Veneficus: Stones of the Chosen

by Chris Page

  “And the message … it concerned the progress of my father?”

  “It did. Phi is keeping an eye on him. He goes well and has not strayed from the path I gave him.”

  They walked on for a while before Merlin stopped and placed his fingers to his lips, motioning the boy to silence. Walking carefully forward they picked up the sound of excited young voices punctured by the sounds of splashing. Where a clear chalk stream rounded a bend, some boys about Twilight’s age from the nearby settlement of Marlborough had hung a length of jute from an overhanging branch. Clinging to the jute rope and launching themselves from the high bank, they dropped squealing into the middle of the stream and splashed excitedly back to the bank to repeat the exercise.

  With a grunt of disgust, Merlin pointed off to the right.

  Bovey, with the head of his huge snake craned up from the grass, watched the frolicking boys from behind a large thorn bush. So engrossed were the pair that they were unaware Merlin and the boy were watching them.

  The malodorous Bovey and his reptilian accomplice are getting ready to pull their despicable stunt again and frighten those boys. Merlin’s message flashed into Twilight’s mind. But this time it is the frightener who will be frightened.

  What are you going to do?

  The serpent-who-would-be-a-dragon shall become one.

  Having checked over his head to ensure that the thick, heavy snake had a suitable branch upon which to rest, having coiled itself around his body in their macabre dance of terror, Bovey nodded toward his companion and raised one dirt-encrusted foot to step out from behind the bush and begin the charade.

  Suddenly, a jet of orange flame shot out of the snake’s mouth and ignited the soiled hem of the hermit’s greasy old robe. With a cry of pain and panic, Bovey began to beat at the flames, then ran to the edge of the stream and jumped in to douse the fire that had quickly taken hold and had reached as far as his armpits. The snake’s head remained raised above the long grass in stupefaction at the jet of fire that had suddenly issued from its mouth.

  Crawling up the bank, the bedraggled Bovey got to his feet. In the background the children continued uninterrupted to swing out over the water on their jute rope and drop with excited shrieks into the middle of the stream.

  “I do believe that’s the first wash you’ve had in many a long year.” Merlin chuckled, walking toward the dripping, dirt-streaked hermit, a blackened rim around the bottom of his grimy robe where the fire had left its mark.

  Bovey spun around to face Merlin and the boy.

  “Dum vivimus, vivimus,” he snarled.

  “While you live I will let you live, but only if you and your despicable companion stop visiting this parody of terror upon innocent folk.” Merlin raised his long, bony finger at Bovey in admonishment.

  The snake jerked its neck at Merlin and Twilight several times in a vain attempt to recreate the jet of flame that had so inconvenienced its master. Nothing happened.

  “Ahhh,” sighed Merlin. “The snake-in-the-grass again tries to be a dragon.” His eyes flashed an intense emerald green at the serpent, and it instantly disappeared.

  “What have you done?” Bovey wailed. “Where is my friend, my beautiful friend? What have you done with my Anguis?”

  “He is there, cockscum. Look hard and you may find him crawling through the grass and dead leaves. A few days as an earthworm may teach him a little humility.”

  Bovey dropped to his knees and began a whimpering search along the ground. He picked up a worm and held it high.

  “Is that him, sorcerer? Is that my Anguis?”

  “It might be, malodorous charlatan, it just might be.”

  Bovey cradled the earthworm in his hand and began to mutter and caress it. He glowered at Merlin.

  “Your witchcraft does not frighten me, long magus. You will pay for this one day, see if you won’t.”

  Merlin glowered at him. “Be very careful, ex-monk. Otherwise, it might be you crawling around with the insects, and I might not be so lenient with the time. And remember, no more terrorizing folk or pretending to be me.”

  Bovey scowled, and nodded at Twilight.

  “I saw this boy yesterday, and he spoke directly into my mind. He is a tyro veneficus, your replacement?”

  “He is called Twilight. If I were you I’d keep well out of his way as he will need much practice to get his enchantments working correctly. All manner of strange things will happen to those who cross his path as he learns, some of which may not be reversible.”

