The Revenge of Eli Monpress by Rachel Aaron

Author:Rachel Aaron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Adventure, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780356501840
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2012-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 1

Eleven Years Later

The vast desert that stretched across the Immortal Empire’s southwestern tip was still and quiet in the moonlight. At its edges, the coast was calm, the ocean lapping tiredly against the beaches. The great storm that had raged for weeks up and down the continent’s seaboard had died as suddenly as it began, the clouds dissipating in a handful of seconds to leave the night sky clear and blank as though there had never been a storm at all. Only the wreckage of the sea towns and the wall the Empress had raised to protect them remained, an improvised barrier standing awkwardly at the edge of the placid sea.

Suddenly and without warning, a light cut through the stillness. All across the dark desert, white lines appeared. They sliced high in the air, forming long needles of light that dangled several dozen feet above the sand. One after another they appeared until the sky was full of them, their white light filling the desert until it was bright as noon, and then the quiet shattered as the Immortal Empress’s invasion fleet fell through the white lines and crashed into the dunes below.

The palace ships slammed into the sand, their great keels cracking against solid ground. Without the water to keep them upright, the boats toppled immediately, rolling onto their sides like falling horses. The night was full of cracking wood as hulls splintered and masts snapped like twigs, and then, as the white lines faded and the ships settled into their deathbeds, the cries of men rose to drown out the groaning of the boats as the Empress’s army, the largest army ever raised, began to pick itself up.

At the head of the now grounded fleet, a large crowd was gathering around a boat that had lost its prow. Even in the chaos, word spread quickly, and the soldiers surged like ants from their toppled ships to gather around the palace ship with the broken hull at the very front of the fleet where, rumor had it, the Empress herself was buried under the wreckage. Up on the deck, the ship’s captain was already at work, shouting orders to a crew of fifty strong men as they hauled the top half of the broken mast off the deck where the Empress had fallen.

They found her lying in a crater of broken wood. Her golden armor was shattered and the cloth beneath was stained bright red with blood. When they saw her, the soldiers fell silent, struck dumb at the possibility that the Immortal Empress, the undying, unquestioned divine ruler of the world, could possibly be dead.

But then, with a groan, the Empress opened her eyes. The men flinched back. Some fell to their knees, others simply stood, shocked. The Empress paid them no mind. She just pushed herself up, throwing off the remains of her golden armor to free her arms.

“Empress?” her captain whispered.

The Empress didn’t answer. She didn’t even look at her men. Her attention was entirely focused on getting to her feet.

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