Maverick

by Curtis, Greg

  Gunder was destroyed. When he’d finally laid eyes upon its ghostly image in the pool for the first time, he’d all but wept at the sight of the once fine city, ruined. Little remained of it other than burnt out, blackened relics, though happily after so long, the bodies had been taken care of by nature. Not even the palace had survived, it was now a mound of burnt stone rubble as high as two houses and covering a full hundred paces in every direction. The enemy still patrolled the streets, mostly a few of the beasts and a solitary soldier in the red livery, but there was little point. Even if the people had the will and the strength to return, there was nothing for them anymore. Even the walls had collapsed under the fiery assault, and the fields outside, the food that would have fed tens of thousands, they were all destroyed. In truth the city now belonged to the scavengers, the crows and buzzards and a few brave wild dogs that crept around through the rubble, always staying out of sight of the enemy.

  The larger towns, those that he had visited and knew and so those that he could scry, were also in ruins. The enemy had run amok in most of them and by the looks of things the body count would be high. Tenfellows had once been home to over fifteen thousand residents and a thriving business in trading with the northern realms. Its shopping centre had been a full dozen streets lined with three and four story stone buildings with endless ornate canopies, selling everything from farming supplies and furs to magical sundries, iron goods and expensive jewellery. Looking through the pool however, Marjan had had great difficulty in even finding the streets. The entire town was simply a rubble heap of broken masonry and burnt timbers, and the only difference between what had once been a street and what had been a building was the height of the rubble. He had no idea how many people now lay dead under that pile.

  Shalefist, the main dwarven trading town to the northeast, was in a similar state, though there because buildings had been made out of solid pieces of carved stone, they had mostly survived, only to be burnt out. But there, perhaps because the rubble was less, he could see bodies, too many of them. Most were in armour, weapons in their hands, and he knew the dwarves had put up a tremendous fight. But clearly they had been caught by surprise, probably massively outnumbered, and defeated. He had no idea how many of the five thousand or so dwarves that had called it home had died there, but he feared it was most of them.

  Snowy Falls was in a similarly tragic state, and other than a couple of wild boars there was no sign of life at all, but there the enemy had gone one step further. The copper mine that was one of the main industries of the town, had been levelled. All four entrances, even the one around the side of the hill, out of site of the main structures, had collapsed, and all that could be seen was rubble. Why would someone do that? He had a theory that maybe the town’s folk had taken shelter in the mine and the beasts had dug them out, but no proof, and he was grateful for that. Naturally he had no way to be sure and neither did the elders when he showed them the image in the scrying pool. But they did know that they didn’t want it happening here. He didn’t want it happening anywhere ever again.

  Thankfully he was able to take steps to help prevent that happening, and the house was more than just a home and a repository of magic, it was a small fortress as well. If and when the enemy came, they would discover that it would not be the easy target it looked.

  The fence, a small picket fence that wouldn’t have stopped a child though it kept Holly in bounds and away from his flowers, was underneath its white paint, embossed with so many glyphs of warding that he’d worried when he drew them that he was running out of room. When it was activated, it would form a powerful protection against anything that might attack. The lightning rod supposedly there to protect the occupants against a storm, was also a weapon that would cast those same bolts against anything he commanded. The village too was being defended. Unknown to the elders, or at least he hadn’t told them and hoped they hadn’t guessed, he’d been ringing the village with defences and the house was now the centre of a magical fortress.

  Every day as he went about his duties, enchanting weapons, helping with the healers, speaking with the council, building his house and studying his magic he’d also taken time out to take a walk around the village, to explore his surroundings so he claimed, and on the way every so often, he’d dropped off small broken pieces of slate and stone. Things that should not be noticed by anyone daring to attack the village, or if they did see them, things that would be considered as unimportant. They would be wrong. Taken as a whole he hoped the enchanted slates would form a barrier of great strength, a wall against the enemy, though not a physical one.

  Master Silas had given him the clue to the defence when he had told him of the dark wizards and their magic, and especially the way they believed in which they had transformed people into their beast men. Poisoning their flesh, savaging their souls, reshaping their ruined bodies, and then enchanting the ruined soul until it knew no master other than the evil that supplanted it. It was evil and dark, and though he had terrible sympathy for their victims he knew it could not be undone, but it wasn’t unassailable.

