Search Worlds Without End

This novella originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, April 2000. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection (2001), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Shade Nox is the only witch in a land of wizards - a fiend, a rogue, a wanted criminal.

Defying those who think her an abomination, Shade wears her tattoos openly and carries obsidian blades at her hips. For years, she has protected the outcast clans who wander the blighted Wastes, but the land is growing more unstable and her blades are no longer enough.

To save her people, Shade vows to raise a Veil of protection - a feat not accomplished in over a hundred years. But the magical Veils are said to belong to the Brotherhood church; if she succeeds in raising one, it will expose their lies. They swear to see her obliterated first.

Treading a dangerous path where allies can be as deceitful as enemies, and where demons lurk in the shadows, Shade chases a vision which could lead to her people's salvation... or her own destruction.

Alex Caine is looking for direction and trying to build a new life with his recently acquired magical talents, and his Kin girlfriend, Silhouette. He is recruited by a secret organisation to head off an impending doom, foretold by Seers as already somehow linked to his destiny.

Claude Darvill is desperately trying to get in touch with his father, Robert Hood. When the company, Black Diamond, reveals that Hood had gone missing after chasing Alex Caine, Darvill takes over control of Black Diamond and starts hunting Caine himself.

Alex and his crew close in on three amateur mages in Britain's north, who think they have uncovered ancient magic that will reveal great powers. But they are caught in a vortex and pulled through to a strange lost city, isolated in the void. trapped in a place removed from everything they know, ruled by a hierarchy of monsters, Alex and his friends must find a way to escape Obsidian.

An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, novel

'I was covered in blood, but it wasn't mine, so it was okay.'

Edward is a hit man. He specialises in monsters. Vampires, shape-shifters, anything and everything. There are people like me, Anita Blake, who do it legally, but Edward doesn't sweat the legalities or, hell, the ethics. He is an equal opportunity killer.

I may be one of the few friends that Edward has, but it's like being friends with a tame leopard. It may curl on the foot of your bed and let you pet its head, but it can still eat your throat out...

The obsidian mirror. Its power is great and terrible. Men have been lost in it, the dead brought back to life through it, and the future annihilated by it. Or this is what will happen unless the mirror is destroyed. Three people seek the mirror: the first has been sent from the future to shatter its power; the second will protect the mirror at all costs, obsessed with its power; and the third needs the mirror to find a murdered father and save his life. But only one can succeed.

The mirror can send you to the past, but it will not bring you back.

An uneasy peace has settled over the Shrianese Empire, and for Indris and Mari, a life together just might be possible. But while the fighting may be over, the struggle between the two great Houses vying to rule has just begun, and caught between them are Indris and Mari--warriors of the highest caliber... and members of the opposing families.

With the court moved to a new city, the old machinations of Mari's father, Corajidin, are still churning as he maneuvers to shape the future Empire. For Mari and Indris, though, it could be the past that's their undoing, as lost lovers and forgotten flames reappear as if by dark magic.

And dark magic it could be, for a dangerous alliance with witches could not only grant Corajidn control of Shrian, but once again plunge the nation back into war--especially after a sorcerous battle destroys much of the city... and forces Indris and Mari to part ways.

In The Obsidian Heart, the second volume of the Echoes of Empire series, darkness falls over a kingdom already reeling from a costly civil war. Can the Indris and Mari survive this new threat to save not only the ones they love, but possibly the entire world?

Having resolved the human-Eldren war, Erekosë finds himself once again called to a strange world to defend Earth from invaders. This time he is Count Urlik Skarsol, Lord of the Frozen Keep, sleeping hero of a frozen and dying Earth. At Rowernarc, the Obsidian City, he hears of the Silver Warriors from the Moon, which long ago crashed into the other side of the Earth. But nobody in Rowernarc seems to fear them—nobody, indeed, seems concerned with anything but whiling away the time until death. With nothing to do and no foe to fight, Erekose wonders who could have called him and searches for a way to return to his lost love.

