The Sun Wolf and Starhawk Omnibus by Barbara Hambly

Author:Barbara Hambly [Hambly, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

I’d have dropped the silly bint, spun-gold curls and all, Sun Wolf thought dourly, moving on. He tried to picture Starhawk fainting in his arms at the sight of a monster leaping at them, no matter how evil its countenance. She’d probably have grabbed a broom handle and tripped the thing while he, Sun Wolf, was still unsheathing his sword.

He picked up a small, black-bound book from a table and found it in a tongue unknown to him—even the letters like nothing of the alphabet of Gwenth.

“That’s in the shirdane.”

Turning sharply, he saw Jeryn leaning in the doorway of the smaller room to his left. He tried to remember when he’d seen the boy last—a glimpse of him, slouched in his chair at the High Table at breakfast that morning, when Sun Wolf had broken the news of the Bishop’s and Milkom’s deaths.

“The shirdar were never in the Empire, so they never read and wrote the way everyone else does. People talk about them as if they were barbarians, but they’re not, you know.” The boy hesitated in the doorway, a fat book tucked under one scrawny arm, as if unsure of his welcome.

Sun Wolf folded his book shut. “I know,” he said. He looked around him at the dark ranks of silent knowledge. “These seem to be from all corners of the world.”

Jeryn nodded, his dark eyes looking wide in his pinched, thin face above its formal little ruff. “I didn’t know you could read, Chief.”

“Well, people talk about me as if I was a barbarian, too.”

The boy grinned, a little embarrassed, and ducked his head.

Sun Wolf leaned back against a corner of the shelves, turning the volume over in his big, scarred hands. “How well do you know the books in this place?”

Jeryn shrugged. “Pretty well.” Finding his ease again, he came in and took a tall-legged, spindly stool from a writing desk to climb up and unerringly replace the tome he carried on a high shelf. “I can read most of them, but some of them are hard—the writing’s little, and they talk about things I don’t understand. But this one’s one of the good ones,” he added, holding up the volume before he slid it back into place. “It’s about rocks and jewels and smelting gold. Did you know that, instead of breaking up the silver rock with hammers, they could probably make a machine to do it, and run it off a mule-treadmill?”

“And to think they want to waste your brains turning you into a dumb warrior.” The Wolf sighed. “Is there any other place in the Fortress where somebody could hide books?”

The boy thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t know. In their rooms, maybe. How many books?”

Sun Wolf glanced at the shelf near him. The smallest volumes would have hidden under his hand, the bigger ones were longer than his forearm. He had taken a quick glance around Kaletha’s cell-like room—it had been bare as a nun’s. “I don’t know.”

“I bet we could find out.

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