Angus Wells - Lords of the Sky

But that is yet to come.

First, I must meet with the Pale Friend.

Does she permit it, I’ll saddle Deburah one last time and fly her to that valley where the bones are, and does the Pale Friend meet me there, I’ll take her hand and go with her. That shall be a great journey, no?

AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Lords of the Sky is not entirely my own work.

Originally, the book was a lot more words (wordier?), but my editor got to work and suggested where I might cut the manuscript, to tighten it up and keep the narrative flowing without excess verbiage. No less, she pointed out where the psychology of my characters went astray and how to bring them back in line. I believe she made the book better, and for that I owe her.

So-thank you, Janna E. Silverstein; long may you edit.

ANGUS WELLS

Nottingham, 1993.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Angus Wells was born in a small village in Kent, England. He has worked as a publicist and as a science fiction and fantasy editor. He now writes full-time, and is the author of The Books of the Kingdoms

(Wrath of Ashar, The Usurper, The Way Beneath)

and The Godwars

(Forbidden Magic, Dark Magic, Wild Magic), Lords of the Sky,

his first stand-alone novel, debuted in trade paperback in October of 1994, and was followed by the two-book Exiles Saga:

Exile’s Children

and

Exile’s Challenge.

He lives in Nottingham with his two dogs, Elmore and Sam.

The Matawaye may have found a new land, one of peace and beauty. The dreaded Breakers may be worlds away, abandoned in Ket-Ta-Witko. Chakthi and his followers may have been exiled from Ket-Ta-Thanne. Davyd, Flysse, and Arcole may have found refuge behind the mountains.

But it is all very far from over….

Don’t miss the riveting conclusion

to

The Exiles Saga:

EXILE’S CHALLENGE

1: Another Time,

Another Place

THE savage roaring of the Breakers’ weirdling beasts echoed like frustrated thunder off the hills surrounding the Meeting Ground. Through that chorus, and rising higher-pitched above it, the dread riders sang their own blighted hymn, an ululation of thwarted bloodlust. From the trees surrounding the great expanse of meadow, birds frightened by the horrid threnody took flight, adding their own alarm-songs to the cacophony, and in the farther hills wolves howled, and coyotes. The night filled up with noise, rang in horrid lamentation, as the Breakers vented their disappointment on the bodies of the slain, mutilating the corpses of fallen warriors, or gifting them to their mounts like playthings to huge and vicious kittens.

It seemed, in that time the Breakers came down onto the grass of the Meeting Ground and found the People gone, that in all Ket-Ta-Witko only the Maker’s holy mountain and the full moon of the Turning Year stood serene, allied in their defiance of the invaders. The moon silvered the grass-where it was not stained dark with blood-and the holy mountain towered white and dispassionate over all. Where the great arch of light had stood, the Maker-given gateway through which the last of the People had escaped, there was now only trampled ground. Of the people, and their horses and their dogs and their lodges, of the Grannach and all their possessions, nothing remained: they had gone away to another place, another time. Morrhyn’s promise was fulfilled.

And the Breakers shrieked in dismay and frustration, their own promise of conquest and destruction denied them, their lust beaten like floodwater washed against immutable stone. Some, maddened by defeat, struck at one another; some turned their blades on themselves, drawing the blood they craved from their own bodies. They were not accustomed to defeat, these reivers of worlds; their habit was annihilation unthinking, massacre, and the overturning of everything stable; anything that was not them.

Then a clarion sounded, cutting like a knife through the tumult, and even before the echoes came back from the hills, silence fell. Riders fought their strange mounts to stillness; blades were sheathed, and the self-mutilators wiped at their wounds and sat their beasts and waited.

From the northern perimeter, where the Commacht had held the cliffs and the fighting had been fiercest, a figure armored magnificently in gold rode down. Curved spikes thrust like defiant talons from the armor, the gauntlets ended in vicious claws, and sharp-edged wings extended batlike from the helmet that concealed the rider’s face. A great sword hung on chains from the waist, its bloodred scabbard rattling against the skulls that decorated the saddle, which in turn sat upon a mount no human creature had ever ridden. It was unlike the other Breakers’ beasts, for it wore the delineaments of a horse, only larger, and with a hide of midnight blue. Horns sprouted from its red-eyed skull and about its flaring nostrils, and its snarling mouth exposed fangs no mortal horse had ever owned. Its muscular form was somewhat disguised by the plates-gold, like its rider’s armor-that decorated the chest and neck and cruppers, and as its clawed hooves pranced across the grass, they seemed to leave imprints of flame that matched the exhalations of its breath. It was not so large as the lion-mounts, but as it drew near they pawed the ravaged ground and bowed their heads and mewled acknowledgment of this beast’s superiority.

Nor less their riders of the golden-armored figure. They parted silently, shaping a pathway down which the two came as if in bitter triumph to where the arch of light had stood. None spoke as the rider halted the obscene, horned horse and the helmeted head bowed in slow contemplation of the ground, all tracked and trampled on one side and on the other nothing, save where Breakers had been.

The helmet rose, turning in the direction of the Maker’s Mountain. The same moon that lit the great peak bathed the armor in its bright light, but the golden plates appeared to absorb that radiance and dull it and change it, so that the armor, instead of shining, seemed to throb with a fiery life, as if its wearer stood before a blaze, or the metal ran with blood beneath its surface. It was as if the figure defied all natural laws, defied even the Maker.

Slowly, the wickedly clawed gauntlets lifted to the helmet’s latchings and raised the pot. The rider shook his head, flinging loose a great spill of long, darkly golden hair. It seemed to glow redly, as if fire danced about the handsome face. And was it fire, then it was matched and met by the glow of his eyes, which burned bright and savage as his steed’s, as if blasphemous furnaces burned inside his skull, fueled by the blood of all his slaughtered victims. He cradled the helm against his armored thigh and tugged the horned horse’s reins so that the creature danced and snorted.

“They have denied us our prize.”

His voice was deep, a musical bass that carried over the Meeting Ground almost as if he sang the words. In the hills, the wolves ceased their howling; the coyotes ended their calling; all the birds fell still. It was as if his voice imposed some dreadful and obscene order.

Into that silence he said, “They have escaped us.”

He spun his mount around, clawed hooves scratching up great sprays of dirt, the beast snarling.

“None have escaped us before. None!”

He slowed his mount’s circling, lowered his head a moment, then raised it up to fix the waiting horde with a smoldering gaze that only a few dared meet.

“This is not the way. We are the Breakers, we are the un-makers of worlds. We are the dark side of light, the shadows that haunt men’s dreams when they think of betrayal and dishonour. We are created to punish sin: we destroy. But …” He shook his head and it seemed that tears the color of blood escaped his eyes. “We have failed our duty here. These cringing things escaped us. How could that be?”