Grimm Afelnor, the youngest Mage Questor in Arnor House of the Ancient and Honourable Guild of Magic-users, Thaumaturges and Sorcerers, lay back on his divan and put down the book he had been reading for the last thirty minutes. He could not remember a word he had read: his mind was too full of fizzing frustration and boredom.

The young mage bore the resounding title, 'Mage Questor of the First Rank', but, until he had completed his first Quest, this was only a courtesy. Although he wore the ornate, blue-gold ring denoting a Guild Mage, the absence of a gold ring on his staff, Redeemer, marked him as a rank tyro: a mage who had not completed even a single Quest. For the six months following his triumphal Ceremony of Acclamation, Grimm had waited for the call to prove himself a worthy Questor: at first, with eagerness; then with impatience; then with desperation.

Just over a year before, he had been a callow Neophyte, making slow but steady progress towards an uncertain vocation. Then came what he thought of as the Nightmare Time: the brutal Ordeal that had driven him to the very edge of the abyss of irrevocable insanity. Although Grimm did not know it at the time, this relentless torment had been intended to force him to access the inner powers that his tutor, Magemaster Crohn, saw within him. Where most mages took many decades of diligent study to reach their potential, those with the strength of mind and spirit to withstand the brutal Questor Ordeal matured while still young. Very few Neophytes were chosen, and fewer still prevailed. Grimm knew now his friend, the gentle, would-be entertainer, Erek Garan, had faced the same Ordeal and failed.

Erek had destroyed Senior Magemaster Urel with an uncontrolled blast of energy and then hanged himself. The tormented Neophyte had stared into the same chasm of madness as Grimm, but he had taken the last crucial, fatal step forward.