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  For my mother, Alexandra.

  I miss you.

  FOREWORD 1

  Your Majesty,

  Enclosed is my chronicle of recent events, as well as Senera’s accounting of events leading up to Atrine’s destruction.

  And I am asking you to not read either of them.

  I realize this seems an odd request, but time … oh, time … is a luxury we don’t have at the moment. What I am asking is that you read the attached summary of Senera’s book and then come immediately, without a second’s delay, to the tower on the island in center of Rainbow Lake. The Crown and Scepter know the way.

  We need your help. I need your help. I do not have time for you to read either book. Once you are here, and not before, only then will we find you the time necessary.

  We’ll steal it if we have to.

  You should know I’ve given a copy of this chronicle to Senera. There is little point in keeping it from her; she has it within her power to divine the contents. I’m hoping my gesture of “friendliness” will convince her that acquiring her own copy is unnecessary. Because her copy is not complete, and it is of vital importance that it remain that way.

  The fate of the whole world rests on this.

  Always your faithful servant,

  Thurvishar

  What led up to this:

  Two days after the Capital City Hellmarch, your own ascension to the Quuros throne, and Kihrin’s recovery of the sword Urthaenriel, Kihrin D’Mon traveled to Jorat to find the Black Knight. As plans go, it needed work; I believe it amounted to “anyone Duke Kaen and Relos Var hate this much must be someone I’ll like.”

  He found Janel Theranon, former Joratese Count of Tolamer, who had bribed a House D’Aramarin Gatekeeper to make sure Kihrin crossed her path. Since Kihrin had Urthaenriel, Janel wanted to recruit him to slay the dragon Morios, which she believed would soon attack Atrine, second-largest city in Quur. Why did she believe this? I’ll get to that in a moment.

  Janel knew Kihrin because she’d helped Return him to life. He didn’t remember her and, believing this a con, attempted to leave. He failed. The dragon Aeyan’arric, Lady of Storms, had arrived, trapping everyone inside. So Kihrin agreed to at least listen to Janel (and her Vishai priest confidant, Brother Qown) explain how the current crisis came to be and why she needed Kihrin’s help.

  It seems several years earlier, Janel had encountered Relos Var, who had been fomenting unrest in the Jorat region. Var’s plan seemed to be multipronged; he was sneaking disguised Yorans into the duchy, destabilizing the power structure with spurious witch hunts, and summoning real demons to be trapped and eliminated. His main provocateur was a Doltari wizard named Senera whom he’d given a Cornerstone called the Name of All Things, which allows Senera to answer any question.

  Besides trying to warn her Joratese superiors, Janel became determined to recover a magic spear named Khoreval, which she believed could kill Aeyan’arric. Unfortunately, it was owned by Relos Var’s “boss”: Duke Kaen of Yor.

  Janel contrived to get herself kidnapped and taken back to Yor, with an unintended companion as Brother Qown was also taken (and gaeshed as a hostage on Janel’s good behavior). Janel won over both Kaen and his undead wife, Xivan, and spent the next several years trying to find a way to steal Khoreval. In the process, she learned Kaen had the spear because he intended to use it to kill the dragon Morios when it woke from under Lake Jorat. (So then Janel had two dragons to kill.) She also secretly passed messages to both Teraeth (yes, our Teraeth) and her own agents working to undermine Kaen’s plans. (This last under the guise of a Jorat persona known as “the Black Knight”—the same one Kihrin sought.)

  During this time, Janel learned several important facts. First, Duke Kaen kept the god-queen Suless as a gaeshed slave. Second, Janel’s father was General Milligreest (a fact that Duke Kaen intended to exploit). And third, Janel was also the daughter of Tya, Goddess of Magic (a fact that Relos Var was exploiting). Janel herself used this last bit of information to help steal Khoreval, and together, mother and daughter slew Aeyan’arric.

  While Janel told this story to Kihrin, she had an attack of conscience and admitted the truth to him: Relos Var had later captured both her and the spear again. She had been dragged before an enraged Duke Kaen, who ordered her death for her betrayal. Before the god-queen Suless could enact this, however, something happened: Kihrin destroyed the Stone of Shackles. Suless, freed from her gaesh, destroyed Kaen’s palace and almost everyone in it, but Janel, Qown, and a few others managed to escape. When Relos Var returned, he revealed that Khoreval1 alone wouldn’t be able to kill Morios (or Aeyan’arric, who would return). The only way to do so permanently was to simultaneously kill both the dragon and their matching Cornerstone. “Fortunately,” he knew the location of Morios’s Cornerstone. The only piece missing was Urthaenriel.

  That’s where Kihrin came in.

  I’m sure Kihrin would have told Relos Var to get lost, except Morios did rise from Lake Jorat and did start destroying Atrine. So Kihrin agreed to help, a decision I know he now regrets. While Janel, Senera, and Relos Var dealt with the dragon, Kihrin, Qown, and myself (yes, I was part of this) agreed to travel down under Lake Jorat to the dead god-king Khorsal’s flooded throne room, where the Cornerstone Warmonger waited.

