Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series (86 page)

Within two years the Alshari coastal lords were at the point of rebellion, and Komentava, now aged, was forced to negotiate a peace before civil war erupted.  The Sea Lords refused to acknowledge the lordships of the Alshari, only grudgingly dealing with the Imperial Consul.  When the Sea Lords remained intractable and promised even more taxes for use of their ports and ships, markets and warehouses, Komentava lost control of the interior.  The Alshari rebelled.

Though not a martial people, the Alshari natives and the lords of the agricultural estates met at Falas and declared themselves Coastlords, in defiance of the Sea Lords.  Taking the anchor - a Sea Lord icon of the Fairtrader, remade to represent their resilience and resistance - as their symbol, the Coastlords armed themselves with swords and spears, making armor of leather and iron.  They fortified strongholds deep inland, on defensible areas, with the assistance of the magi.  Though they did not attack the Sea Lords, they spoke openly of their defiance . . . and refused to send their produce to their markets.  Neither food nor the wine they had grown to love for its abundance and price were kept from the Great Bay.

Though the interdiction was irritating to the Sea Lords, it was an inconvenience at most.  The busy ports of Enultramar were laden with supplies from Farise and beyond, and they did not suffer.  But they were angered at the arrogance of the Coastlords.  They considered themselves apart and superior over the Alshari and resented the interdiction.  When a drunken fight resulted in bloodshed at Arlen’s Landing, the Sea Lords of House Aslus vowed to destroy the coastal Lord of Oxbows.  The first Alshari War began.

A series of brutal raids upriver by the Sea Lords’ fleets recalled their days of being corsairs, generations before, and at first they were very successful.  All those halls within reach of their river bases were raided and razed.  For a year the Sea Lords terrorized the Alshari of the Lower Mandros mercilessly.

But the magelords of Alshar, with the help of the clergy of the Imperial gods and the secular lords, began to counter the attacks of the Sea Lords with equal ferocity.  For two more years the Alshari struggled with the Sea Lords until they won the right to establish their own ports, and the lordships of their aristocracy respected.  Though Komentava died before the final agreement was reached at Falas, his deputy and eventual replacement, the seamage Salapara, oversaw the Concord of Alshar.  Ever after the Lord of the Waves was accounted the master of Enultramar, and the Count of Falas was known as the Lord of the Fields, presumably co-equal authorities within their regions.

The uneasy truce became the basis for a cooperative effort between the Sea Lords and the Coastlords through the auspices of the Count of Falas, Lord Salapara.  During this period, he quietly encouraged the Coastlords to continue to improve their fortifications, as he was worried about news from the east.  Many small castles and strongholds were built across the coastlands, smaller than the Sea Lords’ towers but better defended and more sophisticated in design.  Many monasteries and abbeys were also established, as the Count of Falas oversaw the development of the interior.

When next the Sea Lords rose against the Coastlords, stinging from a fresh defeat at sea, the Coastlords were far better equipped, trained, and prepared to respond.  After the first few raids against their villages and plantations the lords of the coast met the thrust of the Sea Lord’s expedition at the remote but extremely defensible castle at Rhemes.  Away from their ships and on dry land the Sea Lords were at a disadvantage against the landsmen.  Though they attacked they were unprepared for a lengthy siege so far from water.  When the self-styled Count of Rhemes led a counter attack from a postern in the night, the Sea Lord expedition was defeated, their leaders captured and held for ransom.

The Lords of Wave and Field met at Falas to arrange a truce and ransom at midsummer, and so belligerent were the threats of the Lord of the Field that the Lord of the Waves agreed to terms to end hostilities less they face attack in a weakened state.  The Sea Lords affirmed the rights of the Coastlords to run their own havens, permitted their wares at market without demands for tribute, and otherwise agreed to respect the Coastlords as equal in nobility, their gods equal in respect to the Storm King and his five daughters.

