Also by Isabel Cooper
Dark Powers
No Proper Lady
Lessons After Dark
Highland Dragons
Legend of the Highland Dragon
The Highland Dragon’s Lady
Night of the Highland Dragon
Dawn of the Highland Dragon
Highland Dragon Warrior
Highland Dragon Rebel
Highland Dragon Master
Stormbringer
The Stormbringer
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2021 by Isabel Cooper
Cover and internal design © 2021 by Sourcebooks
Cover design ©2020 by Dawn Adams/Sourcebooks
Cover art by Kris Keller/Lott Reps
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
sourcebooks.com
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part II
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Part III
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Part IV
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Excerpt from The Nightborn
Chapter 1
About the Author
Back Cover
To my parents, Dan and Kathy Kunkle,
for support while I wrote large parts of this during a lockdown with them.
Part I
Call: What is the number of the gods?
Response: The gods are five in number. Four are friends to the world. One betrayed it.
Call: What is their nature?
Response: Poram rules the wild, the sea, the world in the raw. Sitha is the weaver, the Golden Lady, mistress of crafts and civilization. Tinival, their son, the Silver Wind, governs justice and wisdom. Letar is the Dark Lady, the Threadcutter, the patron of death and healing, love and vengeance.
Call: What is the nature of the fifth?
Response: Treachery. Subjugation. Greed. The dagger in the back, the poison in the cup, the fetters locked unjustly. All of these are Gizath’s domain.
—The Catechism of the Temple of Sitha, Part I
Know, Your Grace, that the downfall of the world as it was once known began in the shining city of Heliodar. There Lord Thyran, fancying himself betrayed by his common-born wife, came to see the world and all within it as corrupt. There, in the course of a single night of horror, he spilled the blood of his bride, her paramour, and his servants, a dedication to Gizath unlike any the Traitor God had ever known, and from there he fled into the north. His power summoned some of his minions from the places outside the world. Others swarmed to his banner. Many were changed. The lands of the south paid little heed until the day he and his armies came forth…
—From the Letters of Farathen, scribe to the young Duchess of Bethal
Chapter 1
Blood soaked the stones of Klaishil.
Some—too much—was as red as Amris’s own. It didn’t quite blend with the darker, viscous ooze that spilled more in blobs than in rivulets and ate into whatever was beneath it. Both pooled around crumbled stones, abandoned possessions, and bodies of all sorts.
Those still moving, living and otherwise, fought above the corpses of their comrades without looking down. Amris knew his soldiers couldn’t chance the distraction. He suspected—or knew, in the cases of the undead and the beasts—that Thyran’s troops simply didn’t care.
Trapped with his back to the burnt shell of a house, he ducked a massive blow from a scaled fist. Jazmin, his last living lieutenant as far as Amris knew, seized the moment, sprang onto an abandoned cart, and fired a crossbow bolt into the single eye of the creature menacing him. Her aim was keen, despite days without rest: the monster grunted and fell backwards.
Amris followed it forward a few steps, spun, and cut through the dead arms reaching for Jazmin.
She smiled her thanks from a soot-smeared face and leapt down to his side.
“Have we any others?” he asked.
“Blaise, Vada, and the Pine are coming up from the southwest. Or were. Edan and ten of us are getting the last of the priests out of the temples. Nadusha and her squadron are dead. Building collapse.”
Amris made the sign of the Four Gods with his free hand, wearily, wishing them peace. Compared to the last few years, they’d have it anyhow. “Damos’s squadron? Lady Winthair?”
“I’ve seen nothing of them today.”
The previous sign of the Four would have to cover them too. Amris needed both hands on his sword and all his focus at the other end, for coming down the street was a squad of twistedmen: Thyran’s shock troops, redly and wetly skinless, with curving black talons on their huge hands and faces that were mostly sharp-toothed mouths.
Amris had killed a score or so of them since the sun rose, and it was near noon now, but there were always more.
Creatures with wings of tattered flesh circled overhead, riding icy winds below black clouds. One raised its eyeless head and screamed, and a building near it shivered. Another dove, exhaling a purple cloud, and vanished behind a row of still-standing buildings. Amris c
ouldn’t see its prey, which was just as well: he and Jazmin were too far away to aid in time.
A month ago, he’d been in front of a fire with Gerant in his arms.
