The old man nodded and rose. The sunlight faded and dappled as a roiling cloud bank moved overhead. In the distance, heat lightning flashed, followed by a low rumble. "Provide. The storm is coming."

He turned to go, but L'Indasha beckoned him gently once again.

"Lord Paladine…?"

"Yes?" he asked.

"You have lily on your nose."

Chapter 1

The winter of the old man's warning came even more quickly than she had expected, collapsing the autumn of that peaceful year into a matter of days, freezing the unfallen leaves to their branches.

This day, from her sheltering cavern, L'Indasha Yman kept vigil with the rising new storm. Harsh winds from the west-from Taman Busuk-whipped through the Khalkist Mountains, bringing dark, churning clouds and the faint, watery smell of winter lightning.

The druidess peered deeply into a bucket of cinder-clouded ice, rapt in her winter auguries. Somewhere out in the mountain passes-somewhere north and west, she could tell by the smoky crazing of the ice-someone was

trudging through the biting snow, through the plunging cold and the rising night.

Darkness would soon overtake him, whoever he was. And with the darkness, the infamous Breath of Neraka- the murderous mountain night winds. On nights such as this, the Breath of Neraka was cruel. . . merciless. Horses froze in midstride. Trails vanished in sudden avalanches. Once, not long after she had moved here, the high winds had sealed an entire party of bandits in an impenetrable shell of ice.

And that was part of it, too-part of L'Indasha Yman's unsettled vigil in the oncoming night. Between the cold and the brigands, this was deadly country, these mountains between Neraka and the plains of Estwilde, mountains that encircled the shrines of the ancient gods.

What was it the old texts had said?