Beyond the small town of Tours-en-Savoy, the road passing through the mountains branches. Most travellers cross themselves and press onwards, hoping to reach the small priory on the pass before sundown, and continue towards Rüti Canton and its merchant towns. Yet some mostly the foolhardy and the less than scrupulous, take the less travelled road climbing through the shadowy pine forests and into the silent mountains. There, after two days of travel, lies the Valley of the Three Rainbows, and on the shores of a crystal clear lake, the crumbling parapets and fantastic towers of Castle Xyntillan.

How long the immense, ragtag building complex has stood is not known, only that it was erected on the remains of a much older structure. The masters of Xyntillan, the Malévol family, have ruled the province since Charlemagne and perhaps earlier, each generation adding to Xyntillan in its own way. Their corruption, and curious habits which have never put them on good footing with the Bishop of Chamrousse, has long haunted their reputation, leading to their spiritual and material decline. At last, the current head of the family, Jean-Giscard Malévol, decided to move to his smaller but less costly and considerably more fashionable summer palace in Chamrousse, and abandon his family nest to time and the elements.

However, that was not the end of the story, for Xyntillan’s fabulous treasures and Machiavellian deathtraps have fascinated the fortune-seekers of a dozen lands – and never mind the ghost stories.