The Staff of the Winds (The Wizard of South Corner Book 1)

by Meighan, William

  Owen enjoyed the walk down the lane from the farm leading Molly to the North Road, the road that began in South Corner and connected it to all the towns and villages of the parish, and from them to the great cities and exotic lands that he had never seen far away to the east. He sometimes dreamed about traveling to these mysterious lands, perhaps even to the great sea that was said to lie far away to the southeast, but he knew that such journeys were unlikely in the future of a farmer’s son from South Corner, especially an eldest son who would one day be expected to take ownership and responsibility for the farm that his father, and his father before him, had built.

  When Owen was sixteen, he had once traveled north with his father as far as the town of Shepherds Hill. Matthew had been on a mission for some breeding stock for his flock of blackface sheep, as well as something special from the weavers there for Martha’s birthday, and had wanted to show Owen a little of the world around him. That trip of just a few days had been full of discovery for Owen, and wetted his desire for exploration, but since then his travels had been limited to excursions into the Gray Hills with his friends to find hidden lakes and streams, the trails of deer and elk, and on one particularly harrowing expedition with Aaron and Jack Farrel, the secret den of a family of great-cat.

  This morning, with the sky lightening in the east, Owen was relaxed and in tune with the change of life around him. The night’s heavy dew wetted his boots as he strode along watching the woods around him and the lane ahead. The birds and beasts of the night were gradually relinquishing the world to those of the day. Owen spotted a goshawk winging its way in short bursts from tree to tree along the lane, in search of anything that might be panicked by the passing wagon, such as a field mouse, quail or young rabbit. A fat possum and two deer crossed their path ahead, and the songbirds were waking to greet the rising sun.

  There was no other traffic on the North Road when they joined it from their lane, but this was market day, and other farmers and their families would be appearing soon on their way into town. The road itself was broad and straight, carving its way through the smaller hills, and cobbled with stones laid long, long ago. It spoke of an earlier time—the light farm traffic that used it now, along with the occasional peddler’s wagon, hardly justified its existence—but no one in South Corner living today could recall when it was built, or by whom. In truth, few in South Corner gave the question much thought. It was just the North Road; there for anyone to use.

  The morning was quiet and peaceful as they entered the village. The sun had just cleared the trees on the low hill to the east, and Owen could see a few farmers like themselves gathered to exchange news at the market across the green. The villagers didn’t seem to be up and about yet, and Owen wondered briefly what it would be like to lead a life that was not regulated by the needs of the livestock.

  “Evan, go stake out our spot,” Matthew directed, “we’ll make our delivery to the inn then come join you.”

  “Yes sir,” Evan responded, and pealed off to join the small gathering of men on the market green.

  The inactivity of the village seemed strange to Owen. ‘Even villagers should keep some semblance of respectable hours,’ he thought. As they moved further into the village, he noticed the doors of two of the houses were standing open with no sign of their inhabitants, and that too seemed unusual to him on such a cool morning. Then it struck him, they had seen no sign of smoke rising from the chimneys anywhere in the village. He felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck as he became certain that something was wrong. He sensed that his father had also observed those open houses and smokeless chimneys, but both men kept their thoughts to themselves.

  With growing wariness, they led Molly around behind the inn and Matthew knocked on the back door. Mr. Prior’s horses noisily greeted Molly from over the corral fence, and Owen saw that their feeder was empty. It was not like John Prior to be this late with his chores.

  When there was no answer, Matthew struck the door again, a little louder this time. Still receiving no response, Matthew pulled his belt knife from its sheath and motioned for Owen to stay behind him and to his left, then opened the door and stepped into the small, dimly lit mudroom behind the inn’s kitchen. Only silence greeted them. The warmth of the great kitchen stove, the smell of breakfast cooking, the sounds of plates and crockery mugs of coffee being loaded for the common room, none of these familiar things was present. Only a few feet inside the door, Owen could already sense that the inn was abandoned.

