Tenaka Khan

Tenaka Khan leads The King Beyond the Gate, set about a century after Legend. He descends from both sides of that siege, from Ulric and from the Drenai hero Rek, and neither people will fully accept him: the Drenai see a Nadir face and the Nadir see a Drenai. He is a former officer of the Dragon, the Drenai's elite regiment. The country is now ruled by the emperor Ceska, who keeps his grip through fear, through the beast-men called Joinings and through the warrior-priests known as the Dark Templars, and Tenaka sets out to bring him down with the help of old comrades. He is a cold, careful strategist, more ruthless than he lets his friends see, and where his Nadir blood will lead him is one of the book's real questions. Quest for Lost Heroes, set decades later in a world his choices have shaped, brings his story to its end, and readers of the earlier book will want to have met him first.

Appears in

1. 1The King Beyond the Gate (1985)A century after Legend, a half-Nadir exile comes home to kill a mad emperor, and finds himself leading a rebellion instead.
2. 2Quest for Lost Heroes (1990)A village lad persuades four half-forgotten war heroes to ride onto the Nadir steppes and rescue a girl sold into slavery.