A reader's guide
The World of Caradon
A kingdom of salt flats, river towns, border forts, and northern hills, ruled from the Lion Throne in Tessaly. Far from the capital, the lords mostly do as they please.
Places
Along the salt road
- The Salt Flats
- A dry lakebed forty miles wide on Caradon's western side. A white crust breaks under your boots like thin ice, and there's no shade and no water. The flats will kill a mule in the heat of the day, so wagons travel them by night.
- Saltreach
- A bleached-white town of about 2,500 people, built of salt-block around a dry harbor where a lake used to be. Hundreds of shallow evaporation pans run out across the flats like a chessboard. One inn, one reeve, and one Lord in the big stone house on the hill.
- The Lord's End
- The far western pans, sealed behind a ten-foot fence patrolled by men with dogs. At night a single red lamp burns there, high above the flats.
- The Salt Road
- A straight pale track running east and west across the flats, rutted by heavy wagons.
- Cutter's Wash
- A flood-cut gully halfway along the salt road, and the only place in forty miles where the ground does anything but lie flat. The drovers lay up there through the heat.
- Ostler's Well
- A waystation forty miles west of Saltreach, with a well, a stable, a low inn, and a walled yard where cargo changes hands.
- Port Vell
- A forge city on the western coast, and the next stop on the road.
- Tessaly
- The capital, on the river Tess, and the seat of the Lion Throne behind the Lion Gate.
- The Fells
- The northern hill country, rainy and green, with silver mines in the hills. Conall's birthplace.
Characters
The people of Saltreach
Bethan Harl
Keeps the Brine Pot, the only inn in Saltreach. Flour to the elbows, with a face like a closed door that opens slowly. She lost her husband to the Lord's pans two years ago and has never believed the story they told her.
Nell Harl
Bethan's twelve-year-old daughter. Quiet, watchful, and too often on the roof.
Tobin Marsh
An eleven-year-old salt raker with cracked white hands and a sister who went to work at the far end of the pans and never came home.
Reeve Osric Tarry
The king's law in Saltreach: tired, stooped, frightened, and wearing a chain of office that looks too heavy for him. He has signed a great many papers without reading them.
Lord Rafe Corran
The young Lord of Saltreach, back from the court at Tessaly. Charming, beautifully dressed, and very frightened of somebody. He turns his signet ring when he lies.
Captain Brodie Garr
Commander of the Lord's grey-coats, a bald, broken-toothed veteran of the eastern border. He believes in rope.
Hobb
A red-faced drover on the night salt road, who owes everybody money and carries a secret heavier than his wagon.
The Lady
Nobody in Saltreach says her name. Her letters arrive under a seal of black wax pressed with a closed eye, and they are always one line long.
Lore
A glossary of Caradon
- The Lion Throne
- The crown of Caradon, whose arms are a gold lion on white.
- The Kingsguard
- The Seven: sworn shields who guarded the king's body. They wore white enamel and carried the only black swords in the realm.
- The sigil
- A three-pointed crown with a sword driven down through it, point first. The mark of the Seven. Someone has started carving it into dead men.
- The Night of the Lion
- The night, eleven years ago, when King Oswin III was murdered in his bed and the youngest of the Seven fled over the river wall.
- The Oathless
- What Conall Varrick is: a sworn man who broke his oath.
- Nightiron
- A black ore with an oily sheen, unnaturally heavy and always cold. Forged, it becomes a steel harder than anything else in the world. The black swords of the Seven were made of it. The last mine was said to have run dry a hundred and twenty years ago.
- The Charter of the Seven
- An ancient treaty, older than the Lion Throne. Nightiron belongs to the crown alone, and the crown may hold only seven blades: enough to guard a king, never enough to raise an army.
- Grey-coats
- The Lord of Saltreach's household men. Their badge is a white gauntlet on black.
- Reeves
- Keepers of the king's peace in each town. They send out wanted notices, called broadsheets, by courier.
- The Mother
- The common faith of Caradon. People swear by her and keep shrines to her.
- Rakers
- Salt workers who rake the evaporation pans. You can tell them by their cracked white hands.
- The peacemaker
- An iron-banded cudgel, so called in the river towns because it made people very peaceful, very quickly.
- Coin
- Gold crowns, silver crowns, and copper. A room at the Brine Pot costs two silver; a bowl of stew costs one copper.
Walk into Saltreach with him.