Chapter One

One

King Olafur surreptitiously rubbed his damp palms against the sleeves of his silken robe. A lesser man might have shown his impatience by fidgeting, or given in to the urge to pace, but Olafur was beyond such temptations. The blood of great rulers flowed in his veins. Thorvald, his father, had conquered Duncaer and expanded the reach of the empire from sea to sea. Olaven, his grandsire, had brought glory to Jorsk as the hub of a trading empire. And his great-grandsire was King Axel, whose brilliant diplomacy had enabled him to forge an alliance with Emperor Jeoffroi of Selvarat, ending two hundred years of enmity between their peoples. And King Axel's skill at diplomacy had been equaled by his prowess as a war leader, for the combined might of Selvarat and Jorsk had crushed the Nerikaat alliance that had threatened both their realms.

His forebears had left him a mighty kingdom, along with the responsibility to preserve it. Since his father's death, Olafur had done what he could, in the face of nearly insurmountable odds. But Axel had faced only one enemy-and the Nerikaat alliance, for all their viciousness, had been an honorable foe who attacked openly. By contrast Olafur had been fighting a series of faceless enemies who melted away as soon as they were confronted. Border raiders, pirates, and internal unrest had bedeviled him, along with crop failures, plagues, and a host of monsters that had claimed the lives of the Chosen Ones with depressing regularity.

Olafur knew that no other man could have held the Kingdom together so long. But even he could only do so much. Help must be had, if the Kingdom was to survive. It was time to call upon the ancient alliance