Magician: Master recap

Carried through the rift at the end of Magician: Apprentice, Pug spends four years as a slave in the Tsurani swamps before he and a captured Kingdom singer, Laurie, are bought by the Shinzawai, a great house secretly working for peace. On their estate Pug meets and loves Katala, and the magical talent he could never use finally surfaces. The Assembly of Magicians claims him, trains him, and elevates him as the Great One Milamber. On Midkemia, Tomas is nearly consumed by the Dragon Lord whose armour he wears before he regains himself, and Prince Arutha rescues Princess Anita from Guy du Bas-Tyra's grip on Krondor with the help of a boy thief called Jimmy the Hand. Sickened by the slaughter staged at the Warlord's games, Milamber destroys the arena and flees Kelewan with Katala. Duke Borric dies of his wounds, the Tsurani peace attempt is betrayed, and the war ends in a battle at Sethanon where King Rodric is killed after naming Lyam his heir. Macros closes the rift and is lost, Lyam is crowned, and Martin Longbow is revealed as Borric's bastard son and renounces his claim.

Previously, in Magician: Apprentice: Pug, an orphan raised in Castle Crydee on the Far Coast of the Kingdom of the Isles, was chosen as apprentice to the Duke's magician Kulgan but could not work magic by any method his master knew. His friend Tomas joined the garrison. A wrecked ship revealed the existence of invaders from another world, and Duke Borric's journey east to warn the Prince of Krondor and the King came too late: the Tsurani opened a rift and seized the valley and forests near the Grey Towers, beginning a long war. On the way east the Duke's party was driven into the abandoned dwarven mines, where Tomas was separated from the rest and given a suit of ancient white and gold armour by a dying dragon, watched by a sorcerer who explained nothing. The armour began to fill Tomas with another being's memories and power, and he now fights alongside the elves of Elvandar, who fear what he is becoming. After years of stalemate Pug was caught in the fighting outside Crydee and carried back through the rift as a slave. At home he is believed dead. This book picks the story up four years later, with the war still running.

Pug has spent four years as a slave in a Tsurani swamp camp, cutting and hauling logs under brutal overseers. He has learned the language and something of the world called Kelewan and of Tsuranuanni, the rigid empire that rules it. A newly captured Kingdom man arrives, a travelling singer named Laurie, and the two become allies. Their situation changes when they are bought out of the camp and taken north to the estate of the Shinzawai, one of the Empire's great houses. Lord Kamatsu and his elder son Kasumi want one specific thing from them: someone to teach Kasumi to speak the King's Tongue like a native, for reasons nobody in the household will explain. Life on the estate is a different order of existence from the swamp. Pug is set to work in the gardens, where he meets Katala, a slave taken from the Thuril highlands, and for the first time since his capture he begins to build a life rather than simply survive.

On Midkemia, Tomas has all but disappeared into the armour he wears. The memories of Ashen-Shugar, one of the Valheru or Dragon Lords who ruled the world in an age before men, rise in him with every battle, and he becomes a warrior the Tsurani cannot stand against and a presence the elves of Elvandar cannot control. Queen Aglaranna is drawn to him and frightened of him at once, while her advisers argue that he must be destroyed before he turns on them. On Kelewan, Pug's life at the Shinzawai estate settles: he and Katala grow close, Laurie's lessons with Kasumi continue, and the household's purpose becomes a little clearer. Kamatsu belongs to a faction that wants the war ended, and their plan turns on getting a message to the Kingdom's King behind the Warlord's back. The family travels with their two Midkemian slaves in attendance, and Pug begins to show flashes of a power he cannot account for.

Pug's power breaks out where it cannot be concealed, and the Assembly of Magicians takes him: on Kelewan a man with the talent belongs to the Great Ones, who stand outside the law and above the great houses, and no lord's claim on a slave outweighs that. He is taken to the City of Magicians, freed of his slave status and put through a long and punishing training under masters including the stout, pragmatic Hochopepa. On Midkemia, Prince Arutha travels to Krondor to beg for reinforcements and finds the city in the hand of Guy du Bas-Tyra, the King's Viceroy and the conDoins' old rival, with Princess Anita, the heir of Krondor, effectively his prisoner. Arutha falls in with the Mockers, the city's thieves' guild, and with a young thief named Jimmy the Hand, and together they get Anita out of the palace and away.

