Search Worlds Without End

The city of Mera is a fortress hidden from the rest of humanity, a sanctuary for the diverse group of people rescued from death by the Oracle that rules the city. The Oracle has brought together the citizens of Mera from every land and every time period, protecting them from the ravages of time, death and the evil demon forces that howl outside the city at night. All that the Oracle asks in return is a willingness to aid the rest of humanity, calling the citizens to go forth on various missions of rescue to mortals in need of aid.

The Oracle sends Jerry out into the wilderness, accompanied by his ancient Greek friend, Killer, a world-famous lecher and juvenile delinquent with deadly combat skills. There they must rescue a woman named Ariadne, on the run with her children and seeking shelter. But children are not allowed in Mera, and Ariadne will not leave them, while Mera's evil demon enemies move closer and closer to Jerry's and Killer's temporary place of respite.

The Hierarchy, high priests of the religious order the Light, has installed King Ethan as the monarchical figurehead, ruling both the magical kingdom of Albi and its predominant religion. Scattered throughout the land, worshippers in the old ways of the Earth Mother are persecuted as heretics. And when young missionary student Rollo Woodbridge returns home to Albi, he is immediately arrested for heresy and treason, setting off a chain of events that plunges the land into utter chaos.

The Hierarchy has more treacherous motives, however, and when Rollo is rescued from jail, his family's home is destroyed-but Rollo and his siblings are left alive. While Rollo tries diplomacy to end the religious and political conflict, his brother and sister swear vengeance. With the hours to deliverance counting down and their lives hanging in the balance, they must decide whether to stay and fight or leave Albi forever in the suspenseful, action-packed Against the Light.

When one life ends, another begins.

After forty years as the village school teacher in the idyllic valley of Greenbottom, Agatha is looking forward to a quiet retirement. Instead, an enigmatic stranger arrives to drag her through a long-closed portal to another world.

Confronted with a completely foreign culture steeped in magic and violence, Agatha finds herself a crucial pawn being played between rival factions. The only way forward through the rigid traditions and convoluted politics of the Archons of Otopia is to remain true to herself and her Greenbottom ideals.

The nobles of Aureity have been breeding their children for psychic powers for generations. Women's powers are mental, including psychic control and mind-reading, making them ideal rulers. Men have superhuman strength and can teleport to any place they have previously visited. Consequently, young noblemen make their fortune by competing in psychic gladiatorial contests to display their powers in the hope of being hired--and married--by women of high rank.

When Quirt, an older man with obvious skill but little known record, first enters the arena, the combat circuit is abuzz wondering who he might be. But his mystery is almost eclipsed by the young cub who has been entering competitions anonymously and winning them all. Barely in his teens, full of raw power but short on training or patience, Humate is so horrified when he's bested by Quirt that he insists on finding out where he came from.

Unfortunately for Humate, the answer reaches far beyond his birth: back to the terrible wrongs done to Quirt's mother and his new wife by one of Humate's relatives, and back to Quirt's sentencing, a doom which takes away his identity until he can bring the culprit to justice. Humate is in deep denial about this familial scandal generations deep, but Quirt must try to covince him to help, compelled by his doom and by the stirrings of a new love that cannot possibly be realized in his nameless condition.

No one ever said revenge was going to be easy.

Fantasy at its most enchanting: An original and absorbing tale from a master storyteller about the profound effects of a single life on the battle against ultimate evil

It is Midsummer Day, the beginning of the year 700, in the city of Benign. All the children born in the year 684 celebrate their joint sixteenth birthday by passing in front of the statue of the blind goddess Caprice--but only one will become the Chosen and join the Seventy who govern and guide the city.

Much to her surprise, Irona Matrinko, one of the many children of an impoverished fisherman, is chosen. Irona 700 moves into the palace and, with the help of a new mentor, recognizes and cultivates her great talent for guiding wars: strategy and tactics, leadership and inspiration.

As Irona gives her life to the city, an ancient enemy, Maleficence, attacks again and again, corrupting Irona's friends, destroying her lover, and continually defeating her grandest plans for peace and harmony. Along the way, Irona becomes a masterful politician, a shrewd judge of character, and, even at great cost to her personal happiness, a true heroine.

