Chapter 1

Owen hadn't been hurt like this since he had lived with his father and that had been many years ago, more years now that he cared to count. Owen rarely cared to count anything.

This worked against him when the undead asked his age. They were grinning to each other as if this was some great joke or source of amusement. He had only been able to stammer out that he thought he was between twenty and thirty years old.

They didn't seem to like that answer very much, and when they started taking him out of the cage he began insisting that he was in fact twenty-seven. All of a sudden he was very convinced that he was, in fact, twenty-seven.

Why shouldn't he be? He didn't really see any reason he couldn't be twenty-seven years old. Twenty-seven sounded like a great age to be. Even the undead seemed to agree with him; they had nudged one of their friends with their blades and said something and had a great laugh when Owen said it.

Owen could only understand bits and pieces of whatever they said. He imagined that this was because they were dead and whatever they had spoken in life was twisted and rent. If he had been dead (for example) wouldn't it have made sense that he would not be able to speak as well or as clearly as he had when he was living? This made sense to Owen.

He had decided that he wanted to be twenty-seven, and he wasn't sure if he would start keeping track of his age from now on. However he was sure that he was twenty-seven now, and it seemed a good thing to be sure of since the undead seemed to see great importance in his age. When he had said he was unsure of his age, they had begun taking him out of the cage—and he knew what happened when they took him out of the cage. So he told them he was twenty-seven and they all grinned to each other and laughed.

They didn't take him out of the cage that day. He was twenty-seven years old, and he supposed that it was his birthday.

But then it was tomorrow and they took him out of the cage anyway and they got out the collar. Owen had not been hurt like this since he had lived with his father.

Owen hated the undead.


The town was laid out in remarkably symmetrical grids that reminded Elias Thorington how close to the original site of Dalaran city he was. He had perused his own mental records but in the end had had to resort to flipping through books such as Rise and Fall of Towns in Lordaeron and Northern Gilneas after the Collapse of Arathor and old maps before he was able to recall the name of the miller's town. It was Arnalda. Legend had it that it had been founded by the hero Arnald Hard-heart after the Troll Wars. He was buried in the town somewhere. Elias scrutinized the surroundings of town more closely and noted that the gravesite had been dug up.

Returning his attention to Arnalda proper, Elias scried out the location of the Forsaken's gunpowder and men. He counted them and double-counted them. He did not detect any magi or anything darker. But he did note a shadow roaming the town, and that shadow frustrated every attempt he made to clarify its nature.

He spent too long trying to overcome the shadow. He finally released the tension in his chest with a growl.

After memorizing the rest of Arnalda's layout, Elias quit the scrying spell and gathered himself. He got up from his cross-legged seat in the center of the chamber and looked outside the massive paned windows that hung like tapestries on the walls from ceiling to floor.

It was as dark outside as it was inside. The glass panes ran in streaks of rain. Total darkness transformed into blinding light when lightning flashed. The afterimages were of a woods thick and grim and rustling as if caught in an eternal struggle to shake off the rainwater.

Elias crossed from the rug in the center of the chamber and placed the orb he had been using into a cushioned chest made especially for it. He murmured a few words. The box thrummed and wafted down a hallway.

He made his way to one of the towers. He climbed a staircase he thought was too rickety and needed repair. This annoyed him and caught his attention far much more than it should have and he wondered what he could do about it. Hire someone? Every room he passed in the house was dark and it always would have taken at least ten of him stacked high and on their toes to reach the ceilings.

He was so consumed with the staircase that it took him a few moments to realize that he had reached the tip of the tower. It was circular and had a ceiling that he could have reached if he stretched. There were no walls but a railing. Rainwater ran like a curtain off the roof, making him feel as if he was on the inside of a waterfall.

The map was on the floor. It was beautifully rendered but had long worn down because of scuff and weathering. Still the exquisitely drawn depiction of Gilneas and southern Lordaeron caught his eye tonight and he smiled. It was flattened against the floor by an old spell.

Black pins dotted Gilneas, marking the portals he had not yet lost.