“The immured anchorite?”
“Yes. Jordan Ambrose fascinated by this man and speak to him. The lama let Ambrose into inner monastery, talk him into stealing Agozyen. But not to cleanse the world. Lama have other reason.”
“Which was?”
“It is difficult to explain. Before you arrive in spring, his holiness the Ralang Rinpoche die. He is eighteenth incarnation of the Rinpoche who founded this monastery long time ago. We cannot continue as a monastery without our incarnated teacher. And so, when a Rinpoche dies, we must go out into world to find his reincarnation. When we do, we bring child back to the monastery and raise it as next Rinpoche. This has always been our way. When the seventeenth Rinpoche died in 1919 Tibet was free country, and it was still possible to go out and find his reincarnation. But now the eighteenth Rinpoche is dead, and Tibet occupied. Free travel for Tibetan monks is very difficult and dangerous. Chinese arrest Tibetan monks on missions like this, beat them, sometimes kill them. The holy man in wall knows many deep things. He knew of prophecy that say:when we cannot go out and find new Rinpoche, then new Rinpochewill come to Gsalrig Chongg instead. We will know this Rinpoche, because he will fulfill the prophecy written in our founding holy text of the monastery. It say:
When the Agozyen walks the Western Sea,
And darkness upon darkness wheel,
The waters shall rise up in fury,
And batter the great palace of the deep,
And ye shall know the Rinpoche by his guardian,
Who shall return with the Green Tara,
Dancing across the waters of the Western Sea,
From the ruined palace of the deep.
“So to test prophecy, holy man release Agozyen into the world to see who will bring it back. Because man who bring it back is the guardian of the nineteenth Rinpoche.”
Pendergast felt an emotion rare to him: utter surprise.
“Yes, friend Pendergast, you have brought the nineteenth Rinpoche to us.” Tsering looked at Pendergast with a slightly amused expression. And then he focused a pointed gaze on Constance.
She rose. “The guardian of the . . . excuse me, are you saying
I’m
the reincarnation of the Rinpoche? But that’s absurd—I was born long before he died.”
The monk’s smile deepened. “I do not speak of you. I speak of the child you carry.”
Pendergast’s surprise redoubled. He turned toward Constance, who was looking at the monk, an unreadable expression on her face.
“Child?” Pendergast said. “But you went to the Feversham Clinic. I thought—I assumed . . .”
“Yes,” Constance replied. “I went to the clinic. But once there, I found I couldn’t go through with it. Not even . . . knowing it was
his
.”
It was Tsering who broke the silence that followed. “There is an ancient prayer. It say:
Lead me into all misfortune. Only by that path can I transform the negative into the positive.
”
Constance nodded, one hand drifting unconsciously across the slight swell of her waist. And then she smiled: a smile that seemed half secretive, and half shy.
A Word From The Authors
The Preston
-
Child Novels
We are very frequently asked in what order, if any, our books should be read.
The question is most applicable to the novels that feature Special Agent Pendergast. Although most of our novels are written to be stand-alone stories, very few have turned out to be set in discrete worlds. Quite the opposite: it seems the more novels we write together, the more “bleed-through” occurs between the characters and events that comprise them all. Characters from one book will appear in a later one, for example, or events in one novel could spill into a subsequent one. In short, we have slowly been building up a universe in which all the characters in our novels, and the experiences they have, take place and overlap.
Reading the novels in a particular order, however, is rarely necessary. We have worked hard to make almost all of our books into stories that can be enjoyed without reading any of the others, with a few exceptions.
Here, then, is our own breakdown of our books.
The Pendergast Novels
Relic
was our first novel, and the first to feature Agent Pendergast, and as such has no antecedents.
Reliquary
is the sequel to
Relic
.
The Cabinet of Curiosities
is our next Pendergast novel, and it stands completely on its own.
Still Life with Crows
is next. It is also a self-contained story (although people curious about Constance Greene will find a little more information here, as well as in
The Cabinet of Curiosities
).
Brimstone
is next, and it is the first novel in what we informally call the Diogenes trilogy. Although it is also self-contained, it does pick up some threads begun in
The Cabinet of Curiosities
.
Dance of Death
is the middle novel of the Diogenes trilogy. While it can be read as a stand-alone book, readers may wish to read
Brimstone
before
Dance of Death
.
The Book of the Dead
is the culminating novel in the Diogenes trilogy. For greatest enjoyment, the reader should read at least
Dance of Death
first.
The Wheel of Darkness
, which you presently hold in your hands, is a stand-alone novel that continues to follow Pendergast and takes place after the events in
The Book of the Dead
.
The Non-Pendergast Novels
We have also written a number of self-contained tales of adventure that do not feature Special Agent Pendergast. They are, by date of publication,Mount Dragon, Riptide, Thunderhead , andThe Ice Limit.
Thunderhead
introduces the archaeologist Nora Kelly, who appears in most of the later Pendergast novels.
The Ice Limit
introduces Eli Glinn, who appears in
Dance of Death
and
The Book of the Dead
.
In closing, we want to assure our readers that this note is not intended as some kind of onerous syllabus, but rather as an answer to the questionIn what order should I read your novels? We feel extraordinarily fortunate that there are people like you who enjoy reading our novels as much as we enjoy writing them.
With our best wishes,
Copyright © 2007 by Splendide Mendax, Inc. and Lincoln Child
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Warner Books
Hachette Book Group USA
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at
www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com
.
First eBook Edition: August 2007
ISBN: 0-446-19906-0
1. Pendergast, Aloysius (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Government investigators—Fiction.
3. Americans—Himalaya Mountains—Fiction. 4. Archaeological thefts—Fiction. 5. Monks—
Fiction. 6.
Britannia
(Ship)—Fiction. 7. Ocean liners—Fiction. I. Child, Lincoln. II. Title.
Contents
Acknowledgments
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80
Epilogue A Word From The Authors
About this Title
This eBook was created using ReaderWorks®Publisher 2.0, produced by OverDrive, Inc.
For more information about ReaderWorks, please visit us on the Web at
www.overdrive.com/readerworks
FB2 document info
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Document version: 1
Document creation date: 30.4.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.48, FB Editor v2.0 software
Document authors :
Douglas Preston;Lincoln Child
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The Wheel of Darkness p-8 Page 39