Devin Tersteeg

Exordium Devin Tersteeg

Paperback edition includes The Hollow Sky ebooks Exordium and Thorns of Obsession. King Tamberlaine and his knights have long marched through the heat of foreign jungles to reach the broken keep among the sward. The battle may not be against many, but those few are mighty - legendary - and they have gathered strange magic that threatens the kingdoms, the gods, and time itself. The young king Laius Igor II, a boy of only seven, went to see the Oracles at Tartu. A king could not be late, and the oracles would tell you they foresaw his delay, but anyone from the king's conversation companions to his servants knew they were arriving at the wooden onion steepled city of Tartu far later in the day than was expected. The city was a chaotic construct of centuries of amalgamated creativity. Much of the city proper lay within low stone walls that anyone could climb without losing their breath, and within were grand buildings of wood that reached into the sky layer by layer. Each new group of oracles would slowly spend their lifetime adding on to the buildings, connecting them, driving up new towers high above the noise below, and carving the exterior with intricate designs that looked like wavy lines and big onions. The center of town stood the Cathedral of Tartu, but like most other buildings in town it had grown several dozen onion topped towers spread like stalagmites, and perhaps a hundred corridors sprawling out like roots from its base connecting it to every nearby building. Some lead nowhere, but perhaps to peace, quiet, and solitude.