The second Starshield yarn mostly delivers on the promise made by The Mantle of Kendis-Dai (1997) that this celebrated team was writing another excellent adventure saga. Astronaut Jeremy Griffiths has acquired the Mantle of Kendis-Dai, and with it, possibly, knowledge of the location of the mad emperor Lokan's talisman of power, the Nightsword. This makes reluctant hero Griffiths, and his ship and crew with him, the target of every ambitious party in a galaxy by no means short of them. Griffiths also wants to win the love of Merinda Neskai, but he can't be entirely sure that she is more trustworthy than anyone else to whom possessing the Nightsword would mean having ultimate, world-destroying powers. The lived-in space-opera universe; the engaging characters, both good and bad; and the streak of wit and zaniness that crops out unexpectedly in it are all signs that with Starshield, Weis and Hickman are creating something most agreeable for all fans of swashbuckling space adventure. Weis and Hickman have a well-earned large following: libraries, serve it! Roland Green
From Kirkus Reviews
Another Starshield yarn (Sentinels, 1996), continuing the adventures of Earth astronaut Jeremy Griffiths (he's had a huge grab-bag of knowledge dumped into his head, courtesy of a wizard who expired before he could explain why) and galactic Omnet operative Merinda Neskat, set against a hybrid fantasy/sf backdrop designed to permit dragons, wizards, and suchlike to coexist in the same universe as computers and spaceships. Why anyone should want this is another matter entirely. The fearsome weapon of the title is missing, and the fate of the galaxy trembles in the balance. Jeremy, of course, with his vast if involuntary knowledge, knows where it is. Problem is, the bad guys know that Jeremy knows. . . . Addicts only--but there are zillions of them. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Not content to simply create new worlds like the rest of us mortals, Weis and Hickman have decided to re-invent the entire galaxy--and they do it beautifully."
--R. A. SALVATORE
"THE SCALE IS EPIC, THE ACTION IS CINEMATIC,
the characters are endearingly and engagingly human.
Weis and Hickman take their magic to the stars!"
--JEFF GRUBB
Author of The Brothers' War
From the Paperback edition.
From the Publisher
The Nightsword is the second book in Weis & Hickman's Starshield series, a series that introduces what could be the most exciting new world to arrive on the sf/fantasy scene in years. Because the authors have posited a universe where the actual laws of physics vary from region to region, where technology reigns in some places, and magic is the power in others, so that no matter where you go, anything is possible.
--Shelly Shapiro, Executive Editor
From the Inside Flap
ling authors Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, world-builders extraordinaire, as they triumphantly return to their epic galaxy-spanning fantasy adventure that began in The Mantle of Kendis-Dai. Enter a remarkable universe where science and magic co exist in uneasy equilibrium. A cosmos populated by elves, dragons, minotaurs, and synthetic minds. . . where ultimate power rests in a fabled sword able to bend reality itself to the will of whoever wields it . . .
Thousands of years ago, the mad emperor Lokan controlled the Nightsword--and imposed his twisted desires on all that lived. At his slightest whim, whole worlds were destroyed, and entire races were transformed. Then Lokan mysteriously vanished behind the Maelstrom Wall, into the quantum chaos of the galactic core. But legend says that somewhere behind the Wall, lost amidst the ghost ships of Lokan's doomed fleet, the Nightsword is hidden, its awesome energies waiting to be used again . . . for good or evil.
While most dis
About the Author
Margaret Weis was born and raised in Independence, Missouri. She attended the University of Missouri, Columbia, graduating in 1970 with a BA in creative writing. In 1983, Weis was hired as a book editor at TSR, Inc., producers of the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing games. Here she met game designer Tracy Hickman and the two teamed up to write the bestselling Dragonlance® novels. Weis has two children, David and Elizabeth Baldwin. Weis and her husband, Don Perrin, live in a converted bard in Wisconsin with two collie dogs, Laddie and Robbie; a Sheltie, Jo-jo; and two cats, Niclolai Mouseslayer and Motley Tatters.
