Ship of Destiny

by Hobb, Robin

• ISBN13: 9780553103236
• ISBN10: 0553103237
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-09-01
• Publisher: Spectra

Summary

Robin Hobb has established herself as one of the masters of fantasy fiction And nowhere is that more apparent than in this powerful, poignant, swashbuckling epic of treachery, heroism, and humanity. The rousing conclusion to the Liveship Traders trilogy, Ship of Destiny is the spellbinding story of a once-thriving city now reduced to shambles by raging war and rampant greed; of a glorious and mythic species on the brutal edge of extinction; and of the Vestrits, the clan, whose destiny is intertwined with both. Bingtown is a city under fire from forces within and without. While accusations of conspiracy fly between the Old Bingtown Traders and the New, invaders attack the harbor, trying to take the city for their own. Matriarch Ronica Vestrit bears witness to the destruction, but she is not the type of woman to simply surrender. Even as she finds herself branded a traitor, she searches for a way to bring all the city's inhabitants together to stand against the Chalcedean threat. But there is someone who cannot allow Ronica to succeed, no matter what the cost. Far out on the stormy seas, Althea Vestrit, ignorant of all that has befallen Bingtown, continues her mission to track down and recover her liveship Vivacia from the ruthless pirate Kennit. Serving as the Paragon's second mate under Captain Brashen, she faces peril beyond imagining... not just from her growing love for Brashen or their reckless scheme to regain the Vivacia, but from the unpredictable vessel Paragon himself, as he wrestles with his madness and plots his own deadly brand of revenge. Yet Althea's bold scheme may be in vain. For her beloved Vivacia will face the most terrible confrontation of all as the secret of the liveships is finally revealed. This is a truth so horrifying, so shattering, it may destroy the Vivacia and all who love her, including the boy-priest Wintrow Vestrit, whose life already hangs in the balance... A triumph of imagination and masterful storytelling, Ship of Destiny is an enthralling blend of intrigue and magic, drama and high fantasy. It is the fitting conclusion to a tale that is bound to become a classic--by a beguiling author who is already deservedly revered. From the Hardcover edition.

Author Biography

Robin Hobb is the author of the Farseer trilogy, consisting of <b>Assasin's Apprentice</b>, <b>Royal Assassin</b>, and <b>Assassin's Quest</b>.  She lives in Washington State.

Excerpts

She wondered what it would have been like to be perfect.

On the day that she had hatched, she had been captured before she could wriggle over the sand to the cool and salty embrace of the sea.  She Who Remembers was doomed to recall every detail of that day with clarity. It was her entire function and the reason for her existence.  She was a vessel for memories.  Not just her own life, from the moment she began forming the egg, but the linked lives of those who had gone before her were nested inside her.  From egg to serpent, to cocoon to dragon to egg, all memory of her line was hers.  Not every serpent was so gifted, or so burdened.  Only a relative few were imprinted with the full record of their species, but only a few were needed.

She had begun perfect.  Her tiny, smooth body, lithe and scaled, had been flawless.  She had cut her way out of the leathery shell with the egg tooth atop her snout.  She was a late hatcher.  The others of her clutch had already broken free of their shells and the heaped dry sand.  They had left their wallowing trails for her to follow.  The sea had beckoned her insistently.  Every lap of every wave beguiled her.  She had begun her journey, slithering across the dry sand under the beating sun.  She had smelled the wet tang of the ocean.  The moving light on its dazzling surface had lured her.

She had never finished her journey.

The Abominations had found her.  They had surrounded her, interposing their heavy bodies between her and the beckoning ocean.  Plucked wriggling form the sand, she had been imprisoned in a tide-fed pool inside a cave in the cliffs.  There they had kept her, feeding her only dead food and never allowing her to swim free.  She had never migrated south with the others to the warm seas where food was plentiful. She had never achieved the bulk and strength that free life would have granted her.  Nevertheless, she grew, until the pool in the cave was little more than a cramped puddle to her, a space barely sufficient to keep her skin and gills wet.  Her lungs were pinched always inside her folded coils.  The water that protected her was constantly befouled with her poisons and wastes.  The Abominations had kept her prisoner.

How long had they confined her there?  She could not measure it, but she felt certain that she had been captive for several ordinary lifetimes of her kind.  Time and again, she had felt the call of the season of migration.  A restless energy would come over her, followed by a terrible desire to seek out her own kind.  The poison glands in her throat would swell and ache with fullness.  There was no rest for her at such times, for the memories still permeated her and clamored to be released.  She had shifted restlessly in the torment of her small pool and vowed endless revenge against the Abominations who held her so.  At such times her hatred of them was most savage.  When her overflowing glands flavored the water with her ancestral memories, when the water became so toxic with the past that her gasping gills poisoned her with history, then the Abominations came.  They came to her prison, to draw water from the pool and inebriate themselves with it.  Drunken, they prophesied to one another, ranting and raving in the light of the full moon.  They stole the memories of her kind, and used them to extrapolate the future.

The the two-legs, Wintrow Vestrit had freed her.  He had come to the island of the Abominations, to gather for them the treasures of the sea left on the shore.  In exchange, he had expected them to prophecy the future for him.  Even now, that thought made her man grow turgid with poison.  The Abominations prophesied only what they sensed of the future from stealing her pasts!  They had no true gifts of Seeing.  If they had, she reflected, they would have known that the two-legs brought their doom.  They would have stopped Winthrow Vestrit.  Instead, he had discovered her and freed her.  Although she had touched skins with him, although their memories had mingled through her toxins, she did not understand what had motivated the two-legs to free her.  He was such a short-lived creature that most of his memories could not even leave an imprint on her.  She had sensed his worry and pain.  She had known that he risked his brief existence to free her.  The courage of such a brief spasm of life had moved her.  She had slain the Abominations when they would have recaptured both of them.  Then, when the two-legs would have died in the mothering sea, she had aided him to return to his ship.

She Who Remembers opened wide her gills once more.  She tasted a mystery in the waves.  She had restored the two-legs to his ship, but the ship both frightened and attracted her.  The silvery gray hull of the vessel flavored the water ahead of her.  She followed it, drinking in the elusive tang of memories.

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Excerpted from The Ship of Destiny by Robin Hobb
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