Storm Warning - Mercedes Lackey [0]
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
One
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Nine
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eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Sifteen
Sixteen
Herald? White Demon? Hellhorse?
Oh, glorious God—
Rubrik was a Herald. A White Demon. And that beautiful horse that Karal had admired so much—the horse with the blue eyes, and the silver hooves which made a bell-like sound when they struck the ground—was no horse at all!
He stared into the fire, stunned, quite unable to move. It was a good thing he wasn’t holding anything, or he would have dropped it, his hands were so numb. He didn’t even realize that Rubrik had excused himself and gone back to the inn for something, until the door closed behind him.
“Child, you look as if someone smacked you with a board,” Ulrich observed dispassionately. “Are you all right?”
Karal rose to his feet, somewhat unsteadily, and stared at his mentor, trembling from head to foot in mingled shock and fear. “Didn’t you hear what he said?” Karal sputtered. “He’s one of them! Demonspawn! The—”
“I know, I’ve known all along, and I thought you knew as well,” Ulrich replied, a hint of stem rebuke in his voice. “We are in Valdemar. We are envoys from Her Holiness. The Heralds are the most important representatives of their Queen. We’ve always called them White Demons. It should have been logical.”
Karal tried to get a breath and couldn’t.
A Herald.
He had never seen a Herald in all his life. The descriptions in the Chronicles were composed of all the horrors mothers used to frighten little children into obedience, rolled into one and put into a white shroud. Not a neat uniform, a livery like Rubrick’s, but a tattered, ichor-dripping shroud of death. And no matter what other things he’d learned that had been wrong about Karse’s former enemies, somehow he had still expected Heralds to be monsters. He just couldn’t handle this. How could he act normally around Rubrick ever again?
Karal flushed in confusion and wondered how he was ever going to make the scattered pieces of his life fit again....
NOVELS BY MERCEDES LACKEY
available from DAW Books:
THE HERALDS OF VALDEMAR
ARROWS OF THE QUEEN
ARROW’S FLIGHT
ARROW’S FALL
THE LAST HERALD-MAGE
MAGIC’S PAWN
MAGIC’S PROMISE
MAGIC’S PRICE
THE MAGE WINDS
WINDS OF FATE
WINDS OF CHANGE
WINDS OF FURY
THE MAGE STORMS
STORM WARNING
STORM RISING
STORM BREAKING
VOWS AND HONOR
THE OATHBOUND
OATHBREAKERS
OATHBLOOD
THE COLLEGIUM CHRONICLES FOUNDATION*
BY THE SWORD
BRIGHTLY BURNING
TAKE A THIEF
EXILE’S HONOR
EXILE’S VALOR
VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES:
SWORD OF ICE
SUN IN GLORY
CROSSROADS
MOVING TARGETS*
Written with LARRY DIXON:
THE MAGE WARS
THE BLACK GRYPHON
THE WHITE GRYPHON
THE SILVER GRYPHON
DARIAN’S TALE
OWLFLIGHT
OWLSIGHT
OWLKNIGHT
OTHER NOVELS
THE BLACK SWAN
THE DRAGON JOUSTERS
JOUST
ALTA
SANCTUARY
AERIE
THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS
THE SERPENT’S SHADOW
THE GATES OF SLEEP
PHOENIX AND ASHES
THE WIZARD OF LONDON
RESERVED FOR THE CAT
And don’t miss:
THE VALDEMAR COMPANION
Edited by John Helfers and Denise Little
*Coming soon from DAW Books
VALDEMAR And Surrounding Kingdoms
Copynght @ 1994 by Mercedes R. Lackey.
eISBN : 978-1-101-12787-2
All rights reserved.
For color prints of Jody Lee’s paintings, please contact:
The Cerridwen Enterprise
P.O. Box 10161
Kansas City, MO 64111
Phone: 1-800-825-1281
Interior illustrations by Larry Dixon and Victor Wren.
All the black & white interior illustrations
in this book are available as 8” x 10” prints;
either in a signed, open edition singly, or in
a signed and numbered portfolio from:
FIREBIRD ARTS & MUSIC, INC.
P.O. Box 14785
Portland. OR 97214-9998
Phone: 1-800-752-0494
Time Line by Pat Tobin.
Maps by Victor Wren.
DAW Book Collectors No. 958.
DAW Books are distributed by Penguin USA.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
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