A California medieval scholar is pulled into a far-off magical world—and a fight to save mankind—in this novel by a New York Times–bestselling author. As a student of medieval history, Gil Patterson is a woman familiar with dark stories. She knows well the Crusades, the Black Death, and the other horrors of the Middle Ages, but it is another kind of atrocity that has begun to haunt her dreams. She sees forces of evil assaulting a beleaguered kingdom, whose kind people are on the brink of annihilation, and awakes each morning in a cold sweat. Gil dismisses the dreams until a wizard appears in her apartment. He has crossed into her dimension, passing through the fraying fabric of the universe, to ask her help. For mankind to survive he must protect an infant prince, whom he plans to hide in Gil's world. The student of history is about to get much closer to evil than she ever imagined.

Three thousand years before, the dreadful Dark had sprung from underground lairs to destroy most of humanity. Now they are back, and only a few thousand people have managed to find refuge in the ancient fortress of Renweth.

After a year of magical combat, the world is in ruins, and the few surviving wizards, including two stranded Californians, must take to the offensive Since the Dark Ones returned, the world has been laid to waste. The land’s wizards have been slaughtered, its cities destroyed, and its people scattered in terror, and few have witnessed more of the destruction than Rudy and Gil—two ordinary Californians who found their way across the Void, and took up arms in defense of a strange and magical world. She learned the ways of war, while he found within himself the powers of a great wizard. Both of them will need all their strength to survive this final challenge. Ingold, the master wizard, has devised a spell to hide the user from the deathly stare of the Dark, and he intends to use it to strike at their very heart. Finally, Rudy, Gil, and the rest of mankind’s survivors will take the offensive, bringing an end to this terrible war, for better or for worse.

Five years after defeating the Dark Ones, the embattled inhabitants of the once-great Keep of Dare face a yet more deadly foe. An icy-cold force was spreading across the northlands, spawning strange creatures that killed everything in their grisly path . . . Archmage Ingold Inglorion believed the source of this monstrous evil lay in the decadent lands to the south. With him traveled Gil Patterson, the scholar-warrior from Earth who had forsaken her own universe for love of the mage. Determined to aid him in his quest, she was cursed to become the instrument of his death. Ingold's apprentice Rudy Solis was left behind, the sole wizard standing between the Keep of Dare and the nightmare creatures besieging it. Rudy struggled tirelessly with wavering magic to ward off the virulent attacks of the ice mage's minions. But when someone attacked the widowed queen—the woman he loved—Rudy was forced to plumb the ultimate secret locked in the black crystal heart of the Keep of Dare . . . and so decide the fate of the world.

Chaos reigned in the Eastern as the fearsome Alketch army mounted siege, the young Prince Tir was snatched from the heart of Dare's Keep. Behind the terror was the depraved, hook-handed general Vair na-Chandros. He had learned that the royal child possessed forbidden wisdom; a secret the bloodthirsty Vair intended to use to conquer the world. One man posed a threat to Vair's vaunting the legendary warrior known as the Icefalcon. Banished by his own people and scorned as a barbarian by others, only he could hope to free the boy from Vair's clutches. With his sister Cold Death—a sorcerer whose magic was as sharp as her tongue—the Icefalcon embarked on a dangerous mission of rescue and redemption that would force him to wage his greatest battle . . . for his prince, for his honor, and for all eternity.