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Overview
Luthien Bedwyr vowed to free his beleaguered land of Eriador from its demonic ruler, Wizard-King Greensparrow. Cloaked in a scarlet cape that renders him invisible and wielding a magical sword, Luthien is known to Eriador’s oppressed as the Crimson Shadow. With the rallying support of enslaved humans, defiant peasants, and Fairborn elves, he has forged a path for liberation—raid by insurgent raid.
Even with a mighty battle-ready band of stalwart comrades—including halfling thief Oliver deBurrows; fierce elf warrior Katerin O’Hale; and the ancient and mysterious mage, Brind’Amour—the rebels are fighting an uphill battle against the vile despot’s escalating and bloodthirsty army of cyclopean soldiers. Then, Greensparrow makes an unexpected bid for peace. But why would a wizard so cunning and so evil suddenly concede?
Though Eriador’s slaves see the compromise as cause for celebration, Luthien and Brind’Amour recognize it as a calculated trap. The Crimson Shadow knows in his heart that the war for freedom has only just begun.
Return to a rousing, magical quest in book two of a trilogy hailed by Terry Brooks as a “fine adventure filled with memorable characters and compelling action.”
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504057257 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 06/18/2019 |
| Series: | Crimson Shadow Trilogy , #2 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 260 |
| Sales rank: | 302,627 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Salvatore spends a good deal of time speaking to schools and library groups, encouraging people, particularly young people, to read. He enjoys a broad range of literary writers, from James Joyce to Dante and Chaucer, and counts among his favorite genre literary influences Ian Fleming, Arthur Conan Doyle, Fritz Leiber, and J. R. R. Tolkien. Salvatore makes his home in Massachusetts, with his wife, Diane, and their dogs. His gaming group still meets on Sunday nights.
He is currently working on more novels set in the Demonwars and Dark Elf series.
R. A. Salvatore’s first book, The Crystal Shard, was published in 1988; in 1990 his third novel, The Halfling’s Gem, hit the New York Times bestseller list. Since then he has written more than sixty novels, which have sold more than thirty million copies worldwide. In addition, Salvatore has numerous game credits, making him one of the most important figures in modern epic fantasy. Among his books are numerous titles in the saga of dark elf Drizzt Do’Urden, the Coven series, the Crimson Shadow trilogy, and many more.
Salvatore spends a good deal of time speaking to schools and library groups, encouraging people, particularly young people, to read. He enjoys a broad range of literary writers, from James Joyce to Dante and Chaucer, and counts among his favorite genre literary influences Ian Fleming, Arthur Conan Doyle, Fritz Leiber, and J. R. R. Tolkien. Salvatore makes his home in Massachusetts, with his wife, Diane, and their dogs. His gaming group still meets on Sunday nights.
He is currently working on more novels set in the Demonwars and Dark Elf series.
Hometown:
Leominster, MADate of Birth:
January 20, 1959Place of Birth:
Leominster, MAWebsite:
http://www.rasalvatore.com/Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
THE MINISTRY
The revolt had begun here, in the huge nave of the Ministry, and the dried blood of those killed in the first battle could still be seen, staining the wooden pews and the stone floor, splattered across the walls and the sculpted statues.
The cathedral was built along the wall separating the city's merchant class from the common folk, and thus held a strategic position indeed. It had changed hands several times in the weeks since the fighting began, but so determined were the revolutionaries that the cyclopians still had not held the place long enough to climb the tower and cut down Duke Morkney's body.
This time, though, the one-eyed brutes had come on in full force, and the Ministry's western doors had been breached, as well as the smaller entrance into the cathedral's northern transept. Cyclopians poured in by the score, only to be met by determined resistors, and fresh blood covered the dried blood staining the wooden pews and the stone floor.
In mere seconds, there were no obvious battle lines, just a swarming mob of bitter enemies, hacking at each other with wild abandon, killing and dying.
The fighting was heard in the lower section of the city, the streets belonging to the rebels. Siobhan, half-elven and half-human, and her two-score elvish companions — more than a third of all the elves in Montfort — were quick to answer the call. A secret entrance had been fashioned in the wall of the great cathedral, which it shared with lower Montfort, cut by cunning dwarfs in those rare times when there was a lull in the fighting. Now Siobhan and her companions rushed from the lower section of town, scrambling up preset ropes into the passageway.
