Читать книгу The Book of Magic: Part 2 - Группа авторов - Страница 12

The low, dry stone walls that delineated the three angled commons belonging to the villages of Gamel, Thrake, and Seyam met at an ancient obelisk known to everyone simply as “the Corner Post.” Feuds between villagers would be settled at the Corner Post, by wrestling and challenges of skill, or the more serious in a formal conclave of elders from all three villages. Twice in the last hundred years the obelisk had been the site of full-scale battles between Gamel and Thrake against Seyam, and then Gamel and Seyam against Thrake.

Every spring, the ploughs would stop well short of the Corner Post, for fear of disturbing the bones of some bygone relative or enemy. In consequence, a small copse of undistinguished trees and shrubs grew around the obelisk, dominated by a single, tall rowan tree, often remarked on, for there were no other rowans for leagues around, and no one living knew how it had come to be planted there.

Small children played under the rowan in the early morning, evading their chores, and lovers met there for trysts in the early evening. No one went near stone and copse by dead of night, because of the bones, and the stories that were told of what might rise there, or perhaps be drawn there, come midnight.

So it was three children under five who discovered a curious change in the stone, just after the sun had risen high enough to glance off the bronze ferrule on the foot of a staff, and there was sufficient light to see that the rest of the dark bog-oak length was impossibly embedded in the stone.

The visible end of the staff was high above the reach of the tallest child, which was just as well, for they were too young to be properly afraid of such a thing. In fact, after attempting to stand on each other’s shoulders in a vain effort to reach it, they forgot all about the staff until the very youngest was bringing water to the sweating harvest-time reapers working toward the narrowest point of the Thrake common. Seeing the Corner Post again, the little girl wondered aloud why there was a big black stick stuck in it, like a skewer through a cooking rabbit.

Her father went to look, and came back even sweatier and more out of breath than he had been from his work. The word spread quickly from field to barn to village, and no more than an hour later, made its way to the cool, green-lit forest home of the nearest approximation to a wizard for fifty leagues or more, since the woman purported to be one in the nearest town of Sandrem had been unmasked as a charlatan several months before.

The forest house had once been a minor royal hunting lodge, in the time of the kings and queens, before the plague and the rise of the Grand Mayors. Octagonal in shape, it was built around the bole of one of the giant redwoods, some twenty feet above the forest floor. A broad stair had led up to it once, but long ago that had fallen or been intentionally destroyed, its remnants now a tumulus of rotten timber, overgrown with ferns and fungus. A ladder, easily drawn up in case of peril, had replaced it.

The current inhabitant of the lodge was hanging pheasants in his cool room, an oak-shingled hut built between the roots of a neighboring giant redwood some sixty paces from the house. He felt the news arriving before he heard those bringing it, or at least he sensed there were excited people coming down the forest path. Usually this meant somebody was badly hurt and needed his aid, so he strung up the last three pheasants very swiftly and climbed out, leaving the birds swinging on their hooks. He did pause to close and slide the great bolt across the door, for it was not only mere foxes that fancied hanging game. The Rannachin loved pheasant, and they could open doors that weren’t secured with cold iron.

The pheasant-hanger’s name was Colrean, or at least it was now. He was under thirty years old, but only just, and looked older, because he had spent the last decade mostly at sea, and then more recently in the forest and the fields, under the sky. Sun, salt water, and wind had worked to make his face more interesting. He had a lean, competent look about him, his eyes were dark and quick, and he walked with a noticeable limp, legacy of some unexplained wound or injury.

Colrean had come to the lodge some twenty months before, in midwinter, riding one mule and followed by two others, all of them heavily laden. Tying these up at the old iron hitching post near the ladder, he had by means unknown dispossessed the Rannachin, who had thought to make the lodge a cozy winter lair. Then he had nailed a parchment with a great lead seal to one of the more outstanding roots of the great tree. According to those few folk among the villagers who could read, this was a deed from the Grand Mayor of Pran, granting the new arrival the lodge; hunting rights in the forest and certain other perquisites relating to tolls on the forest road; tithes on fishing or eel-trapping in the river Undrana that passed nearby; a threepenny fee for cattle watering at the wide Undrana ford; and other minor items of tallage.

He had never attempted to enforce any of these imposts, which was fortunate, given that the people of the three villages were by no means convinced that Pran had any authority whatsoever in their purlieu, no matter what the last queen of Pranallis and her vassal the long-gone baron of Gamel, Thrake, and Seyam might have held to be their own.

Colrean had shown his wisdom in matters of friendly relations with the local inhabitants very early, by giving each of the three villages one of his mules within days of his arrival, limping along through snow and ice to do so. Though he carried no staff nor wore a sorcerer’s ring, he was at once suspected of being some kind of magic-worker, for he spoke to the mules and they obeyed, and the village dogs didn’t bark and slather at his approach, but came and bent their heads before him, and wagged their tails and offered their bellies to be scratched. Which he did, indicating kindness as well as magic.

The villagers tried to find out exactly what kind of magic-worker he was, but he would not speak of it. They first knew he definitely was one when Fingal the Miller’s hand was crushed in his own stone, and Colrean came unbidden to cut away the dangling fingers and then, with a cold flame conjured in his own hands, cauterized the wound, so that no blood sickness came. Fingal Seven Fingers was only the first of Colrean’s patients, and he even deigned to help the midwives at difficult birthings, which the villagers knew marked him as no wizard. Wizards were grand beings, and lived in the cities, and were not to be found at village birthings.

The news-bearers who came running to be first to tell Colrean about the staff were Sommie and Heln. They were frequent visitors, inseparable friends, serious-minded, both eleven years old. Sommie was the seventh daughter of the midwife of Gamel and her weaver husband; Heln was the fifth son of the innkeepers of the only inn for leagues, the Silver Gull at the Seyam crossroad. Colrean knew them well, for once a week he taught children (and some grown folk) who wished to learn their letters, taking slates and hornbook to each village meeting hall in turn. Sommie and Heln were among his keenest pupils, following him from village to village and always pestering him for extra classes or books they might borrow.

“There’s a stick stuck in the Corner Post!” shouted Sommie when she was still a good dozen yards away.

“Not just a stick!” cried out Heln breathlessly, skidding to a stop in the leaf mulch of the forest path. “A staff! Like a scythe handle, only it’s dark wood and has a metal bit on the end.”

Colrean stopped in midstep, as always a little clumsily, and lifted his head, sniffing at the breeze. The children watched as he slowly turned about, nose twitching. When he completed his circle, he looked down at the two dirty, excited faces staring up at him.

“A staff in the stone, you say? And you’ve seen it yourselves?”

“Yes, of course! We looked and then came straight here. Why are you sniffing?”

