Dark is the Moon.

Ian Irvine.

PUPPETS OF THE.

TWISTED MIRROR.

Karan of Gothryme: To save her people, her land, and her lover, she will have to sacrifice the entire world ...

Llian of the Zain: Born cursed to serve the Charon, he now must use his knowledge to overcome his very nature ...

Yalhara of the Charon: The Demon Queen warped the Twisted Mirror to escape Santhenar and the Forbidding, but she may have left her darkest secrets behind ...

Maigraith: She has the strength to lead armies against inhuman foes, yet she cannot free herself from the one person who would destroy her ...

Shand: He has spent an eon burying his past but if he does not reveal the truth now, Santhenar may be doomed ...

Faelamor of the Faellem: The Lady of Illusions plans to lead her people back to their homeworld of Tallallame, even if escape means sacrificing all other worlds to The Void ...

"A great find! Irvine writes beautifully ... refreshing, complicated, and compelling."

-Kate Elliott, author of King's Dragon.

I would like to thank Simon Irvine for the truly glorious cover concept artwork.

"You are wrong if you think fortune haschanged toward you.

Inconstancy is my very essence."

BOETHIUS, THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY.

PART OF THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE OF SANTHENAR.

MELDORIN ISLAND.

NORTH-EASTERN MELDORIN.

THE DRY SEA.

SYNOPSIS OF.

THE VIEW FROM THE MIRROR.

The View from the Mirror is a tale of the Three Worlds, Aachan, Tallallame and Santhenar, and of the four human species that inhabit them: Aachim, Charon, Faellem and old human. The setting is Santhenar, a world where wizardry-the Secret Art-is difficult, and doesn't always work, and every using comes at a price-aftersickness.

Long ago a whole race was betrayed and cast into the void between the worlds, a Darwinian place where life is more desperate, more brutal, more fleeting than anywhere. In the void none but the fittest survive, and only by remaking themselves constantly. A million of that race died in the first few weeks.

The terrible centuries ground on. The exiles were transformed into a new human species, but still they could not survive the void. Reduced to a handful, they hung over the abyss of extinction. Then one day a chance came, an opening to another world-Aachan!

Giving themselves a new name, Charon, after a frigid moonlet at the furthest extremity of the void, they took Aachan from the Aachim. The Hundred, as the remaining Charon became known, dared allow nothing to stand before the survival of their species.

But they did not flourish on Aachan, so one of the Hundred, Rulke, commissioned the golden flute, an instrument that could open the Way between the Worlds. Before it could be used, Shuthdar, the old human who made it, stole the flute and fled with it to Santhenar. Unfortunately for Rulke, Shuthdar blundered. He opened all the paths between the worlds, and the four species scrambled to get the flute for themselves. Rather than be taken Shuthdar destroyed it, bringing down the Forbidding that sealed Santhenar off completely. Now the fate of the Three Worlds is bound up with those marooned on Santhenar. They have never ceased to search for a way home, but none has ever been found.

Volume 1.

A SHADOW ON THE GLASS.

Llian, a brilliant young chronicler at the College of the Histories, presents a new version of an ancient Great Tale, the Tale of the Forbidding, at his graduation telling, to unprecedented acclaim. But Wistan, the master of the College, realizes that Llian has uncovered a deadly mystery-evidence that a crippled girl was murdered at the time the golden flute was destroyed. The crime must have occurred to conceal a greater one, and even now such knowledge could be deadly, both for him and for the College.

Llian is also Zain, an outcast race despised for collaborating with the Charon in olden times. Wistan persecutes Llian to make him retract the tale, but Llian secretly keeps on with his research. He knows that it could be the key to a brilliant story-the first new Great Tale for hundreds of years-and if he were the one to write it, he would stand shoulder to shoulder with the greatest chroniclers of all time.

Karan, a young woman who is a sensitive, was at the graduation telling when Llian told his famous tale. She loves the Histories and is captivated by the tale and the teller. Karan returns to Gothryme, her drought-stricken and impoverished home, but soon afterwards Maigraith appears. Karan owes an obligation to Maigraith, the powerful but troubled lieutenant of Faelamor, and Maigraith insists that she repay it by helping to steal an ancient relic for her liege. Faelamor is the age-old leader of the Faellem, exiled on Santhenar by the Forbidding. Desperate to take her people back to her own world, she believes that the relic may hold the key.