They could hear the fighting in the nave as they crawled along the crude tunnel. The passage split, continuing along the city's dividing wall, then curving as it traced the shape of the cathedral's apse. The dwarfs had not had a hard time fashioning the passage, for the massive wall was no less then ten feet thick in any place, and many tunnels were already in place, used by those performing maintenance on the cathedral.
Soon the elves were traveling generally west. They came to an abrupt end in the tunnel at a ladder that led them up to the next level. Then they went south, west again, and finally north, completing the circuit of the southern transept. Finally Siobhan pushed a stone aside and crawled out onto the southern triforium, an open ledge fifty feet up from the floor that ran the length of the nave, from the western door all the way to the open area of the crossing transepts. The beautiful half-elf gave a resigned sigh as she brushed the long wheat-colored tresses from her face and considered the awful scene below.
"Pick your shots with care," Siobhan instructed her elven companions as they crowded out behind her and filtered along the length of the ledge. The command hardly seemed necessary as they viewed the jumble of struggling bodies below. Not many targets presented themselves, but few archers in all of Avonsea could match the skill of the elves. The great longbows sang out, arrows slicing through the air unerringly to take down cyclopians.
A quarter of the elvish force, with Siobhan in the lead, ran along the triforium all the way to its western end. Here a small tunnel, still high above the floor, ran across the western narthex and crossed the nave, opening onto the northern triforium. The elves rushed among the shadows, around the many statues decorating that ledge, to its opposite end, the base of the northern transept. More cyclopians poured in through the door there, and there were few defenders to stem their flow in this area. The ten elves bent their bows and fired off arrow after arrow, devastating the invading cyclopians, filling the northern transept with bodies.
Below in the nave, the tide seemed to turn, with the cyclopians, their reinforcements dwindling, unable to keep up the momentum of their initial attack.
But then there came an explosion as a battering ram shattered the doors at the end of the southern transept, destroying the barricades that had been erected there. A new wave of cyclopians charged in, and neither the archers on the triforium nor the men fighting in the nave could slow them.
"It is as if all the one-eyes of Montfort have come upon us!" the elf standing behind Siobhan cried out.
Siobhan nodded, not disagreeing with the assessment. Apparently Viscount Aubrey, the man rumors named as the new leader of the king's forces in Montfort, had decided that the Ministry had been in enemy hands long enough. Aubrey was a buffoon, so it was said, one of the far too many fumbling viscounts and barons in Eriador who claimed royal blood, lackeys all to the unlawful Avon king. A buffoon by all accounts, but nevertheless Aubrey had taken control of the Montfort guards, and now the viscount was throwing all of his considerable weight at the rebel force in the cathedral.
"Luthien predicted this," Siobhan lamented, speaking of her lover, whom the fates had chosen as the Crimson Shadow. Indeed, only a week before, Luthien had told Siobhan that they would not be able to hold the Ministry until spring.
"We cannot stop them," said the elf behind Siobhan.
Siobhan's first instinct was to yell out at the elf, to berate him for his pessimism. But again Siobhan could not disagree. Viscount Aubrey wanted the Ministry back, and so he would have it. No longer was their job the defense of the great building. Now all they could hope to do was get as many allies out alive as possible.
And, in the process, inflict as much pain as possible on the cyclopians.
Siobhan bent her bow and let fly an arrow that thudded into the chest of a one-eyed brute an instant before it thrust its huge sword into a man it had knocked to the floor. The cyclopian stood perfectly still, its one large eye staring down at the quivering shaft, as though the brute did not understand what had happened to it. Its opponent scrambled back to his feet and brought his club in a roundhouse swing that erased the dying brute's face and hastened its descent to the floor.
The man spun and looked to the triforium and Siobhan, his fist raised in victory and in thanks. Two running strides put him in the middle of yet another fight.
The cyclopians advanced in a line along the southern end of the swarming mob, linking up with allies and beating back resisters.
"Back to the southern triforium," Siobhan ordered her companions. The elves stared at her; if they rejoined their kin across the way, they would be surrendering a valuable vantage point.