“You’re not playing some trick on me?” asked Colrean. He had sensed nothing on the air, no magic stirring. The Corner Post was less than half a league away, and he felt sure he would have felt something …

“No! It’s there! This morning, from nowhere. The little ones saw it. Why were you sniffing?”

“Oh, just smelling what scents are on the air,” said Colrean absently. “I’d better have a look. Has anyone touched this staff?”

“No! Old Haxon said no one was to go near, and you were to be fetched, I mean asked to come. Ma’s coming to tell you, but we ran ahead.”

Ma was Sommie’s mother, the midwife Wendrel. She had some small magic herself, combined with considerable herb-lore and a little book-learning. Knowing more about such things than the younger folk, she could barely conceal her fear as she puffed up after the children.

“It is a wizard’s staff,” she panted out, after a bare nod of greeting. “And it is deep in the stone.”

“But there is no wizard about?” asked Colrean. He hesitated for a moment, then added, “No new tree nearby, strangely full-grown? A stray horse of odd hue? A stranger in the village?”

“No tree, no stray, no stranger,” said Wendrel. “Just the staff in the stone. Will you come?”

“Yes,” said Colrean.

“Can we come too?” asked Sommie, her question echoed by Heln.

Colrean looked up at the sky, watching the clouds, judging how much daylight remained. He thought about the phase of the moon, which was waning gibbous, and which stars would be in the ascendant that night, influencing the world below. There was nothing of obvious alarm in the heavens, no harbinger of doom.

“It should be safe enough, at least until sunset,” he said slowly. He looked at Wendrel. “But there is danger. As Frossel said:

A wizard without a staff

may still be a wizard

A staff without a wizard

is a void

Waiting to be filled.

“Who’s?” asked Heln.

“Frossel?” finished Sommie.

“Frossel was a wizard, chronicler, and poet,” answered Colrean. He started walking, the slower pace forced by his limp easily matched by Wendrel at his side, the children ranging faster across and behind him on the path, like dogs on a tricky scent who nevertheless do not wish to go far from their master. “I might lend you one of his books. He wrote a lot. Go on, I want to talk to Wendrel.”

The children nodded together and bounded ahead.

“What does ‘a void waiting to be filled’ mean?” asked Wendrel quietly.

“A wizard’s staff, lost or abandoned by a wizard, will attract many things, many of them not of our sunlit, mortal realm,” said Colrean.

“Rannachin?” asked Wendrel.

“Yes, but worse things too,” said Colrean. “Far worse. And the staff—if it is a wizard’s staff—will call magic-workers of all kinds, even from very far away. Though I have some hope the stone will quiet it. I suppose that’s why whoever put it there did so, trying to keep it hidden.”

“The stone will hide it? Our Corner Post?”

Colrean looked aside at her as he strode on with his curious, lumbering gait. A brief look of puzzlement passed over his face like a cloud whisking across the sun.

“You do not know the nature of your stone?”

“I know it’s very old,” replied Wendrel, with a shrug. “But the powers I have are to do with people, and living things, not ancient lumps of rock or the like. The Corner Post has always seemed simply a stone to me. Though there is that odd rowan that keeps the stone company … sometimes I have felt as if it were watching me, that it is more than a simple tree …”

“It is,” said Colrean. “Though I do not know its nature either. All such mysteries are best left alone, save a pressing need to do otherwise. As for the Corner Post … there is definitely a power within it, though it sleeps, and sleeps deeply. I suspect it is one of the ancient walking stones, which many ages ago came down from the far mountains and took root here to fulfill some compact long forgotten. Those stone warriors served the Old Ones, the folk of the air, so long vanished but never entirely gone.”

Wendrel shivered. When she was a young apprentice, a birthing had gone terribly wrong. At the moment both infant and mother died, she had felt a sudden cold and unnerving presence, something drawn to the two deaths. The midwife who was her mentor quickly said this was one of the Old Ones, and that if they remained still and did not speak, no harm would come to them. Yet to warn Wendrel, the older midwife had spoken. She was at once struck dumb, and it was a twelvemonth before she regained the use of her voice at all, and she who had one of the sweetest voices in the three villages could never again carry a tune.

“Even the most powerful wizards do not readily meddle with such stones,” continued Colrean. “I am surprised … no … I am astonished that the stone would allow anything to pierce it, let alone a wizard’s staff.”

“Allow?” asked Wendrel.

“On its own ground, I think that stone could stand against the Grand Wizard herself,” replied Colrean. “And it must be allied to, or at least have permitted the rowan to grow … and that tree isn’t much younger than the stone! It’s older than any of the trees in the forest, even the giant redwoods or Grand’s Oak, over by the broad water. Ordinary rowans do not live so long.”

Wendrel asked no more questions, and was silent, her brow furrowed in thought. They walked on, crossing one of the rivulets that fed the Undrana. Colrean’s oddly heavy, nailed boots boomed on the old log bridge, accompanied by the soft patter of Wendrel’s sandals and the almost imperceptible scuffing of the children’s bare feet.

They left the forest fringe soon after, to follow the well-trodden path along Gamel common’s western boundary wall. The villagers were back at their reaping, for the harvest could not wait for anything save obvious, immediate threat. Sheaves of barley dotted the common, waiting for the older children to pick them up. But there was a noticeable lack of activity toward the top of the common, where the Corner Post loomed with its attendant rowan, the lesser trees and shrubs about it like beggars waiting for bounty from a king and queen.

“You had best leave me, and come no closer,” Colrean warned Wendrel and the children, as they drew near the copse. He could feel the staff’s presence now. It was making his thumbs prick and shiver as if a horde of minute insects stuck their prongs in his flesh, and there was a cold, wet draft caressing his bare neck, though no wind ruffled the barley stalks.

He looked up again at the sun, and the few tufts of scattered cloud dotted across the great stretch of blue sky—clouds that dissipated even as he watched.

“I think it will be safe enough till dusk. But you need to warn everyone to stay away from the Corner Post. They must be inside well before full night. The livestock too. Salt thresholds and windowsills. Stoke the hearthfires up and keep cold iron close.”

“What’s going—”

“To happen?”

“Perhaps nothing,” said Colrean, attempting a smile to reassure the children. They were not reassured, for the smile was unlike any expression Colrean had made in their sight before, and were they asked what he tried to convey, would have said he was in pain. “The staff in the stone may call … creatures … who are dangerous. I will stay here. If anything comes, I will make sure it can do no harm. Now go!”

The children, well versed in obeying their elders, skipped off at once. But Wendrel lingered, concern on her face. As she had said, her powers lay with the living, most particularly attending upon births and deaths. She was thus well acquainted with fear, and the small indications of it upon an otherwise well-composed face.

