Twelve years ago, Gonway and Owen severed the connection between worlds and ended the age of magic. They saved their village. They also destroyed the power of every wizard in the world.

Now one of those wizards has come for answers—and revenge.

Shamandra was the most powerful sorceress at court. Now she can't light a candle. She's spent eleven years searching for the truth, the reason why magic no longer exists. She believes she can restore what was lost. She has the King's authority, a company of soldiers, and an obsession that will not be denied.

Gonway knows the truth: the magic is gone. It will not return. This quest will end in an empty chamber beneath the mountains, with nothing to find but the weight of what's been lost.

But Shamandra won't accept his word. So Gonway and Owen agree to guide her into the brutal heights of the Karth Mountains one final time—four weeks of ice and stone and thin air, climbing toward a chamber that holds nothing but echoes.

What they don't expect is to be reunited with Thag, the gentle troll who was their companion on the first journey and who has spent twelve years in self-imposed exile, resisting the call to the spirit world. Or to encounter Adelais, the last dragon of the mountains, ancient and fading and resigned to the ending of her kind.

As Shamandra's desperation turns to paranoia and then to madness, as accusations of conspiracy give way to chains and betrayal, Gonway must answer the question he's avoided for twelve years: In a world that has moved on without magic, where does a man who ended an age finally belong?