Thirty years ago, a terrifying anomaly known as Sungoback appeared over North Africa. Two hundred miles wide, the mysterious zone manifests as a pillar of darkness during the day and as a pillar of light at night. There is no telling what secrets it holds inside, as it defies science and destroys technology. Entering Sungoback is considered tantamount to suicide since most who do so are never seen again.

Now, nine strangers are headed to Sungoback. Each has their own motive for risking everything to enter. They should hope they don't all share the same fate inside...

Pock's World, long settled by humankind, is accused of being infected by humanoid aliens. It has been quarantined and may have to be sterilized. Five people are chosen to go there and examine the evidence: saintly but ruthless Father Andre; Ratty Turnsole, a muckraking reporter ripe for romance; ambitious politician Athena Fimble; manipulative bureaucrat Millie Backet; and shady billionaire Linn Lazuline. Some of them carry grudges - all have their own agendas. Pock's World surprises them all. Nothing is what they expect. Quickly entangled in love, politics, religion, and deceit, they discover that the clock is already ticking and the fate of humanity itself is at stake.

The looming threat of a once-in-a-millennium magical event sends nineteenth-century China into violent chaos in this epic alternate-history fantasy.

Author of the Seventh Sword series Dave Duncan transports us to Imperial China in an alternate nineteenth century--an Asian epoch not unlike the Boxer Rebellion era--with a spellbinding tale of rebellion, political intrigue, larceny, seduction, shape-shifting, dark magic, and murder. These are troubled years in the Good Land.

Ten centuries have passed since the last time the Portal of a Thousand Worlds opened, bringing chaos, upheaval, and radical change to the then-ruling dynasty, and now the mystical gateway is rumored to be on the verge of opening once more. Only the Firstborn--he who has been reincarnated through countless generations and remembers all he has ever learned--knows what the future holds, but he has been imprisoned for refusing to comply with a repressive imperial government's wishes.

Now, those hoping to seize the opportunity for wealth and position are hatching sinister plots. And as the cold-hearted dowager empress closely guards a fateful secret, and a rebel army led by a fanatical zealot gathers strength under the Bamboo Banner, the cataclysm approaches....

The recipient of two Aurora Awards and numerous Locus and Endeavour Award nominations, Dave Duncan is an acknowledged master of sword-and-sorcery adventure on par with George R. R. Martin of Game of Thrones fame. A sprawling epic with a colorful cast of royals, thieves, prostitutes, gods, warriors, dragons, assassins, merchants, and mages set against the backdrop of a volatile alternate Asia, Portal of a Thousand Worlds is a magnificent work of invention from one of the premier fantasists of our day.

Sald Harl would like nothing more than to soar on the wings of his noble eagle, but his youthful rides in the sky are cut short by an appointment to guard the prince. Sald watches his dreams of flight fade with his name and independence as he takes over his bodyguard duties. During a perilous journey to the edges of the kingdom a dark secret comes to life. Now the great Prince Shadow is accused of treason, and Sald must orchestrate a desperate plan of escape or he will lose the one thing he has been orderedto defend. His only option of freedom is a dangerous flight that no one has ever survived. Once again Sald hopes to feel the freedom of soaring though the air unshackled from servitude.

The world was desperate. Since the empire had fallen a hundred years ago, Gwin and her people had nearly given up hope that the Renewer would come. Gwin had lost everything. Her husband was killed in one of the wars. Her children died of Star Sickness. Even her work at the hostel was in jeopardy because the politicians had it out for her.

The cursed Gwin, therefore, had nothing to lose. When she took in the girl, a survivor of the Star Sickness, it was a dreadful crime. Gwin was at the end of her rope, and possibly the end of her life if she was found out. But the Sickness had left the girl with certain magic, certain powers, which could prove very useful to them both. Was it possible that this young survivor could save their lives and the empire? Was a new life for Gwin and her world finally at hand?

"They know the world is dying, but they hope not in their lifetimes. Meanwhile, they're top dogs and will do anything to stay that way."

Doig Gray is fifteen when his father is killed in a mining accident, which Doig comes to realizes was no accident. Torn from his mother and sister, Doig is sent off to college, his every movement monitored in case he has inherited his dissident father's unacceptable attitudes... or passwords. Doig has nothing but his own sense that there's something desperately wrong with the world - and a last name that evokes the assumption that he's destined to be the next traitor-hero.