Tracy Hickman was born in Salt Lake City. He currently resides in a large Victorian home he built for his wife and four children in the tall mountain pines of Flagstaff, Arizona. He has coauthored with Margaret Weis four New York Times bestselling series, including Death Gate Cycle and the Dragonlance® series--which have more than eleven million copies in print--and has published his own solo works as well.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
His Name Was L'Zari.
He gripped the thrumming stay line, his youthful hands white,
drained of blood in his fear and desperation. A snarling wind whipped his
hair about his face, belying the fact that he was inside the protective
dome of the ship. How could a wind blow inside the protective dome of the
ship. How, indeed, he thought savagely, could anything that he had
experienced over the last few weeks have been real.
His legs were braced against the grandyard boom some thirty feet
above the deck. L'Zari had inconspicuously slipped both feet underneath
the stay cables running the top length of the massive yard, despite the
warnings of other spacers that he might just lose a foot that way. The
youth had gone beyond caring as he clung high in the rigging of the
starship. He knew little of the trade, in any event which, he suspected,
was hanging here in the midst of a quantum gale.
All about him, up ratlines and occasionally across the backyards, the
spacers moved nimbly from task to task as they were called out from the
deck below them. L'Zari knew there were watching him with great amusement
of their own superiority here in the rigging. They meant to teach him his
place. He already knew his place, he thought grimly and he fervently
hoped that it was a place back down there on the deck swinging far below
him. At least there you don't have quite so far to fall, he thought
angrily to himself. At least there you had a much better chance of
actually hitting the deck instead of missing it altogether and falling
into stars.
The stars. He looked up the mast toward those same romantic stars
that had called him here or so he had fancied in his imagination that they
had done. They were there: so many and so bright. There were far more
than one might except here among the brilliantly-lit dust clouds
surrounding the ship. Toward the rim such clouds would have obscured most
of the stellar bodies beyond, limiting one's view to a few stars and the
great nebulae that hung in interstellar space. Not there. Here the ship
rushed upward along the Maelstrom Wall, that vicious curtain of quantum
fury at the very edge of the galactic core. Here the stars were so
thickly clustered that it was difficult to avoid that even when boring
down a tunnel through the nebular mass itself.
The ship to which he clung so desperately was rushing upward through
just such a cavernous drift in the Wall. the Knight Fortune a ludicrous
name, chosen by an apparent idiot, L'Zari thought was of Aendorian design,
or at least had been crafted on that world after the manner of the core
explorers. Her shape was generally spherical, compressed somewhat along
her vertical axis so that her cross section suggested something of an
oval. The hull forming the bowl like bottom of the ship swept upward into
three great, curving prows that arched over the main deck until they
nearly touched the mast. The ancient Aendorian totemic forms and symbols
covered the hull itself, which if the legends were true, would have been
frown to this exact shape by the mystic artists of that world. The main
deck was cradled within the triple fingers of those prows with access to
the several decks below and the massive cargo hold.
Running through it all was the drive-tree the core of the ship. It
began beneath the center of the hull with the massive kneelbob another
foolish spacer name, L'Zari thought. He couldn't see it now but had
gotten a good look at its brilliant brass finish, tooled down to a spike,
when the ship had been careened on E'knar a few weeks ago. The kneelob
alone was nearly four times his own height. The mast extended upward from
the bob, through the center of the intervening decks, and past the clear
bubble of atmosphere into the vacuum of space itself. Along the mast were
mounted several booms. Lanyards to each from the deck below repositioned
them as the prevailing quantum weather dictated. It was this massive
complex called the drive-tree that dragged the ship upward into the
stars, the ship's direction of motion following the same line as that
of the mast. The Aendorian ships didn't sail across space so much as up
into it.
In calmer weather, the various Crystal focus booms would only need to
be repositioned now and then as the ship passed from one quantum zone to
another. Then the spacers would climb the ratlines into the rigging and
reposition the various booms with their braces and incant their magical
spells to simulate whatever drive system functioned in the new zone.
Spacer magic was powerful, as everyone knew, and it was rare that a good
spacer crew couldn't come up with some kind configuration that put the
mystic wind into the various sheets of light, crystal, plasma, or flesh
that would bring them home again.
