Luck in the Shadows

when the tide was turning Mindar fell to Araman's sword.
    For Honor's price is blood and steelfor churl and lord as well And generals often lead their men down to the gates of hell!
    Bold Amman, the victor now,
    lays his blade aside.
    From his wounds his life flows out just like the sea's great tide.
    The price of Honor paid in full with blood and steel and lives.
    On an empty plain by an empty shore
    the rightful victor dies.
    For Honor's price is blood and steelso harken well, my son. Honor's a damned expensive thing if you're dead when the battle's won!"
    "Well sung!" Seregil applauded. "With a good apprenticeship, you might make a passable bard yourself."
    "Me?" Alec said with an embarrassed grin. "I can imagine what Father would have said to that!"
    So can I , Seregil thought, having decided that the dead man must have been a pretty dour sort.
    They passed much of the afternoon ride trading songs. As soon as Seregil discovered how Alec blushed at the bawdy ones, he made a special point of including plenty of those.
    For two days they traveled hard and slept cold, but the time passed quickly. Seregil proved as fine a wayfaring companion as Alec could have hoped for, happy to fill the long hours of riding with tales, songs, and legends. The only subject he proved stubbornly reticent about was his own past, and Alec quickly learned not to press. Otherwise, however, they got on well enough. Alec was particularly intrigued by stories of life in the south.
    "You never finished telling me about why the Three Lands fight so often," he said, hoping for another story after a particularly long silence that afternoon.
    "I do tend to get sidetracked, don't I? What would you like to know?"
    "About that priest king and all, I guess. It used to be all one country, you said, but now they're three. What happened?"
    "Same thing that always happens when someone thinks someone else has more land and power than they do—there was a war.
    "About a thousand years ago, the various territories got restless under Hierophantic rule. Hoping to hold his people together, the Hierophant granted them dominion, dividing them up into pretty much what are now Skala, Mycena, and Plenimar. Each had its own regent, appointed by him, of course.
    "It was a logical split, geographically speaking, but unfortunately Plenimar got the short end of the stick. Skala controlled the sheltered plains below the Nimra Range. Mycena had fertile valleys and established outposts to the north. But Plenimar, earliest settled of the three, lay on a dry peninsula with diminishing resources.
    "To make matters worse, the first rumors of gold soon came back from the north and Mycena controlled the routes. What Plenimar did have, though, were warriors and ships, and it wasn't long before they decided to use them. Just two centuries after the division, they attacked Mycena and started a war that lasted seventeen years."
    "How long ago was this?"
    "Nearly eight hundred years. Plenimar probably would've won, too, if Aurлnen hadn't come into the fight in the last years."
    "The Aurлnfaie again!" Alec cried, delighted. "But why did they wait so long?"
    Seregil shrugged. "The doings of the Tirfaie were of little concern to Aurлnen. It was only when the fighting neared their own waters that they officially allied themselves with Skala and Mycena."
    Alec thought a moment. "But if the other countries had all the gold and land and everything, how come they weren't stronger than Plenimar?"
    "They should have been. The wizards of Skala were at the height of their powers then, too. Even the drysians were enlisted to the fight and, as I'm sure you can imagine, they are a force to be reckoned with when they want to be. Some old ballads speak of Plenimaran necromancers and armies of walking dead that could be driven back only by the strongest magicks. Whether or not these tales are true, it was the most terrible war ever fought."
    "And Plenimar didn't win?"
    "No, but they came close. In the spring of the fifteenth year of the war, Hierophant Estmar was killed; this sundered the Three Lands forever.
    "Luckily, the black ships of Aurлnen sailed through the Straits of Bal just after this and attacked at Benshal, while the Aurлnfaie army and their wizards joined the fighting at Cirna. Whether it was by magic or simply the force of fresh troops, the power of Plenimar was finally broken. At the Battle of Isil, Krycopt, the first Plenimaran ruler to call himself Overlord, was killed by the