With construction of the canal well under way, all eyes point to Innarlith and to the laconic genius Ivar Devorast. Devorast, more concerned with the deed itself, pays too little attention to the forces aligning against him. All he wants to do is dig a canal, but instead he’s had to defend himself against everyone from the Red Wizards of Thay and the Zhentarim to Phyrea, a woman who loves him so much that she wants nothing more than to see him destroyed.
Still haunted by the ghosts of her family’s country estate, Phyrea slips ever deeper into madness, clinging to her sanity by the thinnest of threads.
The genasi senator Pristoleph set his sights on the Palace of Many Towers, but he paused along the way to steal Phyrea from her arranged marriage to Willem Korvan.
Willem, heartbroken and confused, sought solace with his mentor, the Red Wizard Marek Rymiit. But Marek has more planned for Willem than just a marriage to the master builder’s daughter. Willem, who has done nothing but follow orders, has been transformed by Marek Rymiit into an undead creature, a creature designed to do only one thing: kill.