The Book That Broke the World

Informationen zum Autor Mark Lawrence Klappentext "The Library of Alexandria died in fire. Others fade away with less drama, ignored, forgotten, left to dust. To the athenaeum though, the great library of which all others are echoes, fires are merely a temporary inconvenience. The only true threat to the library's existence is a book--the one Livira wrote. Livira's book also brought her together with Evar, a young man who was raised in the library itself, and they discovered secrets that no one else had uncovered. But now they are separated--and something hunts them both"-- Leseprobe The greater tragedy of our world is not the victims of cruelty, but that so many of those victims would, given the opportunity, stand in the shoes of their oppressors and wield the same whip with equal enthusiasm. Excavating Crath, by Anthony Robinson Chapter 1 Celcha Being able to see the walls of your prison is a luxury that few are afforded. Make no mistake though: every one of us is trapped. This was the slaver's wisdom, and he was given to sharing it. The palisade around the Arthran dig site had seen better days and had probably been unimpressive on the day it was finished, but its presence, Myles Carstar maintained, allowed a concrete focus for the restless dissatisfaction that would otherwise turn inwards and chew away at a person, or even an animal, from the inside. Celcha wondered whether the slaver should in fact be called a slaver since it was other sabbers who went about the world hunting people down and bringing them from the wilds in chains. Whereas Myles Carstar simply set them to their tasks and enforced the law. Celcha's brother, who had an unhealthy interest in words, claimed that you could be a slaver simply by owning slaves-the business of riding them down and beating the fight out of them with iron-rod staves was not a necessary qualification. And in any case, Myles Carstar did more than handing out duties and assigning the official cruelties-he also made slaves of those new arrivals who rather than entering the dig site by the gates, wailing behind the trackers' horses, came the second way, also wailing. The second route onto Arthran Plateau, the one Celcha and her brother had taken, was by far the shorter journey. It still took the best part of a year, though, before the newest slave was dragged out from between their mother's thighs to join the workforce. Celcha's brother felt that the babies were born free and deprived of their liberty only when Myles Carstar set the first manacle around their bloody little wrist. Celcha thought that they were slaves from the moment they emerged, and perhaps before, but that it really didn't matter either way-they were as screwed as the rest of them. The first official cruelty involved a flexible steel cane with which between five and fifty lashes were delivered. The scale of horror inflicted escalated rapidly through the second to sixth cruelty, moving through peelings, amputations, and the removal of an eye. By the time she was ten Celcha had seen all but the seventh-death by slow fire-enacted in the main yard, and had endured the first herself, bearing five long scars wrapped around her shoulders, side, and hip. Celcha had been the youngest in memory to bear the steel lash. Casual beatings were common at any age, but until Myles Carstar assigned ten lashes to her brother, Hellet, she had been the youngest to receive an official cruelty. By the time of her brother's crime Celcha had worn her scars for five years and the sting of them as she moved still echoed with the vastly greater pain of their delivery. How Hellet, a little younger and far frailer than she had been, would withstand twice as many blows she'd had no idea. The truth turned out to be that he didn't withstand them. The agony broke him. The agony or perhaps the humiliation, for he'd always h...

Product details

• Authors: Mark Lawrence
• Publisher: Ace Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 09.04.2024
• EAN: 9780593437940
• ISBN: 978-0-593-43794-0
• No. of pages: 384
• Dimensions: 157 mm x 236 mm x 33 mm
• Series: The Library Trilogy
• Subject: Fiction > Science fiction, fantasy