The Amber Arrow — Tony Daniel

THE ARROW OF FATE
The dragon may be calling again, but this time Wulf von Dunstig isn't going to answer. Sure, times are dangerous, and a day of reckoning seems at hand. The Shenandoah dragon, spirit of the land, needs him. The Mark of Shenandoah is surrounded by invading, near-invincible Roman enemies. The Northern lands are falling into chaos. Wulf's father, Duke Otto, rules in name only. Otto's mind is fading and it is Wulf who hears the dragon-call, the traditional sign of the true heir. Preserving the mark is his challenge to take on.

But Wulf is in love with the elf Saeunn Amberstone and Saeunn is dying. To save the land, she has sacrificed her star, an elf's soul, to destroy an ancient evil. Now, with only a piece of iron star-stone to sustain her, Saeunn's life force dwindles fast. Wulf will risk all to save Saeunn. But to do it, he needs the help of someone else someone who is as deeply in love with Wulf as he is with Saeunn: Ursel Keiler. For it's Ursel, a foundling raised among the bear people of Shenandoah, who knows the deep woods well enough to guide Wulf to the ancient relic known as the Amber Arrow, Saeunn's only hope for survival.

Meanwhile, Wulf's best friend and foster brother Rainer Stope, a born warrior, and his foster sister, the tempestuous Roman princess Ravenelle Archambeault, are in danger of being burned alive in Ravenelle's ancestral kingdom. And if they avoid that fate, they may be cast as slaves into the mines of Montserrat, to end their lives toiling in darkness.

Now as evil from the dawn of time sends vast forces against his realm, the path Wulf chooses will either preserve a land where humans and animal people, the Tier, live in peace and liberty or allow the hope of freedom to be wiped away forever. Wulf may discover that the knife-edge path between love and leadership, between liberty and fate, is also his only path to the Amber Arrow.