Ian Irvine - Dark Is the Moon (The View From the Mirror, #3)

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 Kings Dragon

Books by Ian Irvine

A Shadow on the Glass
The Tower on the Rift

WARNER BOOK EDITION

Copyright 1999 by Ian Irvine

Maps copyright 1999 by Ian Irvine

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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First eBook Edition: September 2009

ISBN: 978-0-446-56578-3

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

CONTENTS

You are wrong if you think fortune haschanged toward you.
Inconstancy is my very essence.

BOETHIUS, THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY

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 wizardrythe Secret Artis difficult, and doesnt always work, and every using comes at a priceaftersickness.

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 worldAachan!

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 mysteryevidence 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 storythe first new Great Tale for hundreds of yearsand 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 fathers people or refuse her debt to Maigraithdishonor 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 Yggurs 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 Llians wonderful tale. Pursued by the Whelm and their dogs, she reaches out to him in her dreams.

Mendark, a mancer and Yggurs bitter enemy, hears that the Mirror has been stolen and sends his lieutenants to find it. Learning from