They’d had no illusions of peace then. Thyran had been burning a path across the world for years. They’d both heard what had happened to Vylik, the first city he’d attacked, whose baron had tried to surrender. Some said that baron and a few score of his citizens still lived, after a fashion. Amris had already beaten Thyran to a standstill twice, forced him to retreat once, and knew it was only a matter of time until the next attack. Their last, desperate plans, based on months of magic on the part of Gerant and the High Priestess of Sitha, had even then been going forward.
But for a few weeks, they’d been safe, warm, together, as they’d been before either of them had heard the name Thyran of Heliodar.
Now as Amris felt claws scrape against his armor, he stabbed, cut, and thrust mechanically, and didn’t even feel the creature’s ribs breaking beneath his blade. He registered them, which was a different, much more abstract matter. The world was action and response, mission and path, and much else to be ignored, like screams beneath the sky and how much colder it was than it should have been in June.
Another storm was on its way. The last had been a nine-day blizzard. If patterns held, this would double it in strength and duration. After that? Even Amris, not half the scholar Gerant was, could see the arc rising and cringed, fearing it as he’d feared few things in battle. If Thyran couldn’t “purify” the world with his armies—or if he simply felt the process was taking too long—he’d evidently try other ways.
The final twistedman fell, twitching. Amris and Jazmin moved forward into the clear alley beyond them, and on toward where it opened onto what had once been the Plaza of Winds. The crumbling walls blocked much of Amris’s view of the plaza, but he could still see the huge, pillar-flanked staircases that led to the duke’s palace.
His Grace, well into his old age, had gotten out, along with his bride and his eldest son’s family. Amris had made sure of that, perhaps the only triumph he’d had in the last three days. Lord Bauspar himself had stayed behind to defend the city he would have one day inherited, and had been devoured the evening before by one of the winged creatures. His sister, as far as Amris knew, lived and fought yet.
There, running toward the steps of the palace, Amris saw the remnants of the army he led, the soldiers that hadn’t already retreated to guard Klaishil’s fleeing citizens or stayed to hold Thyran off a little longer and given their lives in the process. The spiked helmet of the Pine towered above the shorter forms of stocky Vada with their spear and shield and Blaise, his dark braids loose since his helm had broken the previous dawn. Amris noted their presence, but his heart didn’t lift the way it would have done at such a sight when the war had begun.
Too much weighed it down now.
Sword in his hands, Gerant’s rose—an enchanted weapon no one would think to suspect—secure in his belt, he dashed toward the meeting place. To one side, he saw Jazmin, crossbow up: she could fire while running, at need, and with wicked aim.
Each step leading to Klaishil’s palace was huge, ceremonially so. Amris saw the bodies lying strewn across them, but used as he was to passing corpses in the streets, he didn’t focus on any until one raised a dark, mustached face and he saw what had once been Damos.
Blaise’s profanity filled the air, even above the sounds of battle. Amris couldn’t have gotten sound from his throat even if he’d taken the time to curse. He simply bolted for the step where the other man lay, more of a puddle than a body and yet somehow still living.
“The man himself,” Damos rasped, as Amris came within earshot. What was left of his mouth strained over the next words. Amris would have given his life to not need to hear what came next, to be able to tell his sergeant to rest easy and lie quiet. He held still, listening. “Came. Blasted us. Five minutes gone, or so. Went up,” Damos went on, gesturing to the palace with the boneless remnant of a hand. “Lady’s there. Was firing on them. A couple guards with her. We slew his. I tried for him. I thought I’d struck, but…I’m sorry, General.”
“No,” said Amris, his voice sounding no better than Damos’s, even though he had lungs. “You did well. Go with the gods.”
He brought his sword down on the man’s neck. The light in Damos’s eyes faded, and he slumped back against the bloody marble, to Amris’s relief. Sometimes even beheading didn’t end the suffering of Thyran’s most immediate victims.
“General?”
It was Jazmin, red-eyed, broken-voiced, but tearless—tears took water, and they’d all lacked that for a long time. The others were beside her, waiting.
If Damos was right, Thyran was alone, or nearly so. Amris alone could use the rose he carried: the others who’d received them were on other battlefields, or with Letar. None of the half dozen who watched him with weary, grimy faces could end the five years of hell, and he wished with all his heart he could have simply considered that and bid them go.
Yet Thyran was not invincible. The fighting might have worn down even his shields and contingencies. A succession of attacks, when the sorcerer had no guards, might do likewise, could buy Amris time to act or even mean he didn’t need to. He couldn’t let himself hope so far, but he couldn’t discount the possibility either.
