Midnight Tides

How it opens

The young Tiste Edur warrior Trull Sengar runs for three days and two nights to bring his Hiroth village word of nineteen Letherii ships slaughtering the seals on the Calach beds, with a Great Meeting between the two peoples only two moons away. Hannan Mosag, the Warlock King who now rules all six Edur tribes, promises that sorcery will kill the raiders, and charges the sons of Tomad Sengar to retrieve what he calls a gift, glimpsed in a vision on a plain of snow and ice. That night the slave Feather Witch casts the old tiles of the Holds before a gathering of Letherii slaves, and an unseen winged creature seizes her until Udinaas, a slave of the Sengar household, leaps onto it and cuts her free. In the mountains to the south, the Acquitor Seren Pedac is guiding the merchant Buruk the Pale into Edur lands, and the former Sentinel Hull Beddict walks into their camp and says he will go with them.

Who you meet early

• Trull SengarTrull Sengar is a Hiroth warrior and one of the four sons of Tomad Sengar. His belt carries twenty-one coup rivets from the wars that united the tribes, seven of them marking kills, and he wants no new war with the Letherii.
• Hannan MosagHannan Mosag is the Warlock King of the Hiroth and overlord of all the Edur tribes. He holds the firstborn sons of the conquered chiefs as his K'risnan, and his shadow wraith bodyguard never sleeps.
• UdinaasUdinaas is a Letherii slave of the Sengar household, an Indebted sailor taken from a whaler by the Hiroth thirteen years ago. He mends the family's nets and loves Feather Witch, knowing nothing can come of it.
• Feather WitchFeather Witch is a Letherii slave born in the Hiroth village eighteen years ago, a handmaid to Mayen, the betrothed of Fear Sengar. She reads the old tiles of the Holds, taught by no living teacher.
• Seren PedacSeren Pedac is an Acquitor, one of seven allowed by the last treaty to guide merchants into Edur lands. She is in the sixth year of her contract with Buruk the Pale.
• Hull BeddictHull Beddict is the eldest of the Beddict brothers and a former Sentinel to King Ezgara Diskanar who gave back the King's Reed. His reports on the northern tribes were used to conquer them, and the Nerek still worship him.
• Tehol BeddictTehol Beddict is the middle of the three Beddict brothers. He sleeps on the roof of his house in Letheras, where a bed and a stool are the only furniture, and lives with an old servant named Bugg.
• Brys BeddictBrys Beddict, the youngest Beddict brother, is a Finadd of the Royal Guard newly made King's Champion. He has neither seen nor spoken with his brother Hull in years.