title: The Red Cross of Gold V:. The Quinta Essentia: The Assassin Chronicles (The Assassin Chronicles: the Red Cross of Gold)
author:  Brendan Carroll 
description: Brendan Carroll lives and works in the beautiful East Texas Lake Country. The Red Cross of Gold Series is the culmination of a life-long study of the occult, the mystical and all things related to the suffering of mankind through the evolutionary process that makes life worth living.
zlib_text: About the Book
  
  Tens of thousands of years of ice is melting, and the land of Assail, long a
  byword for menace and inaccessibility, is at last yielding its secrets. Tales
  of gold discovered in the region's north circulate in every waterfront dive
  and sailor's tavern and now adventurers and fortune-seekers have set sail in
  search of riches. And all they have to guide them are legends and garbled
  tales of the dangers that lie in wait - hostile coasts, fields of ice,
  impassable barriers and strange, terrifying creatures. But all accounts concur
  that the people of the north meet all trespassers with the sword - and should
  you make it, beyond are rumoured to lurk Elder monsters out of history's very
  beginnings.
  
  Into this turmoil ventures the mercenary company, the Crimson Guard. Not drawn
  by contract, but by the promise of answers: answers that Shimmer, second in
  command, feels should not be sought. Also heading north, as part of an uneasy
  alliance of Malazan fortune-hunters and Letherii s