The Deathless. Peter Newman
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PETER NEWMAN
The Deathless
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Peter Newman 2018
Cover illustration © Jaime Jones
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Peter Newman 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: 9780008228989
Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008229009
Version: 2018-05-10
For my friends,
who I really should see more often!
Table of Contents
Vasin Sapphire had risen long before the three suns, unable to sleep nor act, waiting, like the rest of the castle, for the drums of the hunt to begin.
He wished it were otherwise, that experience had taught him how to be calm, allowed him to conserve his strength, but it was always the same, his nerves as much a part of the ritual as everything else. How many times had he participated in the hunt? How many lifetimes? To his surprise, he was hazy on the exact number.
But his body knew. An instinct made him tense, the muscles bunching as he held his breath. And sure enough, on the next beat of his heart, the first drum was played, a single, thunderous strike. Housed at the very centre of the sprawling castle, its reverberations were felt at every corner, through the stone and in the guts, echoing throughout as the note faded to make way for the next. This was the deepest drum of the set, and its beat would steadily quicken as time passed, signalling all to prepare for the hunt.
Vasin exhaled. Some of the tension he had been holding in his limbs released. He kept looking out of the window. The darkness remained, starless and black, a greater emptiness that echoed the one inside.
Clearly he should be getting