Raymond Feist - A Kingdom Besieged

RAYMOND E. FEIST

A KINGDOM BESIEGED

HarperCollins Publishers

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Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by Harper Voyager

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 2011

Copyright © Raymond E. Feist 2011

Raymond E. Feist asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007264766

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007290178

Version: 2014-09-19

This one’s for John and Tammy

COVER

TITLE PAGE RAYMOND E. FEIST A KINGDOM BESIEGED

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

EPILOGUE

KEEP READING

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

OTHER BOOKS BY

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

THE SKIES SHRIEKED.

Overhead, a storm of black energies shot out tendrils that reached forth and attached themselves to the first structure they encountered. The sound generated was almost as terrifying as the sight of everything they touched collapsing into rubble.

The inhabitants of the city fled in abject terror, ignoring the plight of others, even family or close friends. Above the onrushing tide of darkness loomed a figure, a thing of such massive size and monstrosity that it lay beyond comprehension.

The remaining King’s Guardians did what they could to oppose the Darkness: but there was little they could achieve against such madness. A female fled through the streets amidst the trampling throng. Fearful of what she might see, she chanced a quick glance behind her and clutched her child to her chest.

Other city residents huddled in doorways, given over to despair, waiting the inevitability of their own destruction, clinging weeping to one another, or staring towards the Centre, whence the Darkness was coming.

From the Time Before Time legends about the Final End had persisted, but these stories were seen as nothing more than metaphors, cautionary tales with which the Elders might teach children so they could contribute usefully to the People during this particular Endurance.

It was said that some Elders had repeated the Endurance so many times that they remembered bits and pieces of previous incarnations and had begun to piece together the plan of everything in the world. It was even whispered that some had ventured into the realms of madness – known as the ‘Other Places’ or ‘the Outside’ – or even to the edge of the Void, and returned, but few credited such reports as anything other than tall tales.

The People rejoiced in their Existence and their Endurance, and when their personal end came they knew it was no more than an interruption of the Eternal Journey.

But what they faced now was the Final End, the termination of the Eternal Journey, and no words existed to express the terror and anguish that assailed them.

The female pushed through a knot of the People clustered at an intersection in the centre of the city’s Eastern Canton. Some had come to seek the Sunrise Gate but having come here did not seem to know what to do next.

Nothing in the history of the People had prepared them for the Darkness.

The mother looked down at her child, who clutched her robe with delicate claws, her black eyes enormous in the still-tiny face. ‘My child,’ she whispered, and although the screams and cries from those surrounding them drowned out the sound, the child saw her mother’s lips move and understood. She smiled at her mother, showing rapidly growing fangs. Her baby skin had already sloughed off and her first set of scales were visible. If she could feed her, her mother thought, she would grow quickly and would be better able to flee.

‘But flee where?’

East.

Out of the gate to the Quartz Mountains and through the Valley of Flame, then on to the Kingdom’s boundary. It was rumoured that others had found safety in the Kingdom of Ma’har, to the south, where age-old enmities had been put aside in the face of the common terror.

The mother elbowed her way through the press, sensing more than seeing that a fight had erupted to the north. Ancient perceptions, buried under civilized training, rose to the surface to aid her and the child. Along with them rose ancient hungers, appetites for the flesh of something more substantial than the lesser animals the King had decreed would form their sustenance. Soon the People would become like the Mad Ones, struggling for survival by devouring one another. She sensed that several threats were converging, threats that would soon turn into feeding frenzies, and she knew that to be caught up in one of those would be her doom or the child’s, or both.

She chanced a brief look back and as she had suspected, claws were being wielded and fangs were dripping blood. A feeding frenzy would soon sweep through this area of the city and even with her child’s life in the balance, she could easily be caught up in it. Neither of them had fed in a very long time.

A few Guardians not detailed to delay the onslaught were quickly intervening, their flaming swords rising and falling, dispatching not only those involved in the nascent frenzy but also those unfortunate enough to be slow in departing.