Book I Chapter I. “Surely death acquires a new and deeper significance when we regard it no longer as a single and unexplained break in an unending life, but as part of the continually recurring rhythm of progress--as inevitable, as natural, and as benevolent as sleep.”--“Some Dogmas of Religion” (Prof. J. M’Taggart). It was one autumn in the late ’nineties that I found myself at Bâle, awaiting letters. I was returning leisurely from the Dolomites, where a climbing holiday had combined pleasantly with an examination of the geologically interesting Monzoni Valley. When the claims of the latter were exhausted, however, and I turned my eyes towards the peaks, it happened that bad weather held permanent possession of the great grey cliffs and towering pinnacles, and climbing was out of the question altogether. A world of savage desolation gloomed down upon me through impenetrable mists; the scouts of winter’s advance had established themselves upon all possible points of attack; and the whole tossed wilderness of precipice and scree lay safe, from my assaults at least, behind a frontier of furious autumn storms.... Chapter II. Chapter III. Chapter IV. Chapter V. Chapter VI. Chapter VII. Chapter VIII. BOOK II Chapter IX. Chapter X. Chapter XI. Chapter XII. Chapter XIII. Chapter XIV. BOOK III Chapter XV. Chapter XVI. Chapter XVII. Chapter XVIII. Chapter XIX. Chapter XX. Chapter XXI. Chapter XXII. Chapter XXIII. Chapter XXIV. BOOK IV Chapter XXV. Chapter XXVI. Chapter XXVII. Chapter XXVIII. Chapter XXIX. Chapter XXX. Chapter XXXI. Chapter XXXII.

A chance meeting sparks a forgotten memory of a former life. Le Vallon reminds Mason of a time hundreds of thousands of years ago when they conducted an experiment which went disastrously wrong. The experiment unleashed the elemental powers of Wind and Fire, and Le Vallon now faces the ultimate challenge.

The antecedents of fantasy literature extend back to the very beginnings of storytelling itself, but modern fantasy became recognizable as a distinct literary form only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the publication of the novels of William Morris and the short stories of Lord Dunsany. The emphasis by these writers and their successors on ideal and sometimes less than ideal places and peoples who exist only in a realm of pure imagination laid the foundation for later works by J. R. R. Tolkien and many others. Book jacket.