  With a glance at Owen to assure himself that he too had his knife out and ready, Matthew quietly stepped toward the kitchen door. In the inn’s large kitchen they saw their first clear signs of trouble. The pantry was open, and its contents had been strewn out onto the floor. Potatoes and yellow onions lay scattered. A bag of barley flower had burst, dusting the table and kitchen counters like a heavy winter frost, and a large crock of pale green pickles had been overturned, the brine traced a small flood under the kitchen table towards the sink across the room. Owen could see that the spill had partially dried, indicating that the crock had been overturned at least several hours earlier.

  Silently the two men moved deeper into the inn. Each room they entered met them with stillness, giving no testimony to what had happened or where their owners had gone. Apparently there had been no guests in the inn last night, not uncommon for this time of year. The one likely possibility would have been a traveling buyer of the late season’s crops, but the only other sign of trouble that they found was in the Prior’s bedroom. There the furniture lay scattered and broken, and the great feather bed was ripped nearly in half, its contents forming a slight eddy in the breeze of the two men’s passage into the room. Still though, there was no indication of the cause of the mayhem that had clearly taken place in this room and in the kitchen.

  Continuing to move in silence, alert to any sign or sound of life whether survivor or attacker, Owen and his father retraced their steps to the back door. When they reached the kitchen, Matthew slowed to make a more careful search. Suddenly he held up his hand for Owen to stop, and he stooped to examine a partial footprint that was just visible at the edge of an outcropping of spilled flower on the kitchen floor. The impression was of the front part of a foot. Clearly outlined were four broad toes with the indication of long nails or blunt claws, and the soft blurring of hair down the sides.

  Back in the stable yard, Matthew pulled his bow from the wagon and tossed Owen his staff. He strung his bow, hung his quiver from his belt, and fitted a heavy broad-point arrow to the taught string.

  “I think those that did this are long gone,” Matthew said quietly, “but there could be stragglers. Stay alert and don’t take any chances. I’m going to work my way up towards the east end of the village. You go check on the Murrays. We’ll meet back on the green. Keep your eyes and ears open, shout out if you find anyone, and Owen, don’t be too long.”

  With mention of the Murrays, a shudder passed through Owen. What could the unknown raiders have done to Sarah? He was worried about his good friend Aaron, of course, but Sarah was just an innocent, young girl. What could happen to her in the hands of whatever had ransacked the inn? Trying not to think of the possibilities, lest his thoughts somehow make them real, Owen hurried up the row of houses to the Murray’s small house near the north end of the village.

  Brian Murray, Sarah’s father was a fletcher, and highly skilled with a bow. Surely, he could have held his house against any number of attackers. Aaron had nearly his father’s skill, and there would have been no lack of arrows at hand. Even Sarah, for that matter, could be deadly accurate with the lighter bow that she used. At least against targets, she could outshoot himself, Owen acknowledged, but against a man? Surely the three of them could have held against even a concerted attack, unless they were taken by surprise. Judging by the destruction in the Prior’s bedroom, surprise had clearly been a part of this attack. His anxiety spiked at the thought of Sarah at the hands of a ruthless invader.

  Owen
jerked his mind away from the distraction of dark possibilities, and instead tried to concentrate on the task at hand, looking for any presence or movement in the street or the houses around him. He saw more doors standing open, but now, with the image of the destruction in the Meadows Inn on his mind, he realized that several of them were not just open, but had been torn partly from their hinges, leaning out at an angle from their frames.

  Owen slowed as he approached the Murrays’, and shifted his grip on his staff to prepare for a lunging attack. A staff could not be properly swung in the confines of a doorway, but a thrust to the sternum could cripple, and a thrust to the throat could crush a windpipe and quickly kill. Every sense was alert as he eased through the doorway, but he knew almost immediately that there was no living enemy here. There was no one moving; there was no one breathing; there was no life in this house. With little hope, Owen quietly and carefully worked his way through the rooms, inspecting each, alert to any sudden motion. There was obvious destruction in several rooms, and even a few spots that appeared to be blood on the floor in Brian Murray’s bedroom, but there was no further sign of the attackers, and no trace of Brian, Aaron or Sarah.

