Midkemia

by Raymond E. Feist

  The Princes, Borric and Erland, where to begin? They possess their mother’s coloring, reddish-brown hair and light complexions, pale blue eyes, and their father’s look, slender, fast, and strong. Their features are a cross between both parents, and by any reasonable standard, they were handsome young men.

  Which was superfluous given their uncle was King of Isles, for had they been hideous in appearance young women from all walks of life would still be vying for their attention. When they stopped to visit on the way to the Empress of Great Kesh’s Jubilee, I had a chance for a quiet conversation with Baron James, and he acquainted me with Prince Arutha’s desire that his sons be schooled in the responsibilities of their offices. And he informed me that Lyam, lacking a son, would name Borric the Heir, as Arutha had already informed the King he would step aside in Borric’s favor. Having twins in the royal succession is always a difficult situation, for it would take little for those with political ambition to line up behind Erland and claim he had a right to the Crown, so Erland had to be committed to his brother, no matter what. This envoy to Kesh undertaken on behalf of the King was seen as the first step on their road to a royal education.

  I hadn’t seen the two Princes in some years and was surprised at how much they had grown. Their father had subjected them to a fairly rigorous upbringing, while their mother tended to coddle them.

  They had two younger siblings, their sister, Elena, and the youngest, Nicholas. Nicholas had been born with a deformed foot, which resisted all attempts to heal, magic as well as mundane, which is a topic I’ll comment on at some future date.

  The two Princes who stopped to visit with me had a well-earned reputation as wild young men. If memory serves, they were roughly eighteen or nineteen years of age when they appeared on their way to Great Kesh. The two Barons barely looked that much older, despite more than fifteen or sixteen years of age difference.

  There is a personal note to add to this narrative. It was during this visit that my daughter, Gamina, first met Baron James. It was not merely that they met, they eventually wed. The circumstance of that meeting is, perhaps, somewhat instructive on how these two people became among the most important people in the Kingdom for years, yet about whom very little has ever been recounted.

  My father is correct. My stepsister by adoption, and her husband, both have been meticulously excluded save for a few superficial mentions in the annals of the Court in Krondor, and in Rillanon. Most of the mentions are due to the role assumed by Baron James, later Duke of Krondor, then Duke of Rillanon, and the creator of the King’s spy network. Of my father’s life before my birth, I know only what I’ve been told, but over the years I have come to appreciate his life was in ways far more complex than appear in a simple retelling of facts and dates. His first wife, Katala, William’s and Gamina’s mother, was dying, and no magic or healing undertaken seemed to do more than slow the disease’s progress. There are bitter realities in life, most being the feeling of helplessness that grips us when confronted by something beyond our abilities to mitigate. Doubly so when it involves people we love. Years later, after these events, my father speaks little of his first wife. As much as he loved my mother, in ways difficult to imagine, I think he never recovered fully from Katala’s death and his inability to save her. You will notice in the following that he barely speaks of her again. I think years after the fact, her loss was still too painful for him to touch on more than briefly.

  Gamina had not been present when the visitors arrived, having gone to the fishing village to help prepare supper for the growing population of children there. We were experiencing our first sudden surge of workers, many of them with small children, and my daughter loved being around the children. Her personal gifts of magic were not the sort that benefited from a great deal of study—she had the ability to speak with her mind across vast distances, as well as read the thoughts of others—so when I informed her that we had guests, she begged to be excused, promising to meet them the next day.

  The next day proved to be eventful. I encountered James in the predawn morning the next day. We had met several times before, but as he observed, we had never really spoken much together privately, nor did we know much about each other. I’ll wager I knew more of him from his exploits, and Arutha’s pride in his protégé in telling those tales, than James knew of me.

