Copy and Paste from the back cover of the novelEdit

Jimmy the Hand, boy thief of Krondor, lived in the shadows of the city. The sewers were his byways and a flea-ridden, rat infested cellar his home. Although gifted beyond his peers, he was still but a nimble street urchin, a pickpocket with potential. Until the day he met Prince Arutha.

Aiding the Prince in his rescue of Princess Anita conDoin from imprisonment by Duke Guy du Bas-Tyra, Jimmy ran afoul of Black Guy's secret police. But his situation gets worse when he blatantly disregards the Upright Man's instruction to lie-low in order to rescue his fellow Mockers from the cruel reprisal of the Dukes henchmen.

Given the choice of disappearing on his own, or with the Upright Man's help - in a weighted barrel at the bottom of Krondor's harbour - Jimmy flees the only home he's ever known, and ventures south to the relatively safe haven of Lands End. Suspecting the rural villagers have never encountered a lad with his talent and nose for finding wealth - other peoples wealth - he's fairly optimistic about his broadening his horizons. But Jimmy is completely unprepared for what greets him.

For Land's End is home to others who tried the crooked path, and more, to a darker secret; a dangerous presence unknown to even the local thieves and smugglers. Jimmy's youthful bravado and courage plunge him deep into the maw of chaos and death.

Plot summaryEdit

Jimmy the Hand and the Mockers have just helped Prince Arutha and Princess Anita escape the clutches of Guy du Bas-Tyra in Krondor.

Martial law is declared in Krondor and many of the prostitutes, pickpickets, street urchins, and other thugs associated with the Mockers are rounded up and prepared for execution.

Jimmy, however, devises a plan to rescue the imprisoned Mockers, including his whorish girlfriend Flora, but inadvertently destroys a dungeon while doing so.

Hoping to gain the praise of the Mockers for rescuing many Mockers that were slated for execution, Jimmy instead finds himself banished for disobeying the Upright Man's orders to do nothing and lie low.

Jimmy makes his way with Flora to Land's End to reunite her relatives there. As Jimmy explores Land's End, he meets the distraught farmgirl Lorrie, whose parents have been butchered and whose little brother was kidnapped. Jimmy and Flora agree to help Lorrie rescue her younger brother.

An agent of the temple of Lims-Kragma, goddess of death, also joins Jimmy for his search for the kidnappers and the kidnapped.

The awful truth was that the baron of Land's End was sacrificing children in an attempt to revive his dying wife who has been suspended between life and death by necromancy for over a decade. The baroness had much difficulty with childbirth but had a bastard son that was given up for adoption. Her son became the farmboy Bram, a neighbor of Lorrie, who also searched for the kidnappers.

In the end, Jimmy and the agent of Lims-Kragma rescued Lorrie's little brother along with some other children and put an end to the baron of Land's End and his necromancy. The baron and the baroness finally died and Jimmy decided to return to Krondor to rejoin the Mockers.


