The Red-Stained Wings
Hugo Award–winning author Elizabeth Bear returns the epic fantasy world of the Lotus Kingdoms with The Red-Stained Wings, the sequel to The Stone in the Skull, taking the Gage into desertlands under a deadly sky to answer the riddle of the Stone in the Skull.
The Gage and the Dead Man brought a message from the greatest wizard of Messaline to the ruling queen of Sarathai, one of the Lotus Kingdoms. But the message was a riddle, and the Lotus Kingdoms are at war.
Elizabeth Bear created her secondary world of the Eternal Sky in her highly praised novel The Range of Ghosts and its sequels. She continued it the first book of the Lotus Kingdoms, The Stone in the Skull.
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Elizabeth Bear
Elizabeth Bear is an author whose writing navigates the spaces where fantasy, science fiction, and historical fiction intertwine, creating worlds as complex and varied as the human condition itself. With a background deeply rooted in both science and the arts, her stories weave together elements of mythology, speculative thought, and philosophical exploration. Her ability to craft intricate worlds and layered narratives has earned her a devoted following among fans of thoughtful, boundary-pushing speculative fiction.
The Lotus Kingdoms
Elizabeth Bear expands the world of her Eternal Sky trilogy beyond the Steles of the Sky into the southern Lotus Kingdoms. The Gage is an automaton built around a human heart, created by a long-dead Wizard of Messaline. His purpose now is to carry a message to the Rajni of one of those Lotus Kingdoms. With him travels a Dead Man, once the bodyguard of the ruler of the Uthman Caliphate, now fallen. The Dead Man is now a nameless mercenary. But the Lotus Kingdoms are soon to be at war with each other, and Wizardly messages are seldom what they seem to be on the surface.
The Lotus Kingdoms consists of three books and considered as a complete series. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
Main series The Eternal Sky

