by W. C. Conner
He got to his feet and turned in a circle, taking in all he saw and listening once more for the summoning voice.
You must come to me.
He turned and pointed. “There!” he said aloud, then started in the direction from which the voice had come. Animals both large and small raised their heads to watch him as he walked, seemingly unafraid of this intruder in their forest. The life that teemed all about observed him in his passing: bears, beaver, deer, squirrels, mice and rats, foxes, ferrets, martins, marmots, moles, voles and rats, birds of all sorts, and even Scrubby’s missing hog. There was no fear of Wil, only a natural curiosity that caused them to lift their heads and watch as he passed. It seemed to Wil there was even a sense of watchfulness from the trees and bushes, the flowering plants and grasses.
Of a sudden he had an insight. The Old Forest is sentient, he realized. A shudder ran through him at the sensation that everything he saw was aware of him. Not just aware of his presence but aware of him as a person. It was a disconcerting feeling to wonder what the birds in the trees, or even the trees themselves thought of him. During his life he had been aware of the living things around him, of course. Now for the first time he could feel that they, in turn, were aware of him and he felt uneasy at the thought of it.
Though the voice had stopped its summoning the directing presence had not and Wil’s feet followed an invisible pathway as surely as if he had mapped it himself. It occurred to him one time only to question why it was that he knew which way he was to travel though he had certainly never been this way before.
In this way, he walked and slept for four days. When hungry, fruit trees and vegetables were abundant all around. When thirsty, springs with cold and crystal clear water would be close to hand. He wondered at each of them whether this might be the same spring that fed the one behind Scrubby’s little house, and he would smile.
At the end of the fourth day, Wil entered a large open circular area in the forest and he stopped, knowing somehow that this was his destination. For the first time since that first morning, the voice spoke directly to him. Rest you now, it said. Time flees before us and there is much for you to learn. We will start when the sun rises tomorrow.
Wil lay down into lush, soft grasses and fell immediately into a profound and dreamless slumber, knowing deep in his soul that there was nothing to fear while he slept.
The sun had just cleared the tops of the trees when he awoke refreshed and feeling as if he had been cleansed both inside and out while he slept. He sat up and stretched luxuriously. As he finished his stretch and looked about himself, his attention was captured by a glimmering of light in the center of the circular area and Wil recognized the opening in which he sat as the place of his vision. The glimmering coalesced into a distinct shape that was still largely transparent as if made of water or glass. Even looking directly at it, Wil was only barely able at first to make out the shape of a man that wavered in and out of visibility. Wil looked closely. There was something vaguely familiar about this vision. It felt as if he was seeing a hazy memory from a dream.
He opened his mouth to say something just as the translucent figure spoke. “I am Gleneagle, the elven progenitor of the mixed blood line of the house of Gleneagle,” said a thin voice issuing from the wavering light. “The elfstone you wear about your neck projects my life force and was my gift to my descendants, given to keep their elven heritage vibrant and strong within them. Without it you would not have been able to enter the Old Forest and live.”
The image of Gleneagle winked out for a few moments before reappearing much closer to Wil. The transparent eyes seemed to be looking deep into Wil’s soul and he knew that his instruction was to begin.
“Long before the elves left this world,” the shade said, “the class of men that are called wizards arose using the magics inherent to the earth. These men carried within them varying levels of potential to comprehend and use the magics of the earth, much as one man’s mind might be better able to comprehend and analyze the world about him than another’s.
“At the beginning, all wizards were benign and the elves welcomed them as brothers in the stewardship of the living and growing things of the earth. We showed them the ways of plants and animals and taught them of the life forces in all things. They could easily see and sense for themselves that the animals and birds, the fish and even the insects are bursting with these life forces. We helped them see that plants and their kin also have much life force, though less than the animals, and even inanimate objects such as the earth and rocks and the fluid elements of water and air carry life force within them, for if they did not they would not exist. These life forces and no others arise naturally from this earth and were all we knew until man was born.
“Unlike the other animals, when man entered the world he brought with him a restless curiosity to defeat his ignorance and the urgency mortality demands, an urgency wrought by forces from outside this world, for man exists in a state between two opposing forces: On the one hand is the life which we understand, but on the other is death and the evil forces with which death travels. For mankind there is a natural cycle of life and death. Both are necessary. Both are an intrinsic part of mankind’s cycle. One without the other is a perversion. For you, if there was only life and no death, life would become meaningless for there would no need for love, no challenge, no urgency, no need for accomplishment or learning or progress or procreation. If, on the other hand, there was only death, then there would be only the decay and hate and hopelessness which is a part of you as well and which entered our world with you.
“The fledgling wizards were able to control small magics of love and growing. They delighted in their natal abilities to mimic our elven powers, and we, in turn, delighted in helping them. But they were men and thereby bound to the constraints of time that mortality imposes.
