Crown Of Stars 02 - Prince of Dogs by Kate Elliott

Author:Kate Elliott [Elliott, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Imaginary places, Fantasy fiction, General, Fiction, Fantasy, Imaginary wars and battles, Historical, Epic
ISBN: 9780886777708
Publisher: Daw Books
Published: 1998-01-26T05:00:00+00:00

The distraction gave her cover. She crept out the door but took a wrong turn and at once was confused. The Augensburg palace boasted two reception halls, a solarium, courtyards, barracks, guest rooms, chambers for the regnant and for the duke of Avaria, a safe room for the king's treasury, and a dozen cottages for envoys and servants. All this was built out of timber felled from the surrounding forest Only the bathing complex and the chapel were built of stone.

Liath had left her saddlebags in the barracks, but Sapientia held her on such a tight leash that she'd had no time to commit the palace layout to memory. She retraced her steps. In the hall, everyone was asleep—and Hugh was nowhere to be seen. Backing out of the room, she tried again to find the barracks by cutting through a side corridor, but it only let her out through a tiny fountain courtyard where an old gardener sat dozing in the cold air on the lip of a frost-encrusted fountain. No water ran.

The reception room opened before her. Frescoes gleamed on the walls, splashes of color in the dim chamber. Great wooden beams spanned the ceiling. A languor hung over the hall. Two servants, brooms in hand, snored on the steps that led up to the dais and the regnant's throne, itself carved cunningly with lions as the four legs, the back as the wings of an eagle, and the arms as the sinuous necks and heads of dragons. A woman had fallen asleep by the hearth fire while mending a seat cover; she had pricked herself with her needle, and a tiny drop of blood welled on her skin.

Suddenly uneasy, Liath climbed spiraling wooden stairs to a long corridor. Built above the north block of buildings, the corridor was reserved for the king, his family, and his messengers; it provided a way for him to proceed from one quarter of the complex to another without walking through the common rooms below or setting foot in the muddy alleyways. She hurried down the narrow corridor, not wider than the width of her arms outstretched. Now she remembered; the barracks lay in the northeast corner of the palace complex.

She became consumed with the fear that something was following her. She felt breathing on her neck, spun around. The far end of the corridor, down which she had just come, lay blanketed in darkness except where spines of light shone through cracks in the wooden shutters. A footstep scraped on the stair.

"Liath," he said, his voice muted by the distance and the narrow walls. "Why are you still awake?"

She bolted.

She ran down the length of the corridor, scrambled, half falling, down the other stairs, banging her knee, wrenching a finger as she gripped a smooth square railing and shoved herself forward. It was dark in the palace, all the shutters closed against winter's chill. Most of the nobles were out on the hunt. In every room she came to, every corridor she escaped down, those who had stayed behind slept.

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