Prologue

[feredar]

Many years ago, in time beyond remembrance, the gods put the final touches on their creation, sealing the masses of land and water where they lay, and bringing forth their children to populate it. To these children, they each gave a great gift.

First came Creation, the active one who had done the bulk of the work in their process, who breathed into them, as He had into all other creations, the gift of Life.

Next came Inspiration, the clever one who had initiated the process, who breathed into them a gift She had given all but a very few, the gift of Free Will.

Third came Passion, the steadfast one who had buoyed the group through periods of self-doubt, who breathed into them a gift She had given most, but not all, of the others, the gift of Desire.

Fourth came Reason, the contemplative one who had uncovered ways to solve errors in design, who breathed into them a gift He had given only a very few, the gift of Thought.

Last came Meditation, the silent one who had helped wherever needed, who breathed into them a gift invented without consultation with the others, the gift of Magic.

In the uproar that followed among the gods, Meditation agreed to separate Magic into separate strands, and gift it only to a small number of their children, rather than all. Meditation chose twenty-nine of the worthiest, and gave to them eight great magics.

To the four who came from the islands, Meditation gave power over water, making them the greatest of sailors and fishermen.

To the four who came from the deserts, Meditation gave power over fire, which made of them great warriors and seers.

To the four who came from the sedentary farmlands, Meditation gave power over the earth itself, making them great providers and defenders.

To the four who came from the high mountain passes, Meditation gave power over the air, to see and travel far on its currents.

To the four who came from the lower foothills, Meditation gave power over metal, and they became great artisans and craftsmen.

To the four who came from the poles, Meditation gave power over electricity and magnetism, making them powerful storm-weavers and navigators.

To the four who came from the empty plains, Meditation gave power over sound and speech, making them great bards and performers.

To the last, who was found worthiest of all, full of the best of all the other gifts, Meditation gave power over blood, making her a great healer, and also possessed of the power to kill in the most horrible ways imaginible.

But Meditation had one further trick to play on the other gods. Building on the gifts Passion had given, Meditation built into the Magic an incomprehensible inheritance pattern. Any child of one so gifted would also be gifted. It was likely to be the same gift, but, as generations went by and the facets of the gifts of Magic spread throughout the population, the specific thread might have skipped a generation, or many generations, so that bewildered parents were confronted with children whose gifts were the complete opposites of their own. Those gifted with water-magic born in the desert were miserable, as were those gifted with earth born among the islands. It took a powerful working of all four of the other gods to limit the gifts to only one in each mage.

But it was the gods' children themselves who placed other, greater limits on their magic. As the years went by, societies formed around the use of such gifts.

The islander water-mages became a confederation of vast merchant clans, which elected a Lord or Lady every twenty years from among the clan heads.

The desert-dwelling fire-mages forged a great nation, centered on a hidden city made of very thick, tinted glass somewhere in their desert. They were mercenaries and mystics, ruled by a core family of fire-mages, though leadership positions in their army were as often given to nonmages as not.

The farmers from whom the earth-mages had come were perhaps the least concerned with those gifts.They were valuable enough, yes, but had little to do with the rulership and governance of their people. Though some few rose to rank over the centuries, most remained in the background, farmers and builders and very occasionally warriors.

The mountain air-mages were couriers for the rest of the world, bringing treasures, messages, and people from one place to the next. The only place in the world they were not welcome was the sacred City of Glass.

The miners and metal-mages were a surly, solitary lot, rarely leaving their own domains. The single greatest honor for any person in the rest of the world was to carry a piece of mage-crafted metal, be it jewelry or weaponry or tableware.

The polar navigators were nearly as secretive as the fire-mages, sending out a very few of their lightning-mages each year to foreign courts with whom they had strong ties and favored water-mage captains. Of their non-mage people, little was known in the outside world, but they were believed to be sorely uneducated and looked down on for this, as even the mages sent outside were barely literate.

The bards of the plains spent most of their time wandering, talking their way into and out of trouble. Only when approaching middle age did they settle, to small towns often highly mingled with farm people.

The blood-mages, before settling, unleashed untold horrors when they made war, and most of their bloodlines were driven near to extinction by an alliance of the other peoples of the world. They retreated to lick their wounds, and formed a forest enclave of seven cities at the heart of the world. Each city, populated by both mages and civilians, elected a single female blood-mage to rule. These seven witches, as they came to be called, met in council to determine the future of their gift. They decreed, after years of debate, that only the seven ruling lines would be permitted to use the destructive side of their gift. All others born with it would be healers only. The punishment for any infraction was swift and terrible death. Each witch, furthermore, would have a single daughter, who would have no clear father, as men would be selected from her city at an appropriate time for conception. Any son she bore would be eliminated in infancy. Her daughter would then have a daughter, under the same circumstances, the granddaughter to have a child of her own when either the Eldest Witch died or she approached the end of her reasonably safe childbearing years, whichever came first.

After the end of the Blood War, all of the children of the gods turned their attentions inward, suspicious of strangers. The greatest city among the earth-mage dominated peoples, Feredar, in particular fell victim to this paranoia, leading to the rise two centuries later of a brilliant dictator, one of the rare earth-mages who sought and gained prominence. He built massive walls around Feredar, both with his magic and with his words, preying on the people's paranoia to make any mention of the outside world forbidden. This rabid isolationism led to the assassination of the lightning-mage then attached to the court, the expulsion of all bards, a massive decline in trade, as water-captains were no longer welcome, and the destruction of beautiful pieces of metal and glass, created by metal- and fire-mages. In time, the people of Feredar, seeing the swath of destruction this paranoia had caused, rose up in rebellion, executing the mage, and declaring it illegal for any so gifted to hold high office again.

So the histories tell, and the religious texts buried deep in the libraries of the City of Glass and the minds of the wandering bards. More centuries passed, and the Mage's Fall in Feredar became as much legend as history. But the people remembered it; the massive walls of their city remained a silent testement to his greatness and evil. The leaders of the city built layer upon layer of paranoia back into their government, and, after close to a thousand years, had unwittingly trapped themselves in much the same corner their historical demon had forced them into. In the final days of the reign of King Sorell, the paranoia that had led to the Mage's rise once again exploded into war.