“It was not long after the elves departed that the more talented and ambitious of them began to covet greater and greater power such as that which came naturally with time to the immortal elves, time which was not available to mortal men. Their impatience led these ambitious and powerful wizards to search for ways to rival the powers of the elves. The path they found led them ultimately to corruption.
“Almost without exception, the wizards of lesser potential and ambition have remained true to the original promise of wizardry. They have maintained the trust of the living land and have shunned those evil forces not naturally arising from this earth. But those with more powerful potential and ambition have become increasingly corrupt, reaching out and gathering more and more power, but finding it not within the benign magics of the elves.”
The apparition waned slightly, its face a mask of either anger or of sorrow. As the image waxed once more it floated down to sit cross-legged on the ground facing Wil.
“The only powers open to them which could rival ours is the opposite of ours. The magics they can gather quickly to themselves do not arise naturally from this world. Where our magic is of growth, that which they could exploit was of withering. Where ours is of hope, theirs was of despair. Where ours is of love, theirs was of hate. Where ours is of life, theirs was of death.”
Wil decided the expression on the shimmering face consisted of the emotions of both anger and sorrow.
“There exists a balance in both the nature of men and the struggle of the forces of good and evil which shifts subtly from one side to the other over long periods of time, much as a pendulum swinging imperceptibly slowly from side to side. As the pendulum slows at the ends of its arc, chance will favor first one force, then the other.
“It was foretold many thousands of years before we departed this land that there would come a time when the forces opposed to those of the elves would find a weakness, a vessel to give them unlimited access through the boundary into this world, destroying the balance. Thus evil waited, building upon its malignant hatred and biding its time for chance to present an opportunity. That opportunity came as foreseen when the pendulum swung to the side o
f despair, at a time that the boundary between the worlds had floated close to a willing vessel, and there now has arisen one who stands ready to challenge even the power of this place.”
Wil uttered his first word since the morning he had identified the direction from which came the summoning voice of the elf.
“Greyleige.”
The shade put his hands before his face as if deflecting something thrown at him. “Though he is himself a weak man, even the name has power because of his corruption,” he said. “Do not name him again in this place. He covets the power herein. He has schemed to get it but it is beyond his grasp... for now.”
Once again he bent his gaze upon Wil. “When the elves departed, we knew we could not leave the world open to the unchallenged power of those who embrace evil, for uncontested evil is filled with aggressive discontent and hatred, while uncontested love is complacent. Knowing this, we concentrated our energies to create a repository of the magics of love and growth and life. You stand in it now. It is known to you as the Old Forest. It was to be the balance to evil.
“As the king of the elves at the time of our final departure, it fell to me to leave behind the mechanism to protect the balance. Thus, I bestowed two gifts to be passed down through the line established by the son born after we departed – the son who I would never know.”
The vague memory of a dream of two desperate lovers flitted through Wil’s memory. He looked carefully at the shimmering face, certain that he detected a tear sliding down the shade’s cheek.
“I was desperately in love with the child’s human mother and she with me, but circumstances dictated that history would judge us as nothing more than urgent lovers furtively quenching our passion by moonlight. We could not be, the two of us, for I could not stay while my subjects and my kin departed, and she could not leave with us, for she was mortal. Of our love was born the half-elven Prince Gleneagle, the first in an unbroken line.”
Again, the shade of the elf paused as if collecting himself.
“The first of the gifts I left to my descendants was a scroll that tells of a proof against the malignancy that the prophecies had foretold would inevitably arise. Within this scroll I charged my descendants with the responsibility to be vigilant for the day this threat should arrive. And further, it fell to them to seek the counter to the evil, to seek and nurture the key that gentle chance might place upon the world in defiance of the odds of probability.
“My second gift was the elfstone you wear about your neck which was given both to keep strong the elven strain in my descendants, and to be the key to gain entry to the Old Forest. It was the only elfstone left behind upon our departure and it is the reason that I am able to appear to you, though only as a shade.
“As foretold within my own dreams, chance favored the evil forces, for it would require only time and patience for the proper vessel to be available upon the swinging of the pendulum, and that time is at hand.
“For us to prevail, the kind fates alone could provide a champion of the forces of life at the critical point to forestall the victory of evil. Time was the ally of evil while luck alone would necessarily be the ally of the good.
“Against all probability, the forces of good have given us you.
“You were born of magics both benign and powerful, a mix that created the most powerful potential for good or ill since before we departed. Fate has favored us thus far, for you never learned of your gift. Your potential was given the time to mature, protected from corruption in your ignorance of its existence. You were not introduced to the arrogance that even lesser amounts of power than yours invoke. You have been named The Key, and for good reason.”
Wil stood up, crossed his arms upon his chest in a defensive pose and rocked from side to side on his feet, his face a study in conflicting emotions.
