Midkemia Page 5

  That was my introduction to both Sorcerer’s Isle and Macros the Black.

  Not much past thirty years of age when he began writing his journal, my father regarded his first visit to Sorcerer’s Isle with a perspective of one who had not seen enough time pass to truly gauge the significance of some key event.

  There are several accounts of the main conflicts over the years between my father, with allies, and forces that can only be regarded as pure destruction. The nature of the enemies we faced were not made known to us until recently, after decades of struggle, so it is only now I can look back and appreciate how naive my father was in his youth. It was, in many ways, a charming quality, one that provided him with an openness and acceptance of others I struggle to match, failing more often than not. I’ll confess in this one area, I am more like my mother, guarded at best, suspicious at worst, and I take a while to trust people.

  For me, there is more than a little irony in several of my father’s observations at this time of his life. I benefit from the perspective of more than a century’s hindsight, so I try to put myself in my father’s place. I usually fail in the attempt, but I do try.

  Sorcerer’s Isle is my home. It is where I was born and raised. To me it will always be the first place I remember, and to where I will always eventually return, no matter where fate or chance takes me.

  At the time of writing his previous entry, my father had returned from the Tsurani world, brokered the peace between the Kingdom and the Empire of Tsuranuanni, watched the betrayal of that peace engineered by Macros, reestablished the peace, and fought the Great Uprising when the false prophet of the Moredhel, Murmandamus, led an army from beyond the Teeth of the World, down into the heart of the Kingdom to attack the city of Sethanon.

  My father was married to a woman named Katala, a former slave on the Tsurani world from a nation known as the Thuril. He also stood father to a boy, William, and an adopted daughter, Gamina, and that was the family he knew as he wrote about Sorcerer’s Island the first time.

  Since then his entire first family had perished, and he met my mother, Miranda, who happened to be the only child of Macros the Black, so you see Macros was destined to be Pug’s father-in-law and is my grandfather.

  As stated, there is ample opportunity for irony here.

  The villa I knew as home was rebuilt by my father and became a second home, while he oversaw the construction of the Academy of Magicians on the Island of Stardock, in the middle of the Great Star Lake, on the border between the Empire of Great Kesh and the Kingdom of the Isles. It did not become his primary home for years to come.

  Since my birth our home has been attacked by agents of that darkness that father sought to battle, and at one point it was almost completely obliterated. After the second attack and the death of my mother, Father abandoned the island almost entirely for a number of years, before finally returning to restore the villa.

  As one might imagine, it has changed and evolved over the years. At first a home for a small group, a family and some close friends and servants, it has been enlarged and became something very special to my parents, a school for gifted practitioners of magic, scholars, and gifted masters of various arts.

  It is a beautiful home, with grace and open space, and unlike any other home I have seen in this world of Midkemia. My mother could be difficult at times, for she had a temper, but she was unstinting in her love of me and my younger brother, Caleb. As with my mother, Caleb no longer lives, but his presence lingers at Sorcerer’s Island, as does hers, another reason why I feel more at peace there than anywhere else I have ever known.

  Even when my father abandoned the villa on the isle, after the death of my mother and brother, and allowed the ruins to lie untended for years, while those of us who belonged to what is known as the Conclave of Shadows scattered to all corners of the world, even then I stayed on the island.

  I have a small house, little more than a hut, on a small beach near the north side of the island, where I used to go to be alone and occasionally fish. Although I knew my father feared for the safety of everyone in the Conclave, his real reason for leaving the house in ruin was he could not imagine it without my mother and brother there. I stayed because I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. At last my father relented, and the villa was rebuilt.

  Now trees my father planted as a young man are lofty and offer sheltering shade from the heat, cut the bitter winter’s wind, seem to stand as sentinels against the world’s unwelcome intrusions. My father and I both had duties that took us many places over the years, but this is where we always returned, and as I age and consider the burden fate has put on my shoulders, I cannot imagine there is anywhere else I would call my home.

