“There is adventure and intrigue, swordplay and dark sorcery aplenty.”— Realms of Fantasy When the legendary Briar King awoke from his slumber, dark magics awoke with him and spread across the Kingdom of Crotheny. In Eslen, King William has been murdered, Queen Muriele is stalked by treachery from every side, and their last surviving daughter, Anne, has fled the assassins bent on destroying her family. The queen’s one trusted ally, young knight Neil MeqVren, is sworn to rescue the princess from her pursuers. As spies in the service of the powerful Churchman embark upon a mission to destroy the Briar King, a sinister conspiracy threatens to engulf the land. Personal fates will be decided, and a kingdom’s destiny will hinge upon the ultimate conflict between virtue and malevolence, might and magic. “Keyes’s world is rich, detailed, and always believable; the twisty plot is delightful and frightening in turns.”— Locus “Strong world building and superior storytelling.”— Library Journal “There is adventure and intrigue, swordplay and dark sorcery aplenty.” — Realms of Fantasy  “Keyes’s world is rich, detailed, and always believable; the twisty plot is delightful and frightening in turns.” — Locus   “Strong world building and superior storytelling.” — Library Journal When the legendary Briar King awoke from his slumber, a season of darkness and horror fell upon the Kingdom of Crotheny. Now countless breeds of unspeakable monsters roam the countryside. An epidemic of madness has transformed peaceful villagers from the wildlands into savage, flesh-eating fiends. In Eslen, King William has been murdered, Queen Muriele is stalked by treachery on every side, and their last surviving daughter, Anne, has fled the assassins bent on destroying her family. Close on the heels of the runaway princess, young knight Neil MeqVren, the queen's one trusted ally, is sworn to rescue Anne from her murderous pursuers. Anne herself undertakes a perilous journey toward the sanctuary of her distant paramour's arms, but along the way lie the sinister agents and hidden snares of a sprawling conspiracy that few might hope to evade. At the same time, spies in the service of Praifec Hespero, the powerful Churchman, embark upon a mission to destroy the Briar King in the heart of his domain. And the power-hungry Church, spurred on by the mystical events, has launched an inquisition whose repercussions threaten even the queen. As the noose of intrigue tightens across the land, personal fates and a kingdom's destiny alike will be decided in a conflict between virtue and malevolence, might and magic. Here then is Book II of The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone: intoxicating and harrowing, passionate and grand-it is Greg Keyes's most ambitiously imagined and vividly rendered work of epic fantasy. "From the Hardcover edition. Greg Keyes was born in Meridian, Mississippi, to a large, diverse, storytelling family. He received degrees in anthropology from Mississippi State and the University of Georgia before becoming a full-time writer. He is the author of The Waterborn , The Blackgod , the Age of Unreason tetralogy, and the Star Wars New Jedi Order novels Edge of Victory I: Conquest , Edge of Victory II: Rebirth, and The Final Prophecy . He lives in Savannah, Georgia. chapter one The Night Neil MeqVren rode with his queen down a dark street in the city of the dead. The tattoo of their horse’s hooves was drowned by hail shattering on lead cobbles. The wind was a dragon heaving its misty coils and lashing its wet tail. Ghosts began to stir, and beneath Neil’s burnished breastplate, beneath his chilled skin and cage of bone, worry clenched. He did not mind the wind or frozen rain. His homeland was Skern, where the frost and the sea and the clouds were all the same, where ice and pain were the simplest facts of life. The dead did not bother him either. It was the living he feared, the knives and darts the dark and weather hid from his merely human eyes. It would take so little to kill his queen—the prick of a tiny needle, a hole the size of a little finger in her heart, a sling-flung stone to her temple. How could he protect her? How could he keep safe the only thing he had left? He glanced at her; she was obscured in a wool weather-cloak, her face shadowed deep in the cowl. A similar cloak covered his own lord’s plate and helm. They might appear to be any two pilgrims, come to see their ancestors—or so he hoped. If those who wanted the queen dead were grains of sand, there would be strand enough to beach a war galley. They crossed stone bridges over black water canals that caught bits of the fire from their lantern and stirred them into gauzy yellow webs. The houses of the dead huddled between the waterways, peaked roofs shedding the storm, keeping their quiet inhabitants dry if not warm. A few lights moved elsewhere between the lanes—the queen, it seemed, was not the only one undeterred by the weather, determined to see