Frangka

Frangka is a military strategist. At the end of Book One’s epilogue, she rides out alone to face a Thartan army blocking Tharwind Canyon. The army parts to let her through.

That is the image the book leaves you with. A single woman, riding toward a force that has been dismantling Mordikhaan‘s armies, and the army moving aside for her. The Thartans call her Ih-kay-rahhhh. They call her the Shadowcatcher. She is a Ghothar. Beyond that, the book tells you this: that is all the explanation you will be given.

The Strategist

Frangka belongs to House Vahd. Her military capabilities are not in dispute — she is described as a brilliant strategist, and the combined Vahd/Cleargh army that reaches Tharwind Canyon under her command is the most organised military response Mordikhaan manages against the Thartan return.

But the canyon scene is not about strategy. When a Thartan leader approaches her, calls her by the name they have for her, and triggers something traumatic in her memory, it becomes clear that Frangka’s history with the Thartans precedes the events of Book One. The Thartans know who she is. They have a name for her from before the wall went up forty years ago.

What that means about Frangka’s age, her nature, or her history is not explained.

What a Ghothar Is

The book uses the word Ghothar once, in relation to Frangka, and offers no definition. This is deliberate. Something about Frangka is not ordinary — the Thartan recognition of her, the name they use, the inexplicable parting of an army at her approach — all of this points toward a nature that sits outside the normal categories of Mordikhaan‘s world.

What a Ghothar is, what it means that Frangka is one, and what the Thartans calling her Shadowcatcher implies about her history — these are threads the series has laid down carefully and not yet pulled.