Yggur the sorcerer now holds the relic in Fiz Gorgo. Karan and Maigraith steal into his fortress, but Karan is shocked to learn that the relic is the Mirror of Aachan, stolen from the Aachim a thousand years ago. Being part-Aachim herself, she knows that the Aachim have never stopped searching for it. She must betray her father's people or refuse her debt to Maigraith-dishonor either way. And Karan has a dangerous heritage: part Aachim, part old human, she is a blending. Blendings, though prone to madness, can have unusual talents, as she has. They are also at risk: sometimes hunted to enslave the talent, as often to destroy it.

Maigraith, captivated by something she sees on the Mirror, is surprised by Yggur. Finally she is overcome but Karan flees with the Mirror into the flooded labyrinth below the fortress, pursued by Yggur's dreadful Whelm guards. Karan eventually escapes but is hunted for weeks through swamp and forest and mountains, the Whelm tracking her through her nightmares. In a twist of fate, Karan saves the life of one of them, Idlis the healer. She heads toward Chanthed, a place of haunting memories because of Llian's wonderful tale. Pursued by the Whelm and their dogs, she reaches out to him in her dreams.

Mendark, a mancer and Yggur's bitter enemy, hears that the Mirror has been stolen and sends his lieutenants to find it. Learning from Tallia that Karan is heading for Chanthed he asks Wistan to find her. Wistan, who would do anything to get rid of Llian, orders him to find Karan and take her to Mendark's city, Thurkad.

At the village of Tullin, Llian dreams that Karan is calling for help and wakes to find two Whelm at his throat, trying to trace her sending. He is rescued by Shand, an old man who works at the inn but is more than he seems. Llian heads out into the snow to find Karan. Eventually he does, after many perils. Full of mixed feelings about Llian, Karan flees with him into the high mountains. After a number of narrow escapes they lose their pursuers, but Llian gets mountain sickness and Karan has no choice but to head for Shazmak, a secret city of the Aachim, where she grew up.

After they arrive Karan learns that Tensor is on his way to Shazmak. She knows she can never keep the Mirror secret from him. Unknown to her, Tensor already knows she has it. Soon Karan is brought to trial, for the Mirror cannot be found. It is impossible to lie to the Syndics, but Karan, in a desperate expedient, plants a false dream in Llian's mind, and through a link with him, reads it back to the Syndics at her trial. Because Llian believes it to be truth, it is truth, and despite Tensor's protests she is freed. Karan and Llian escape from Shazmak, hotly pursued by the Aachim. Stealing a boat, they flee down a wild river.

In Yggur's stronghold, Maigraith is tormented by the Whelm, who have an instinctive hatred of her. Later, under Yggur's relentless interrogation, she gives away Karan's destination, the city of Sith. Yggur needs the Mirror desperately, for his coming war. However as the weeks pass a bond grows between them, Maigraith finding in the tormented Yggur the complement to her own troubled self.

Faelamor uses her mastery of illusion to snatch Maigraith out of Fiz Gorgo but is furious when she learns that Karan, whom she hates, has escaped with the Mirror. Inwardly Faelamor despairs because the Mirror, which she has sought for so long, has eluded her again. Once before she almost had it, but Yalkara the Charon, her greatest enemy, defeated her. Yalkara used the Mirror to find a warp in the Forbidding, the only person ever to escape from Santhenar. Now Faelamor's own world, Tallallame, cries out for aid and she is desperate to return.

Faelamor and Maigraith set off to find Karan. Maigraith falls back under Faelamor's domination. Yggur, finding Maigraith gone, marches to war on the east.

Karan and Llian flee through mountains and caverns, hotly pursued by Tensor and his Aachim. At a forest camp she has a terrible nightmare and wakes to find that the Whelm have tracked her down again. This time she is helpless for they have learned how to control her. Desperate, Karan makes a link to Maigraith, now not far away. Unfortunately the link is captured by a terrifying presence, who uses it to speak directly to the Whelm, reminding them that they are really Ghashad, ancient enemies of the Aachim. Llian escapes but Karan is captured.

