After leaving Tagwen at the Druid’s Keep, Kermadec had traveled north on foot out of Paranor and across the Streleheim to the ruins of the kingdom of the Warlock Lord. He did not want to do this, but he had no better idea of where to begin his search for Grianne Ohmsford. Days earlier, he had accompanied the Ard Rhys to investigate rumors of apparitions and strange fires within those ruins and had encountered an impossibly dark and evil presence. The Maturen felt certain that there was a connection between that presence and the disappearance of the Ard Rhys, and he was hopeful that by taking a closer look at the site where the presence had revealed itself, he might discover something useful.

It was a long shot at best, and as Kermadec had made clear to Tagwen, the Troll people did not go into the Skull Kingdom for any but the best of reasons. Kermadec was brave, and there were few dangers that could turn him aside, but that was one of them. Rock Trolls had an inbred fear and distrust of the land where the Warlock Lord had ruled and been destroyed. Rock Trolls, in that time and place, had served the Warlock Lord, slaves and soldiers to help in the conquest and subjugation of the Four Lands. It had taken many years for the Trolls to recover from those monstrous times, years for them to be accepted again by the other Races. Grianne Ohmsford had done much to make that possible. If a journey to the forbidden land was what it would take to help her in turn, then so be it.

Nevertheless, he had determined that he would not go back there alone.

So he traveled first to a Gnome village situated below the River Lethe on the western borders of the Knife Edge, seeking a man he believed would know better how to protect against the danger he expected to encounter in the ruins. The man’s name was Achen Wuhl, and he was a Gnome shaman of some repute in the tribe to which he belonged. He was old, perhaps ninety, and he had been a shaman the whole of his life, living with the Warst, a tribe that migrated across the Streleheim between the Kensrowe and the Charnals.

Kermadec had met Achen Wuhl twenty years before on an outing that had brought a company of his Trolls in contact with the Warst while the latter were under attack from Mutens. In most circumstances, Rock Trolls would have nothing to do with Gnomes because the two Races were traditionally at odds over territorial rights and migratory routes. But the Trolls hated Mutens worse than anything. Voiceless, soulless remnants of the Warlock Lord’s dark magic, the Mutens survived in the Knife Edge in much the same way as the Werebeasts did within Olden Moor—by preying on the Gnomes who worshiped them as sacred spirits.