accounts a gruff bear of a man, always lumbering into fray after fray and never backing down from a fight. He was a man as good as his word, as many folk learned to their delight-and some learned to their cost. Phaldinor the Bear used the coins spun into his hands by a fleet of merchant ships plying the Sea of Fallen Stars to sponsor armed expeditions into the peaks around the High Dale, to dig mines under the very jaws and talons of the beasts that made the Stormfangs-still dangerous today-so perilous then. Those mines brought back gold and silver enough to make the Uskevren the owners of much of Selgaunt, and enable Phaldinor to build himself a veritable palace. A straightforward man, he named it for its appearance: Blackturrets.
Thamalon had been born in that sprawling, indefensible mansion of orchards and gardens and watched Selgaunt gnaw away at field after copse after bower of its grounds, filling family coffers but searing away small corners of his heart with every felling and building. Wherefore his wildness had begun, a madness of youthful rebellion, which he'd fallen out of, shaken and sobered, bare months before the flames had claimed the grand new home of the Uskevren.
Prim, careful old Nelember had stepped into the chaos of Thamalon's heart and thoughts, and built a foundation of pride as carefully as any castle mason.
Pride in a family that was not without its faults. Phaldinor's first son, Thoebellon, was tall and strikingly handsome. In the words of Nelember, 'he looked more like a king than kings ever do.' He was also a hunter, wencher, and drunkard who squandered vast treasuries of family coins on dragon hunting, a sport at which the flower of the Uskevren was (luckily for him) an utter failure.
He hunted gentler prey with far more success, leaving a trail of outraged fathers and scandalized mothers clear across southern Sembia. That tactical error might well have hastened his doom.
Someone who was never found or even named stabbed Thoebellon in a forest one night whilst he was on a stag hunt, and his young son Aldimar became head of House Uskevren.
Aldimar was Thamalon's prim-lipped, disapproving father. His eyes were as hard and unyielding as two sword-points, and his tongue never spoke to wayward sons save with cold, biting contempt.
Nelember had seen Thamalon's hard face as they talked of his father and had fetched forth the chalice from its locked cabinet at the end of the room.
'Think of your father, and touch it,' the old man had commanded.
He'd never been allowed near the family heirloom that the servants called 'the Burning Cup' before. More out of curiosity than anything else, Thamalon touched it.
'Uncle,' the young man stammered, blinking, 'can you count coins at all?'
The great bear of a man belched, waved one blunt-fingered, hairy hand vaguely and rumbled, 'By the handful… why?'
'Uncle Roel,' Aldimar said in exasperation, 'this chest was full a tenday ago! Brim-laden with Chassabra's housekeeping money; the servants' pay for a year. Where is it now?'
Roel belched again, thunderously. 'Gone,' he admitted sadly.
'Gone where?'
The bearlike man lifted the goblet that was never far from his hand, pointed into its depths, then upended it toward Aldimar. Nothing ran out. It was empty.
Thamalon found himself back in the high gallery, young again and drenched in cold sweat, blinking at the chalice on the table in front of him instead of the empty depths of Roel's unsteadily dangled cup.
Nelember wordlessly handed him a tankard of something warm, wet, and steadying-pheasant broth-and offered the dry words, 'Rich fathers always have such easy choices to make, hmm?'
Thamalon stared up at his teacher, then back at the chalice. After a long, silent time, he mumbled, 'Just tell me; I'll hear and heed. I'd not touch that again.'
The old tutor smiled grimly and said, 'Think of it as truth, waiting at your elbow for whenever you disbelieve.'
Thamalon listened and learned. Aldimar had been a quiet, studious youth who let his boisterous, hard-riding uncles Roel and Tivamon run the affairs of the Uskevren-until Tivamon was killed in a tavern duel fighting half-a- dozen fellow drunkards, all of different families, and none of them 'noble.' The day after the crypt had been sealed on his casket, the hitherto-quiet Aldimar firmly set his Uncle Roel aside and assumed control of the family.
Aldimar had by then grown into a man both young and inexperienced but lettered and shrewd enough to run a family. All he dreaded was Roel's revenge, but the old bear snarled once or thrice then took happily to spending all his waking hours (than just half of them or so) at wenching, drinking, and falling drunkenly out of saddles as he rode from one Uskevren hunting lodge to another.
In the fullness of time, Aldimar took a wife, Balantra Toemalar, a stunningly beautiful, soft-spoken lass from a Saerlunan family of old and respected lineage but declining wealth. They had two sons, Perivel and Thamalon, before a third birthing killed her and what would have been a daughter. Thamalon remembered best her crooning songs, dark starshot eyes, and the long tumbling wildness of her hair.
The elder son, Perivel, was his father's favorite. He was a handsome, strapping youth every bit the horseman his Great-uncle Roel was, but with wits as sharp as Aldimar's own. In his brother's shadow, Thamalon became the quiet, studious watcher… and, after Nelember's teaching on the heels of his wild days, the family coin-counter. He had a horror of empty chests.
Under Aldimar, the Uskevren clan soared to new prosperity, outstripping even its former greatness. Aldimar took a second wife, and grew steadily more gaunt and short-tempered even as his influence made him the uncrowned ruler of Selgaunt. Perivel seriously contemplated conquering Battledale. This contentious realm northeast of Sembia proper was to be Perivel's own province, what he hoped would be the 'breadbasket to the realm,' as well as his own source of endless riches.
Then it all came crashing down. A dying pirate revealed Aldimar's dark secret. Behind all the lawful land deals and loans to shopkeepers and cart-merchants, the Uskevren wealth was based on piracy. Through Aldimar and the family fleet, the Uskevren bought ships for pirates, fenced their stolen goods, and in return prospered from smuggling and from pirate gold.
Like a pack of wolves swarming a falling stag, rival families rushed in for the kill. Old business foes like the Soargyl and Talendars and grasping new-coin climbers such as the families of Baerodreemer and Ithivisk hired wizards to uncover the truth. When Aldimar ignored their visits and failed to appear before the probiters they complained to, they met to plan war, hammered out an agreement, and forthwith attacked Stormweather Towers seeking to seize-or butcher-Aldimar.
Being an Uskevren, of course, he defied them.
With a flash and a roar that split the night, the gate guard and his hut cartwheeled up into the sky amid rolling blue flames.
'What by all the bright gods-?' Perivel shouted, springing up from his game of chethlachance with a violent surge that scattered the pieces across the board and sent old Nelember ducking hastily away from the swing of the heir's scabbarded sword.
'Unless I'm mistaken,' Perivel's father said quietly, standing like a dark statue by the windows, 'that will be our friends of House Soargyl and House Talendar, come to call on me, and in a mood to demonstrate that they've forgotten how to open gates.'
'Why, those beggars!' Perivel was almost speechless in fury, but not quite. A Sembian could give no higher insult than the word he'd chosen.
'Father,' Thamalon asked urgently, his book flung down and forgotten, 'what shall we do?'
Aldimar Uskevren shrugged, the weariness of the gesture leaving both his sons gaping at him in shock. 'What else?' he replied. 'Fight, and sell our lives dearly. If two of us fall, mind, the third must win free, to keep the Uskevren name alive for a day when revenge can be taken. I've no more the strength or the inclination for fleeing and dodging. Let it end for me here.'
He drew a wand from one sleeve and a long knife from the other and strode forward, never seeing the stunned looks his sons traded with each other behind his back.
A moment ago the brothers had been idling away an evening waiting for their father to confide in them the details of his latest schemes. They waited for him to tell them just how startlingly steep the bribes he was going to
