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  She was limping back to bed when the import of Sulien’s words struck her. Mummy, the evil man saw me! What a disturbing thing to say. Should she wake Llian? No, he had enough to worry about.

  Karan’s leg was really painful now. She went down the steep stairs of the old keep in the dark, holding on to the rail and wincing, but the pain grew with every step and so did her need for the one thing that could take it away–hrux.

  She fought it. Hrux was for emergencies, for those times when the pain was utterly unbearable. In the round chamber she called her thinking room, lit only by five winking embers in the fireplace, she sat in a worn-out armchair, pulled a cloak tightly around herself and closed her eyes.

  What had Sulien meant by the evil man saw me? And what had she seen?

  Karan’s gift for mancery, the Secret Art, had been blocked when she was a girl but, being a sensitive, she still had some mind powers. She knew how to replay the nightmare, though she was reluctant to try; using her gift always came at a cost, the headaches and nausea of aftersickness. But she had to know what Sulien had seen. Very carefully she lifted the lid on the beginning of the nightmare…

  A pair of moons, one small and yellow spattered with black, the other huge and jade green, lit a barren landscape. The green moon stood above a remarkable city, unlike any place Karan had ever seen–a crisp white metropolis where the buildings were shaped like dishes, arches, globes and tall spikes, and enclosed within a silvery dome. Where could it be? None of the Three Worlds had a green moon; the city must be on some little planet in the void.

  In the darkness outside the dome, silhouetted against it, a great army had gathered. Goose pimples crept down her arms. A lean, angular man wearing spiked armour ran up a mound, raised his right fist and shook it at the city.

  “Now!” he cried.

  Crimson flames burst from the lower side of the dome and there came a cracking, a crashing and a shrieking whistle. A long ragged hole, the shape of a spiny caterpillar, had been blasted through the wall.

  “Are… you… ready?” he roared.

  “Yes!” yelled his captains.

  It was too dark for Karan to see any faces, but there was a troubling familiarity about the way the soldiers stood and moved and spoke. What was it?

  “Avenge our ancestors’ betrayal!” bellowed the man in the spiked armour. “Put every man, woman, child, dog and cat to the sword. Go!”

  Karan’s stomach churned. This seemed far too real to be a nightmare.

  The troops stormed towards the hole in the dome, all except a cohort of eleven led by a round-faced woman whose yellow plaits were knotted into a loop above her head.

  “Lord Gergrig?” she said timidly. “I thought this attack was a dress rehearsal.”

  “You need practice in killing,” he said chillingly.

  “But the people of Cinnabar have done nothing to us.”

  “Our betrayal was a stain on all humanity.” Gergrig’s voice vibrated with pain and torment. “All humanity must pay until the stain is gone.”

  “Even so—”

  “Soon we will face the greatest battle of all time, against the greatest foe–that’s why we’ve practised war for the past ten millennia.”

  “Then why do we—”

  “To stay in practice, you fool! If fifteen thousand Merdrun can’t clean out this small city, how can we hope to escape the awful void?” His voice ached with longing. “How can we capture the jewel of worlds that is Santhenar?”

  Karan clutched at her chest. This was no nightmare; it had to be a true seeing, but why had it come to Sulien? She was a gifted child, though Karan had never understood what Sulien’s gift was. And who were the Merdrun? She had never heard the name before.

  Abruptly Gergrig swung round, staring. The left edge of his face, a series of hard angles, was outlined by light from a blazing tower. Like an echo, Karan heard Sulien’s cry, “Mummy, the evil man saw me. He saw me!”

  Momentarily, Gergrig seemed afraid. He picked up a small green glass box and lights began to flicker inside it. His jaw hardened. “Uzzey,” he said to the blonde warrior, “we’ve been seen.”

  “Who by?”

  He bent his shaven head for a few seconds, peering into the glass box, then made a swirling movement with his left hand. “A little redhaired girl. On Santhenar!”

  Karan slid off the chair onto her knees, struggling to breathe. This was real; this bloodthirsty brute, whose troops need practice in killing, had seen her beautiful daughter. Ice crystallised all around her; there was no warmth left in the world. Her breath rushed in, in, in. She was going to scream. She fought to hold it back. Don’t make a sound; don’t do anything that could alert him.

  “How can this be?” said Uzzey.

  “I don’t know,” said Gergrig. “Where’s the magiz?”

  “Setting another blasting charge.”

  “Fetch her. She’s got to locate this girl, urgently.”

  “What harm can a child do?”

  “She can betray the invasion; she can reveal our plans and our numbers.”

  Pain speared up Karan’s left leg and it was getting worse. Black fog swirled in her head. She rocked forwards and back, her teeth chattering.

  “Who would listen to a kid?” said Uzzey.

  “I can’t take the risk,” said Gergrig. “Run!”

  Uzzey raced off, bounding high with each stride.

  Karan’s heart was thundering but her blood did not seem to be circulating; she felt faint, freezing and so breathless that she was suffocating. She wanted to scoop Sulien up in her arms and run, but where could she go? How could Sulien see people on barren little Cinnabar, somewhere in the void, anyway? And how could Gergrig have seen her? Karan would not have thought it possible.

  Shortly the magiz, who was tall and thin, with sparse white hair and colourless eyes bulging out of soot-black sockets, loped up. “What’s this about a girl seeing us?”

  Gergrig explained, then said, “I’m bringing the invasion forward. I’ll have to wake the summon stone right away.”

  Karan choked. What invasion? Her head spun and she began to tremble violently.

  “So soon?” said the magiz. “The cost in power will be… extreme.”

  “We’ll have to pay it. The stone must be ready by syzygy–the nigh the triple moons line up–or we’ll never be able to open the gate.”

  The magiz licked her grey lips. “To get more power, I’ll need more deaths.”

  “Then see to it!”

  “Ah, to drink a life,” sighed the magiz. “Especially the powerful lives of the gifted. This child’s ending will be nectar.”

  Gergrig took a step backwards. He looked repulsed.

  Karan doubled over, gasping. In a flash of foreboding she saw three bloody bodies–Sulien, Llian and herself–flung like rubbish into a corner of her burning manor.

  “What do you want me to do first?” said the magiz.

  “Find the redhaired brat and put her down. And everyone in her household.”

  A murderous fury overwhelmed Karan. No one threatened her daughter! Whatever it took, she would do it to protect her own.

  The magiz, evidently untroubled by Gergrig’s order, nodded. “I’ll look for the kid.”

  Gergrig turned to Uzzey and her cohort, who were all staring at him. “What are you waiting for? Get to the killing field!”

  Ah, to drink a life! It was the end of Sulien’s nightmare, and the beginning of Karan’s.

  By Stephen Aryan

  Battlemage

  Bloodmage

  Chaosmage

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  Contents

  Cov
er

  Title Page

  Welcome

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  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

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Acknowledgements

  Extras Meet the Author

  A Preview of The Summon Stone

  By Stephen Aryan

  Orbit Newsletter

  Copyright

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2016 by Stephen Aryan

  Excerpt from The Summon Stone copyright © 2016 by Ian Irvine

  Cover design by Nico Taylor—LBBG

  Cover illustration by Steve Stone

  Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  Simultaneously published in Great Britain and in the U.S. by Orbit in 2016

  First U.S. Edition: October 2016

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  The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016941491

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-29834-6 (trade paperback), 978-0-316-29835-3 (ebook)

  E3-20160829-JV-NF