
CHAPTER TWENTY: The Years 1004-1011 AFE; The Dragon Emperor 177
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Summer, 1011 AFE; The King Is Dead. Long Live the King 189
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Summer, 1011 AFE; Eye of the Storm 195
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Summer, 1011 AFE; The Hidden Kingdom 204
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Summer, 1011 AFE; Kavelin A-March 211
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Summer, 1011 AFE; The Assault on Argon 221
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Summer, 1011 AFE; Battle for the Fadem 229
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Summer, 1011 AFE; Mocker Returns 238
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Summer, 1011 AFE; A Friendly Assassin 249
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Winter, 1011-1012 AFE; A Dark Stranger in the Kingdom of Dread
261
CHAPTER THIRTY: Summer, 1011-Winter, 1012 AFE; The Other Side 267
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Spring, 1012 AFE; Baxendala Redux 271
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: Spring-Summer-Autumn, 1012 AFE; Defeat. Defeat. Defeat. 284
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: Winter, 1012 Spring, 1013 AFE; Itaskia 291
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: Spring, 1013 AFE; The Road to Palmisano 301
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: Spring, 1013 AFE; Palmisano: The Guttering Flame 312
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: Spring, 1013 AFE; Home
318
ONE: 0 Shing, Ehelebe
The woman screamed with every contraction. The demon outside howled and clawed at
the walls. It roared like a wounded elephant, smashed against the door. The timbers
groaned.
The physician, soaked with perspiration, shook like a trapped rabbit. His skin was
the hue of death.
"Get on with it!" snarled the baby's father.
"Lord!..."
"Do it!" Nu Li Hsi appeared undisturbed by the siege. He refused even to
acknowledge the possibility of fear, in himself or those who served him. Would-be Lord
of All Shinsan, he dared reveal nothing the Tervola could call weakness.
Still the physician delayed. He was hopelessly trapped. He couldn't win. A demon
was trying to shatter the sorceries shielding his surgery. Inside, his master was in a
rage because the mother couldn't deliver normally. The child was just too huge. The
woman was a friend, and the surgeon doubted she could survive the operation. The only
assistant permitted him was his daughter. No fourteen-year-old was ready to face this.
Worse, there were witnesses. Two Tervola leaned against one wall. These sorcerer-
generals, who managed Shinsan's armies and made up her nobility, were waiting to see the
product of the Dragon Prince's experiments.
The goal was a child who could develop into a super strong, super competent
soldier, thinking, yet with little ability to become a personality in his own right, and
immune to the magicks by which foes seized control of enemy soldiers.
"Start cutting," Nu Li Hsi said softly, with the "or else" transmitted by
intonation, "before my brother's attacks become more imaginative."
For a millennium Nu Li Hsi and his twin, Yo Hsi, had battled
for mastery of Shinsan, virtually from the moment they had murdered Tuan Hoa,
their father, who had been Shinsan's founder.
"Scalpel," said the surgeon. He could scarcely be heard. He glanced around the
cramped surgery. The Tervola, with their masks and robes, could have been statues. Nu
Li Hsi himself moved nothing but his eyes. His face, though, was naked. The Princes