Fire Sea (61 page)

Welcome to the magical realm of Thimhallan.

We know many of you already. You are “gamers” who have visited other worlds of sword and sorcery with us before, and we're pleased that you have decided to join us again.

There are, however, many of you interested in Thimhallan who have never participated in role-playing games. Perhaps you thought they were too difficult or complicated to learn. Perhaps you were intimidated by massive, expensive volumes of rules filled with incomprehensible numbers and strange abbreviations.

We want you to join us in the fun and excitement we experience visiting Thimhallan in our imaginations. Therefore we are pleased to present a complete role-playing game and source book in an affordable, entertaining format. Everything you need to play is included in this one volume—game rules, statistics, character and monster descriptions, suggested scenarios—presented in the form of interesting and revealing reports on Thimhallan compiled by the
Duuk-tsarith
to be given to Major James Boris. We have devised a very simple system for role-playing that you can learn easily.

There may be those of you who are not interested in role-playing but would simply like to have more information about the world and its people. You will find all that in this volume, without being distracted by a lot of rules. Included are a History of the World, a description of Thimhallan written by a young man who survived many wild adventures in the various parts of the realm, descriptions of the wondrous creatures that inhabit Thimhallan, information on the major and minor characters, and more.

Whether you journey by yourself or in the company of friends, we hope you enjoy your visit to the magical realm of Thimhallan. May your trip be an adventurous one!

Tracy Raye Hickman
Margaret Weis

The scent of roses hung heavily in the air. A nightingale trilled unseen in the fragrant shadows. Cool water fell from the marble hands of a delicate maiden, spilling into a large conch shell at her feet. The multicolored tiles, laid out in fantastic mosaics, sparkled like jewels in the twilight. But Quar took pleasure in none of this beauty. The God sat upon the tiled rim of a fountain's basin, absently tearing apart a gardenia, moodily tossing the waxy, white petals into the rippling water.

The luck of Sul, that's what it was. The luck of Sul, which was no luck at all. The luck of Sul had taken those damned and blasted priests of Promenthas's into the way of a few dozen of Quar's faithful. At least he assumed they had been his faithful. The God had not realized his followers had grown quite that fanatical. Now Promenthas was angry and not only angry, suspicious as well. Quar was not prepared for this. He had intended to deal with Promenthas, of course, but further— much further—down the long and twisting road of his scheming.

And there was Akhran to consider. He would act swiftly to take advantage of the incident. The Wandering God was undoubtedly persuading Promenthas to some sort of action. Not that Promenthas could do much. His followers had all died on the swords of the righteous. Hadn't they? Quar made a mental note to check. But now that Promenthas was alerted, he would be watchful, wary. Quar would have to move faster than he'd anticipated.

Akhran the Meddler. He was the scorpion in Quar's bed sheets, the
qarakurt
in Quar's boot. Just days ago Quar had received a report that two tribes of Akhran's followers had banded together in the Pagrah desert. Relatively few in number compared to Quar's mighty armies, these nomads were more of a nuisance than a

direct threat. But Quar had no time for nuisances right now.

The one factor on which Quar had counted in his design to overthrow Akhran was the constant feuding and strife among the Wandering God's followers. The old axiom: divide and conquer. Who would have imagined that this Wandering God, who seemingly cared for nothing except his horse, would have been observant enough to detect Quar's plotting and move swiftly to forestall it?

“It was my fault. I concentrated on the other Gods of Sardish Jardan. I saw them as the threat. Now Mimrim of the Ravenchai, feeling herself weakening, hides on her cloud-covered mountain. Uevin of the Bas takes refuge behind his politics and siege machines, never realizing that his foundation is being undermined and soon he will fall through the cracks. But you, Horse God. I underestimated you. In looking west and south, I turned my back upon the east. It will not happen again.”

The vase, once broken, cannot be mended with tears, Quar reminded himself severely. You have realized your mistake, now you must act to remedy it. There is only one way Akhran could have united his feuding tribes—through the intervention of his immortals. There were reports of Akhran's ‘efreets whipping up fearsome desert storms. Apparently the unleashing of the mighty power of the djinn was enough to frighten those thick-headed nomads—

Quar paused, absently crushing the last blossoms of the ravaged gardenia in his hand.

The djinn. Why, that was his answer.

We do not beat the whipped dog…. Are you going to lie down on your master's grave and die?

Crouched in his dark cell, Achmed repeated the Amir's words to himself. It was true. Everything the Amir said was true!

