The Twilight Herald Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  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

  ENDGAME

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Acknowledgements

  Teaser chapter

  Also by Tom Lloyd from Gollancz

  THE STORMCALLER

  Tom Lloyd was born in 1979 in Berkshire. After a degree in

  International Relations he went straight into publishing, where he

  still works. He never received the memo about suitable jobs for

  writers and consequently has never been a kitchen-hand, hospital

  porter, pigeon hunter or secret agent. He lives in South London,

  isn’t one of those authors who gives a damn about the history of

  the font used in his books and only believes in forms of exercise

  that allow him to hit something.

  www.tomlloyd.co.uk

  The Twilight Herald

  TOM LLOYD

  Orion

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  A GOLLANCZ EBOOK

  First published in Great Britain in 2007 by Gollancz.

  This eBook first published in 2009 by Orion Books.

  Copyright © Tom Lloyd-Williams 2007

  The right of Tom Lloyd-Williams to be identified as the author of

  this work has been asserted byhim in accordance with the

  copyright, designs and patents act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons,living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any

  means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor

  be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or coler other than

  that in which it is published without a similar condition, including

  this condition, being imposedon the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from British

  Library.

  eISBN : 978 0 5750 8711 8

  This eBook produced by Jouve, Hrance.

  Orion Books

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper St Martin’s Lane

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  For Natascha and Alexandra

  What has gone before: The Stormcaller

  Isak is a white-eye, an unnaturally strong and fast young man with a reputation for being hot-tempered and troublesome. His unpedictable and dangerous nature means he has grown up as an outcast on the wagon-train where his father, Horman, works. Isak’s only real friend is Carel, the captain of the guards and a former soldier. When a strange mercenary called Aracnan meets them on the road and demands Isak goes with him to pursue his future, Isak refuses. Aracnan instead goes ahead of them to Tirah, capital city of the Farlan tribe, and informs Lord Bahl, another white-eye, that Isak has been appointed his heir by the Gods.

  Contrary to tradition, Isak has to be summoned to Tirah Palace rather than brought by Aracnan, but even then he demurs. Then the drunken hostility of his father and the other wagon-train drivers spills into outright violence and Isak, trying to escape, finds himself at the palace, leaving behind a dead man. Isak himself is barely standing, but much to his own surprise he is taken in and fed while Lord Bahl attends to matters of state. Bahl’s Chief Steward, Lesarl, tells him the Gods’ traditional gifts to the Chosen are not to be handed over immediately to Isak; they have been stored away even from Lord Bahl, for the lure of their power is so great. The gifts are Siulents and Eolis, the armour and sword of Aryn Bwr, the last and greatest of the Elven kings, considered to be the finest and most powerful mortal-made weapons ever created.

  Lesarl also mentions the journal of Cordein Malich, a necromancer who almost sparked a civil war within the Farlan. Lord Bahl had ordered the journal to be deciphered, despite its heretical nature, because of his own interest in a powerful artefact mentioned within: a Crystal Skull, also created by Aryn Bwr.

  When Isak first meets Lord Bahl he collapses, overwhelmed by the memory of a recurring dream in which Bahl, a man he’s never met, is killed fighting an unknown knight on a distant island. When he wakes he is told of his new position, as Chosen, the heir to Lord Bahl. That night Isak dreams of their patron God, Nartis, who begins to make his newest servant even bigger and stronger than a normal man - but once again things don’t go exactly as they should. Instead, Isak awakes to find a mysterious light has burned the Elven rune Xeliath -which means ‘heart’ - onto his chest.

  Isak is sent by Lord Bahl to begin his weapons training, but his white-eye temper flares and a practice duel with a nobleman, Dirass Certinse, turns nasty when Certinse, against all reason, tries to kill Isak. Isak reacts the only way a white-eye can: he kills the man, a member of the tribe’s most powerful family, and one heavily implicated in the Malich rebellion. Lord Bahl is more concerned about why nothing is going as expected in Isak’s life, and his fear increases when Isak receives another gift, this time from the Goddess Fate: his crest, a crowned dragon, is revealed to have been prepared long before Isak was even Chosen. And death continues to follow Isak, as he inexplicably kills a high priest of the God of Magic, who was investigating why Isak appears unable to use his immense latent magical power.

  During this time, Isak becomes close friends with his maid, Tila.

  To the south-east, Kastan Styrax, the lord of the Menin tribe, has travelled in secret to attack the city of Raland and capture the Crystal Skull Lord Bahl was seeking - but Bahl has no time to do anything about this, for an Elven army is invading Farlan lands. Bahl sends an army under Isak’s command to meet the threat, at last giving Isak his weapons and introducing him to the dragon that watches over them, Genedel. The army marches off, gathering troops and noblemen along the way including the popular hero Count Vesna, with whom he swiftly becomes friends, and, less happily, Duke Certinse, the new head of the rebellious Certinse family.

