Kaschar's Quarter by David Gowey

Prologue
     
    In these, the end of my days, I set out to make a history of my comings and goings. I am still unsure how I feel about such an undertaking. While I do wish the rising generation would have some knowledge concerning the errors of our age, I also do not wish to force those of tender hearts to wade through the sorrow that did consume our world in those times. In this, I am torn between the desire to protect the curious from both apathy and horror. How can I warn sufficiently of our downfall unless I tell of its consequences? And how can I simply tell of the calamities that befell us without relating the causes?
    Therefore, I endeavor in this work to provide a history; not a scholar’s history, and certainly not a child’s history. In all respects, I shall try to make it a true history. Let the historians and philosophers work out the problems of our times, all while reclining in the comforts of hindsight. Let them ascribe our age’s downfall to any number of factors, from the Mentite War to the plague and everything else under heaven. However, they cannot glean from all their studies and suppositions the experience forced upon these two eyes or felt by these two hands; they can neither sound the depths of our grief nor summit the heights of our folly. All I can do is to offer what I have in all humility, if only in the hopes that you, the reader in some future age, may come away from these pages with more knowledge than we had.
    I therefore commit these pages to the future.
     
    - Words of the Emperor in Qepperdan, Matthieu Sartonné, as narrated to his page, Jarun Hichame
     
    Jarun Hichame had ascended these stairs hundreds of times in his years as imperial page, yet tonight felt different. Summoned by one of his fellows just as he had changed into his bedclothes, he was at first annoyed that the emperor would call him at such an hour. After all, did he not have servants outside his own bedchamber? He pressed on regardless, hoping to at least be useful briefly to his master before again retiring to bed.
    The candle's dancing flame cast playful shadows across the stone passageway. Jarun walked as quickly as he could without putting out his only light, as the full moon was yet several weeks away. It had been not since childhood, when he was first brought to the palace following his father's death in war, that he had stalked these corridors at such a late hour. Now, his usual boredom was displaced by curiosity. He arrived at the door to the bedchamber to find two guards standing watch outside, as was the custom.
    “The emperor is waiting for you,” one spoke in a gravelly voice as he opened the door. Jarun entered silently. Once he had passed the threshold, the solid door was shut behind him. Silhouetted in front of a roaring fire was the emperor.
    “Ah, Jarun,” he said. “It is so good of you to come at such an hour as this. I know it is late, but there are things I must get off my mind.” He spoke again, as if he could sense Jarun's apprehension. “Come here, boy! Do not be shy.”
    Jarun found himself gripped by a strange reluctance. In all his years of service, it was rare that the emperor would say more than a few words of command to him. He was a servant, not an advisor. What advice could he possibly give to the ruler of the known world? Still, he did as the emperor commanded, seating himself in a chair across from his master. It was padded with the finest silk, usually reserved for the emperor's own robes; rare was the page that would experience such luxury for himself.
    “What is it you need me to do, my lord?” he said, trying his best to hide his apprehension at his ruler's strange manner.
    “There is much weighing on my mind of late, Jarun. Things past, as well as things to come.”
    “Forgive me for saying so but you have lived a long and full life.”
    “That I have,” Matthieu chuckled. “That I have. Perhaps too full, some would say, yet I cannot do anything to change it. Nor would