The Sea Lords faced a dilemma: their traditional warlike ways were severely restricted by the Magi, and while they profited greatly from trade (they still held four ships out of five in the Great Bay) they yearned to return to their piratical ways.  

No more were they the dominant force in Enultramar - the Alshari natives, led by the Magi and the secular lords, had learned the arts of war, and in their arrogance the Sea Lords failed to recognize their numerical superiority.  There were now more than twenty Coastlord fiefdoms surrounding them to the north, each with large and prosperous families, and many smaller estates were prepared for abundant growth after the war.  

The native Coastlords even had the temerity to build ships and contend against the Sea Lords in trade from their upriver havens, particularly the rich and prosperous Oxbow Viscounties.  As they had been originally settled by the Sea Lords and then abandoned when they proved unfit for farming, this trade was particularly insulting to them.

More, under the guidance of the magi certain monks and adventurers were exploring even deeper along the Upper Mandros in the Great Vale, traveling up the rivers after climbing the escarpment across the midst of Alshar responsible for the great falls.  The land beyond the escarpment proved as abundant as the coastal plain, though in different manner.  For beyond the falls and the fertile coastlands was a fertile country of rolling hills and green valleys, ideal for grain and fruit . . . and horses. The land was half again as large as the Coastlands of the Lower Mandros, and seemed ideally suited for grain crops in the magi’s estimation. 

The Great Vale had been known but ignored by the Sea Lords for over a century, for it was a land of meadows and plains, with the trees they coveted only abundant along the rivers or in forests along the ridges.  The magi at Falas understood the secret bounty available to them, as the tribes up-country were few, and did no more than hunt and fish their lands.  But they were not ready to undertake the development of Alshar’s interior, yet, so they made quiet preparation against that day instead.  

Over the next fifty years, as the height of the Late Magocracy approached, Coastlord and Sea Lord came to an uneasy alliance fueled by mutual greed.  The Cormeeran harvests for several years were compromised by rebellion and war, as the Archmage consolidated his power, and demand for wine was strong in the Empire.  The vintages of Bikavar found a profitable market in the ports of Merwyn, and the Coastlords had great store of wine put up.  Between the industry of the Coastlords and the daring of the mariners amongst the Sea Lords, a great Wine Fleet was assembled.  The Bay Tax was suspended for the season before the Wine Fleet took sail.  When it returned from its journey the following year the ships were laden with silver and gold from the profits.

Thus began a mutually-lucrative enterprise between the two cultures which enriched them both.  While the Magelord was technically Consul over Alshar and Enultramar, he did little other than facilitate trade and settle disputes for years.  By the time the Fifth Lord of the Fields and the ninth Lord of the Waves met at Falas for their regular council under the joint auspices of the Count of Falas (the Imperial Consul) and the Stormfather, neither side wished to disturb the fabulously prosperous relationship.

Alas, all things must come to an end, and the golden age of Alshar and Enultramar was no exception.  When the Archmage at last summoned support from all corners of the empire to drive back the Narasi barbarians north of Vore and protect the coasts from the pirates proliferating in the ruins of lost Perwyn, half of the Sea Lord fleet departed for the east, laden with Coastlord warriors and warmagi trained at the Tower of Sorcery, the home of the Alshari counsel.  

Tragically, much of the fifty-ship fleet Enultramar sent was lost in a storm off of Cormeer, and the remainder was defeated at sea by the resurgent Cormeeran corsairs who preyed on pirate and Magelord alike.  Though nine ships eventually did make it to Merwyn’s ports, and the Coastlords of Alshar were present at the final battles of the Empire, few, if any, ever returned to their homeland.  The Conquest of the Narasi barbarian king, Kamaklavan, swept them away, and a new chapter began in the history of Alshar.