  Isak narrowly avoids assassination and fares well in the fight, thanks to his burgeoning strength, until he loses himself in his newly found magic, going beserk on the field before passing out. It is only Bahl’s sudden arrival with Genedel that wins the battle for the Farlan. Isak awakes a few days later to discover that the Elven army were seeking Siulents and Eolis, his own God-gifted weapons, to fulfil a prophecy heralding Aryn Bwr’s return.

  To the south, Chalat, the lord of the desert-dwelling Chetse tribe, is deposed by his Chosen heir who has been possessed by a daemon. Chalat heads north with a foreigner called Mihn, hoping to ask Lord Bahl for help. Far to the north-east, the mercenary Aracnan visits an old acquaintance, the immortal vampire Koezh Vukotic, to share his fears that Isak is des
tined to be the Saviour spoken of in prophecy. The pair travel west to ensure they will have a hand in unfolding events.

  Isak returns to Tirah, where he is reunited with his friend Carel, now commander of his personal guard, shortly before being sent west to Narkang by Lord Bahl, both to forge an alliance with its ruler King Emin and to distance him from future attempts on his life by the defeated Elves. He is accompanied by Mihn, Tila, Count Vesna and Carel, and a strange wanderer called Morghien he meets on the way. Morghien claims to have been sent by a white-eye girl called Xeliath to prepare Isak for a threat in his future.

  Xeliath herself starts to visit Isak in his dreams, for she is bound up in the same prophecies as Isak. She was Chosen by her patron Goddess, told she was destined to be Isak’s queen, and given a Crystal Skull as a gift, but when her destiny was bound to Isak’s, the tangled mess of prophecy around him nearly broke her mind, damaging her both physically and mentally. Isak also begins to realise that his fears of something watching him from the shadows might be more than an overactive imagination.

  In the south, Kastan Styrax is overseeing preparations to invade Chetse lands now that Chalat has fled, while he himself travels to await Lord Bahl, whom he has lured away from his army. When he talks to the daemon he has made a bargain with to realise his plans of conquest, he receives a warning that he himself may be under threat.

  Reaching Narkang, Isak learns King Emin has unearthed a planned coup in his city. While stopping the revolution, Isak and his friends discover that the vampire Zhia Vukotic, sister of Koezh, was impersonating a conspirator in order to steal a Crystal Skull from the leaders. In a desperate move, Isak defends King Emin’s palace, but during the first stage of the battle Isak senses the death of Lord Bahl and feels the hand of Nartis descend upon him as the new Lord of the Farlan. He breaks the palace siege by shattering the enemy army with lightning, earning him the nickname Isak Stormcaller. His left arm is turned completely white, an after-effect of the spell.

  After the battle, Isak is approached by a religious order of knights who ask that he go to a place called Llehden. The knights give him Aryn Bwr’s own Crystal Skulls, unwittingly releasing the ancient king’s spirit. Thanks to advice from the mysterious Morghien, Isak survives the assault and breaks that particular prophecy, leaving Aryn Bwr a prisoner in Isak’s mind - and his own future uncertain.

  PROLOGUE: PART ONE

  A lined face, pale against the deep shadow of the archway, looked out into the street. The ground before him was empty of people, but movement was everywhere as the deluge that was worsening by the minute turned the packed earth to spattering mud. The old man had a heavy woollen scarf wrapped over his head and tied tight under his chin so the now-sodden material framed his face. Anxiety filled his eyes as he saw only the plummeting rain churning the ground, running in rivers off the rooftops and overflowing the gutters in the middle of the street. The black feather tattoos that marked the right side of his face looked crumpled; over the decades the once-crisp lines had faded. The tumult of the rain slashing down filled the air as the old monk trembled in the darkness. He felt it crowding him, driving him back into the shadows.

  ‘Where are you, Mayel?’ His voice was nothing more than a shivering whisper, yet almost as he spoke a figure turned the corner and headed towards him, arms held uselessly over his head against the storm.

  Mayel made straight for the archway, head hunched low, and splashed into the dark recesses of the monument that sheltered the old man. He shook himself violently, like a dog, scattering water like a fountain. ‘Abbot Doren,’ he said urgently, ‘I found him. He’s waiting for us at an inn, just a few streets east of here.’ There was a flicker of triumph in his eyes that saddened the abbot. Mayel was young enough to think this was a grand adventure; that a murderer was pursuing them seemed not to have filtered through into the novice’s mind.

  ‘I have warned you,’ the old man said, ‘this is not a game: even a hint of my name could mean our deaths.’

  ‘But there’s no one out here!’ he protested, eyes wide in dismay. The abbot could see Mayel had not been expecting another scolding; the youth deserved praise, he knew that, but their safety was not something they could take any chances with. Their mission was too vital for that.

