*cover art credit goes to Leslie Ann O'Dell |
"The song of swords is said to be the sweetest, the sight of blood the most beautiful." One day, ordinary high-school English teacher Carlene Lawson, based in California, had no idea why she was in Maine. Her life was a thousand miles away from the frigid cold of Bedford, in the cozy comfort of her apartment...and yet she finds herself sitting in Ravendown House, listening to a story being uttered from the lips of an 18-year-old girl named Audrey, whose sanity is questionable at best. Audrey tells the story of the great nomadic kingdom of Scythia, at war with the might of the Persian army, mustered up to seven hundred thousand men strong and led by the powerful Darius the Great. On board the massive fleet of the army's vessels is Bronn, a mysterious man who wears red dragon armor and wields his twin swords with deadly intent, his own painful past shrouded in a dark, impenetrable haze. He comes to the Scythian lands expecting more blood and death to taint his life...but what he finds instead is the fierce Artimpaz, daughter of the Chief of the legendary tribe of the Getae, who whisper the secrets to immortality, to be paid at a great and terrible price... |