Product Description

Now for the first time in one thrilling volume–the three magical novels that make up David Eddings’s epic fantasy The Elenium.

In an ancient kingdom, the legacy of one royal family hangs in the balance, and the fate of a queen–and her empire–lies on the shoulders of one knight.

Sparhawk, Knight and Queen’s Champion, has returned to Elenia after ten years of exile, only to find young Queen Ehlana trapped in a crystalline cocoon. The enchantments of the sorceress Sephrenia have kept the queen alive–but the spell is fading. In the meantime, Elenia is ruled by a prince regent, the puppet of the tyrannical Annias, who vows to seize power over all the land.

Now Sparhawk must find the legendary Bhelliom, a sapphire that holds the key to Ehlana’s cure. Sparhawk and his companions will face monstrous foes and evil creatures on their journey, but even greater dangers lie in wait: for dark legions will stop at nothing to reach the radiant stone, which may possess powers too deadly for any mortal to bear.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40732 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-25
• Released on: 2007-09-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 912 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780345500939
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER ONE

It was raining. A soft, silvery drizzle sifted down out of the night sky and wreathed around the blocky watchtowers of the city of Cimmura, hissing in the torches on each side of the broad gate and making the stones of the road leading up to the city shiny and black. A lone rider approached the city. He was wrapped in a dark, heavy traveller’s cloak and rode a tall, shaggy roan horse with a long nose and flat, vicious eyes. The traveller was a big man, a bigness of large, heavy bone and ropy tendon rather than of flesh. His hair was coarse and black, and at some time his nose had been broken. He rode easily, but with the peculiar alertness of the trained warrior.

His name was Sparhawk, a man at least ten years older than he looked, who carried the erosion of his years not so much on his battered face as in a half-dozen or so minor infirmities and discomforts and in the several wide purple scars upon his body which always ached in damp weather. Tonight, however, he felt his age and he wished only for a warm bed in the obscure inn which was his goal. Sparhawk was coming home at last after a decade of being someone else with a different name in a country where it almost never rained—where the sun was a hammer pounding down on a bleached white anvil of sand and rock and hard-baked clay, where the walls of the buildings were thick and white to ward off the blows of the sun, and where graceful women went to the wells in the silvery light of early morning with large clay vessels balanced on their shoulders and black veils across their faces.

The big roan horse shuddered absently, shaking the rain out of his shaggy coat, and approached the city gate, stopping in the ruddy circle of torchlight before the gatehouse.

An unshaven gate guard in a rust-splotched breastplate and helmet, and with a patched green cloak negligently hanging from one shoulder, came unsteadily out of the gatehouse and stood swaying in Sparhawk’s path. “I’ll need your name,” he said in a voice thick with drink.

Sparhawk gave him a long stare, then opened his cloak to show the heavy silver amulet hanging on a chain about his neck.

The half-drunk gate guard’s eyes widened slightly, and he stepped back a pace. “Oh,” he said, “sorry, my Lord. Go ahead.”

Another guard poked his head out of the gatehouse. “Who is he, Raf?” he demanded.

“A Pandion Knight,” the first guard replied nervously.

“What’s his business in Cimmura?”

“I don’t question the Pandions, Bral,” the man named Raf answered. He smiled ingratiatingly up at Sparhawk. “New man,” he said apologetically, jerking his thumb back over his shoulder at his comrade. “He’ll learn in time, my Lord. Can we serve you in any way?”

“No,” Sparhawk replied, “thanks all the same. You’d better get in out of the rain, neighbor. You’ll catch cold out here.” He handed a small coin to the green-cloaked guard and rode on into the city, passing up the narrow, cobbled street beyond the gate with the slow clatter of the big roan’s steel-shod hooves echoing back from the buildings.

The district near the gate was poor, with shabby, run-down houses standing tightly packed beside each other with their second floors projecting out over the wet, littered street. Crude signs swung creaking on rusty hooks in the night wind, identifying this or that tightly shuttered shop on the street-level floors. A wet, miserable-looking cur slunk across the street with his ratlike tail between his legs. Otherwise, the street was dark and empty.

A torch burned fitfully at an intersection where another street crossed the one upon which Sparhawk rode. A sick young whore, thin and wrapped in a shabby blue cloak, stood hopefully under the torch like a pale, frightened ghost. “Would you like a nice time, sir?” she whined at him. Her eyes were wide and timid, and her face gaunt and hungry.

He stopped, bent in his saddle, and poured a few small coins into her grimy hand. “Go home, little sister,” he told her in a gentle voice. “It’s late and wet, and there’ll be no customers tonight.” Then he straightened and rode on, leaving her to stare in grateful astonishment after him. He turned down a narrow side street clotted with shadow and heard the scurry of feet somewhere in the rainy dark ahead of him. His ears caught a quick, whispered conversation in the deep shadows somewhere to his left.

The roan snorted and laid his ears back.

“It’s nothing to get excited about,” Sparhawk told him. The big man’s voice was very soft, almost a husky whisper. It was the kind of voice people turned to hear. Then he spoke more loudly, addressing the pair of footpads lurking in the shadows. “I’d like to accommodate you, neighbors,” he said, “but it’s late, and I’m not in the mood for casual entertainment. Why don’t you go rob some drunk young nobleman instead, and live to steal another day?” To emphasize his words, he threw back his damp cloak to reveal the leather-bound hilt of the plain broadsword belted at his side.

There was a quick, startled silence in the dark street, followed by the rapid patter of fleeing feet.

The big roan snorted derisively.

“My sentiments exactly,” Sparhawk agreed, pulling his cloak back around him. “Shall we proceed?”

