and magical powers of the Fey.
Gateway. The door between Earth and the galaxy where the Imnada first originated.
Gather. The ruling council of the Imnada, consisting of seven members: the clan leader from each of the five clans, the head of the Ossine, and the Duke of Morieux, who is hereditary leader over the five clans.
Idrin the Traveler. Among the first Imnada to come through the Gateway and settle on Earth. He is considered the father of their race and from his seed the five clans sprang.
Imnada. A race of shapechangers and telepaths divided into five clans overseen by the ruling Gather. They wield no magical powers, though they are sensitive to its presence and can identify those who possess magic. At first they existed peacefully with the magical race of Other but when the Imnada betrayed King Arthur to his death, they were hunted down in the wars and uprisings that followed. In the ensuing centuries, those who survived grew reclusive and fiercely suspicious of all outsiders to the point that most believe the Imnada no longer exist.
Lucan. Leader of the clans during King Arthur’s reign. He conspired with Morgana, the king’s half sister, to place her son Mordred upon the throne. His betrayal led to Arthur’s murder. He was captured by the Fey for his treachery and imprisoned within the Bear’s Stone for all eternity.
Morderoth. The night of the new moon, when the shift is impossible for the Imnada.
Mother Goddess. The moon from which the Imnada derive their magical powers.
Ossine. Shamans and spiritual advisers to the clans, they tend to be the strongest and most powerful of the Imnada. They maintain the bloodline scrolls used for selecting each Imnada mating pair and protect the Imnada from out-clan interference with their armed militia of enforcers.
Other. See Fey-blood.
Out-clan. Someone who is not a member of the five clans.
Palings. Magical mists conjured and maintained by the Ossine of each clan. They are used as a natural force field, disguising and shunting people away from the hidden holdings. In recent years, these warded fields have weakened as the clans’ powers have weakened.
Pathing. Speaking mind to mind. Imnada can use this telepathy to speak to one another over short distances or when they are in their animal aspect. For longer distances, they use the amplifying power of the
Realing. A magical servant bound to a specific person or place.
Rogue. An unmarked shapechanger without clan or hold affiliation.
Signum. The mental imprint set on every shapechanger’s mind at birth by the Ossine. It identifies clan affiliation and rank. Those cast out of the clans have their signa stripped, denoting their outlaw status.
Silmith. The night of the full moon, when the shift comes easiest and the powers of the Imnada are at their height.
Sisters of High Danu. An order of Other priestesses, also known as
Warriors of Scathach (Amhas-draoi). An Other brotherhood of warrior mages who serve as guardians between the Fey and human worlds.
Ynys Avalenn. Also known as the Summer Kingdom, this is the realm of the Fey.
Youngling. A child of the Imnada who has not yet reached maturity or been marked.
Keep reading for an excerpt from
WARRIOR’S CURSE
Book Three in the Imnada Brotherhood Series
by Alexa Egan
Available May 2014 from Pocket Books
Turn the page for
a preview of
Prologue
SUMMER 1815
DEEPINGS, CORNWALL—THE PRIMARY SEAT OF THE DUKE OF MORIEUX
No matter what, they would not see him weep.
Instead Gray bit his lower lip until blood dripped hot down his chin to mix with the streaks already smearing his bruised and battered chest. He twisted against the silver fetters clamped around his wrists and ankles, his torn flesh mottled a sickly shade of green from the metal’s poisonous touch, but the struggle only served to sap him of the little strength he had left.
“Just get it over with,” he shouted, despising the weakness cracking his voice and the tremors shaking his knees.
The old man merely stared with milky pale eyes at his only surviving grandson. An air of disappointment carved long lines in the Duke’s solemn aged face. His heir had let him down—again.
Gray’s gaze widened to take in the Gather elders ringing the Duke like hounds round a carcass. The ruddy- faced corpulence of Lord Carteret down from his lonesome Highland holding. Owen Glynjohns from Wales, with his bold good looks and bard’s clever tongue. The Skaarsgard, who’d traveled from the ocean-sprayed Orkney cliffs where the seals basking upon those rocky shores and the rugged fishermen plying their coracles on the cold northern seas considered each other kin. Each of the men looked on impassively, their duty done if not enjoyed.
The fourth elder watched the proceedings with a face pale as bone and eyes hollow with mute rage, his hands clamped against the arms of his chair like claws. No doubt Sir Desmond Flannery was imagining his own son’s sentence, due to be carried out on the morrow. Mac would never snivel or flinch in fear. He was the consummate soldier, unlike Gray, his supposed senior officer.
Sir Desmond leaned forward, his mouth twisted in disgust. “Enough dallying. Let’s have it done then. The sun’ll be down in another wee bit and he’ll”—he seemed to choke on his words—“he’ll shift. The chains aren’t intended to hold a bird on the wing.”
The elder was right. Already Gray felt the queasy slide of Fey blood magic stealing over him, flames burning blue and silver at the edges of his vision. The sun would set soon, and the dying sorcerer’s curse would take him over, twisting his unwilling body from man to beast for the hours of night. His eyes flashed wildly toward his grandfather before darting away again, his bowels churning ominously.
“Of course.” A nondescript little gentleman with a clerk’s fastidiousness stepped forward in response. The Arch Ossine—Sir Dromon Pryor—had eyes that saw everything and a mouth trained for truth-twisting. “Mr. Copper. Whenever you’re ready.”
Gray tried meeting Pryor’s triumphant stare but faltered when the enforcer stepped to the scaffold, a red- hot iron brand held in one brutish fist.
A restless audience whispered, feet shuffling against the benches, but no one called out or came to his defense. They knew the laws that had governed their existence for a hundred hundred generations. Understood