Not long after, Faelamor is taken by Tensor and sent to Shazmak, where to her horror she learns about Karan's Aachim heritage. Faelamor already suspects that Karan has Faellem ancestry as well. If so, she is triune: one with the blood of three worlds. A terrifying prospect-no one can tell what unpredictable talents a triune might have. Faelamor decides that the risk to her plans is too great-Karan must die. Faelamor escapes but the Ghashad find a way into Shazmak.

Clumsy Llian somehow rescues Karan, hires a boat and Pender takes them down the river to Sith. There they find Yggur's armies just across the river. The city cannot stand against him. Nor is Faelamor there to take the Mirror. Karan collapses, unable to drive herself any further. There is nowhere to go but to Mendark. Karan is afraid of him too.

They reach Thurkad not far ahead of the war to find that Mendark has been overthrown by Thyllan. A street urchin, Lilis, guides Llian to Mendark's refuge. Mendark and Tallia offer to take Karan in but, angered by Mendark's imperious manner, she refuses him. Shortly, Thyllan captures Karan and the Mirror.

As all the powers gather in Thurkad, Mendark realizes that the only way to recover the Mirror is to call a Great Conclave, which Thyllan must obey. As the Conclave ends, news comes that the army is defeated and Yggur at the gates of the city. Faelamor shatters Tensor by revealing that the Whelm are actually his ancient enemies, Ghashad, one-time servants of Rulke, who have taken Shazmak and slaughtered the Aachim there. She lies, blaming Karan for this treachery.

Karan is sentenced to death, while the Mirror is given to Thyllan to use in the defense of Thurkad. Seizing the moment, Faelamor calls forth Maigraith, and Tensor knows by her eyes that she is descended from the hated Charon. He breaks and uses a forbidden potency, or mind-blasting spell, that lays the whole Conclave low. Only Llian the Zain is unaffected. Thinking Karan dead, in grief and fury he attacks Tensor but is easily captured. Tensor sees a use for someone who is immune to the potency. He flees with Llian and the Mirror.

Volume 2.

THE TOWER ON THE RIFT.

Mendark and Tallia wake in the ruins of the Conclave. Tensor and Llian have disappeared, and Karan too. Mendark takes over the hopeless defense of the city but Thurkad soon falls. He flees with his little company: a few guards, Tallia and Lilis, then finds that his boat has been captured. They are forced to take refuge with the Hlune, a strange subculture that has made the vast, ancient wharf city of Thurkad their own. Tallia eventually hires Pender's boat and after a series of pursuits, escapes and mishaps they reach Zile, an old, declining city famous for its Great Library. The librarian, Nadiril, is a capricious old man who has the knowledge of the world at his fingertips. Nadiril takes Lilis as his apprentice but cannot suggest where Tensor may have taken refuge.

Tensor drags Llian through bloody war to a hideout where a small band of the Aachim wait for him, including Malien, his one-time consort. Tensor tells the terrible news about the destruction of Shazmak and the climax of the Conclave, but when he admits that he violated the Conclave with a forbidden potency the Aachim are outraged at his dishonor.

In the uproar Llian tries to get away but is speared in the side. The Aachim flee, taking Llian with them. They are hunted for weeks by Yggur's Whelm. They flee north, escaping many traps, and some among them would kill Llian, the treacherous Zain as they see him, but Tensor has a purpose for him. Llian, grieving for the loss of Karan and plagued by dreams of death and doom, is slow to recover. He often talks to Malien, who is disturbed by his dreams. Finally they are joined by other Aachim, refugees from ruined Shazmak. Their tales drive Tensor into a frenzy of hate and bitterness.

Maigraith and Faelamor are also laid low by Tensor's potency. Maigraith recovers, but Faelamor has lost her powers and sinks into despair. Thurkad is now controlled by Yggur and there is no way of escape. Maigraith has only one recourse-she goes to Yggur. Their meeting is tense, for neither has been able to forget the other and each is afraid of rejection. However, in time they become lovers.

Karan wakes from pain, nightmares and madness to find herself in a dingy room with a stranger. At first she barely knows who she is, and can remember only fragments of the past weeks. The stranger turns out to be Shand, who rescued her from the Conclave. She does not know why.

