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J Robert King

Edge of Destiny

Prologue

DREAM AND NIGHTMARE

The flames were beautiful. They looked like autumn leaves-red and gold, rattling as the wind tore through them, breaking free and whirling into the sky.

The village was flying away. Thatch and wattle and rafters all were going up in ash.

Caithe watched the village and the villagers burn.

She was too late. Everything was fire.

Still, it was beautiful.

Caithe, sylvari of the Firstborn, dropped down from the boulder where she had crouched and stalked slowly into the burning village. Like all of her people, Caithe was slender and lithe, the child of a great tree in a sacred grove. She was one with the natural world. Even her travel leathers bore the vine motifs of her homeland. Caithe pushed silvery hair back from wide eyes, watching for signs of life in the burning village. Only the flames lived. She listened for voices, but only the fire spoke.

Caithe didn't fear the fire. She was young and strong, voracious and indomitable and curious-just like fire. It had drawn her here. It was interesting.

Who had started it? How? Why? What had this village been called?

"I love a bonfire," came a voice-deep and dark, feminine and familiar.

Caithe turned to see a sylvari woman garbed in a black-orchid gown as if this were some fancy ball. Caithe's eyes narrowed. "What are you doing here, Faolain?"

Faolain gave the suffering smile of an addict. "The fires drew me. "

"A moth to a flame. "

"Just like you. "

In fact, Faolain and Caithe were nothing alike. Faolain's hair was jet-black, as were her nails and her eyes. They had been that way from the moment the two women emerged together from the Pale Tree.

Faolain had been all about questions, and Caithe had been all about answers. They were dear to each other and set out together to explore the world. But Caithe's spirit had grown straight and true like a young tree while Faolain's had grown twisted like a poison-ivy vine.

"Did you set this fire?" Caithe asked.

Faolain threw back her shock of black hair and breathed smoke through flared nostrils. "A nice idea, but no. It was destroyers-magma monsters. "

Caithe shook her head grimly. "They boil up everywhere. "

"The Elder Dragon Primordus is taking back the world. "

A loud moan came from a burning barn nearby. Caithe rushed to the door, hauled it open, and stared within. The hayloft boiled with black smoke, and the threshing floor was mantled in fire. Against the far wall lay a blackened figure that could hardly have been alive-except that it moaned.

Caithe wove among the flames to reach the man and dropped to her knees. His eyes were gone, his face, too-just cracked bark over oozy muscle. His lips were half-fused. "Burning beast… burning beast… burning…"

"I will help you," Caithe said.

"Such sweet words," Faolain whispered, kneeling on the other side of the man. "Hope is like oil on the fires of misery. "

"Is my skin peeled off?" the man groaned. "Is it?"

"Yes," Caithe said gently.

Faolain laughed. "Oh, you're cruel. "

"They came from underground," he muttered. "They scrambled up. Roaches. Black, with bodies of fire-"