2003, Colorado: Alexandra Solarin is summoned home to her family’s ancestral Rocky Mountain hideaway for her mother’s birthday. Thirty years ago, her parents, Cat Velis and Alexander Solarin, believed that they had scattered the pieces of the Montglane Service around the world, burying with the chessmen the secrets of the power that comes with possessing them. But Alexandra arrives to find that her mother is missing–and that the Game has begun again. 1822, Albania: Haidee, the young daughter of a powerful Ottoman ruler, embarks on a dangerous mission to smuggle a valuable relic out of Albania and deliver it into the hands of the one man who might be able to save it. Haidee’s journey brings forth chilling revelations that burn through history to the present day. “[An] exotic, labyrinthine conspiracy tale . . . the perfect escapist adventure.”— Washington Post “ The Fire expertly blends history, science, and myth. Katherine Neville is the undisputed queen of the international suspense genre.”—Steve Berry, author of The Charlemagne Pursuit “For fans of The Da Vinci Code and The Rule of Four , Neville’s historical detective story . . . packs an epic wallop.”— People StyleWatch “ The Fire impresses as much for its literary aspects as it does for its action, puzzles and suspense. . . . This is a book to be savored as it’s read, and admired for the beauty of its accomplishment.”— Chicago Sun-Times Katherine Neville is the author of The Eight, The Magic Circle (a USA Today bestseller), and A Calculated Risk (a New York Times Notable Book). The Eight has been translated into more than thirty languages. In a national poll in Spain by the noted journal El País, The Eight was voted one of the top ten books of all time. Neville lives in Virginia and Washington, D.C. THE BLACK LAND Wyrd oft nereth unfaegne eorl, ponne his ellen deah. (Unless he is already doomed, fortune is apt to favor the man who keeps his nerve.) –Beowulf Mesa Verde, Colorado Spring 2003 BEFORE I’D EVEN REACHED THE HOUSE, I KNEW SOMETHING was wrong. Very wrong. Even though on the surface, it all seemed picture-perfect. The steep, sweeping curve of drive was blanketed deep in snow and lined with stately rows of towering Colorado blue spruce. Their snow-covered branches sparkled like rose quartz in the early morning light. Atop the hill, where the driveway flattened and spread out for parking, I pulled up my rented Land Rover in front of the lodge. A lazy curl of blue-gray smoke rose from the moss rock chimney that formed the center of the building. The rich scent of pine smoke pervaded the air, which meant that–although I might not be warmly welcomed after all this time–at least I was expected. To confirm this, I saw that my mother’s truck and jeep were both sitting side-by-side in the former horse stable at the edge of the parking area. I did find it odd, though, that the drive had not yet been plowed and there were no tracks. If I were expected, wouldn’t someone have cleared a path? Now that I was here at last, in the only place I’d ever called home, you would think I could finally relax. But I couldn’t shake the sense that something was wrong. Our family lodge had been built at about this same period in the prior century, by neighboring tribes, for my great-great-grandmother, a pioneering mountain lass. Constructed of hand-hewn rock and massive tree trunks chinked together, it was a huge log cabin that was shaped like an octagon–patterned after a hogan or sweat lodge–with many-paned windows facing in each cardinal direction, like a vast, architectural compass rose. Each female descendant had lived here at one time or another, including my mother and me. . . . So what was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I ever come here without this sense of impending doom? I knew why, of course. And so did my mother. It was the thing we never spoke about. That’s why–when I had finally left home for good–my mother understood. She’d never insisted, like other mothers, that I come back for familial visits. That is, not until today. But then, my presence today hadn’t exactly been by invitation–it was more of a summons, a cryptic message that Mother had left on my home phone back in Washington D.C., when she knew very well I’d be off at work. She was inviting me, she said, to her birthday party. And that, of course, was a big part of the problem. You see, my mother didn’t have birthdays. She’d never had birthdays. I don’t mean she was concerned about her youth or appearance or wished to lie about her age–in fact, she looked more youthful each year. But the strange truth was, she didn’t want anyone outside of our family even to know when her birthday was. This secrecy, combined with a few other idiosyncracies–like the fact that she’d been in hermetic retreat up on top of this mountain for the past ten years, ever since . . . the thing we never spoke about–all went far to explain why there were those who may have pe