He ignored it, focused on the plains ahead, on the moonlit silver of the grasses and the brittle stars in the sky. Folds in the land appeared as shadows, and by the growing darkness he could tell that he was getting closer to Alvritshai lands. He walked upon dwarren lands now, on earth he’d traveled as a child over a hundred years ago, when his parents had abandoned Portstown for the unknown wilds of the grasses to the east.

Those unknown wilds had killed them-and everyone else in their ill-fated wagon train-except for Colin.

And Walter.

Colin frowned at himself and shrugged the disturbing memories away. It had happened a long time ago, in what felt like another world, another lifetime. Wrath Suvane had changed since then. The Accord he had helped establish between the three races had held, although tenuously, strained by the continued attacks of the Shadows and the work of the Wraiths to bring about the awakening of the Wells. The dwarren retained their claim to the plains, the Alvritshai the lands to the north and the mountain reaches of Hauttaeren, and the humans the coastal region.

The Shadows and the Wraiths maintained their hold on the forests of Ostraell.

But in the past forty years, all of the races had grown. The Alvritshai had branched out along the mountains, botheast and west, carving new strongholds into their depths even though the encroaching ice sheets to the north continued to build, their original homeland still locked away beneath the frigid cold. The dwarren continued to survive beneaththe plains in their extensive warrens, although they’d begun building stone and cloth citiesat the mouths of the most prominent entrances to facilitate trade. Colin had passed one such citya few hours before, a caravan of twenty wagons headed toward its vast towers along the main road from the human province of Corsair. The humans had expanded the most, populating the coast at first, but spreading south and then east, along the sheer cliffs of the Escarpment that provided a natural boundary between dwarren and human lands. They’d spread far, although they had not yet reached the edges of the desert to the east.