  We watched the sun rise and spoke of his childhood and mine. I found myself coming to like this somewhat brash young man, which turned out to be a good thing, given the later events of that day. I suggested he might enjoy a morning soak in the hot springs on the west side of the island, beyond a stand of willow trees. It was thick with reeds but had several places one could soak in very hot water for a time. Then a short dash and jump into the lake, a practice I had enjoyed since moving to Stardock many times. I found it a perfect way to start the morning, as did my daughter and my son when he still lived here.

  Unbeknownst to me, my daughter was already swimming there, and James and she met for the first time in the reeds. I do not know the particulars of that encounter, for it is something my daughter refused to share with me in detail. Knowing Gamina, and her talents, I can only imagine it was a profound and deeply personal thing, for the end result was the two of them arriving together for the morning meal and James asking for Gamina’s hand in marriage. To sum up, after my wife and I expressed a fair amount of concerns, we at last were forced to concede that our daughter, no longer a child, had made up her mind and there was little we could do but give our blessings. Part of my reason, I will concede, was that at least my wife would see one of her children wed. As my son was off being a soldier in the Prince’s guard, I had scant hope he would settle down before my wife left to return to the place of her birth.

  James and Gamina expressed a desire to be married at once, so I contacted Prince Arutha and gained royal consent. He also granted to James the rank of Earl of the Court, a rank he was going to bestow after James’s return from Kesh, but which he felt was an appropriate wedding present. After a bit of delay, James and my daughter were wed, and with heavy heart I saw them depart for Kesh.

  For reasons I will not share here, I had an idea that James might encounter someone who would prove vital to me, a stranger who might need to hear something that would convince him to journey to Stardock and make my acquaintance. So, as we readied for the feast and I found myself alone with James, I said to him the following: “I do not expect you to understand what I’m about to say. But should you ever come to a time when you need to say something upon my behalf, say this, “The last truth is that there is no magic.”

  That conversation changed not only my life, but perhaps the fate of all Midkemia, for the person James encountered, to whom he gave that message, was a remarkable character from the province of Isalani in the Kingdom. As I had discussed with James, I needed a third influence in Stardock, as the two most dominant personalities among my disciples were two Keshian magicians, Watoom and Korsh, and I had wished to find a Kingdom magician to leave as the third voice, but in the man who came after hearing James’s message from me, I found a mind so unique, a vision unmatched; and his contributions to the founding of our society here at Stardock were unmatched by anything I could have imagined.

  His name is Nakor.

  I will tell more of the Blue Rider, as he styled himself after a lavish gift of a magnificent horse and blue garb, but first I’ll return to the departure of the brothers—the two young Barons—and my daughter as they traveled to Kesh.

  The journey of the two Princes through Kesh is actually the story of two journeys. And as such tales are prone to, it begins with a silly and somewhat trivial issue.

  Princes Borric and Erland had found themselves in a tavern at the Commercial Dock, and in that tavern was a game of cards, known as pokiir in the Kingdom, poker in the Empire. As a result, with the ebb and flow of luck, and with people coming and going, by the morning of their departure, Prince Borric had managed to acquire a rather colorful set of traveling togs, a purpl
e robe and ridiculous red boots, as well as a staff with a light-emitting crystal on top. He had lost most of his armor and his sword during the evening, then won this attire later.

  So, this first thing you should know: Borric, Prince of the blood royal of the Kingdom of the Isles, departed from Stardock looking nothing as much as a down-in-the-heels practitioner of street magic.

  To travel by land from the Kingdom into the Empire, there are basically two routes, a difficult trail over the Grey Range, from Duronny’s Vale to the Keshian city of Jonril, not to be confused with the town in Crydee named after that city. From Jonril the caravan trail runs to Nar Ayab, through the Spires of Light Mountains, to the city of Khattara, to the city of Kesh.

  The other route, the one chosen by the brothers and their party, was from Stardock, down the east face of the Pillars of the Stars, skirting the edge of the Jal-Pur Desert to Nar Ayab.

  Almost all other trade between the Kingdom and the Empire is by sea, as there are numerous ports on both coasts of the Sea of Kingdoms, as well as trade along the south shore of the Bitter Sea. And, in both nations, there are wild regions like the Green Reaches, the Trollhome Mountains, and others that prevent easy transit.

