Excerpt

Prologue

Peace is a fragile thing. A long war drives a people. It works its way into the minds and souls of a nation, giving them something to live for, and something to die for. When the fighting ends, the prospect of what comes after—the rebuilding and the healing—can be terrifying. The horrors of war are too often more comfortable and familiar than the challenges of peace.

After more than a century of fighting, peace was tenuous. Heroes once called upon to vanquish evil were now tasked with holding together the ragged edges of their world until the healing could begin. Too much blood had been shed and too many lives lost to allow war to return. But in a dark place long forgotten, a spark stands ready to ignite the war anew.

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Somewhere deep in the arid wastes of the southern shore of Tressor, a woman lay sleeping. Hers was a deep, dreamless slumber, a slumber unbroken for years. The woman was frail and forgotten, a motionless bundle of ragged cloth and withered flesh. If undisturbed, she might never have awoken, sleeping blissfully until the end of time without troubling the world or its people. But this was not to be.

Piece by piece her body flickered to life, like soggy bits of firewood sluggishly taking to flame. Her lungs took the initiative, deciding that shallow breaths were simply not sufficient. And so she breathed deep, quickly releasing it as a painful cough. Next her eyes grew weary of the darkness and slid open, feeding her mind images that it was not quite ready to comprehend. Her fingers twitched, her cracked lips parted, her dry tongue smacked, and slowly a word formed in her mind. It took several minutes of effort before it worked its way to her lips.

"Thirsty," she croaked in a voice from the wrong side of a grave, startling a nest of mice that had made a home in her hair.

She slowly scraped together enough of her wits to sit up, stiff joints crackling with every motion. The light was dim, filtering in from the mouth of a low-roofed cave. She swept her eyes around until she found beside her a small cup caked with sand and dust. Beside it was a cork-topped wine bottle. It took three poorly guided grasps before she was able to close her bony hand about the bottle's neck, and four tries to manage the complex maneuver of pulling its cork free, but persistence earned her a long swig of vinegary swill.

One need dealt with, her body quickly alerted her of another.

"Hungry," she stated, her voice a shade closer to human now.

Again she scanned her surroundings. There were empty bags chewed through by rodents and the bones of a dozen assorted animals that had been picked clean and bleached white. Nothing even resembling a meal had been in the cave for years. For a moment she contemplated climbing to her feet and seeking out some provisions, but having only just managed to work out how to use both arms at the same time, she felt the task of walking was one that would be easier to tackle on a full stomach.

She picked through the mound of bones nearest her. Though it was an uphill struggle to determine the proper sequence of opening and closing her fingers that was necessary to grasp them, oddly she found identifying them to be utterly effortless.

"Skull of a jackal. Where is the jaw? Here. Good, good. One of its legs too. Don't need the toes. A few rat spines, yes. Ah, perfect, a serpent skeleton. Intact, save the head. That will do nicely."

Like a child with a new set of building blocks, she merrily began to fit the bits of carcass together. Under her breath she uttered arcane words, conjuring black tendrils that fused the bones to one another. After a few minutes she had assembled a creature that could only have been born of madness.

The jackal skull sat atop the long, narrow spine of a snake. Ribs, femurs, and claws linked together into a set of six spidery legs that connected to the curving spine a third of the way down its length. The rest of the serpent's spine formed a curled tail. She dangled the horrid concoction by the spine, eying it critically.

"A motley bit of odds and ends, but it will have to do… Now, live."

Inside the hollow skull, darkness began to swirl and coil. The edge of the tail twitched, and the mismatched legs quivered. Two points of violet light sparked to life in the jackal's eye sockets. She lowered it to the ground and watched it shudder, quake, and finally hoist itself to its feet, twisting its oversize head toward her and sweeping its tail in expectation.

"Good. Now listen closely, Motley. You will fetch me food. Meat. Something large, lots of blood, lots of skin, lots of bone. Bring it quickly and I'll be sure to give you the bits I don't need."

The abomination pranced in place for a moment, radiating delight at the chance to serve, then rattled off toward the mouth of the cave. When it was out of sight, the woman ran her fingers through her scraggly white hair, combing away any other creatures that might have taken up residence.

"Now then… to work. I suspect there's much to be done."

She looked beside her and found a tall ivory staff. It was intricately carved with runes and sigils, and the top was set with a deep violet gem. She pulled the head of the staff to her lap and worked a simple spell. Inside the gem a muddy red glow pulsed, and she felt her thoughts grow sharper, if not more orderly. Yes… her name. She was Turiel. Her task. She was to prepare the second keyhole. Her masters… why had they not woken her? And why did something feel lost, something missing? She reached out, seeking guidance, but there was no answer.

"Something has happened… I've slept too long… Need answers… Something must be done…"