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Home > Fantasy > Fantasy General & Other > Maledicte-eBook

Maledicte

Robins, Lane

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Maledicte

Chapter 1

NESTLING

·1·

Maledicte lived and Maledicte died

And only at his birth did anybody cry.

How many people did he kill?

One, two, three . . .

—Children’s skipping song

Baron Vornatti was an old man, hunched in his chair, staring at the wonders of his extensive library with a jaded and bleary eye. A sable pelt poured over his wasted legs. Absently, he ruffled the furs while he flipped pages of the book of pornographic woodcuts on his lap. A hedonist and a sensualist, he was much withered by time and pain; on a cold winter’s night, he fondled old memories as he once did flesh. But all his precious memories, of women’s softly rounded shoulders and mounded breasts, the sweet juncture at their thighs, of young men’s ripe buttocks, greedy mouths, and strong square hands, all these could not distract him as they used to do.

His back flared and spasmed. His glassy eyes flew to the old grandfather clock by the door. “Gilly,” he roared. “Time!”

Grinding his teeth, Vornatti sagged forward in the chair to ease the strain. The book fell to the floor, splayed on opened pages. He wanted a distraction, something beyond the torment of his bones and illusory remembrances of the flesh. Once, he had found engrossment in the bloody game of court intrigue, but even that had palled with his mastery of it.

In the distant recesses of the library, beyond the firelight, beyond the lamps, glass broke with a sound like cracking ice. Slow, crunching footsteps echoed.

A chill serpent of air wound around Vornatti’s ankles, hissing with blown snow.

“My lord?” Gilly said from the doorway. The large silver tray of drug and drink was dwarfed in his hands. His voice put a temporary stop to the footsteps.

“We have an intruder,” Vornatti said, straightening with a wince.

“Who’s there?” Gilly said, as the footsteps resumed their slow progress, now thudding against the bare wooden floor. He squinted against the glare of the built-up fire, set the tray down on the thick carpeting beside Vornatti.

The footsteps gained the carpet and disappeared in the muffling softness. Gilly lifted a book pole, holding it across his chest, the hook facing the shadows.

“Put it down, damn it, Gilly. Put it down, and give me my Elysia. Let the bastard wait.”

Gilly hesitated, but finally set the book pole back against Vornatti’s chair.

He bent, turning his back to the shadows, and cradled Vornatti’s withered arm against his own. He drew the Elysia into the glass syringe in a cloudy swirl that held something of its origin in it, the elixir left in Naga’s serpent-scaled wake. Letting it settle long enough so that the contents stopped their eddying, Gilly pushed the needle into the old man’s ropy veins. Vornatti closed his eyes as Gilly worked the plunger, hissed against the bite of it in his blood.

When Gilly looked up, they were no longer alone in the circle of firelight. The intruder shared it with them. It was only a boy, shivering in his thin shirt, blue at the lips. He had shadowed eyes, made darker by a cropped tumble of black curls that seemed to spread shadow out behind him. A thin scar sliced along the left side of his jaw, and he held his right hand behin

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Title of ebook: Maledicte
ISBN: 9780345500496
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Internet download file size: 3757 kb
Released online for download: 05-29-2007
Author of eBook: Robins, Lane