title: Tortall and Other Lands: A Collection of Tales
author:  Tamora Pierce 
description: <i>New York Times</i> bestselling writer TAMORA PIERCE captured the imagination of readers more than 20 years ago with <i>Alanna: The First Adventure.</i> She has written 16 books about the extraordinary kingdom of Tortall, with another to come in fall 2011. She lives in upstate New York, with her husband and an assortment of wildlife.
zlib_text: The Sword of Bedwyr
  
  
  ## Book 1 of Crimson Shadow series
  
  
  ### By R. A. Salvatore
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## PROLOGUE
  
  
  
  
  
  These are the Avonsea Islands, rugged peaks and rolling hills, gentle
  
  
  rains and fierce winds blowing down from the glaciers across the Dorsal
  
  
  Sea. They are quiet Baranduine, land of folk and Fairborn, land of green and
  rainbows. They are the Five Sentinels, the Windbreakers, barren
  
  
  peaks, huge, horned sheep, and multicolored lichen that glows eerily when the
  sun has set. Let all seafarers beware the rocks of the channels near to the
  five!
  
  
  They are Praetoria, most populous and civilized of the is-lands, where
  
  
  trade with the mainland is the way and cities dot the countryside.
  
  
  And they are Eriador, untamed. She is a land of war, of hardy folk as
  
  
  familiar with sword as with plow. A land of clans, where loyalties run
  
  
  deep as blood and to fight a man is to fight all his kin.
  
  
  Eriador, untamed. Where the clouds hang low over rolling hills thick with
  green and the wind