Mirror Omnibus by Ian Irvine

Author:Ian Irvine
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Epic, Fantasy, Fantasy Fiction, Mirrors, Fiction, Imaginary Places, Imaginary Wars and Battles, Historians, General, Psychics
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A COURSE IN

LEADERSHIP

Something crashed against the door. Maigraith jumped, thinking it was the Ghâshâd coming for her. Only days after Rulke’s apparition, Thyllan, who had overthrown Men-dark and set himself up as Magister before the disaster of the Great Conclave, sailed across the sea with an army, intent on taking the city back. A fortnight had now gone by. Thurkad was besieged and looked set to fall. The Ghâshâd, their subversion done, were hurrying to escape before that happened. If they took her to Shazmak she would never get away.

And the way Rulke had looked at her. Hold her until I return, he’d said. Protect her with your lives! What did he want of her? The thought of him was frightening, yet exhilarating too. She could not work out why she was drawn to him, for everything she’d ever heard about Rulke had made him a monster—a violent, brutal, treacherous man. Yet that hadn’t matched what she’d seen in his eyes.

The noise, when Maigraith went to her peephole, turned out to be someone moving a chest. She paced the room. Yggur’s empire was falling to pieces. How had it happened so quickly?

In two bloody battles outside the city last week, all his generals and half his senior officers had been slain. The armies of Thurkad were now commanded by Vanhe, once the most junior of Yggur’s marshals. A stolid, unimaginative man, Vanhe was well out of his depth. He did not know how to deal with the seductions of sinful Thurkad, much less Thyllan’s propaganda war or the Ghâshâd subversion.

Maigraith knew what was going to happen—bloody war for the city, street by street. The dead would be piled as high as houses. She remembered last winter’s war only too well, huddling in that freezing shed with just a few wormy turnips to eat. That reminded her of the youth who had carried her and Faelamor away from the Conclave, who had been so kind to them, only to immolate himself on the bodies of his slain mother and brothers. The image was wrenching. How many more orphans, as miserable as herself, would this war create?

“I won’t let it happen again!” she said aloud.

All her life Maigraith had been under the thrall of Faelamor, doing her bidding mechanically, hardly noticing the troubles of the world. She’d always had difficulty making decisions, for she could never believe in herself. But Faelamor had gone through the gate to Katazza, then Yggur. In their absence Maigraith had begun to think for herself.

First she must escape. Being a master of the Secret Art, she had power enough to work the lock, or even break the door if she had to. But the old fortress, once Yggur’s headquarters, was now swarming with Ghâshâd. She could not beat all of them.

How would Faelamor get away? Maigraith asked herself. She had often seen her liege use illusion to get herself into, or out of, guarded places. Faelamor had brought them both out of Fiz Gorgo unseen, but she was a master of illusion, possibly the greatest on the Three Worlds.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.