  He could not heal the transformed, and he could not restore their souls to them, but he was at least hopeful that he could break the link they shared with their masters. The Guild Wizards had found and used that link to track back from the servants to the masters and kill them remotely. He couldn’t do that. But he could shatter it, and once it shattered, he hoped, the servants would be greatly weakened. Moreover they would have no direction. Any of the enemy soldiers or beast men that came within half a league of Evensong in any direction, would be so affected.

  After that he wasn’t completely sure what would happen. Certainly he hoped the beast men would either retreat or collapse, and that their beast armies would dissolve into rabble. The various groups of wolves might remain in packs, but the boars, bears and big cats would not, it was not their way. Nor would they work together with one another, not when many of them were natural enemies. With a little luck an attacking army would descend into civil war. After that it would be up to the elves with their newly enchanted weapons and him to see to it that they didn’t recover.

  Of course all of that depended on the accuracy of the guild wizards analysis. It was logical, it seemed right and more then that he could think of no other explanation for what had been done to them, but he’d already had one terrible reminder that they weren’t always right.

  “You came to see me with a purpose Lady Essaline?”

  “We are alone Marjan, and you may call me Essaline.” She had said that a few times of late and he had never dared to take her up on her offer. He wasn’t game with so many elves all around, all with sharp hearing and too many of them with short tempers where humans and especially human wizards were concerned. This wasn’t the easiest of places for him to live which was one of the reasons he had chosen his house to be a little way out of the village itself.

  It must have been much harder on the others who had now also made Evensong their home, at least until they could return to their own lands, and the small town of four or five thousand elves now had at least five hundred humans and three hundred dwarves walking its streets, and none of them were as lucky as him to have their own house. They had had to find quarters among the tree homes of the elves, and then find work as well. They might be refugees, the elders might even call them guests, but they were still expected to contribute, and many were now filling out the numbers of guard and ranger troops, more were farming and harvesting, and some had set up shops. He had heard that the other nearer elven towns and cities were in a similar state with the many thousands of refugees having been divided between them to ease the burden. At least it gave him a few people to talk to.

  “My jaw still remembers the last time I spoke so informally my Lady.”

  “As mine remembers a certain evening after a battle with a very large spider queen. If the captain had seen that you would not have had a jaw remaining. But I am willing to forgive, I would hope that you are also.” She
smiled at him and he knew as his heart melted once again, that she was telling the truth. But that didn’t change the facts of the matter.

  “There is nothing to forgive my lady the mistakes were entirely mine. I would just choose not to make the same mistakes again.” He smiled to show he meant nothing mean or hurtful with his words, but he had to be careful, especially when he still couldn’t speak elvish. Four full tendays of daily lessons with the schoolteachers had taught him only a few basic words and he feared they would soon pronounce him impossibly slow and give up. Ferris by contrast was almost fluent. But there were simply too many vowels in their language, along with too many soft consonants and not enough hard ones. It sounded like singing, and they spoke so fast. It was just fortunate that so many of them spoke trade, but then Evensong was a trading town, something else he hadn’t realised about the elves. They weren’t great traders in Gunderland, but in these southern lands, far more of their life revolved around commerce.

  “And what of my choices?” She didn’t smile and he gathered she wasn’t completely pleased with his words. Still there was little he could do about that right then. So he apologised as best he could and waited for her to tell him whatever she had come to say. In time she gave up on trying to make him bend to her will and delivered her message as he’d expected.

  “The elders have requested that you visit with them at five bells, and that you bring your crystal of far sight. They wish to speak once more with the Guild. Also, after that my parents have requested that you join us for the evening meal.” The first part was what he had expected more or less and Marjan was happy enough to do as they asked, but the second part when he heard it suddenly filled him with dread. Whatever a meal with her parents entailed he knew he was nowhere near ready for it, nor for whatever it meant. The sudden panic must have shown on his face.

  “Fear not my brave wizard. It’s just a meal, and I do not think you’ll choke on it. My mother is an excellent cook.” Essaline laughed gently at him, a simple, friendly and somewhat musical sound that filled the air, and he was somewhat relieved by it, but not completely.

  “Forgive me good Essaline but once long ago you said I should do the same and when I told you of my plans to head further south instead you became upset, as if I had offended you. There is more than just a meal to this dinner is there not?”

  “Yes of course. It is time you were formally introduced, to my family and to the people as well, after all you have saved my life and the children’s lives, and they have not yet had the chance to thank you for that. The children would also like to see you again.”