Stuck on the wrong world at the wrong site, with the wrong leaders, the colony is doomed to extinction unless immediate steps are taken to correct - everything. But 500 years of hiding from the reality of their situation has created an unchallengeable status quo - and the Accident Squad, determined to ensure it remains that way.

Set on a distant planet, far in the future, West of January tells the story of a world in which time moves very slowly. Because it takes a lifetime for each region of the planet to experience dawn, midday and dusk, the planet's population does not remember the catastrophes that occur as the sun moves across the sky - entire civilizations have been scorched into oblivion. The only people who remember the dangers of the past are the planet's "angels" - a people who have tried to preserve past technologies to save the planet.

Beautiful Queen Inos married the loyal stableboy Rap and made him her king. They were very much in love, and they lived happily ever after. Fifteen years went by. Rap and Inos were comfortable, secure, and truly happy, raising their family in the little backwater kingdom of Krasnegar, well removed from the hurly-burly of great affairs...

But in far-off Hub, the old Imperor's health--and, some said, his sanity--deteriorated inexorably. The borderlands were seething. Prince Emshandar--or Shandie, as Rap knew him--found himself leading his grandfather's armies into terrible battles where victory and justice hung in gravest doubt.

And now the end of the millennium was at hand, ushered in by prophecies of cataclysmic upheaval on a scale never before imagined. All across Pandemia, sensible people tried to dismiss a growing sense of unease as superstitious nonsense.

Then a God appeared to Rap and warned him that the prophecies spoke the least of the truth. Devastation was a certainty; total destruction loomed. The very fabric of the world was at risk. And it was all Rap's fault. The last thing in the world Rap had wanted was another adventure. And it might be the last thing he would ever get.

The power-mad dwarf-sorcerer Zinixo had driven Emshandar V from his throne. He had shattered the ancient Protocol that kept tenuous peace among Pandemia's warlocks. And his conquest had only begun.

Somehow the deposed Imperor had escaped his clutches--so far--but Shandie would soon be found. Then the Impire would be Zinixo's alone. Outlying countries would fall beneath his fist. And at long last, he could wreak fabulous revenge upon Rap of Krasnegar. For Zinixo wielded the greatest magic ever imagined: an army of slave-sorcerers bound to serve his every whim--to the death.

No one could stop him: Shandie had scarcely an ally in the world; Rap's magical powers were a shadow of their former strength; and there was hardly a free sorcerer to be found in all Pandemia. Where could any resistance effort find even... A Handful of Men?

Paranoid but almighty, the sorcerer Xinixo had seized control of the Impire. But ruling the imps and most of the world was not enough. He would never feel safe until he was universally loved, so he would smash everything and then rebuild the whole world in his own insane image. Who could resist him? King Rap of Krasnegar and Shandie, the rightful Imperor, were still at large and determined to resist the evil, however slender their chances. Their one, faint hope was to enlist the help of the remaining free sorcerers of the world, those not already spellbound by Xinixo. Their quest soon ran into disaster. Their messengers were betrayed or ensnared. A rampaging goblin army had captured Shandie and was about to torture him to death. Rap was mired in tropical jungle, hoping his wife and children were safe, back home in Krasnegar. They were not in Krasnegar and certainly not safe. As the flames of war raged across Pandemia, news of the disasters penetrated even into Thume, the Accursed Land. Outsiders believed that the pixies had been extinct for a thousand years, but they still lived there, hoarding their magic. Their ruler, the Keeper, adamantly refused to meddle in events outside her borders, but one young pixie girl was prepared to rebel against the ancient order.

The sorcerer Zinixo had declared himself the Almighty, and none could doubt that the end of the era was at hand. Not in the thousand years since the War of the Five Warlocks had the world known upheaval on such a scale. Goblin hordes ravished the Impire. Dragons incinerated entire legions in the space of a heartbeat. The slave-sorcerers of the Covin practiced whatever barbarities Zinixo required --and the chorus swelled with each victory: "Almighty!"

