Harkaan awoke with the morning sun streaming through the window of his cell. The window was barred, but this was the first time in his life that he had slept in a room open to the outside air. He arose from the bed and took a sip of the watered wine, now warm, left from the night before. He looked around the sparsely furnished chamber and saw the bed with its sleeping furs, a chair and small table, a bucket, and nothing e...

Harkaan had been taken by the Atlanteans as a child, captured in a raid that destroyed his village and enslaved his people. He remembered little of the next few weeks. The chains, the dark hold of the cargo ship, the raucous bidding of the auction house, all a vague blur. He ended up in the marble quarry, cutting stone and hauling the enormous blocks out of the pits and onto the waiting transports. The labor made him stro...