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The Wars of Light and Shadow
1
Curse of the Mistwraith
Janny Wurts
Voyager
An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Previously published by HarperCollins Science Fiction & Fantasy 1994 and by Voyager 1996
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1993
Copyright © Janny Wurts 1993
Janny Wurts 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: 9780586210697
Ebook Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 9780007346905
Version: 2019-01-03
Table of Contents
XVII. MARCH UPON STRAKEWOOD FOREST
The Wars of Light and Shadow were fought during the third age of Athera, the most troubled and strife-filled era recorded in all of history. At that time Arithon, called Master of Shadow, battled the Lord of Light through five centuries of bloody and bitter conflict. If the canons of the religion founded during that period are reliable, the Lord of Light was divinity incarnate, and the Master of Shadow a servant of evil, spinner of dark powers. Temple archives attest with grandiloquent force to be the sole arbiters of truth.
Yet contrary evidence supports a claim that the Master was unjustly aligned with evil. Fragments of manuscript survive which expose the entire religion of Light as fraud, and award Arithon the attributes of saint and mystic instead.
Because the factual account lay hopelessly entangled between legend and theology, sages in the seventh age meditated upon the ancient past, and recalled through visions the events as they happened. Contrary to all expectation, the conflict did not begin on the council stair of Etarra, nor even on the soil of Athera itself; instead the visions started upon the wide oceans of the splinter world, Dascen Elur.
This is the chronicle the sages recovered. Let each who reads determine the good and the evil for himself.