Shadow of a Dark Queen

Erik von Darkmoor is a blacksmith's apprentice and the illegitimate son of a baron. His friend Roo Avery is a quick-witted young man with a gift for scheming. After they kill Erik's half-brother Stefan, who had assaulted a friend of theirs, the pair flee toward Krondor, helped along the way by a mysterious woman named Miranda. In Krondor they are sentenced to hang, but their executions are faked and they are offered a way out: join a company of condemned men under the half-elven captain Calis.

The company's task is to pass as mercenaries, Calis' Crimson Eagles, and join the army of the Emerald Queen on the distant continent of Novindus. Her conquering host is led by the reptilian Pantathian priests, and it intends to cross the sea and invade the Kingdom of the Isles. Erik, Roo and the rest must learn the army's strengths and weaknesses from the inside, and then find a way to strike at it before it sails.

Shadow of a Dark Queen is the first book of The Serpentwar Saga, set in Raymond E. Feist's world of Midkemia. It is a military fantasy adventure about infiltration, loyalty and second chances, and it can be read without the earlier Riftwar books, although the magician Pug and the gambler Nakor appear along the way.