  “Doesn’t he have a tongue to speak for himself, or does he only take the coward’s route, directly into people’s mind?”

  “I certainly do have a tongue,” said Twilight. “But if I were you I would concentrate upon other matters.”

  “Such as?” Bovey spat out the words.

  “Well, Merlin hawks for a start. And other birds. They like nothing more than a good, juicy earthworm in their stomach.”

  Glancing fearfully skywards, the dirty old hermit closed his hand protectively around the worm and, muttering dark threats, hurried off into the forest.

  “He spoke Latin, and you called him an ex-monk,” said Twilight as they walked slowly back to the compound. “You were also very easy on him, it seemed to me.”

  Merlin sighed.

  “He is learned in the Latin tongue and like me reverts to it when taken by surprise. For many years he practiced his devotions as a monk under Paulinus, the first Christian bishop of York, in a great northern monastery there. York is known as the northern cradle of that faith. Paulinus sent Bovey as a wandering missionary to Wessex to spread their gospel, and he had a small monastery built at Glastonbury, a settlement some three days’ ride from here. Against his will he gave sanctuary to a marauding band of mercenaries said to be under the orders of a warlord of Mercia, sent here to harry and pillage. In order to get at the mercenaries, King Arthur had to sack the monastery, and Bovey and his small band of followers were cast out. They took to living in a cave on the edge of the forest, but gradually the followers deserted him until he was the only one left. Not being made of martyr stock he rather lost his faith. That was thirty years ago. Since then he has lived alone, and, in the time-honored manner of aging men living in solitude, has forgotten most of his learning and beliefs and become a deviant old man. The ridiculous serpent turned up a couple of years ago and wanted the cave for his own shelter. Somehow they reached an accommodation, which has turned into this vile partnership of terror. Luckily it has only been going on for a short time - you and your father were their third or fourth victims. Now it is finished. And yes, I was lenient with him, but there is a reason for that which he is unaware of.”

  “I think I know what it is,” said the boy, interrupting. “It was upon your counsel that King Arthur sacked Bovey’s monastery, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Merlin quietly. “It was also upon my counsel that Bovey and his small band of followers were cast out and saved from the fate of the mercenaries who had occupied his small monastery, all of whom were hacked to death by Arthur’s knights. Bovey would never understand, especially now, for it was a long time ago, but I actually saved his miserable life. Therefore, I must also take some blame for his subsequent actions. It is the sort of paradox that weighs heavily on the shoulders of those with our powers. We can manipulate phenomena, but we are just like everyone else when it comes to the vagaries of fate.”

  “How did you change that huge serpent into an earthworm?” asked Twilight.

  “I didn’t change it into an earthworm. I need to conserve my energies. Why use a complicated, energy-sapping piece of wizardry when a little bit of junior sorcery - which is all instant movement is - will suffice? Save the complicated stuff, and therefore your energy, for when you need it. “

  “That earthworm wasn’t Bovey’s Anguis, then, just an ordinary earthworm.” Twilight bent down and
rustled around under the dead leaves at the side of the track they were walking along, and then held up a worm. “The like of which can be found everywhere around here!” He held the wriggling creature triumphantly under the old wizard’s nose for a few moments before carefully replacing it under the leaves.

  Merlin smiled indulgently as the boy gradually worked it out for himself.

  “And you didn’t actually say that the worm Bovey found was the reptile, you only said that it might be. But what, I wonder, did you do with Anguis?” Twilight paused in thought for a moment, and then answered his own question. “I know! Instant movement, you said … so you put him where he was going anyway. Bovey had placed him carefully under a thick branch in order to carry out their disgusting charade … and you put him there … you put him up on the branch! You placed the wretched creature onto the branch and put him to sleep for a few days. Bovey never thought to look up there because he was too busy scrabbling around in the leaves. Now he’ll spend the next few days protecting and cooing over a genuine earthworm!”