Arutha, Anita and their companions escape Krondor by sea with the smuggler captain Amos Trask, survive a hard voyage, and reach Crydee, where Arutha and Anita's attachment deepens. On Kelewan, Pug completes the Assembly's training and passes its final trial, in which he is shown the history of the world and something of the ancient force that once drove the Tsurani's ancestors across space to reach it. He emerges as a Great One under the name Milamber, one of the most powerful magicians of the Empire, answerable to no lord and free to go where he pleases. He returns for Katala and marries her. In the north of Midkemia, Tomas is brought back from the edge by the intervention of the sorcerer Macros and by what remains of his own humanity, and finds a balance between the boy from Crydee and the Dragon Lord whose memories he carries. He and Aglaranna acknowledge each other openly.

Summoned with the other Great Ones to the Warlord's Imperial Games in the Holy City, Milamber watches Midkemian prisoners butchered for the crowd's entertainment and, in a rage he does not entirely control, tears the arena apart with storm and earthquake before walking out. By Tsurani standards the act is unforgivable, and it makes him an outlaw in all but name; he takes Katala and flees to Midkemia. The Assembly, humiliated, withdraws its support from the Warlord, and the political ground on Kelewan shifts far enough for the peace faction's plan to move. On Midkemia the war has ground on for years. Duke Borric is mortally wounded at the front and dies, and Lyam becomes Duke of Crydee. Kasumi crosses the rift under the Shinzawai plan carrying terms, and for the first time an end to the war looks possible.

The truce talks are broken by treachery: the Warlord's faction attacks under the flag of parley, and the fighting resolves into a final battle in the east, at Sethanon. King Rodric is mortally wounded there and names Lyam his heir before he dies. Pug and Tomas take a hand in the battle, and the sorcerer Macros closes the rift between the worlds at the apparent cost of his own life, cutting the Tsurani army on Midkemia off from home for good. The war ends. Lyam is crowned in Rillanon, where an old matter finally comes out: Martin Longbow, huntmaster of Crydee, is Borric's natural son and therefore Lyam's elder half-brother, with a claim on the crown. Martin renounces it publicly and the succession holds. Arutha becomes Prince of Krondor and is betrothed to Anita, Martin is confirmed Duke of Crydee, Carline and Laurie find each other, and Kasumi's stranded Tsurani soldiers swear to the Kingdom and are settled at LaMut. Pug and Katala remain on Midkemia, with the question of what Macros knew, and what his warning meant, still unanswered.

The Riftwar ends. The truce talks are broken by treachery and the fighting resolves into a final battle in the east, at Sethanon, where King Rodric is mortally wounded and names Lyam conDoin his heir before he dies. Pug, no longer using his Tsurani name, and Tomas take a hand in the battle, and the sorcerer Macros closes the rift between the worlds at the apparent cost of his own life, stranding the Tsurani army on Midkemia for good. Lyam is crowned in Rillanon. There it emerges that Martin Longbow, huntmaster of Crydee, is Duke Borric's natural son and therefore Lyam's elder half-brother with a claim on the crown; Martin renounces it publicly and the succession holds. Arutha becomes Prince of Krondor and is betrothed to Anita; Martin is confirmed Duke of Crydee; Carline and Laurie find each other; Kasumi's stranded Tsurani soldiers swear to the Kingdom and are settled at LaMut under his command. Pug and Katala remain on Midkemia to build a life and, in time, a place where magic can be studied openly. Tomas, now at peace with the Valheru memories he carries, shares the rule of Elvandar with Aglaranna. What none of them can answer is what Macros knew, what the vision in Pug's final trial was warning of, or why the enemy that drove the Tsurani's ancestors across space should matter to Midkemia at all.