Mage Heart

by Jane Routley

Overview

Provincial and naive--and the most powerful mage in the realm--young Dion is an innocent adrift in a world of intrigues and treacheries, with foul, hungry demons lurking just beyond its borders. And now she has been called upon to serve her Duke's favorite mistress: the extraordinary Kitten Avignon, Our Lady of Roses.

For the mesmerizing courtesan is a woman in dire jeopardy, stalked by a fearsome necromancer who will not sleep until his beautiful prey suffers horribly and is destroyed. And with Evil's night approaching, shielding the Lady and herself from harm will require every ounce of a power Dion is only beginning to recognize and fear--a great gift suddenly imperiled by blossoming womanhood. . .and dangerous desire.

"A highly original romantic fantasy."(—Cherry Wilder, author of Signs of Life)

"One of the genre's bright new stars...Routley produces fantasy that can be read for more than myth or pyrotechnics...While many fantasists simply add magic to political intrigue, Routley's are noteworthy for the natural and inevitable intertwining of the two...Well-drawn backgrounds and characters add to the appeal."(—Publishers Weekly)

"A superb entry into the realm of magic and demons...a wonderful addition to the fantasy genre."(—Affaire de Coeur)

"Compelling...evocative...intriguing."(—Fantasy & Science Fiction)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781921857102
Publisher:	Ticonderoga Publications
Publication date:	09/30/2012
Series:	Dion Chronicles
Pages:	360
Sales rank:	1,142,182
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Jane Routley is an Australia-born writer who mader her litery debut with Mage Heart, followed by its sequel, Fire Angels. She divides her time between her native land and Copenhagen, Denmark.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

The first time I saw the demon was in a vision, a vision brought on by chewing the drug hazia. But it was more than a vision.

I was walking along a beach in cold darkness. I knew, even then, that I was in some place I should not be, and-I felt the nervous tenderness between the shoulder blades that comes with such knowledge.

It was easy to see. Cold brilliant stars spiraled slowly and hypnotically in the sky. Did they pulsate as well? Were they eyes? I don't remember now.

The beach was not sand, but millions of tiny, fragile bones that crunched and shattered under my feet. The sea heaved silently as if exhausted. It seemed dappled with starlight. Then I saw it was covered with thousands of little faces, mouths really, which opened and closed with the long, slow roll of the waves and shrieked like seabirds as they broke against the shore. I think I stood for some time looking out across the languid expanse. Suddenly my eye was caught by a different movement, a quick movement. What I had thought to be a rock just offshore stretched in the dark light and resettled its bat wings. Some kind of creature sat on that rock.

I suspected what it was. Desperately. I wanted desperately to see that creature closer. I paced up and down the shore in frustration.

There was a pounding.

The rock was so close; my desire was a torment. Recklessly I stepped into the sea and began to wade. It was not cold and wet as I'd expected, but warm and viscous, like jelly. It held me up, smoothly and firmly. The little gaping maws seemed to move aside for me. As I got deeper in, I noticed little pink tongues lashing out of them as I passed. It tickleddeliciously where they touched the skin. There was a sickly scent, rotting and sweet, like nothing I had ever smelled. So strong that it was nauseating. Like roses—pustulant, rotting roses.

By the time I had waded in up to my waist, I knew that the being on the rock was, as I'd prayed, indeed a demon. It crouched there, betoothed and beclawed, its scaly wings spread out as if to dry, its face to the swirling stars.

A pounding on the door warned me to go no closer.

I had never seen a real demon before, but all my waking life I had been fascinated by the chaotic, winged denizens of nightmare. Now one of these awesome and dangerous beings was before me. I did not have the sense to feel more than the tiniest delicious tingle of fear. Instead, I devoured it with my eyes. It must have felt my gaze, for slowly, like a lizard, it turned its head and looked at me.

Someone was yelling and banging on the door.

Its red reptile eyes were heavy-lidded. It smiled charmingly, urbanely, and held out its spiky hand in greeting. I felt an intense desire to put my tiny, shatterable hand into that hand and feel the rough, horny skin.

Then, suddenly, the compulsion was terrifying. I pulled back violently, lost my footing, and fell back wards into the firm and sucking sea.

And off the bed. I was encased in a white, sticky womb, struggling to be born, my arms pinned to my sides, my head just sticking out. There was a great crashing in my head. Or was it at the door? Suddenly the sheets ripped apart and I tumbled onto the cold floor and lay there panting and twitching, covered in blood and jelly like a newborn worm. I was on a plain covered with huge boulders as the world whirled around and was filled with the most terrible pounding. I covered my head. The pounding was like the blows of a hammer crushing down on a walnut; I had a sticky vision of my brain oozing out like grey stew.

The room turned another circle. The vision peeled away. I broke the surface, and suddenly I was in my own familiar ordinary room, and everything was unbelievably small, quiet, and colorless.

Someone was banging on the door.

"Dion!" yelled an irritable voice. "Oh! By the Seven! Dion, answer the door."

My mouth tasted of sour phlegm. My vision was blurry and seemed ready to whirl again at any moment. I opened the door slightly and saw a pimple faced second year boy.

"Lord of all," he said. "What took you?"

I didn't feel up to standing on my dignity.

"Whats going on?" I croaked.

"The Dean wants to see you."

Oh, God and Angels! No!

"I can't. . ."

"He says its urgent."

He craned his skinny neck forward curiously and moved closer to the door. His spots were fiery red on his bluish morning skin. He smelled of body oil and, grit. He suspected something. I could tell.

"Tell him I'm sick," I said. "I'll come as soon as I can."

I slammed the door shut. It was only then, as I stood behind it, that I realized I was covered in warm slime. Warm slime smelling of pus and roses. It had not been just a vision. Oh, God and Angels! My neck tingled as the hair on the back of it stood up. The. room spun around dizzyingly, filling me with such vertigo that I sank to the floor, still clutching at the door handle.

How could I have entered the world of demons, a plane so remote, so unreachable from our own, that only the strongest mages and the strongest magics could touch it? Was that where the beach of bones had been? Had I actually journeyed there physically? It was as if I had just peered gingerly into a magnetic abyss. I had been to an unknowable world filled with the most malevolent and destructive beings imaginable. If it hadn't been for that revolting boy, I might have touched the demon.

That pulled me up. What the hell was I thinking of? How could I, a mere student mage, accidentally go to that impossibly dangerous place—a place which only the strongest touched, and nobody had ever entered? There had to be some other explanation for the rapidly cooling slime covering me, an explanation that I was too inexperienced to know.