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.