  And Kihrin had been right from the beginning; it was all a con. The dragon existed, the threat existed, but Senera had sabotaged the signals we’d created to time our strikes, so Kihrin, thinking Morios had been slain, destroyed what he thought was Warmonger. Instead, it was an ancient warding crystal, one of eight, used to keep Vol Karoth imprisoned and sleeping. Its destruction didn’t free Vol Karoth, but he woke from his slumber. When Kihrin tried to confront Relos Var, Qown betrayed us and ambushed Kihrin.

  Relos Var and Qown took Urthaenriel and left, having accomplished everything they wanted. (Teraeth later rescued both Kihrin and myself from drowning under Lake Jorat.) The rest of us, yourself included, were left to clean up the mess.

  In terms of Relos Var’s goals, I would say it was a complete success. It certainly opened the path for what’s followed, because Relos Var knew exactly how the Eight Immortals would respond.

  He was planning on it.

  FOREWORD 2

  My dearest, Senera,

  I originally thought to address this volume to Empress Tyentso. After all, she does need to be updated on the rather startling events happening outside Quur’s borders.

  Those events will come to roost on her throne as well.

  However, it occurred to me that I can do nothing to keep you from reading this chronicle. I am well aware of what the Name of All Things can do. You may be
required to write down the answers to questions in full, but there is no rule that says you must do so at a moderate and sedate pace. I also know those spells, as well as how to reach Shadrag Gor.

  When you have finished reading, ask yourself this for me, as one equal to another: If Relos Var didn’t know this could happen, what else doesn’t he know? And if he did know, just how much of his true motives has he hidden from you? He believes that only he can save the world and has followed that belief to its most narcissistic and grandiose conclusion. Thus, no matter how much he values your support, you will always be expendable to him.

  It’s not fun to be a wizard’s toy, is it?

  Believe me, I know.

  Think on this and ponder the possibility that saving the world doesn’t have to mean sacrificing your soul. Consider the idea that Relos Var might be wrong. What will you do if you discover all these atrocities he has had you commit were never necessary, but rather a failure of imagination?

  Your most respectful and admiring enemy,

  Thurvishar (that D’Lorus brat)

  PART I

  RITUALS OF NIGHT

  Kihrin found Thurvishar in the library, or rather, the three thousand years of accumulated detritus that had passed for a library to a bachelor who had never once considered that another person might need to look through all his centuries of research. Books littered every room of the tower, along with notes, diagrams, junk, and objects whose purpose and providence were unfathomable. Kihrin had no idea how most of it hadn’t rotted away, besides the obvious: magic. But then, there was rather a lot of magic here. The walls stank of it, the floors vibrated with tenyé sunk into every pore of granite and quartz. The stone was a battery for wizardly power, although not enough power.

  Never enough power for what they needed.

  The D’Lorus Lord Heir didn’t look up from his reading. “May I help you?”

  A bang made Thurvishar glance up as Kihrin dropped a large, heavy book on the table. Kihrin had to shove a stack of papers out of the way so Thurvishar might actually be able to see him as he spoke. “Are you going to write another one?”

  Thurvishar paused, then closed the text he’d been reading. “I’m sorry. What was that?”

  “Are you going to write another book? Like the one you wrote about finding Urthaenriel?” Kihrin gazed at him intently.

  “Technically speaking, I didn’t write—”

  “You did,” Kihrin said. “You may have had those transcripts, but you can’t tell me you didn’t make up large chunks of it. Senera wasn’t wrong about that.” The golden-haired man paused. “I think you need to do it again. You need to write another book.”

  Thurvishar straightened. “To send to Empress Tyentso, you mean?”

  “Sure, that too.” Kihrin drummed his fingers on the book he’d returned. “I just think if we don’t, they will.” He didn’t clarify who “they” were, but it was obvious: Relos Var and his associate, Senera. And likely his new apprentice, Qown.

  Thurvishar studied the book under Kihrin’s fingers and pursed his lips. “So I take it you finished both accounts, then?”

  “Yeah,” Kihrin said. “And I think your conclusions are right.”1 Then the young man sighed. “But I want … I want to cover what’s happened since then. I know you were there for almost all of it, but I keep thinking that there’s something we missed. Something we could have … I don’t know. Something we could have done differently.” He shook his head. “I keep telling myself that it didn’t have to end this way.”

  “Kihrin, are you—” Thurvishar grimaced. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “What do you think?” Kihrin snapped, and then he stopped himself, exhaling. “I’m sorry. But no. No, I don’t think I’m going to be all right at all. Maybe never again.”

  Kihrin picked up a page from the stack of papers he’d moved earlier, and glanced at it. When he realized what it said, he raised an eyebrow at Thurvishar.

  The wizard cleared his throat. “I may have already started. But I was going to ask you for your input, I promise.”

  Kihrin’s mouth quirked. “No time like the present.”

  1: AN INTERRUPTION

  (Thurvishar’s story)

  When the gods descended on the Atrine ruins, they interrupted an assassination.

