The Wide World's End
Read The Wide World's End Online
Authors: James Enge
A
LSO BY
J
AMES
E
NGE
A TOURNAMENT OF SHADOWS
A Guile of Dragons
Wrath-Bearing Tree
The Wolf Age
This Crooked Way
Blood of Ambrose
Published 2015 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books
The Wide World's End
. Copyright © 2015 by James Enge. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopyÂing, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, exÂcept in the case of brief quotations emÂbodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover illustration ©Steve Stone
Cover design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke
Cold Wind To Valhalla
Words and Music by Ian Anderson
Copyright © 1975 The Ian Anderson Group Of Companies, Ltd.
Copyright Renewed 2004
All Rights Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC
All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation
.
This is a work of fiction. Characters
, locales, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Inquiries should be addressed to
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Enge, James, 1960-
The wide world's end / by James Enge.
pages ; cm. â (A tournament of shadows ; Book Three)
ISBN 978-1-61614-907-9 (pbk.) â ISBN 978-1-61614-908-6 (ebook)
I. Title.
PS3605.N43W53 2015
813'.6âdc23
2014035459
Printed in the United States of America
To Michael Korte
who stood with me once at the end of another world
Acknowledgments
A thousand thanks are due to Ian Anderson, for permission to quote his lyric from “Cold Wind to Valhalla.”
Ten thousand thanks to Lou Anders for his kindness, his patience, and his attentive reading that so improved my work. If you, patient reader, still don't like it, it's not his fault.
Contents
Chapter Two: Conversations in A Thousand Towers
Chapter Five: Evening in the Gravehills
Chapter Six: The Hill of Storms
Chapter One: What Really Happened
Chapter Three: Death of a Summoner
Chapter Four: The Last Station
Chapter Five: Evening in A Thousand Towers
Chapter Six: A Parting; a Meeting
Chapter Seven: A Needle of Sunlight
Chapter Ten: Scenes of the Crime
Chapter Eleven: Among the Vraids
Chapter Twelve: Intruder in the Death House
Chapter Thirteen: The Sea Road to Grarby
Chapter Fifteen: The God and His Enemies
Chapter Seventeen: Miracles of St. Danadhar
Chapter Eighteen: Second Chances
Chapter Nineteen: Enemies of the Enemy
Chapter Twenty-One: The Chains of the God
Chapter Two: Fire, Gods, and a Stranger
Chapter Three: To Market, To Market
Chapter Four: The Flight of the
Viviana
Chapter Five: The Wreck of the
Viviana
Chapter Six: The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Chapter Seven: The Graith Divided
Chapter Nine: Ghosts and Shadows
A. The Lands of Laent during the Ontilian Interregnum
D. The Wardlands and the Graith of Guardians
E. Note on Ambrosian Legend and Its Sources, Lost and Found
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Three leagues beyond the wide world's end.
Methinks it is no journey.
â“Tom O'Bedlam's Song”
I
NVOCATION
I'll tell the tale, since you insist, but it won't be like the songs they sing. I saw much of what I'm about to tell with my own eyes, heard it with my own ears, felt it with my own heart. But I won't be saying I-I-I all the way through. I was a different person then. And any time you tell a story about yourself, it isn't about you, really. The teller is never the tale, or anyone in it.
Old Father Tyr, standing outside the world with Those-Who-Watch, shape my words like stones to build a bridge to the truth. Creator, guide my creation, which is yours also. Sustainer, give me the breath to complete it. Avenger, teach me when to end it, as you end all things in their time.
P
ART
O
NE
The Winter War
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
âShelley, “Ode to the West Wind”