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Prologue

The Year of the Reborn Hero (1463 DR)

YOU CANNOT PRESUME THAT THIS CREATURE IS NATURAL, IN ANY SENSE OF the word," the dark-skinned Shadovar woraybeard "She is perversion incarnate"

The old druid Erlindir shuffled his sandal-clad feet and gave a great "harrumph!"

"Incarnate, I tell you" The Shifter tapped her finger against the old druid’s temple and ran it delicately down under his eye and across his cheek to touch his crooked nose

"So, you’re really in front ofto the fact that when one addressed the Shifter, typically one was actually addressing a projected ie, a phantasm, of the most elusive enchantress

"I told you that you could trust iven hirove many months before

"If I didn’t believe you, would I have coes of the Shadowfell, his gaze settling on the twisted keep and tower before hioyles, all leering at hih aof death and decay and populated by undead monstrosities This castle was not much of an improvement

"Why, Erlindir, you flatter rabbed hiaze back to her face Her spell wouldn’t last forever, she knew, and she didn’t want any of the unnatural ies to shake the druid from his stupor Erlindir was of the old school, after all, a disciple of the nature goddess Mielikki "But remember why you are here"

"Yes, yes," he replied, "this unnatural cat You would have me destroy it, then?"

"Oh, no, not that!" the Shifter exclaimed

Erlindir looked at her curiously

"My friend Lord Draygo has the panther," the Shifter explained "He is a warl--reat renown and tremendous power" She paused to watch the druid’s reaction, fearing that her near slip-up ht clue the old one into her ruse There was a reason that swamp teemed with undead creatures No druid, charer to help a warlock

"Lord Draygo fears that the cat’sother … aborant hih her eyes when she is sus to the Astral Plane and anchor her here instead"

Erlindir looked at her suspiciously

"Only for a short time," she assured him "We will destroy the cat e’re sure that hernature for his ill intent And destroy him, too, if needed"

"I would rather that you bring hie he has already caused," Erlindir said

"So be it," the enchantress readily agreed, since lies caates were harder to h his crystal ball to his peer, Parise Ulfbinder, a fellow high-ranking and powerful warlock who lived in a tower sio’s in Shade Enclave, but upon the soil of Toril "And my understudy told me that the shadowstep back to his home was not as easily accomplished as he had expected"

Parise stroked his serated in the contours of the crystal ball "They warred with drow, did they not? And with drow spellspinners, no doubt"

"Not at that time, I don’t believe"

"But there were rym"

"Yes, that is what I have been told"

"And Glorfathel?" Parise asked, referring to an elf roup Cavus Dun, who had disappeared quite unexpectedly and quickly in Gauntlgryht before the io Quick said And he added quickly, "Yes, it is possible that Glorfathel created soical waves to impede our retreat We do not know that he betrayed us Only the dwarf priestess"

Parise sat back and ran his fingers through his long black hair "You don’t think it was Glorfathel who hindered the shadowsteps," he stated

Draygo Quick shook his head

"You don’t think it was the work of drow es, either, or of the priestess," said Parise

"The shadowstep was e in the air"

"The Spellplague was change," Parise said "The advent of Shadoas change The new reality is now si to return?" Draygo Quick asked At the other end of the crystal ball, Parise Ulfbinder could only sigh and shrug

It was just a theory, after all, a belief based on the reading by Parise, Draygo Quick, and soo’s Darkness," a cryptic sonnet found in a letter written by the ancient wizard Cherlrigo Cherlrigo claimed he’d translated the poem from The Leaves of One Grass, a now-lost tome penned nearly a thousand years before, based on prophecies from almost a thousand years before that

"The world is full of prophecies," Parise warned, but there seeo when they had retrieved the letter, after all, and the amount of trouble and the power of the curses they had found along with the page seeht

"If we are to take Cherlrigo’s word for it, the tome in which he found this sonnet, was penned in Myth Drannor," Draygo Quick re Tower That is no book of ranosticator" "Nay, but it is a book of cryptic o Quick nodded, conceding that unfortunate fact

"The proposition of the octave calls it a temporary state," Parise went on "Let us not react in fear to that which we do not fully comprehend"

"Let us not rest while the world prepares to shift around us," the old warlock countered

"To a temporary state!" Parise replied

"Only if the second quatrain is decoded as a o Quick reminded

"The turn of the ninth line is a clear hint, my friend"

"There are o Quick sat back, tapped the tips of his withered fingers together before his frown, and inadvertently glanced at the parchment that lay face down at the side of his desk The words of the sonnet danced before his eyes, and he od’s particular flavor"