Warned by the prophecy that a new and greater danger threatens the lands of the west, Garion, Belgarath, and Polgara must begin another quest to save the lands from great evil.

Long ago, so the Storyteller claimed, the evil God Torak sought dominion and drove men and Gods to war. But Belgarath the Sorcerer led men to reclaim the Orb that protected men of the West. So long as it lay at Riva, the prophecy went, men would be safe.

Sparhawk, the Pandion Knight and Queen's Champion, returns from a long spell of exile to find his native land overrun with evil and intrigue, and his young Queen grievously ill. Indeed, Ehlana lies magically entombed within a block of crystal, doomed to die unless a cure can be found within a year.

Six years had passed since the redoubtable knight Sparhawk had triumphed over the evil God Azash and returned to Elenia with Queen Ehlana, his bride. And now a new danger had arisen to threaten the peace of Ehlana's realm. The trouble had started quietly. At home, bandits began to plague the hill country. In neighboring Lamorkand, the customary political unrest turned ominous with whispers that the bloody heroes of old soon would rise again.

The Wasteland is a barren and hideous wilderness ruled by the Vlagh - a godlike creature whose young are evil spawn. Now, as the elder gods are about to transfer their power to the younger gods, the Vlagh plans to take advantage of their weakened state and neutralize them, eventually conquering the world. To do so, it is breeding a terrible force borne of monsters and demons. But one ray of hope shines through the darkness: four children called the Dreamers. They alone hold the power to change the course of history...and stop the Vlagh in its quest for total world domination.

It would be sheer folly to try to conceal the true nature of Althalus, for his flaws are the stuff of legend. He is, as all men know, a thief, a liar, an occasional murderer, an outrageous braggart, and a man devoid of even the slightest hint of honor. Yet of all the men in the world, it is Althalus, unrepentant rogue and scoundrel, who will become the champion of humanity in its desperate struggle against the forces of an ancient god determined to return the universe to nothingness.

Within the Eastern Empire, Duke Kordas Valdemar rules a tiny, bucolic Duchy that focuses mostly on horse breeding. Anticipating the day when the Empire's exploitative and militant leaders would not be content to leave them alone, Korda's father set out to gather magicians in the hopes of one day finding a way to escape and protect the people of the Duchy from tyranny.

Raised and marked as a bastard human, she is as surprised as the rest when blood tells and her dragon roars. Trin has been raised with the knowledge that her parentage was unknown and she was human. Those two items were the cornerstone of her existence. An altercation at a baby shower leads to her discovering another side to herself. That side was big, crystalline, and caused the other dragons in her vicinity to bow their heads. Defending her friend had led her into this new shape, and now, she was stuck with it.

For more than fifty years, the Terran Republic and the Terran League have been killing one another. The death toll has climbed ever higher, year after year, with no end in sight. But the members of the Five Hundred, the social elite of the Republic's Heart Worlds, don't care.

Centuries in the past, mankind fought a seemingly unbeatable adversary from sector to sector across the Spiral Arm until the war ground to a standstill and the Enemy withdrew. Believing that they had won, the citizens of the galaxy rebuilt. The Inner Worlds, which had escaped the worst of the war's ravages, became even more insular, while the Rim worlds adopted a free and easy way with law and order. Now, hundreds of years after their withdrawal, the Enemy is back - and this time they'll be satisfied with nothing less than the extinction of the galaxy.

Warned by the prophecy that a new and greater danger threatens the lands of the west, Garion, Belgarath, and Polgara must begin another quest to save the lands from great evil.

Long ago, so the Storyteller claimed, the evil God Torak sought dominion and drove men and Gods to war. But Belgarath the Sorcerer led men to reclaim the Orb that protected men of the West. So long as it lay at Riva, the prophecy went, men would be safe.

Sparhawk, the Pandion Knight and Queen's Champion, returns from a long spell of exile to find his native land overrun with evil and intrigue, and his young Queen grievously ill. Indeed, Ehlana lies magically entombed within a block of crystal, doomed to die unless a cure can be found within a year.

It would be sheer folly to try to conceal the true nature of Althalus, for his flaws are the stuff of legend. He is, as all men know, a thief, a liar, an occasional murderer, an outrageous braggart, and a man devoid of even the slightest hint of honor. Yet of all the men in the world, it is Althalus, unrepentant rogue and scoundrel, who will become the champion of humanity in its desperate struggle against the forces of an ancient god determined to return the universe to nothingness.

Six years had passed since the redoubtable knight Sparhawk had triumphed over the evil God Azash and returned to Elenia with Queen Ehlana, his bride. And now a new danger had arisen to threaten the peace of Ehlana's realm. The trouble had started quietly. At home, bandits began to plague the hill country. In neighboring Lamorkand, the customary political unrest turned ominous with whispers that the bloody heroes of old soon would rise again.