Stricken Field

August 30, 1993
The future appears increasingly bleak for those few still free to oppose the secret rule of Warlock Zinixo in this sequel to Upland Outlaws . Emshandar V, Imperor of Pandemia, and Queen Inosolan of Krasnegar, along with her twin teenaged children, Kadie and Gath, have been taken by the goblins, led by charismatic Death Bird. Inos and Shandie convince the goblin sorcerers of the danger posed by Zinixo, but then must persuade their captors to let them get the dwarves to join the new protocol that bans votarism--the virtual enslavement of sorcerers by those more powerful--doing away with Zinixo's power base. Far away, the faun King Rap, Inosolan's husband and once a demi-god, convinces the trolls' most powerful magic makers, as well as those of the cannibal anthropophagus, to join the fight against Zinixo's powerful concentration of sorcerers, the Covin. But the real weapon is revealed in the slowly unfolding tale of the pixie Thaile. Duncan's tale is laden with gloom and premonitions of doom, but the reader is irresistibly drawn further into the lives, loves and travails of appealing--and unappealing--protagonists.