Karan is devastated to find that Llian has disappeared. As Thurkad capitulates, Shand leaves her in the wharf city, a place that she has a horror of, while he goes to find help. She is put to work at a disgusting and painful job-cleaning jellyfish and packing them in barrels. Finally Shand returns and they go across the sea.

Shand reveals that he knew Karan's father long ago, which is why he rescued her. They travel on, having adventures alternately comical, palpitating and gruesome, and eventually come to a cliff as tall as a mountain, below which is a vast emptiness, the Dry Sea, that was once the magnificent Sea of Perion.

Karan senses that Llian is out there somewhere. Throughout the salt plains there are tall mountains, once islands in the sea, and the largest of them, Katazza, was the seat of the fabulous empire of Kandor, one of the three Charon who came to Santhenar for the flute. The empire was destroyed when the sea dried up, but the fortress of Katazza remains.

Karan senses that Llian has been taken there. Shand agrees to accompany her, but it is not a journey to be taken lightly. They set out across the salt, a terrible journey, pursued by bounty hunters and attacked by venomous desert creatures. There is never enough water and at the end, deadly volcanic country to cross before they get to Katazza. There they are stuck, too weak to tackle the great cliffs.

Much earlier, the Aachim also go down onto the Dry Sea. They cross the sea quickly and climb the cliffs and mountains of Katazza to reach Kandor's fortress. Tensor begins his great project, to find within the Mirror the way of making gates from one place to another. He plans to open the Night-land, Rulke's prison of a thousand years, and have his revenge.

For a long time Tensor makes no progress, the memories of the Mirror being locked, then one day finds a way in. Only when he begins to make his gate do the Aachim realize what his real plan is. They try to stop him but Tensor seizes Llian, locks the Aachim out of the tower and continues with his work. Soon the gate is ready for its first test.

Back in Zile, Tallia has worked out what Tensor's destination must be. Mendark, his guard Osseion, and Tallia set off. After crossing the Dry Sea, to their astonishment they come across recent tracks at the base of Katazza. After a scuffle in the dark they realize that they have found Karan and Shand. Together they climb the cliffs and at the top are met by a deputation of the Aachim.

Mendark agrees to help them against Tensor. Karan is interested in only one thing, that Llian is here, and races off to find him. Unfortunately they can only communicate through a slit in the wall.

Tensor tests his gate but it goes astray, for he has used the Mirror to see the destination. It was often called the Twisted Mirror-a deceitful, treacherous thing. Karan, afraid for Llian, climbs the tower, a terrifying ordeal that she barely survives. Soon after that, Tensor seizes Llian, who is immune to the potency, as a defense against Rulke. Then he opens the gate.

In Thurkad, Faelamor recovers her powers and warns Yggur that Tensor has made a gate, risking their ruin. Yggur manages to draw the gate away from the Nightland to Thurkad, though when it opens he dares not enter. Faelamor curses him for a coward and a fool and leaps into the gate. Later Yggur follows her, leaving Maigraith behind.

In Katazza, Tensor expects Rulke to come through the gate but Faelamor appears instead. She confuses him with illusion, seizes the Mirror and hides. Yggur appears. Shortly after, the gate begins working of its own accord. Tensor seizes Llian, preparing to blast his enemy, Rulke. Karan knows Llian won't survive the confrontation. She hurls a block of rubble in Tensor's face and Llian gets away. Then Rulke leaps out of the gate, terrible in his power and majesty, and the potency fizzles into nothing.

Rulke attacks his enemies one by one. First Yggur, then Tensor, whom he cripples. Faelamor, having found what she wanted in the Mirror, flees back through the gate. The Aachim are broken; Mendark is afraid to act by himself. Finally Rulke turns to Karan and realizes that she is the one whose link he used to wake the Ghashad. He needs her for his own project. He advances on Karan. With no other resort, she flings herself through the gate, dragging Llian after her.

Mendark now sees an opportunity, reaches into Yggur's mind and frees him from Rulke's possession of long ago. The tide begins to turn; the allies realize that together they can defeat Rulke, if they have the courage. They attack. Rulke flees to the top of the tower. There they corner him and hurl him out, but he curses them with a foretelling-that when the dark side of the moon is full in hythe (mid-winter's day) he will return and Santh will be his.