  As fate would have it, both Princes eventually traversed from Stardock to the city of Kesh by the two routes most likely, and least likely to get you there. Amid a blasting sandstorm, raiders attacked the caravan, and while the majority of travelers were to emerge unhurt, Prince Borric was captured by slavers. Because of his attire, the slavers thought him a magic user and placed upon him shackles designed to blunt magic. An unintended consequence of this was to shield Borric from Gamina’s attempt to find him through the use of her mental arts.

  A MAP constructed from James’s—now Baron of the Prince’s Court—narration of the amazing journey to Kesh undertaken by the Princes Borric and Erland.

  The party moved on from their search for Borric, determining his fate was up to the gods, and that despite their grief at his disappearance, the needs of state, to be at the Empress’s Jubilee and represent the Kingdom of the Isles, demanded they move on. With heavy hearts, Erland, Earl James, Baron Locklear, and the rest moved down through the border of the Jal-Pur and the great plains to the city of Nar Ayab. From there they were escorted by Keshian soldiers to the city of Kesh.

  Borric, in the meantime, had been taken to Durbin, the Empire’s major port on the Bitter Sea. Far enough away from the oversight of the central government, the governor of Durbin effectively was a law unto himself. There had been some business there, involving Earl James when he was younger, that had ended with a member of the Hazara-Khan family taking control for a while, but as politics in the Empire is wont to do, control soon drifted to someone with better relations with the Crown, or at least someone close enough to the Crown to influence the decision about who was appointed governor.

  So the slavers conducted business as usual, and Borric was herded into a pen. His escape is something of an adventure in its own right, and I expect at some point someone will write that tale in detail, but for this narrative, suffice it to say a combination of wit and luck put Borric and a companion, a beggar boy named Suli Abul, on a boat in the Bitter Sea.

  A general alarm had been sounded that a slave had murdered a slaver and a large reward was posted, so many ships were out on patrol looking for Borric. He was forced away from his desired course, back to Krondor, and set sail to the northwest. Borric had spent enough time sailing as a boy that he managed to elude capture, but the boat he sailed in was damaged and he was forced to seek rescue from a Free Cities ship bound for the Keshian port of Farafra, on the Dragon Sea.

  Borric’s chance meeting put him upon the preferred sea route from the Bitter Sea to his destination; if he couldn’t return to Krondor, he was determined to find his way to the Empress’s court and reunite with his brother. Farafra is a trading hub, the coastal city closest by land route to the city of Kesh, and a busy gateway into the heart of the Empire. From there it would be little problem to find a caravan bound for the Overn Deep.

  THE CITY OF GREAT KESH. A strange and interesting fellow named Nakor produced the map from a rucksack that seemed to hold far more than possible.

  Erland in the Imperial Court, and Borric through his travels overland, arrived in the Empress’s palace in time, thwarting a plan to wrest the throne of Kesh away from the Empress. Their part to secure the throne and expose the traitors forged a much closer bond between Kesh and Isles than ever before, beginning a period of relative peace that lasted almost thirty years. The one bitter outcome to this otherwise triumphant series of events was the death of Baron Locklear.

  Keshian Trueblood Charioteers

  It was a very changed James and Gamina who came past me on their way back to Krondor, and we spoke late into the night about what had occurred on their journey. It was a sobering and sad tale in many ways, but also held a note of triumph, for it was clear the two Princes had learned a great deal about themselves as men and about the responsibilities of office.

  And with them came Nakor. I suspect in years to come I will have more to say about this unique and gifted man, but for this entry, simply suffice it to say I had never encountered his like. He was a man of prodigious gifts, yet despite his being able to effect magic in a fashion unlike anything I had experienced, he insisted there was no magic, only “tricks.” He claims to be a mere gambler, but it was obvious to me within moments of meeting him that he was much more than that.

