Midkemia Read online

  Arutha sent Gardan to Stardock escorting an Ishapian monk, Brother Dominic. He wanted the magicians at Stardock to lend their knowledge to the Ishapians in case he failed. Arutha would have gladly given his life to save Anita’s.

  Along the road they encountered no trouble, and overtaking a small caravan, they blended in as additional guards. Entering Ylith without incident, they chanced upon two men who would play a vital role in the coming quest for Silverthorn, and the Great Uprising.

  Roald, a mercenary and an old trail companion of Laurie’s, was the first they met, and he was asked to join them, to further enhance Arutha’s disguise as one among many mercenaries traveling in the North. During a relatively minor bar brawl, another assassin sought to take Prince Arutha’s life. A Hadati hillman, by name Baru Serpentslayer, saved the Prince. He had recognized the Prince from the Riftwar and was curious why the Prince of Krondor was sneaking into Ylith. He followed and was standing in the right place to kill the assassin before he could strike Arutha.

  Each man had his reasons for accompanying Arutha north, those facts being recounted in a journal of the Prince’s quest, a transcription of one of Laurie’s famous ballads composed after their return. As for the accuracy of that story, I can only say that some of the facts do mesh with what I know personally. Roald was pressed into service once he realized who Arutha was, and Baru volunteered as his need to revenge himself upon the Moredhel chieftain Murad intersected with Arutha’s need to reach the Black Lake.

  To get to Moraelin from Ylith required a bold journey, over the south pass to Crydee, the very one used years earlier by Lord Borric to bring word of the Tsurani invasion. The addition of two seasoned warriors heightened Arutha’s prospects for a successful outcome, so he welcomed their addition to his company.

  The most common route from Yabon to Crydee is up a road from Ylith through Zun, LaMut, Yabon City, to the town of Meek’s Hold, then overland north of the Yabon Forest, to the trading center known as Lakeside, beside the Lake of the Sky. From there the King’s Road ends and a travel route follows the Crydee River, also known as the River Boundary, along the south bank all the way to the ford east of Crydee Keep.

  Arutha’s path surrendered the illusion of safety—for he had already endured repeated attempts on his life—in exchange for a difficult path few would anticipate. Once over the mountains he would cut through the eastern third of the Green Heart, until reaching River Boundary, where he could be sheltered by the elves until he reached the foothills of the Great Northern Mountains. He also would be taking the more direct route.

  They reached Elvandar, where they were hosted by the Elf Queen and my boyhood friend Tomas, now her consort. I have heard of this visit by the Prince from several sources, including Tomas, after I returned from my visit to Kelewan. This is what I was told. After taking rest and discussing their mission, they learned the story behind the Black Lake, “the Hopeless Quest.”

  THIS MAP TRACES ARUTHA’S JOURNEY FROM YLITH TO MORAELIN, drawn based on Squire James’s account by a student of mine.

  In ancient elven lore, there was a Prince of Elvandar whose betrothed was courted by a Moredhel warrior—this was my first hint that in ancient times there may have been more than outright warfare between the elves and the Moredhel. The Prince’s betrothed spurned the Moredhel’s advances, who in his wrath poisoned her with a draught not unlike the poison afflicting Princess Anita. He then carried her still form to Moraelin, where he built a shrine to her and laid her to rest within. An enchantment from a Moredhel shaman froze the dying woman, an aspect to the story I find eerily familiar.

  In the legend, the Prince of Elvandar sought a cure, the plant known as aelebera in the elf language, Silverthorn to we humans. It grew in only one location, the shores of the Black Lake. So the elf prince found himself on the same quest as Arutha.

  But Moraelin was a sacred place to the Moredhel, a place of dark spirits and ancient magic, one forbidden to elves, because of its dark magic and power. The legend concluded with the tragic image of the Prince of Elvandar at the boundary of Moraelin. Unable to enter that dark place, he began walking a circle around it, eventually wearing tracks so deep they became a canyon around a plateau. Legend has it he still walks the Tracks of the Hopeless, for he may not enter the Black Lake, but he will not leave until he finds his beloved’s cure.