(Wikipedia)

In battle's fire, young Jarom became Torin, King of Alson, and now must forge his kingdom from the ruins of an empire. But by recklessly reclaiming the Crimson Sword of Asahiel, Torin reopened a dimensional realm no longer sealed by the power of the Obsidian Key. And now the Illysp have emerged from history's darkest hour--foul spirits that possess men's bodies and enslave their souls. With enemies advancing on all sides, Torin must undertake a perilous voyage to unearth the ancient secrets once used to overcome the vile interlopers. Yet even if Torin can somehow miraculously survive, it may already be too late for his devastated land.

To do list: Cow-tip the Minotaur. Cure a reptile dysfunction.

My name is Nate Temple, and I'm secretly a wizard. I ride a foul-mouthed unicorn, I drink with Achilles, and I'm pals with the Four Horsemen. I've even cow-tipped the Minotaur. I understand the theory of following the rules... I'm just not very good at the application.

Because rules were meant to be broken.

Especially when I find out a monster just murdered my parents. Now all I can hear is the sweet, soothing song of vengeance in my ears, playing on repeat.

But when shifter dragons come to town, I'm forced to step away from hunting down the scumbag murderer. Because I know the cure for a reptile dysfunction, and the dragons aren't going to like it.

This fight soon opens up Pandora's Box, and suddenly every flavor of supernatural thug is after me. The only way out of it--

I didn't want, ask for, or start any of this. But I will finish it. It's time I show St. Louis that magic is very, very real. And that an angry wizard is truly something to see--at least once in your life.

You know, right before he puts you and everyone you've ever met in the grave...

This volume contains all three books in the Ombinus and Blood series: Servant of the Underworld + Harbinger of the Storm + Master of the House of Darts

Servant of the Underworld: Year One-Knife, Tenochtitlan - the capital of the Aztecs. The end of the world is kept at bay only by the magic of human sacrifice. A priestess disappears from an empty room drenched in blood. Acatl, high priest, must find her, or break the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead.

Harbinger of the Storm: The year is Two House and the Mexica Empire teeters on the brink of destruction, lying vulnerable to the flesh-eating star-demons - and to the return of their creator, a malevolent goddess only held in check by the Protector God's power. The council is convening to choose a new emperor, but when a councilman is found dead, only Acatl, High Priest of the Dead, can solve the mystery.

Master of the House of Darts: The year is Three Rabbit, and the storm is coming... The coronation war for the new Emperor has just ended in a failure, the armies retreating with a mere forty prisoners of war - not near enough sacrifices to ensure the favor of the gods. When one of those prisoners of war dies of a magical illness, Acatl, High Priest for the Dead, is summoned to investigate.

Table of Contents:

• Servant of the Underworld - (2010)
• Harbinger of the Storm - (2011)
• Master of the House of Darts - (2011)

It is the year One-Knife in Tenochtitlan - the capital of the Aztecs. The end of the world is kept at bay only by the magic of human sacrifice. A Priestess disappears from an empty room drenched in blood.

Acatl, High Priest of the Dead must find her, or break the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead. But how do you find someone, living or dead, in a world where blood sacrifices are an everyday occurrence and the very gods stalk the streets?

The Aztec Empire teeters on the brink of extinction. As the political infighting starts within the imperial court, Acatl, High Priest for the Dead, makes a macabre discovery in the palace: a high-ranking nobleman has been torn to pieces by an invocation - and it looks like the summoner belongs to the court itself...

The year is Three Rabbit, and the storm is coming...

The coronation war for the new Emperor has just ended in a failure, the armies retreating with a mere forty prisoners of war - not near enough sacrifices to ensure the favor of the gods.

When one of those prisoners of war dies of a magical illness, ACATL, High Priest for the Dead, is summoned to investigate.

