Some say he passed peacefully in his sleep, others insist a terrible illness overtook him in the end. Some whisper of foul-play. Some say he was secreted away or that he has been seen, wandering the wilderness, wild-eyed and quite mad.
Regardless, the old king is gone, the kingdom's crown has lain unclaimed and unworn for too long.
Past the salt-shot, spray-soaked coast, through arcades of elm and sleeping slopes of pine, to where the last lonely road ends, in heather, spruce, ash and bone; in the loud ceaseless cities and tumbledown-towns, factions are stirring. Heirs are emerging. In this place where the stones recall and the zephyrs roam, where old ambitions are advancing and new voices are emerging, raised and resisting