  ‘Still you must be careful; you can never be sure who is around. But you’ve done well. Let’s find ourselves somewhere warm and get a hot meal and a bed for the night. We’ll find a more permanent place in the morning.’

  ‘I think my cousin will be able to help with that,’ Mayel said, trying to sound cheerful again, despite the storm. ‘He rents rooms to workmen, so I’m sure he’d give me a good price -and watch out for us.’ He started shivering, his saturated clothes clammy against his skin. Glancing nervously out from under the archway he saw the sky was an angry grey. It felt more like autumn than an early summer’s evening, as though their pursuer swept away the joy and warmth of the season as he closed on them.

  ‘We’ll need a house, somewhere with a cellar,’ said the abbot. ‘I have work to do; I’ll need complete privacy. It can’t wait any longer.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Mayel stared at the old man, wondering what could possibly be so important when they were fleeing for their lives.

  ‘If Prior Corci does find out where we are, I need to be ready for him -and I need your help, not just to carry the books, but to protect me from the rest of this city.’

  ‘Do we really need all these books with us?’ There was understandable irritation in Mayel’s voice: he had been lugging around the six thick volumes for two weeks now.

  ‘You know what they are, boy. Our order’s texts are sacred. That traitor may have made me flee the monastery, but he will never force me to give up the traditions that he himself has tried to destroy. The books must not leave the presence of the abbot - that is one of the very first lessons we learn.’

  ‘Of course I know that,’ Mayel said, ‘but are you still abbot if you flee the island?’

  The old man shuddered and Mayel continued hurriedly, ‘I mean, surely the sacred texts are there for the community, to look to for guidance. Should they not stay on the island?’

  ‘This current situation is more complex than that,’ snapped the old man. ‘You are a novice; don’t presume you are in possession of all the facts. Now, enough of your chatter. Show me to this inn where your cousin is.’

  Mayel opened his mouth to argue, then remembered who he was talking to and clamped it shut again. He pointed down the street, and Abbot Doren pushed past and began to make his splashing way through the puddles. His bag, which held his few possessions -two more books and a strange, pearl-inlaid box that Mayel had never seen until the night they fled - was held tight to his chest. The abbot hunched over low, his eyes on the ground, trying to protect the bag from the rain.

  ‘You don’t fool me, old man,’ Mayel muttered. The wail of the weather drowned his words, but if the abbot had turned round, he would have seen a coldly calculating look that had no place on the face of a novice. ‘There’s something in that box that Jackdaw wants. He killed Brother Edin for more than madness. The prior wouldn’t be following us for just a few dirty old books, so why won’t you tell me what’s in that box? It’s got to be worth something if Jackdaw wants it so badly -enough to buy my way into my cousin’s gang. If we do survive this, you’ll be carrying these bloody books back to the island yourself, old man.’

  He scowled at the abbot’s back, then hurried to catch him up, at the last moment swinging his own bag around to his chest to shelter it somewhat.

  From the upper reaches of the monument where the abbot had been sheltering a soft voice spoke over the sound of the rain. ‘He has the Skull with him, I can feel it.’

  ‘We must sacrifice that for the greater prize. The old man is not as frail as he seems, nor as unprotected. Be content that he has done as we wanted. Now the next act of our play can begin.’

  ‘But I could kill him now.’ The speaker’s deeply-set eyes, hooded by
thick brows, glittered avariciously. He ignored the rain soaking his thick black hair and running down over the tattooed feathers on his cheek and neck as he glared down the street, but the abbot had already turned the corner.

  ‘His God would not let you,’ said his companion. ‘Renouncing any God as you have is not done lightly, and Vellern would stop you from harming one who is first among his worshippers. Perhaps the Lord of the Birds would take the opportunity to extract a measure of revenge too.’ The second man wore a green minstrel’s hat and tunic and hugged a flute close under his left arm. He looked only a little damp, as though the rain was reluctant to touch him. His soft brown hair was not wet enough to have darkened and his cheeks, as smooth as a young man’s despite the air of age about him, remained dry. A slight smile, both knowing and scornful, curled the edges of his mouth.

  ‘We have others who could,’ growled the dark-haired man. Once known as Prior Corci, now he was Jackdaw, reviled as a traitor and murderer. His new master had called him that the first time they met, no more than six months past, in one of the monastery’s dank, unused cellars. He had thought it a joke, but steadily he’d found the name had spread, even amongst brothers who knew nothing of his intended treachery. Prior Corci was being steadily erased from history, as every week that passed, another man had forgotten about him. Jackdaw knew there was no going back, no escape from the choices he’d made, and only the thought of what else Azaer’s power could achieve stopped him sinking into glum desperation at the loss of his former life.

  Now Jackdaw blinked the rain from his eyes and squinted through the gloom at the empty street. ‘The old man might be strong with the Skull, but an arrow would go right through that withered neck, whether or not he was holding magic. The Hounds would be glad to tear him apart.’