  After a frantic search, convinced that neither Sarah nor Aaron had somehow managed to hide themselves in a dark corner where they might be lying hurt and unconscious, Owen worked his way back to the door. From the entryway, Owen suddenly saw, framed in the Murray’s doorway, the small cottage of the Old Wizard across the street. He had been so intent upon the Murray’s house coming in, that he had failed to notice that the door and windows of the Old Wizard’s cottage had been completely blasted away. Quickly checking all directions as he exited the door, Owen cautiously walked across the street to inspect the destruction before him.

  The door to the cottage opened into a sitting room that the wizard had lined with shelves stocked to overflowing with old books. Owen had been in that room numerous times before. It was always dimly lit. Books stacked on the windowsills blocked much of the light of day, and the candles on the desk at the end of the room where the wizard could usually be found poring over one of his volumes or writing in a large leather bound journal with a great quill pen cast a wavering yellow light that made the stacks of books here and there about the floor seem to move and shift.

  Owen and Aaron used to visit the wizard to listen to his stories of times and peoples long forgotten by the other residents of the parish. He told them of wizards and heroes and great struggles against the gorn and the sorcerers from the West that had created and directed them. He told them of a time hundreds of years before the origins of South Corner, when a great city stood on a hill to the south of this valley, where industry and commerce prospered, and armies marched to war in the Break with trumpets sounding and banners waving in the wind. He told of the warrior outposts in the north that held those narrow northern passes through the Wall even today. Most of South Corner laughed off the Old Wizard’s stories as the fantasies of a senile old man, but Aaron believed them, and Owen… well Owen really didn’t care if they were true or not. To Owen, they were grand and fascinating stories that dealt with the best and most noble aspects of humankind (contrasted with the worst and most evil failings), and the possibility that they might be true was enough for him.

  The two friends had spent many hours in their youth taking turns being hero and gorn, fighting with quarterstaffs. As they grew, Owen became far better with the staff, and therefore Aaron had to more often play the gorn—it would not have been right for the hero to lose these battles. With bows, Aaron was superior, and they spent the occasional idle afternoon hunting the woods for evil sorcerers. Many a fierce gorn warrior, in the guise of a crooked tree stump, met its death at their hands.

  They sometimes met the Old Wizard in the woods harvesting mushrooms or medicinal herbs during these adventures. He encouraged them in their games, and also taught them the names and natures of many of the plants and animals of the parish.

  On one occasion, when they were seventeen and engaged in mock battle with their makeshift quarterstaffs, the old man had offered to fashion a new staff as a prize for the winner. The contest had been fierce; both boys were eager for the prize. Aaron had used every trick that he knew, but Owen always seemed to be able to anticipate and counter his moves. They fought their way back and forth across a small clearing, first Owen giving ground as Aaron weaved, spun and thrust in a concerted attack, then Owen taking the offensive and driving Aaron back across the glen.

  Owen had the greater size and strength, and although Aaron was quick, Owen always seemed to have the counter to his attacks in place before he even made them. Owen was in a state that he had rarely experienced. Both boys had been taught by their fathers to be calm and focused when loosing arrows at target or game, but Owen had never applied it to his work with the staff before. Today though, he was effortless motion. Utterly calm, he felt the staff in his hands, the ground under his feet the air as it moved around him, and they were all connected and interlinked with his opponent. He was not battling Aaron so much as moving with him, all part of the same action. His counters to Aaron’s strikes and thrusts flowed naturally and without thought. He was aware of the contest almost as though he were watching it from another’s eyes; able to see weakness here, hesitation there, while at the same time he directed his own actions smoothly making the moves that best fit into the rhythm of the contest.

  Finally, becoming winded and desperate, Aaron interrupted the pattern they had been engaged in and redirected a blow in mid swing that would have come in to the side of Owen’s knee and brought it up hard toward his head instead. Just before contact, Aaron changed it to a faint, reversed his staff, and thrust as quickly as he could to the center of Owen’s chest.