"Back!" Siobhan ordered, for she understood the larger picture. The nave would soon be lost, and then the cyclopians would turn their eyes upward to the ledges. The only escape for Siobhan's group was the same route that had brought them in: the secret passage that linked the far eastern wall with the southern triforium. The half-elf knew that she and her companions had a long way to go, and if that small tunnel above the western doors was cut off by the cyclopians, the northern ledge, and Siobhan's group, would be completely isolated.
"Run on!" Siobhan called, and her companions, though some still did not understand the command, did not pause to question her.
Siobhan waited at the base of the northern triforium looking back across the nave as her companions rushed by. She remained confident that her elven band, the Cutters by name, would escape, but feared that not a single man who was now defending the nave would get out of the Ministry alive.
All the elves passed her by and were moving along the tunnel. Siobhan turned to follow, but then looked back, and a wave of hope washed over her.
As she watched, a small, perfectly squared portion of the back end of the cathedral, directly below the secret tunnel that her group had used to enter the Ministry, fell in. Siobhan expected a resounding crash, and was surprised to see that the wall did not slam to the floor but was supported by chains, like some drawbridge. A man rushed in, scrambling over the angled platform, his crimson cape flowing behind him. He leaped to the floor, and two short strides brought him to the altar, in the center of the apse. Up he leaped, holding high his magnificent sword. Siobhan smiled, realizing that those cunning dwarfs had been at work on more than the secret entrance. They had fashioned the drawbridge, as well, probably at Luthien's bidding, for the wise young man had indeed foreseen this dangerous day.
The defenders of the Ministry fought on — but the cyclopians looked back and were afraid.
The Crimson Shadow had come.
"Dear Luthien," Siobhan whispered, and she smiled even wider as Luthien's companion, the foppish halfling Oliver deBurrows, rushed to catch up to the man. Oliver held his huge hat in one hand and his rapier in the other, his purple velvet cape flowed out behind him. He got to the altar and leaped as high as he could, fingers just catching the lip. Kicking and scrambling, the three-foot-tall Oliver tried desperately to clamber up beside Luthien, but he would not have made it except that Luthien's next companion rushed up behind, grabbed the halfling by the seat of his pants, and heaved him up.
Siobhan's smile faded as she regarded the newcomer, though surely the half-elf was glad to see Luthien in such strong company. This one was a woman, a warrior from Luthien's home island of Bedwydrin, tall and strong and undeniably beautiful, with unkempt red hair and eyes that shone green as intensely as Siobhan's own.
"Well met, Katerin O'Hale," the half-elf whispered, putting aside the moment of jealousy and reminding herself that the appearance of these three, and of the three-score warriors that poured over the drawbridge behind them, might well be the salvation of those trapped defenders in the nave.
Crossing the tunnel within the west wall was no easy task for the elves, for Siobhan's fears that the cyclopians would cut them off were on the mark, and the one-eyed brutes were waiting for them in the crawl spaces above the western narthex. The defense had not yet been organized, though, and the elves, with help from their kin from the southern tunnel, fought their way through to the southern triforium with only a few minor injuries
Coming out onto that ledge, Siobhan saw that the fighting below had shifted somewhat, with the defenders gradually rolling toward the east, toward the escape route that Luthien and his force had opened.
"Fight to the last arrow," Siobhan told her companions. "And prepare ropes that we might go down to the southern wing and join with our allies."
The other elves nodded, their faces grim, but truly they could not have expected such an order. The Cutters were quick-hitters: in, usually with their bows only, and out before the enemy could retaliate. This was the Ministry, though, and it was about to be lost, along with many lives. Their usual tactics of hit and retreat be damned, Siobhan explained hurriedly, for this battle was simply too important.
Luthien was in the fighting now, his great sword Blind- Striker cutting down cyclopians as he spearheaded a wedge of resistance. Oliver and Katerin flanked him, the halfling — tremendous hat back upon his long and curly brown locks — fighting with rapier and main gauche, and the woman deftly wielding a light spear. Oliver and Katerin were formidable fighters, as were the men holding the lines behind them, a wedge of fury working out from the semicircular apse, felling enemies and enveloping allies in their protective shield.
