Midkemia Page 7

  I’ve known Tomas my entire life and trust him more than any other being I’ve encountered, yet there is something within him, that lingering touch of the Dragon Lord, that makes me certain our roles in the future of this world are far from over. I hope in days to come to more fully understand his situation and, should I be able, to aid him in resolving it.

  My father’s note above, after Tomas’s overly modest recounting of his part in the war, was almost a foretelling. Tomas’s unique nature was to play a role in the final conflict that began with the Tsurani invasion.

  I repeatedly asked Prince Arutha for his recollection of the early days of the war, and it was more than a half-dozen years after he assumed office in Krondor as Prince, following what came to be known as the Great Uprising, when he finally agreed and wrote the following letter. I was fortunate to get his insights into both the Tsurani invasion and the events leading to the Battle of Sethanon.

  Dear Pug,

  For the sake of our old friendship and all the service you’ve provided the Kingdom and my family, I take pen in hand and shall attempt to address the questions you’ve posed me. As you know, I was surrounded by people of exceptional talent and must stress their parts in the various events I recount, and I trust you will not place too much credit for the successes we achieved on my part in events.

  As for my part in the war with the Tsurani, it was for the most part modest. My father had ordered my brother to take ship and come join him, which was to be expected, as Lyam was effectively my father’s second-in-command in the duchy. I was relegated to serving in Crydee under the tutelage of Swordmaster Fannon, to my chagrin. I now concede that it was a wise choice on my father’s part, given my performance prior to the coming of the Tsurani, for I had never been visited with more responsibility than chasing away a band of goblins or bandits.

  Still, as I was young, I chafed under the command of a man whom I considered too cautious and, even dare I admit this, timid. In retrospect, I most certainly would have put Crydee Keep at great risk had I seized every moment to bring the fight to the invaders I saw.

  My education in war came slowly at first, then swiftly and brutally.

  For the first few years of the war, the Tsurani seemed content to slowly expand their areas of control. They would mount an offensive between two strongholds and then seize and build a new stronghold, expanding their hold in the West in stages. When the Free City of Walinor fell, it was clear they had abundant patience and time was working on their behalf.

  Messages sent by Natalese Rangers between Swordmaster Fannon and my father showed that their approach was the same on all fronts, save to the south, where they had dislodged the dwarves from the abandoned mines, and to the northwest, where they feared to cross the River Boundary into Elvandar. In short, we were slowly losing the war.

  Then came a spring assault into Crydee, and a siege became an attack. Swordmaster Fannon fell to injury, and circumstance put me in charge of the defense of Crydee. The Kingdom and Duchy of Crydee were well served by many during that period, notably Sergeant Gardan, Squire Roland, Huntmaster Martin Longbow, and a rogue sea captain by the name of Amos Trask, all who acquitted themselves admirably. The full details of that attack were presented in a report I sent along to my father, which you may find in the Ducal Library at Crydee.

  —Arutha

  The Winds of Dawn Braving the Straits of Darkness

  I’m not certain if the above reflects Prince Arutha’s notable dry sense of humor or if he really has little to add to the chronicles of those times put down by others. In either case, the above recounting does him little credit.

  Although I was not a witness to the events in Crydee during the Riftwar, I have spoken to others who were there, and Prince Arutha’s assumption of command and heroism in the face of a determined enemy breasting the defenses of the castle, driving them back by sheer will and example to his men, cannot be overstated. He has since proven himself a leader of men and as intelligent a commander as the Kingdom has seen in generations.

  If one were to peruse the many accounts of his leadership both at the end of the Riftwar and during the Great Uprising, nothing written can do justice to the brilliance of the man, both as a military mind and as a critical thinker. More, he was an exceptionally generous man, as his relationship with a young man named James will attest.

  Suffice it to say that Arutha’s forceful and precise command of the garrison at Crydee denied further expansion to the west to the Tsurani, forcing them to exist for many years in a constant stalemate with the Kingdom and Free Cities. Political forces on the home world, in which I played a part and have detailed in other commentaries, forced the Warlord to launch an offensive that proved disastrous at the end.