Soon would come midsummer, and the Nordland Moot, and the smell of blood upon the air. Soon the mad dwarf-sorcerer would truly reign supreme--unless Rap of Krasnegar could conjure a miracle at the end of the millennium. Rap and his rebels were recruiting any magic-users the Covin had not yet perverted. And when the time came to move against Zinixo--if it came--they would aim one single, killing blow against the tyrant.

It wasn't much of a plan. But it was all they had.

Princess Inos lived an idyllic life in her father's sleepy, backwater kingdom. Krasnegar was a peaceful realm, and Inos was a friend to all-especially her childhood companion, the stableboy Rap.

Then one day a God appeared with an enigmatic warning that might mean that Inos should wed. No one was sure, but who could ignore a divine warning? And as no eligible noblemen ever visited tiny Krasnegar, Inos found herself exiled to the Impire to learn to be a lady.

Thus Inos was far away when Rap's strange talents began to emerge, and the townsfolk whispered darkly of magic. Then the king fell ill, and Rap set out to warn Inos to prepare to claim her birthright. But Rap couldn't know as he struggled through goblin-infested wastes that his was a journey ordained by the Gods since before the world began.

Inos, the late king's daughter, had been kidnapped through the magic casement even as the Impish legions overrunning her tiny kingdom were storming the castle tower. Now she was a prisoner in a desert land ruled by a dockside whore with a talent for magic and a passion for politics.

She little dreamed that the loyal stableboy Rap had jumped through the casement after her. But no one really knew how the magic worked, and Rap found himself not in a desert, but in the steaming jungles of Faerie--half a world away from Inos!

Rap was determined to rescue his beloved queen, and nothing could stop him--not even the monsters and headhunters of Faerie, or the paranoid machinations of an evil sorcerer.

Queen Inos was badly shaken. Rap--loyal, trustworthy Rap--had appeared to her, obviously from beyond the grave. His insubstantial image, the echo of his voice...She stiffened her resolve. She would serve her people, whatever the cost. Rap would have wanted her to.

But Rap was alive, armed with a magic word and unwavering resolve to find his beloved Inos and give her whatever help a galley slave could give a queen.

Then Kalkor, cruelest of the vicious Nordland raiders, sailed into port in his longship Blood Wave; and Rap's life took a hellish turn for the worse.

The loyal stableboy Rap had fought through hell and high water to rescue Inos, his queen. But at the end of his quest, all his struggle had been in vain.

For Inos had already married the accursed Sultan Azak. Her beauty had been despoiled, her kingdom stolen away. And for her honeymoon, Azak planned the dangerous journey to Hub, capital of the Impire. There, amid the maelstrom of fearsome magic and vicious imperial politics surrounding the ailing imperor, Azak intended to recoup all his losses and be freed from his curse.

A failed and broken man, Rap awaited his fate--at the hands of Azak's torturers. And Inos followed her destiny, and her jealous new lord, on a journey whose outcome even the gods could not have foretold.

As unwanted and rebellious boys, they find refuge in Ironhall.... Years later they emerge as the finest swordsmen in the realm--A magical ritual of a sword through the heart binds each to his ward--if not the king himself, then to whomever else the monarch designates--with absolute loyalty.And the greatest Blade of them all was--and is--Sir Durendal.

But a lifelong dream of protecting his beloved liege from enemies, traitors, and monsters is dashed to bits when Durendal is bonded till death to an effete noble fop at his king's orders. Yet Destiny has many strange and inscrutable plans for the young knight--for a mission, a contest, and, perhaps, a treasure await him in a faraway land. But he soon finds himself enmeshed in treason and foul intrigues, compelled to betray the king he had hoped to serve. The Blades have ways to protect their own, but death and madness haunt the path to salvation--and few ever return unscathed. As unwanted and rebellious boys, they find refuge in Ironhall.... Years later they emerge as the finest swordsmen in the realm--A magical ritual of a sword through the heart binds each to his ward--if not the king himself, then to whomever else the monarch designates--with absolute loyalty. And the greatest Blade of them all was--and is--Sir Durendal.