“How long have I been in prison? Two weeks? Two months?” Despairing, Achmed shook his head. “Is it morning or night?” He had no idea. “Have I been fed today, or was that yesterday's meal I remember eating? I no longer hear the screams. I no longer smell the stench!”

Achmed clutched at his head, cowering in fear. He recalled hearing of a punishment that deprived a man of his five senses. First the hands were cut off, to take away the sense of touch. Then the eyes were gouged out, the tongue ripped from the mouth, the nose cut off, the ears torn from the head. This place was his executioner! The death he was dying was more ghastly than any torture. Misery screamed at him, but he had lost the ears to hear it. He had long ago ceased being bothered by the prison smell, and now he knew it was because the foul stench was his own. In horror, he realized he was growing to relish the guards’ beatings. The pain made him feel alive….

Panic-stricken, Achmed leaped to his feet and hurled himself at the wooden door, beating it with his fists and

pleading to be let out. The only response was a shouted curse from another cell, the debtor having been rudely awakened from a nap. No guards came. They were used to such disturbances. Sliding down the doorway, Achmed slumped to the floor. In his half-crazed state, he fell into a stupor.

He saw himself lying on a shallow, unmarked grave, hastily dug in the sand. A terrible wind came up, blowing the sand away, threatening to expose the body. A wave of revulsion and fear swept over Achmed. He couldn't bear to see the corpse, decaying, rotting. Desperately, he shoveled the sand back over the body, scooping it up in handfuls and tossing it onto the grave. But every time he lifted a handful, the wind caught it and blew it back into his face, stinging his eyes, choking him. He kept working frantically, but the wind was relentless. Slowly, the face of the corpse emerged—a man's face, the withered flesh covered by a woman's silken veil….

The scraping sound of the wooden bar being lifted from the door jolted Achmed out of his dream. The shuffling footsteps of prisoners being herded outside and the distant cries of women and children told the young man that it was visiting time.

Slowly Achmed rose to his feet, his decision made.

The following dawn the sun's first rays skimmed across the desert, crept through the holes in Majiid's tent, bringing silence with them. The arguing ceased. Zohra and Mathew glanced at each other. Her eyes were shadowed and red-rimmed from lack of sleep and the concentration she had devoted to her work. Mathew knew his must look the same or perhaps worse.

The silence of the morning was suddenly broken by the sound of feet crunching over sand. They heard the guards outside scramble to their feet, the sound of footsteps draw nearer. Both Mathew and Zohra were ready, each had been ready for over an hour now, ever since first light. Zohra was clad in the women's clothes Mathew had brought her. They were not the fine silk she was accustomed to wearing, only a simple
chador
of white cotton that had been worn by the second wife in a poor man's household. Its simplicity became her, enhancing the newfound gravity of bearing. A plain white mantle covered her head and face, shoulders and hands. Held tightly in her hands, hidden by the folds of her veil, were several pieces of carefully rolled-up goatskin.

Mathew was dressed in the black robes he had acquired in Castle Zhakrin. Since he was able to come and go freely, he had left the tent in the middle of the night and searched the camp in the moonlit darkness until he found the camels they had ridden. Their baggage had been removed from the beasts, thrown down, and left to lie in the sand as though cursed. Mathew could have wished the robes—retrieved by Auda from their campsite on the shores of the Kurdin Sea—cleaner and less worse for wear, but he hoped that even stained and wrinkled they must still look impressive to these people who had never seen sorcerer's garb before.

Stealing back to the tent once he had changed his

clothes, Mathew noted the figure of the Black Paladin sitting unmoving before Khardan's tent. The slender white hand, shining in the moonlight as if it had some kind of light of its own, beckoned to him. Mathew hesitated, casting a worried glance at the watchful guards. Auda beckoned again, more insistently, and Mathew reluctantly approached him.

“Do not worry, Blossom,” the man said easily, “they will not prevent us from speaking. After all, I am a guest and you are insane.”

“What do you want?” Mathew whispered, squirming beneath the scrutiny of the flat, dispassionate eyes.

Auda's hand caught hold of the hem of Mathew's black robes, rubbing the velvet between his fingers. “You are planning something.”

“Yes,” said Mathew uncomfortably, with another glance at the guards.

“That is good, Blossom,” said Auda softly, slowly twisting the black cloth. “You are an ingenious and resourceful young man. Your life was obviously spared for a purpose. I will be watching and waiting. You may count upon me.”

He released the cloth from his grasp, smiled, and settled back comfortably. Mathew left, returning to Zohra's tent, uncertain whether to feel relieved or more worried.