Horseclans 08 – The Death of A Legend – Adams, Robert

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the ancient city of Karaleenop-olis. Once the winter capital of kings, it was now the seat of the Prince of Karaleenos, who ruled the former kingdom as the local satrap of the High Lord of the Confederation of Eastern Peoples. As the small cavalcade neared the outer fortification, the lead rider threw back the hood of his travel cloak, unbuck-led and then removed the helmet beneath it, baring his close-cropped,

blondish hair and fair-skinned but weather-bronzed face. The grizzled sentry turned to the bugler and the noncom who had come up to join them. “Best blow the ‘Let Pass,’ lad. That bareheaded one, he be the Undying Lord Tim Vawn, commander of the Army of the West I sojered with him fer near thirty years, and he don’t like waiting, as I r’call.” Within the massive fortress-palace, core of the citadel around which the city had been built, in a circular tower-chamber before a blazing fire of resinous pine logs, a man and two women sat at ease on low, padded couches. Atop a round table between them were small ewers of several wines, decanters of brandy and cordials, pipes and tobacco and a large bowl of

unshelled nuts. They had been there throughout the night, and the wan light of the new day showed layer upon layer of bluish tobacco smoke filling those parts of the chamber where the hearthfire’s draft could not pull it up the chimney. Although the two women were very different—the one a very fair, blue-eyed blonde, the other of a light-olive skin tone, with eyes as sloe-black as her long, thick hair—they appeared to be about of an age, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty years. But appearance was, in their highly unusual case, deceiving in the extreme; the blonde, the Undying Lady Giliahna Vawn, was