When King Kamaklavan stood in the ruins of the Archmage’s palace and determined the course of his nascent kingdom, he realized that his five sons were too belligerent to rule a united kingdom.  He thought therefore to divide his legacy, giving each of them equal portion over his conquest.  Yet not all fiefs were equal, nor all sons, and the eldest brothers, to whom he awarded rich Vore and fabulous Merwyn, were his favorites.  To his second sons (of his second wife, Kamlan and Bemin) he awarded Remere and Castal, and to the beloved bastard and master horseman Terine he acknowledged his name and granted him distant Alshar, the furthest (but legendarily prosperous) territory within the Empire, as his fief.

It was nearly a decade before the new Duke Terine led his sons and a portion of the great Narasi horde aboard a fleet to depart for his legacy.  When he arrived in Enultramar with two dozen ships to claim his fief, the folk of Alshar were incredulous with the feat.  They had not been defeated, and despite the fall of the Archmage they saw little reason to bow to a barbarian lord.  Coastlord and Sealord alike viewed the Narasi as invaders, not conquerors.  

Yet the Narasi Duke would not be ignored.  Landing at Argarus with his fleet he swiftly took control of the town and used it as a beachhead against his potential foes.  For the Narasi had one great advantage over the native Alshari, their masterful use of cavalry.  Though the Coastlords possessed horses, they did not use them with the same effect or in the same numbers, and the Narasi cavalry quickly swept over what resistance was raised.

Though the first Duke of Alshar seized the Consulate at Falas, and forcibly married the daughter of the Lord of the Fields after his beloved wife died, the Narasi held little more than the County of Falas for a full generation while the Coastlords and Sea Lords continued their trade and largely ignored the new barbarians.

Taking the title Count of Falas, in addition to Duke of Alshar, the ducal house was little more than a player amongst others in Alshar for three generations.  Yet they made productive use of the time. Though some of the Narasi were granted the estates of rebellious Coastlords, and others married their conquered subjects, most of the Narasi were more eager to build their own lands than take those of others.  

When the former magelord suggested the wide, empty country north of Falas as being ideal for the horses so beloved by the Narasi to his son-in-law, the Duke approved its settlement in force.  Most of the Narasi conquerors therefore established keeps and estates in the up-country Great Vale along the Upper Mandros, styling themselves Vale Lords as the Coastlords and the Sea Lords did.

By the time the third Duke of Alshar, Obrus I, attempted to expand his power over his neighbors as was his right, the Coastlords rose in rebellion against him.  Summoning his vassals from the north, the heavy cavalry of the Vale Lords decimated the infantry of the Coastlords in Rhemes and Bikavar, until the entire coast agreed to swear fealty to the Duke of Alshar, Lord of Field and Vale.  Though the Sea Lords did not take part in the landsmen’s struggles, they realized the power of the Narasi and chose to volunteer their support in favor of conquest.  Though this was an unexpected betrayal of the old Coastlord/Sealord alliance it proved as profitable for the Great Bay as it was detrimental to the Coast.

As a result, the Narasi made a pact with the Sea Lords, in which they swore fealty in the Narasi style, and Duke Obrus in turn acknowledged the Master of Wave as the chief of his navy.  By the time his son Kandrus was elevated to the throne he ruled over every inch of the vale of Alshar, from the Shoals to the Narrows in the rocky and impassable north.

The Middle History of Alshar

Once the first explorers came to the far end of the impassable Narrows, where the Mindens and the mountains of the Farisi Peninsula meet, they began searching for some means of going beyond the imposing cliffs.  A pair of monks of Herus, Dansus and Ladras, eventually discovered a cavern in the upper slopes that opened on the ridge above.  From that vantage point they saw out over the edge of the Dry Lands, into the edge of the Land of Scars, and into the distant, fertile plains of Gilmora, beyond.  Though it took a month for them to find a place of descent, the two monks eventually took the first steps of Alshar’s expansion into the rest of the continent.

When Duke Obrus first heard the news of the monks’ discovery, he immediately ordered the northern lords to lend assistance to the effort of creating a permanent pass through the Narrows.