A Crown Imperiled by Raymond E. Feist Page B

agents had travelled below the Girdle of Kesh, as the two ranges of mountains that divided the Empire from the Confederacy were called. Which made it the perfect place to organize the major undertaking of subverting the Empire’s rulers and launching a wholesale invasion of the Kingdom.
    And it made it impossible to reach by the magical means at Pug’s disposal.
    So, more mundane means of transport had been required. Pug had the ability to transport himself magically to any place in his line of sight, and to the places he knew well, but he was limited in how far he could transport himself and two others repeatedly. Still, the occasional sorcerous jaunt was handy for bypassing certain obstacles and to avoid roving bands of raiders, bandits, and what passed for the local militia, but most of their journey had been made by horseback, small boat, and foot.
    The weather was chilly, as it was now early winter in the southern hemisphere. A misty rain had been falling intermittently since dawn and the three travellers were just damp and cold enough to be irritable. Sandreena in particular was beyond patience, as she had been forced to leave her horse stabled in a tiny village on the mainland coast with the other mounts. As a Knight-Adamant of the Order of the Shield of the Weak, worshippers of the Goddess Dala, she found that being on foot was like having to fight with one hand; something she was able to do, but would rather not.
    Pug had secured a boat but the owner had refused to row them over to the large island, and at last Pug understood why. The maps that Macros had drawn years before and left behind in his library were full of errors and inexactitudes, one of which was sloppy translation. After speaking to the locals on the far shore of the mainland, Pug now realized that this was not the ‘Island of the Snakes’, but rather the ‘Island of the Snake Men’.
    Apparently, he had found the Pantathian homeland. Which puzzled him, as he had thought the heart of the Pantathian murder cult had been located near the foothills of the mountain range named the Pavilion of the Gods. Legend said many of the Valheru Dragon Lords had resided in that region as well.
    The Pantathians were an unnatural race, distorted by a Valheru by the name of Alma-Lodaka, Mistress of Serpents, who had created them to serve her. She had bred them, then evolved them into intelligent beings and granted them magical abilities. It was conceded that while the Valheru could not create life, they could manipulate and distort it.
    One unintended consequence had been the creation of a death cult who worshipped the long-departed Mistress of Serpents as a goddess, longed for her return, and who would stop at nothing to bring it about. Much of Pug’s personal history was intertwined with these snake men: upright serpents who were human-like in form, but who were more alien than any other race Pug had encountered on Midkemia. He understood the Dasati, a race from another plane of reality, better than he understood the Pantathians.
    Pug and his son Magnus had been instrumental in destroying the Pantathian crèches in what they had thought to be the final blow against the lizard race, but apparently there had been more than one enclave of the creatures. As disgusting as it might have been to obliterate every egg and spawn they had encountered, Pug had at least found some solace in the knowledge they were not natural creatures, but twisted parodies of intelligent life focused only on one purpose, and that purpose entailed the annihilation or enslavement of all other races on Midkemia in service of their ‘goddess’.
    Pug surveyed the landscape and sniffed the air. There was a burnt wood tinge in the heavy damp air. He motioned for his companions to follow him and led them up a small rise to a ridge overlooking a shallow valley. In the distance they could see what looked to be a community, but even at this distance it was clear that it had been burned to char.
    Pug