Cover:  Keith Parkinson

The Eye of the Hunter
Takes place:  5E989-90

Augeries are oft subtle . . . and dangerous
-- thou may deem they mean one thing
when they mean something else altogether.

The elfess climbed toward the golden light . . .

Heedless of the enemy, Riatha climbed.   Suddenly she called back to her companions, Quickly!  Aid me!"

Leading Aravan, damman Faeril and buccan Gwylly scrambled up through the slithering mass of ice, coming at last into the luminance.   The bulk of the glacier loomed high above and the light from within suffused through the myriad splits and cracks, shining as would the Sun through a fractured glass window.  And even as they stood up to their knees in the sliding shatter, stood in that fragmented golden glow, Elfess and buccan and damman, Riatha with Lastborn Firstborns at her side, overhead the Eye of the Hunter streamed crimson though the sky.

But neither gold nor crimson caught their sight.  Instead, it was what they saw in the center of the scattered light:  for out from the shattered wall jutted a hand, a large Man's hand . . .

. . . and the fingers moved!

-- Excerpts from the book.