THE COVENANT RISING

In a land where magic defines the social order, the ruling tyrants alone control the most powerful sorcery ...

One of the last of a massacred race of warriors -- an unparalleled swordsman magically afflicted by spells of blind, uncontrollable rage -- Reeth Caldason wanders Bhealfa seeking vengeance ... and freedom from his strange malady. Now word has come from a sorcerer's apprentice of a mysterious Covenant in the capital city, a secretive society that may provide the escape Reeth desires. But forming an uneasy alliance with the youthful messenger could ultimately prove disastrous -- for the road they musttravel together leads into the sordid heart of a perilous conspiracy of treachery, tyranny, necromancy, and death.

Stan Nicholls is best known for the internationally acclaimed Orcs: First Blood series. His journalism has appeared in Locus, SFX, the Guardian, the Independent, the Daily Mirror, Time Out, Sight and Sound, and Rolling Stone, among many other publications. He currently lives in the West Midlands, U.K., with his wife, the writer Anne Gay.