“We go in,” he said, and began to climb the stairs.
* * *
Inside, Thyran had left a trail of warped doors, twisted walls, and bloody boot prints. The palace hadn’t stood long before his onslaught, any more than most people did, and he’d taken no care to hide his course. Amris would likely have been able to guess regardless.
The first of Lady Winthair’s guards lay dead at the foot of the inner stairs—truly dead, in a mercy that had likely been mere convenience for Thyran. His ribs had grown outward from his chest, sprouting white and red through his armor. Amris didn’t look longer, but ran on.
He heard the scream midway up the stairs. It almost masked an assortment of wet sounds. Afterward, metal clanged against stone. Amris gripped his sword tightly in one hand, Gerant’s rose in the other.
“If you can, get the lady out,” he told Jazmin. “I’ll chance the rest.”
There was no time to argue, nor reason for it. Noble blood wasn’t sufficient protection from Thyran, not even when tied to the land, but he got power from making that nobility bow before him, and everybody broke in the end. Lady Winthair’s ties to Klaishil had helped them for a while. Now they’d be a liability, should Thyran get his hands on her.
Jazmin nodded. Neither she nor Amris wasted breath speaking while they climbed the stairs, but their eyes met as they’d done a score of times in battle, conveying messages in the shorthand of those who’d fought together for years.
This time, the message was goodbye.
It wasn’t completely certain—if all went well with the plan Gerant and Her Holiness had concocted, they’d meet again, with Thyran defeated and a world to rebuild. All very rarely went well. Every one of the people ascending the staircase with Amris knew that.
At the top of the staircase, he caught sight of Thyran’s robe, gray silk billowing in the cold wind as the sorcerer strode down the hallway. The armor of another guard lay on the landing behind him. What was within could no longer properly be called a body.
Thyran was muttering to himself as he walked, lashing out with dark power at every door he found, and that gave Amris and his troops a few moments of cover before he heard them. They used the time to scatter, as much as they could in a hallway, and the Dukes of Klaishil had built their halls wide. Jazmin and Blaise ducked through the nearest door. They’d make their way to the lady by inner door or secret passage, Amris knew, or climb along the windowsills as a last resort. He and the Pine spread out, each taking a different wall.
Magic was already bursting from Thyran’s fingers when he turn
ed. The Pine whipped his shield up in front of his body. Amris, charging, saw the metal melt without heat, fusing with the arm behind it, and heard his soldier’s shout of agony.
He couldn’t stop. They’d both known as much.
There was Thyran in front of him, the ordinary middle-aged face topped by a crown of jewels and bone, the milky blue eyes aware, yet empty of all feeling Amris could have recognized. As Amris slashed for the sorcerer’s throat, that changed: he did recognize alarm in the other man’s expression, and was glad of it, for a fleeting moment before one of the jewels flickered and his muscles locked in place.
That had happened before—not with Thyran, and not defensively, but Amris knew the sensation. He could still breathe, and he did. Thyran glared at him, recognition dawning first, then a more specific hatred than the sort he seemed to have for the world. His hands started to glow again.
Amris remembered Gerant: rolling over to face him with a sweet smile, sunlight pouring over them both, pacing the study gesturing with enthusiasm over a new theory, and sleeping peacefully beside him. Dark Lady, be with my love, he prayed, feeling his muscles begin to relax, until we meet again.
He raised the rose as Thyran lifted his hands. “Be still,” Amris said—and time itself froze around them.
Chapter 2
105 years after Thyran’s War
A skull was gnawing on her heel.
Darya kicked backward into the nearest wall and heard bone shatter, but the jawbone held on. She couldn’t kick very hard, lest she bring down the tunnel of ruined masonry she was crawling through, and she didn’t have enough room to stand or turn around.
Undeath isn’t contagious once they’re down to the bones, Gerant said in her mind. The emerald in the hilt of Darya’s sword flickered to the rhythm of his speech.
“That’s a relief,” she said, “but I’d rather not hunt a cockatrice with half my foot gone. Get off, you stupid thing—it’s not like eating does you any good!”
Flailing her leg didn’t manage to shake the skull loose. Her boot was holding up, though, and the teeth were only mild pressure and irritating movement. She’d ignored worse. Darya sighed and started squirming forward on her belly again, focusing on the light ahead of her and gripping her long knife in one hand, in case she met an enemy that leather couldn’t hold off.
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