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  FOREWORD

  Warrior of the Altaii has been sold twice, but has never been published. Until now.

  How could this happen?

  As Wulfgar will say, draw near and listen.

  I first read the manuscript in 1978—forty years ago—just a year or so after I had relocated from New York, where I was Editorial Director of Ace Books (and Tom Doherty was Publisher), to my hometown, Charleston, South Carolina. I had a one-page contract with a guy named Richard Gallen, who played a much larger part than I knew in the founding of small publishing companies. My deal with Gallen was, I would find the writers,

  Gallen would invest the advance money, and we would split the profits. Profits? Hah. But that’s another story.

  So, where would you go to find writers? A bookstore! I went to a store owned by the local magazine wholesaler, where you could find paperback books, magazines, and newspapers from all over the place. Sure enough, the manager said there was a guy who came in for paperbacks and said he was writing something. She didn’t remember his name.

  I asked for an index card and a pencil, wrote my name and phone number on it, and asked her to give it to him when he next came in. She did.

  He stared at it in disbelief—pencil? index card?—and was about to tear it up when she told him that I had been Editorial Director of Ace. I had told the manager I was looking for writers—actually, I wanted a new Kathleen Woodiwiss, a writer who could write bodice rippers, sexy historicals aimed at a female audience.

  He called me. And made up a bodice ripper synopsis on the drive to my house. OMG, it was awful. All I remember was that the obligatory sex scene involved a duck. I thanked him and couldn’t wait to close the door behind him. Turned out he had as much estrogen in him as Conan the Barbarian.

  Twelve months went by. Unbeknownst to me, he had sold Warrior of the Altaii to DAW Books in August 1977. He had received the contract and asked for some changes in it. DAW had withdrawn their offer in September 1977. First sale, first reversion of rights.

  After those eight months, I hit a slow patch and thumbed through my Rolodex looking for new prospects. I called him. He said he had written a barbarian fantasy called Warrior of the Altaii, and I asked to see it. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it was good.

  Meanwhile, Tom Doherty had agreed to have Ace distribute the books of my imprint. Tom had a splendid science fiction editor, Jim Baen, and it seemed to me that this kind of book was exactly what Tom wouldn’t want in my imprint.

  I sent it to Tom, asking if he was interested in publishing it in Ace. Baen bought it in 1979. Sort of. The contract was dated April 1980. Second sale.

  Meanwhile, Ace didn’t stand still. It became part of “Berkley Publishing Group, Publishers of Berkley, Jove, Ace Science Fiction, Charter, Tempo and Second Chance.” A myth floated around the industry that someone on the switchboard answered a call by saying “Pac-Man Books” and was out of a job by sunset.

  Anyway, the editor in chief of science fiction at this unwieldy entity said she wanted some revisions. He said, just let me know what you want me to do—and then she didn’t send any requests for said revisions.

  He wrote to her in January 1983, “My manuscript is fast becoming a mushroom farm on a back shelf in some dark corner of your offices. In that fashion it is doing neither of us any good.”

  Berkley gave the rights back in June 1983. Second reversion.

  Now, turn back to 1979.

  Robert Jordan—then James Oliver Rigney, Jr., the name he had from birth—who was about to morph into Reagan O’Neal—told me that he had some new ideas. I made a date for a meeting. He came in and overlapped with my earlier appointment, who wanted to write a novel about Joseph of Arimathea taking the Christ child to the west of England. She was known for her historical expertise, and I had been hoping she’d want to write a historical novel set in South Carolina, but not in Civil War days, and said so in Rigney’s presence.

  So he said he was passionately interested in doing a South Carolina novel set in the American Revolution. (I am pretty sure he had no such idea when he entered the room.) He promised me an outline the next day.

  He delivered an outline of a novel telling the adventures of one Michael Fallon during the Revolution. Two more Fallon books would follow, roaming through the War of 1812 to the founding of the Republic of Texas.

  I gave him a contract for the first Fallon, to be written by Reagan O’Neal, on March 20, 1979.

  A sale made because of Altaii. Most people who start a first novel never finish it, but he had done so. And he had written a good novel, head and shoulders above most first novels.

  Well, he and I married on March 28, 1981.

  Not so long after that, Tom Doherty got the rights from Conan Properties to do a new Conan novel, but Tom wanted to publish it in time for the first Conan movie, and Baen didn’t have any writers who could do a credible Conan. So I told him Rigney could (because of Altaii), and I asked Rigney to do it.

  He said no.

  I hoped Tom would forget about it, but that is not his way. Weeks later, he came back to me.

  I went back to Rigney, pleading with him. He said, “Harriet, don’t wiggle that thing” (my trembling chin) “at me. I’ll do it.”

  So he did. Under the name Robert Jordan, his work was reviewed as “the best of the modern Conans,” thus establishing a name in fantasy. He liked doing it, and did six more.

