Dragon Prince trilogy and of the Dragon Star trilogy. She graduated from Scripps College with a BA in History and has worked as a teacher and editor. Rawn lives in Flagstaff, Arizona.

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Elsewhens

Book Two of the Glass Thorns

By Melanie Rawn

Tom Doherty Associates

Copyright © 2013 Melanie Rawn
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7653-2877-9

CHAPTER 1

He couldn't breathe. His chest was tight, his head aching. His hands shook as he rubbed his tear-streaked face, terrified that he might have cried out and woken someone —

By the Lord and Lady and all the Angels and Old Gods, please let him have cried out and woken someone in the vastness of Fairwalk Manor.

By the time he recovered his breath and his heart stopped thundering, he knew he had stayed silent. There was no one to knock on his door, call out his name, come into his room, exclaim with shock at what he knew must be in his eyes. There was no one.

Brishen Staindrop had promised him dreams to fire his imagination and make his writing richer, deeper. He ought to've known. Blockweed hadn't worked on him the way it was supposed to; neither had this, whatever it was. All he wanted was a few hours spent someplace beautiful that danced and sparkled, someplace safe. What he got instead was horror.

And he would have to remember it, wouldn't he? It was part of him now. To tuck it all away and forget the words that unlocked it would be to lose something of himself. If he was true to his own arrogance, he would have to keep this Elsewhen as he had kept all the others.

Pushing himself to his feet, he made his slow, aching way to the hearth and half-fell onto his knees, reaching for logs to stoke the fire. There was no clock in the bedchamber — Kearney Fairwalk forbade clocks at his residences, with the splendid disregard of a very rich man for such mundane concerns as being anywhere on time. Cade might have lingered in bed and rung for a servant to replenish the fire for him, but the frantic need to see another living being had faded. He didn't want anyone to see him like this.

To be in possession of a suite of rooms at Fairwalk Manor was a privilege not accorded many. Touchstone had been invited for the fortnight preceding Trials. After their first grueling Winterly Circuit and dozens of shows in and around Gallantrybanks, all four young men were in need of time off. But rather than visit Fairwalk Manor, Jeska had chosen instead to escort his mother to a seaside town where he'd taken a month's hire on a cottage for her, and stay for a couple of weeks. Rafe and his new wife, Crisiant, had accepted His Lordship's generosity as a welcome escape after the strains of putting together their wedding celebrations. Cayden, determined on other forms of escape and certain that Fairwalk Manor was precisely the location for them, hadn't blushed a single blush when he got into a carriage the morning after Rafe and Crisiant's wedding and betook himself to Fairwalk Manor. In fact, he hadn't seen the couple at all. Not only was the tall, sprawling house gigantic, but orders had also come down from Lord Fairwalk to his servants to give his guests whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it, and do this as unobtrusively as possible. What Rafe and Crisiant wanted was exactly what Cade wanted: privacy.

Cade knew exactly how they were spending their time. He spent his exploring the library, the grounds, the stables, and the little blue leather roll of thorn he'd purchased from Mieka Windthistle's Auntie Brishen.

He'd always thought Mieka would be with him when he did this. Don't worry about going too lost, Quill, I'll always come find you, he'd written in the note accompanying that first little green wallet of blockweed. But Mieka was in Frimham, pretending to stay at a seaside inn while really staying with the girl whose existence made the thorn necessary.

Cade was supposed to be working on various playlets, polishing those that Touchstone might have to present at Trials and crafting his own ideas into performable shape. He arrived at Fairwalk Manor fully intending to do his duty by his group and his talents. Instead, the afternoon following his arrival, he took a long walk about the sculpted grounds, ate an early dinner, and told the servants to leave him alone. And they had done so; even if he had cried out, no one would have come. He got out the roll of thorn and stared at it for almost an hour before deciding which little packet of powder to use.

He hated what was in his mind. He had to find some way of enduring what he knew was to come. If thorn helped, then he'd use it.

Elsewhens, Mieka called them: visions while he slept and sometimes when he was wide awake of futures that might come to pass. Cade had neglected far too long the orderly categorizing of what he'd foreseen. The memories of things that hadn't happened yet were crowding his head, and he knew he had to discipline them or run mad.

The Elsewhens about Tobalt Fluter in the Downstreet, talking to some reporter about Touchstone — those didn't count now, not since the tavern had burned. He didn't have to worry about them anymore. He didn't have to think about hearing Tobalt say, "His mind's cold, but his heart's colder" or "Touchstone is still together after twenty-five years." Whatever futures Tobalt had referred to, they would be different. Cade could rid himself of the despair of the first — and the determination not to let it happen. He had to let go of the joy of the second — and the fear that now it would never come true. The futures would be different, and those dreams didn't count.

But as he went through each in his mind, reviewing them before locking them away, he noticed something strange: the lutenist in the second vision. With a soundless bark of laughter he suddenly recognized Alaen Blackpath — twenty-five years older, his reddish curls turning silver —

— just as he'd seen Mieka's black hair silvered in a single tantalizing flash, lines framing his mouth and crossing his forehead; older, yes, but still bright-eyed and laughing and beautiful.

He wanted so much to hold on to that one. It was still possible, wasn't it? Just because Tobalt could no longer sit in the Downstreet and say that Touchstone was still together after twenty-five years, it didn't mean that Cade would never see Mieka like that.

No. He had to be ruthless. He couldn't keep that one just because it made him smile, because it comforted him. He had to get rid of at least some of these Elsewhens crammed into his brain. Not that he'd ever done it before, except the once.

"Once you've learned it, the technique will in all probability save your sanity," said Master Emmot. "If only by convincing you that there is an order to things, an order that you may impose upon them. Organization is a desirable thing. When we can accomplish it, in whatever area of life, it is to be cherished and defended. To impose order on the chaos of living, on the potential chaos of your own mind — what else is language, and the division of the world into separate nations, and even the ordering of time itself into hours, weeks, months, years? Thus, too, it must be with your foreseeings. And just as words are used to identify time, places, things, you may use a series of words to classify each separate dream."

To think he had actually been intrigued: learning how to select a couple of words or a phrase that encompassed a particular foreseeing, how to think of his mind like a trunk with an ever-increasing number of locks, each giving access to a little compartment where a dream was kept.

"It's very like what men used to do when they wanted to memorize large quantities of information, such as the solar or lunar calendars, or an epic poem cycle. They...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Tor Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0765328771
• ISBN 13: 9780765328779
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Procter & Gamble Service GmbH, Braun; https://in.pg.com/contact-us/; ; Sulzbacher Str. 40-50; Schwalbach/Ts.; 65824; Deutschland