The Ruthless
Return to a world of crystal armour, savage wilderness, and corrupt dynasties in book two of The Deathless series from Gemmell award-winning author Peter Newman. THE REBELFor years, Vasin Sapphire has been waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike. Now, as other Deathless families come under constant assault from the monsters that roam the Wild, that time has come. THE RUTHLESSIn the floating castle of Rochant Sapphire, loyal subjects await the ceremony to return their ruler to his rightful place. But the child raised to give up his body to Lord Rochant is no ordinary servant. Strange and savage, he will stop at nothing to escape his gilded prison. AND THE RETURNED…Far below, another child yearns to see the human world. Raised by a creature of the Wild, he knows their secrets better than any other. As he enters into the struggle between the Deathless houses, he may be the key to protecting their power or destroying it completely. THE WILD HAS BEGUN TO RISE
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Copyright © Peter Newman 2019
Cover illustration © Chris Tulloch McCabe 2019
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Peter Newman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008229030
Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008229054
Version: 2019-05-15
To AndrewFor being there to catch me
Contents
She had been elsewhere, between lives, formless and timeless. There was a sense of hanging above angry water, of shapes sliding under the surface, of shadows rising to feed, hungry, yet unable to break through to where she hung. She both feared the shapes and was drawn to them. But when she tried to go down to them, something held her up: unbreakable strands threading around and through her. Where she herself was neither light nor shadow, these strands glowed blue and violet, glimmering like crystal. Together they were a tether connecting her to the world beyond, to a platinum sphere, her anchor. This, she knew.
And so she had watched the shadows swirl and throw themselves against the divide, pressing against it, bending it, but unable to push through. On instinct, she tried to reach out, sure that if she could touch whatever separated them, it would part for her. However, the bands of light that protected her also fixed her in place.
The shadows could not reach her any more than she could reach them, but they could whisper, and the sounds they made walked slow through the non-space, inching their way upwards. Though she had no bones in this place, no flesh, no blood, no limbs, the thing that remained had something of her senses, and she turned towards the whisperers, straining to listen.
Words came, trickling into her consciousness. Secret words, forbidden ones. The kind that excited her. Yes! This was true. Recalling something of her old nature sharpened her resolve. She was a hunter of secrets. She was a hunter of demons.
This time, like the times before, she told herself that she must remember what they said, that she must hold on to what she learned. It was important.
The voices were not as one. Some feared her, some hungered for her, and others made senseless noise that buffeted, making her rock from side to side, like a pendulum of glowing wires, or a hunk of meat on a rope.
But it was not meat that the shadows hungered for. They wanted memories, the very pieces that made up her soul. If they could tear one away, it would leave a space. Tear a second and the space would grow, becoming a burrow in her heart for them to hide inside.
There was a change above her, a tightening of the blue-violet strands, and she knew from experience that she would soon leave this place and become herself again, whoever that was.
The shadows sensed it too, redoubling their efforts, pressing so close that she was able to make out features, teeth and torn edges, ragged holes that allowed glimpses of muscle bunching naked inside.
She could feel a tension now, a pull at her back accompanied by the desire to rise. But a new noise made her resist and hold where she was.
Tucked within the writhing mass of shapes was a smaller, more human one, crushed, crying out, over and over: ‘Pari!’
She knew that name. For it was her own. She knew the voice of the one crying out too. Someone dear, someone she loved. Peering closer, she saw his face bubble up from the darkness, set like a pimple on the back of some great beast.
The features belonged to Arkav, her brother. But that was impossible! Arkav was in a young body, very much alive. He could not be here. Could not be here and there at the same time. Unless some part of him had been lost between lives, bitten from him when he had last hung in this place.
