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Emperor And Clown


Emperor And Clown
Book 1 of A Man Of His Word

By Dave Duncan

ISBN: 0-345-36631-X




ONE
Naught availeth
1

Of all the cities of Pandemia, only Hub had no legend or history of its founding. Hub was a legend in its own right, and history was its creation.


Hub had always been. It was the capital of the Impire, the mother of superlatives, the City of the Gods. It sprawled along the shores of Cenmere like
a marble cancer.


Alone among all the dwelling places of mankind, only Hub had never known sack or rape or the ravages of war. Forever it had lurked in peace
behind the swords of its legions and the sorcery of the Four. Hub was graced by the spoils of a thousand campaigns and nourished on taxes
extracted from half the world. Slaves in forgotten millions had died to build it, priceless artworks had crumbled and-weathered away in its halls and
gardens to make space for more.


It was the best and worst parts of a hundred cities, melted into one. Its finest avenues were wide enough to march a century abreast; its darkest
alleys were slits where half a legion could have vanished without trace.


Hub was grandeur. Hub was squalor. Hub gathered all the beauty of the world and offered every vice. Its wealth and population were uncountable.
Year in and year out, by ship and wagon, food poured into Hub to feed its teeming mouths, yet the humble starved. Hub exported war and laws and
little else but bodies-especially those in summer, when the fevers raged. The rich imported their wine from distant lands, but their servants drank
from the same wells as the poor, and they infected their masters.


All roads led to Hub, the imps boasted, and in Hub the greatest ways led to the center, the five hills, the five palaces. The abodes of the wardens, the
Red, the White, the Gold, the Blue-beautiful but sinister, these were secret places, masked and buttressed by sorcery, and few went willingly to
those. In their midst, highest and greatest, shone the Opal Palace of the imperor, seat of government and all mundane power.


To the Opal Palace came glory and. tribute and petitions and ambassadors.


And to the Opal Palace came also, each in its own time, all the problems of the world.