The Wolf and the Wild King — K.V. Johansen

High fantasy born of myth and folklore, of the dark and the trees and the winter's cold, the flint blade's edge and the secrets that are spoken only in dreams...Assassin, executioner, shapeshifter, and dutiful son of the undying Queen of the land called only the Forest, Mairran is haunted by the voice of an Immortal long lost, who runs with him as a wolf in his dreams. More used to being the instrument of death than an arbiter of justice, he is dispatched by his mother to find the killer of an earl whose life was offered in an unsanctioned sacrifice to the Forest.In an earlier age, the outlaw Lannesk swears an oath to follow the Grey Hunter and the Wild King, ancient guardians of the Forest, in a war against the invading dragon-kin and their sorcerer-priests, who seek to wake the great dragon long ago bound in sleep beneath the Lake. Past and present tangle around troubled assassin and mute outlaw, as a conspiracy of fell magic threatens the land and its people. Evocative of a darker, grimmer McKillip, The Wolf and the Wild King is a brooding, lyrical new work from a master of epic fantasy.