When Wizards Rule

Prologue

Once, so very long ago, there was peace in the lands of Sentmar. A time when Cauldaran and Covenan did not exist. A time when it was only the land of Magick, ruled by the Wizard Twins and their Consorts.

But in the forgetfulness of the ages, and a search for power and standing, Wizard Twins and Sorceress Consorts forgot the first and foremost role of their hierarchy and that of their Joinings. That love must conquer the heart, that power meets and tender hearts mold, and in the joining, a union is born.

Power cannot be decided by the minds of men. Even men who hold all power at their fingertips. Power will dim and eventually cease when love does not heat the embers of lust and create a fire of endurance and compassion. And so did this day come. A day when Joinings were decided by the depth of power gauged. Wizard Twins to Sorceress Consort, alliances built not on the tender emotions or the compassionate hearts, but on the less merciful basis of what can and must be gained.

And what had once been pleasure became pain. What had once been seen as a mating of hearts, souls and minds became but endurance, a basis for hatred and the chill of ice. And so this time continued, until both Wizards and Sorceresses no longer remembered why they strived to live within the same lands, or that their disharmony flowed from within.

Sorceresses whispered of love. Wizards dreamed of power. Daughters were contracted into Joining before birth, sons ordered to choose on basis of the material rather than of the heart.

And the magick began to falter, violence began to fill the castles. In one last desperate effort to force those who were blind to see, the Sentinel Select separated their children. To the land of Covenan, the Sorceress Select drew her daughters, women of great intuitive magick, of compassion and strength. Bequeathed to the Wizard Twins by the Wizard Select were the lands of Cauldaran, those lands which once held harmony, but were now torn with strife. For the Select believed their children to be wise, compassionate and would in time see the errors of their ways. Instead the Cauldaran warred against Covenan, further dividing their races until finally there was no hope, no chance to realign the magick of their kinds. And the land settled, weeping for its lost children, as the humans of Secular grew in abundance. And it was said the magick of the twin moons of the Select would weaken. That discord would result. That death and war would come to the lands as magick gave way beneath the hands of a darker alliance.

4

When Wizards Rule

The alliance of Secular and the building tendrils of dark hatred. And so this time has come. Violence builds as the humans strike. Betrayal, death and blood began to fill the lands that once knew only peace, only compassion. The time has come to reunite. Wizard Twins to Sorceress Consort. Mercy, compassion and love to that of arrogance, power and strength. A gentling. A building of the foundations of harmony.

But the Seculars have found also an alliance of power. A dark strength that had built as the strength of Twins and Consort waned. And now shall it strike…

5

Lora Leigh