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About the Author

Laurie Forest lives deep in the backwoods of Vermont, where she sits in front of a woodstove drinking strong tea and dreaming up tales full of dryads, dragons, and wands. She is the author of The Black Witch Chronicles, including The Black Witch, The Iron Flower, The Shadow Wand, and The Demon Tide, as well as the prequel novellas Wandfasted and Light Mage, available in print in The Rebel Mages anthology.

LaurieAnnForest.com

Dedication

To my circle of writing & reading friends
because you are the best & most talented people in all the Realms.
May the purple Xishlon Moon shine down bright upon you all.

Western Realm Map

Continent of the Realms

Prologue

PROLOGUE

The Shadow Wand

Six years ago

The Wand senses the touch of the ship to Shadow

like the brush of a fly to a spider’s web.

Its power shivers,

then it opens its Void senses...

ready to rise once more.

THE LOST CONTINENT

Alaric Fynnes

The Western Ocean

Priest-Apprentice Alaric Fynnes grips The Book of the Ancients as he steps onto the Ironflower’s deck, an ocean breeze buffeting him. His silken priest-apprentice raiment gleams in the sunlight, the holy black garb embossed with the Ancient One’s white messenger bird wrought in gleaming silver thread. The ship’s sails luff and snap, the black canvas also marked with the Ancient One’s bird, its talons clasping a bouquet of Ironflowers.

Alaric’s seventeen-year-old heart fair bursts with joy as he takes in the sunlit sea, his mind still full of a heady disbelief that he was chosen, out of so many, to accompany his mentor, Priest Marcus Vogel, on this incredible adventure.

To seek out the Lost Continent of the West.

On the Ancient One’s own sacred mission.

A smile on his lips, Alaric clasps the holy book tighter as calls of “The Lost Continent!” rise. He looks toward the Mage-mariners pointing over the whitecapped waves, an agitated excitement in the air as Alaric turns his gaze toward the inky mass hunched on the horizon, bringing to mind a menacing beast.

His heartbeat quickens. Could they finally be nearing their quarry after weeks on the kraken-and storm-infested Western Ocean? Their crew, speeding toward the mythical Lost Continent to vanquish the Evil Ones’ Wand of Power. A wand conveyed to Priest Vogel in a dream-vision, a divine leading mirrored by three church seers...and a disturbing number of heathen seers, as well. Which is why it’s vital to the survival of the Magedom that Priest Vogel gets hold of the Wand first.

To destroy it.

Alaric spots his mentor near the ship’s prow, peering through a runic telescope. His breath catches in his chest at the sight of the young priest’s arresting features, Vogel’s elegant, charismatic bearing, his shoulder-length onyx hair, a wand and an iron blade sheathed at his side.