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Book 13 has Tyndal say "we are in the fifth year of his reign," but Book 14.5 โ which immediately follows โ explicitly stamps the date as the 9th year of King Rard I's reign. The two anchors are four years apart with no intervening time-jump narrated.
The most-discussed timeline contradiction in the series sits at the Book 13 / 14.5 boundary.
In Footwizard, Tyndal remarks on his attendance at Rard's coronation and dates the present:
We are in the fifth year of his reign. I attended his coronation, myself.Tyndal, Footwizard
But The Mad Mage of Sevendor (14.5) โ which begins immediately upon the expedition's return from Anghysbel and explicitly overlaps with Book 14 โ opens its journal with:
this 22nd day of Baismas... I write this upon my return to civilization from the Lost Land of Anghysbel, in the 9th year of King Rard I's reign.Minalan, The Mad Mage of Sevendor
Four years cannot have passed between Books 13 and 14.5. The wiki treats Book 14.5's explicit "9th year" stamp as canonical (it's a dated journal, the strongest possible anchor) and the Tyndal "fifth year" line as the looser of the two.
Possible reconciliations:
(1) Tyndal misspeaks. Casual character dialogue is more error-prone than a journal date stamp; Tyndal may simply be imprecise about the count. This is the simplest reading.
(2) Anghysbel jevolar time-dilation. Anghysbel sits inside a magic-suppressing field that warps subjective time. If the expedition felt short to its members but objectively burned years, both lines could be correct from different reference frames. The text doesn't make this case explicit, however.
(3) Authorial slip. Most likely a continuity error baked in at the manuscript level; the audiobook reads it the same way.
The chronology page treats Books 13, 14, and 14.5 as Year 9 events on the strength of the Mad Mage anchor.