Bøger af D P Prior

When students go missing in the university town of Aberystwyth, Harry Chesterton's investigation leads him to an ancient monastery on the hill.

Deacon Shader is a child out of time, removed as a baby from his Ancient world parents and raised on the Isle of Maranore.On his seventh birthday, the philosopher Aristodeus arrives to commence the boy's training with sword and mind. Nothing short of excellence will suffice, if Deacon is to fulfill his destiny and avert the Unweaving of all things.But as Aristodeus pushes him to the limits, reavers are spotted approaching the coast, and a cloud of horror descends upon the village.For these are no ordinary pirates. They sail under the Impaled Man, the grisly flag of Verusia, land of the undead and realm of the Lich Lord.

For centuries, no one had heard a peep out of Verusia, the dark stain at the heart of the Templum's empire. But when a messenger arrives in the Holy City of Aeterna, bearing news that the fortresses along the border have mysteriously been abandoned, and the three-hundred men of Trajinot's garrison have been impaled outside the city walls, word is, the Lich Lord is on the move again.As an army of the dead waits within the shadow-black trees of the Schwarzwald, the Templum gathers its troops for war.Captain Deacon Shader leads the Seventh Horse, a heavy cavalry troop now deemed obsolete. One charge, one chance is their motto. Time it right, and the tide of any battle can be turned; get it wrong, and it could all be over.When the two forces face off outside the walls of Trajinot, it is not just the hordes of undeath the Templum must fight. Intangible terror poisons the air, driving seasoned warriors to panic.Only the Elect knights of the Seventh Horse have the discipline to stand their ground; yet facing a fear doesn't mean it will do you no harm, and for Shader, there are worse things than wounds of the flesh.

The only thing keeping the Nameless Dwarf from once more becoming the Ravine Butcher is a helm made from the sorcerous ore, ocras, which he can never remove. Without the helm, he would succumb to the power of the black axe that caused the slaughter at Arx Gravis.After a year of fighting in other people's wars, Nameless receives a visit from one of the underworld tricksters-a faen-who tells him the day he has long waited for has arrived:The philosopher Aristodeus has come up with a plan to destroy the black axe and free Nameless from the ocras helm.With the aid of new companions and an old friend, the assassin Shadrak the Unseen, Nameless must retrieve three artifacts that, combined, will bring an end to his suffering:The gauntlets of the fire giant, Sartis, whose lair lies in the roots of a volcano;The invulnerable armor of the Lich Lord of Verusia-an undead tyrant with a penchant for impaling and the drinking of souls;And the Shield of Warding, beneath which cowers a paranoid god on the fringe of the Abyss.But things are never that simple. Each of the companions has their own reasons for joining the quests, even Shadrak, who has been bound by an irrevocable contract-to kill the Nameless Dwarf.

Captured by the survivors of his massacre at Arx Gravis, the Nameless Dwarf is sentenced to die. The assassin Ilesa has abandoned him, and so it falls to the ex-rogue Nils and Silas the sorcerer to stage a rescue.But with the Lich Lord's grimoire obsessing him more and more, Silas suspects he is no longer in control of his own fate. Sick and close to death, he is drawn on by visions of a black staff within a forest of tar.As an ancient trap closes in on the companions, the last of the dwarves are threatened with extinction at the hands of ravenous beasts that live only to feed.And in the background, orchestrating it all, an implacable horror Nameless thought had been destroyed:A skull with crimson eyes that feast on living souls.All that remains of Otto Blightey, the Lich Lord of Verusia.

Alone, bereft, and unable to forgive himself for the slaughter at the ravine, the Nameless Dwarf swears to do one last thing, even if it kills him:With Nils Fargin, the son of a Jeridium guild lord as his guide, Nameless pursues the survivors among the dwarves, hoping to convince them that the curse of the Black Axe has been lifted from him and they are safe to return home.The trail leads to the town of Malfen-a nest of cutthroats and the gateway to Cerreth, the Land of Nightmare, which would be suicide for the dwarves to enter.Nameless and Nils join forces with a shapeshifting assassin and a sorcerer under the sway of a dubious magical grimoire for the hazardous journey into Cerreth. It soon becomes apparent their new companions have agendas of their own.With threats from within and horror on every side, Nameless knows that time is running out for his people. The only surprise is that they have lasted so long.But new hope awaits him in a city beneath the waves-if he can first survive the unstoppable evil that destroyed the dwarf lords of old.

Having worked out his penance and resettled his people in the citadel of Arnoch, the Nameless Dwarf decides to start a new life in the up-and-coming town of Brink.Seven years later, he has everything a dwarf could possibly wish for—a gym, a beer hall, and a bawdy house across the road.Then a blood-stained dwarf staggers into town with a message of doom:Arnoch has sunk beneath the waves, its last defense against the attack of a five-headed dragon.The one slender hope remaining to the dwarves lies in their distant past: the dwarf lords, who had been created for perils such as this. But for centuries, they have been in exile on Thanatos, a death world likely to change even the greatest of heroes.With time running out for Arnoch, Nameless must find the dwarf lords and persuade them to come home.But before that, he first has to survive them.

Awakened from an induced year-long slumber, the Nameless Dwarf is tortured with memories of slaughter and must come to terms with who he has become: an outcast, a butcher, the most reviled of dwarven-kind.As forces of unimaginable destruction coalesce around the mountain fortress of a mad sorcerer, the philosopher Aristodeus puts together a team for a last desperate attempt to avert the coming cataclysm:A knight besieged by doubts, who has been prepared since a child for the current crisis, yet is crumbling under the pressure of the task before him;An albino assassin who denies the truth of what he really is;A woman with a black sword as disturbing as the axe responsible for the massacre at Arx Gravis;And a dwarf with no name, who will either carve out the path of his own redemption or condemn the world to a night that will never end.

From internationally bestselling author D.P. Prior..."A beautifully written and engrossing masterwork!" -- Mitchell HoganFantasy Faction semifinalist for the SPFBO 2018A babe is born in the shadows of the ravine city, a child who will end the self-imposed exile of the dwarves and usher in a new age of glory.Years later, Ravine Guard Carnac Thayn discovers a break-in at the Scriptorium. A dwarf has been murdered and a book stolen, but the ruling council do nothing.Then, when Carn is called to investigate thuds and crashes from the mines, old horror rises from the deep, and the city is threatened with slaughter.Rumors begin to circulate about a mythical axe said to be lost below the earth, an axe wielded by the dwarf lords of old that might just be the last hope of a race marked to die.But deception is rife, and unseen forces manipulate all paths to the future.It is a pivotal moment for the dwarves, and Carn must make a choice that will either save or damn his people.Blood will flow in rivers through the ravine.Friends will become foes.A name will be forgotten.And a hero will rise.