  Arutha determined that as he was not an elf, he would go to the Black Lake and he would find Silverthorn. Before leaving, Arutha was addressed by the Queen’s eldest adviser, Tathar, who told him of the lore of the people, that once all elves were as one but the Dark Brothers had been driven away for their dreams of dark power. Here Arutha first learned the identity of the Black Slayers, the armored foes who refused to die from normal wounds, and where he learned of Murmandamus, the legendary leader of the Moredhel clans who appeared to have risen from the ashes of history to return the Brotherhood of the Dark Path to glory.

  Arutha and his companions were accompanied by a young elf named Galain, who guided them to the boundary of the Black Lake. After some difficulty, all but Galain crossed a stone bridge to the plateau where a building awaited.

  It was clear to everyone this structure was too new to be the crypt of ancient legend and was most likely a trap. Jimmy stole in and saw what appeared to be Silverthorn contained within a crystal sphere. Judging it a more than obvious trap, Jimmy and Martin deduced the plant would grow along the shore of the lake, and perhaps be underwater as the result of heavy rains that spring.

  Finding the plant where he sought it, Jimmy presented it to Arutha. The Prince and his companions quickly turned south, eager to get the Silverthorn plant to the healing priests in Krondor.

  A band of Moredhel, led by the shamanistic chieftain named Murad, overtook Arutha’s party and finally they turned to confront the band of Moredhel and renegade humans. Galain left the party, racing as fast as he could south, to the elven forest, where he could summon aid. Baru defeated Murad and the Moredhel departed while the human renegades attacked. Galain arrived with reinforcements and Arutha made it safely to the edge of Elvandar when the Black Slayers returned and threatened to overwhelm them. Tomas arrived at that moment and destroyed the Black Slayers. After a brief rest with the elves, Arutha returned home to Krondor, where Anita was eventually cured.

  I had, in the meantime, traveled to Kelewan to uncover the source of a troubling vision one of the seers at Stardock endured.

  My father never did find the time to gather information on his days on Kelewan, nor the other worlds to which he journeyed. I’ve speculated on why, only to conclude that to my father, Midkemia was always his home, and that many of the memories associated with Kelewan, the Dasati realm, and his travels elsewhere are simply too painful for him to revisit. Moreover, his time spent elsewhere is but a tiny fraction of his time spent here.

  I will say this much about my journey to Kelewan; I sought to explain the link between a vision, one given to an old seer named Rogan.

  In my training on Kelewan, at the end when I joined the ranks of Great Ones, there is a shared vision, upon the Tower of Testing, in which each magician sees the history of humanity coming to Kelewan. It is different in some ways for each magician; though the general narrative is the same, some details differ. What was significant was that in the lore of the Tsurani, they came to Kelewan from another world, driven by a massive horror known only as “the Enemy.” In the ancient Tsurani language, the word had two meanings, enemy and a darkness so profound it destroyed.

  Squire James Finds Silverthorn in the Black Lake

  It was that word Rogan the Seer called out when he saw a vision of what was threatening Midkemia. Being at a total loss to explain why anyone on Midkemia besides me would even recognize that word, let alone know its meaning, I embarked on a journey to discover the source of this mystery.

  I was joined on that search by Brother Dominic, the Ishapian monk who had traveled with Gardan to Stardock to share what they knew of Silverthorn, and with my old teacher
Kulgan’s man, Meecham, who was there to safeguard Dominic and me from nonmagical harm. In the end, we uncovered what I thought to be the final clues, but even more important, I discovered a lost community of elves, from Midkemia, living in a secret forest below the ice cap. To the Tsurani, they were “the Watchers,” mythical beings, but I discovered they were the Eldar, lost scholars who were the First Servants to the Dragon Lords. They had come to Kelewan at the time of the Enemy and hidden themselves where none could find them, preserving a forest much like Elvandar under the ice near the pole.

  For a short time, peace returned to the Kingdom and I was busy about my concerns at Stardock and the Villa Beata. After Arutha and Anita had their first birth, twins by name Borric and Erland, word reached him from the Upright Man that the Nighthawks were once again in Krondor, seeking the death of the Lord of the West.

