The Fireseed Wars

Selestros-Son of former Great King Kaiphranos of Hos-Harphax.

Sopharar-Great King of Hos-Zygros.

Theovacar-King of Grefftscharr.

Varrack-Prince of Thagnor.

PROLOGUE

A northwestern gale roared through Greffa, rattling shutters and howling through the streets. Tortha Karf was happy their boat had reached port in Greffa City before the storm struck, rather than the morning after. During the sea voyage from Ulthor Port, he had heard tales from the crew about the Galfryth Sea's vicious storms, with their short steep waves and the eastern shore waiting close under your lee. Vargabar was the Home Time Line equivalent of Greffa City; on Europo-American, Great King Kalvan's home Subsector, it was called Chicago and nicknamed the "Windy City."

It had been centuries since Tortha had gone on a sea passage in as primitive a craft as the small trading schooner, appropriately named the Sea Dog. Nor was he relishing the return journey to Port Ulthor, the gathering point, where Great King Kalvan was retreating with his defeated army and hundreds of thousands of Hostigi refugees. Kalvan was at an impasse; he couldn't return to Hos-Hostigos where the Grand Host was laying waste to his former kingdom, nor could he go south without fighting his way through Styphon's House's power base in Hos-Ktemnos. Kalvan's only possible route was to the northwest, the Upper Middle Kingdoms, where he'd be as welcome as another northern blizzard.

Tortha, under his Aryan-Transpacific cover as Trader Tortha of Xiphlon, had been sent along with Prince Phrames to act as ambassadors at the Court of King Theovacar of Greffa City in order for Kalvan to obtain some reliable information on the political situation in the Upper Middle Kingdoms and, more specifically, on King Theovacar. Tneovacar was the most powerful of the Upper Middle Kingdom rulers and controlled over a third of the region. With Verkan Vail out of the picture from a bad chest wound and believed dead, Tortha was now Kalvan's only window into the Upper Middle Kingdoms.

Great King Kalvan didn't have a lot of choices facing him: play the part of a cornered rat in Ulthor, with his back to the Saltless Seas, make a suicidal attack on the Grand Host in a glorious attempt to reclaim Hos-Hostigos, or move his army and subjects into the Middle Kingdoms. Tortha knew that if he could figure that out so could just about everyone else in the Five Great Kingdoms. The real question was: Why was Styphon's House taking so long to strike at Kalvan's jugular?

Tortha decided that he was not going to solve this problem tonight so he wrapped himself tightly in dry sheepskins and let fatigue and First Level self-hypnosis put him to sleep in spite of the roaring wind and crashing roof tiles.

The next morning Tortha awoke to a mild headache and the howling wind. He used the bell pull to summon a servant and asked for some sassafras tea. When outtime he usually stayed with local medicinal remedies to keep in cover. Successful infiltration meant trying to become one of the local outtimers, not play-act; he'd learned that much from his two centuries of outtime enforcement in the Paratime Police. Later he would join Kostran Galth, head of the Greffan Study Team, and his lovely wife, Zinna, for first meal. They were the caretakers of the House of Verkan, a modest mansion in the suburbs of Greffa City, as well as Verkan's local commercial ventures.

The mansion was newly built; the Verkan Fireseed Works and Verkan's Hostigos'Trading Company had brought in so much profit over the past three years that Verkan had required quarters in a house and neighborhood befitting his new stature among the Greffan merchant magnates. It was a large stone house, very well built, designed by the best Greffan standards, but still a long way from providing what Home Time Liners considered acceptable comfort.

On the other hand, it contained the only collapsed-nickel cellar and transtemporal conveyer head in Greffa City. It was too bad that the Royal Foundry in Hostigos had been destroyed and the entire area was under Styphoni control, making it dangerous for him to be there. Otherwise, he could have used the Hostigos conveyer to paratemporally transpose back to Fifth Level Hostigos Equivalent and then flown to Fifth Level Greffa Equivalent (Tergostar), and from there been transposed back to Verkan's cellar. That way Tortha could have made the entire journey in less than half a day, instead of wasting a moon on horseback riding and-worst of all-a sea journey with stops at every puddle and port. Instead he could have spent time with Chief Verkan and Dalla, caught up on all the latest Opposition Party shenanigans, and still would have had time to check out his Fifth Level estate and rabbit nursery.

However, traveling by boat had given him a firsthand view of the difficulties and challenges that Kalvan was facing, along with half a million refugees. Tortha didn't envy his lot-no, not even one little bit.