“Do you have such power, to assure no harm will come to us?” she asked.

Colrean shook his head. “But I may be able to divert the course of whatever does come for the staff. Delay acts of small malevolence, and I hope give warning of anything worse.”

“Why would you do this for us?” asked Wendrel. “To heal the hurt from a millstone, to aid in a birthing—these things do not risk your life. But surely you do now.”

Colrean half shrugged, as if he did not know how to answer.

“This is my homeplace now,” he said. “I have grown fond of some … many of the people. I have found peace here.”

“A peace soon to be disturbed, if you are right,” said Wendrel. “Almost, you remind me of the wizards of the old tales, who would appear without word on the eve of some storm or terror, come to defend the common folk. Only to leave when the danger has passed, as unheralded as they came, without thanks or payment.”

“Wizards are only found in the cities now, bound by gold and oaths to serve the Mayors,” said Colrean. “And I have been here two winters already. I hope this acquits me of being thought some bird of ill omen. Besides, I certainly do not wish to leave. Or seek payment.”

Wendrel did not say anything for a moment, and silence fell between them. Colrean turned his head to glance at the Corner Post. But his body remained still, and he did not otherwise move, or take his leave, seemingly caught in indecision on the moment of commitment to a likely short-lived future.

In the distance, one of the reapers nicked herself with her sickle, and swore. Her harsh words brought Colrean back into the present. He blinked and looked at the midwife, who returned his gaze with a concern he recognized from seeing her with patients.

“I will bring you one of Rhun’s second-best blankets, a waterskin, and food. Is there aught else you will need?”

Rhun was Wendrel’s husband, save his wife the youngest of the elders of Gamel. He was barely old enough to bear the title without ridicule, having gained his position not from mere seniority, or as in Wendrel’s case her wisdom, but in recognition of him being the best weaver in the three villages, and in fact for many leagues around. Even Rhun’s second-best blankets were thicker, heavier, far more water repellent and more attractive than the city-bought ones Colrean had back in his lodge.

“All will be welcome, and a blanket perhaps most of all. It will be clear and cool tonight, and I must stay until the dawn. But be sure you come and go before nightfall.”

“There is time enough,” said Wendrel.

“Do not approach the stone,” added Colrean. “Leave everything by the wall here; I will fetch it.”

“As you will,” said Wendrel. “I hope … I hope you are wrong about the staff, and nothing will come.”

“I hope so too,” said Colrean. But he knew he was not wrong. Whether he had become more accustomed to it, or the stone’s grip on the staff was loosening as the day faded, he was much more aware of the silent call of magic emanating from whatever was in the Corner Post. If the children had not come to him, he would still have been drawn here, by sunset at the latest. And there were creatures far more sensitive to magic than he was, more sensitive than any mortal. They would come, once the sun was down.

Unless a wizard claimed the staff.

That would be another problem, perhaps no less dangerous than the creatures. For despite what he had said to Wendrel, not all wizards were bound to the Mayors by oaths and gold. There were some who considered themselves above the concerns of ordinary folk, and only sought to please themselves. They were kept in check by what they called the tame wizards of the cities, but that was in the cities.

Not out here.

Here there was only Colrean.

Who realized he had been woolgathering again, delaying the inevitable. Wendrel was already hurrying after the children, and he could hear them excitedly calling out his warnings to the harvesters, the repetition of “salt your windowsills” clear.

Colrean walked over to the Corner Post, pausing by the rowan to bend his head respectfully, as if the tree might bar his way or take umbrage at his presence. But the rowan gave no indication it was anything other than a normal tree, leaves and branches still in the quiet air. Colrean would have welcomed a breeze, particularly a brisk southerly, for that wind was antithetical to some of the creatures that might come in the night. But there was no wind, and it seemed, little chance of one.

Colrean passed by the rowan and cautiously approached the Corner Post, each of his six clumsy steps slower and shorter than the last, till he shuffled as close as he dared go, almost but not quite in touching distance.

There was a staff in the stone.

Colrean didn’t really need to look at it to know it was indeed a wizard’s staff. But he cautiously examined the exposed length that projected from the ancient stone, wondering why the staff was placed so high. Indeed, either an extraordinarily tall wizard had plunged it into the stone, or they had brought a ladder, which seemed unlikely. Even if so, why bother to put it out of easy reach?

This was not the only puzzle. Only three or four inches of the dark bog-oak beyond the bronze ferrule on the foot of the staff was exposed, and there were no obvious runes or inscriptions that might have helped him identify the staff’s provenance. All he could tell from sight and his sense of the unseen was that this staff was very old, and very powerful.

Colrean could tell it was not a single staff at all, but a composite of many. Staves were made by wizards to store more power than they could hold in their own fragile bodies or in other tools of the art, and particularly powerful staves were made by a process of accretion, combining a new staff with the old.

But as making a wizard’s staff was a time-consuming and potentially dangerous process, there were renegades who would simply take or steal the staves of weaker or unsuspecting wizards, using whatever means necessary—including such things as poison and assassination. Then they would combine the stolen staff with their own, growing more powerful in the process, and thus be able to take even more staves from other wizards.

“Better and better,” muttered Colrean to himself, meaning quite the opposite. For a moment he contemplated touching the end of the staff, for that would reveal to him from whence it came, and might even give him the name of the wizard who had put it here. Though Colrean could not think why a wizard would want to put their own staff in such a place, or indeed, why a wizard would put someone else’s staff there.

Unless it was a trap or a lure of some sort … but he could sense no other magic-worker nearby, nor see anything that might be one in another shape. There were no new trees, no odd horse, no peculiarly large raven watching from the stone wall …

Colrean also contemplated placing his hand upon the Corner Post itself and beseeching it to inform him what it knew of the matter. But it was not a serious thought, and was immediately dismissed. He knew more about such stones than he had revealed to Wendrel. Most were long dead—or their animating force dissipated—but the few who retained their power were typically averse to interaction with any but the most innocent of mortal folk, and were best left very much alone.

Though, in this case, the stone must have allowed the staff to be placed where it was, else there would have been a dead wizard among the barley, pieces of broken staff strewn about the commons, fires burning, people screaming, and no need for anyone to summon him from the forest.

It was all a great puzzle.

Colrean sighed and found a place to sit some twenty paces from the Corner Post and the rowan, where the ground rose a little, giving him a longer view. He sat with his back against the Gamel-Thrake border wall and settled into the reverie magic-workers called dwelm, calling forth power he had stored over time in various items about his person, drawing it either into himself or reapportioning it among his objects of power.

