‘Guest Gulkan.’
The voice was deep, dark, cavernous. A voice of roiling stone and flensing steel. A voice of sulphurous flames and bone-grinding appetites. At the sound of it, Guest halted. His flaring nostrils endeavoured to gape still wider. His hair, that part of it which was not firmly matted to his skull by the dedicated accumulation of filth, endeavoured to stand on end.
With eyes wild, with the agitated whip-crack intemperance of a highly-strung horse about to panic and bolt, Guest turned to face the demon.
‘You!’ said Guest, challenging the jade-green block of glowing stone. ‘Is it you?’
‘Who else?’ said the voice.
This time there was no mistaking the source of that voice. The jade-green monolith was speaking to him. Guest Gulkan was being directly addressed by a demon - by Icaria Scaria Iva-Italis, Keeper of the Inner Sanctum and Guardian Prime.
‘What do you want?’ said Guest, trembling on the edge of a one-man stampede.
‘I want you,’ said the demon. ‘Come here!’
In the course of Guest Gulkan’s eventful life, empires are won and lost. Driven by his unquenchable thirst for power, Guest encounters many people and events which are beyond his understanding. The son of a barbarian emperor must change his ways - for about him the whole world is changing. The Age of Darkness is coming to an end.