  Investigating the report, Squire James discovered a false Arutha, who with two companions thought they disposed of James and made for the palace. James regained his senses and reached the palace just as the two Aruthas confronted each other. The only one to recognize the true from false was James, because of the sewer mud still upon the impostor’s boots.

  Enraged that the Guild of Assassins again threatened not only himself, but his family, Arutha ordered everyone on his staff to seek out where the nest of killers might be hiding.

  Jimmy used his contacts in the Mockers to discover the Nighthawks’ hideout. Arutha conducted a raid against the assassins, but after some successfully fled, the Prince ordered martial law and quarantined the city. While interrogating prisoners, Arutha was struck down by an assassin’s dagger, and the city was in mourning. It was later revealed to be a ruse that allowed Arutha the freedom to leave the city and seek out the author of these attacks, reputed to be a Moredhel chieftain and mystic named Murmandamus.

  I visited Tomas at the edge of the Elven Forest, outside the boundaries of Elvandar proper and apprised him of what I had learned on Kelewan regarding the vision.

  Elvandar is a unique place on Midkemia, for not only is it a forest, it is also home to the elves and the trees that in their ancient language are called a’tar, or “star.” These trees resemble monstrous oaks but are several times larger, with boles big enough that entire compartments for living can be carved out without harming the life of the tree. Their largest branches can be flattened to provide walkways hundreds of feet above the forest floor, and their leaves glow with marvelous colors, some green, others blue, orange, red, gold, and even white. This gives Elvandar’s heart a magic light, a sense of being somewhere else, and with it comes an amazing calming magic. Nowhere else have I seen so many beings at peace with themselves or the world around them than there.

  Tomas and I discussed what possible relationship could exist between the threat from Murmandamus and his army in the North, and the attempts on Arutha’s life, with the coming of what I only knew to be the Enemy, or in the Tsurani tongue, “the Darkness,” and my belief that not only was the relationship of all these things real, but vital.

  I then shared with him I had found the ancient elven scholars, the Eldar in a magic forest, under the ice cap on Kelewan. His astonishment was profound and I promised we would seek to return the Eldar to Elvandar, for their knowledge and magic would bring even more security and wisdom to the elves.

  While Arutha was traveling north, I had already returned from my visit with the Oracle of Aal, armed with the little foretelling she could provide, but with enough clues to know where I must next look, among Macros’s library—not the one in his castle on the bluffs, but the secret library he had built in the villa.

  I convinced Tomas to come with me on a journey, as I needed his arts to travel by dragon to that other world. He summoned a dragon, Ryath, daughter of Rhuagh, and we began our journey. My encounter with the Oracle and the promise to move her and her followers to safety on Midkemia are not a topic I will share in detail here.

  It became clear once our journey was under way that the one person who might be able to bring us the knowledge we sought would be Macros the Black. Macros had left a servant, a wise goblin-like creature named Gathis, who had a link to Macros and judged him gone. So Tomas and I began a long search for the Black Sorcerer.

  At that time, Martin was home in Crydee, guesting Baru, when word arrived of Arutha’s murder. He then received a secret message from Arutha only a few would understand, indicating he was alive and needed Martin to journey to Ylith and meet him. Martin and Baru set out at once by fast horse to ride to Ylith and seek out Arutha.

  Arutha left by horse with Laurie and Roald. The behavior of the Princesses Anita and Carline let slip to James that something wasn’t as it seemed to be. He then recalled a detail of the funeral—the corpse lacked Arutha’s favorite boots—and he suddenly understood that the Prince was alive and calculated what his plan most likely would be.

  James and his companion Locklear, another squire in the Prince’s court, snuck out of the castle to intercept Arutha. He convinced Aaron Cook, an old smuggling friend, to sail up the coast to Sarth, and after purchasing mounts, he and Locklear found the most likely place to meet with the Prince and his companions and waited. Arutha, Laurie, and Roald rode up the coast and they joined forces. Deciding he had no other recourse than to permit the two young squires to continue with him, Arutha gave his consent.

  A MAP DRAWN BY MY STUDENT, from James’s description, showing his and Prince Arutha’s separate journeys from Krondor to Sarth, then their journey together on to Ylith.

