The latest in the internationally bestselling Valdemar sequence of brilliantly imagimned fantasies. Darian is a young boy living as apprentice to the wizard Justyn in Errold Green, a small Valdemaran village. He is unwilling to hone his skill in magic as he believes it is quicker and a damned sight more efficient to achieve your ends by purely physical methods. Darien's parents disappeared on a hunting trip into the forest, the villagers believe they have fallen prey to the monsters created in the Mage storms, that they themselves may have been changed. But Darien believes differently. When Errold Green is suddenly and devastatingly attacked by a force of men accompanied by monstrous creatures of magic, Justyn makes a dramatic last stand , destroying the village in a cataclysmic spell that Darien witnesses. Escaping into the forest, Darien is chased down by 3 of enemy only to be saved at the point of capture by the mysterious Hawk brothers. It is the beginning of a new life, born out of the ashes of the old, where he will for the 1st time realise the worth of the magical talent he has always wanted to rid of.