FOREWORD 1
Your Majesty,
Enclosed is my chronicle of recent events, as well as Senera’s accounting of events leading up to Atrine’s destruction.
And I am asking you to not read either of them.
I realize this seems an odd request, but time … oh, time … is a luxury we don’t have at the moment. What I am asking is that you read the attached summary of Senera’s book and then come immediately, without a second’s delay, to the tower on the island in center of Rainbow Lake. The Crown and Scepter know the way.
We need your help. I need your help. I do not have time for you to read either book. Once you are here, and not before, only then will we find you the time necessary.
We’ll steal it if we have to.
You should know I’ve given a copy of this chronicle to Senera. There is little point in keeping it from her; she has it within her power to divine the contents. I’m hoping my gesture of “friendliness” will convince her that acquiring her own copy is unnecessary. Because her copy is not complete, and it is of vital importance that it remain that way.
The fate of the whole world rests on this.
Always your faithful servant,
Thurvishar
What led up to this:
Two days after the Capital City Hellmarch, your own ascension to the Quuros throne, and Kihrin’s recovery of the sword Urthaenriel, Kihrin D’Mon traveled to Jorat to find the Black Knight. As plans go, it needed work; I believe it amounted to “anyone Duke Kaen and Relos Var hate this much must be someone I’ll like.”
He found Janel Theranon, former Joratese Count of Tolamer, who had bribed a House D’Aramarin Gatekeeper to make sure Kihrin crossed her path. Since Kihrin had Urthaenriel, Janel wanted to recruit him to slay the dragon Morios, which she believed would soon attack Atrine, second-largest city in Quur. Why did she believe this? I’ll get to that in a moment.
Janel knew Kihrin because she’d helped Return him to life. He didn’t remember her and, believing this a con, attempted to leave. He failed. The dragon Aeyan’arric, Lady of Storms, had arrived, trapping everyone inside. So Kihrin agreed to at least listen to Janel (and her Vishai priest confidant, Brother Qown) explain how the current crisis came to be and why she needed Kihrin’s help.
It seems several years earlier, Janel had encountered Relos Var, who had been fomenting unrest in the Jorat region. Var’s plan seemed to be multipronged; he was sneaking disguised Yorans into the duchy, destabilizing the power structure with spurious witch hunts, and summoning real demons to be trapped and eliminated. His main provocateur was a Doltari wizard named Senera whom he’d given a Cornerstone called the Name of All Things, which allows Senera to answer any question.
Besides trying to warn her Joratese superiors, Janel became determined to recover a magic spear named Khoreval, which she believed could kill Aeyan’arric. Unfortunately, it was owned by Relos Var’s “boss”: Duke Kaen of Yor.
Janel contrived to get herself kidnapped and taken back to Yor, with an unintended companion as Brother Qown was also taken (and gaeshed as a hostage on Janel’s good behavior). Janel won over both Kaen and his undead wife, Xivan, and spent the next several years trying to find a way to steal Khoreval. In the process, she learned Kaen had the spear because he intended to use it to kill the dragon Morios when it woke from under Lake Jorat. (So then Janel had two dragons to kill.) She also secretly passed messages to both Teraeth (yes, our Teraeth) and her own agents working to undermine Kaen’s plans. (This last under the guise of a Jorat persona known as “the Black Knight”—the same one Kihrin sought.)
During this time, Janel learned several important facts. First, Duke Kaen kept the god-queen Suless as a gaeshed slave. Second, Janel’s father was General Milligreest (a fact that Duke Kaen intended to exploit). And third, Janel was also the daughter of Tya, Goddess of Magic (a fact that Relos Var was exploiting). Janel herself used this last bit of information to help steal Khoreval, and together, mother and daughter slew Aeyan’arric.
While Janel told this story to Kihrin, she had an attack of conscience and admitted the truth to him: Relos Var had later captured both her and the spear again. She had been dragged before an enraged Duke Kaen, who ordered her death for her betrayal. Before the god-queen Suless could enact this, however, something happened: Kihrin destroyed the Stone of Shackles. Suless, freed from her gaesh, destroyed Kaen’s palace and almost everyone in it, but Janel, Qown, and a few others managed to escape. When Relos Var returned, he revealed that Khoreval1 alone wouldn’t be able to kill Morios (or Aeyan’arric, who would return). The only way to do so permanently was to simultaneously kill both the dragon and their matching Cornerstone. “Fortunately,” he knew the location of Morios’s Cornerstone. The only piece missing was Urthaenriel.
That’s where Kihrin came in.
I’m sure Kihrin would have told Relos Var to get lost, except Morios did rise from Lake Jorat and did start destroying Atrine. So Kihrin agreed to help, a decision I know he now regrets. While Janel, Senera, and Relos Var dealt with the dragon, Kihrin, Qown, and myself (yes, I was part of this) agreed to travel down under Lake Jorat to the dead god-king Khorsal’s flooded throne room, where the Cornerstone Warmonger waited.
And Kihrin had been right from the beginning; it was all a con. The dragon existed, the threat existed, but Senera had sabotaged the signals we’d created to time our strikes, so Kihrin, thinking Morios had been slain, destroyed what he thought was Warmonger. Instead, it was an ancient warding crystal, one of eight, used to keep Vol Karoth imprisoned and sleeping. Its destruction didn’t free Vol Karoth, but he woke from his slumber. When Kihrin tried to confront Relos Var, Qown betrayed us and ambushed Kihrin.
Relos Var and Qown took Urthaenriel and left, having accomplished everything they wanted. (Teraeth later rescued both Kihrin and myself from drowning under Lake Jorat.) The rest of us, yourself included, were left to clean up the mess.
In terms of Relos Var’s goals, I would say it was a complete success. It certainly opened the path for what’s followed, because Relos Var knew exactly how the Eight Immortals would respond.
He was planning on it.
FOREWORD 2
My dearest, Senera,
I originally thought to address this volume to Empress Tyentso. After all, she does need to be updated on the rather startling events happening outside Quur’s borders.
Those events will come to roost on her throne as well.
However, it occurred to me that I can do nothing to keep you from reading this chronicle. I am well aware of what the Name of All Things can do. You may be required to write down the answers to questions in full, but there is no rule that says you must do so at a moderate and sedate pace. I also know those spells, as well as how to reach Shadrag Gor.
When you have finished reading, ask yourself this for me, as one equal to another: If Relos Var didn’t know this could happen, what else doesn’t he know? And if he did know, just how much of his true motives has he hidden from you? He believes that only he can save the world and has followed that belief to its most narcissistic and grandiose conclusion. Thus, no matter how much he values your support, you will always be expendable to him.
It’s not fun to be a wizard’s toy, is it?
Believe me, I know.