Enter a world of legend and prophecy, love and war, loyal friendships and cold betrayals, where a mad king wreaks havoc, and salvation might just be worse than destruction.
“Stasia woke in the middle of the night, her body trembling with fear, her gown drenched in cold sweat. The blue icelights that never sleep were distant to her eyes. The ice slab of her bed was cold and soothing, but her heart was beating fast and hot. Though she was only six years old, she did not cry out for her mother, but sat still and silent, the dream replaying in her mind.”“Two Lords of Chraun sat in the baths, drinking blissi and telling stories. Because they were particularly wealthy Lords, and especially because Lord Garn was eligible, a bevy of Ladies, each younger and more beautiful than the other, crowded close in Lord Barrett’s private pool, hanging on their every word.”“Maia, stay back from the edge.” Kachni hurried toward her daughter, who was running headlong for the cliff. “Maia!”Katu dug his pole deep into the muck of Lake Lentok and heaved his skiff away from shore on still waters.“Tonight I will meet the one who will change my life forever. He will bring me riches and power beyond anything my family has ever dreamed of, if the Fire Spirit is good.”“I am not like all the other guildless. These people are here because they are mad or lazy, or born in this dismal tunnel; starving or not, they breed like slink in a warm cave. I am here because one piece of gold plate was misplaced at just the wrong moment, and I was swept down a bureaucratic crack in the floor, and wound up here among misfits and slovenly bastards.”“They say in language of Ancestors, Semija meant servant. In my time, it has meant one thing only—slave. “I was born in breeding pits, where all Semija mothers go to birth. I don’t know who my mother was. Male Semija don’t have mothers, only fathers. When new one is born they mark him with fire; mark shows who his father is and where he will work.”“For a little while longer, the light would protect him from the silent dangers. Pitvipers with fatal venom, lurking in cracks and crevices. Trap-fungi, their sticky mycelium fingers reaching down tunnels to grab prey. And the stealthy, viciously territorial slink.”