  I played my part in ending the war, as did many others mentioned, and at the time I felt both pride in my ability to finally bring peace to both nations and worlds, and open trade and communication between what had, for me, become two different homes.

  I came to Stardock to build an Academy for the study of magic, on an island bequeathed to me by Lord Borric, who also adopted me into his family so I was Pug the orphan no more but Pug conDoin, cousin to the King by adoption. My wife, Katala, and my son, William, and our adopted daughter, Gamina, reside on Stardock, while I also oversee the reconstruction of the villa on Sorcerer’s Isle and attempt to organize these records of Macros the Black.

  The Tsurani Attack Crydee Castle

  Entry, the Ninth

  SO ENDED THE RIFTWAR. We were not, however, done with the Tsurani, for forces unknown to us were moving with dark purpose, and before the end of the war, the Tsurani would become a major factor in our understanding of the threat. What has come to be called the Great Uprising began modestly enough, if you can call an attempt on the life of the King’s brother a modest event. The Great Uprising was ended at the Battle of Sethanon, and that came on the heels of several occurrences, journeys, and conflicts that received little notice outside of official reports. The majority of those living in the Kingdom are ignorant of most of what I will detail here, and those living in cities far enough away are even ignorant of the very battle that ended the Great Uprising.

  Prince Arutha touched on the events of this period in his reports to his brother, the King, but as is his wont, he was modest to the point of self-effacement and brief in summation to the point of being cryptic at times. Despite being confronted by pressures and fears enough to drive most men mad, he consistently found the means to make intelligent choices and eventually prevail. I began to understand some of what occurred by reading his report to his brother, the King.

  One other source of information on these matters was my friend Laurie of Tyr-Sog, troubadour, fellow prisoner on Kelewan, lately husband to the King’s sister and newly appointed Duke of Salador. My final source was James, Prince Arutha’s squire, the former thief known as Jimmy the Hand.

  While Laurie is a storyteller of heroic gifts and has never let the truth interfere with a good story, in this case, with a quiet recounting of events over a shared bottle of good wine, I think he gave me a fair insight into the events that transpired in this very important but rarely understood conflict.

  And Jimmy, or James as he is now called, despite his occasional appetite for flamboyance and a slight tendency to self-aggrandizement, was forthcoming. He told me his tale without embellishment and false heroics. There were enough true heroics for a dozen lifetimes. One thing did become clear: something exists between him and Prince Arutha, and it is more than gratitude for the Prince’s elevating him to a station undreamed of mere months before. Rather, it’s a profound loyalty and devotion, as a boy might idolize an older brother, or even a father perhaps, but James is driven by two things: clearly, a desire to excel in all things he attempts, and a profound need not to disappoint the Prince. I think he is also coming to be like Arutha in another fashion; he’s developing a sense of his place in the larger scheme of things, that the Kingdom is more than a rolling countryside, lines on a map, or
the politics of the moment, but rather is something worth defending, an ideal that even the lowest man has a place that can be defined not by his station in life, but by his accomplishments.

  Much has been recorded, both in historical documents and a few heroic dramas and poems around the theme of these events, of what has come commonly to be known as the “Search for Silverthorn.” My part in this particular series of events was limited as I was on a search of my own.

  The Pantathians, a race of serpent beings about whom little is known, were behind all the events that followed. For reasons only partially clear, even now, they determined to raise an army to invade the Kingdom. It wasn’t until the end of the struggle we realized they were the major designers of this chaos.

  A false prophet of the Moredhel arose. He called himself Murmandamus, taking the name of a legendary chieftain, the last to unite all the clans of the North, and organized the armies of the Northland, dark elves, goblins, renegade humans, and others, to invade the Kingdom. In preparation, however, he felt the need to fulfill a prophecy, that the “Lord of the West” would die.

