The Stargate of Lantyn

 Volume 9 of the completed Gom series 

Conscience - and the sudden arrival of his friend Wycan - force Gom from the Dunderfosse to attend a tiresome event in Pen'langoth. A few days, Gom tells himself, and he'd get back to work on Harga's island, preparing obsessively for the arrival of the second Spohr. And that's all it would have been until an unexpected revelation propelled him and Wycan far from their planned route and into dangers which threaten not only them but all Ulm and beyond. . . .



The Tamarith of Lantyn:




The icon on the cover represents the Tamarith and suggests the shape of the tree itself. The radiance within it suggests the tree's power and the iridescence of the living crystals.

frontispiece: Gom's vision of Harga trapped with a Spohr inside the Lantyn stargate.

 right: back cover inset: the kithyweird,* a tree found growing in the center of a mysterious wood. The woman? That would be telling.



*"Kithy" comes from the old English verb "cythan", pronounced "couthan"  meaning "to make known." "Weird"? In old English, "wyrd" meant "fate"; the three "weird" sisters in Macbeth, for instance,  were seers. To "dree one's weird" meant "to tell one's fate," or fortune. Here, on Ulm, the kithyweird foretells Gom's fate on two critical occasions and by so doing drastically changes their outcome.