Evil has come to a distant land high among the snow-capped mountains of Midkemia, as anexterminating army wearing the colors of theDuke of Olasko razes village after village, slaughtering men, women, and children without mercy. And when the carnage is done, only one survivor remains: a young boy named Kieli. A youth no longer, there is now but one road for him to travel: the path of vengeance. And he willnot be alone. Under the tutelage of the rescuerswho discovered him, Kieli will be molded into a sure and pitiless weapon. And he will accept the destiny that has been chosen for him ......

In the mountains of Midkemia,
a boy came brutally of age in blood and
in terror. And now he lives for one
purpose alone ... revenge

An exceptionally skilled swordsman, youngTal Hawkins was the only survivor of the massacre of his village -- rescued, recruited, and trained by the mysterious order of magicians and spies, the Conclave of Shadows. Now one of the secret society's mostvaluable agents, he gains entrance into the court of Duke Olasko, the bloodthirsty and powerful despot whose armies put Tal's village to the sword, by posing as a nobleman from the distant...

Saved by a mage's intervention from certain death, Kaspar, the evil Duke of Olasko, is lord no more -- reduced to an exile's existence and forced to wander the harshest realms of the world he once enslaved.

Merciless deserts, forbidding mountains, and vast oceans now separate the once powerful despot from his former seat of power -- his dark dreams of vengeance overwhelmed by the daily struggle for survival. But there is a larger drama that will entangle the broken dictator. An evil devastating and deadly seeks entrance to the land -- the mystical tool of a dark empire...