The Thrice-Bound Fool

Kinch Na Shannack and Galva dom Braga begin as fugitives carrying the stolen Book of the Full Shadow, a sentient and treacherous Guild artifact. In the harsh village of Hredlangessfir, the book tries to betray them by making a magical mouth in the wall call for their deaths, but Kinch destroys the mouth with iron. The pair hire Worrig, a Wostran guide, and enter the Thrall Mountains, where corpse-hive bees, storms, and the trapped book’s writhing malice make clear that the journey is dangerous from without and within.

Brigands ambush them in the mountains. Galva unleashes her war corvid, Dalgatha, to rout the attackers, but Worrig dies and the Book briefly puppets his corpse, proving it can use the dead. Kinch and Galva seize the brigands’ cave, execute captives with the Murder Alphabet, and decide not to winter there because the Guild will pursue them. Their crossing worsens when white, owl-like predators stalk them, their donkey plunges into a crevasse, and the Book helps them kill the owls only to cut loose their remaining supplies.

Forced back to the cave, Kinch nurses a feverish Galva and seeks answers from the Book. It draws him into seductive dream-traps as Filaine, the bound soul within it, while Norrigal intervenes through visions and warns him toward a secret route through the three-headed mountain called Three-Head. As Galva recovers, Kinch studies the Book, learns scraps about the Guild, and discovers that Filaine is both victim and monstrous instrument. After surviving another Book-made trial, he and Galva resume the crossing, trigger an avalanche, and enter tunnels that lead to the God of Threes.

The deity splits Kinch and Galva into three pairs. One pair is destroyed, one is sent back, and one is allowed to go on. Kinch throws the Book into the god’s fire, freeing Filaine and destroying that copy, and the surviving pair awaken in a warm land beyond the mountains. They quarrel over the lost mission, survive narcotic flowers and carnivorous birds, and head south through waterless country. After thirst, poisonous berries, visions of Norrigal, and a saving rain, they are captured by Wostran Free Traders led by Bazl. The slavers debate accepting them as members, but Galva refuses a long oath of service, so both are sold toward Erydon, the half-giant power beyond the plains.

Giants seize the caravan, only for Erydon’s flying craft and thunderdust weapons to annihilate them. The slavers reclaim Kinch and Galva and deliver them to Tinthrax, where they are auctioned. Galva’s defiance impresses the crowd, and both are bought for gladiatorial use. At Verna Zan Zan’s Ludus of the Green Devil, Kinch proves quick and Galva proves valuable. In the Blood Chalice, the two kill a true giant through Galva’s tactics, drawing Princess Renata’s favor. King Agraias buys Galva for his fighters and Kinch as Renata’s fool, taking them by cloud-ship to Erydon.

In the palace, Kinch is separated from Galva and trained by Hasp, an aging Galt fool. He witnesses Renata’s cruelty, the chained geigon Pulhu powering the ascender, Quiggles Silversides the intelligent cuttlefish, and Erydon’s priest-controlled technologies: printing, sathium flight, steam, and thunderdust. Meanwhile Galva becomes a famed arena fighter, even taming the abused tiger Jubel instead of killing her. Kinch maps secret tunnels, befriends the cyclops smith Zherit-Nassk and his harsher daytime persona Zherit Dayborn, obtains a skeleton key, and begins planning escape. Hasp dies, leaving Kinch with grief, lessons, and resolve.

The danger expands when goblin ambassadors arrive to court Erydon. Kinch recognizes their magic, their hunger for airships and thunderdust, and the catastrophic threat an alliance would pose. He and Galva agree the envoys must die, but an extra day of games intervenes. Galva, Jubel, a goblin gladiator, Apia the Bee, and a bear are thrown into the arena. Jubel dies, the bear and goblin kill each other, and Galva defeats Apia by sacrificing her hand, but she is stabbed in the belly. Before collapsing, she silently orders Kinch to kill the envoys.

Unable to reach the guarded goblins directly, Kinch devises a terrible alternative. During the Ceremony of Apocalypse, he has secretly added Murder Alphabet script to the rising tablet of supposed godwords. When the literate crowd reads it, thousands die instantly, including King Agraias. Kinch saves Renata by blocking her sight, but Queen Neffa realizes he knew and knocks him unconscious. Earthquakes and eruption follow the massacre. In the palace, slaves rise up; Sylvae Mar Mexes is dead, the queen is overwhelmed, the minister is killed, and Pulhu crushes Renata after tracking Hasp’s bell on her.

Kinch flees to the ludus, frees the King’s Own Dead during a catastrophic glassfall, and reunites with the wounded Galva. They choose escape over revenge and race to the palace roof to seize a cloud-ship. Goblin ambassadors and Moth Knights ambush the crew first, but Kinch, Galva, and Dalgatha join the fight. The goblins are killed, Dalgatha dies, Galva’s shield is lost, and Kinch accidentally thrusts through the last enemy into Galva. As the ship rises over doomed Erydon, Kinch describes Pulhu rescuing Quiggles from the melting palace before Galva dies.

Alone with Galva’s body, Kinch rejects the power of Erydon by throwing thunderdust barrels overboard. Guided by Norrigal’s stone and aided through storm and dream, he crash-lands in the Thralls and reaches the old cave. There he finds his other self dead beside a letter explaining how to enter the Book’s pages. Galva, alive from the pair that went back, returns with the chained Book and explains that she and the other Kinch defeated Guild assassins, though he later died of his wounds. Kinch tells her of Erydon and gives her the blackglass sword. Together they burn the wreck, stage corpses to fake their deaths, reclaim what they need, and head east with the trapped Book, resolved to survive and someday strike at the Guild and Spanth powers.