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The world grows colder with each passing year, the longer winters and ever-deepening snows awaking ancient fears within the Dengan Packstead, fears of invasion by armed and desperate nomads, attack by the witchlike and mysterious Silth, able to kill with their minds alone, and of the Grauken, that desperate time when intellect gives way to buried cannibalistic instinct, when meth feeds upon meth.

For Marika, a young pup of the Packstead, loyal to pack and family, times are dark indeed, for against these foes, the Packstead cannot prevail. But awakening within Marika is a power unmatched in all the world, a legendary power that may not just save her world, but allow her to grasp the stars themselves.

From Glen Cook, author of the Black Company and Dread Empire novels, comes Darkwar, collecting for the first time, the stunning science fantasy epic that originally appeared as Doomstalker, Warlock, and Ceremony.

The Grauken wakes. It was the dormant, loathsome instinct possessed by every beast of Ponath. An innocent pup of the Degnan Packstead, Marika thought it was just a tale to frighten the young. Then the Grauken-possessed, cannibalistic nomads swept down from the far north--and the winter of death began.

Marika's pack now has to fight for its life--even if it means calling upon the treacherous witchlike Silth who can slay by mind alone. But young Marika has powers, too... enormous, untamed mental energies. Can Marika be a weapon against their foes? Or will she become something far greater than the Silth, something fearfully whispered of only in legends Doomstalker.

THE POWER IN HER MIND brought young Morika at last to the great Maksche Cloister, where her already precocious silth witch-like powers could be honed to an awesome mental weapon.

To the tradermales fell the skills ot science and technology, while the female silth dominated the world with their mastery of the black arts. In the uneasy tradermale-silth truce, there could be no trust or friendship between the two races.

But proud, stubborn Marika was born to break all rulesù maybe even to be her worldÆs destruction. One tradermaIe was her friend already. And another, closer to her heart than any living being, held a power strong enough to challenge silth domination. Marika had a choice to make, a vow to keep, and a battle to fight with the one they called...

Was she their savior or a deadly menace? Now grown to her full psychic powers as Most Senior of the witchlike silth, Marika made a daring plan: to set solar mirrors in space that would end the Winter of the World, heralding a new age for all.

Then her old enemies, the rogue tradermales, raised up a champion against her, an alien power that threatened to destroy all that she had worked for. It was to lead Marika to her final battle--one against the forces of nature and the will of her own people. Before its end, she would have to pilot her darkship to touch another world, as she herself faced the final... Ceremony.

A portent of annihilation awakens the powerful sorcerer Pug in the dead of night—a dread vision warning of a vast and terrible army descending upon the exposed heart of Midkemia. Even the formidable might of the Tsurani Empire will not beat back the alien invaders. And in far Stardock town, two boys—untrained, unready, and barely come of age—will be called upon by the mysterious Conclave of Shadows to confront a sinister plot that implicates even the highest-ranking nobles in the land. For a nightmare of treason, intrigue, and murder is brewing among an ancient Brotherhood of Death—a clan of merciless assassins whose name is spoken only in fearful whispers . . .

The dread plot to destroy the Empire of Great Kesh has failed. The Conclave of Shadows has ended the murderous Nighthawk brotherhood's horrific reign of terror and death. But the mad sorcerer, Leso Varen, has fled, taking refuge among the most powerful men and women on Kelewan—a world now threatened, along with Midkemia, by hordes of the most vicious warriors in the known universe. The great sorcerer Pug knows of no power that will vanquish these invaders. And now he, brave Magnus and Nakor, and a disturbing young stranger named Bek must venture into the poisonous heart of the Dasati realm—the most terrible place they have ever encountered—in a valiant, impossible attempt to turn the tides against the encroaching doom that would swallow their world.

The Darkwar rages, bringing bleak days of destruction and despair to Midkemia and Kelewan. To save both worlds, the powerful sorcerer Pug and select members of the mysterious Conclave of Shadows must journey deep into the dangerous realm of the bloodthirsty Dasati on an audacious mission that has little, if any, chance to succeed. In Midkemia, young warriors Tad and Zane and their fellow soldiers must protect the Kingdom from raiders. And Pug's beloved wife, Miranda, finds herself a prisoner of the Dasati and, even more ominously, of Pug's nemesis, the evil sorcerer Leso Varen.

But salvation may come from a friend thought long dead—an unlikely ally whose remarkable powers will be sorely needed. For there is a momentous battle looming . . . a final, fevered onslaught against the most malevolent agents of evil ever known.