  Nakor proved a valuable ally for Borric when he first met him on the caravan trail from Farafra to the city of Kesh. Between them, the two Princes of the Kingdom had uncovered and frustrated a coup d’état within the Royal House of Kesh. The result of their actions did two things worth note beyond the personal heroics displayed: it stabilized the Royal House of Kesh for a generation; and it brought a relatively long period of peace between the two nations.

  Nakor spent quite a bit of time with us at Stardock, in his role as the self-proclaimed “Blue Rider,” which had the net effect of blunting the conservative inclinations of two other leaders in the community, as well as creating his own following, who dubbed themselves “the Blue Riders.”

  Nakor was also a key actor in the events associated with Prince Nicholas’s journey to Novindus.

  Portrait of Nakor the Blue Rider

  Entry, the Twelfth

  AMOS TRASK, WHERE TO BEGIN? A legend on the Bitter Sea, Trenchard the Pirate, the Dagger of the Sea. A series of odd circumstances brought him into the lives of the royal family, back during the late years of the Riftwar. His part in the defense of Armengar and the final battles of the Great Uprising have also been touched upon.

  I cannot begin to do justice to the man’s nature, and his profound change in life. As a youngster, he was a pirate, one of the most dangerous men on the Bitter Sea. In his old age he was an admiral in the King’s Navy, and husband to Anita’s mother, Alicia, Prince Erland’s widow.

  I think it best to let the man speak in his own words. These events came nine years after Borric and Erland’s journey to Kesh.

  Amos had put in to Sorcerer’s Isle to tell me of the following events. Amos, Nakor, and the others in his party had stopped on their way to Novindus during the events recounted below, and I asked Amos to stop by after all was done. As circumstances would have it, it was quite a few years later, toward the end of his life when he finally did recount this tale. I asked if he minded a scribe attending, and this is what Amos said:

  “As you know, I had settled into a good life. I was given a magnificent ship, The Royal Dragon, and a squadron to command and got to spend most of my days chasing pirates, raiders, and smugglers across the Bitter Sea. I also was keeping company with Princess Alicia, Anita’s mother. Just before all this business with Nicky, Harry, Marcus, and the rest of them started, we decided to wed . . . I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, aren’t I?

  “Well, it’s all about Nicholas. You know him well enough, I should think, at this point. But as
a child, let’s say that coddled isn’t the exact word, but he was hovered over to a fair degree by his mother.

  “His older brothers were pretty rough-and-tumble lads, and they weren’t especially kind when Nicky was a wee boy, teasing him about that deformed foot, calling him “monkey” behind their mother’s back, and all the usual torment visited upon little brothers by their older brothers. That did change after the twins returned from Kesh, more credit to them for mending their ways, but a lot of what I took to be Nicky’s . . . what’s the word? Hesitancy? Let’s call it that, a need to be calm and think things through, not with the clear deliberation his father showed, but as a way to put things off a little longer. Yes, that was Nicky.

  “The first change in him was because of his squire, Harry, son of the Earl of Ludland. He sort of ignited something in Nicky. Brought out a little . . . recklessness. To me it was welcome; I loved Nicky like a grandson, and he needed to get out a bit more. But there was always that foot.

  “Well, you know more of that than I, and that comes later in the tale, doesn’t it? Anyway, Arutha decided to send Nicky to Crydee; he thought a little frontier living might harden the lad a bit. It was my suggestion, actually.

  “In any event, Arutha gave permission. I pulled rank and took command of The Royal Eagle, for a supply run to the Far Coast.

  “You know most of this part of the story, Pug. You remember our visit to your island on our way to Crydee.

  “In any event, it was Nakor’s idea for you to meet Nicky, which in light of what came later was a good idea. That bandy-legged little maniac does have good ideas from time to time.

  “Now, I have no idea as to what you and Nakor, you and Nicholas, or anyone else said in private, and truth to tell at my age I’m content to know only what I need to know.