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Princess Inos lived an idyllic life in her father's sleepy, backwater kingdom. Krasnegar was a peaceful realm, and Inos was a friend to all-especially her childhood companion, the stableboy Rap.

Then one day a God appeared with an enigmatic warning that might mean that Inos should wed. No one was sure, but who could ignore a divine warning? And as no eligible noblemen ever visited tiny Krasnegar, Inos found herself exiled to the Impire to learn to be a lady.

Thus Inos was far away when Rap's strange talents began to emerge, and the townsfolk whispered darkly of magic. Then the king fell ill, and Rap set out to warn Inos to prepare to claim her birthright. But Rap couldn't know as he struggled through goblin-infested wastes that his was a journey ordained by the Gods since before the world began.

Inos, the late king's daughter, had been kidnapped through the magic casement even as the Impish legions overrunning her tiny kingdom were storming the castle tower. Now she was a prisoner in a desert land ruled by a dockside whore with a talent for magic and a passion for politics.

She little dreamed that the loyal stableboy Rap had jumped through the casement after her. But no one really knew how the magic worked, and Rap found himself not in a desert, but in the steaming jungles of Faerie--half a world away from Inos!

Rap was determined to rescue his beloved queen, and nothing could stop him--not even the monsters and headhunters of Faerie, or the paranoid machinations of an evil sorcerer.

Queen Inos was badly shaken. Rap--loyal, trustworthy Rap--had appeared to her, obviously from beyond the grave. His insubstantial image, the echo of his voice...She stiffened her resolve. She would serve her people, whatever the cost. Rap would have wanted her to.

But Rap was alive, armed with a magic word and unwavering resolve to find his beloved Inos and give her whatever help a galley slave could give a queen.

Then Kalkor, cruelest of the vicious Nordland raiders, sailed into port in his longship Blood Wave; and Rap's life took a hellish turn for the worse.

The loyal stableboy Rap had fought through hell and high water to rescue Inos, his queen. But at the end of his quest, all his struggle had been in vain.

For Inos had already married the accursed Sultan Azak. Her beauty had been despoiled, her kingdom stolen away. And for her honeymoon, Azak planned the dangerous journey to Hub, capital of the Impire. There, amid the maelstrom of fearsome magic and vicious imperial politics surrounding the ailing imperor, Azak intended to recoup all his losses and be freed from his curse.

A failed and broken man, Rap awaited his fate--at the hands of Azak's torturers. And Inos followed her destiny, and her jealous new lord, on a journey whose outcome even the gods could not have foretold.