Over the years, Dougal Keane developed a personal rule: Never adventure with people you like. If pressed, he might modify it to: Don’t adventure with people you’d hate to see die. Now, in the depths of the crypts beneath Divinity’s Reach, he was getting his wish. Dougal disliked his comrades intensely. He also hated his task. Most of all, at the moment, he hated the stifling heat of the crypts themselves.

The sweltering summer heat that enveloped Divinity’s Reach above had stolen deep into the bowels of these hidden burial grounds, where it festered like a hidden wound. The prevailing winds that caressed the burial...