But the weather was not calm. The rapid shifts between the quantum
fronts near the core brought with them a terrible price to the spacers who
braved their reach. The quantum fronts came quickly here: a succession of
realities which constantly challenged the integrity of the drive-tree and
its configuration. The spacers challenged the assault in the rigging,
swinging the booms wildly as they fought chaos itself from moment to
moment, altering their incantations and their mystic spells with each new
reality as it came.
None of which would do right now, L'Zari reminded himself. He
twisted his head and looked down his right shoulder. The ratlines,
rigging, and mast ran down dizzingly below him to the deck. He dreaded
the sight, but needed to know.
There, just as the ship's hull yawed to starboard, he saw it. A
dull, orange-red mottled hull. It was smaller than his merchant ship but
apparently every bit as nimble and swift. The arched cone of the aft hull
casing projected horns forward and encompassed the raider's main deck. He
could see vague shadows moving there, could somehow sense their hunger for
his own ship.
It was a Gorgon ship.
That wasn't entirely true, he reminded himself. The ship itself was
of an old K'tan design or, at least, that was what Old Phin had told him
when the other ship made its first pass at them. But it flew the Gorgon
flag. L'Zari could see the great ensign trailing down the hull from one
of the horned mounts a bright red swath of cloth bearing the white
Gorgon's skull with a saber passing through one eye socket. That left no
doubt to it--it was Marren-Kan. No other ship dared fly such a flag. No
other buccaneer had such a reputation for dread.
The hull of the Knight Fortune swung across his view of the raider.
In his musings, L'Zari was unprepared for the unexpected roll of the ship
to port. His body swung away from the boom, his feet slipping from under
the stay cables. In sudden panic, the boy gripped the ratlines even
tighter as he found himself suddenly suspended by his arms alone, high
above the shifting deck. He cried out against the howling winds whipping
about him, but his voice sounded hollow and small in his own ears. The
ship suddenly pitched upward through another break in the mast. The
sudden impact pressed the wind out of his lungs. Gasping and dazed, he
released his grip.
The lines, backstays, halyards, and booms swung crazily around him.
I let go! His mind screamed at him as he flailed through the hurricane,
searching for something to which he might hold. Falling ... he felt
himself falling for the longest time ...
Suddenly he stopped and spun madly about. The world was a blur until
something grasped his leg, then gathered the front of his tunic in its
massive hand. L'Zari shook his head, trying to clear the bleariness from
his eyes. After a moment they focused fairly well but had trouble
holding steady, as they tried to follow the spin that his inner ear told
him he still was experiencing. Unstable as his sight seemed to be, he was
pretty sure that he was hanging somehow from the rigging directly over the
face of his father.
"Boy?" An angry face with bright squinting eyes was staring up at him
not a handsbreath from his own face. A broad nose and a stubble-length
beard his vision. "This is certainly no time to be hanging about!"
"Sorry, father," L'Zari said miserably.
In a single motion, the man pulled a broad knife and cut the safety
line that suspended L'Zari over him. The moment the boy was free, the man
moved aside to allow him to fall the rest of the way to the hard planks
below.
L'Zari landed painfully and, groaning, pulled himself up to sit. At
least I'm back on the deck, he thought as he rubbed his right shoulder.
L'Zari's father Kip-lei, whom all the ship knew only as "Kip," stood
over him, his legs spread wide on the moving deck, paying not the least
bit of attention to the plight of his own son.
It was understandable. L'Zari thought ruefully. The old man had
known houses in the Far Trade Coalition. Interstellar trade was invented
by them, or so the believed, and was therefore a concept they owned. His
mother had been raised in a somewhat sheltered atmosphere. The best
tutors did all her schooling at home lest she be corrupted by any outside
influence into ideas that were contrary to her clan. Her friends were
selected for her. In time she deemed sufficiently competent to actually
go out on her own and face the galaxy, but K'thari hadn't quite set in
their mold. She found excitement in the greater galaxy that unfolded
around her especially in the arms of the forbidden and roguish freetrade
captain with the brilliant blue eyes and confident manner. He filled her
mind with visions and tales: stories of the great treasures of the core
and his passion ...
