The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection
The complete WINDSINGERS SERIES by international bestselling author Megan Lindholm (who also writes as Robin Hobb).Harpies don't give up of blood debts. Neither do the men who serve them. A life must be given in return.Devastated by the slaughter of her family and haunted by memories of her own violent revenge, Ki rejects the comfort of her husband's gypsy people and wants only to wander in solitude as an outcast.Across mountains sheathed with ice, through the treacherous shadow of the impassable Sisters, Ki finds herself running for her life, pursued by frenzied Harpies sworn to vengeance; and by one stubborn, dark-haired man who seems intent on being part of her future.
Читать The Windsingers Series: The Complete 4-Book Collection онлайн беплатно
THE WINDSINGERS SERIES
The Complete 4-Book Collection
Harpyâs Flight
The Windsingers The Limbreth Gate Luck of the Wheels
Robin Hobb
These novels are entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in them are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Harpyâs Flight © Megan Lindholm 1983 The Windsingers © Megan Lindholm 1984 The Limbreth Gate © Megan Lindholm 1984 Luck of the Wheels © Megan Lindholm 1989
Ebook Bundle Edition © Megan Lindholm
Cover Layout Design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
Megan Lindholm asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBNs:
Harpy's Flight: 9780007112524 The Windsingers: 9780007112531 The Limbreth Gate: 9780007112548 Luck of the Wheels: 9780007112548
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007555215
Version: 2016â11â21
Contents
Harpyâs Flight
Book One of the Windsingers Series
Robin Hobb
The woman was an improbable speck on the vertical cliff face. Without skills or tools to aid her, she moved awkwardly up the exposed shale layering. Her close-fitting leather jerkin and coarsely woven trousers were impregnated with gray rock dust. Like an insect, she had taken on the color of the cliff she scaled. Sweat had plastered her brown hair to the top of her skull. Intricate knots and weavings confined the length of her hair, but the wind had picked loose a few strands of it, to spiderweb it across her eyes. She rubbed her narrow face against the gray rock. Her hands were occupied.
Some long-ago cataclysm had riven this mountain, sending its green face sliding down into a heap of stone and earth at its base. Far above the woman the mountain still wore a cap of earth and greenery. But the woman climbed over bare shale. This morning she had stood in the tangled brush and young trees that sprouted from that long-ago landslide. She had peered up the slick black rock to a certain ledge more than three-quarters of the way up the mountain. She had measured herself against the task of reaching that ledge and found that it was hopeless. Then she had begun her climb.
Now her left hand clung to a tiny ledge in the shale. She cautiously took some weight on it. The ledge cracked free, clean as if chiseled, and slid down the mountain face. Ki frantically scrabbled her hand into a second crack and clung, panting, to the cliff face. She knew she was close. The ledge, little more than a dent in the cliffâs face, called to her like bloody water to a shark. She could glance narrowly over one shoulder to see the valley floor. She had left in the predawn light. She had to be near her goal. She was pressed too tightly to the rock to turn her eyes up to see. The sun shone down on the top of her head. It had climbed the skies faster than Ki had scaled the cliff. Time was slipping away from her, crumbling under her like the rotten stone she climbed.
She had climbed recklessly at first, kicking free of ledges and scrabbling for handholds she might never find. Her hatred had burned hot in her. But as the rock face became steeper and more slippery, the holds more precarious, her anger had subsided to a dull, aching emptiness. Now she clung flat to the mountain, her face pressed against its sun-warmed stone. Only death was inside her now. She could remain still for a moment, but she could not rest. With her arms raised to cling, she dared not draw a full deep breath. Every clenched muscle in her body cried out to loosen. Ki ignored them.
She scraped her left foot up the smooth shale, her softly shod toes feeling for any indentation they might cling in. They found a tiny ledge. Ki placed her toes gently on it, cautiously added the weight of her leg. It held. She pressed more weight on it, sliding her body up. Her chest and belly scraped shale, the cramp in her fingers becoming well-nigh unendurable. Her whole weight hung now on her left fingers and the toes of her left leg. Her right hand was free to crawl up the smooth shale, seeking a place to cling.