For the cyclopians, though, the focus of the march was Luthien, the Crimson Shadow, slayer of Morkney. The one-eyes knew that cape and they had come, too, to know the remarkable sword, its great golden and jewel-encrusted hilt sculpted to resemble a dragon rampant, outspread wings serving as the secure crosspiece. Luthien was the dangerous one: he was the one the Eriadorans rallied behind. If the cyclopians could kill the Crimson Shadow, the revolt in Montfort might quickly be put down. Many cyclopians fled the determined stalk of the mighty young Bedwyr, but those brave enough put themselves in Luthien's way, eager to win the favor of Viscount Aubrey, who would likely be appointed the next duke of the city.
"You should fight with main gauche," Oliver remarked, seeing Luthien engaged suddenly with two brutes. To accentuate his point, the halfling angled his large-bladed dagger in the path of a thrusting spear, catching the head of the weapon with the dagger's upturned hilt just above the protective basket. A flick of Oliver's deceptively delicate wrist snapped the head off the cyclopian's spear, and the halfling quick-stepped alongside the broken shaft and poked the tip of his rapier into the brute's chest.
"Because your left hand should be used for more than balance," the halfling finished, stepping back into a heroic pose, rapier tip to the floor, dagger hand on hip. He held the stance for just a moment as yet another cyclopian came charging in from the side.
Luthien smiled despite the press, and the fact that he was fighting two against one. He felt a need to counter Oliver's reasoning, to one-up his diminutive friend.
"But if I fought with two weapons," he began, and thrust with Blind-Striker, then brought it back and launched a wide-arcing sweep to force his opponents away, "then how would I ever do this?" He grabbed up his sword in both hands, spinning the heavy blade high over his head as he rushed forward. Blind-Striker came angling down and across, the sheer weight of the two-handed blow knocking aside both cyclopian spears, severing the tip from one.
Around went the blade, up over Luthien's head and back around and down as the young man advanced yet again, and again the cyclopian spears were turned aside and knocked out wide.
Blind-Striker continued its furious flow, following the same course, but this time the young man reversed the cut, coming back around from the left. The tip drew a line of bright blood from the closest cyclopian's shoulder down across its chest. The second brute turned to face the coming blade, spear held firmly in front of its torso.
Blind-Striker went right through that spear, right through the brute's armor, to sink deeply into its chest. The cyclopian staggered backward and would have fallen, except that Luthien held the sword firmly, and the blade held the brute in place.
The other cyclopian, wiping away its own blood, fell back and scrambled away, suddenly having no desire to stand against this young warrior.
Luthien yanked his sword free and the cyclopian fell to the floor. He had a moment before the next cyclopian adversary came at him, and he couldn't resist glancing back to see if he had taken the smile from Oliver's face.
He hadn't. Oliver's rapier was spinning circles around the tip of a cyclopian sword, the movement apparently confusing the dim-witted brute.
"Finesse!" the halfling snorted, his strong Gascony accent turning it into a three-syllable word. "If you fought with two weapons, you would have killed them both. Now I might have to chase the one you lost and kill the most ugly thing myself!"
Luthien sighed helplessly and turned back just in time to lift Blind-Striker in a quick parry, intercepting a wicked cut. Before Luthien could counter, he saw a movement angle in under his free hand at his left. The cyclopian jerked suddenly and groaned, Katerin O'Hale's spear deep in its belly.
"If you fought more and talked less, we'd all be out of here," the woman scolded. She tugged her spear free and swung about to meet the newest challenge coming in at her side.
Luthien recognized her bluster for what it was. He had lived and trained beside Katerin for many years, and she could fight with the best and play with them, too. She had taken an immediate liking to Oliver and his swaggering bravado, an affection that was certainly mutual. And now, despite the awful battle, despite the fact that the Ministry was about to fall back into Aubrey's dirty hands, Katerin, like Oliver, enjoyed the play.
At that moment, Luthien Bedwyr understood that he could not be surrounded by better friends.
A cyclopian roared and charged in at him, and he went into a crouch to meet the rush. The brute jerked weirdly, though, and then crashed onto its face, and Luthien saw an arrow buried deep in its skull. He followed the line of that shot, up and to the left, fifty feet above the floor, to the triforium and to Siobhan, who was eyeing him sternly — and he got the distinct feeling that she was not pleased to see him at play beside Katerin O'Hale.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Luthien's Gamble"
by .
Copyright © 1996 R. A. Salvatore.
Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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