The "City of Magic" and its shadow. The city where Fiona gave Samantha Spade and Merlin a crash course in trashing magical wards with Pattern.

Athdara is a high-magic world. Like many such it it mostly a series of magic-blasted wastelands.

Athdara the city is a river port in a California-sized fertile, unblasted region. The city is ruled (using the term loosely) by several dozen powerful wizards who get along mainly because there isn't much of anywhere else to go.

There is a small merchant class, not nearly enough yeoman farmers, a lot of serfs and a small merchant marine. Small numbers of nomads roam the various wastelands, preyed upon by slavers from the city.

There is a Gate -- a natural Shadow Path imroved by magic -- thirty miles outside of Athdara city. It leads to Tezia, an empire heavily influenced by the wizards of Athdara. Tezia is an average-magic world but the Athdaran wizards are able to keep old age from the Emperor and his favorites plus offer him other unfair advantages. Relative to the size of the Empire, the resources and slaves sent to Athdara are negligible.

The slaves of the Athdaran wizard Acrasias, who Sam and Merlin killed, are a mixed lot of serfs and nomads from Athdara and slaves from all over the Tezian Empire.