This was a key part of any magic-worker’s preparations, for there were things that stored magic well but were slow to give it up, and objects that released power swiftly, but could not hold it for any length of time; or some combination thereof that was necessarily a compromise. The first were typically made of stone, petrified wood, amber, and/or gold, sometimes rubies or emeralds; and the latter silver or bronze with moonstones and diamonds or any of the paler gems, and younger wood or porcelain.

A properly prepared staff of ancient bog-oak, shod in bronze and tipped with iron, was unrivaled as a magical instrument, in that it could store power very well and release it reasonably quickly. There was a good reason every wizard had a staff. Though a wand of well-aged willow, with bands of gold and silver, could serve near as well, if there was some reason to dissemble and appear to be some other kind of magic-worker.

But Colrean had neither staff nor wand, nor, it seemed even a mere sorcerer’s ring. His fingers, still somewhat stained with pheasant blood, were bare.

The sun had begun to set by the time he emerged from the dwelm trance. Wendrel had been; there was a basket sitting on the wall some distance away. He went to fetch it, taking it back to his chosen position where he could keep watch over Corner Post, rowan, and most of the three commons, though one area was obscured by the copse.

As expected, it began to grow cool almost immediately after the sun went down. Colrean unfolded the blanket and arranged it over his shoulders. Wendrel had provided bread, cheese, and sausage, and he made a quick meal of this and drank some water, while he watched the moon begin its rise and the stars come out. It was a very bright night, with the sky clear. Several small shooting stars sped by near the horizon, watched carefully by Colrean in case they grew brighter, or shone red, as true portents would. But they seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary. Such tiny fading sparks of brilliance could be seen on any clear night out here.

Colrean dozed a little then, rather uncomfortably, trusting to his otherworldly senses to jolt him awake should something happen. But when he did wake, it was from the simple discomfort of his bladder. Stretching to ease the kinks of dozing against the stone wall, he limped some distance away to urinate, not wishing to offer any disrespect to the Corner Post.

Coming back, he noticed it had suddenly grown quiet. His own footfalls were the only sound, where even a few moments before he had heard crickets sawing at their music; night-birds calling; the shrill shriek of a shrew caught by an owl; the muffled crackle and thump of hares disporting nearby in the barley stubble. All were silent now, and the air was still.

Colrean opened his eyes wide, calling power into his dormant mage-sight. The world grew brighter, moon- and starlight intensified. Shadows lengthened from stone and tree … and sprang out from a dozen previously unseen creatures that had made their characteristically stealthy way from the forest and across the common, and were now only nine or ten yards from the copse. Even through a mage’s eyes their shadows were easier to see than themselves, but in essence they were somewhat like foxes and somewhat like human folk, walking upright on their hind legs, and possessing tool-using hands, but they also had tall brushes, russet fur, cunning fox-masked faces, and sensitive, sticking-up ears.

Those ears twitched in unison as Colrean spoke.

“How now, my lords and ladies! What seek the Rannachin at the Corner Post?”

The twelve spread out in a line without any obvious command or discussion, and there was the glitter of obsidian blades in their pawhands, the shine of teeth bared in long snouts.

“I think not,” said Colrean. He mumbled something, cupped one hand and drew power. A blue flame burst from his palm, the air roaring as the fire grew taller than the man. “You recall the stench of singed fox fur well, I think?”

Again there were no visible signs of debate, but as one the Rannachin’s weapons were put away, the jaws closed, and the fox-people turned and slid away into the night, as unobtrusively as they had come.

Colrean watched them for some time, keeping the flamecast ready, as it was quite possible they would turn back and try to rush him. But they did not. Quite possibly in the short time they had spent near the Corner Post they had already deduced the staff was too powerful for them to steal, or dared not risk the displeasure of the stone. It was even possible they thought Colrean too great a foe, though in the past he had never had to deal with more than three or four Rannachin at once.

He let the fire die when they were out of sight, and allowed the power to ebb from his eyes as well. He had to carefully husband his strength, particularly that drawn from his own blood and bone. There would doubtless be worse than Rannachin to come that night. He could sense the staff calling ever more clearly and strongly in the clear, cool night. It would bring others.

Colrean ate a little more bread, but did not sit down again. Instead he limped about the edge of the copse, and once again paid his respects to the ancient rowan. This time he not only bent his head, but slowly went down on one knee, as he might to a Grand Mayor or the Grand Wizard. He stayed there for some time, listening and thinking, comforted that the world around was full of small sounds again, and the sky remained clear, the stars and moon bright—and there was no sudden shower of bloodred sparks in the heavens above.

The rowan gave no sign it was aware of his obeisance, neither during his uncomfortable kneeling nor when Colrean pushed himself up and wandered off again, this time returning to his watching spot. Feeling uneasy, he carefully climbed up on the wall for a better view. This was a chancy maneuver given whatever was wrong with his leg, and was made no easier by the age and construction of the wall. Though the stones were cunningly set together, no mortar held them in place. Neither he nor the wall fell, but Colrean was not comforted by what he saw.

There was a fog rolling across the Seyam common, as if a single dense cloud had somehow fallen from above, though the sky was clear and there was no fog anywhere else.

Even as he saw this sudden, inexplicable mist, Colrean’s otherworldly senses twitched, and he felt a spasm of intense fear grab his guts and grip him about the lungs. He fought off the sudden, sensible urge to flee and instead took a quick, shuddering breath. Climbing down from the wall, he hurried as fast as he could, almost hopping back to the rowan. Under its branches, he quickly took out one of his few objects of power, a knife of whalebone with a solid silver hilt that had been hidden under his jerkin. Calling on the power stored in this, he drew a circle about himself in the earth, mumbling memory-hooks, the words magic-workers used to safely recall exactly how the power must be called and used, words that the uneducated thought of as spells.

When it was done, the whalebone blade blew into dust like a kicked puffball, and the silver hilt crumbled in Colrean’s hand, as if it had been buried in a tomb for a thousand years and could not stand the corrosive effect of open air. He had drawn every last scrap of power stored in the weapon, all at once, and so it could never be used again, never refilled. Two years to make and fill it to the brim with power, all gone in a matter of minutes, a treasure spent.

Spent wisely, Colrean hoped. He reached into his jerkin again, fingers closing on the silver chain around his neck, making sure it was secure and that by its weight he could feel what hung suspended there.

Fog overlapped the stone walls and spread around him, encircling copse, Corner Post, and rowan, but not closing in. Colrean could still see the starlit sky directly above, but it was as if he were in a deep hole, surrounded on all sides by gray walls.

Walls of shifting, dense fog.

