Burning was how Thamalon had first seen the large, plain metal goblet-or, withstanding snarling flames. It had been floating alone, dark and eerie in midair, among the roaring fires devouring Stormweather Towers. He'd stared at it in amazement ere his great-uncle Roel stormed out of the smoke to snatch him away from the fire and death and shattered dreams.

The chalice had been one of the few things to be salvaged from the ashes. It had been found standing serenely atop a charred mound that had once been the servants' quarters-and the servants-before they'd plunged helplessly into the inferno of the pantries beneath.

Stormweather Towers had fallen then. It must not fall again.

Somehow the sunlight streaming in the windows of the rebuilt high gallery never seemed as golden as the light that had fallen through the windows of the first high gallery. Back then the light fell onto maps and records, and Thamalon's own laborious copying as old Nelember had taught a quiet, chastened son of the Uskevren the history of his family.

A history that had begun somewhere else-his old tutor had never been very clear about just where-but sailed on ships to Selgaunt, there to rise in riches under Phaldinor Uskevren.

"Too bold to hide," the family name meant, in some forgotten tongue. Certainly Phaldinor had been by all accounts a gruff bear of a man, always lumbering into fray after fray and never backing down from a fight. He was a man as good as his word, as many folk learned to their delight-and some learned to their cost. Phaldinor the Bear used the coins spun into his hands by a fleet of merchant ships plying the Sea of Fallen Stars to sponsor armed expeditions into the peaks around the High Dale, to dig mines under the very jaws and talons of the beasts that made the Stormfangs-still dangerous today-so perilous then. Those mines brought back gold and silver enough to make the Uskevren the owners of much of Selgaunt, and enable Phaldinor to build himself a veritable palace. A straightforward man, he named it for its appearance: Blackturrets.