Characters

Daughter of one the greatest Halfling merchant families in the Imperial Protectorates, Gywnneth's trip to the far South ended in disaster. She was bound as an unwilling concubine to the heir to the slaver House Rhaed, and endured months of rape and abuse at his hands. Freed by her husband in a fatal gambit, she is now a fugitive along with the gladiator Bronze.

Slave gladiator of House Rhaed, Gywnn's husband gave his life to free Bronze from the geas binding her to Rhaed. In return, she vowed to free Gywnn and see her safely home to the Empire. Freeing Gywnn was the easy part. Now the fugitives face a perilous journey through the most dangerous region of the entire world.

Born in the darkness of the Age of the Gods, now called the First Age, Keah fought in the rebellion of the mortal races that overthrew the Old Gods. Now a member of the Conclave, the secretive organization opposing the slavers of Rhaed, Keah and her mage companion, Tyr, search for the fugitives Bronze and Gywnn, to find out how Bronze was able to escape the geas of the slavers. But in finding the fugitives, a secret from her distant past surfaces, and the elven warrior-druid may be forced into a confrontation with an evil long thought destroyed.

Companion to Keah, the young half-elven mage is on his first extended trip outside the cloisters of the Mages Collegium of Nestra. Although he frequently exasperates the more experienced elf, she has been quietly impressed by his coolness in the face of danger, and wonders if he may be far more powerful than he appears.