  Somewhat arbitrarily, he judged Prince Arutha was that person, though in retrospect there were any number of people who would have served and inspired the rising of the armies of the North. It is now after the fact that I assume this needed killing of a potential enemy was but a ruse, yet ironically it proved the root of his undoing. Had Murmandamus simply marched his army south without warning, it is unlikely the Kingdom would have reacted in time to answer his aggression. Whatever the case, the attempt on Arutha’s life set in motion a series of events with global repercussions.

  Using a series of go-betweens, the Pantathian Serpent Priests arranged for repeated attempts on the Prince. First a member of the Guild of Assassins, the Nighthawks, was foiled in his attempt when by chance he encountered Jimmy the Hand, a lad who had made acquaintance with the Prince during the war with the Tsurani. Arutha had come to Krondor seeking aid in the war to discover Guy, Duke of Bas-Tyra, had taken control of the city in the King’s name and had subjected the Prince of Krondor to house arrest. Jimmy played a key role in getting Arutha to those hiding Princess Anita, and it was there they first met, in a basement in Krondor amid thieves and smugglers.

  Jimmy carried a warning to the Prince, thereby achieving two things: first, he changed forever his place in the world, being forced to leave the Mockers, the Guild of Thieves, as punishment for putting the Prince’s well-being ahead of his duty to them; and, second, he alerted Arutha to the threat against him and the Kingdom. There is a rumor I have not been able to verify that Arutha personally met with the Upright Man, the leader of the Mockers, and arranged for Jimmy’s safe exit from the Guild of Thieves, at no small price. Subsequent events lead me to believe it was gold well spent, if true, for young James appears a young man of exceptional gifts entirely wasted in a life of crime.

  A second attempt at Arutha’s wedding to the Prince Anita went horribly awry, wounding the Princess and bringing her to the brink of death as the crossbow bolt that struck her was poisoned. Healing priests from every order attended her, and I did what I could, but in the end the best we could do was to slow the progress of a particularly vicious poison, derived from a rare plant called Silverthorn.

  Jimmy the Hand Encounters a Nighthawk Preparing to Assassinate the Prince

  Utilizing priestly healing magic to slow the poison’s progress, I created a spell of preserving around the Princess’s room, not quite stopping time, but slowing it so that one second inside her chambers took a day to pass in our world, giving Arutha time to locate the plant and devise a cure.

  The heroics of that undertaking and the resulting events are well documented in other places; I will focus on certain aspects of the journey that have gone unremarked upon. To understand this mission, one must understand the men.

  Prince Arutha was, as I have stated, one of the most competent and intelligent men I’ve known. As a young man, his major fault lay in his relationships with people, trusting few: his father and brother, Swordmaster Fannon, Father Tully, and Sergeant Gardan. Anita made him far more open and trusting than anyone who knew him before he met her would have imagined. Growing up in Crydee, I had seen his dark moods and brooding introspection, an unforgiving critic of those less gifted than himself at times. With her at his side, he was a different man, far more compassionate and forgiving. The thought of losing her changed him beyond understanding; I saw him after effecting the spell to protect her, and I spoke to others after he returned. His mood could only be said to be rage constantly held in check, and it is to his credit he took that rage and made it a drive to save her. Yet at any moment it seemed madness could overwhelm him.

  Having now become his squire, James had uncommon gifts and a natural instinct for survival. He was more than clever, however, for he possessed a deep and critical intelligence that first began to emerge during this journey. He also learned to confront his fears and overcome them, lessons that served him well for years after.

  Arutha’s eldest brother, Martin, the former huntmaster of Crydee until acknowledged by Duke Borric on his deathbed, was in many ways like his brother, but also had a level of self-reliance few men ever achieve. Being schooled by the elves as a boy, as well as uncountable days spent alone in the forests, gave him a sense of his own capacities and shortcomings few of us ever achieve.