But a lifelong dream of protcting his beloved liege from enemies, traitors, and monsters is dashed to bits when Durendal is bonded till death to an effete noble fop at his king's orders. Yet Destiny has many strange and inscrutable plans for the young knight--for a mission, a contest, and, perhaps, a treasure await him in a faraway land. But he soon finds himself enmeshed in treasonand foul intrigues, compelled to betray the king he had hoped to serve. The Blades have ways to protect their own, but death and madness haunt the path to salvation--and few ever return unscathed.

Raider and Wasp have spent five years at Ironhall studying to become Blades, expert swordsmen whose talents stand unmatched. Magic both enhances the Blades' fighting skills and binds them in lifelong duty. But, when Raider and Wasp are selected to protect the king of Chivial himself, they refuse, an act unprecedented in the living history of the Blades. Now on the run for their "treasonous" act, the two gifted swordsmen must escape to the Fire Lands, where pirates, monsters, and mixed allegiances wait around every corner. As old hatreds and still-fresh tragedies come to light, these young swashbucklers must confront both harsh truths from the past and a present swarming with their would-be brothers at arms seeking vengeance and intending punishment.

The mightiest swordsmen in the relm, are bound by magic to defend their noble wards... to the death.

The King's Blades

The unloved child of the unscrupulous King Ambrose,Princess Malinda learned at an early age to fight for what was rightfully hers. Now, with the Kings abrupt death, civil war has become her grim destiny. Making her uncertain way through the blood labyrinth of schemesand betrayals, Malinda can trust none but the Blades of the Royal Guard. But the Blades themselves are in grave peril. And the young Queen faces the most crucialdecision of her life: a choice that will either redeem her kingdom from chaos... or bring ultimate destruction down upon it, her Blades, and herself.

Sir Rhys, Sir Sharp, and Sir Trusty may be three of the world's greatest swordsmen, but that hasn't saved them from being let go from their positions as Royal Guards. All three are still young , and without a job or pension, they need to find some way of making money.

Rhys's father, Sir Spender, is a great Blade hero listed in the Litany. He is also without a job and may have a solution for their predicament. A great treasure was lost more than thirty years ago, and Spender thinks he knows its location and suggests they find it.

Of course, Spender is not the only one to remember the lost treasure. King Ambrose claims it as his own--and is ready to use all the manpower at his disposal to get his hands on it first...

Niall's father raised him to be a man of his word, and Niall has tried to live that way throughout his life, even during his training to become a Blade.

But things have changed. King Ambrose has died. His daughter, Malinda, is now queen and behaving suspiciously. When she makes Niall Prime of the Blades, he is asked to swear an oath to protect her - and then is made a spy.

Now Niall faces a mission that challenges everything he believes and must place his life on the line for a leader he's not certain he can trust...

Before They Could be BladesThey Were the King's Daggers...

Young Stalwart, known as Wart to his fellow students, is expelled from the academy for King's Blades, only to be plunged into a current of breathless intrigue and danger. Together with Emerald, a former White Sister, Wart must survive sorcery, swordplay, ambush, a chimera, a quagmarsh, and more, and uncover a devious plot to assassinate their kingand prove himself worthy of a place among the King's Blades.

The Crooked House is the second book in the King's Daggers triology, and Duncan has infused this title with all the breathless action and riveting adventure of his previous titles. In this installment, Sir Stalwart and Emerald embark on a quest to uncover the evil lurking at the heart of the king's chambers.

A Notorious Killer Stalks the King...

The world's most deadly assassin has been hired to kill King Ambrose. Once again King's Daggers are plunged into danger, because only White Sister Emerald can identify the killer's magic and only Sir Stalwart knows what he looks like. The two must trap the killer before he can strike the king -- or at them.

As the trial of death leads back to Ironhall, the swordsmen school Stalwart so recently left, he finds he is a boy sent to do a man's job -- and Emerald is a girl sent to do a boy's.

Many legends have emerged from the shadows of Ironhall, yet surely none can surpass the greatness and glory predestined for Sir Beaumont--possessor of the purest and strongest of hearts, and a mind as quick, keen, and accurate as his sword. But the day he sets out in the service of the elderly Lord Wassail turns to a black one, and young Beau's journey ends in horror and blood... and disgrace. Banished from the King's Blades, he now faces a grim future as a homeless pariah, a creature to be shunned and despised. But redemption can come from unexpected directions and in unrecognizable guises. Approached in secret by the legendary Durendal, now Grand Master of the Order, the dishonored paragon is offered one last chance to win back his weapon and his place among his brothers in arms. But to do so, Beau must ride alone back through the icy gates of Hell... and do battle with the Devil himself.