They entered a large square surrounded by hissing torches where most of the brightly colored canvas booths had their fronts rolled down. A few forlornly hopeful enthusiasts remained open for business, stridently bawling their wares to indifferent passersby hurrying home on a late, rainy evening. Sparhawk reined in his horse as a group of rowdy young nobles lurched unsteadily from the door of a seedy tavern, shouting drunkenly to each other as they crossed the square. He waited calmly until they vanished into a side street and then looked around, not so much wary as alert.

Had there been but a few more people in the nearly empty square, even Sparhawk’s trained eye might not have noticed Krager. The man was of medium height and he was rumpled and unkempt. His boots were muddy, and his maroon cape carelessly caught at the throat. He slouched across the square, his wet, colorless hair plastered down on his narrow skull and his watery eyes blinking nearsightedly as he peered about in the rain. Sparhawk drew in his breath sharply. He hadn’t seen Krager since that night in Cippria, almost ten years ago, and the man had aged considerably. His face was grayer and more pouchy-looking, but there could be no question that it was Krager.

Since quick movements attracted the eye, Sparhawk’s reaction was studied. He dismounted slowly and led his big horse to a green canvas food vendor’s stall, keeping the animal between himself and the nearsighted man in the maroon cape. “Good evening, neighbor,” he said to the brown-clad food vendor in his deadly quiet voice. “I have some business to attend to. I’ll pay you if you’ll watch my horse.”

The unshaven vendor’s eyes came quickly alight.

“Don’t even think it,” Sparhawk warned. “The horse won’t follow you, no matter what you do—but I will, and you wouldn’t like that at all. Just take the pay and forget about trying to steal the horse.”

The vendor looked at the big man’s bleak face, swallowed hard, and made a jerky attempt at a bow. “Whatever you say, my Lord,” he agreed quickly, his words tumbling over each other. “I vow to you that your noble mount will be safe with me.”

“Noble what?”

“Noble mount—your horse.”

“Oh, I see. I’d appreciate that.”

“Can I do anything else for you, my Lord?”

Sparhawk looked across the square at Krager’s back. “Do you by chance happen to have a bit of wire handy—about so long?” He measured out perhaps three feet with his hands.

“I may have, my Lord. The herring kegs are bound with wire. Let me look.”

Sparhawk crossed his arms and leaned them on his saddle, watching Krager across the horse’s back. The past years, the blasting sun, and the women going to the wells in the steely light of early morning fell away, and quite suddenly he was back in the stockyards outside Cippria with the stink of dung and blood on him, the taste of fear and hatred in his mouth, and the pain of his wounds making him weak as his pursuers searched for him with their swords in their hands.

He pulled his mind away from that, deliberately concentrating on this moment rather than the past. He hoped that the vendor could find some wire. Wire was good. No noise, no mess, and with a little time it could be made to look exotic—the kind of thing one might expect from a Styric or perhaps a Pelosian. It wasn’t so much Krager, he thought as the tense excitement built in him. Krager had never been more than a dim, feeble adjunct to Martel—an extension, another set of hands, just as the other man, Adus, had never been more than a weapon. It was what Krager’s death would do to Martel—that was what mattered.

“This is the best I could find, my Lord,” the greasy-aproned food vendor said respectfully, coming out of the back of his canvas booth and holding out a length of rusty, soft-iron wire. “I’m sorry. It isn’t much.”

“It’s just fine,” Sparhawk replied, taking the wire. He snapped the rusty strand taut between his hands. “It’s perfect, in fact.” Then he turned to his horse. “Stay here, Faran,” he said.

The horse bared his teeth at him. Sparhawk laughed softly and moved out into the square, some distan...

Customer Reviews

A Hero's Story
"The Elenium perhaps matches Edding's Belgariad. A fantastic high fantasy series featuring one of the great heroes of modern fantasy literature - the knight, Sparhawk."
-- Glenn G. Thater, Author of 'Harbinger of Doom'

Book equivalent of the Saturday movie serial
I admit it, I enjoy the Eddings. They write big sprawling books that are pure escapism. When I stop my world long enough to read, I don't want the "Great American Novel" full of angst. I want entertainment with enjoyable characters, Good vs. Evil plots and enough travel to get me out of my day to day rut. I can snicker over Sparhawk's horse, Faran, and his nasty attitude and appreciate the pragmatic, broken-nosed Pandion who would never think he could be anyone's Paladin. The Elenium: The Diamond Throne The Ruby Knight The Sapphire Rose

A witty Paladin
Eddings tells the same story over and over again, but it's a good story and the characters are what make it so enticing.

Here's the spoiler. The Universe makes mistakes every now and again and those mistakes make good and evil. To sort out the difference, the Universe makes one man and then makes a world for that man to stand on so he can get the job done. No job is ever finished in a single day or a single series and the motivations of that man are neither pure nor truly dastardly, but tend towards the iconic in Arthurian tradition. Save the Damsel in distress, avenge the death of your friends, and serve the faith as it serves others. Almost all of Eddings good works subscribe to this formula, but within it are characters who jibe and jab like family members, like old army buddies or people you meet at work, college or on the bus. Everyone you bother to hear from in the Eddings universe is either a slack jawed simpleton, a hero with a few rough edges, a genius, or perhaps a God or their disciple.

I hope I've spoiled nothing, but the reason you'll read Eddings and hopefully re-read him is because you miss the people you met in his books and would like to revisit them. This 900+ page tome replaces three tattered paper backs on my shelf, and will probably serve me until I buy a hard bound collectors edition or slam one on a Kindle in that contraptions 2nd or 3rd generation.