The Black Company

Some feel the Lady, newly risen from centuries in thrall, stands between humankind and evil. Some feel she is evil itself. The hardbitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must, burying their doubts with their dead.

Until the prophecy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more.

There must be a way for the Black Company to find her...

Mercenary soldiers in the service of the Lady, the Black Company stands against the Rebels of the White Rose. They are tough men, proud of honoring their contracts. The Lady is evil, but so, too, are those who falsely profess to follow the White Rose, reincarnation of a centuries-dead heroine.

Yet now some of the Company have discovered that the mute girl they rescued and sheltered is truly the White Rose reborn. Now there may be a path to the light, even for such as they. If they can survive it.

She is the last hope of good in the war against the evil sorceress known as the Lady. From a secret base on the Plains of Fear, where even the Lady hesitates to go, the Black Company, once in service to the Lady, now fights to bring victory to the White Rose.

But now an even greater evil threatens the world. All the great battles that have gone before will seem as skirmishes when the Dominator rises from the grave.

...embedded in the trunk of the scion of the godtree, it contains the essence of the maddest of the Ten Who Were Taken.. the Dominator. Defeated by the Lady and cast from this world, all that was left of him was a foul trace of lingering evil. But the graveyard that was once the Barrowland contains more secrets than dead. All who would possess the power of the Dominator are drawn to the Spike. A foolhardy band of thieves is the first to reach it, and a rapacious and malign spirit is unleashed on an unwary world.

The forces gather, sides are drawn, and mortal men can only die as the Dark Lords battle for dominion.

After the devastating battle at the Tower of Charm, Croaker leads the greatly diminished Black Company south, in search of the Lost Annals. The Annals will be returned to Khatovar, eight thousand miles away, a city that may exist only in legend...the origin of the first Free Companies.

Every step of the way the Company is hounded by shadowy figures and carrion-eating crows. As they march ever southward, through bug-infested jungle, rivers dense with bloodthirsty pirates, and cities, dead and living, haunted by the passage of the Company north, their numbers grow until they are thousands strong.

But always they are watched - by the Shadowmasters - a deadly new enemy: twisted creatures that deal in darkness and death; powerful, shadowy creatures bent on smothering the world in their foul embrace. This is the first round in a deadly game, a game the Black Company cannot lose - or hope to win. Welcome to Shadow Games.

Croaker has fallen and, following the Company's disastrous defeat at Dejagore, Lady is one of the few survivors - determined to avenge the Company and herself against the Shadowmasters, no matter what the cost.

But in assembling a new fighting force from the dregs and rabble of Taglios, she finds herself offered help by a mysterious, ancient cult of murder - competent, reliable, and apparently committed to her goals.

Meanwhile, far away, Shadowmasters conspire against one another and the world, weaving dark spells that reach into the heart of Taglios. And in a hidden grove, a familiar figure slowly awakens to find himself the captive of an animated, headless corpse.

Mercilessly cutting through Taglian intrigues, Lady appears to be growing stronger every day. All that disturbs her are the dreams which afflict her by night. Dreams of carnage, of destruction, of universal death. Unceasing Dreams of Steel.

"Let me tell you who I am, on the chance that these scribblings do survive....

"I am Murgen, Standardbearer of the Black Company, though I bear the shame of having lost that standard in battle. I am keeping these Annals because Croaker is dead, One-Eye won't, and hardly anyone else can read or write. I will be your guide for however long it takes the Shadowlanders to force our present predicament to its inevitable end...."

So writes Murgen, seasoned veteran of the Black Company. The Company has taken the fortress of Stormgard from the evil Shadowlanders, lords of darkness from the far reaches of the earth. Now the waiting begins.

Exhausted from the siege, beset by sorcery, and vastly outnumbered, the Company have risked their souls as well as their lives to hold their prize. But this is the end of an age, and great forces are at work. The ancient race known as the Nyueng Bao swear that ancient gods are stirring. The Company's command has gone mad and flirts with the forces of darkness. Only Murgen, touched by a spell that has set his soul adrift in time, begins at last to comprehend the dark design that has made pawns of men and gods alike.

The wind whines and howls with bitter breath. Lightning snarls and barks. Rage in an animate force upon the plain of glittering stone. Even shadows are afraid.

So begins the next movement of Glittering Stone....

The tale again comes to us from the pen of Murgen, Annalist and Standard Bearer of the Black Company, whose developing power of travel through space and time give him a perspective like no other.

Led by the wily commander, Croaker, and the Lady, the Company is working for the Taglian government, but neither the Company nor the Taglians are overflowing with trust for each other. Arrayed against both is a similarly tenuous alliance of sorcerers, including the diabolical Soulcatcher, the psychotic Howler, and a four-year-old child who may be the most powerful of all.

The survivors of the disaster regroup in Taglios. Determined to free their fellow warriors held in stasis beneath the glittering plain, they journey there under terrible conditions, arriving just in time for a magical conflagration in which the bones of the world will be revealed, the history of the Company unveiled, and new world gained and lost...all at a major price.

No Black Company member has died in battle for four years. Croaker figures it can't last. He's right.

For, of course, many of the Company's old adversaries are still around. Narayan Singh and his adopted daughter - actually the offspring of Croaker and Lady - hope to bring about the apocalyptic Year of the Skulls. Other old enemies like Longshadow and Howler are also ready to do the Company harm. And much of the company is still recovering from the fifteen years many of them spent in a stasis field.

Then a report arrives of an old enemy newly active again. It attacks them at a shadowgate - setting off a chain of events that will bring the Company to the edge of apocalypse and, as usual, several steps beyond.