Psychology professor Alex Locke is an ex-convict, forced back into the criminal underworld when his daughter is threatened. After he agrees to steal a mysterious Obsidian Heart, Locke is pursued by unearthly assassins known as the 'Wolves of London'. Soon he discovers the heart can enable him to travel through time, and while it bestows him with his own dark powers, it also corrupts...

Transported through time to the dank streets of Victorian London, Alex Locke seeks to unravel the mysteries of the Obsidian Heart, the enigmatic object to which his fate is inextricably bound. When a string of grisly murders takes place across the capital, Alex follows a trail that will lead him through the opium dens of Limehouse into the dark and twisted world of the Society of Blood, and ever closer to unlocking the secret of the Heart.

Alex Locke is desperately trying to hold onto the disparate threads of the complex web of time he has created. He travels to the First World War, living through the horrors of trench warfare in order to befriend a young soldier crucial to his story; then to the 1930s to uncover the secrets of a mysterious stage magician. He moves back and forth in time, always with the strange and terrifying Dark Man on his heels, gradually getting closer to uncovering the true nature of his destiny with the obsidian heart.

Kellen Tavadon, son of the Arch-Mage Lycaelon, thought he knew the way the world worked. His father, leading the wise and benevolent Council of Mages, protected and guided the citizens of the Golden City of the Bells. Young Mages in training-all men, for women were unfit to practice magic-memorized the intricate details of High Magic and aspired to seats on the council.

Then he found the forbidden Books of Wild Magic-or did they find him? Their Magic felt like a living thing, guided by the hearts and minds of those who practiced it and benefited from it.
Questioning everything he has known, Kellen discovers too many of the City's dark secrets. Banished, with the Outlaw Hunt on his heels, Kellen invokes Wild Magic-and finds himself running for his life with a unicorn at his side.

Rescued by a unicorn, healed by a female Wild Mage who knows more about Kellen than anyone outside the City should, meeting Elven royalty and Elven warriors, and plunged into a world full of magical beings-Kellen both revels in and fears his new freedom.

The one thing all the Mages of the City agreed on was that practicing Wild Magic corrupted a Mage. Turned him into a Demon. Would that be Kellen's fate?

Deep in Obsidian Mountain, the Demons are waiting. Since their defeat in the last great War, they've been biding their time, sowing the seeds of distrust and discontent between their human and Elven enemies. Very soon now, when the Demons rise to make war, there will be no alliance between High and Wild Magic to stand against them. And then all the world will belong to the Endarkened.

The Demon Queen Attacks!

To his own surprise, young Kellen, once the disappointing son of the great Mage who leads the City's Mage Council, has become a powerful Knight-Mage. Valued for his bravery and his skills as both wizard and warrior, Kellen joins the Elves' war councils. Yet he cannot convince the City of his birth that it is in terrible danger.

Kellen's sister Idalia, a Wild Mage with great healing ability, has pledged her heart to Jermayan, a proud Elven warrior. Someday Idalia will pay a tragic Price for a world-saving work of Wild Magic, but until then, she will claim any joy life can offer her.

Jermayan, who has learned much fighting at Kellen's side and loving the human Idalia, finds that everything changes when he Bonds with a dragon while rescuing the Elf Prince and becomes the first Elven Mage in a thousand years.

Furious at her enemies' success with the dragon, the Demon Queen attacks in force. Light struggles against Dark, like flickering candle flames buried deep in the shadow of Obsidian Mountain.

A great working of Wild Magic and High Magic strikes at the heart of the Demon Queen's plots, but the human city, the Golden City of the Bells, falls farther under her sway with each day that passes. And without the City's High Magicians, the Wild Magicians, the Elven Army, and all their allies will surely fall before the onslaught of the Demon Queen's malignant warriors.

But all hope is not lost. The Light's young mages, tempered by war, grow ever more powerful. High Mage Cilarnen learns an ancient secret that can make him, for a brief, white-hot time, the greatest mage in the world--unless it kills him.

