James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

"Winold was a crafty one, but he made one fatal error. He arranged a border atrocity, sending a large complement of soldiers to attack an isolated, small village in southern Ungardt, then arranged it to look like the leader of the western nobles, Duke Tykan, was the one that ordered the attack. The attackers carried out their mission, and did manage to convince the Ungardt that it was Tykan who was responsible, but they didn't count on the Ungardt response. Instead of punishing just Tykan, the Ungardt invaded the entire kingdom of Draconia. That was the War of Seven Roses, and it lasted only six months. It ended with the Ungardt invaders taking King Dawon back to Dusgaard in chains, dragged by a horse the entire way. The stories say that he even managed to live long enough to get to Dusgaard, where he was stoned to death in a public square by children. Dawon's heir was Elon."

"Elon the Sunderer?" Tarrin asked.

"That's how he's known, yes," Jarax said with a smile. "Elon wasn't a very smart man. He relied on Winold's counsel, not realizing that Winold only cared about putting Tykan in his place. Tykan and the western nobles had fought well in the war, but the western lands had been relatively untouched. The Ungardt had invaded from the north and east, ravaging the eastern duchies on their way to Draconis. Winold convinced Elon to raise the taxes and thithes even more on the western nobles, to equalize the suffering, so Elon had been told.

"Needless to say, Tykan and the western nobles went up in flames. Tykan demanded an audience with the king, which was denied. Tykan knew that it was Winold behind all the scheming, so he decided that he had to talk to the King without Winold's oily voice there to cloud the issues. When he tried to get into the king's bedroom to talk to him personally, Winold had him thrown in the dungeon. The western nobles, loyal to Tykan, attacked Dracon Keep in a surprise attack and freed Duke Tykan. They were careful not to hurt anyone, but their goal of just freeing the Duke wasn't really noticed. Tykan fled back to his duchy with Winold's private army on his tail, then they barred themselves in Tykar's Hold and endured a month-long siege. The armies of the west rose up and chased out the invaders.

"That was when Elon made a fateful mistake. He declared Tykan an outlaw, and levied fines on all the nobles of the west that had participated in the routing of Winold's army, so steep that they would never be able to pay them. The western nobles, in an absolute rage over the continual injustice, simply seceeded from Draconia as a block. They decided that wise Tykan would be their king, and named their new kingdom after him. The nobles of the central duchies were suddenly caught between two nations, and they declared their allegiances in a random order that left pockets of one kingdom inside another.

"By then, Elon had died under mysterious circumstances, and with no heir, Winold assumed the throne. His hatred of Tykan had totally consumed him, so he raised an army to march into the rebelling western lands and kill anything that moved. The western lords, already mobilized, marched east and met the hastily assembled army at Long Staff River, and totally crushed them. Winold pulled back and regrouped as Tykan rallied for support from Ungardt and Sulasia, his bordering neighbors. The Ungardt were still in a tiff over the war, and the Sulasians recognized their independence but wouldn't form any sort of military alliance. "And that was how the war started. Tykan controlled the commerce coming in from the western harbors and ports, but Winold controlled the iron mines in the mountains around the Petal Lakes. The two kingdoms started a war that still hasn't ended, to this day. The lands between Draconia and Tykarthia, once fertile farmland, are nothing but a barren wasteland now, the grass trampled into mud by hundreds of battles and all the towns and keeps crushed by one side or the other. The border changed by the day at the beginning of the war, but as time went by and more and more was destroyed by the boots of soldiers, the wheels of siege engines, and by fire. They're more or less separated now, and there are few if any major battles, but not a day goes by when one baron or earl rides across that wasteland to raid on the border of the other. They say that there are enough bones littering Elon's Waste to make a mountain."

"Wouldn't it have grown back by now?" Tiella asked.

"Yes, it has, but it's still called a wasteland because nobody can live there," Jarax replied. "Even the rudest hut is burned and all its inhabitants killed, because there are raiders from both sides prowling the no-man's land constantly. That brutal practice has actually helped to keep the two kingdoms separate."

"I'm glad I don't live there," Walten said, shuddering.

"It's an unhappy place, all right," he said. "I've been there a few times. Children are taught that the people on the other side of the border are murderous animals and have to be completely exterminated. They live in cities behind walls, and the people out on the farms jump at every shadow. The funny thing is, they both worship the same God. They're the same people, but they're too busy hating each other to notice it."

"Eww," Tiella sounded. "I'm glad I don't live there too."

"Why does it go on?" Tarrin asked.

"Who knows?" Jarax shrugged. "I guess because by now, there's nothing left but hate. The minds of fanatics are hard to fathom. You'd be better off trying to walk to the sun." He scratched at his beard absently. "Now that we got the unpleasant story out of the way, how would you like to hear about the Islands of Amazar?"

"Where?" Tiella asked.

There was a gleam in Jarax's eye. "A wondrous place that I myself have visited. A place of women, where women rule, women fight, and women do all the things that men do here, and men are the property of the women."

"There's no such place," Walten scoffed. "My father told me that the tales about Amazar are a bunch of baloo. There's no Amazar, no Sha'Kari, and there's no such things as dragons."

"Sha'Kari, I don't know about," Jarax admitted, "but Amazar is a real enough place, thousands of leagues to the south of Shace. Amazar is actually a series of islands off the coast of the continent of Sharadar, home of that wondrous and ancient land of magic. The Wikuni visit it often, because the furs and silk the Amazons make are in high demand, and they are the only ones that go to the islands. I was there myself, so I know."

"If they don't let humans go there, how did you get there?" Tiella asked, a bit accusingly.

"Ah, that's a long tale," he said. "Let's just say that I was a young man with a wanderlust. It's not that humans aren't allowed. Women are free to come and go as they will, but any man that sets foot on the lands of Amazar becomes a woman's property, and he's not allowed to leave. I happened to Amazar quite by accident, and spent nearly a year there, owned by a tall, regal lady named Sulina Dar. She was quite a woman," he said, his eyes distant. Then he cleared his throat and continued. "I decided that being a slave wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and snuck onto a Wikuni galleon and returned to Sennadar. I even have something to remember it by," he said. He rolled up the sleeve of his tunic, displaying a strange tatoo. "This was the mark of my mistress," he told them. "That's how they know who owns which man."

"What happens when he's sold?" Tarrin asked.

"He's tatooed again underneath the first one. Some men have tatoos all the way down one arm and halfway down the other, but they're usually older men. Being sold too often hurts a man's reputation."

"Reputation?" Walten asked. "How can a slave have a reputation?"

"It's slavery, yes, but it's almost an institution now," he said. "Full-blooded Amazon men may be owned, but they're not exactly slaves either. They have to do what the woman tells them to do, but there's a certain amount of leeway in the matter. It's very difficult to explain."