There was something in the whiteness. Colrean could sense it, but was grateful he couldn’t see it. He knew what it must be: one of the ancient evils of thrice-burned Hîrr, the city-state still reviled and feared though a thousand years had passed since its last and utter destruction. The thing in the fog had been called many things by many different peoples. Colrean chose the most common, one that would not reveal his knowledge of any deeper mysteries.

“Grannoch! Many-in-one!” shouted Colrean. “This is not your land, this is not your time. There is nothing here for you. Begone!”

Fog swirled. Colrean caught a glimpse of something—some long limb or perhaps a tail—of ever-burning hide, like lumpy charcoal with crosshatched lines of fire. His eyes burned and tears ran as he watched it disappear once more into the roiling mist, to be replaced by the sudden emergence of a human hand, smooth-skinned and elegant, the fingers beckoning to him, summoning him from his circle. Offering him in that gesture everything he ever wanted, or might want: the most beautiful lover, the greatest power, riches beyond compare—

Colrean dug his foot into the earth, just as it began to rise without his conscious direction, to make him take that first, fatal step out of his protective circle.

“I am not to be caught that way,” said Colrean. “I say again, begone!”

The beckoning hand disappeared. The fog thickened, but Colrean could see a dim silhouette building there, a figure forming. Something twice his height, and twice as broad, and only roughly human. One arm was very long, or perhaps held a blade; he could not tell from the mere suggestion of shape in the twisty cloud.

It was a blade, of dark crystal or congealed black flame or something stranger still, a blade that erupted from the fog and struck at Colrean, so swiftly he barely saw it. He cried out and flinched as it hit, but it did not cut him in half, as it would have had he been unprotected. The circle he had made around himself stood firm, the unearthly blade rebounding from the unseen barrier with the screech of a nail drawn across an anvil, magnified a thousand times.

“A sorcerer?” whispered a voice high in the air, somewhere in that bank of fog.

A little girl’s voice, clear and sweet.

“It bears no ring,” answered another voice, seemingly from beneath the earth just beyond Colrean’s circle.

This voice was male, and old, and crotchety.

“It has no staff,” muttered yet another voice from somewhere in the fog.

A deep-voiced woman. A high-pitched man. An adolescent, the voice shifting, changing with every word.

“The circle is well wrought, and adamant,” announced another male voice. “Yet, three strikes shall see it split asunder, or so I judge.”

“Unless it be renewed.”

“Renewed? No ring, no staff. It is mortal. Such a meager vessel; it must have spent its force.”

“Why do we hold back? Strike again, strike again!”

“It smiles. It has a secret. A true wizard comes, we must not tarry.”

“Strike or go, strike or—”

The blade shot out again, and once more every muscle in Colrean’s body tensed, expecting sudden, awful pain and then the perhaps welcome relief of death. But again the circle held with the scream of iron, and the blade whisked back.

Before the Grannoch could strike again, Colrean hurled himself down and sideways out of the circle, breaking its protection himself even as the third strike split the air above him. Like a cockroach he scuttled away, circling behind the rowan, but the fog rolled closer, and the blade came too swiftly for him to fully escape, the very tip of it slicing the heel off Colrean’s left boot and the sole beneath, leaving an agonizing, four-inch-long wound along his foot.

Stifling a sob, Colrean clutched the trunk of the rowan and drew his legs up, hands scrabbling at the chain around his neck. But before he could draw out what was hidden there, the terrible sword came out of the fog once again. Colrean had a split second to know this was the death blow. He shut his eyes and let out the scream that he had been holding back the entire time.

Three seconds later he was still screaming, but he wasn’t dead, and there was no new pain to add to the white-hot burn in his foot.

Colrean opened his eyes, the scream fading in his throat. The sword hung above him, wrapped and roped and entangled in rowan branches, and more branches ran outward to grip a great, grotesque arm of smoking, chancred charcoal hide. Through the suddenly broken and dissipated fog Colrean saw the hideous misshapen body of the Grannoch, the “many-in-one.” Worst of all, he saw its lumpen head, adorned with all those it had taken over centuries, dozens of mostly human faces crammed too tightly together. All eyes dull and lifeless, but the many mouths writhing, emitting cries and curses as the monster tried to free itself from the grip of the ancient rowan.

Colrean resisted the temptation to shut his eyes again, or to look away and vomit. Instead he drew out the chain, his shaking hand closing on the pendant object. But before he could use whatever he held, the Grannoch tore itself out of the grasp of the rowan with the crack of snapping branches and the rasp of shredding bark. But it did not attack again, instead staggering back, great arms reaching to fend off the rowan’s whipping branches, the monster’s many mouths no longer shouting or screaming but exhaling thick streams of fog as it tried to shroud itself again.

Colrean put on the ring of wreathed gold and electrum that he usually kept hidden on the chain, and called forth its power. Muttering memory-hooks, he directed his magic this way and that, lines of force reaching deep into the ground around the Grannoch. Then with one wrenching effort of will, the magic opened a great chasm in the ground, the earth breaking apart with a thunderous blare.

Now the Grannoch reached for the rowan branches, rather than trying to fend them off. But it was too slow, the opening of the ground too deep, too sudden and unexpected. The monster fell into the ravine, spouting streams of fog and curses, the rowan’s branches snapping back to let it go.

Colrean called upon the last reserves in the ring and shut the chasm with a clap of his hands. The electrum wreath crumbled to dust. The gold band shivered, but remained, though it was now powerless and empty.

Even so, it was clearly a sorcerer’s ring, worn on the third finger of Colrean’s right hand, and the sight of it would have settled many bets in the three villages.

For a minute or two the ground groaned and rumbled beneath the sorcerer, as if the very earth might choose to spit the Grannoch out, but eventually it stilled. Colrean, his hands trembling with hurt and shock and only slowly ebbing terror, painfully stripped the boot from his left foot and inspected the wound. It was not deep, but ugly, and even as he half laughed and half sobbed at the irony that it had to be his left foot the Grannoch’s blade had struck, the mage carefully summoned a fraction of the remaining power he held ready in himself. Calling a cauterizing flame to his hand, he used it to cleanse and seal the angry wound.

When he was finished, he tore the tail from his linen shirt and bound it around his foot. That done, he rested his forehead against the rowan’s trunk and gave thanks in a quiet whisper. He had hoped it was an ancient guardian of the kind that reviled such things as the Grannoch, but he had not been sure.

When he lifted his forehead from the tree, the rowan’s branches shivered, and a single leaf fell into his hand, a leaf more silver in the moonlight than any normal rowan’s. Colrean carefully put it inside his jerkin.

“I thank the rowan,” he said formally, gingerly hopping up onto his right foot. He almost fell over, and would have done if he hadn’t caught himself, both hands against the rowan’s trunk. “For all.”