  Entry, the Sixth

  WHEN FIRST SAILING INTO THE HARBOR AT KRONDOR, I was visited by a sense of awe that in retrospect was more a function of my youth than the city’s magnificence. Twice before I had been visited by the same amazement that a place could be so large, so different, teeming with people: my first visit to Carse, and my first visit to Bordon.

  Here, years later, I realize that I have witnessed wonders and seen sights that no one else on Midkemia has seen, the beauty of Rillanon, the majesty of Kentosani, the Tsurani Holy City, the mysterious and staggering City Forever. But to a boy fresh from the Far Coast, thinking erroneously his journey was coming to an end, this was a most marvelous place, for it was the Prince’s city!

  Since my first visit I’ve had occasion to visit Krondor several times, and my appreciation of the city has changed. Krondor is one of those places one comes to feel comfortable with, yet in its own right possesses little to recommend it.

  The story is told that Krondor is the Prince’s city because the first Prince of Krondor, a younger brother to the King of Isles at the time, had fought his way through what were essentially a cluster of bandit tribes and outlaw warlords to reach the shores of the Bitter Sea. The region to the west of Malac’s Cross was a wild no-man’s-land.

  To the south lay the Grey Range, low mountains that were difficult to pass despite their modest altitude compared to the other great ranges on Midkemia. To the north lay the Great Velt, home to nomadic people who have since vanished as towns and cities were built by the Kingdom, but who at the time hunted the grasslands and would raid travelers.

  At that time, all trade between the Kingdom of the Isles and the Empire of Great Kesh was in the east, by ship. The only overland trade of note was smuggling.

  History is a little vague about this period of expansion westward. The first Prince of Krondor, Richard, was the younger brother of King Henry II, and had been sent west to quell rebellion among villagers to the west of Malac’s Cross, a stretch of rugged frontier that stopped at the foothills of the southern Calastius Mountains. Through an almost comical series of events the struggle turned into a chase up into a pass not yet fully explored by the Kingdom, leading to the region we now know as Darkmoor.

  In the Prince’s report back to his brother of this portion of the journey, he mentioned an abundance of wild grapes in the valleys on the northeastern foothills of the range, which would eventually become the premier wine-growing region in all of Triagia, Ravensburg.

  I’ve only recently begun to read Kingdom history and find the volumes available to me in both the libraries at Krondor and Rillanon to be of mixed value. Some are genuine works of scholarship, but many are so wildly inaccurate to the point of being fiction. Several are works commissioned by certain nobles or wealthy commoners designed to aggrandize far more than save for posterity anything resembling an accurate recounting of facts.

  Chronicles of Richard’s expedition to the West are fraught with invention, conjecture, and supposition. The few missives between Richard and Henry provide little amplification for the simple fact that he went well beyond his mandate to put down rebellion in the West and moved aggressively forward to finally plant the banner of the Kingdom of the Isles on the shores of the Bitter Sea.

  From what can be cobbled togethe
r from various sources, Richard fought a series of battles with various opponents from Darkmoor to Krondor, resting as little as possible before pushing on.

  Contemporary records from Salador, the Kingdom’s major port in the region on the mainland, indicate that at least four times Richard requested reinforcement. Whether or not he received such, he did continue his movement west.

  Here we encounter the most popular tale, myth perhaps, of why Krondor is the capital of the Western Realm. The story follows that Richard fought a battle against a tribe known as the Krondor, a three-day conflict that ended only when he had killed them to the last warrior and entered their stronghold where present-day Krondor sits.

  The tale says that at the end of the battle, with smoke filling the sky and his soldiers on the verge of exhaustion, he sat on a knoll above the shore of the Bitter Sea and wept at the most beautiful sunset he had ever beheld, declaring he would build his palace on that very spot. In honor of the tribe he had conquered, he named the city after them, took what remained of their women and children and apportioned them among his troops, ordering his men to marry the very women they had just widowed and to adopt their children.

