PROLOGUE

Vestapalk burned.

He burned with rage. He burned with fever, and fever led him into dreams. Deep within his burning mind, he knew he dreamed, but the tighter he tried to grasp that knowledge, the deeper he slid into delirium. His thoughts condensed and faded like wisps of his venomous breath.

Except for two memories that rose in him again and again.

One was of the faces of the lesser creatures that had dared—dared—to stand against mighty Vestapalk. An eladrin wizard and a tiefling warlock. A member of the debased race that claimed to be “dragonborn.” An undead thing that to dragon senses stank of ash and decay. A rat of a halfling.

The face that stood out most clearly in his fevered dreams, though, was the human female who had somehow slipped between his claws time and again. The human female whose sword had torn into Vestapalk’s belly, unleashing a pain like nothing he had ever known.

Vestapalk will kill you all, he promised the visions. Vestapalk will drown you in his poison. Vestapalk will feast on your flesh. Vestapalk will savor the stinging flavor of your tainted meat!

The other memory burned deeper, burned with the savage heat of betrayal. He had been promised power. He had been promised transformation. The signs and omens had been clear. The Herald walked the land with the promise of a new age and the ascendancy of Vestapalk.

The future written in the blood and guts of beasts had guided him to the place of ancient tombs to make the meeting that would raise him above this world. But the Herald had not come. Vestapalk had found only his own end. Death circled like a cowardly scavenger of carrion, waiting for him to falter.

Vestapalk would not suffer its approach easily. In his dream, he raised his head to the shadows of the crevasse that might yet become his grave and roared, “Vestapalk will not be forsaken!”

And in the darkness, the Elemental Eye opened.

The first time the Eye had looked on Vestapalk, he had been young, barely grown into maturity, his green scales still soft. Another dragon had claimed territory that Vestapalk desired. Vestapalk had triumphed, of course, but among the spilled organs of his enemy, he had seen the first hints of a future that was greater than a mere stretch of forest and hills. It had frightened him—before the Eye, even mighty Vestapalk could admit fear—but it had lured him as well. In the years since, he had followed those signs, catching glimpses of the Eye now and again in his dreams, each time thrilled and terrified by the power that it promised.

With the end near, there was no place for fear. Vestapalk howled his rage at the Eye, its dark pupil eternally consuming the fire and lightning, the crackling frost and the thundering earth, that swirled around it. “Where is the Herald?” he screamed. “Where is the new age?” He slashed his talons at the unblinking Elemental Eye, but came no closer to it than a worm might come to the moon. “Where is Vestapalk’s transformation?”

For the first time, the Eye answered him. “It has already begun.”

The voice of the Eye was as ponderous as thunder trapped in a cavern and as fine as the sharp edge of broken glass. It was hollow; it was full of the howls of a thousand lunatics. The voice fell on the dragon like a weight, pressing down Vestapalk between one breath and the next, leaving him no room to roar or scream or even mewl like a hatchling. Yet there was no anger in the Eye’s answer to his challenge, only a display of such vast might that Vestapalk knew instantly that whatever power he had ever hoped to gain paled beside it.

But the power was contained. Imprisoned. And so incredibly distant that Vestapalk could have flown for his entire life, could have soared among the silver clouds of the Astral Sea for the lifetime of a hundred dragons, and never reached it. The long gaze of the Eye was its only touch upon the world, and for now that gaze rested on Vestapalk.

If he could have preened, he would have. He, Vestapalk, was favored beyond all the creatures of this realm—

The weight of the Eye lifted from him. Disdain entered its voice. “There are others.”

Knowledge crept over Vestapalk, as if each word spoken by the Eye carried more information than a lesser voice could convey. The Eye had spoken to others in the past and might speak to others yet in the future. Its gaze swept the world. Vestapalk felt a fleeting awareness of beings, perhaps not so favored as him but still working as the Eye willed, whether they knew it or not. The Herald—a presence on the edge of Vestapalk’s awareness, closer than he might have guessed but like him brought low—was one. And another, too, drawing nearer. One that Vestapalk would meet.

“No,” said the Eye. “One that Vestapalk must meet. The One Who Gathers.”

The dragon felt himself swept up in the Eye’s gaze. The tiny section of the world that lesser creatures called the Nentir Vale whirled beneath him until he was looking down on a place of ancient ruins. For a moment, the Eye simply held him there—then it turned away, its great voice fading to an echo.

Vestapalk fell back into himself with the will of the Eye ringing through him. The vision of the ruins had been little more than a glimpse, but it was clearer than any the Eye had granted him before. Certainty thundered upon Vestapalk. He knew in his bones where he would find those ruins—and what he would find there. Among those ruins, the Gatherer would come to him. Among those ruins, the will of the Eye would be brought forth and a new age born.

Among those ruins, Vestapalk would come into the power that was destined to be his! Roaring with triumph and desire, the dragon spread his wings and launched himself into the air.

Or tried to. However clear his vision might have been, however strong his will, his body remained broken. Vestapalk shrieked as one of his legs collapsed beneath him and the muscles anchoring a wing tore apart. The dragon tried again, though, fighting to rise toward his vision.

He couldn’t. The rocky floor of the crevasse slammed into him. Pain seared his wounds. For the first time, the fever that consumed him eclipsed his rage. He felt a warm trickle as venom and perhaps blood dripped and pooled beneath his jaw.

But underneath the rage and the pain, something stirred—and spoke, not from across a vast distance but seemingly from within him, as if his fever had acquired a voice.

Vestapalk carries the seed. Vestapalk carries the Voidharrow.

“Who are you?” Vestapalk wasn’t certain if he growled the words aloud or merely thought them. Either way, there was no answer, only the burning that was slowly, inevitably consuming him.

Changing him.

New fire woke in the dragon’s belly. The Herald had not come, but the Herald’s purpose had been fulfilled. A transformation had been promised to Vestapalk. Perhaps it had not come as he had expected—but as the Eye had said, it had begun.

The new age had not yet been born, but soon it would be.

The seething anger that had burned in Vestapalk’s throat slid forward, emerging as a dry rasp of laughter.

“M-master?”

A thin hissing voice rose, tentative but concerned, and also, Vestapalk realized, entirely outside of his own mind. He opened an eye and fixed it on the cringing, reptilian form of a kobold wyrmpriest. His wyrmpriest, or so Tiktag had declared himself. Vestapalk’s laugh faded into a long, shuddering breath.

Tiktag stepped forward. “I will watch over you, master. I will care for you. You will be strong again!”

Vestapalk tried to snarl, to prove his strength, but it came out as a wracking cough. He settled back onto the rocky ground. The lord of the new age—watched over by a kobold. The transformation could not come quickly enough. Vestapalk’s eye sagged shut. Fever-sharp dreams of the world that would be his closed over him, whispering one last word into his mind.

Voidharrow.