Corean Chronicles

Millennia ago, a magical disaster caused the fall of a great worldwide civilization, the end of a golden age. New civilizations have fought their way up from the ancient destruction and chaos, knowing little of the lost world that preceded them or the details of its fall.Corus today is a world of contending countries, of humans, but also of strange animals and supernatural creatures. It is a place of magical powers and of a few people who are talented enough to use them. Alusius, the hero of the story, is one.

Corus is a world of humans, but also of strange animals and supernatural creatures. It is a world of magical powers and of a few people who are Talented enough to use them. Alucius, the hero of the story, is one such person. In Legacies we saw how he grew from a Talented child on a lonely Nightsheep ranch in the Iron Valleys to a proficient soldier who used his wits and his Talent to become the first to escape military enslavement in the neighboring country of Madrien. Now captain of the Twenty-first Company, the youngest officer of his rank in the Militia, he must now face new challenges, both military and magical.Corus has been fragmented since the collapse of its ancient magic-powered civilization. A would-be conqueror has somehow revived sorcerous creatures of legend to assist in his crusade to reunite the continent under his rule. The Iron Valleys are forced into an alliance with the Lord-Protector of Lanachrona, and the Twenty-first is dispatched to stand against the invaders. Neither the officers above him nor the men under him know it, but Alucius's Talent is their only hope for victory, or even survival.

Alucius is happy to be back on his night sheep stead with his beloved wife, Wendra, who is expecting their first child. But the country is beset by enemies on all sides. Although the Lord Protector of Lanachrona keeps his promise not to order Alucius back to active duty, Alucius finds his request for help no easier to ignore. Newly promoted to a higher rank and given command of a combined force of the Northern and Southern Guards, Alucius must first quell a strange, religiously inspired rebellion and then find a way to destroy the powerful weapons of ancient design again being used by the forces of Madrien. Unlike the Lord Protector, Alucius can see that a third, covert, threat must be behind the other two. Only the timely assistance of the mysterious ancient Soarers and the addition of Wendra's Talent to his own give him any hope of success.

As the Alector Colonel of Myrmidons, Dainyl is the fourth highest ranking military officer of the Duarchy. Alectors are a race apart from the normal inhabitants of Corus, from another world. But there is a rebellion brewing against them. Captain Mykel is a young officer who is potentially Talented and unaware that, should he ever discover that Talent, his life is forfeit. For Mykel is not an Alector, and only Alectors are allowed to use Talent.The rebellion spirals out of control, spurred by treachery, corruption, and greed-and aided by the reappearance of the ancient soarers, a fragile humanoid race of flying beings thought to have become extinct. A terrible war is brewing, and one or both of these men are the only ones who might stand against it.

The world Corus has been redesigned to become the new home of a superior race from a distant world whose very life depends on drawing sustenance from the biological life force of a planet. Meanwhile, their plans are supervised by a staff of Alectors, who in effect rule the world. The Alectors alone have access to the huge flying Pteridons they have bred, and the superior weapons that underpin their psychic talents. The time is now fast approaching for the transfer of the whole population from the old world nearly bled dry of life force to Corus. But neither the Alectors (who will be reduced in status when the real powers arrive) nor the local humans (who seem destined to become no more than cattle, though they know nothing of this) are ready. And the mysterious Ancient Ones, the true natives of Corus and assumed to have died out in eons past, still survive, and they have their own powers. The situation builds toward an explosive climax.

The civilization of the Alectors, which has farmed and developed all life on Corus to produce sustaining life force for their vampiric civilization, must move wholesale from one planet to another every few thousand years as it exhausts the life force of another world. This time, two worlds have been prepared, and the time is at hand for the great move. And Corus is the loser, to be abandoned by the civilizing forces of the government of Alectors but used as a dumping ground for malcontents and others who don't make the cut to move on to a richer new world. This neither bodes well for the future of human civilization nor for the honest Alectors such as Dainyl, who is trying to hold everything together as all systems are failing. But the mysterious Ancients, the Soarers, are a force to be reckoned with, and they may hold a powerful and destructive trump card.

Mykella, the eldest daughter of the Lord-Protector of Lanachrona, discovers that someone is diverting significant sums of money from her father's treasury. Soon, a series of fatal and near fatal accidents occur with members of her family and trusted retainers. Then there are attempts to remove Mykella and her sisters from the capital by marrying them off. While Mykella develops a solid idea of who stands behind it all, each of her attempts at a solution is used to discredit her. But Mykella is also discovering her talent for magic.

A bloody coup has made Mykella, the Lord-Protector's daughter, ruler of her land, but it has also left her and her two sisters bereft of family and uncertain of their friends. Worse, their country is almost destitute, and there are rumblings of war along the borders. With no money and few allies, Mykella is faced with the difficult prospect of rebuilding her nation from within while trying to hold off a potentially devastating invasion. Fortunately for Mykella, an old magic awakens in her: a power that gives her the ability to read the emotions of others and to spy on the movements of her enemies. But the resurgence of this power may herald the return of an ancient enemy, one that Mykella isn't sure how to face.