  Despite the unprecedented actions of the Prince, eventually this act of conciliation created the core of Krondor, the capital of the Western Realm. There was an unfortunate series of husbands being murdered by vengeful wives, and young children fleeing the camp, but eventually the situation stabilized, and the outpost the Prince founded grew into a town. The King seemed pleased that Richard had found a land to call his own, as well as giving the Kingdom dominion over that part of the continent. King Henry sent provisions, a company of additional soldiers, and a few volunteers who wished to settle in the West to reinforce Krondor.

  By modern standards, the location for what was to become the second-most-important city in Kingdom, the seat of the Principality, was an inferior choice. A far more natural location to the south, in Shandon Bay, or up the coast in what is now the town of Sarth would have been preferable. The harbor was nonexistent at the time of conquest, and dredging took decades to bring it to its current standards. Large seawalls were constructed to keep the harbor mouth protected and defensible, and trade ensued, but no ship’s captain enjoyed entering the harbor, as it was always difficult under the best of conditions, and in bad weather few were willing to try it.

  THIS MAP OF KRONDOR was a gift from Prince Arutha for my collection.

  Krondor has changed little since I first visited it with Duke Borric, Prince Arutha, and Kulgan. The palace still sits athwart the hilltop upon which the ancient tribal fortress sat, in the southwest corner of the city. To the east a more recent population lives outside the walls of the palace and below the southern wall of the city in one of three faubourgs.

  Directly to the north of the palace lies the wealthy quarter of the city, where nobles, rich merchants, and well-connected businessmen reside. The houses in this area are settled on streets carved into the hillside leading up to the palace, and those on the northwest slope have a wonderful view of the harbor and sunset, while those on the eastern slope have a view of the temples and the sunrise. Gardens abound and those inns that are situated on the Sandy Beach Road and on the western side of Broad Street are among the finest on the Bitter Sea.

  To the east of the wealthy quarter is the smaller temple quarter around Temple Square where each of the major gods has a full temple, and many local and minor deities have shrines. To the north of that is the merchant quarter, the single largest part of Krondor. It is a mix of businesses and homes, rather than a concentration of commercial enterprises as the name might suggest. The farther north one goes, from the area surrounding Temple Square, past the Merchant Gate up past Miller’s Road to the northern wall, the quality of residences falls off, until at last you are moving into the northwest corner of Krondor, the poor quarter. Businesses situated between Sea Gate Road and the poor quarter are often affiliated with criminal activities, and constantly under the scrutiny of the City Watch, under the command of the sheriff of Krondor. Even those on legitimate business after dark in this part of the city, if untroubled by thieves, prostitutes, or mountebanks, may be detailed and thoroughly interrogated by the watch.

  The poor quarter is best visited during the day, if at all, and is the home for every criminal enterprise in the city, despite all efforts to stamp them out. Most criminal activity of note in Krondor is under the control of an organization known as the Guild of Thieves, better known as the “Mockers,” who are serving a mysterious personage known only as “the Upright Man.” Rumors abound as to his identity, but in fact perhaps as few as two or three people know who he really is.

  Outside the city walls lie Fishtown and Stinktown, to the west of the King’s Road heading north up the coast. The fishing community lies cheek by jowl with the slaughterhouses, tanneries, tallow rendering, and other trades given to producing large quantities of garbage as by-products of their industries. Given the prevailing winds off the sea, for the most part this is a reasonable location, but when the wind shifts off the mountains for a few days, the poor quarter is even less pleasant a place to be than usual.

  In my first visit to Krondor, I had two remarkable meetings, the first being with Prince Erland, whom I found to be a gracious and warm person and for whom I felt an instant liking. More charming was his daughter, still a child at the time, Anita, who inquired if I might be Prince Arutha, for she wished to see him, as she had been informed he was a likely candidate to someday be her husband.

  At that time I found the entire exchange captivating, as this very lovely little girl was approaching the prospect of her future with a very serious and determined attitude. As fate would have it, she did indeed become wife to Arutha, but that is another story for another time.

