Read an Excerpt
Magician's End
By Raymond Feist HarperCollins Publishers
Copyright © 2013 Raymond Feist
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-146843-8
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SHATTERED
Chaos erupted.
A light so brilliant it was painful bathed Pug as
he instinctively threw all his magic into the protective shell
Magnus had erected around them just a moment before. Only
Magnus's anticipation of the trap had prevented them all from
being instantly vaporized. Energy so intense it could hardly
be comprehended now destroyed everything at hand, reduc-
ing even the most iron- hard granite to its fundamental par-
ticles, dispersing them into the fiery vortex forming around
them.
The light pierced Pug's tightly shut eyelids, rendering his
vision an angry red- orange, with afterimages of green- blue.
His instinct was to shield his face, but he knew the gesture
would be useless. He willed himself to keep his hands moving
in the pattern necessary to support Magnus's efforts. Only
magic protected them from conditions no mortal could with-
stand for even the barest tick of time. The very stuff of the
universe was being distorted on all sides.
They were in what appeared to be the heart of a sun. In his
studies, Pug knew this to be the fifth state of matter, beyond
R A Y M O N D E . F E I S T
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earth, air, water, and fire, called different names by various
magicians: among them, flux, plasma, and excited fire. Energy
so powerful that it tore the very essentials of all matter down
to their very atoms and recombined them, repeating the pro-
cess until at some point the plasma fell below a threshold of
destruction and creation and was able finally to cease its fury.
Years of perfecting his art had gifted him with myriad
skills, some talents deployed reflexively without conscious
effort. The magic tools he used to assess and evaluate were
overloaded with sensations he had never experienced in his
very long lifetime. Obviously, whoever had constructed this
trap had hoped it would be beyond his ability to withstand.
He suspected it was the work of several artisans of magic.
In his mind, Pug heard Miranda asking, Is everyone safe?
Nakor's voice spoke aloud. “There's air. We can talk.
Magnus, Pug, don't look. It will blind you. Miranda, we can
look.”
“Describe what you see,” Magnus said to the two demons
in human form.
Miranda said, “It's an inferno hotter than anything wit-
nessed in the demon realm. It has destroyed a hundred feet of
rock and soil below us and we are afloat in a bubble of energy.
Farther out from where we stand, it's turning sand to glass.
A wall of superheated air is expanding outward at incredible
speed, and whatever it touches is incinerated in moments. As
far as my eye can discern, all is flame, smoke, and ash.”
Less than a minute before, the four of them had been ex-
amining a matrix of magic, which was obviously a lock, but
had turned out to be a trap.
Ancient beings of energy, the Sven- ga'ri, had been pro-
tected in a quiet glade atop a massive building built by a peace-
ful tribe of the Pantathians, a race of serpent men created by
the ancient Dragon Lord, Alma- Lodaka. Unlike their more
violent brethren, these beings had been gentle, scholarly, and
very much like humans.
Now that peaceful race had been obliterated. It didn't
M A G I C I A N ' S E N D
3
matter to Pug that they had been created by the mad vanity
of a long- dead Dragon Lord as pets and servants: they had
evolved into something much finer and he knew he would
mourn their loss.
“It's fading,” said Nakor. “Don't look.”
Pug kept his eyes closed, focusing on his son's protective
shell. “You anticipated— ”
Magnus finished his sentence for him: “— the trap. It was
just one of those moments, Father. The hair on my neck and
arms started to tingle, and before I knew it, the protective spell
was cast. I had created a word trigger, a power word. I just had
no idea the trap would be so massive. Without your help and
Moth— Miranda's . . .” He let the thought go unfinished.
Pug and Miranda both chose to ignore his slip. She wasn't
his mother. She was a demon named Child who was in pos-
session of all his mother's memories, but Child seemed com-
pletely contained within Miranda. It was easy to forget she
wasn't Miranda; the experience was unnerving for all of them.
Only Belog the demon, now to outward appearances
Nakor, seemed untroubled by his situation, and that was
wholly in keeping with who Nakor had been in life: a man
of unlimited curiosity and a delight in all mysteries. His
voice held a note of awe. “This was an unspeakably brilliant
trap, Pug.”
Keeping his eyes tightly shut, Pug said, “I tend to agree.
What's your thinking?”
“Whoever fashioned this understood it could be investi-
gated only by a very limited number of people,” said Nakor.
“First they would have to get past the Pantathians, either by
winning their confidence or by brute force. If they reached
the matrix, few magic- using demons or lesser magicians, or
even very well- schooled priests, could have begun to under-
stand the complexities of this lock, or trap, or however you
think of it.”
Miranda said, “Only Pug.”
Pug was silent for a moment, then said, “No. It was
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Magnus. I sensed the lock, but only assumed there was a trap
involved. By the time I returned from the Academy, he had al-
ready easily won past barriers that would have proved a chal-
lenge to me.”
Magnus began, “I'm not certain— ”
Miranda cut him off. “That was no hollow praise. I have
all your mother's memories and skills, Magnus, but you . . .
you are the best of both of us, I mean both your mother and
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Magician's End by Raymond Feist. Copyright © 2013 Raymond Feist. Excerpted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
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