Jim walked through the empty great room, crossing before the massive fireplace. In ages past, this type of castle would house as many as a hundred members of a noble family, and retainers and their families, and on especially cold nights they could gather in this one room. He paused for a moment and considered the painful attention to detail undertaken by Macros the Black in constructing this place. Anyone exploring this near ruin would assume it had been built ages before its erection. Jim, not for the first time, counted the Black Sorcerer who built this place slightly mad.

As he mounted the stairs leading up to the one tower he knew to be occupied, he wondered how his great-grandfather would have viewed the current situation. By all reports of his nature, he would have been annoyed and amused by it, Jim concluded.

Pug had shamed the Prince of Krondor at that time, later King Patrick, disavowing his loyalty to the Kingdom of the Isles and virtually daring the Kingdom to assert its claim to control over the island duchy of Stardock, in the Vale of Dreams.

Jim recalled there was some issue with those running Stardock on Pug’s behalf at that time, as well. Whatever the causes, truly, Pug had withdrawn to this island with his family and retainers. He had also begun the Conclave of Shadows, the secret organization that had become a major part of Jim’s life, despite his wishing to have nothing to do with it at the outset.

Reaching the top landing, Jim paused, considering what he would report to Pug. Not only was he bringing intelligence of the most dire sort to the magician’s attention, he was about to make a choice.

The relationship between the Jamison family and the Conclave became strained when Jim’s grandfather had been summoned to the King’s court, eventually rising to the rank of Duke of Rillanon. Jim’s great-uncle Dashel had retired from public service, beginning the family’s merchant presence in Krondor.

At times during his grandfather’s administration of the capital city—and by extension the Kingdom itself—conflicts of interest had arisen between the Conclave and the Kingdom. James of Rillanon, like his grandfather before him, had been steadfast in his loyalty to the Kingdom of the Isles.

Jim reflected it might have been simpler for Jimmy the Hand—in those days the aims of the magicians of Stardock and the Kingdom were more or less in harmony. He wondered if his great-grandfather would have looked at this situation the same way Jim did.

Jim’s father, William Jamison, and his uncle Dasher had both died in border wars with Kesh when Jim was a boy, and his great-uncle Dashel had no surviving sons. By the time he was twenty years of age, James Dasher Jamison was the sole surviving heir to the family, and both his grandfather and great-uncle had marked him.