I'd like to thank Mary Kittredge, Mark J. McGarry, and most particularly Harry F. Leonard, all of whom helped to make this a better book than it otherwise would have been. This is both my fourth book and the fourth time I've thanked all of them in print; that isn't coincidental.
I'd be more than a little remiss if I didn't also thank my agent, Richard Curtis; my editor, Sheila Gilbert, for her advice, support, and patience; my favorite policeman, Officer William T. Badger, NHPD/VSU, for creating the quiet; and Felicia, for the usual—and more.
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
—Niccolò Machiavelli
It had long since ceased being a game. Friends didn't really die in a game.
But . . . it had been just a game, years before. Professor Arthur Simpson Deighton was the gamemaster. Karl Cullinane, Jason Parker, James Michael Finnegan, Doria Perlstein, Walter Slovotsky, Andrea Andropolous, and Lou Riccetti had sat down for an evening of fantasy gaming. The game suddenly, without warning, became real: James Michael became Ahira Bandylegs, a powerful dwarf; skinny Karl Cullinane turned into Barak, a massive warrior; Lou Riccetti became Aristobulus, wielder of powerful magicks; Andrea became Lotana, novice wizard.
It had become real, every bit as real as the pain Jason Parker felt in his last moments kicking on the end of a bloody spear, every bit as real as Ahira's fiery death, and his resurrection by the Matriarch of the Healing Hand Society.
But there was a price to be paid for that resurrection: Karl and the others promised to fight to end slavery. They declared war on the Pandathaway-based Slavers' Guild, the dealers in human flesh who traveled across the Eren regions, securing and selling their cargo.
Attacking the slavers was one thing—but what to do with the freed slaves? Some could be sent home, but some had no home to go back to. That was easily solved: They built Home, a new kind of society for the world they found themselves in.
Aeia Eriksen did have a home to go back to, a village in Melawei. While returning her there, Karl discovered evidence that Professor Deighton was actually the almost legendary wizard Arta Myrdhyn, who had left a magical sword in a cave, clutched in fingers of light, waiting.
Waiting for whom? For Karl's son, it seemed; Deighton/Arta Myrdhyn had plans for Karl's son. . . .
Not my son, Karl said. He left the sword of Arta Myrdhyn in Melawei and returned Home, continuing to venture out and attack Slavers' Guild caravans wherever they could be found.
It had long since ceased being a game.
A revolution is never a game; it is, in more senses than one, a bloody mess.