He stood there for some time, supported by the tree. Listening, letting his otherworldly senses stretch outward, fearing that the ground might burst open to reveal the Grannoch was not crushed and dead far below, as he truly hoped.

But everything seemed once again returned to the normal business of the night. There was no fog, no silence, just the soft velvet darkness lightened by moon and stars, and the usual small sounds of life and death.

After a time that felt long but he knew was well short of an hour, Colrean began to hold some hope that he might now survive until the dawn. If he made it that far, he should survive the day beyond, as he had some expectation that help would come before the next night. An oath-bound, trustworthy wizard would likely come from Ferraul or Achelliston, as both cities were within a day’s hard riding. Less, using post-horses and a little magic to draw away fatigue and renew tired muscles.

He had even begun to imagine just such a wizard, when he both heard and felt the approach of something that, while it sounded rather like a horse, he knew from his mage-sense was not. Once again, the natural creatures about knew it too, and all around the owls were fleeing, the field mice diving into holes, the very crickets digging under the barley stalks, all hoping like Colrean to stay alive until the dawn.

There was nowhere for Colrean to hide, and he could not flee. Instead he drew himself up, only one hand resting against the rowan’s trunk. He looked across at the stone, and the staff thrust into it. Again he wondered who had put it there, a staff of such power, one sure to draw Rannachin and things like the Grannoch, and the wizard who was coming now.

Only then did Colrean remember the Grannoch had said a true wizard was on the way.

Surely not an oath-bound wizard, though, for there had not been time for anyone to come from the closest cities. Besides, this one was riding a peggoty, a made horse, a thing given a semblance of magical life for a short period. A peggoty was fashioned from green sticks of willow, mud, and the blood of no less than seven mares. Such mounts were accordingly very expensive to make, they took a great deal of power to create and not much less to maintain, and were difficult to ride. But they were much swifter than a horse.

Making things like the peggoty was forbidden to oath-bound wizards. It was blood magic, requiring a great deal of often slow and painful killing, and its practitioners invariably ended up having no concern for any lives but their own.

Sure enough, up alongside the Thrake-Seyam wall came a strutting mount of sticks, with a cloaked and hatted figure on its back, a staff held negligently in the rider’s hand. Colrean could not see the face of the wizard, shadowed under the brim of the hat, but he already had an inkling of the rider’s identity just from the silhouette and seat. He knew that rider.

She—it had to be she, if he was right—stopped the peggoty a little ways off, and dismounted onto the stone wall. Unlike Colrean, she did so with nimble grace, and there was no danger she would fall or stones dislodge. Her hand waved, moonlight catching several sorcerer’s rings upon her fingers, not a meager single ring as Colrean had possessed. With that wave, the peggoty collapsed into its component parts, its work done.

Colrean caught a whiff of the horrible charnel stench of decaying blood and tried not to breathe it in.

He still couldn’t see the wizard’s face, but he was sure now. He did indeed know every movement of her slender body, the shape of those elegant hands.

“It’s been a long time, Naramala,” said Colrean, his voice loud in the silent night.

The wizard tilted her head back, perhaps in surprise at hearing his voice, though probably not. He could see her face clearly now. Beautiful Naramala, the woman he had once thought sure to be the great love of his life.

“Coltreen,” she said, her voice musical and lovely, even more lovely than her face and body. It was her voice he had fallen in love with first, hearing her unseen in the university library, undeterred by the shushing and hushing of the proctors.

“I am called Colrean now,” he said quietly. “The Islanders cannot pronounce hard t’s. It seemed easier to let it go.”

“The Islanders?” asked Naramala. “Is that where you went? But then why are you here now, so far from the Cold Sea?”

She walked along the wall now, toward copse and rowan and Corner Post. And Colrean. She held the staff like a rope-walker, across her body, as if for balance, though he knew she had no need to do so.

“I live nearby, these two years past,” said Colrean, gesturing with his right hand, the moonlight catching on his own ring. “I had enough of the sea, the cold.”

“And you made your ring, after all,” said Naramala. She stopped several feet short of the farthest-reaching branches of the rowan and stepped lightly down from the wall, bringing her staff vertical. “I did wonder what had become of you. And why you left so abruptly, without a word. Indeed, I was quite hurt.”

“I saw you with Alris,” said Colrean.

Naramala laughed, an easy, carefree laugh. Even now, knowing what he knew, Colrean felt an ache when he heard it. Such an easy laugh, so warm and inclusive, with her eyes widening that little bit and her mouth twitched just so—

“Oh, we were students then and carefree! How was I to know you would be so jealous of some simple pleasure? Or was it because she was a woman? So rustic, Coltreen! I suppose these barley fields suit you better than the streets of Pran.”

“It wasn’t jealousy, though I will admit to that. I saw you kill her,” said Colrean flatly. “Strangled with her own scarf. And you took her bracelets, the proof that won her the first place.”

Naramala didn’t answer for a moment, then she laughed again. A little laugh, very different in tone. One of cold amusement, not for sharing, and her eyes became colder still.

“How ever did you see that?”

“There was a cat,” said Colrean. “I was practicing watching through its eyes. It chanced to alight on your windowsill, and … I saw.”

“Only four of us were to be allowed to try for our sorcerer’s rings that year,” said Naramala conversationally. “Alris might have got my place. Though your leaving made it easier still. Were you afraid I would kill you, too?”

“No,” replied Colrean. “I was afraid I might kill you. I couldn’t bear … everything, I suppose. The disillusionment, the despair. I decided to go as far away as possible. I was young, rash, and judgmental. Of myself, more than anything. How could I have ever loved a murderer?”

“I thought true love would transcend mere murder,” said Naramala. She looked up at the rowan’s branches, many of them now leafless, the bark shredded from its combat with the Grannoch. Giving the tree a wide berth, she circled around toward the stone, tapping the ground with her staff as she walked, her gaze never quite leaving Colrean. “If you ever truly loved me, you would understand why I had to kill Alris. Wizards are not to be judged as normal people, Colrean. If you had stayed to make your staff, you would understand this.”

“So you are beyond me, and my judging?” asked Colrean. “Or that of anyone, save other wizards?”

“I am beyond their judgment too,” answered Naramala. “Or I will be, once I take the staff in that stone for myself.”

“You are not oath-bound?” asked Colrean, though he already knew the answer from the mere existence of the peggoty. “How so?”

Naramala smiled. “Let us say I crossed my fingers,” she said. “I found a way to loose the coils. The oath could not hold me, not beyond the passing of a dozen moons. I pretended it did, of course. The old fools have no idea.”

Colrean lifted his eyebrows to show his amazement and shuffled around the rowan a little as Naramala edged closer to the stone.

