The Chaoswar Saga: A Kingdom Besieged, A Crown Imperilled, Magician’s End. Raymond E. Feist

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      The pursuers ran quietly underneath, and Jim held his breath, praying they would not notice they were passing scant inches below their quarry, or they would be able simply to impale him and his companion as easily as spearing fruit on a tree branch with a pointed stick. Jim felt more than heard his companion let himself lightly down to the ground. Jim followed, his shoulders and hips burning from the exertion of holding himself in place. I am getting too old for this nonsense, he thought. His father and grandfather were both putting pressure on him to marry and start a more mundane life in the King’s service and he was getting to be convinced that was a really fine idea. Not for the first time he considered asking Franciezka to quit her post with the Crown of Roldem and run off to some tiny island where they could eat, sleep, and make love.

      The guide motioned and Jim followed, running silently through the dark streets of the city. Ducking through a maze of alleys, they reached an unmarked door, and the guide opened it.

      Jim followed him inside without hesitation and closed the door behind him. ‘We shall be safe here,’ said the guide.

      ‘Not for long.’

      ‘Yes, they will double back, but unless they can track by magic, they’ll have a hundred doors to investigate.’ He caught his breath and added, ‘The sun will rise in an hour. We can attempt to get down to the docks in the throng going to work. Rest now. I will go and seek help to get you out of the port. If I am not back by dawn, it means I have been captured or am dead; make your way to the docks as best you can and seek out a boat called the Mialaba, the name of a woman from the captain’s homeland. He is a man named Nefu. He can be trusted. Tell him you need to find a ship for Durbin and he will get you safely there. Latch the door behind me.’

      Jim waved a tired hand, indicating that he understood, and the guide slipped out of the door. Jim latched it and sat down heavily on a large, tied bundle of cloth.

      When he looked around, he saw he was in the back room of some sort of enterprise, a tailor’s shop by the look of it. Whoever owned it was absent, and Jim was certain the shop must be one of Kaseem’s safe houses in this town.

      He settled in, determined to sort through the strange events he’d endured since awakening in Ranom. For several hours, Kaseem abu Hazara-Khan had detailed to Jim what had occurred in his nation to bring this war on so suddenly and unexpectedly.

      It had begun, according to the desert man, with the unexpected rise in the Gallery of Lords and Masters of a few members of the nobility who were close friends with a Keshian prince by the name of Harfum, a distant nephew of the Emperor. This sort of nepotism and cronyism was nothing new in the Empire, and as long as it didn’t get too obvious and abusive, no one cared about it. The only thing Keshian nobility cared about was keeping their own rank and privileges. The offices granted these men were minor: supervising taxes in a distant province, overseeing the garrisons along the southern border with the Confederacy, supervising the building of ships, levying duties on goods transported by caravan. Nothing in these appointments signalled building a power base or creating a faction within the Gallery of Lords and Masters, so no one objected.

      Then came rumours about a caravan carrying certain goods being diverted at the request of the newly-appointed minister for that district, or a ship-building request that seemed to originate in some vague office attached to the Imperial Navy, but with no one quite sure who was authorizing that purchase. It seemed that Prince Harfum’s friends were always somewhere around when things turned odd, but Kaseem could not establish a clear pattern or find compelling evidence to present to his master, the Imperial Chancellor, or to the Emperor himself.

      Also the corruption that was common to Kesh’s bureaucracy hid much of what was going on, since bribes were paid for falsified cargo manifests and caravan freight was signed off without inspection. Bolts of cloth turned out to have sharp, hard edges; urns were filled with herbs that had steel broad-heads attached, and pottery was made from steel with nose- and cheek-guards. Bows were smuggled as trade goods; swords, shields and armour as raw timber. Iron ore intended for the Imperial Armoury at one city was diverted to a retired swordmaker’s forge in a different city. When a hundred horses were requisitioned for a garrison, eighty would arrive and a notation on a document would explain away the discrepancy. Mules, oxen, horses, dried foodstuff, crates for food, water barrels and casks – all the necessities to put an army on the march – slowly wended their way through the Empire, always heading south. And it had been going on for more than two years, before the spymaster of Kesh even had an inkling.

      By the time Kaseem had sensed something was amiss, it was too late. His agents began to vanish, or mysteriously file reports that made little sense at the time, and when Kaseem realized his network of intelligence operatives had been compromised, it was much too late.

      As Kaseem had made ready to leave the City of Kesh to investigate what he feared to be the case – high treason running rampant in the government – the attacks had begun. The first attempt had been by one of his most trusted agents, the man he had put in charge of the entire network in the City of Kesh and the surrounding region of the Overn Deep. That meant he could trust no one in the City of Kesh. Three times armed men had almost killed Kaseem as he made his escape, but he wasn’t considered the wiliest man in Great Kesh without reason.

      Kaseem had taken a fast horse and headed west towards Caralyan rather than north to his home in the Jal-Pur. Every road from the City of Kesh directly leading to the Jal-Pur would be watched by those trying to kill him, so his intention had been to sail around into the Bitter Sea, then to the port of Ranom. From here he would ride to his father’s camp, at one of many desert oases, where he knew he would be safe.

      It was only by the strangest chance that one of the agents Kaseem had detailed to watch for Kingdom spies had noticed Jim. He had contrived to join the same ship’s company as a common sailor set to keep an eye on Jim. That ‘sailor’ was now Jim’s guide here in Ranom; he was named Destan and was a man Jim would have been happy to have in his service. Jim was very good at not being noticed when he so chose, so the fact that Destan had spotted something to make him suspicious must make him a very valuable asset to Kaseem.

      Destan had been detailed to Hansulé to keep an eye on the insanity of mobilization that had gripped the Empire, to ascertain where all the arms and supplies were heading for so it was, for him, a happy coincidence that Jim was signing on as a sailor on the same fleet. When he caught sight of Jim checking a lump in his hammock, he had managed to ferret out the tiny Tsurani sphere. But then he had prodded at it with a dagger, trying to open it, and had only succeeded in breaking it. But that was of secondary importance; at that point he knew that Jim was someone his master would most certainly wish to speak to.

      When Jim had tried to escape, Destan had struck him from behind, an effective enough means to render him docile, and carried him up on deck while everyone else was busy. Since he had Jim wrapped in canvas, he looked like just another sailor moving something important from one place to another. He had dumped Jim in a sail-locker and came back half an hour later to drug him.

      Jim had awakened here in Ranom. He was uncertain how he had got there from Caralyan so fast, but decided that Kaseem must have his own supply of Tsurani devices, or some other magical equivalent, a magician in his service who could transport others as Magnus could, perhaps. When Jim had broached the subject, Kaseem had been noncommittal: if he possessed such a device, he wasn’t offering one to Jim Dasher to get back to the Kingdom.

      Kaseem had problems of his own, it was fair to see, and Jim was touched by his willingness to help one of his most dangerous opponents. For a brief instant he considered it ironic that Francezka and Kaseem were the two people most likely to have him killed, ultimately, yet in them he had found kindred souls. Not for the first time he considered he had chosen a very strange trade in life.

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