Ian Irvine: Rebellion

LIST OF CHARACTERS

Arkyz Leatherhead: A gigantic, murderous bandit.

Astatin: A witch-woman and healer in Garramide.

Benn: Glynnie’s little brother, aged ten.

Blathy: Leatherhead’s mistress — a bold, vengeful gambler.

Chancellor, the: The leader of Hightspall, a small, twisted, cunning man.

Crebb: A black-bearded thug.

Dibly, Madam: An aged healer.

Errek First-King: The legendary inventor of king-magery, recreated in spirit form by Lyf.

Gauntling, the: A humanoid, winged shifter.

Glynnie: A young maidservant from Palace Ricinus, Benn’s big sister.

Grandys, Axil: A brutal, treacherous man, the first of the Five Heroes and the legendary founder of Hightspall.

Holm: An old, mysterious man, very clever with his hands. Also known as Kroni.

Lirriam: One of the Five Heroes, a cold, buxom temptress.

Lizue: A beautiful prisoner in Fortress Rutherin.

Lyf, King Lyf: The last king of Cythe, recently reincarnated from his ghostly wrythen, and now the king of the Cythonians.

Maloch: Rix’s enchanted sword, which originally belonged to Axil Grandys.

Nuddell: One of Leatherhead’s gang, later Rix’s loyal sergeant.

Porfry: The Keeper of the Records at Garramide; a fanatical Herovian.

Radl: A tall, beautiful Pale slave in Cython. Tali’s enemy since childhood.

Rannilt: A slave girl, aged ten, who has an enigmatic gift for magery. She escaped from Cython with Tali.

Rezire: The curator at Tirnan Twil.

Rixium (Rix): Formerly heir to the vast estates of House Ricinus. Also known as Deadhand.

Rochlis: Lyf’s greatest general. A man with a conscience.

Rufuss: One of the Five Heroes, a tall, gaunt man whose only pleasure is denial.

Sullen Man, the: A cold-eyed prisoner in Fortress Rutherin.

Swelt: The castellan of Garramide, a greedy, corpulent man.

Syrten: One of the Five Heroes, a massive, golem-like man.

Tali: A Pale slave, the first to ever escape from Cython.

Tobry: Rix’s closest friend, who became a caitsthe to save his friends.

Wil: A blind Cythonian, addicted to sniffing alkoyl. Also known as Mad Wil, Wil the Sump.

Yestin: A local lord who helps Rix in the raid on Jadgery.

Yulia: One of the Five Heroes, a slender, sad-eyed, moral woman.

In the underground city of Cython, a simple youth called WIL reads the forbidden but incomplete iron book, The Consolation of Vengeance . It burns his eyes out, but he also has a foreseeing about the one , a slave girl of the Pale who will grow up to challenge the Cythonians’ legendary leader, King LYF. Wil should have told the matriarchs where to find the one , so they could have her killed, but he lies, and other girls are killed in her place.

Lyf, the creator of the iron book, was murdered two thousand years ago but still exists as a bodiless wrythen bent on two things: restoring his dispossessed people to the land above, and taking revenge on the Hightspallers who killed him and drove his people out.

TALI, an eight-year-old slave girl in Cython, is led, along with her mother IUSIA, on a secret escape route by TINYHEAD, a Cythonian. But Tinyhead betrays them, and in a gloomy cellar Iusia is caught by a masked man and woman. Though Tali has a gift for magery, she is unable to summon it in her mother’s defence — using magery in Cython means instant death and she has been taught to suppress it.

While the terrified child watches from hiding, Iusia’s captors hack something out of her head, killing her, then take her blood. After they have gone, Tali sees a richly dressed boy hiding on the other side of the cellar. He flees and she returns to her slave’s existence, swearing to bring the killers to justice when she grows up.

In a cavern deep in the mountains, Lyf’s wrythen is trying to bring his two-thousand-year-old plan to completion. To do so he has to recover his king-magery, the mighty healing force that was lost when he was murdered by the legendary Five Heroes at the behest of their leader, AXIL GRANDYS. But first, Lyf needs all five ebony pearls, powerful magical artefacts that only form in the heads of rare, female Pale slaves.

Lacking a body, Lyf cannot take the pearls himself, and long ago he forced the sorcerer DEROE to get each new pearl for him, possessing Deroe to make sure he complied. To escape the agony of possession, Deroe employed LORD and LADY RICINUS to take the second, third and fourth pearls for him, hoping thereby to drive Lyf out and kill him. For this service, Deroe made House Ricinus fabulously wealthy.

Now Lyf forms a long-term plan to get the fifth pearl — the master pearl — by compelling the Ricinus’s son and heir, RIXIUM (RIX), via the great heatstone in Rix’s room, to take the master pearl once the host slave girl comes of age.

Tali turns eighteen, discovers that three more of her direct female ancestors were also murdered at a young age, and knows that the killers will soon be hunting her. She has to escape Cython but does not know how — the Pale have been enslaved for a thousand years and in that time none have ever escaped. At the same time she begins to have terrible headaches, as though something is grinding against the inside of her skull. The master pearl is waking (though she does not know they exist).

The pain accentuates Tali’s rebellious streak, but her attack on a vicious guard results in the execution of her only friend, MIA, by their overseer, BANJ. Stricken with guilt, Tali swears that one day she will save her enslaved people. Then she realises that Tinyhead is hunting her.

Tali also discovers that the Cythonians, who are masters of alchymie and have invented many alchymical weapons, are preparing to go to war on Hightspall, the land above, where Tali’s ancestors came from. Tali feels sure that Hightspall is unprepared; she has to warn her country.

With the aid of a ten-year-old slave girl, RANNILT, who has an unfathomable gift for magery, and MIMOY, a foul-mouthed old woman who turns out to be Tali’s ancestor, she escapes, beating Tinyhead and killing Banj with an uncontrollable burst of magery. For that crime, if the Cythonians catch her, she will suffer the most terrible death they can devise. Mimoy dies, but Tali and Rannilt get away and Tali sets off across Hightspall to try and find clues to the killers’ identities.

In Palace Ricinus, Rix is about to come of age. Soon he will inherit one of the greatest fortunes in Hightspall. He’s a trained warrior as well as a gifted artist, though some of his paintings are disturbingly divinatory. But Rix is troubled by nightmares about doom and destruction, the fall of his house, and his role in a future, terrible murder. He is supposed to be completing his father’s portrait for Lord Ricinus’s Honouring, which Rix’s social-climbing mother, Lady Ricinus, plans to use to raise House Ricinus to the First Circle, the highest families of all.