SYNOPSIS
Max is going mad. He
is plagued by chattering anxieties, lurking rages and slow-burning
fears. The traffic and noise of the world becomes intolerable;
Max gives up his job and friendships for the static refuge of his
apartment. His initiation has begun.
Maggie, adopted at birth,
finally seeks out her natural grandmother. There is a low thunder in Maggie’s heart, subtle but strong enough to disrupt her happiness.
She is questing for something, anything, to quiet it. Joanne, her
grandmother, is a Knight in the secret Order of the Sovereign House.
She offers Maggie membership.
Two generations ago
Max’s grandfather, the shaman Malcolm, and Joanne found
themselves allies in a struggle against the Chainborn. Their callings
let them understand each others' hardships and loneliness but
refused them the chance to remain together. This is the legacy
Max and Maggie must inherit or deny.
Max’s sufferings
drive him back to the city streets where he is visited by the
Abrhim-Sol, the spirits of his initiation. In a fugue of car
accidents, muggings, shopping sprees and visions Max’s soul is
torn apart. Meanwhile, Joanne tests Maggie in the Ways of the Scales,
the Sword and the Sun, the principles that guide the Order.
The initiate’s trials
are interrupted by the return of the Chainborn. They are hunting a
shaman’s soul for their dark designs and have targeted Max. A
traitor to the Order has allied with them; Joanne and Maggie are
called to face him.
Max and Maggie meet
under the threat of the Gheddon-Siege, a ritual curse laid by the
Chainborn to snare Max while he is at his weakest. The trap fails
when Malcolm arrives; he offers his own soul to the Gheddon-Siege and
the act of sacrifice counters the Chainborn’s claim. In the
battle, Joanne reunites briefly with Malcolm before she is killed by
the traitor.
Shocked and frightened in
the aftermath of the battle, Maggie and Max flee their enemies.
They feel a profound attraction between them, but to follow it would
endanger both their souls. Max still suffers the shaman’s
sickness and Maggie’s knightly purification would be infected. They
would be without power, at the mercy of the Chainborn.
In an act of mystical
affirmation and denial, in a rejection of fate’s constraints in
favor of the true path of the knight and shaman, the path of heart, Maggie and Max make love. They embrace the paradox of their
legacies - they are a knight and shaman, they are not a knight and
shaman - and so surrender to their callings while claiming their
freedom.
Their initiations
complete, Marshal and Alison set forth to hunt the Chainborn,
together.