“Are you going to try and stop me, Coltreen?” asked Naramala. “Indeed, I am puzzled why you are here at all. Sorcerer you may be, but you could no more draw that staff than you could stand against me.”

“That is as may be,” said Colreen. “But you will not take that staff. Nor could the Grannoch who came before you.”

Naramala tilted her head slightly, those beautiful pale-hazel eyes weighing up Colrean. He knew she was taking stock of how he leaned upon the tree, his right foot planted too heavily, knee at an odd angle, his left foot drawn up to try and soften the pain of his wounded sole. The single gold band upon his finger, that doubtless she suspected no longer held any reserve of magic. The lack of a staff, and no other obvious articles of magic, no sword or knife or wand. All in all, he must look a posturing fool to deny the wizard Naramala, in all her majesty and power.

“A Grannoch? I wondered what strange corpse was immured below. But any power you did have must have been spent to slay such a thing. I hazard you are empty now, of all but words.”

“I am not,” said Colrean. “I make no more warnings.”

“I would heed none from such as you,” said Naramala, and raised her staff.

She muttered no memory-hooks, choosing a simple blast of pure magic that would have thrown Colrean to the ground, doubtless breaking many bones. But he concentrated magic of his own from some unseen source in his clenched fist, raising it against her spell. Naramala’s blow broke upon it like a wave on a tall rock, all force diverted about Colrean, dissipating into nothing.

“I wasn’t going to kill you,” said Naramala. “But you have annoyed me now.”

She spoke memory-hooks, her staff raised high. Magic coalesced around the silver-chased tip of the staff, becoming visible as luminous trails that swirled and spun to become a globe of sick yellow light, which with a flick of her arm, Naramala sent drifting toward Colrean’s head.

He knew what it was: a standard of wizard’s duels, though few could cast it so well or so swiftly. The Asphyxiation of Lygar, an impenetrable globe that would settle on his shoulders and constrict, denying him breath or crushing his skull, death coming swiftly either way.

Colrean drew yet more power into his fist, babbling memory-hooks himself, each word reminding him how the magic must be shaped to form a specific spell, this one a counterspell of considerable strength.

A wizard’s spell.

The globe began to lower over his head, but Colrean thrust his hand within it and opened his fingers. There was a flash of brilliant light, a shower of small sparks that died even as they fell to the earth, and the globe was no more.

“How—”

Naramala did not finish her question, but immediately began to mutter again, building another spell. Colrean watched her intently, trying to read her lips, to work out which memory-hooks she was using in order to anticipate her casting. A few seconds after she started, he began as well, calling power as he sketched an outline in front of himself in the air. Smoke trailed from his fingers, lines of lurid too-white smoke that he drew across and up and down, weaving the smoke together to make a solid shield.

Colrean finished a scant second before Naramala unleashed an incinerating bolt of power from her staff, of such strength it blew his shield of smoke apart and struck him full on the chest, flames licking over his entire body. But the shield had almost worked, for the flames died even as they struck. Though blackened and shocked, Colrean was hardly burned.

Naramala shrieked in frustration as she saw he still lived, though he had fallen to one knee and was blinking away soot. Raising her staff, she ran forward, clearly intent on delivering a killing blow of both magical and physical force—a favored tactic of the most brutal wizards when their opponents were temporarily stunned.

Colrean raised his hand and called more magic into it, but he was dazed and could not shape it, could not get his ashen tongue to utter a memory-hook, and then Naramala was in front of him, her staff blazing with power, and she raised herself up and—

The rowan struck first. Two branches wound around the staff and plucked it from her grasp, even as another forked branch closed around the wizard’s neck. Lifting her high, yet another branch secured her legs, and then, just as a farmer might kill a chicken, the rowan broke Naramala’s neck and threw her down upon the ground.

The wizard’s arms twitched. Her heels drummed, and a terrible inhuman clicking sound emanated from her throat. Then she was still.

Colrean flinched as the rowan threw the wizard’s staff down next to her body. Coughing up soot, he groaned and leaned back against the tree, stretching out his legs. The wound in his left foot had opened again, the bandage blown off. His right boot had black-rimmed burn holes and scorch marks all over it, as did his breeches, and through the holes he could see the sheen of his narwhal-horn peg leg, and the shine of the gold bands that wound around the horn from tip to base.

The Islanders also had wizards, but they did not carry their staves openly.

Colrean looked across at Naramala’s body and then over at the Corner Post, looming dark against the lighter sky. The bronze foot of the staff high up seemed to wink in the starlight. Colrean stared at it and became certain of something he had begun to suspect.

“Come out!” called Colrean, his voice unsteady. There were tears in his eyes, tears running down his cheeks, making trails through the layer of soot. They were for Naramala, as he had once thought she was, and for his younger, foolish self, and because he was hurt and weakened, and the night was still not done.

“Come out!”

The staff in the stone shifted against the backdrop of stars, slanting down. As it moved, a line of light sprang up behind it, so bright that Colrean had to duck his head, put his chin against his chest, and cover his face with his forearm. Even shielded so, and with his eyes tightly shut, it was almost unbearably bright.

The light ebbed. Colrean risked a glimpse, raising his arm a little. There was a figure stepping down from the Corner Post—from inside the Corner Post—lit from behind by a softer light, as if deep within the stone there was sunshine. The silhouette was almost a caricature of a wizard, with the pointed, broad-brimmed hat, the trailing sleeves, the staff as tall as its bearer.

“Verashe,” said Colrean, naming the wizard as she came toward him, now rounded and real under the moon and stars, not a shadowed shape backlit by the strange illumination from the stone, a light that was already fading. “Grand Wizard.”

“Coltreen,” said the wizard mildly. She was very old, but not stooped. Still taller than Colrean, straight-backed and imposing. Her face was lined and thin, but her green eyes sharp as ever. Her long hair, once red, was pale with time and tied back under her hat, save for one slight wisp, which was escaping above her left ear. “Or Colrean, as I believe you call yourself now.”

She bowed her head to the rowan as Colrean had done, if not so deeply. A greeting of equals, or those long familiar.

“So you set your snare, and have caught two unbound wizards,” said Colrean bitterly. He lifted himself against the trunk of the rowan, trying to sit more upright, and winced as new pains made themselves felt.

“I did not even know you were in these parts,” replied Verashe. “Not until I came here, at least, and by then matters were already in train.”

“So the lure was for Naramala alone?” asked Colrean wearily. “Did you expect the Grannoch too?”

“I was not sure what might come,” answered the Grand Wizard. She knelt down at Colrean’s side and ran her fingers over the sole of his foot, once again stemming the flow of blood with magic and doing something else that vanquished the pain. A curious thing to do for a condemned man, thought Colrean, and a small spark of hope grew inside him.

