'I don't know you, blind man,’ he blustered, his voice shaking. ‘But I'll give you your length of this rich place for all eternity if you don't release my hand.'

The old man chuckled. A disgusting, bubbling sound, full of great confidence and certainty. Then, with his free hand, he reached up slowly and pulled the bandage from his eyes. Ivaroth tried to look away, but his black-irised eyes were held by the stranger's sightless gaze as if it were a blazing spear, passing right through him and impaling his very soul. The orbs were white and cloudy as if the sight had been bleached from them by too great a light, though, Ivaroth suddenly knew, it was because they had seen too terrible a truth.

'There is blindness and blindness,’ said the stranger's voice. ‘I see more than you will ever know, yet you will be my eyes and I shall be yours … Ivaroth Ungwyl … fratricide, murderer of the young, and … chieftain to be … chieftain of all the tribes.'

Chapter 1

The light from the doorway sent Antyr's shadow leaping ahead into the swirling gloom of the dense fog that greeted him as he emerged from the inn.

He paused, an unsteady silhouette, at the top of the short flight of stone steps. Then he grimaced. He had lived in the Serenstad contentedly enough all his life, but these appalling fogs always reminded him of childhood holidays in the country. There, for all their cold dampness, the wintry mists had been grey and soft, but the fogs here were always tainted yellow with grime and smoke from the city's innumerable forges and workshops. They made the roads and footways slimy and treacherous, they clung to clothes, making them damp and sulphurous, and they made every breath a chest-burning ordeal.

His dark reverie was interrupted by mounting cries of abuse from the noisy inn parlour at his back.