The Green Stone Tower

Long ago in the legendary time, at the very dawn of civilized days, the Old Gods sang the Green Stone Towers into being as bridges between two worlds. By means of the Towers the workers of magic, descended of the gods, escaped the wrath of the rest of mankind. Into the world of Faerie the mages fled, the gods followed, and the doors of the Towers were sealed behind them. In the ages after, the makers of magic evolved into the immortal faerie-folk. Now once in a while a faerie will brave the Green Stone Towers and visit the world they left behind, sometimes out of curiosity, often for love's sake, if a mortal takes their fancy.

Johnny Silverbell's merchant father wants to buy him a commission in the Royal Army and, eventually, a "Sir" before his name, but Johnny, secretly the son of a dalliance by his mother with a man of the faerie, and blessed with gifts of music and magic, has different ideas entirely. He would find the hidden door in the Green Stone Tower and leave this world for the land of the faerie. There he hopes to find his true father, and also the beautiful faerie-girl who awakened his magic. But as long as anything – love, fortune, even life itself – binds him to this world, he can't even see the door in the Tower, let alone climb its hidden stair. He will only be able to do it when he has lost everything and flees from certain death.

Meanwhile, in the land of the faerie-folk, Illowan, the faerie girl who won Johnny's heart, herself lives under a dreadful doom: to become the unwilling bride of the dark god Malatant, Lord of Shadow, and bring him victory in his ages-long struggle with the gods of light. "You will bow to Malatant, until Malatant bows to you," the god Drithur, Lord of Riddles, had told her in a mountain pass when she failed to answer his riddle. Feeling like a fly in a spider's web, she lives in fear of the dark god's call, at the same time as she is tempted by his offer of power and the status of a goddess.

In The Green Stone Tower we follow Johnny's struggle to find the hidden door, and the harder transformation that awaits him once he finds the world of the faerie-folk. We see Illowan strain against her doom, and learn the machinations of the gods and the secrets behind the prophecies.