The Pretender's Crown
Prologue
Years and names are useless; they tie him to a calendar that means nothing to him or his kind. Still, if they must be put in place, he is–or will be–Robert, Lord Drake, and the date, by the reckoning of the people he’ll have the most contact with, is the midfifteenth century. But that name, those dates, lie ahead of him: for now, he stands on a starship far above the surface of the small blue planet whose future he’ll shape.
They call themselves Heseth, his people; the people of the sun, as the people of the world below him might someday call themselves Terran, for people of the earth. Every race the Heseth have encountered across the span of aeons and galaxies has been quite literal in their naming of themselves. Not even the Heseth themselves are immune to it; they’re called the people of the sun for the never- darkening sky at the heart of a galaxy where they began. Even now, light burns at the back of his mind, reminding him where they came from and what it is they seek.
That, of course, is simple: they seek to survive, ...
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