  Merlin nodded in sober appreciation of the boy’s deductive powers; then the great gray-tinged dark brows rose and the emerald eyes twinkled, and they both burst out laughing. As they walked slowly and happily back to the compound, Phi suddenly appeared on a branch beside them and, repeating his salutation rite as before, let out two piercing shrieks, lifted his talons, and was gone. Merlin gave a grunt of pleasure and waved after the swiftly disappearing falcon. He turned to Twilight and nodded.

  “Your father is safely home with your mother and brothers and sisters.”

  “Thank you,” the boy said simply.

  They would be gathered around the hearth in the gloom of their wood and earth hovel, their smiles of palpable relief at the success of the father’s mission lighting up the smoky interior. Life for them had just become a great deal easier. The loss of their “odd” brother meant they were now in control of their own movements and thoughts. No more unexplained travails, extraordinary extravagancies, and involuntary actions. Apart from his mother, Leah, of course. She wouldn’t be smiling. She would keep her weary face away from them in the gloom for a while until she had composed herself. She would never reconcile the loss of her silent first-born with the subsequent wellbeing of the rest of her brood, but that had been the decision of her husband and the Settlement Council of Elders. They were wrong, and their reasoning was skewed, yet it had to be. In that instinctive way mothers have of being aware of matters beyond the bounds of simple brood familiarity, she had always understood that Will was special in some indefinable, mystical way, and that he would somehow fulfill a destiny that was far beyond her understanding. The stories Sam regaled to the rest of them when he returned of their travails on the journey to Merlin’s compound were further proof. The way her Will, now renamed Twilight by the long magus, had coolly dealt with the old man called Bovey and his odious serpent and the Lament of the Sorrows told her what she had always suspected. His joyful acceptance by the old sorcerer at his compound confirmed it.

  Were Will’s - Twilight’s - powers such that he could somehow guess her great secret? The secret that ran so very deep that she had hardly dared even to contemplate its consequences with her innermost thoughts, let alone share it with another human being. That fateful day over fourteen years ago, when the white dove had flown gently and irresistibly over the breeze-brushed grass of the green hill just two weeks before she went through the hand-fasting ritual of marriage with Sam Timms. Did the long magus, the venerable veneficus himself, know who her eldest boy really was?

  To walk through the medieval mist of an autumn equinox is to walk through the remains of every life that ever lived before us on this turning earth. Each minute teardrop of floating humidity is the vaporized soul of a cowerer, a once-human inhabitant who lived out its term of prostrated avoidance in the vicinity wherein it now swirled and screamed in a silent, tortured cloud. A powerful legend of medieval Britain has it that only one type of live species can walk among these silently raging equinoctial mists and commune with the tortured souls therein. Such a communer is a very rare and special person described variously by deeply superstitious, sign-making Celtic and West Saxon folk as a hybrid of sorcerer, magician, alchemist, wizard, oracle, or wax-pale ghost.

  A veneficus.

  Chapter Four

  As the lone curlew’s dawn call cast its haunting melody over the borderland region of Oswestry, it was gradually subsumed by a greater sound as the clashing din of battle approached the slumbering Marches. Drawing ever closer, the cries and clashes took on the frenzy of rout as the winning army of King Penda of Northumbria and his superior men of the north surrounded the disorganized forces of King Oswald of Mercia.

  Alongside the great wood-and-earthenware ramparts of the Wall of Severus, later known as Offa’s Dyke, the battle for supremacy was soon over, and Penda’s victory was complete. He was now the undisputed ruler of two-thirds of the lands known as Britain. Before the blood of Oswald’s slaughtered army had dried on the keen iron of Penda’s soldiers, his victorious eyes turned westward to the one-third of mainland Britain he did not rule.

  The green and mysterious Celtic lands of Wessex.

