Wrath of a Mad God ( The Darkwar, Book 3)

James Dasher Jamison was hardly a reflective man, but there were moments when he did consider his role in a larger scheme and wondered if he would every truly realize what it was he was fated to accomplish. A boy of great promise, he was the grandson of Lord James, Duke of Rillanon, the King’s most trusted advisor. He was also the grandnephew of the man in control of the largest shipping enterprise in the Bitter Sea, Dashell Jamison. Something had occurred between the two brothers: once close, they were estranged by the time Jim was born.

 

Jim’s father, Dasher Jamison, Lord Carlstone, had been one of the finest administrators in the King’s court, and his mother had been Lady Rowella Montonowksy, a daughter of Roldem’s nobility and a distant cousin to their queen. In all things, Jim should have been a child of privilege and refinement.

 

Sent to study in Roldem, he had been quickly judged to be one of the most promising students at the university. They had waited for him to blossom as a scholar. Instead he had discovered the streets of Roldem, and the back alleys as well. His instructors at university were defeated, for while he was repeatedly absent without permission, Jim always excelled at his studies. He had a natural ability to hear or read something once and know it perfectly, a gift for logic and problem-solving that made mathematics and the natural sciences easy for him, and an ability for abstraction and logic that made even the most obtuse philosophies manageable. In short, he had been the perfect student, when he chose to be around. He was indifferent to the canings he earned for each transgression, considering the welts on his back the cost of doing what he wished. Finally, the monks who were in charge of the University judged their efforts to be futile and had sent the young man back to his family in Rillanon.

 

His father was determined to harness his son’s reckless nature and to make a courtier out of him, so he gave him a minor position in the King’s court. More often than not Jim was gone from his office, wasting time in gambling halls, inns, and brothels. He had a flair for gambling which earned him a steady income on top of his family’s allowance, and a taste for women of low estate, which had got him into a fair share of brawls, landing him in the city gaol more than once. His father’s position had freed him every time, though the gaoler had warned Lord Carlstone that he could not protect his wayward son much longer.

 

Jim’s father had used every means of persuasion at his disposal to curb his son’s appetite for the seedier side of life, including a threat to hand him over to the King’s army for service if he couldn’t stem his impulses for low living, but all to no avail. At last his grandfather had taken a hand and had sent Jim to Krondor to work for his uncle, Jonathan Jamison, son of Dashell, Jim’s great-uncle.

 

Jim took to his new surroundings as if born to them, and quickly discovered that he had a flair for business. He also soon realized that there was a very questionable relationship between his great-uncle’s many business enterprises and any number of criminal activities in and around Krondor. At first it was smuggling, then sabotage of a competitor’s shipments or a well-timed fire in their warehouse. By the time he was twenty years of age, Jim was running a gang at the docks, the Backwater Boys, and collecting money from various merchants to facilitate the safe arrival of goods that somehow avoided the Royal Customs House.

 

Then a year later, Jim was dragged out of his home in the dead of night by four men clad in black. He had incapacitated two of them before they had clubbed him unconscious and when he awoke, he had found himself in the dungeon in the Prince’s palace.

 

After a cold night and long day, he was visited by Lord Erik von Darkmoor, former Knight-Marshall of the Western Realm and currently retiring Duke of Krondor. The choice given to him had been simple: learn to love a contemplative and solitary life in a very dark and damp cell without any outside windows, or work for the Prince of Krondor as an agent.

 

Lord Erik made it clear that his relationship to the Duke of Rillanon would not save him from the choice; his grandfather would receive a most sympathetic message from Lord Erik regretfully informing him that his grandson had gone missing, perhaps a victim of foul play. It wasn’t for two more years after he started working for Erik that Jim discovered the entire thing had been his grandfather’s idea and that his great-uncle was also in on the plot.

 

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