  And all the while he was writing them, as in the time he had been writing the Fallon books, he was thinking of the themes and shadows, the people and events of The Wheel of Time.

  When I reread Warrior of the Altaii this winter, after this long intermission, I was amazed at the foreshadowing of The Wheel of Time. You will find many hints of what is to come. One of the most obvious is the name of the major mountain range—the Backbone of the World. In The Wheel, it is the Spine of the World. I think you’ll have fun finding them as you read this brand-new Robert Jordan—a fine wine that has reached its perfect maturity.

  Now go see what Wulfgar wants to tell you.

  Best regards,

  Harriet P. McDougal

  I am Wulfgar, Lord of Two Horsetails, warrior of the Altaii people.

  Come near and I will tell you of Lanta, the City of Twelve Gates, the Unconquerable, the Pearl of the Plain.

  I will tell you of the Twin Thrones of Lanta, and of the twin queens who ruled from them.

  I will tell of the Morassa and of Brecon and Ivo, who led them to war.

  I will tell of the Most High, and of the powers that covered the Plain in the Year of the Stone Lizard.

  Come near and listen.

  Ir />
  SIGN OF MORASSA

  In the fifth month of the Year of the Stone Lizard, in the Kafhara Wind, I sat on my horse on a small hill not far from the great city of Lanta. They called this the Plain, the Lantans did, here where green things grew all around. Only a short ride beyond the city there were trees taller than a man on horseback. Still, to soft men of the cities perhaps it seemed like the Plain.

  To the north a pack of dril circled slowly in the sky, sunlight glinting on their wing scales. Out there something was dead, or soon to be.

  It was a time for it, a time for dying. Above, Loewin chased across the sky, driven there in its battle with Ban and Wilaf, with t’Fie and Mondra. It is a well-known sign of ill fortune. In addition the Kafhara Wind had come early that year. To have an early Wind and Loewin in the sky at the same time, that is an omen seldom seen, and blessings are given when it passes.

  My purpose there was not to read omens, though. I adjusted my face cloth against the dust picked up by the wind, even there where green things grew, and waited for the one I knew would come. The wind lifted a screen of dust before me. When it fell, they were coming.

  Twenty men rode in two columns. Their lance tips were blackened against reflecting light, and their arms were bare. They were not men to sheathe their arms in armor, or even in cloth against the wind. They had honor. It was their leader I had come to meet.

  “Come,” I said. My horse moved down the hill at the pressure of my knees, and twenty of my own lances followed.

  The other riders halted to await us, the man I had come to meet a little in front. He was tall, taller even than I, and I am accounted tall for an Altaii.

  I motioned my followers to stop and rode to meet him. He dropped his sand cloth, watching me unsmiling. After a time I held out my left hand. It is the custom of some peoples to offer the weapon hand, the right hand, to be clasped as a sign of harmlessness. This is not a custom of the Altaii. He grasped my left hand firmly in his.

  “It has been a long time, Harald.” I could contain my smiles no longer. “It has been a long time, and I am glad to see you again.”

  “It is good to see you, too, Wulfgar. There has been a time or two this year past when I thought I would not.”

  Harald, son of Bohemund, who was King and Warlord of the Altaii nation, was as close to me as any man has ever been or could be. If no brother of blood remains to me, if all have fallen to steel or the Plain, this man was my brother.

  When my father fell, in the great victory over the Emperor Basrath at the Heights of Tybal, it was Bohemund who took me into his household. As his son I was raised, as brother to Harald. We kept more of that closeness than most brothers of blood.

  “Mayra saw that you would come this way to Lanta,” I said. “Has the raiding been good?”

  “No fewer than three large caravans have crossed my path in the last four tendays.” He shook his head. “The caravan masters curse the fates, as usual. If they’re going to cross the Plain they should learn to expect that some of them will fall to us now and again. They should look on it as a tax. And how has it been with you?”

  The smile faded from my face, and I took a deep breath. “I have seen one caravan in the last six tendays, and one other in seven before that. Nine times in that space a fanghorn has raided the herds. Twice I found waterholes broken and dry, and only four days ago thirty of my lances were beset by Runners. They killed more than a hundred before they went down, as closely as we could tell, but as we found nothing but bones it was hard to be certain.”

  “Harsh words, Wulfgar. Hard words.”

  He hesitated before he spoke again, and when he spoke the laughter was gone. “The caravans were all small, and only one carried slaves. The smallest one at that. One carried cloth and pots and things made out of clay. The third carried empty casks headed back to the winery at Thisk. Such a scrawny bunch of strawmen running it I turned them loose. Had I kept them I’d never have gotten rid of them. No one in his right mind would have taken the lot as a gift.”

  “And the fanghorns? The Runners?”

  “No Runners, and there are always fanghorns.”

  “More this year,” I said. “There are more this year than ever before.”

  “All right, there are more. The Plain has never been easy. You do not live on the Plain, you make war with it.”

