"Cecilia Dart-Thornton - The Bitterbynde 02 - The Lady of the Sorrows" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dart-Thornton Cecilia)

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 For my friend and muse,
Tanith Lee




Cecilia
Dart-Thornton




CONTENTS




Synopsis
1—White Down Rory: Mask and Mirror
2—Caermelor, Part I: Vogue and Vanity
3—Caermelor, Part II: Story and Sentence
4—The Tower: Hunt and Heart's Desire
5—Caermelor, Part III: Fire and Fleet
6—The Island: Green Hair, Dark Sea
7—The Cauldron: Thyme and Tide
8—Avlantia: Quest and Questions
9—The Langothe: The Longing for Leaving; the Leaving of Longing
10—Downfall
 Synopsis
This is the second book in THE BITTERBYNDE trilogy.
Book 1, The Ill-Made Mute, told of a mute, scarred, amnesiac who led a life of drudgery in Isse
Tower, a House of the Stormriders. Stormriders, otherwise known as Relayers, were messengers of high
status. They "rode sky" on winged steeds called eotaurs, and their many towers were strewn across the
empire of Erith, in the world called Aia.
Sildron, the most valuable of metals in this empire, had the property of repelling the ground, thus
providing any object with lift. This material was used to make the shoes of the Skyhorses and in the
building of Windships to sail the skies. Only andalum, another metal, could nullify the effect of sildron.
Erith was randomly visited by a strange phenomenon known as the shang, or the unstorm: a
shadowy, charged wind that brought a dim ringing of bells and a sudden springing of tiny points of
colored light. When this anomaly swept over the land, humans had to cover their heads with their
taltries—hoods lined with a mesh of a third metal, talium. Talium prevented human passions from spilling
out through the skull. At times of the unstorm, this was important, because the shang had the ability to
catch and replay human dramas. Its presence engendered tableaux, which were ghostly impressions of
past moments' intense passions, played over repeatedly until, over centuries, they faded.
The world outside the Tower was populated not only by mortals but also by immortal creatures
called eldritch wights—incarnations wielding the power of gramarye. Some were seelie, benevolent
toward mankind, while others were unseelie and dangerous.
The drudge escaped from Isse Tower and set out to seek a name, a past, and a cure for the facial
deformities. Befriended by an Ertish adventurer named Sianadh, who named her Imrhien, she learned that