  Thurvishar hadn’t perceived the danger at first. Yes, soldiers had been pouring through the eight open magical portals set up on a small hill next to Lake Jorat, but he’d expected that. A mountain-size dragon had just finished tearing the second-largest city in the empire into rubble and fine quartz dust, with an incalculable body count. Morios had attacked the army right along with the civilian populations—populations now panicked and displaced. Of course there were soldiers. Soldiers to clean up the mess left in the attack’s wake, soldiers to help with the evacuation, soldiers to maintain a presence in the ruined, rubble-strewn Atrine streets. And the wizards? They needed to render Morios’s body into something so discorporate the dragon couldn’t re-form himself and start the whole messy apocalypse all over again.

  To add fuel to the fire, the damaged dam holding back Lake Jorat, Demon Falls, had begun to fail. When the dam blew, Lake Jorat would empty out. Millions would die, if not in the flooding itself, then by starvation when Quur’s breadbasket1 found itself twenty feet underwater. The wizards would focus on stopping such a catastrophe.

  In hindsight, Thurvishar had been too optimistic; he’d assumed the Quuros High Council would care about saving lives.

  Janel’s fury alerted him, furnace hot, a bubbling cauldron usually locked away behind a fiercer will. He felt Kihrin’s anger a moment later, sharp and lashing. Thurvishar paused while discussing spell theory with an Academy wizard and looked up the hill. The same soldiers he’d ignored earlier had set up a defensive formation. They weren’t dressed as normal soldiers. These men wore the distinctive coin-studded breastplates of a particular sort of Quuros enforcer.

  Witchhunters. He couldn’t see who they surrounded, but he made assumptions.

  Thurvishar debated and discarded opening a portal to their location. That might provoke the very reaction he sought to avoid.

  So instead, he ran.

  What he found when he arrived qualified as a worst-case scenario. No one tried to stop him from pushing to the front. He was, after all, Lord Heir to House D’Lorus. If anyone had a right to be here, he did. More witchhunters gathered in this one area than he’d ever seen before. They didn’t stand alone either; he recognized Academy wizards in equal number as well as High Lord Havar D’Aramarin and several Quuros High Council members.

  All for three people: Kihrin D’Mon, Janel Theranon, and Teraeth. Neither Kihrin nor Janel held obvious weapons, and while one might argue they didn’t need them, with this many people?

  The outcome seemed predictable.

  “What is going on here?” General Qoran Milligreest pushed aside several witchhunters as he strode into the confrontation’s center.

  “It seems our thanks for helping is to be a prison cell.” Janel clenched her fists.

  “Vornel, what’s the meaning of this?” Milligreest turned to a Quuros man without acknowledging his daughter.2

  Vornel Wenora, High Council member, snorted at the general’s question. “I should think it obvious. We’re dealing with a threat to the empire. Which is what you should have done.”

  “Threat to the empire?” Qoran pointed toward the giant metal dragon’s corpse. “That is a threat to the empire. The impending rupture of Demon Falls is a threat to the empire. These are children!”

  Thurvishar scanned the crowd. The witchhunter minds stood out as blank spaces, as did some wizards and all the High Council. But where was Empress Tyentso?

  Vornel shrugged. “So you say, but all I see are dangerous people who are a grave threat to our great and glorious empire. This is the man who killed the emperor and stole Urthaenriel. Then we have a witch who flaunts her powers in public and a known Manol vané agent. Yet for reasons I cannot
begin to fathom, you’ve done nothing to put a stop to them. Why is that, Qoran?”

  “Because I understand priorities!” the general replied.

  Thurvishar raised an eyebrow at Vornel. While the accusations had merit, they missed the truth by an astonishing margin. Plus, none of the High Council members were giving Thurvishar so much as a glance, when he was the far more appropriate target for their anger. Vornel’s accusations seemed disingenuous, less true outrage than a savvy councilman sensing a perfect opportunity for a power play, and too arrogant, petty, or stupid to temper his ruinous timing.

  Councilman Nevesi Oxun, old and thin with silvering cloudcurl hair, stepped forward. “It doesn’t matter, Milligreest. By unanimous vote—”

  “Did I vote in my sleep, then?” Milligreest growled.

  “Nearly unanimous,”3 Oxun corrected. “If you act to prevent us from doing this or interfere with these men in their lawful enforcement, we will be forced to conclude you’ve fallen under the sway of foreign powers and remove you from the High Council.”

  “How dare—”

  Kihrin started laughing. Thurvishar grimaced and glanced away.

  Of course. Tyentso.

  “You don’t want us, do you?” Kihrin said. “You couldn’t give two thrones about us. But Tyentso? She’s the one you think is a ‘grave threat to the empire.’” The young royal, still wearing a Quuros soldier’s borrowed clothing, held out his hands. “If you geniuses think Tyentso’s stupid enough to show herself now with all these witchhunters present, I’ve got a gently used bridge by the lake to sell you.”

  Thurvishar’s own anger rose. Kihrin had called it. The High Council considered Janel and Teraeth inconsequential. They might have regarded Kihrin more seriously if they studied the Devoran Prophecies. But they cared a great deal that the new Quuros emperor had somehow managed to insult them all by being born a woman.