All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund

Section I: The First Day of School

1 New Rules

2 Circles of Power And Regret

3 Entrance Exam

4 What We Do Best

5 Placement And Displacement

6 Not A Popularity Contest

7 The Fool’s Opening Move

8 Tour

9 Ludus Magnus

10 The Gates of Perdition

11 Borderlands

12 Hero-In-Training

13 Just The Start

Section II: Rigors of Academic Life

14 Blood Pedigree

15 The Truth Will Hurt

16 Breakfast Special

17 Friends and Enemies

18 The Unprepared Test

19 Team Scarab’s First Match

20 Little White Lie

21 Unexpected Rendezvous

22 A Problem Never Meant to be Solved

23 Shopping For Trouble

Section III: Adversaries

24 First Step on a Crooked Path

25 Stones That Weep

26 The Battle of Ultima Thule

27 A Wrong Turn

28 Shadow Legion

29 Deception By Moonlight

30 Captain

31 What Mattered to Eliot

32 Boy Trouble

33 Three Words That Changed Her Life

34 Outsider

Section IV: Freshman Midterms

35 Father–Daughter Chat

36 Cramming For The Midterm

37 Pre-Test Jitters

38 Midterm Maze

39 Two Against One

40 Grudge Match

41 Expelled

42 Consequences Be Damned

43 A Match

44 Infiltration

45 Shadows, Honey, and Blood

46 Conclusion Most Dire

47 Tipped Balance

Section V: The Semester of Fire And Blood

48 When There Were Still Lots of Options

49 Electives

50 No Match for his Charm and Intellect

51 No More Just Friends

52 Audition of Stars

53 Challenge

54 Music to End the World if Thou Desire

55 Underestimation of his Cunning

56 Two More Pieces in Play

57 How to Foil a Death Trap

Section VI: Ditching

58 Performance

59 Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect

60 The Trouble With Truancy

61 What Little Girls Are Made of

62 Collateral Damage

63 Wolf Under the Waves

64 First Time in the Headmistress’s Office

65 A Very Long Distance Call

66 One Thing Almost Everyone had Forgotten

67 The Biggest Lie of His Life

68 Not a Time to Be Coy

69 Betrayal At The Gates of Perdition

Section VII: War is Hell

70 Missteps in the Blasted Lands

71 The Heroic Stand of Amanda Lane

72 The Tower Grave

73 Dux Bellorum

74 Underlying Darkness

75 Broken Hearts of Hell

76 Last Moments Together

77 Tide of Battle

78 Just the two of them

79 One in a Million

80 The Last Moment When Everything was Still Possible

81 Infernal Lord

Section VIII: Graduation

82 Second Time in the Headmistress’s Office

83 Last-Minute Details for Armageddon

84 Cycle of Violence

85 Ceremonies

86 All that Lives Must Die

87 Patched

88 The Storm that None Survive

89 No Rest for the Wicked

90 The Long Walk Home

Reader’s Guide

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ALL THAT LIVES MUST DIE

Copyright © 2010 by Eric Nylund

Reader’s Guide copyright © 2010 by Eric Nylund

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN 978-0-7653-2304-0

First Edition: July 2010

Printed in the United States of America

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Syne, the passion of my life and the one woman

I’d go to Hell and battle the Legions of the Damned for

&

For Kai, your father promises he will never make you

go to the Paxington Institute (unless you want to)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My gratitude to the following people for their help, confidence, and being some of the best friends a writer could have: Richard Curtis, Tom Doherty, Alexis Ortega, Eric Raab, and John Sutherland.

EDITOR’S NOTE

We at Tor have received numerous requests to publish the many-volume set of Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, as well as the notorious Golden’s Guide to Extraordinary Books and, of course, the apocalyptically difficult to obtain and decipher Mythica Improbiba. At this time, however, the rights for these rare books (and others within All That Lives Must Die) reside with academic institutes, religious organizations, and private collectors. While excerpts have been graciously provided for Mr. Nylund’s footnotes, the remaining bodies of these works are fated to remain in obscurity (and please, please stop sending me e-mail and letters about this).

ERIC RAAB

Editor, Tor Books

New York

QUEEN GERTRUDE

Do not for ever with thy vailed lids

Seek for thy noble father in the dust:

Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die,

Passing through nature to eternity.

HAMLET

Ay, madam, it is common.

QUEEN GERTRUDE

If it be,

Why seems it so particular with thee?

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Hamlet (act 1, scene 2)

ALL THAT LIVES MUST DIE

Prologue

WHAT I DID OVER MY SUMMER VACATION

by Fiona Paige Post

This summer, my brother and I joined the League of Immortals. One minute, I’m a homeschooled hermit; the next, I’m a fledgling goddess-in-training and the newest member of the Order of the Celestial Rose.

You’d think, being an actual goddess, I’d end up with killer Botticelli hair. No luck there, I’m afraid.

Let me start at the beginning.

Gods and fallen angels exist.

And they don’t get along.

Despite this, sixteen years ago—Atropos, the Eldest Fate, and Lucifer, Prince of Darkness, fell in love.

They’re my mother and