After decades of internecine warfare, the tribes of the Tiste Edur have
at last united under the Warlock King of the Hiroth, There is peace--but
it has been exacted at a terrible price: a pact made with a hidden power
whose motives are at best suspect, at worst deadly.
To the south, the expansionist kingdom of Lether, eager to fulfill its
long-prophesized renaissance as an Empire reborn, has enslaved all its
less-civilized neighbors with rapacious hunger. All, that is, save
one--the Tiste Edur. And it must be only a matter of time before they
too fall--either beneath the suffocating weight of gold, or by slaughter
at the edge of a sword. Or so destiny has decreed.
Yet as the two sides gather for a pivotal treaty neither truly wants,
ancient forces are awakening. For the impending struggle between these
two peoples is but a pale reflection of a far more profound, primal
battle--a confrontation with the still-raw wound of an old betrayal and
the craving for revenge at its seething heart.