In a land where magic defines the social order, the ruling tyrants alone control the most powerful sorcery ... One of the last of a massacred race of warriors -- an unparalleled swordsman magically afflicted by spells of blind, uncontrollable rage -- Reeth Caldason wanders Bhealfa seeking vengeance ... and freedom from his strange malady. Now word has come from a sorcerer's apprentice of a mysterious Covenant in the capital city, a secretive society that may provide the escape Reeth desires. But forming an uneasy alliance with the youthful messenger could ultimately prove disastrous -- for the road they must travel together leads into the sordid heart of a perilous conspiracy of treachery, tyranny, necromancy, and death.