Iorich

Начало книги

         p. cm.

     “A Tom Do­her­ty As­so­ciates book.”

     IS­BN 978-0-7653-1208-2

     1. Tal­tos, Vlad (Fic­ti­tious char­ac­ter)—Fic­tion. I. Ti­tle.

  PS3552.R84I57 2010

  813'.54—dc22

2009040414

First Edi­tion: Jan­uary 2010

Print­ed in the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica

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Iorich

For Meridel Bian­ca

Iorich

AC­KNOWL­EDG­MENTS

Thanks to Reesa Brown for pota­to pas­tries and oth­er things too nu­mer­ous to men­tion, and to Kit O’Con­nell for com­put­er and re­search help. Anne K. G. Mur­phy pro­vid­ed some emacs help for which I re­main grate­ful. Thanks to Brad Roberts and Thomas Bull for sig­nif­icant help in sur­viv­ing un­til this was done. Fi­nal­ly, my thanks to Alexx Kay for con­ti­nu­ity check­ing.

Iorich

Iorich

IORICH

Iorich

PRO­LOGUE

Even if things don’t work the way you’d planned, it’s good when you can take some­thing use­ful away from the ex­pe­ri­ence.

They jumped me just as I was en­ter­ing a lit­tle vil­lage called Whitemill at the south­ern edge of the Push­ta. They had con­cealed them­selves be­hind the long, bro­ken hedge that bor­dered the Whitemill Pike be­fore it turned in­to the sin­gle road of the ham­let. It was a good place for an at­tack. The near­est dwelling was per­haps a quar­ter of a mile away, and night was just falling.

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