There were more guards here, their uniforms in no better repair than those he'd already seen. They eyed him warily. Receiving no verbal instructions, Bryck strode past them down the corridor, carrying himself with a lofty gait that was not quite a swagger. He smelled of the road. A steaming perfumed bath would erase these odors, but for the present, he was content to reek of his rough travels.

He couldn't recall the last time he had exerted himself so. He was nearing the end of his fourth tenwinter, moderately fit for a man his age. He was of average height, sagging a bit around the middle, owing to the luxuries of his class and the sedentary life of a playwright, which he'd been leading these past many years. His thick dark hair was streaked mildly with grey. His face, etched and some-what full, often lit readily with merriment.

These were grim times. With the Felk army mobilized and backed by powerful wizardry, the historically precarious stability of the entire Isthmus was threatened. No one knew what the Felks' ultimate goal was—expansion of their territory, full conquest? Individual city-states lay ahead of the Felk forces like so many children's stacking blocks, waiting only to be tumbled.

Grim times, indeed. Not the sort of period in which one would expect a satirical playwright to thrive. But so it was. Perhaps it was Bryck's audiences' need to lose themselves in his comic—and frankly silly—works that accounted for the durability of his fame. Bryck's name was synonymous with humor. People always needed to laugh. They perhaps needed that release now more than ever.

Bryck, of course, was aware of the perilous state of things. The pall of the Felk hung over the land. Yet, the threat had seemed remote, detached from the familiar daily business of living ... had seemed so until now, that was, when the invaders were suddenly closing toward U'delph, toward home, toward everything he held dear.