Now in paperback--New York Times bestselling author Richard A. Knaak
continues the thrilling story begun in the record-breaking MMO game
expansion World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.
In the wake of the Cataclysm, conflict has engulfed every corner of
Azeroth. Hungering for more resources amid the turmoil, the Horde has
pressed into Ashenvale to feed its burgeoning war machine. There, acting
warchief Garrosh Hellscream has employed a brutal new tactic to conquer
the region and crush its night elf defenders, a move that will cripple
the Alliance's power throughout Azeroth.
Unaware of the disaster brewing in Ashenvale, the night elves' legendary
leaders, High Priestess Tyrande Whisperwind and Archdruid Malfurion
Stormrage, conduct a summit near Darnassus in order to vote the proud
worgen of Gilneas into the Alliance. However, resentment of Gilneas and
its ruler, Genn Greymane, runs deep in Stormwind's King Varian Wrynn.
His refusal to forgive Genn for closing his nation off from the rest of
the world years ago endangers more than just the summit: it threatens to
unravel the Alliance itself.
Varian's animosity is only one of many unsettling developments in
Darnassus. An uneasiness creeps over the once-immortal night elves as
the first of them fall victim to the infirmities of age. While they cope
with their mortality, tensions flare over the reintroduction of the
Highborne, formerly the highest caste of night elf nobility, into their
society. Many night elves are unable to pardon the Highborne for the
destruction unleashed millennia ago by their reckless use of magic.
When a murdered Highborne is discovered on the outskirts of Darnassus,
Malfurion and Tyrande move to stop further bloodshed and unrest by
appointing one of the night elves' most cunning and skilled agents to
find the killer: the renowned warden Maiev Shadowsong. Yet with all that
is transpiring in Darnassus, the Alliance might be powerless to stop the
relentless new warchief Garrosh from seizing the whole of Ashenvale.