  Krondor at Sunset

  Entry, the Seventh

  LEAVING KRONDOR, WE RODE THE KING’S HIGHWAY toward Salador. By this time I had become a competent rider, and the long journey ahead was not as daunting as keenly anticipated.

  Like the Duke and his son, I was fearful of what the coming of the Tsurani to our part of the world might mean, and fearful of those I cared for being threatened. I had gone through a difficult moment when Princess Anita had mentioned that the Duke intended to continue traveling on to Salador then Rillanon. I had found myself missing home, and I also hoped that upon returning we’d receive word of Tomas’s fate.

  However, a lad traveling farther from home than I had ever imagined, and while Tomas’s absence still weighed heavily on me, I found myself keenly anticipating new experiences.

  We were escorted by a company of Krondorian Lancers. We would be three weeks on horseback and camp out most nights along the King’s Highway.

  We halted in the town of Darkmoor, next to the marsh of the same name, due to an unusually heavy snowfall, which lengthened our journey, much to the Duke’s ire. As we were all forced to crowd into a single inn, my lord Borric’s party and a contingency of Royal Lancers, we were uniformly pleased when the snow stopped. Progress was slow as the horses had to ride through hock-high drifts at times, but after the second day, a drizzling rain helped clear the road a bit.

  We rode down from the mountains toward the southern border of the Great Velt, and the weather turned milder. Though cold, it was above freezing and we could move with haste again.

  A day was lost when we encountered a large band of outlaws troubling a village, by name Tull’s Ford. At sight of the Duke’s party, the bandits fled. This relief of the village resulted in the inhabitants insisting we stay for a full day of celebration, and for myself I was pleased. A day out of the saddle and some hot food was welcome. It was a modest meal by the Duke’s standards, but it was a reminder of the simple pleasures of home I’d left behind, and I welcomed the opportunity to sleep a night next to a warm fire indoors, even if it was on the floor of a cobbler’s home.

  The remainder of the journey was uneventful, though I was fascinated by the Great Velt to our north. There were tree
s and small ponds and other expected woodlands to our left as we rode, but then we’d occasionally follow the road up a hill, where I could see the grasslands sweep away beyond the treetops. I knew from my studies a little Kingdom geography; far to the north lay the Dimwood, a forest as large as all of Crydee, below the foothills of the Teeth of the World.

  From where we rode, though, it was impossible to see the Dimwood, unless a trick of the eye lulled me into thinking a narrow strip of darker green on the horizon for a moment might be that mighty forest.

  The closest I had seen that endless horizon was the sea on a calm day in Crydee, but even there the water is moving, if slightly, waves and combers and chop, whitecap, and spindrift. The Great Velt lay below the foothills as we would rise high enough to glimpse it, and it was still under winter rain and snow. I have been told that in spring and summer the tall grasses move with the wind, mirroring what I was used to with the sea, but for my first encounter, it was a motionless, ever retreating plain.

  We entered wooded foothills for the remainder of the journey; they would rise up to the south to meet the Grey Range, the mountains’ border between the Kingdom and Great Kesh. We passed first a smaller road heading south, and one of the Lancers told Master Kulgan it was the cart road leading to the dwarves’ eastern stronghold at Dorgin and the Kingdom Outpost at Duronny’s Vale. There was a route through the Green Reaches, a massive forest on the other side of the mountains, that allowed passage up from Kesh if one were brave enough to choose that path. It came out equal distance between Duronny’s Vale and the Great Star Lake, where Stardock Island rested, and the garrison blocked one of two possible routes into the Kingdom for raiders and smugglers.

  We moved into more rolling pastureland, with small villages scattered about; I wondered what it must have been like to have accompanied Prince Richard on that expedition west from where we were at that moment, for we were entering the region once on the frontier to the southwest of Malac’s Cross. The road divided, with a large road moving northeast to Malac’s Cross and the other straight on to Salador.