Longshadow

From Glen Cook Wiki

The chief Shadowmaster, a potent sorcerer who uses Shadows from the Glittering Plain as minions. Longshadow is very tall and incredibly skinny; he is very pale, though he has oriental features, originally from the Land of Unknown Shadows. He almost always wears a mask.

Rise of the Shadowmasters

Decades ago, using the name Maricha Manthara Dhumraksha, he presented himself at the Vinh Gao Ghang temple of the Nyueng Bao as a visiting scholar; actually he was there to steal the key to the Shadowgate. Armed with the Key, he opened the Shadowgate and established himself and his fellow sorcerers as the Shadowmasters. Longshadow took the extra precaution of weaving his true name into the Shadowgate (damaging the gate in the process).

Armed with the Shadows, Longshadow and the others set out to conquer the deep South; but Longshadow was also utterly paranoid about the powers he had loosed getting out of control. He began building an enormous fortress to guard against Shadow incursions, Overlook Fortress, which took decades to build and was still not complete when the Company arrived.

The Shadowland Wars

Mastermind of the Shadowmasters, he is content to let his fellows take the risks in the field (and perish); he builds alliances with The Howler, the Daughter of Night, and Company defector Mogaba. But he is handicapped by his paranoia and by a strangely clouded sense of judgment, punctuated by almost epileptic fits - likely the result of Kina interfering with his mind. The result is that he is a really ineffective leader and ultimately he is captured by Lady after Howler and Soulcatcher turn on him.

He seems to go completely insane after this and remains a prisoner of the Company thereafter; he is one of the figures captured under the fortress in the Glittering Plain.

Miscellaneous

There appears to be an irreconcilable conflict between accounts of his fate in Water Sleeps and Soldiers Live. In the former, the Annalist Sleepy clearly says that when the Company establishes a settlement in the Land of Unknown Shadows, Longshadow is released so he can help instruct Tobo. However at the outset of Soldiers Live, it is apparent that Longshadow has never been released from stasis. Since the matter is given more discussion in Soldiers Live, where his release to the File of Nine becomes a protracted negotiating point, it must be assumed that the latter text is correct.