The Riftwar Legacy: The Complete 4-Book Collection. Raymond E. Feist

       • PROLOGUE •

       Warning

      THE WIND HOWLED.

      Locklear, squire of the Prince of Krondor’s court, sat huddled under his heavy cloak, astride his horse. Summer was quick to flee in the Northlands and the passes through the mountains known as the Teeth of the World. Autumn nights in the south might still be soft and warm, but up here in the north, autumn had been a brief visitor and winter was early to arrive, and would be long in residence. Locklear cursed his own stupidity for leading him to this forlorn place.

      Sergeant Bales said, ‘Gets nippy up here, squire.’ The sergeant had heard the rumour about the young noble’s sudden appearance in Tyr-Sog, some matter involving a young woman married to a well-connected merchant in Krondor. Locklear wouldn’t be the first young dandy sent to the frontier to get him out of an angry husband’s reach. ‘Not as balmy as Krondor, sorry to say, sir.’

      ‘Really?’ asked the young squire, dryly.

      The patrol followed a narrow trail along the edge of the foothills, the northern border of the Kingdom of the Isles. Locklear had been in court at Tyr-Sog less than a week when Baron Moyiet had suggested the young squire might benefit from accompanying the special patrol to the east of the city. Rumours had been circulating that renegades and moredhel – dark elves known as the Brotherhood of the Dark Path – were infiltrating south under the cover of heavy rains and snow flurries. Trackers had reported few signs, but hearsay and the insistence of farmers that they had seen companies of dark-clad warriors hurrying south had prompted the Baron to order the patrol.

      Locklear knew as well as the men garrisoned there that the chance of any activity along the small passes over the mountains in late fall or early winter was unusual. While the freeze had just come to the foothills, the higher passes would already be thick with snow, then choked with mud should a brief thaw occur.

      Yet since the war known as the Great Uprising – the invasion of the Kingdom by the army of Murmandamus, the charismatic leader of the dark elves – ten years ago, any activity was to be investigated, and that order came directly from King Lyam.

      ‘Yes, must be a bit of a change from the Prince’s court, squire,’ prodded the sergeant. Locklear had looked the part of a Krondorian dandy – tall, slender, a finely garbed young man in his mid-twenties, affecting a moustache and long ringlets – when he reached Tyr-Sog. Locklear thought the moustache and fine clothing made him look older, but if anything the impact was the opposite of his desired intent.

      Locklear had enough of the sergeant’s playful baiting, and observed, ‘Still, it’s warmer than I remember the other side of the mountains being.’

      ‘Other side, sir?’ asked the sergeant.

      ‘The Northlands,’ said Locklear. ‘Even in the spring and summer the nights are cold.’

      The sergeant looked askance at the young man. ‘You’ve been there, squire?’ Few men who were not renegades or weapons runners had visited the Northlands and lived to return to the Kingdom.

      ‘With the Prince,’ replied Locklear. ‘I was with him at Armengar and Highcastle.’

      The sergeant fell silent and looked ahead. The soldiers nearest Locklear exchanged glances and nods. One whispered to the man behind him. No soldier living in the north hadn’t heard of the fall of Armengar before the hosts of Murmandamus, the powerful moredhel leader who had destroyed the human city in the Northlands and then had invaded the Kingdom. Only his defeat at Sethanon, ten years before, had kept his army of dark elves, trolls, goblins and giants from rending the Kingdom.

      The survivors of Armengar had come to live in Yabon, not far from Tyr-Sog, and the telling of the great battle and the flight of the survivors, as well as the part played by Prince Arutha and his companions, had grown in the telling. Any man who had served with Prince Arutha and Guy du Bas-Tyra could only be judged a hero. With a reappraising glance at the young man, the sergeant kept his silence.

      Locklear’s amusement at shutting up the voluble sergeant was shortlived, as the snow started to freshen, blowing harder by the minute. He might have gained enough stature with the garrison to be