“I did try to ensure Naramala would be foremost of the wizards, since it was well past time her ambitions should be thwarted.”

“You knew she had evaded the oath?”

“Of course,” replied Verashe. She sighed. “Almost every class has someone like Naramala, certain of their own cleverness and destiny. And the oath, though robust, cannot hold against continued use of blood magic and human sacrifice. She killed Cateran and Lieros too, you know, and quite a number of beggars and the like—those she believed would not be readily missed. All the while thinking herself unobserved.”

Colrean wiped his eyes and pretended no new tears brimmed there. Cateran and Lieros had been fellow students too. He remembered first meeting them, brimful with the joy of learning magic. They had both come to their powers unexpectedly, unbelieving they had won places at the university in Pran, foremost of the schools of wizardry.

Verashe ran her index finger from one burned hole in Colrean’s breeches to another, splitting the cloth all along the leg, to completely expose the limb made of gold-banded narwhal horn. In addition to the gold, the horn was deeply etched along the whorls with scenes of ships and the sea, and set with tiny pearls and pieces of amber.

“I have only seen one such … staff … before,” mused Verashe. “A wizard called Sissishuram studied with us one summer, it must be thirty years ago now. Though her staff took the place of her left arm from the elbow, and ended in the most vicious hook.”

“Sissishuram was my master,” said Colrean. “She remembered you, and told me I was a fool to risk coming back. Verashe will brook no unbound wizard, she said. Stay with us, we who are free upon the sea.”

Verashe stood up and walked across to look down upon Naramala’s body, and the staff next to it.

“How did you go within the stone?” asked Colrean. “What spell?”

Verashe didn’t answer him, instead picking up Naramala’s fallen staff, so she held one in each hand.

“I am overcurious for a man about to die, I suppose,” said Colrean. He laughed, a short laugh that ended almost with a sob. “Stupid of me, I suppose. To want to know such a thing now.”

“Are you sure you will not come back to Pran? The oath is not so terrible for someone who has no desire for power.”

“It is not the oath alone,” replied Colrean slowly. He looked up at the sky above, so vast with stars, the moon hanging in the corner. There were clouds drifting across from the west now, doubtless bringing rain. All the small sounds had come back, and the westerly breeze that had sprung up to bring the clouds was steadily strengthening, taking away the stench of sudden death as easily as it flung barley chaff across the field. He thought of the three villages beyond the commons to north, east, and south, with their people asleep behind barred oak doors, their windowsills salted, trusting to him to keep them safe.

“It is not the oath at all,” continued Colrean. He looked up at Verashe, unsure what he could see in her face, whether it was the executioner he beheld or the messenger bringing an unexpected pardon to the very foot of the block.

“I want … I need to stay here. I cannot live in the city, any city. I do not wish to serve the Grand Mayors, I do not desire gold and servants and all that goes with such things. I want to do small magics, for ordinary folk, and be at peace. I have found … happiness … here. I will not relinquish it.”

“We permit no unbound wizards in Pran, or Huyere, or the five cities, and those who defy this order end as Naramala has done,” mused Verashe, apparently to herself. She paused and glanced across at Colrean. “Here, among barley fields and forest, the strictures are less … straitened … shall we say. And the rowan is a fine judge of what truly lies inside the hearts of people …”

She stopped talking again, and bowed her head to the tree again, her face now shadowed by her hat. Colrean watched her, wondering, hoping.

“So, Colrean. I have decided to let you live. But if you will not be bound by the oath, other bindings must be applied, other bounds set. You must swear by the rowan you will abide here, to never go more than twenty leagues from the Corner Post, without leave from the Grand Wizard and the Council.”

Colrean nodded stiffly, and reached inside his jerkin for the silver leaf the rowan had given him, a token of its trust. He held it in his hand and spoke.

“I swear by the rowan, I shall abide here, and go no farther than twenty leagues from the Corner Post, without leave from the Grand Wizard and the Council.”

The leaf shivered and crumbled, leaving only the delicate tracery of its veins behind, and these sank into Colrean’s palm, marking the skin with russet and silver lines. If he broke this oath, the ancient rowan would know, and hold him accountable.

Colrean shivered, remembering the sounds of Naramala’s death.

“Good,” said Verashe. She held Naramala’s staff out to him. “You will need this, I think, to help you hobble to the closest house, where I trust we can have an early breakfast.”

Colrean took the staff wonderingly, and slowly used it to lever himself upright. He could feel the vestige of magic within the bog-oak and the bands of gold, but the staff’s power was almost entirely spent. It would take many years to fill again.

“Naramala?” he asked, looking at the body.

“The Rannachin would also break their fast,” answered Verashe, gesturing.

Colrean looked across the barley and saw the moon shadows there. He frowned, but only for a moment. He had no strength to dig a grave or build a cairn, and in truth, it was better nothing should remain of a wizard who had practiced blood magic. The Rannachin were known to eat even bones and teeth, and they would take no scathe from any remnant magic, as a rat or other scavenger might.

“Come!” said Verashe impatiently. “I have been fasting within the stone since the last dawn, and I am too old to miss another meal!”

“We cannot go to the closest house,” said Colrean. “Two wizards in Gamel, and none calling into Seyam and Thrake? Besides, they won’t let us in until after dawn. I warned them not to admit anyone, and they would rightly be afraid. It is farther, but I have food and drink in my forest house.”

He limped past the Grand Wizard, pausing to bow once again to the rowan, leaning heavily on his new staff. A few paces along he bowed to the Corner Post as well, and turned his head back to Verashe.

“My question remains … how exactly did you inhabit the stone? What spell could overcome such power as resides there?”

Verashe laughed. She did not have a lovely voice like Naramala’s, and her laugh was like a crow’s call. But Colrean did not mind, for it was human.

“You have a true wizard’s curiosity,” she said. “But no spell would let you dwell within this stone. It was a matter of friendship, a courtesy allowed me. We have known each other a very long time, the Corner Post and I.”

Colrean nodded thoughtfully and set forth again, stumping alongside the wall. It was much darker now, half the sky clouded, and it was starting to rain. A soft drizzle that spread the soot about his face and streaked his clothes, rather than washing anything clean.

I will need a hat he thought, surprising himself that he could think of any such ordinary thing amidst pain and grief and weariness. But he could, and he was glad of it, and he grabbed at the thought as he might a lifeline aboard one of the Islanders’ ships.

I will need a hat to go with the staff. The villagers, particularly Sommie and Heln, will expect me to fully look the part, and it will keep the rain off. I suppose the brim from Gamel, the body from Thrake, the tip from Seyam—or the other way about …