Shand replies with a riddle, 'Fear the thrice born, but beware the thrice betrayed', then Rulke vanishes. Finally Shand takes the Mirror, 'in memory of the one whose birthright it was', though no one knows what he means.

PART ONE.

THE STORM.

An untuned horn moaned the midnight hour. Maigraith tossed in her steamy bed, her skin on fire with prickly heat. The humid air sweated beads of moisture onto every surface. Two sweltering days had passed, two hot and sticky Thurkad nights since Faelamor had gone through the gate, disguised as Vartila, and one night since Yggur followed her. Neither had returned.

The storm began with a sudden shrieking gust of wind that rattled the windows of Yggur's fortress, an ancient structure whose black stonework brooded over the skyline of the city. The wind withdrew; for a moment there was silence. Without warning a flash of white lightning lit up Maigraith's room as stark and bright as midday. A shattering roar of thunder followed. The calm that sighed into the sound vacuum was eerie.

Leaping out of bed Maigraith ran to a window. A storm was approaching the like of which she had never seen. Bolt after bolt of lightning jagged down, the flashes moving slowly along the hills from the west end to the east. Thunder beat against the great building-measured beats. See what is coming to Thurkad, the pulses said to her. Fear it!

No longer could she bear her confining room with its stifling heat and prison-cell windows. The storm called her out. Maigraith flung on a gown, donned glasses that concealed the color of her eyes and ran up the stairs to the tower at the eastern end of the fortress. There, protected by a dome standing on six squat columns of soot-stained stone, she leaned on the marble rail and peered out.

A fitful moon shone through tormented clouds that belched up into towers of black and cream, illuminated from within by lightning that lit up the whole of the city. The billowing stacks were just as quickly rent apart again. Clouds racing nowhere, everywhere! Her scalp began to crawl. The storm was swirling toward one place: the center of Thurkad, Yggur's fortress, the tower in which she stood.

The wind flung itself at the tower from the north, then the east, then the south, one minute dying to a whisper so that the humidity choked her, the next screaming at her from the opposite direction. Maigraith had to twine her fingers in the twisted iron below the rail to avoid being blown out into the night. Roof slates were whirled across the sky like papers before the wind. Chimneys began to topple all around, their long flat bricks streaming onto the close-packed roofs. Now whole roofs were torn up, slates, battens and all, and driven across the city flapping like paper birds. Like paper birds they were crumpled by the gale and tossed into the harbor.

Clouds shut out the moon. It grew calm. An uncanny dark descended, broken every few seconds by a diffuse incandescence, the internal lightning revealing each thunderhead's milky intestines. But the thunder was muffled now, hiding something.

A scrap of paper spiraled up toward the top of the dome, though there was no wind. Maigraith could feel her hair being drawn up too, glowing and crackling.

From the angry clouds above came a pulse of light, so close that she could feel the heat. Now a double pulse, blinding, blending into a third, the city cast in black and white as if made of lead and plaster. Lightning arched down all around, making an umbrella of light over the tower. The wind shrieked again, wrenching a copper sheet off the dome. Twisted into a knot, it drifted away out of sight. A massive bolt struck the roof, sending sparks and glowing droplets of copper in all directions. The thunder became a cacophony, a roaring, thundering, smashing brutality. Maigraith was lifted and flung onto the floor, wrenching her knee. She lay there for a long moment, afraid to look.

A hot metal stench blew across her face. Opening her eyes, Maigraith saw a river of molten copper running across the floor, dividing into two streams to surround her. As she sprang up her knee collapsed and she had to hop to safety. A fire was burning in fallen timber on the far side of the space. More than half the leaves of the dome were gone, leaving her vantage open to the blistered sky.

At the top of the stair a crowd of people stood. Even before the lightning flashed she knew that they were Whelm. They had not all broken their oath to Yggur; near half had remained behind when the others rebelled and, as Ghashad, turned Shazmak into bloody ruin. Why did they stay faithful to a master that they held in contempt? She did not know. Why had Yggur kept them after the rest had turned their coats? She had no idea of that either. Now they went down on their knees and their thin arms reached out and up. But to what?