Gail Martin - The Sworn

Nearly a year and a half has passed since King Martris Drayke of Margolan won back the throne from Jared the Usurper, and still Margolan is not at peace. Jared’s brief reign was long enough to drive the kingdom to famine and revolt, beggaring its farmers and stirring tensions between its mortal and undead residents, the vayash moru.

Jared seized the throne by killing his father, King Bricen, and the rest of the royal family, save for his half-brother, Martris, the only legitimate challenger. Martris (known as Tris) escaped with the help of three loyal friends: Ban Soterius, the captain of the guards; Harrtuck, one of the king’s guardsmen; and Master Bard Riordan Carroway. Tris and his friends fled to Principality to plan their counterstrike. Along the way, they gained a number of unlikely allies: Jonmarc Vahanian, an outlaw turned smuggler; Carina, a gifted healer; Carina’s brother Cam, a former mercenary; Gabriel, one of the lords of the vayash moru; and Kiara of Isencroft, who was fleeing an arranged marriage with Jared. When the group rescued a young girl, Berry, from the slavers who had captured her, they unexpectedly found King Staden of Principality in their debt.

During the journey, Tris discovered his ability as a powerful summoner, a mage able to intercede among the living, dead, and undead. Summoning magic is rare and dangerous, as its great power easily corrupts many who wield it, including Tris’s grandfather, a mage named Lemuel. Lemuel became possessed by the spirit of the Obsidian King, and Lemuel’s misuse of his summoning magic plunged the Winter Kingdoms into a cataclysmic war in a generation past.

That long-ago war splintered the Flow, one of the great currents of magical energy. Learning to control the Flow and his own wild magic before they could destroy him pushed Tris to the brink of sanity and survival.

The battle for the throne took a harsh toll on all of Margolan, and Tris Drayke paid the price in blood as he honed his skills as fighter and mage in order to go up against Jared and Jared’s dark mage, Foor Arontala. Ban Soterius played a vital role in the rebellion, assembling deserters and refugees into a strike-and-hide force to harry Jared’s troops and stop the massacre of civilians. Tris’s victory nearly cost him his life, and it won him a tattered kingdom with a bankrupt treasury. Although he gained the crown, it became painfully clear that the peace and prosperity of Bricen’s reign would be dangerously elusive.

Tris’s marriage to Princess Kiara of Isencroft is a love match, and Kiara is pregnant with their first child, a son they hope will inherit his father’s magic. Isencroft is a neighboring kingdom to Margolan, and the two kingdoms share a stormy history. The attempt to forestall war a generation ago unwittingly sowed the seeds for strife in a new generation. When Donelan of Isencroft eloped with Princess Viata of Eastmark more than twenty years earlier, Eastmark threatened war. Bricen of Margolan forced peace by creating a betrothal contract between his heir and Donelan’s heir. When Jared murdered Bricen, Kiara scandalized both courts by throwing her allegiance to Tris and helping him unseat Jared the Usurper.

Isencroft’s fortunes have suffered in recent years due to poor harvests and drought, and Kiara’s marriage means that Isencroft and Margolan share a joint crown until a suitable heir for each throne is born. The idea of a shared crown with a kingdom that in times past was an invader has fueled dissension in Isencroft, leading to riots and the rise of the Divisionists, a group that seeks to keep Isencroft free of foreign entanglements.

A Divisionist sympathizer infiltrated the Margolan palace staff and nearly succeeded in killing Kiara and her unborn child. The attack was stopped by Bard Riordan Carroway, a trusted friend and Margolan’s master musician. The wounds Carroway sustained protecting Kiara could cost him his livelihood. Kiara recovered from the attack, but the poisoned blade may have damaged the child she carries.

Jonmarc Vahanian, who was rewarded for his courage with the title of Lord of Dark Haven, returned from war to claim lands that were the traditional sanctuary of the undead vayash moru and shapeshifting vyrkin, immortals who were not pleased to see a mortal lord claim his due.

When rogue vayash moru led by Malesh of Tremont broke the Truce and slaughtered mortals, Jonmarc retaliated, and he bargained his soul for vengeance. Carina, newly betrothed to Jonmarc, became a pawn in the war. The magical energy of the Flow, damaged in the Mage War of a generation past, became too dangerously unstable for mages to use, and Carina risked her life to “heal” the energy. Jonmarc and Gabriel defeated Malesh’s forces, but the Truce remained damaged, and retaliatory killings between mortals and the vayash moru still threaten the fragile peace.

Carina’s brother Cam returned to the service as Champion of King Donelan of Isencroft. Cam was captured by the Divisionists, and while a prisoner, he uncovered a plot to kill the king and put the Divisionists’ man on the throne. Alvior of Brunnfen, the traitors’ challenger, is Cam’s elder brother. When Cam managed to blow up the Divisionists’ stronghold to warn the king, he nearly lost a leg in the explosion, but he gained the unlikely assistance of Rhistiart, a silversmith-turned-squire. After the king’s personal healer did all he could for Cam, Donelan sent Cam to Carina in Dark Haven, hoping that she could complete the healing.

In the first year of his reign, Tris went to war to put down a rebellion by the traitorous Lord Curane and his blood mages. Tris waged a bitterly fought siege that unleashed a virulent plague. His triumph over the traitor lord took a great toll on Margolan’s army and came at a high personal cost. When Tris returned to his palace, he found his queen badly injured by an assassin’s blade and his best friend wrongfully accused of high treason. Summoning the spirits of the dead to find the traitor and clear his friend’s name, Tris was sorely tempted to use his powerful magic for vengeance, but the memory of the penalty Lemuel paid for his twisted magic stayed Tris’s hand.

Six months have passed since the Margolan army returned from battle and since Jonmarc Vahanian put down the vayash moru uprising. Jonmarc and Carina wed, and Carina is pregnant with twins. Tris and Kiara nervously await the birth of their son, uncertain how the poison has affected this child on whom the future of two kingdoms depends. In Isencroft, the Divisionists have scattered, but Cam fears that the threat has merely gone into hiding and that Alvior may have found foreign allies to challenge Donelan for the throne.

Peace in the Winter Kingdoms has always been elusive. With the kingdoms weakened by war, insurrection, and poor harvest, the threat of invasion and revolution looms large and all the magic in the world may not be enough to hold back the bloodshed.

Every time you go, I can’t believe six months have passed already.”

Prince Jair Rothlandorn of Dhasson looked up as his father, King Harrol, stood in the doorway. Jair smiled and sighed as he closed his saddlebag and secured the cinch. “And every time I get ready to leave, I can’t believe I’ve survived six months away from the Ride.” Carefully, Jair folded his palace clothing into neat piles and placed them in a drawer to await his return. For the Ride, the only clue that would mark him as the heir to the throne of Dhasson was the gold signet ring on his right hand.

Jair walked to his window and looked out over the city. Valiquet was the name of both the Dhassonian palace and its capital city. The sun gleamed from the white marble and crystalline sculptures that had earned Valiquet its reputation as “The Glittering Place.” Long a crossroads for commerce and ideas, Dhasson was perhaps the most cosmopolitan of the Winter Kingdoms. Its long tradition of tolerance for all but the Cult of the Crone had spared it the conflicts that often tore at the other kingdoms and had made it a magnet for scholars and artists. Beautiful as it was, for the six months Jair was home, the city felt like a glittering prison. Jair sighed and returned to packing.