  “Don’t quote sayings to me, Harald. I know you must make war on the Plain, but I never before thought it was winning.”

  He shifted uncomfortably. No doubt he was thinking of some other saying, one about enduring. Suddenly he frowned.

  “You spoke of finding waterholes broken apart. I found three of them, myself. And at one”—he fumbled under his tunic—“in the dried mud, I found this.”

  It was a scarf he handed me, a small, crudely woven scarf with a simple three-cornered pattern repeated over and over again.

  “Morassa,” I said. “No one else would bother with this poor a piece, so it wasn’t traded. Morassa at the waterhole when it was broken?”

  “Had to be. It was dried into the mud, and in that part of the Plain the mud would have dried very quickly.”

  “Morassa.” I whispered it. They were scavengers, picking over the leavings of other men’s raids. If ever they raided themselves, it was against someone they were sure was weaker. And still, even with the evidence in my hands, I found it hard to believe.

  On the Plain, water is life. A waterhole is life. The absence of water is death. It is just that simple. The fact breeds respect. The man who poisoned or destroyed a waterhole would be killed immediately. If he did it to keep the water from an enemy it would make no difference. The day would surely come, would, not could, when his own people would need that water. Not even the Morassa would destroy water.

  “Did you ask a Sister of Wisdom to look at the waterhole?”

  He nodded. “She found nothing. There had been a spell cast over the hole for a period of time. Before, it was complete. After, it was broken. During was clouded. At the next broken waterhole I asked her to look again, and again she found the clouding.”

  “So someone is out to—to what? Destroy all the water on the Plain? Why?”

  The wind quickened, and Harald pulled his cloak tighter around him. “I don’t know, Wulfgar, and I don’t intend to stay here thinking about it until I freeze.”

  “All right, then. To Lanta. To the Pearl of the Plain. We’ll let them know we’re here in peace, and maybe some of them will scrape up enough courage to come out and buy. Any goods that they might recognize in your booty? Any friends they might see on the block?”

  “Has that ever stopped them before?”

  “It has not. Let us ride.” I spurred away, and Harald raced to catch me, our lances trailing behind.

  If I made no more mention of the waterholes, they did not leave my mind. The destruction of water argued for madmen, but no madman could afford the price a Sister of Wisdom would demand for that many cloakings. Someone of wealth was destroying water, but who? And why? The questions kept ringing in my mind, but no answers came, not a glimmer of one. And then there was no more time for vague questions. We topped a rise, and Lanta was before us.

  Lanta the Unconquerable, the Pearl of the Plain. Victor over Basrath they styled themselves, also, but in truth he had turned his armies away when he realized that the city would not fall to his siege. They never defeated him, or even met him in open combat. He simply grew tired of waiting with no end in sight.

  At that they had reason for their pride. Only Caselle itself, among the cities I have seen, rivaled it in size. It is said that there are three or four cities as large or larger in the lands of the Liau, but I have never seen them. It is perhaps the idle talk of travelers.

  The walls alone were marvels, and men who had interest in such things came great distances to see them. The Outer Wall was ten times the height of a man and had a road on top for carrying soldiers. The Inner Wall was even higher, perhaps twice as high, and it, too, had a road. The men who cam
e to see the walls said that their construction was marvelous, that their size and length made them a wonder. The only interest they had for me was the fact that they had never been breached. Never, not even by Basrath.

  We rode toward the Barbarian Gate openly, without fear of attack. It is so called, this gate, because it is the only one of the Twelve Gates that faces directly out into the Plain. Caravans leaving through it faced the worst chance of meeting with Altaii lances, or Eikonan or even Morassa. They came, though. They came because their losses to the people of the Plain were worth it if ever so often a caravan made it to the mountains to trade for gems and precious metals, for furs and perfumes and for strange things from the lands beyond the mountains. Also, a merchant often rejoiced to buy his rival’s goods from us, and sometimes his rival.

  At the gate an officer of the City Guard stepped out to confront us, and we slowed until he should wave us on. He did not. Nervously he looked from Harald to me and back again, tugging at his beard. As we came to a halt he drew himself up.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

  Some of my men laughed. They thought he was making a joke or trying to build up to an insult. I thought of the Wind and Loewin running overhead and was not so certain. There had been a two-toed gromit in my tent three days past, too. Darkness was gathering, but was this just another omen or was it the place of ending?

  Suddenly I realized that everyone had fallen silent, waiting for me to answer. Harald had an expectant smile on his face. I leaned down, smiling a smile that was perhaps grimmer than I intended.

  “Have you no eyes to see with? Surely it is plain that I am a merchant of Devia, and these are a troupe of Cerduan dancing girls.”

  The lances fell to laughing and slapping their thighs. Even a few of the Lantans were hiding smiles. The officer had no smiles.

  “I must know what you are doing here. You will not be allowed into the city until I do.”