The Far Kingdoms by Allan Cole

Author:Allan Cole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adventure, magic, witches, demons, battles, sailing ships, monsters, wizard, spells, black magic, giants, voyage, armies
Publisher: Allan Cole

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE SECOND EXPEDITION

It is no boast that the funeral for Paphos Karima Antero was one of the largest in our city's history. So many clamored to attend the magistrates ordered the Great Amphitheater opened for the viewing of the pyre. Then all Orissa turned out for the long procession down river to the Groves of the Wayfarers, where we made sacrifice to Te-Date and I scattered my father's ashes to the winds.

Everyone, myself included, was surprised at just how popular a figure my father was. He was by nature a quiet man who shunned honors and large company. But as I mentioned earlier in this journal, he had an uncanny ability to sniff out a deserving man's misfortune, and do his utmost to ease that man's pain. He also had a way of conducting his business, so when he came the better of a bargain, he also did not win his opponent's ire. That his great popularity had never evinced itself publicly, however, I can only lay at the feet of the Evocators, and the wrong they did Halab; another part of the silent price my family paid for that wrong. Now, however, with my victory so recent, no one feared to display their affection. This time the fear was entirely on the other side, for the panoply of the funeral echoed long after the breeze carried away the last of my father's ashes. Powerful men began striking new bargains, seeking new alliances; the dissension carried into the ranks of the Evocators themselves.

My father's funeral, with all the weeping, hair-tearing and pompous speeches, was an important sideshow to the intense debate that gripped Orissa. The focus of that debate was the second expedition... and Janos Greycloak. None of us realized how great an impact the Far Kingdoms had on our lives. Suddenly all the old ways had been called into question. People from the highest on high to the meanest slave believed they deserved a stake in what was to come. All of them wanted change, and wanted it now. For the common man and woman; for tinkerer, soldier and slave; for the young and adventurous, or for just the far-thinking; Janos became the standard bearer.

Greycloak shone under the intense light of his sudden popularity. He attended endless banquets in his honor and then gathered up the rich food and drink left over and distributed them to the poor in the streets. He told the tale of our journey again and again in settings from luxurious villas to impromptu storytellings in riverfront slum lots. Each time he told it, the tale became fresher and his emotions never played false or stale when he came to the moment when we saw that black-fisted mountain range. Women accosted him on the street and begged to let them bear his child; mothers named their sons after him; fathers stood for hours on the chance he might pass and they could shake his hand. Every one of them had a question. "I've been

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