The Last Hosting (The Wardstane Chronicles)

By Raymond Stone

Book 5, the finale, of The Wardstane Chronicles.

Seven years the realm climbs out of the mirk: Bruce subduing his enemies, taking castle after castle, until only Stirling holds and a pact forces the whole matter to a field by the Bannock burn at midsummer of 1314. And the hidden war climbs with it toward three closings that are one. The order, grown a hundredfold, spreads the minding back into the emptied parishes and comes to the answer the whole war has circled: the stolen Stone will not come home, and the anchor was never the Stone; a realm that anchors itself in the minding, in what it does, cannot be un-anchored by anything, and is free. Thomas the Rhymer walks the hard road into the enemy's keeping to win back his lost foster-daughter, holding her fast through every shape, even her own loving plea to let go, at the cost of his life. And the Unkinged stakes his nine hundred years on one last hosting at Bannockburn, and finds the harvest already home, and is contained forever. Two hostings meet on one ground, for the last time, the living realm's and the dead king's; the realm is freed, the enemy penned, the harper spent, the oldest account closed, the Stone let go; and the frame closes back to Scone, where a dying monk once said, count the wrens, and the wrens are counted, and the watch is passed, at the last, to the reader. Every recorded event happens exactly as history says. The deepest lesson of both wars is that the things worth keeping must be anchored not in what you hold but in what you do.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HHRSRV9T
• ISBN13: 9798170713127
• Release Date: August 2026
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 218 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.6" x 6.0"