Chapter 1

The rat peeked out at the quiet street, visibly weighing its chances. A weak fire spell roared from inside the building convincing it to scurry for freedom. Halfway across the street the small rodent paused... nose in the air, reconsidering. Too late. My bronze dart caught it in its midsection, tumbling it end over end towards the far side of the street, where it fell with a small plunk into the canal.

"Blast!" I cursed, "Lost another arrow! Not to mention the five coins for the rat!"

I removed another slender dart from the sheath lying atop a canvas bag half full of dead rats.

"This is no work for a warrior!" I muttered slumping back down against the doorway to the granary.

"You call this work?" A youthful voice boomed down at me... I moved aside slightly to hide the bag of rat corpses. I recognized the voice of course, and knew it was time again for my weekly "you can do better than this, Gareth" lecture. When I finally looked up into the face of my friend Blaster, I knew that he hadn't missed the significance of the bloody bag. My face grew red with embarrassment.

"Yeah, work is work," I replied, scarcely louder than before. "Hard enough to get a decent job these days."

When I first met him, he was just a skinny kid arguing with some street toughs. He insisted that they call him "The Blaster", as he had just been accepted into the Poet's Guild and had big plans for his future. They had another name for him, not nearly so nice. I don't know if their slander against his mother was true or not, but he did have the look of a street kid himself. The fact that a Guild accepted him was enough to make me side with him. I unsheathed my axe and stood behind him, easily twice his size in my armor. The street toughs thought that it was a really good time to go fishing. Or anything that took them far away. Quickly.

He never told me his real name and I never asked. I told him about my past, guarding caravans for over twenty years, before finally giving in to the lure of magic to be found in the Kingdom. I was accepted into the Warrior's guild immediately. Maybe Taebek liked me... I told people that he must have thought I was so old I might die before the regular initiation was over. Still, for all my greater years, I wasn't much further along in my training than Blaster was in his. He didn't talk about his past, but he chattered endlessly about his plans. He promised that he was going to be a powerful Poet, healer and master of animal magics. I got the impression that I was the first person to ever listen to him, let alone believe him. Still, it seemed like such hard work... learning new spells and mastering new weapons. Stuff we never would do guarding caravans. Each time I learned a new skill, Blaster and I would celebrate, at first over a few roasted birds I bought... later, as he outstripped me in talent he started springing for full banquets to celebrate. Though we joined the Phoenix Clan together, we really had little in common in those days. But we were friends and we died more than once for each other. Thank the Gods that Resurrection spell worked right! Not like it is today.