To Eli, on his 16th birthday
Turold, the four-foot apprentice of the disgraced (and deceased) Hildigrim Blackbeard, has been tapped to locate the missing Cinquefoil Codex, last seen in the possession of Sir Otrygg, the Astrologer Royal. If the rumors are true, the Codex can awaken the Sleeping God—a creature buried beneath the city to leech power for generations of magicians and astrologers. However, the very sorcerers who want him to find it are also seeking it for their own ends…and are not above killing him to get it.
His only clues to locating the Codex are a cryptic poem that speaks of “freeing the grain from wonder-lock,” and a faceless woman who is pursued by a horde of insects across the city. To solve this mystery, Turold will have to embrace his questionable past, and question everything he knows and believes about magic…including, most horribly, the secret of his Master’s death—of which he is rumored to be an accomplice!
