Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
The Hand of Chaos
Introduction: To the Four Realms
I am called Haplo.
My name means single, alone. It was given to me by my parents as a sort of prophecy, for they knew they would not survive the prison into which my people, the Patryns, had been cast—the prison of dark and terrible magics known as the Labyrinth.
I became a Runner—one who fights the Labyrinth. I was one of the lucky ones I made it through the Final Gate, though I very nearly perished in the attempt. If it had not been for this sausage-stealing dog who sits here beside me, I would not be here, penning this account. The dog gave me the will to live when I would have given up and died. He saved my life.
The dog gave me the will to live, but my lord Xar gave me a reason to live, a purpose.
Xar was the first Patryn to escape the Labyrinth. He is old and powerful, highly skilled in the rune-magic that gives both the Patryns and our enemies, the Sartan, our strength. Xar escaped the Labyrinth, then immediately went back into it. No other has ever had the courage to do so, and even now he risks his life daily to rescue us.
Many of us have emerged from the Labyrinth. We live in the Nexus, which we have made into a beautiful city. But have we been rehabilitated as our captors had intended?
An impatient people, we learned patience in that hard school. A selfish people, we learned self-sacrifice, loyalty. Above all, we learned to hate. It is my lord Xar’s goal—our goal—to take back the world that was snatched from us, to rule it as we were always meant to rule, and to inflict dire punishment on our enemies.
The realms used to be but one world, one beautiful green-blue world. It belonged to us and the Sartan, for our rune-magic made us powerful. The other, lesser races, whom we call mensch—the humans, elves, and dwarves—worshiped us as gods.
But the Sartan thought we Patryns were gaining too much control. The balance of power started to shift in our favor. Furious, the Sartan did the only thing they could to stop us. Using their rune-magic—the magic based on probabilities—the Sartan sundered the world and cast us into prison. They formed four new worlds out of the rubble of the old, each from an element of the originaclass="underline" air, fire, stone, water. The four are connected by the magical Death’s Gate—conduits through which those possessing the rune-magic may safely travel. The four worlds should have worked to support each other: Pryan, the world of fire, would supply energy to Abarrach, the world of stone. Abarrach would supply ores and minerals to Chelestra, world of water, and so forth. All was to be coordinated and fueled by a wondrous machine, the Kicksey-winsey, which the Sartan constructed on Arianus.
But the plans of the Sartan went awry. Their populations on each of the worlds began to mysteriously dwindle and die out. The Sartan on each world called for help from the others, but their pleas went unanswered. Each world had its own troubles.
I discovered this, you see, because it was my task—assigned to me by Xar—to travel to each of the worlds. I was to spy them out and discover what had happened to our ancient enemy. And so, I visited each realm. The complete record of my adventures can be found in my journals, which have come to be known as The Death Gate Cycle.
What I learned was a complete surprise. My discoveries changed my life—and not for the better. When I set forth, I had all the answers. Now, I am left only with questions.
My lord blames my unsettled state of mind on a Sartan I met during my travels. A Sartan who calls himself by a mensch name—Alfred Montbank. And at first, I agreed with my lord. I blamed Alfred, I was convinced he was tricking me. But now, I am not so certain. I doubt everything—myself... my lord. Let me try to tell you—in brief—what happened to me.
The first world I visited was the world of air, Arianus. It is made up of floating continents that exist on three levels. The Low Realm is the home of the dwarves, and it is here, on Drevlin, that the Sartan built the great and wondrous machine, the Kicksey-winsey. But before the Sartan could get the machine working, they began to die. Panic-stricken, they placed their young people into a state of suspended animation, hoping that when they awoke, the situation would have stabilized.
But only one of the Sartan survived—Alfred. He awoke to find himself the only one of his friends and family still alive. The knowledge appalled him, terrified him. He felt responsible for the chaos into which his world had fallen—for the mensch were, of course, on the brink of all-out war. Yet he was afraid of revealing the truth about himself. His rune-magic would give him the power of a demigod over the mensch. He feared that the mensch would try to force him to use his magic for their own destructive ends. And so Alfred hid his power, refused to use it even to save himself. Today, whenever he is threatened, instead of fighting back with his strong magic, Alfred faints. The dog and I crash-landed on Arianus and nearly died. We were rescued by a dwarf named Limbeck. The dwarves on Arianus are slaves to the Kicksey-winsey, serving it mindlessly as it works away mindlessly, lacking any direction. But Limbeck is a revolutionary, a freethinker. The dwarves were, at that time, under the thumb of a strong nation of elves, who had set up a dictatorship on the Mid Level of Arianus. The elves therefore control the only supply of fresh water in the world, water that comes from the Kicksey-winsey. The humans, who also dwell in the Mid Realm, have been at war with the elves over water for most of the history of Arianus. The war raged on during my time there, and the battle continues now—with one significant difference. An elven prince has arisen who wants peace, unity among the races. This prince has started a rebellion against his own people, but the only result, so far, has been to cause more chaos.
I managed to assist Limbeck, the dwarf, in leading his people in a revolt against both the humans and elves. And when I left, I brought with me a human child—a changeling named Bane—who had figured out the secret to the Kicksey-winsey. Once the machine is up and running, as the Sartan intended it to be, then my lord will use its power to begin his conquest of the other worlds.
I would have liked to have brought another mensch back with me—a human named Hugh the Hand. A highly skilled assassin, Hugh was the one of the few mensch I’ve met whom I could have accepted as a trusted ally. Unfortunately, Hugh the Hand died fighting Bane’s father, an evil human wizard. And who did I get for a traveling companion?
Alfred.
But that is skipping ahead.
While I was on Arianus, I came across Alfred, who was acting as a servant to the child Bane. I am ashamed to admit it, but Alfred discovered I was a Patryn long before I knew he was a Sartan. When I found out, I intended to kill him, but, at the moment, I had enough to do to save my own life... But that is a long story.[1] Suffice it to say, I was forced to leave Arianus without settling my score with the one Sartan who had fallen into my grasp.
The next world the dog and I visited was Pryan, world of fire. Pryan is a gigantic world, a hollow sphere of rock, its size nearly incomprehensible to the mind. Its sun burns in the center. Life and vegetation exist on the rock’s inner crust. Because the world does not rotate, Pryan’s sun shines continually—there is no night. Consequently, Pryan is a world of jungle life so thick and heavy that few who live on the planet have ever seen the ground. Entire cities are built in the limbs of huge trees, whose strong branches support lakes, even oceans.
One of the first people I met on Pryan was a daft old wizard and the dragon who appears to be the old man’s keeper. The wizard calls himself Zifnab (when he can remember to call himself anything at all!), and gives every indication of being a raving lunatic. Except that there are times when his madness is all too sane. He knows too much, this befuddled old fool; knows too much about me, about the Patryns, about the Sartan, about everything. He knows too much, yet tells exactly nothing.