“I have been contemptuous of wizards all my life,” he said. “I’ve hated them for their arrogance and their ambitions, and now I’m told I am one of them. But more, I’m told that I have within me that which makes me the most powerful of them all.” He opened his arms in supplication. “How does one assimilate something so antithetical to everything he has been and believed?”
“I fear that is a question for which I have no answer,” the shade responded. “The only explanation I can offer is that it must be this way, for it is required that your potential must not have been tainted. Without your ignorance of what you are and your disdain for what you are, you and your world would both have already been lost to us.” The intensity of his image waxed until Wil had to avert his eyes from its brightness, then waned to the point Wil could once again see his image within the light.
“You are the hope and peril of the magics of both life and death, for you are the key to both forces for balance or for dominance.”
At Wil’s puzzled expression, the shade explained, “Upon the elves departure, a balance was achieved between the opposing forces of life and death, of growing and withering, of hope and despair, and of love and hate. It is the natural state of man to be thus balanced.
“There is now a great danger to your world because he whom you named strives for life without end. The danger lies in the fact that he is grasping for it through the powers of decay and hate and hopelessness that have ensnared him, and he can only achieve his objective by overbalancing your world with evil.
“You carry the seeds of both promise and peril for your world, for you alone have the potential to defeat him. Conversely, there are three paths to victory for him: He might defeat you utterly in which case you would cease to exist on this side, or he might overwhelm you and make your power his own, or you might choose to not confront him at all. Should any one of those come to pass, he would succeed and this would become a world of life without end for him. A world in which all would live in everlasting hatred and despair. A world of the living death which is a mirror of the powers that drives and feed him.
“The youngest of my descendants, true to the mandate within the scroll I gave to them, recognized the growing peril and took up the charge to discover and prepare ‘the key’ to accept his role in the inevitable confrontation.”
Wil could sense the stress and hope in the thin voice as Gleneagle concluded. “At the time I left this world, the only thing that was clear was that it was from the wizards that either the threat or the salvation would spring. It has come to pass that both have sprung from the wizards. You are our only possible path to victory. Unless you defeat the corrupted wizard, there is only death and hopelessness for the world to come.”
Wil looked at the ground for several moments, lost in thought as the apparition’s luminescence returned to a lesser level. He raised his eyes at last to the shade – eyes that held both fear and determination. “What would you have of me?” he asked quietly.
“You must learn of the past, Wil,” the shade responded as several scrolls emerged from the air and hovered between them. Shivers ran up his back as Wil recognized the scene as the one of his vision. “Within these scrolls is the sum of what we were from the beginning of all to the moment we departed. Read them and learn what you may. What you do with the knowledge will ultimately be yours to act upon. Unlike the forces of evil, we cannot direct or command, we can only call and instruct.”
“But what of the compulsion that pulled me to you?” Wil asked.
“I only called,” Gleneagle responded. “The compulsion came from within you. It was the potential buried deep within you that responded to the call.”
Wil looked around uncomfortably. It felt more and more as if he was being drawn into something over which he had no control while simultaneously being told it was his decision to make.
“Know this for certain,” Gleneagle continued, “the future of your world is in peril. The magics of love and life that we left behind locked tight here in the Old Forest stand yet in defiance of the opposing magics that the corrupted wizard summons. The scale tips still toward the magics of the Old Forest, but the corrupted one works constantly to tip the
balance toward him. Should he not be thwarted, the fabric of the boundary between good and evil, between love and hate will be forever torn. Evil will become ascendant and that which is the counter to life and love will conquer and rule the world in unending despair.
“Know this also,” he concluded, “though it may feel as if you are no more than a puppet on a string, at the last, the decision to confront this evil will be yours alone. Should you elect to confront the wizard, you will do so alone. Your battle will be with him alone. Not his minions, not his armies, not his demons.” As he finished speaking, he bowed his head. “The time grows short, for the evil forces feed him unceasingly and his powers grow with frightening speed toward the point he will no longer fear the magics contained herein. You are the key. You are the hope.”
With a look of compassion, the shimmering light that was the elf Gleneagle, giver of the gemstone about Wil’s neck and progenitor of Caron and her father, winked out and the scrolls fell from where they floated in the air to the ground in front of Wil.
He stood staring down at the ancient parchments for several moments while he worked to assimilate all that the shade had told him.
“What is it that I seek?” he said aloud.
You must seek the power of the goodness held within this Forest. You must become one with it if you are to challenge the corrupted one. Your ability to use your own magic will be less important in the battle you face than your ability to resist the seduction of corruption. When the time comes, you will be given the words of the high elven spell which will summon the powers of this Forest to a talisman. It is a powerful spell that only a wizard of unrivaled potential might channel without burning himself out. You are that wizard.