Edar Moncrief: sorcerer and scholar extraordinaire. To the outside world, he is a peddler of love potions and wart remover – after all, one has to make a living. Behind closed doors, he is a dangerous and powerful sorcerer specializing in the laws and function of the mysterious energy known as manna.
When he trips over a body in the streets of Elenia, he discovers that the corpse belongs to none other than an Arbiter, the mysterious wielders of the crystal swords rarely seen in his part of the world. The loss of life is his gain, though, when he finds the opportunity to examine the most precious and rare artifact in the world: the Arbiter’s heartblade.
To his misfortune, that same opportunity brings him face-to-face with the spectre of death. Another Arbiter, D’Arden Tal, has found him, and believes he is responsible for the killing. Edar’s only hope is to find and catch a murderer in the streets of the most decadent and deadly city in the Old Kingdoms, before Tal declares him responsible and kills him instead…
From the author of Elegy and The Corpse King comes this brand new novelette set in the dark fantasy world called Eisengoth, where dark and terrible things fill the night, and only the Arbiters possess the power to drive back the horrors that threaten to consume the world.
