’s Fate

PROLOGUE Battling Fate

The White Prophet’s premise seems simple. He wished to set the world in a different path than the one it had rolled on through so many circuits of time. According to him, time always repeats itself, and in every repetition, people make most of the same foolish mistakes they’ve always made. They live from day to day, giving in to appetites and desires, convinced that what they do does not matter in the larger scheme of things.

According to the White Prophet, nothing could be further from the truth. Every small, unselfish action nudges the world into a better path. An accumulation of small acts can change the world. The fate of the world can pivot on one man’s death. Or turn a different way because of his survival. And who was I to the White Prophet? I was his Catalyst. The Changer. I was the stone he would set to bump time’s wheel out of its rut. A small pebble can turn a wheel out of its path, he told me, but warned me that it was seldom a pleasant experience for the pebble.

The White Prophet claimed that he had seen, not just the future, but many possible futures, and most of them were drearily similar. But in a very few cases, there was a difference, and that difference led to a shining realm of new possibilities.

The first difference was the existence of a Farseer heir, one who survived. That was me. Forcing me to survive, dragging me away from the deaths that constantly tried to eliminate me so that time’s wheels could jolt back into their comfortable ruts, became his life’s work. Death and near-death swallowed me, time after time, and each time he dragged me, battered and bruised, back from the brink to follow him again. He used me relentlessly, but not without regret.

And he succeeded in diverting fate from its pre-ordained path into one that would better the world. So he said. But there were people who did not share his opinion, people who envisioned a future without a Farseer heir and without dragons. One of them decided to ensure that future by ridding herself of the fool who stood in her way.