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Prologue:
The Story So Far

SOME THIRTY MILLENNIA ago, the entity known as Perimal Darkling first breached the barrier between the outer void and the series of parallel universes called the Chain of Creation. It began to devour universe after universe, invading each one in turn by way of the threshold world that linked it to the adjacent dimensions.

To meet this threat, the Three-Faced God forged together three races from different threshold worlds into the Kencyrath. Then, apparently, he abandoned them. The Three People— Highborn, Kendar, and catlike Arrin-ken—found themselves alone, pitted against a foe too great for them. And so the long, bitterly fought retreat began from world to world. As the fighting skills of the Kencyrath increased, its number dwindled and its bitterness grew. The Three People felt betrayed by their god and yet unable to refuse the role that he had forced on them. Honor alone upheld them.

Then one man rebelled. Gerridon, Master of Knorth, Highlord of the Kencyrath, offered himself and his followers to Perimal Darkling in exchange for immortality. He persuaded his twin sister and consort, Jamethiel Dream-Weaver, to dance out the souls of the Kencyr Host. On that night, two-thirds of it fell. The remnant fled to the next threshold world, Rathillien.

At this point, the Kencyrath has been on Rathillien nearly three thousand years. In all that time, there have been no major clashes with Perimal Darkling, though the Perimal Darkling and Gerridon have taken over part of the planet, and the Highborn have long since begun to fight among themselves. Some thirty-three years ago, one of these power struggles, combined with a major battlefield defeat in the White Hills, led to the exile of the then Highlord, Ganth of Knorth, called the Gray Lord.

Ganth settled in the Haunted Lands, near the Barrier between the free lands and those controlled by the Perimal Darkling. He took as consort a mysterious Highborn lady whom he brought back one day out of the hills near the Barrier, seemingly out of nowhere. She bore him twins: Torisen and Jamethiel, called Jame. Then she disappeared back into the hills.

Ganth didn't particularly want a daughter, especially when it became clear that Jame had inherited Shanir blood, which linked her, as it had both the Master and her namesake, to the oldest, most feared powers of her race. Ganth cursed her and drove her out of the keep.

Jame crossed the Barrier into Perimal Darkling. She was gone from Rathillien for at least ten years of her life, apparently spending most of that time in Gerridon's House. Then she fled back to her home world, bringing with her an ancient object of power called the Book Bound in Pale Leather but no clear memory of what had happened to her during all that lost time. She found that on Rathillien more than twenty years had passed. She also found her old home, but now it was only a broken shell containing the dead. Her twin brother alone wasn't there. She took their father's ring and his sword, Kin-Slayer, and went southward to look for Torisen.

What she came across first, though, was the city of Tai-tastigon, where she was delayed for more than a year. During her stay, she became involved in the Thieves' Guild, where she made a name for herself as the Talisman, and with an inn called the Res aB'tyrr, where she discovered that she had not only brought the Book out of Perimal Darkling, but fighting and dancing skills that drew on her Shanir blood in alarming ways. The latter ability proved especially useful, however, when Ishtiér, renegade priest of her own god, went mad and she had to dance down the rampant power of his temple before it could destroy all Tai-tastigon. At the same time, war broke out in the Thieves' Guild and Jame found herself accused of the Guild Lord's murder. She fled the city with her ounce Jorin and the Kendar Marcarn.

This story begins three days later.

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Framed