Jermayan, the first Elf-Mage in centuries, has linked with the dragon Ancaladar and rediscovered the swift-as-thought powers of Elven magic, which can reshape mountains and summon lightning from clear skies.

Knight-Mage Kellen has molded his troops and the Unicorn Knights into a deadly fighting force. Soon the Elven King and his Commanders put Kellen's magical gifts to their greatest test, in the final battle between the Elves, the humans, and the Demons.

After Pendergast is presumed dead from a supernatural encounter, his bodyguard Proctor is the only one who can chase a kidnapper across international waters and into the deadly unknown.

A TRAGIC DISAPPEARANCE
After a harrowing, otherworldly confrontation on the shores of Exmouth, Massachussetts, Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast is missing, presumed dead.

A SHOCKING RETURN
Sick with grief, Pendergast's ward, Constance, retreats to her chambers beneath the family mansion at 891 Riverside Drive--only to be taken captive by a shadowy figure from the past.

AN INTERNATIONAL MANHUNT
Proctor, Pendergast's longtime bodyguard, springs to action, chasing Constance's kidnapper through cities, across oceans, and into wastelands unknown.

BUT IN A WORLD OF BLACK AND WHITE, NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS
And by the time Proctor discovers the truth, a terrifying engine has stirred-and it may already be too late...

One woman will either save an entire continent or completely destroy it in a captivating epic fantasy bursting with intrigue and ambition, questioned loyalties, and broken magic.

"Guard the tower, ward the stone. Find your answers writ in bone. Keep your trust through wits or war - nothing must unseal the door."

Deep within Gloamingard Castle lies a black tower. Sealed by magic, it guards a dangerous secret that has been contained for thousands of years.

As Warden, Ryxander knows the warning passed down through generations: nothing must unreal the Door. But one impetuous decision will leave her with blood on her hands - and unleash a threat that could doom the world to fall to darkness.

Contents:

• 1 - The Mirror-Scaled Serpent - [Star Trek: Mirror Universe - 4] - (2007) - novel by Keith R. A. DeCandido
• 163 - Cutting Ties - [Star Trek: Mirror Universe - 5] - (2007) - novel by Peter David
• 311 - Saturn's Children - [Star Trek: Mirror Universe - 6] - (2007) - novel by Sarah Shaw

Some say the line between good and evil is narrower than we imagine -- a divide as subtle as a mirror, and perhaps just as deep. To peer into its black, reflective glass is to know the dark potential we each possess, and we cross that obsidian boundary at our peril... into a world where we no longer recognize who we are or what we believed ourselves capable of.

In the late twenty-fourth century, decades after the fall of the once-mighty Terran Empire, the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance dominates the worlds that, in another reality, made up the United Federation of Planets. Humanity and its former subject races are now bound together by their shared oppression, slaves to their cruel and brutal conquerors. But a downtrodden few have found the courage and the strength of will to act. Inspired by visitors from another continuum to fight for their freedom, they have rekindled hope... and rediscovered an ancient truth: that every revolution begins with a vision.

Star Trek: VOYAGER - A rebel ship commanded by a former slave named Chakotay attempts to evade pursuit in the Badlands... only to encounter a strange ship that was catapulted seventy thousand light-years across the galaxy. On board the craft are two aliens, one of whom has the potential to completely alter the balance of power within the Alliance. But as both sides of the struggle race to get to the stranger first, treachery throws all schemes into a tailspin.

Star Trek: NEW FRONTIER - Following the Terran Empire's collapse, its longtime rival, the Romulan Star Empire, has absorbed many of the fringe civilizations spread across that part of the galaxy. One of the Romulans' slaves is M'k'nzy of Calhoun, a savage and unpredictable Xenexian who dreams of death... and who learns the value of freedom from the unlikeliest of teachers, a Romulan named Soleta.