Elite warrior swordsmen, they are unequalled in any time or realm...

The King's Blades

The King has decreed that new Blades must be sworn into the service of the Grand Duke Rubin, deposed by a foul usurper and currently on the run. But none of the rough youths being readied at Ironhall possess the seasoning to survive what better, more skilled Blades already have not. Still, two woefully unprepared candidates are approached with an offer of early bonding and probable death: deft but dense, rude Ranter, and eager, impetuous Ringwood... with a third, the inadequate swordsman but potentially able spy Bellman, enlisted into their threadbare ranks. Joining the Duke's entourage along with the courageous and prescient White Sister Trudy, the would-be champions must restore a rightful ruler to the throne or die in the process. But before them waits an army of the dead. And the Duke whom the Blades must protect to the last drop of their lifeblood is not the liege they imagined...

The realm's most feared swordsman, Sir Wolf has earned his name, the "King's Killer," well. Unlike many of his brother Blades, however, Wolf detests his sworn duty to do the bloody bidding of a liege he can never respect. But when an impregnable fortress is breached and a former royal mistress is abducted by brazen assailants, Wolf must leap into the fray.

Burdened with the company of his disgraced brother, Sir Lynx--the only Blade ever to lose his ward and live--and shadowed by a mysterious Inquisitor with a secret agenda, Wolf must make his way across a landscape of nightmares vivid and terrible enough to chill any fearless heart. For somewhere in this dark, unfamiliar world, the fate of all Chivial hangs in the balance--and it is the destiny of one reluctant Blade to tip the scales to salvation... or doom.

To the legendary clairvoyant Maestro Nostradamus, the future is forever in motion. But for young swordsman Alfeo Zeno, his apprentice and protector, the present is hard enough to contend with. His days are spent poring over astrology charts and making calculations, his nights learning arcane magic or transcribing Nostradamus's nebulous prophecies. Until one night, when the Council of Ten arrives to take the seer into custody.

It seems that high-ranking friend of the prince died under mysterious circumstances after Nostradamus cast his horoscope, warning of danger-and rumors are swirling that the mystic poisoned the victim to enhance his own reputation. Alfeo is stunned when his master refuses to flee. Instead, Nostradamus charges Alfeo with the task of clearing his name. Now, Alfeo must unravel a web of magic and murder if he is to have any future of his own.

When Nostradamus is hired to find a foreign spy by Venice's ruling Council of 10, the only clues they can offer him are the spy's intercepted messages, encoded in a seemingly unbreakable cipher.

But Nostradamus soon detects evil influences working against him, and realizes the spy can only be caught by occult means. He turns to his able apprentice, the young swordsman Alfeo Zeno, whose unique talents may prove essential to unraveling the truth.

Thus begins a series of events that will involve Alfeo in murder, passion, betrayal, and magic.

Hampered by arthritis, Nostradamus is in no mood for granting favors or running about looking for trouble. But when his apprentice Alfeo's mistress asks him to investigate the murder of her beloved courtesan mentor-and promises a fortune in payment-he comes around.

It appears that someone is murdering the courtesans of Venice. All were well-known, admired for their skills-and somehow connected by a sinister event involving one of the great families of the city.

While Nostradamus attempts to use the dark arts to solve riddles which confound explanation, Alfeo finds himself led by a possibly demonic force through a maze of deceit and death. And when the master and apprentice come to the end of their intertwined paths, there may be hell to pay.

Wallie Smith can feel the pain. He goes to the hospital and remembers the doctors and the commotion, but when he wakes up it all seems like a dream. However, if that was a dream, how do you explain waking up in another body and in another world? Little Wallie finds himself in the physique of a barbarian swordsman, accompanied by both an eccentric priest babbling about the Goddess and a voluptuous slave girl. Is this a rude awakening or a dream come true? What in the world will Wallie do now that he has found himself stranded in a strange realm? Well, it just so happens that the Goddess is in need of a swordsman. It will not be easy, but if he succeeds he will have everything he wants. If he does not, things could get ugly. Wallie is reluctant but sees his chance. If only he had the faintest clue as to the adventure he is about to unleash! If only he could imagine the forces that will be out to vanquish him!

