The Bloodstones of Power

Jebeddo is a gnome of the Fergus Clan: small, stubborn, and far too clever with his tongue for his own good. When he prises a strange red stone out of the rock deep beneath the mountain, he does what he always does with a wonder. He takes it straight to his best friend.

His best friend is a dragon.

Cobaltwyrm is vast, magnificent, and entirely unimpressed by most of the world, but the stone stops her cold. She knows what it is. She knows there should be two. And she knows that what her mother left behind was never meant to be found.

So a gnome, a dragoness, and a mushroom of remarkable self-regard set out to find the only wizard in Norwesis and learn what the twin stones can do. Their road takes them through a forest where something underground has begun to sicken, past thieving dwarves and a hungry troglodyte, into an abandoned coal mine that should never be given a flame, and at last to a bargain that will cost more than any of them expected to pay.

For the stones do not obey. They magnify. Whatever is already burning inside the one who holds them burns hotter, and Cobaltwyrm has a great deal burning inside her.

The Bloodstones of Power is a funny, warm-hearted, and surprisingly sharp fantasy adventure about power and what it does to those who hold it, about the difference between winning and being right, and about the improbable friendships that turn out to be worth more than any hoard.

Winner of the International Impact Book Award.