  Calling for his counselor, Penda brooded upon the possibilities. His men were tired and needed rest from constant battle, yet he, Penda of Northumbria, unchallenged king of the Saxons, was driven by God and the Christian right to rid the land of the pagans that inhabited Wessex. Then he would unite all the realms under the Saxon rule - his rule. Wessex, colonized by a mixture of Iberians, Jutes, Angles, Celts, Gauls, and the hated Britons, had always been a mystery, even to the now departed Romans. Steeped in impenetrable legends of pre-Celtic mysticism from the tin-mining areas of Kernow to the hill fortifications and rolling downlands of Wiltshire, the region where fantasy, heresy, idolatry, and reality blended in an exhilarating mix of chimerism. It was this mix that provided would-be conquerors with the real reason for the domination of Wessex, and Penda, albeit hiding behind the zeal of Christianity, was no different. A conquering king can rewrite a great deal of history if he can control fantastic events.

  Penda watched from the top of a grassy knoll as his elegant counselor, the ever-present white-furred guardian locked faithfully alongside, moved slowly through the blood-soaked carnage of the marshy battlefield toward him. He would soon have his answers, for the counselor, although young, was unusually prescient and had been proved right in advising him that victory would be his if he pursued Oswald’s army to this place and surrounded them.

  Elelendise affected a small bow as she reached his side. The white wolf whined, bared its sharp fangs and, ensuring that its fur remained in contact with its beloved mistress, sat dutifully at her feet, its vigilant, pale gray eyes turning continuously around the immediate area for any sign of danger.

  Penda spoke, the elation of triumph lacing his words.

  “The victory is ours, just as you prophesied, Elelendise. The brave swords of our men of the north have dispatched the ragged army of Oswald. I am now the undisputed ruler of Deira and Mercia.”

  The tall, fair-haired Elelendise smiled, her beauty lighting up the somber scene of battle all around them.

  “It was a great victory, my lord. And the vanquished pagan King Oswald?”

  “Here, in chains.” Penda motioned to a bloodied, tall man nearby, still wearing armor and guarded by six of his personal guards. “I am considering his future,” the victorious king added, walking toward his beaten foe.

  “Do you have any suggestions, counselor?”

  As they neared the vanquished but unbowed Briton king, the white wolf, already edgy due to the strong smells of fresh battlefield blood all around, began to whine and bare its dripping fangs again.

  Elelendise walked up to Oswald and stared straight into his bloodied face for a long while.

  “Yes, my lord,” she said quietly. “Remove his heathen head from his shoulder
s and set it on that hill over there so that his dead eyes look toward the north in perpetual homage to your rule. I will place a flock of rooks there as guardians who will peck out all the flesh of his rancid skull except the eyes. Their unseeing setting will also serve as a reminder to anyone who would be blind enough to usurp or challenge your Saxon rule.”

  Oswald slowly lifted his bloodied head, met her gaze coolly, and nodded.

  “Then my dead eyes will look upon your demise, sorceress, and your rooks will perish from the poison in my flesh brought about by my hatred of Saxons and the lowly stargazers who would assist them under the guise of an alien god.”

  The huge white wolf snarled and crouched as if to spring at the throat of the proud king.

  “It’s all right, Lupa,” soothed Elelendise, stroking the rough white fur on its neck before turning back to Oswald. “Have a care, idolater, and cling to your baubles while you still have life in your heathen fingers. Your anti-Christ existence is of no mind to us. It is a wasteland of defeated indifference.”

  “There is a peaceful place awaiting my soul, a place where we will not meet,” Oswald said simply before putting his chin on his breastplate, signaling he had nothing more to say.

  Penda waved a mailed hand at the guards. “Remove his head and follow my counselor’s instructions,” he ordered imperiously.

  As the guards marched the doomed Oswald away, Penda turned to Elelendise. “My inclination is to continue onward to the realm of Wessex and wipe forever the pagan scourge of the Celts from these lands. What say you, veneficus?”

  The beautiful Elelendise, counselor to the Court of King Penda, holder of the northern venefical enchantments, adored liege-lord of the wolves, and fresh from the teachings of the mighty northern magus Mael, whom she had succeeded when he had reached his century just over one year ago, pondered the question she had long known was coming.