Wallie Smith is staring death in the face; only a miracle can save him. And then one does! The Goddess appears to preserve his soul, but she does much more than that. She promises to bestow upon him a new and powerful body, and, more important, to endow him with the fabled Sapphire Sword of Chioxin. But nothing in this world or any other comes without a price. The Goddess demands that, for her services, Wallie become her champion. It will be an honor to serve such a presence, to have the chance to be victorious over all challengers. But Wallie and his sword quickly find themselves outmatched in a world of high-stakes magic. Even the Goddess's priests cannot offer any resistance to the invading sorcerers and their quest to conquer souls for the Fire God. Wallie will need to find in himself and in the world the powers that will save all mortals. He will need to find the Coming of Wisdom.

Wally Smith, having died on Earth, finds himself reincarnated as a swordsman in another world and entrusted by the presiding goddess with a mission that has no appeal for him at all. Can he bring together all the swordsmen to finally defeat the sorcerors and their terrible technology? Wally is not quite convinced he should, but goddesses can be very persuasive...

For fifteen years, the truce has held. Swordsmen of the Tryst of Casr have kept the peace and extended the rule of law over half the world, but now sorcerers have started killing swordsmen again, and swordsmen traitors are aiding them. Shonsu--who was Wallie Smith before he became a swordsman of the seventh rank and liege lord of the Tryst--must once more gird on the seventh sword of Chioxin, and this time he rides out to fight the war that he hoped would never come. As he leads his army forth, its two most junior members are Vixini, son of Shonsu, and Addis, son of Nnanji, who has an oath of vengeance to fulfill. Their failure or success will determine the fate of the world for the next thousand years.

On a dodecahedral world in thrall to the tyrannical, war-obsessed Hrag dynasty, no one could stop the Bloodlord from sending troops over the Edge to Florengia, invading its major cities, and offering them a choice between strict colonial rule and immediate and total destruction. When the doge of Celebre was faced with this ultimatum, he gave his children up as hostages so that the rest of Celebre might live. Thus the four young Florengians were taken from their homes and scattered across the Vigaelian face.

Fifteen years later, and you'd never guess that they're siblings. Fabia was adopted by a wealthy landowner and spoiled rotten, Orlando desperately yearns to overcome his Florengian blood and fight for the Vigaelian army, Benard is a flighty but talented artist, and Wisdom has it that Dantio, the eldest, died fighting his captors. But when Celebre suddenly takes on crucial political significance, one of the siblings must return home to serve as Celebre's puppet ruler, and the others must be eliminated so that there are no rival claimants to the throne.

It's going to be tough enough finding one another, let alone deciding whether enough kinship remains after fifteen years apart that the siblings will care to help each other out of their respective predicaments. If they're feeling particularly altruistic, the Celebres might even take on the bonus round: trying to save Dodec from the culture of death and war imposed on it by its evil warlords.

One thing's for certain: the Celebre children are going to have a lot of adjusting to do...

The past fifteen years have not been kind to Celebre, the greatest city on the Florengian face of a dodecahedral world. Its walls have been breached and its Doge humiliated by the evil Bloodlord Stralg; all four of its heirs kidnapped and taken over the Edge to Vigaelia; its Dogaressa forcibly impregnated by Stralg and--when her husband's health begins to fail -- left to rule over a city teeming with Stralg's troops. And if you think Stralg is bad, wait until you meet his sister Saltaja, a fanatic who sees no human cost as too great to keep the Hrag dynasty in power and her goddess -- evil Xaran, the Mother of Lies -- appeased.

But there are a few great hopes for the future of the city: the Mutineer, Marno Cavotti, who will not stand to see his hometown destroyed and is massing a powerful liberation movement mere inches beyond Stralg's grasp. And the four heirs of Celebre -- each with god-given expertise in their respective fields of artistry, combat, wisdom, or death -- are wending their way back over the Edge to their birthplace. Of course, even as Marno and the Celebre children are working towards the common goal of defeating the Hrags, they're all painfully aware that once that hurdle is crossed only one of them can wind up on the throne.

