The pilgrims
"Eric Albright is a twenty-six-year-old journalist living in London. That is to say he would be a journalist if he got off his backside. But this luckless slacker isn't all bad--he has a soft spot for his sometimes friend Stuart Casey, the homeless old drunk who mostly lives under the railway bridge near his flat. Eric is willing to let his life just drift by ... until the day a small red door appears on the graffiti-covered wall of the bridge, and a gang of strange-looking people--Eric's pretty sure one of them is a giant--dash out of the door and rob the nearby newsagent. From that day on Eric and Case haunt the arch, waiting for the door to reappear. When it does, both Eric and Case choose to go through, and enter the land of Levaal"--Tor Books web site. "Eric Albright, a twenty-six-year-old unemployed journalist, and Stuart Casey, a homeless old drunk, fall through a door in a graffiti-covered wall into the strange world of Levall, where a mountain-sized dragon with the powers of a god lies sleeping beneath a great white castle. Here they are the otherworlders, Pilgrims, and their lives are never going to be the same again. In the castle the sinister Lord Vous rules with an iron fist as the Project, designed to effect his transformation into an immortal spirit, nears completion. But Vous' growing madness is close to consuming him, as is his fear of the imaginary being named 'Shadow'. And the arrival of the otherworlders in Levall is about to lend substance to that fear. No one has ever seen what lies beyond the impossibly vast Wall that divides Levall, but the Pilgrims possess powers strong enough to break it down. If they do, what will enter from the other side?"--