The Time of SItara

PROLOGUE

The land of Sitara had been the blessed jewel of the ancient gods for centuries. Divinely patronised and guided it grew in prosperity and happiness- Three great nations ruled by a line of kings descended from the gods themselves. However, men touched by the blood of the gods are still only men, and nothing will go well for long before some men feel they are more blessed than others. Sitara dissolved into civil war. The divine royal house of Arth was all but destroyed and the great land of Sitara splintered into smaller kingdoms that soon began fighting each other. The laws, magic and government of Sitara faded from the memory of its war ravaged people. It passed into myth and legend. And their greatest weapon and treasure, the true secret of their success, the flame of their peoples hope was forgotten, awaiting the return of the true kings of the stars.
The greater continent of Sitara had changed dramatically over the thousand years after the war. Not only had the invisible borders devised by men twisted and re-positioned themselves, but the land itself had changed. Coastline had submerged, new islands were created and mountains were thrust up towards the ever watchful eye of the green Sitara sky. The ancient kingdoms of Samarth, Tur Kirrin and Adila passed into myth and legend, and their ancient lines of kings disappeared into obscurity. Khalikha and Isiijekh, the God and Goddess of the beginning and the end hid in their homes in the sky. Their children, numerous and quarrelsome, reigned over humans, animals and amars, indulging in war after war to satisfy their sibling animosity.
So one thousand years after the fall of the mighty kingdom of Samarth and her sister kingdoms of Tur Kirrin and Adila, the continent of Sitara had splintered into five smaller states and the divine blood that flowed in their royal houses disappeared into the dust of oblivion.



One Thousand Years Later

One thousand years later, there was movement in the middle of Uth-Vardentull, now called the Isle of Nothing. It was here; a thousand years ago the last king of Samarth had been killed. A mischievous wind began blowing, and in its wake was revealed the last true artefact of the long forgotten kingdoms. A plush velvet padded chair- it kept solitary vigil from the top of a large moss covered rock. No one ever passed through this particular part of the deserted island, but if they had they would have stopped and goggled at the sight. The chair was so strange that one may just have missed the old man who sat hunched amongst its purple cushions. He wasn’t really much of a sight, a toothless old man in a brown sack with a stick, but those people, if they had ever made it to this part of the island would have been deeply moved by the look of determination on his face. It is hard to imagine being determined about a stick and a chair, no matter how nice the chair is, but this man had a purpose. He was a watchdog, left behind by an ancient police force, to wait for the birth of a catharsis. And it is on the day that his wait finally ended that this story begins. The old man left his chair for the first time in seven hundred years and began to walk slowly toward civilisation.

The capital of Isharth was the lively city of Athakhaan, and two days into the old mans journey it witnessed the birth of a new and rather unimportant prince. The gluttonous and self-indulgent king of Isharth had numerous wives, and a son born of a lesser queen was rarely regarded as something worth getting excited about. Worse, the lesser queen in question was Ithaca, a vaguely noble girl whose bloodline was cluttered and unclear and whose sea blue eyes were completely vacant. The day was warm and the delivery difficult and Ithaca endured both the heat and the pain without expression. She struggled with the contractions, and a few moments after giving birth she died as quietly as she had lived. The child however was a different matter.

The old man trekked across the island and with the same calmness trekked across the sea. He reached the northern shores of Isharth, after a brief stop at the Frigga Islands, and found himself in the newly destroyed fortified city of Lytalia. Lytalia had been rebuilt and destroyed numerous times, because it was very susceptible to pirate raids. In fact she was raided so often that she had stopped functioning as a trading port centuries ago. There were no merchants in this part of Isharth; there were no tourists either, because they all went to the port of Wardhak three kilometres down the coast, but the city port of Lytalia was rebuilt every time it was destroyed. The old man, who we shall call TOM, reached its harbours after a particularly successful pirate raid and watched its rebuilding in a wise stupor. He didn’t offer the obvious advice to the bedraggled Lytalians, because TOM was a man who knew a good curse when he saw one. The Lytalians were doomed to rebuild their city and watch it be destroyed until someone somewhere in the endless bureaucracy of Isharth surveyed the area and told them to move the hell on out. He knew that common sense would not prevail over the glitter over of a notarised document, so he held his tongue and moved on. It had taken him 10 years of steady walking to reach Lytalia; another three days brought him to the wealthy town of Cromagna. Cromagna was an immense glowing point of humanity. It sprawled endlessly around the palace of Luskara Samitha Derish, and extended for kilometres in every direction. Cromagna was the city of the rich and wealthy. There was no place for the poor. The rich were not to be troubled by the plight of the poor, and the result was a city eerily free of the downtrodden. The wide tree lined boulevards were occupied by impressive large white buildings and their purpose was proclaimed by thick golden letters painted on the front. Cromagnians used the elegant curving script of ancient Sitara (well actually not so ancient, but it wouldn’t do to admit it), and because it looked so very grand on their white buildings their names tended to be much longer than necessary. For instance, the library was known as the “Great Hall Of Numerous Sheaf’s Of Paper Bound Together And Stacked On Shelves” and so on. The gates of the massive white city were guarded by tall Amars called Lambais