Gunther

Gunther is an Heirlongo — a race of tall, intelligent outcasts nearly erased from the world — bought as a child from the gutters of a dying city by Barabass, a Wolfrin master who saw in him the perfect instrument: brilliant, hungry, and utterly his to shape. Seventeen years later, Gunther is the finest student his school has ever produced, and he knows it. But graduation brings an errand beneath his talents — retrieve sacred silk from a hidden valley of weavers — and somewhere in the long, lightless miles between here and the ancient city of Tedunken, Gunther begins to suspect that nothing in his life has ever been his own. He can't stop being watched. He can't stop being controlled. So he starts learning how to forge his own path to freedom...and power.