Bestselling author Christopher Golden brings his epic, innovative trilogy, the Veil, to an astonishing conclusion as the mythic realm of heroes and monsters becomes the site of humanity's last--and greatest--showdown.
In the world of the legendary, every myth and folktale is real. That is what Oliver Bascombe learned on the other side of the Veil, where humanity's legends have hidden away for centuries. But even legends have legends, and Oliver has learned of a prophecy that many believe he and his sister, Collette, have come to the Two Kingdoms to fulfill. Before they can discover the truth, the Bascombe siblings must help to stop an apocalyptic war that threatens to destroy the Two Kingdoms, unravel a conspiracy, and prevent a powerful sorcerer from severing the world of humans from the realm of the legendary forever.
But first Oliver will have to plot an escape from an impregnable palace dungeon where he and his allies have been imprisoned . . . for regicide.
As old heroes and friends ally themselves for one last battle, even older enemies stand arrayed against them. Is humanity ready to face its legends head-on? For Oliver Bascombe, the price may be dearer than even he could ever imagine.
Oliver Bascombe paced his dungeon cell, wondering when his captors would decide to kill him and how they would do it. Public execution? Swift murder? Torture? Or perhaps they would simply feed him to the Battle Swine and let those filthy porcine warriors bite off his head and strip the flesh from his bones.
In the two months and more since he had first been clapped into the crumbling stone cell with its iron-grated windows and heavy wooden door, he had come to understand that there were only three things a prisoner in the royal dungeon of Yucatazca could do to pass the time--imagine dying, imagine escaping, and work his body hard enough to hurt, just to remind him that he was alive. In all his life, Oliver had never been so strong. He could not escape the irony that despite all of his newly gained strength and discipline, he had also never been so powerless.
A stained sleeping mat was the room's only comfort. Unless he was sleeping, he kept it rolled up in the center of the cell. With that out of the way, he could walk the perimeter of the room unimpeded by anything but the small sink and the hole beside it that was the closest thing he had to a toilet.
He didn't have space to run; no way to get up any momentum in a cell twenty feet by twelve. The best he could do was walk and so he did that, swiftly and consistently, for at least an hour when he rose and another hour after dark. After dark, Oliver needed to keep his body occupied because his mind became busiest then, as well. Back in the ordinary world, he had always believed that there truly were things lurking in the dark, but now he knew for certain. In the world of the legendary, everything was possible.
No, more than that. Everything is real.
This morning, like every other, he knew the day had begun by the lightening of the cell from black to gloomy gray and from the passage of silent guards out in the corridor. The two small grated windows never received direct sunlight and offered no view of anything but stone and shadow. Beyond the outer wall of the dungeon was a slotted canyon built into the king's palace by its architect. He supposed he ought to have been grateful for that little bit of light that allowed him to keep track of the passage of night and day, but Oliver had no gratitude in his heart.
Only ice.
In the absence of Frost--whom he suspected was alive, despite all evidence to the contrary--he had become a kind of winter man himself.
If not for the presence of his sister, Collette, and his fiancée, Julianna Whitney, in the cell across that stone corridor, he knew his heart would have become ice entirely. What saved him was the ability to hear their voices and catch glimpses of their faces through the grated windows in their parallel door. Instead of slamming his palms and fists against the stones, building callus, he might have rammed his skull into the wall and been done with life.
Instead, he lived.
In between his morning and evening walks, Oliver did sets of pushups and sit-ups. He'd built up the muscles in his arms and shoulders quite a bit, and his abdomen was tight as a drum. This development did not stem solely from his exercise regimen, but also from what he'd come to think of as the "dungeon diet." He, Collette, and Julianna lived on pitiful meals of crusty bread, water, and a thin stew obviously made from whatever others in the palace had not cared to eat. He tried not to think about the origins of his food and never left a drop in the bowl. It would keep him alive.
"Oliver."
He paused beneath one of the grated windows and glanced at the door to his cell. It seemed to him that the voice had come from the...
Reviews
Publishers Weekly...
"[A] fast-paced dark fantasy adventure...[that] should appeal to fans of Neil Gaiman, Charles de Lint, and Robert Holdstock."
Peter Straub...
"Everything [Golden] writes glows with imagination."
Boston magazine...
"Golden's storytelling is spellbinding."
About the Creator
Christopher Golden is the award-winning, L.A. Times bestselling author of such novels as The Ferryman, Strangewood, The Gathering Dark, Of Saints and Shadows, Prowlers, and The Body of Evidence series of teen thrillers. Working with actress/writer/director Amber Benson, he co-created and co-wrote Ghosts of Albion, an animated supernatural drama for BBC online.Golden has also written or co-written a great many books and comic books related to the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, as well as the scripts for two Buffy video games, which he co-wrote with frequent collaborator Tom Sniegoski. His recent comic book work includes the creator-owned Nevermore and DC Comics' Doctor Fate: The Curse. As a pop culture journalist, he was the editor of the Bram Stoker Award-winning book of criticism, Cut!: Horror Writers on Horror Film, and co-author of both Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Watcher's Guide and The Stephen King Universe. Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. He graduated from Tufts University. There are more than eight million copies of his books in print. At present he is at work on his next novel for Bantam Books.