Star Trek: DEEP SPACE NINE - One fallen dictator's struggle to regain her power and her position leads to the discovery of a bold rebel plan for a decisive military strike against the Alliance. But while Kira Nerys navigates the dangerous road of politics, sex, and military intrigue that she believes will lead her back to reclaiming the Intendancy, cracks form in the rebel leadership, leading to a showdown that will change the course of the Mirror Universe.

There is no war in the northlands, just annihilation. Either the dragons will destroy this world or Queen Beulah will raze it to the ground.

Below the city is a secret the House of Balwen have kept for millennia, a treasure beyond imagination. None but a direct descendent of Balwen himself can open the escape routes from this cavern. To do so, Princess Iolwen will need to claim the Obsidian Throne.

Meanwhile Errol and Sir Benfro find their destinies drawing closer together, with the future of all life in the Twin Kingdoms resting on these two unlikely heroes. There will be self-sacrifice and terrible betrayals. And the lives of boy and dragon will be forever changed.

In this final volume of the Shadowfire trilogy, all seems lost for the humans of Aventuria. The shape-changing Bhahdradomen have invaded and Queen Helananthe has been forced to step down or see her mother and brother murdered. Meanwhile Tanthe is attempting to rescue her sister, Ysomir.

Arlian had never left his home village on the Smoking Mountain. The stony ground, jagged peaks, and black glass were all he had ever known of life, and he knew deep in his heart that he would probably never leave.

Until the dragon weather came. Incredible heat, oppressive humidity, dark and angry clouds...and dragons. Dragons with no feelings, no sympathy, no use for humans; dragons who destroyed his entire village and everyone in it.

Everyone, that is, except Arlian.

Orphaned and alone, Arlian makes his way through life, obsessed with the concept of justice, determined to avenge his family and his village. But can one righteous man change the entire world for the better? Or is he doomed by his own actions to become as unjust as those he seeks to destroy?

It all began with Dragon Weather: a wave of incredible heat, oppressive humidity, dark angry clouds... and dragons. Dragons with no remorse, no sympathy, and no use for humans. Dragons who destroyed an entire village and everyone in it. Everyone, that is, except the young boy Arlian.

Orphaned and alone, Arlian was captured by looters and sold as a mining slave. Seven years later he escaped, fueled by years of hatred for the dragons, bandits, and slavers who took away his youth-and a personal vow to exact retribution from all those who have wronged him, including the powerful Lord Enziet Arlian's entire life has one purpose, and one purpose only: to mete out justice. And in the climactic battle of Dragon Weather Lord Enziet fell to this justice.

In The Dragon Society Arlian returns to Manfort, the city that is home to The Dragon Society, whose sworn purpose is to stand against the dragon menace, and whose foremost member had been Lord Enziet. Arlian must immediately deal with the consequences of Enziet's death. But what he finds is shocking, for the doomed Enziet believes that Arlian might well be the best hope humanity will ever have for defeating the dragons... permanently.

After many years of peace in the Lands of Men, there came Dragon Weather: a wave of incredible heat, oppressive humidity, dark angry clouds... and dragons. Dragons with no remorse, no sympathy, no use for humans; dragons who destroyed an entire village and everyone in it. Everyone, that is, except the young boy Arlian. Orphaned and alone, Arlian was captured by looters and sold as a mining slave. He finally escaped, fueled by years of hatred and a personal vow to bring justice to all who had wronged him.

After killing those who enslaved him, Arlian sought out The Dragon Society, whose sworn purpose was to stand against the dragon menace. It was there, among his peers, that Arlian discovered he is humanity's best hope for defeating the dragons... permanently.

Now, Arlian seeks his final vengeance: death to all of dragonkind. But as he begins to destroy the evil beasts, wild magic seeps into the Lands of Men, sowing chaos and destruction in its wake. Will Arlian's all-consuming quest for justice consume humanity as well? The answer may lie within his ancient foe's most lethal weapon: Dragon Venom