Dark Prince

Informationen zum Autor David Gemmell Klappentext The chaos spirit had chosen the child Alexander to be its human host. But Parmenion, most powerful warrior of ancient Greece, had won a small victory over the darkness that sought to rule through Alexander. The boy's soul had not been destroyed by evil, but instead had merged with it -- and now Parmenion aided Alexander in the battle between light and dark that constantly raged within him. But there was another world, where the creatures of Greece's legends still flourished. There, the chaos spirit already ruled, through a demon king. In this Greece, there was a prophecy that a child of great power, the legendary golden child, would come and restore the fading magic of the land to the creatures of myth. The demon king believed also that devouring the heart of this fabled child would give him immortality. He believed Alexander, with the power of the chaos spirit within him, to be that child. And so he called Alexander into his world . . . Only Parmenion, guided by the seeress Derae, his lost love from another life, could hope to save Alexander from the demon king. But who could save the young prince from the chaos spirit that threatened to conquer his soul?BOOK ONE, 352 B.C.   PELLA, MACEDONIA, SUMMER   The golden-haired child sat alone, as he usually did, and wondered whether his father would die that day. Some distance away, across the royal gardens, his nurse was talking to the two sentries who guarded him during the hours of daylight. The soldiers, grim-eyed warriors, did not look at him and shifted nervously if he approached.   Alexander was used to this reaction. Even at four he understood it.   He remembered with sadness the day three weeks earlier when his father, garbed for war, had walked along this same garden path, his cuirass gleaming in the sunlight. It was so beautiful that Alexander had reached out to touch the gleaming plates of iron edged with gold, the six golden lions on the breast. But as his hand came forward, Philip had moved swiftly back.   “Don’t touch me, boy!” he snapped.   “I would not hurt you, Father,” whispered the prince, staring up at the black-bearded face with its blind right eye like a huge opal beneath the savagely scarred brow.   “I came to say good-bye,” muttered Philip, “and to tell you to be good. Learn your lessons well.”   “Will you win?” the child asked.   “Win or die, boy,” answered the king, kneeling to face his son. He smiled and appeared to relax, though his expression remained stern. “There are those who think I cannot win. They remember Onomarchus defeated me when last we met. But …”—his voice dropped to a whisper,—“when the arrow tore into my eye at the siege of Methone, they said I would die. When the fever struck me down in Thrace, men swore my heart stopped beating. But I am Macedon, Alexander, and I do not die easily.”   “I don’t want you to die. I love you,” said the child.   For a moment only Philip’s face softened, his arm rising as if to reach out to his son. But the moment passed, and the king stood. “Be good,” he said. “I will … think of you.”   The sound of children’s laughter brought Alexander’s thoughts back to the present. Beyond the garden walls he could hear the palace children playing. Sighing, he wondered what game they were enjoying. Hunt the turtle perhaps, or Hecate’s touch. He watched them sometimes from the window of his room. One child would be chosen as Hecate, goddess of death, and would chase the others, seeking out their hiding places, to touch them and make them slaves. The game would go on until all the children had been found and enslaved by death.   Alexander shivered in the sunshine. No one would ask him to play such a game. He looked down at his small hands.   He had not meant the hound to die; he had loved the pup. And he had tried so hard, concentrating al...

Product details

• Authors: David Gemmell
• Publisher: Del Rey
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 27.02.2007
• EAN: 9780345494788
• ISBN: 978-0-345-49478-8
• No. of pages: 560
• Dimensions: 111 mm x 175 mm x 30 mm
• Series: Ballantine Books; Greek Series; Greek Series; Greek
• Subject: Fiction > Science fiction, fantasy