Orbit

1 IT BEGINS IN DARKNESS Effigies of the Earth King festooned the city around Castle Sylvarresta. Everywhere the effigies could be seen - hanging beneath shopwindows, standing upright against the walls of the city gates, or nailed beside doorways - stationed any place where the Earth King might...

The sun was already sinking into the deep green of the hills to the west of the valley, the red and gray-pink of its shadows touching the corners of the land, when Flick Ohmsford began his descent. The trail stretched out unevenly down the northern slope, winding through the huge boulders which...

CHAPTER 1 THE PURGE It is said, in Imardin, that the wind has a soul, and that it wails through the narrow city streets because it is grieved by what it finds there. On the day of the Purge it whistled amongst the swaying masts in the Marina, rushed through the Western Gates and screamed...