  Reaching Ylith, where they were joined by Martin and Baru, Arutha made his intentions plain, to go into the Northlands to find and kill Murmandamus, ending his threat to all Arutha held dear. The Prince was ignorant at that time of much larger forces involved and didn’t realize his plan was overly ambitious, but it did start a chain of events that proved critical to the ultimate survival of the Kingdom.

  Tomas and I flew across the sea to the continent of Novindus, a sprawling mass of land, home to many city-states and local warlords. Nestled in the largest range of mountains there, the Ratn’gary, in the foothills next to a deep forest, rested the Necropolis, the city of the Dead Gods. From there Tomas and I entered a magical trance and ventured into the Hall of the Dead, seeking Macros the Black.

  Some details of that journey I may not share, but this I will say, in the Hall of the Dead we confronted Lims-Kragma, the Goddess of Death, who assured us that Macros was still among the living. She provided us with clues that led us to conclude that given Gathis’s link to his master, and Gathis’s feeling that his master was “absent,” there was likely only one place Macros could be, a legendary place outside of normal space and time, the City Forever.

  Arutha heard of a gang of renegade mercenary engineers was moving northward, contracted to join with Murmandamus’s army. Using guile to break the contract between Murmandamus and the engineer general, Arutha moved north, he and his companions playing the part of mercenaries, seeking the false Moredhel prophet.

  Following the King’s Road out of Yabon City, they moved northward, then away from the road to Tyr-Sog, toward the Inclindel Gap, a narrow roadway, little more than a steep crevice with a flat path in some places, but the only way through the mountains leading to the Northlands, in the Western Realm. There were three major passes in the East, all guarded by the Border Barons’ garrisons, Highcastle, Ironpass, and Northwarden. All were guarded by patrols, to keep renegades and weapons runners from reaching the Northlands, but the Inclindel was poorly guarded. Here Arutha moved out of the Western Realm into the Northlands, where the Moredhel resided in numbers, and where the Prince hoped to find Murmandamus.

  Along the way they found a dead man guarded by a massive dog, a breed Baru recognized as a Beasthound thought extinct among his people. Continuing north from there, they were captured by a band of strange soldiers who spoke a language akin to what Baru’s people, the Hadati, spoke. They were taken to the city of Armengar, once the ancient Moredhel city of Sar-Isbandia, a
heavily fortified city atop which sat a massive citadel set hard against towering cliffs. Here, a series of surprises awaited them.

  MAP THAT SHOWS the entrance to the Inclindel Gap.

  First of those was the presence of their old friend Amos Trask, absent since the day of Lyam’s coronation. Even more shocking was the identity of the Lord Protector of Armengar, Guy du Bas-Tyra, the former Duke of the city that bore his family’s name.

  Amos told the story of stealing the King’s ship to go raiding along the coasts of the Eastern Kingdom, but of running afoul of goblin raiders while anchored too close to shore. He had also discovered that Guy du Bas-Tyra had secreted himself aboard the ship, hiding from the King, as a result of Guy’s perceived treason against the Crown. They were taken up into the Northland, to be sold as slaves, when they ran afoul of a party of horsemen from Armengar, who freed the slaves. Guy and Amos have stayed in that city, fighting against the dark elves, and had earned the respect of the previous Lord Protector. He had named Guy his heir, and while many in the Kingdom might doubt Guy’s loyalty, no one could say ill of his skills as a general.

  Pug and Tomas Confront the Goddess

  THE THIRD MAP drawn from Squire James’s narration, showing the final leg north to Armengar.

  The citizens of Armengar were kinsmen to the Hadati, who had fled over the mountain rather than submit to annexation to the Kingdom when it first conquered Yabon. Now they were a fading culture, constantly at war with the Brotherhood of the Dark Path, and faced obliteration at the hands of Murmandamus and his army.

  Arutha quickly realized his plan to find Murmandamus was wholly inadequate and lent himself to the defense of the city. He sent Martin, Laurie, Baru, and Roald back to Yabon to seek aid. Roald gave his life heroically so that the others could escape.