Hidden in a remote nunnery, a single witch watched and waited; plotting the downfall of her hated male rivals and the resurgence of the Geomantic cause. With the strange, awful new power she had discovered, she had influenced Guild politics more than once, and she sought the final, irrevocable push that would topple the Lords of the Guild from their lofty pedestals.
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In a small, run-down smithy in a drab hamlet, an old man, burdened with years of guilt and self-loathing, put down his quill and placed a folded letter into a waxed pouch. The grizzled smith reached into his shirt pocket and extracted an ornate blue and gold ring, staring at it for a few moments. Then, he kissed the ring and dropped it into the pouch, sighing as he sealed the package.
"You will understand when you are older, Grimm," he muttered under his breath. "May the Names bless you and… forgive me."
Chapter 1: A Bedraggled Boy
With a grateful sigh, Doorkeeper lowered himself into his comfortable, battered leather armchair. He asked little of life, and he preferred tranquil solitude to vigorous debate or studious book-learning. The cheerful fire, whispering and crackling in the grate, and the sonorous tick of the pendulum clock opposite him, soothed the old man's jangled nerves.
The distant, muffled sounds of atrocious weather, kept at bay by the mighty walls of the ancient fortress of Arnor House, served to increase his feeling of well-being, and the old man poured himself a glass of wine from a bottle on the small table beside him. Doorkeeper held up his glass and admired the ruby liquid, seemingly brought to life by the flickering of the fire's flames. He drew in a mouthful of the beverage, rolling it around his palate and savouring the wine before swallowing. He put the glass back on the table and contemplated.