  Without breaking momentum, Owen smoothly altered the block he was preparing for the sweep at his knee, he ignored the faint to the head, and was in perfect position to deflect and pivot inside Aaron’s thrust. Owen hooked the back of Aaron’s knee with the butt of his staff and planted Aaron firmly on his back on the ground. All Aaron remembered was the triumph he had felt as he knew that his thrust to Owen’s chest would drive home and win him the match. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground looking up at the sky with the butt of Owen’s staff poised steadily just inches above his throat.

  The Old Wizard had laughed and clapped and congratulated them both on a very impressive display. Aaron had taken Owen’s offered hand, and with a shake of his head and a sheepish grin allowed his friend to pull him back to his feet.

  What followed was the only real magic that either of them had ever seen the wizard perform. The old man led the boys over to a young ash tree. Holding his hands out to either side of the tree’s trunk, he muttered “Sescusito chedoe adme baculum,” in a deep sonorous voice, then with his right hand he reached through the bark and a little way into the trunk and slowly withdrew a stout quarterstaff of dark heartwood. As he drew it out, the tree seemed to heal itself leaving only a slight indentation where the staff had emerged. With a smile, the Old Wizard handed the staff to Owen.

  A little longer than Owen was tall, the staff was lighter than he expected. The surface was smooth with a slight sheen, and the grain of the wood seemed to give it a texture and appearance of depth that took the sunlight deep inside and released it back out with a rich golden glow. Owen spun the staff in the air, changing from hand to hand, and experimented with a few faints and lunges. The staff flowed beautifully in his hands. The balance was perfect, his hands moved along it smoothly, and even though he was perspiring from his contest with Aaron, the grip was sure.

  “Thank you very much, sir. It’s beautiful.”

  “Yes, beautiful and effective in the right hands,” the wizard answered. “May it serve you well, my boy. In a former age, you could have been a mighty hero with a staff like that. Well, ages pass. Maintain your skills, someday you may have need.”

  As Owen drew nearer to the wizard’s cottage, he began to appreciate the extent of the violence that had
occurred here. Not only the door, but also the frame that contained it was gone—blasted to splinters and strewn across the yard. There were scorch marks around the edges of the irregular opening as if a great fire had raged inside, but the cottage had not been consumed by flames. Peering in through the opening, he could see that the normally cluttered but clean interior had been transformed to a state of chaos. None of the stacks of books that had been on the floor were still standing, and the shelves along one wall had toppled over strewing their contents across the room. Books, bindings and individual pages lay everywhere. What captured Owen’s attention, though, was the Old Wizard himself. Unlike the Meadows Inn and the home of the Murrays, the resident of this cottage was still here.

  The Old Wizard lay on the floor of the dark hallway that led from the back of the cottage to the library and to the doorway where Owen stood. The wizard was not moving, and he somehow seemed even older and more wizened than Owen remembered him.

  Carefully, Owen picked his way into the cottage, trying not to further disturb the books and fragments of books that lay on the floor in his path. As he approached the wizard, he noticed that the woodwork that framed the hallway entrance was cracked and broken, and embedded into it were many long splinters of wood that appeared to have been driven there with considerable force. Looking again at the wizard he suddenly realized that much of the right sleeve of his dark blue robe was missing and that his right arm ended in a fractured splinter of bone just above his wrist. A small pool of blood had formed and dried on the floor where his hand should have been, but there was less than Owen would have expected. It appeared that whatever blast and heat had taken the wizard’s hand and most of that sleeve had also partially cauterized the wound. Owen’s hopes rose on that discovery. With the loss of a hand, a man might bleed to death, but there was far too little blood in evidence here to be fatal. That hope was dashed when Owen raised his eyes to the wizard’s face. At first he had been unable to see it in the dark hallway, but there entering the wizard’s left eye and exiting out through the top of his head was a large wooden splinter. Like the larger pieces that had been driven into the surrounding woodwork, the splinter was dark brown with a curved and polished surface on one side. With a sudden gasp, Owen realized that what he was looking at was a fragment from the old man’s staff of power. He had been mistaken, Owen thought; the Old Wizard was no longer in his cottage.