A shadow moved in the unceasing midnight blackness. Marklus tensed then shifted on the grimy stone floor of his ghastly prison cell. Shivering from the bone wearing chill, he rubbed his hands over his thin shoulders and again recalled the hastily inked words that had started it all. The plan had never been to arrive at the northern side of the Sea, lost and naïve, stumbling straight into a trap cleverly laid out for him. When the armed guards ambushed him in the decaying, hazy forest of Slutan and dragged him, lively and struggling, to prison, he’d known interrogation and torture were next. Stripped of his weapons and thrown into the blinding darkness of a deep cell, his screams and cries were left woefully unanswered. It seemed there was no reason for his imprisonment, waiting for fear and hunger to d...

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