  “As I would enjoy seeing them.” It was only the truth, though he wouldn’t have believed it not that long before. He missed the children, as much as they had been annoying and troublesome, not to mention a constant worry. Once he would never have been able to even understand such a thing, but when they were no longer around he’d found emptiness in his life, a hole that he’d never expected to find within himself. It was strange how in such a short time they could almost have become like a family to him. Not that he would admit it.

  Meanwhile those children who could go home had returned to their families, but Petras, Dorian and Sassa were stuck in the town, and he had little doubt that they too would welcome a visit and some cheering up. The children were of good heart, but still he knew their continuing time apart from their families must have been tough, especially now that their classmates had left. They were staying with Essaline’s own family he knew, and no doubt causing them many sleepless nights instead of him. The children could be a handful, and yet for all that when he saw them in the village and passed a few words with them, he was always the happier for it, and they seemed the same. He would be happy to see them again this evening.

  “Besides you should be visiting others as well, spending more time in the heart of the village. It is time the people got to know you as more than just a human wizard. They need to know you as a friend. Mage of the Wilds or not, you do unnerve some of them.” Maybe she had a point but then again, she had raised another question. One he still hadn’t been able to get answered after three or more tendays in the village. Every time he asked the people just looked at him as though he was crazy, which was why he’d soon stopped asking.

  “Lady Essaline, just what is a Mage of the Wilds?” She stared at him in surprise for a few seconds, and then for some reason she just laughed quietly, and while it didn’t help, it was such a pleasant sound that it almost made him forget his question.

  “Why you are of course.” She laughed some more at his confusion, but eventually relented, seeing his obvious ignorance, though it apparently surprised her.

  “Surely in your time here you have seen that the ways of elves are different to those of humans and other races. We do not work for coin or gold, and though we have such things they are less important to us. We live and we work for other things. We have duties to others and all elves regardless of their role or responsibility live and work for those duties. Thus you will find no rich elves or poor elves, no great mansions among us, no homeless people living in the streets. All such things would be an anathema to us. All work and all receive, or in truth, all serve and all are cared for.”

  She was right in that, and one of the many things he still didn’t understand, but maybe that was simply because he was a mere human. He understood coin and ownership of property, the elves seemed more to understand community. In fact they understood it so well and practiced it so faithfully that one of the other things they’d done away with, or in truth never seemed to have invented, was locks. Not a single house in the entire town had a lockable front door, and yet as far as he knew, not a single theft had ever been reported. They were truly a different people.

  “We elves divide our spellcasters into three on the basis of who they serve just as we divide all others. Three leaves growing from the same bud of the dawn forest lily that together form the whole flower.”

  “The first are those who use their magic in the service of the Lady or the Goddess. We mostly know them as priests and priestesses like myself, much as you do, though few of your priests follow the ways of the Goddess. But there are others who are priests in her service who are not spellcasters like myself, and there are still more in her service that are not priests but rather blessed mages. In the same way a soldier in service to the Goddess, what you would call a knight or a paladin is known as a warder, and a person who’s service is as a leader in service to the lady would be a member of the Blessed Council in whatever capacity.”

  “The next are those who use their magic in the service of the world of nature. They serve the wider world, the animals and plants, and the people and the balance between them. Those spellcasters are the druids, and though they do not directly serve the lady, they still serve her and do her work as well as the people’s and so have much of her magic as well as their own. A soldier in service to the natural realm is known as a ranger. A leader in service to the natural realm belongs to the Sylvan Council.”

  “Lastly we have those who serve the people. Those who’s magic is in service to neither the spiritual nor the natural, but to what you would call the people. These are the mages, in your case a mage of the wilds, and that is what you are. Soldiers who serve the people are known as guards. Leaders of the people belong to the Village Councils and the Great Council.”

  “My people find it hard to understand those who do not serve a cause outside of themselves. Thus we have difficulty accepting traders who seem only to want to gain coin for themselves, and we do not permit them. Our merchants charge only what is fair and needed and any excess coin they might find is given to the council to distribute. We cannot abide rulers who seek only further power for themselves. We do not accept soldiers who work purely for coin, those you call mercenaries. And we will not accept wizards who do not serve another cause greater than themselves.”

  “Your magic guilds however flawed in their nature and frightening in their power, have shown with their codes of
conduct and laws that they do serve the people as well as themselves. So we are willing to accept their members within our communities as mages. Your hedge wizards by and large are village spellcasters, and again they serve the people even if they do so for coin, so we can accept them as mages as well, though as you and they have already discovered, they will not get rich here. But those who do not serve, those your guilds sometimes call mavericks and renegades cannot be allowed.”