Medieval magic, murder, and mayhem!

It is 1164, and for a hundred years England has been ruled by the Normans. A young Saxon boy named Durwin, crippled by a childhood accident, had caught the eye of a Norman sage teaching at a rural school of magic. Realizing that the boy had promise, Durwin was made stable boy, and eventually allowed to attend classes.

Now twenty, Durwin is proficient enough that he is assigned to teach, but the other sages refuse to promote him and he is hassled by the Norman juniors for his disability. But those troubles turn out to be the least of his worries when he manages to corrects errors in an ancient corrupted spell, which promptly prophesies murder.

Sure enough, word soon reaches the school that one of the local count's house sage has died, perhaps slain by black magic. Durwin is whisked away to the family's castle, only to find that one death was only the beginning. The young sage quickly learns of a dizzying plot to assassinate King Henry. Dropped into the middle of the complex politics of England's royal courts, can Durwin stop them in time?

King Henry, campaigning in France, receives a muddled warning of a treasonous conspiracy in Lincoln Castle, his great fortress in the center of England. His enchanters report that the letter contains both truth and lies, but cannot determine which is which. Putting little stock in the warning, he sends an eager young knight to lead a troop of men and investigate, and since the letter includes hints of magic, Henry orders him to enlist the help of Durwin, the young Saxon whose education he has been financing these last two years.

Durwin takes an assistant and accompanies the troop to Lincoln, but quickly finds his blossoming abilities as a sage are not warmly received. Upon reaching town, it only takes a couple of hours for Durwin to realize that they are up against a vast Satanic conspiracy?and his companions may have already fallen into a deadly trap!

King Henry is dead; Richard the Lionheart now rules England. The new king does not believe in magic, and is interested only in a crusade to recapture Jerusalem.

But his crusade soon stalls, and while he is away, his brother, John, and his supposed ally, Philip of France, are conspiring to steal his kingdom. Richard's mother, Queen Eleanor, sends Sir Durwin, Enchanter General of England, out to Palestine, where he must convince the skeptical king that a loyal magician can be a valuable aide.

Meanwhile, King Philip has turned all of Europe into a trap for Richard. The moment the Lionheart sets foot there, he will be arrested and imprisoned for life. It is up to Durwin, aided by his old friend William Legier, to see Richard safely home again and to save the kingdom from falling into the hands of the sadistic and treacherous Prince John...

The Great Game of Gods is afoot... In a world on the brink of madness... In the summer of 1914, a young man of reputation beyond reproach awakens under police guard-grievously injured and accused of heinous, impossible murder. And in a strange, distant place... The youngest member of a penniless acting troupe has been taken prisoner by the loyal minions of a corrupt, vengeful goddess. For an ancient prophecy has divided the realm's ruling Deities into warring factions-a prophecy that mentions the crippled captive child...and a youth recovering from inexplicable wounds in a British hospital bed. The game weaves through worlds and through dimensions as it has since time immemorial-a deadly contest of skill and manipulations that ruthlessly creates wizards, destroys human pawns... and transforms ordinary men, women and children into something more.

In the midst of the horror of the First World War, a stranger falls from nowhere into the mud and death of Flanders battlefield--bruised, babbling, and stark naked... with a remarkable story to tell. The Great Game--the timeless diversion of human gods, a ruthless contest of treachery, magic, betrayal, and manipulation, created to relieve the tedium of immortality--goes on.

In a place called Nextdoor-the farthest flung outpost of British imperialism-earthborn mortals possess the power of gods. Young Englishman Edward Exeter has spent five years trying to escape the magnetic and powerfully magical pull of the Great Game, which has designated him as its most important player. But war and bloodthirsty intrigue rage on both sides of magical portals and across worlds, and Exeter can resist his destiny no longer. He accepts the mantle of Liberator that has been thrust upon him, and the decision turns old friends into foes and old enemies into acolytes as he is surrounded by murderous plots and betrayals. But this is not the uninformed Edward Exeter who came naked into this hidden realm years ago. He has lived the Game and learned it well-and he intends to play it boldly to its shocking, worlds-shattering conclusion.