Crimson Shadow, The - R. A. Salvatore Page 0,1

is older than Gascony and where loyalty runs as deep as blood.

That was three hundred years ago.

There arose in Avon, in Carlisle on the River Stratton, a wizard-king of great power who would see all the islands under his rule. Greensparrow was his name, is his name, a fierce man of high ambition and evil means. And evil was the pact that Greensparrow signed with Cresis who ruled the cyclopians, appointing Cresis as his first duke and bringing the warlike one-eyes into Greensparrow’s army. Avon became his in a fortnight, all opposition crushed, and then did he turn his sights on Eriador. His armies fared no better than the barbarians, than the cyclopians, than the Gascons.

But then there swept across Eriador a darkness that no sword could cut, that no courage could chase away: a plague that whispers hinted was inspired by black sorcery. None in Avon felt its ravages, but in all of free Eriador, mainland and islands, two of every three perished, and two of every three who lived were rendered too weak to do battle.

Thus did Greensparrow gain his rule, imposing a truce that gave unto him all the lands north of the Iron Cross. He appointed his eighth duke in the mining city of Montfort, which had been called Caer MacDonald, in honor of the Unifier.

Dark times there were in Eriador; the Fairborn retreated and the dwarves were enslaved.

That was twenty years ago. That was when Luthien Bedwyr was born.

This is his tale.

CHAPTER 1

ETHAN’S DOUBTS

ETHAN BEDWYR, eldest son of the Eorl of Bedwydrin, stood tall on the balcony of the great house in Dun Varna, watching as the two-masted, black-sailed ship lazily glided into the harbor. The proud man wore a frown even before the expected standard, crossed open palms above a bloodshot eye, came into view. Only ships of the king or the barbarians to the northeast would sail openly upon the dark and cold waters of the Dorsal Sea, so named for the eerie black fins of the flesh-eating whales that roamed the waters in ravenous packs, and barbarians did not sail alone.

A second standard—a strong arm, bent at the elbow and holding a miner’s pick—soon appeared.

“Visitors?” came a question from behind.

Recognizing the voice as his father’s, Ethan did not turn. “Flying the duke of Montfort’s pennant,” he answered, and his disdain was obvious.

Gahris Bedwyr moved to the balcony beside his son and Ethan winced when he looked upon the man, who appeared proud and strong, as Ethan distantly remembered him. With the light of the rising sun in his face, Gahris’s cinnamon eyes shone brightly, and the stiff ocean breeze blew his thick shock of silvery white hair back from his ruddy, creased face, a face that had weathered under the sun during countless hours in small fishing craft out on the dangerous Dorsal. Gahris was as tall as Ethan, and that was taller than most men on Isle Bedwydrin, who in turn were taller than most other men of the kingdom. His shoulders remained broader than his belly, and his arms were corded from a youth spent in tireless work.

But as the black-sailed ship drifted closer to the docks, the coarse shouts of the brutish cyclopian crew urging the islanders into subservient action, Gahris’s eyes betrayed his apparent stature.

Ethan turned his gaze back to the harbor, having no desire to look upon his broken father.

“It is the duke’s cousin, I believe,” Gahris remarked. “I had heard that he was touring the northern isles on holiday. Ah well, we must see to his pleasures.” Gahris turned as if to leave, then stopped, seeing that stubborn Ethan had not loosed his grip on the balcony rail.

“Will you fight in the arena for the pleasure of our guest?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Only if the duke’s cousin is my opponent,” Ethan replied in all seriousness, “and the fight is to the death.”

“You must learn to accept what is,” Gahris Bedwyr chided.

Ethan turned an angry gaze on him, a look that might have been Gahris’s own a quarter of a century before, before independent Eriador had fallen under the iron rule of King Greensparrow of Avon. It took the elder Bedwyr a long moment to compose himself, to remind himself of all that he and his people stood to lose. Things were not so bad for the folk of Bedwydrin, or for those on any of the isles. Greensparrow was mostly concerned with those lands in Avon proper, south of the mountains called the Iron