  Laurie of Try-Sog was a fine singer with a curiosity that got him captured during the war simply because he wanted a good look at the Tsurani. He became my closest friend during our imprisonment on Kelewan. I was discovered to have magic ability, and as a result was given over to the Assembly of Magicians to master my craft, and Laurie was left as a slave on the Shinzawai estates. Late he was selected to help the eldest Shinzawai son carry a peace overture to the King of Isles from the Emperor. Despite his carefree manner on the surface, he is a man of deep passion and fierce loyalties, willing to risk all for the brother of his love, Princess Carline.

  Gardan, captain of Arutha’s Household Guard, was as stalwart and dependable a soldier as any man could reasonably wish for. He had a calm capable aura about him that reassured other soldiers and had them strive to be better soldiers to please him, not because he demanded it. He was of Keshian ancestry, one of the few dark-skinned men in Crydee, yet his Duke gave no pause on his heritage, letting him rise on his own merits, for which Gardan was fiercely loyal to the family and cared for the Princes and Princess as if they were his own children.

  Leaving on the search for Silverthorn, Prince Arutha and his group rode from Krondor in the dead of night, utilizing misdirection and false trails laid by men chosen for their resemblance to Arutha’s party. Should spies be seeking the Prince, parties who looked to be Arutha and his companions left out of several different city gates, one by ship, at several different times during the day and following night. A group even accompanied me, my family, and Kulgan on our way to Stardock, after having spread the rumor that Arutha would be traveling to my Academy to seek further magic help.

  So, late the second night, four unremarkable horsemen set out on their way up the King’s Road toward Ylith. Gardan met Arutha, Laurie, Martin, and James outside the city and continued with them. The Keshian ambassador had graciously loaned Arutha the services of his Master of Ceremonies, a tall dark-skinned man who would be seen here and there around the palace, dressed in Gardan’s livery, so it would appear the captain of the Royal Household Guard was still in Krondor.

  They rode a fair distance before an encounter with four riders along the way told them there were forces out looking for them, so they kept off the main highway and took back roads, game trails, and cart paths through the forests, leading to the mountain road north. It was during this encounter, Arutha and his companions got their first glimpse of the Black Slayers, Murmandamus’s half-dead soldiers, who rise again after being struck down. Ambushed on the trek north, Arutha’s party fled to the safety of the Ishapian Abbey at Sarth, their first goal on their search for the loc
ation of Silverthorn.

  At the abbey, the Prince’s party was attacked by a demon, a creature of horrible aspect who was sent by dark forces to destroy the Prince. Only the combined magic of the Priests and a well-placed arrow by Martin Longbow defeated the horror.

  When later I heard this recounting, I wondered at the summoning of a demon. I realized how little I knew of demon lore and judged it a subject I needed to study. Later when summoned elementals, a primitive form of demons, troubled us at Stardock, I realized it was perhaps more than an isolated attack, but part of something larger.

  My father was not being ironic, for he wrote the above just after taking stock on many events that occurred during the Great Uprising. As I possess the benefit of many years’ more perspective writing this addendum to his notes, I can say with certainty that had Father known of how deeply entwined the problem of demons was with the Pantathians and other elements serving the darkest forces imaginable, he would have abandoned everything he had undertaken, constructing the Academy, rebuilding the villa, recruiting students, exploring the Hall of Worlds, and much else to devote himself to facing the demons and their masters. As fate would have it, that knowledge came to him slowly and cost him a great deal in harsh lessons along the way. Since one of the results of things unfolding as they did was my father meeting my mother, I cannot easily say I regret his choices. The prices, yes, but the choices gave me a life, as well as that of my brother, and despite their occasional bickering, my parents had a deep and abiding love for each other.

  In the library at the Abbey of Sarth, Arutha learned the source of Silverthorn: the shores of a single lake in the North, by name Moraelin, also known as the Black Lake. It was nestled in a valley in the Great Northern Mountains, not far from the coast, and according to what Arutha found at Sarth, this was the only known location in which that plant grew, which was the reason its poison was so rare and an antidote even more rare. Lacking any other choice, Arutha set out immediately for Yabon and a path north.