The Long Hunt: Mageworlds #5 (32 page)

Read The Long Hunt: Mageworlds #5 Online

Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: The Long Hunt: Mageworlds #5
2.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
The Price of the Stars
Starpilot’s Grave
By Honor Betray’d
The Gathering Flame
 
“Shh,” Jens said to his cousin Faral. “Here’s the food now.” The cook was coming out of the kitchen with a loaded tray which held a steaming pot of ruddy liquid and a porcelain platter with a pile of small round things under a napkin.
 
Then, without warning, the cook’s posture shifted and she heaved the tray full of hot tea and pastries straight at their table. Faral threw himself sideways off his chair as the heavy crystal pot flew towards him. He thought he saw Jens ducking in the other direction, but he didn’t have a chance to look. Immer-leaf tea splashed in all directions as the pot flew past where his head had been, and parchant buns pattered down like hailstones.
 
The cook was still moving, bringing up one foot in a kick that knocked the table over completely. He recognized the move—it was a common one in the hand-to-hand he’d learned growing up back home—but where did a sweet little old gentlelady pastry-cook learn something like that?
 
Porcelain crashed and broke into splinters, silverware crashed and slid and clattered, and somewhere close behind him a man shouted in surprise and pain. Faral took a chance on glancing up from the floor, and saw a man in tea-soaked blue and white livery clawing at his scalded face. In the next moment, a heavy blaster fired close by. Then another blaster fired near at hand—once, twice, three times—the crimson energy bolts taking the scalded man in the chest and head as he fell.
 
“Get on your feet, boys,” said the cook, who had somehow acquired a blaster.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
 
 
THE LONG HUNT
Copyright © 1996 by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
 
 
Cover art by Romas
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Tor Books on the World Wide Web:
Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
 
 
eISBN 9781466802063
First eBook Edition : September 2011
 
 
First edition: August 1996

Other books

Love at Stake by Victoria Davies
Saints of Augustine by P. E. Ryan
Six Minutes To Freedom by Gilstrap, John, Muse, Kurt
Liar by Kristina Weaver
Trent by Kathi S. Barton
The Pleasure Room by Simmons, D.N.
An American Homo in Paris by Vanessa North