The Prince Deceiver (The Silk & Steel Saga Book 6) Read Online Free PDF

life, he’d corrupted a sorceress
instead of a queen and started the Great Dark Divide, earning many lifetimes.
And now this coin found its way to his hand. Perhaps the distant past came
calling. He’d lived too long to believe in omens. The Mordant stared at the
coin, amazed that it had survived so many centuries…but it would serve him,
just as surely as this new queen would be corrupted to Darkness, twisted by his
deceptions. Deceive, divide, corrupt and destroy. All the pieces were in motion
for the Great Dark Dance. Soon the power of the gods would be within his grasp.

4
    Liandra
     
    Scrolls littered
the queen's solar, the details of running a kingdom. Reports came from high and
from low, from shadowmen, stonemasons, tax collectors, courtiers, merchants,
military advisors, princes and even kings, a web of information flowing to the
Spider Queen. No detail was too small. Liandra waded through the
correspondence, considering the nuances. Plucking precious insights from the
mountain of dross, she took the measure of Erdhe. Like gazing into a crystal
ball, she saw what was and what could be. The answers both pleased and
frightened her. In the south, her kingdom rebounded from the Flame War.
Commerce flowed again, sluggish at first, but her careful prods and incentives
had begun to bear fruit. Her farmers returned to the land and merchants plied
the roads with trade goods. Beef, wine and grain came from Tubor, venison and
furs from Wyeth, exotic goods from the Delta. Her roadways thrummed with the
trundle of wagons bearing trade, the lifeblood of her kingdom. Her markets
bustled, her royal treasury was full, and her people were content. But, in the
north, the army of the Mordant threatened everything. A barbaric horde had
taken Raven Pass, routing the Octagon Knights. The queen shuddered at the grim
thought. She'd always thought the Octagon Knights invincible, a stalwart shield
against the north...but now that shield was broken. Forming a hasty alliance
with Navarre and Wyeth, she'd sent her only remaining son and her army
north...but she did not like the odds. The two armies had yet to clash, but no
matter how many times she read the dispatches and studied the maps, her
conclusions were always bleak. Darkness reached for Erdhe and she had yet to
find the foil.
    "Majesty,
it's nearly time." Lady Sarah hovered at the door to the queen's inner
chambers, bearing a reminder of a pleasant distraction.
    Weary from
reading, the queen set aside the mountain of scrolls. "Yes, we must look
our best for our royal guest."
    The Prince of Ur
had come to Pellanor. A royal emissary from a fabled land, he'd made a showy
entrance to her city. Her shadowmen delivered a full report. Surrounded by
guards in purple tabards, he brought a wagon piled high with treasure chests
and three women swathed in silks. The prince rode a magnificent white stallion
beribboned with gold bells in its mane. The bells struck the queen as an odd,
almost effeminate, detail. Or, perhaps, the bells were merely an expression of
cultural differences. Ur was such a distant land and such an extravagantly
wealthy trading partner, the empire garnered mystery like a bard garnered
songs. All the more reason Liandra was keen to meet the prince. As to the man
himself, her shadowmen described the prince as tall, young, and fair of face,
with shoulder-length blond hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. They said he had
neither the wide shoulders of an archer nor the swarthy arms of a swordsman, so
perhaps the prince was a scrollish man. That might explain the gift of a chess
set and the request for a private audience…yet why make such a showy entrance
to her city? All of Pellanor whispered of nothing else. Her people were
enthralled and the queen confessed herself intrigued. The prince posed an
interesting riddle, one Liandra intended to solve.
    She'd given him
a few days to get settled, and then sent a courtier with a royal invitation to
meet across the chessboard. With the