by Curtis, Greg
“Now my most beautiful lady, if you would allow me a few moments to finish bathing and dressing, it would be my honour to escort you to breakfast.” He was actually hungry, and Bearabus was no doubt starving as usual, but more than that the chance to take Essaline to breakfast, where he had no doubt her family would already be waiting for them, was a joy. They’d spent too long apart of late, so busy with their duties.
Five minutes later they walked hand in hand to the communal dining area, it would be many months maybe years before a dining platform and food shops would be rebuilt, and quickly found her family already settled on the grass with a hearty bowl of porridge bubbling away on their little brazier and a few fish for Bearabus. Places, bowls and spoons had already been set out for them and by the looks of things they were slightly overdue, and Marjan didn’t waste any more time as he helped Essaline to her cushion and took his own beside her, all the while apologising for their tardiness.
Felesily naturally would hear none of it and began spooning out the porridge into bowls for them all, along with a little milk and honey, and soon the conversation was forgotten as they enjoyed the simple fair, especially the children who seemed to have multiplied again. Petras, Dorian and Sassa were there as usual, but it seemed that they’d brought a few friends with them as well, most of who were eyeing up Bearabus. Though she was growing, she was still one of the cutest bears in all of creation and a favourite playmate of the children, something she still accepted with more good grace than could be expected of even a saint. Of course she knew that good behaviour brought food, so she had reason.
Then too her parents seemed to welcome him in much the same way, and though in part he was sure it was simple politeness, he still liked to believe it went further than that. It still surprised and even amazed him a little that they should be so accepting of him among them, of his courting their daughter, and he still felt slightly ill at ease sitting with her parents especially, and yet it was also surprisingly welcome spending a meal with them. Especially in such difficult times.
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Master Vant was in fine form Marjan thought, as he held the floor, or actually the grassy flat at the base of the small slope on the common, which they were calling their chamber. Dressed in all his heavily embroidered silken finery, his voice booming, perhaps due to a slight spell, he was lecturing them all as if they were little children. Something that probably didn’t sit too well with the elders, though they always held their irritation to themselves, civility being the elven way. Still it was like sitting in a classroom being lectured, and when some of those students were surely approaching three hundred years of age, that surely wasn’t easy to take.
It wasn’t easy even for Marjan, and he was barely a child in this august company. But when a master wizard was telling them of what they’d found, he was willing to listen.
“We are satisfied now that the enemy we face comes from the void. All our divinations and all our readings say the same, and even the documents that were taken from the dark constructs support the view. Though there is much we still do not understand of them, we know now that they were written by blind souls with the blood of their own flesh and on leather taken from their own bodies.” How they knew that Marjan didn’t know, he didn’t want to know. For the most part he didn’t want to even think about those writings. Just the memory of them left him feeling chilled, his skin crawling.
“We even know now from whence they came. These are ancient souls, sent bodily into the void as a punishment many thousands of years ago. Sent by the races that walked the lands long before the humans of today and the other peoples of the world had become great civilizations. Sent thousands of years before the unseen wars destroyed the world and what little knowledge we had then of those who had come before.”
“They were exiled to the void as punishments for great and terrible crimes, for being the strongest and greatest of their fallen enemies, and sometimes just for a ruler’s whim. They were exiled in their tens and hundreds of thousands, thought never to be able to return, and perhaps that should have been the end of them. But it wasn’t.” Marjan wished he hadn’t added the last even though he and everyone else knew that it was simply the simple fact of the matter that he was stating.
“The void is just that, a void. Formless, shapeless, dimensionless, and even airless. The flesh of those sent in quickly died. But the souls survived. They survived and they could not escape to whatever place they were supposed to go to. Instead they were still trapped within, destined to spend all eternity in the darkness and cold, linked to their dead bodies.”
“Naturally they went mad.” Marjan understood that only too well, and the very idea of their prison sent a shiver down his spine. Death would have been so much more merciful than the living or actually undying hell they had been consigned to. He felt Essaline’s hand clutch at his and squeezed it back, hoping to give comfort where there was little. All there was in truth was the warmth of the sun above, and the softness of the grass on which they sat, and each other. All things that those poor souls had been denied.
“Now, whoever has opened this portal, wherever he or they may be, has unleashed a plague of tormented undead souls upon the world. Souls so lost in their pain and suffering that they ache for the warmth of flesh once more with a hunger beyond our understanding. And they can take it whenever one is too weak to resist.”
“That is their strength. It is also their weakness.” Marjan understood the wizard instantly, even if a lot of the others around him began muttering among themselves. They thought he was practicing some form of sophistry, but Marjan understood him perfectly. The bond between the possessed and the possessor was their weakness. Break it, and the war was won. He had done much the same with the enemy wizard he had encountered in the goblin lair, or at least strained it. But they would have to have some fairly powerful soul magic to do what they thought they had to.
“We need to destroy their bonds. And because the threat is so dire, and we do not know how many more of these undead souls are out there in the void, waiting to be brought across, we need to do it soon.”
“So we have come to a decision.” Master Vant said it as if he was making a proclamation, and a part of Marjan had the worrying thought that he might be. What they had found was interesting, and maybe, just maybe it gave them an extra edge in the ongoing battle against the wyrmlings, but it didn’t sound like a master stroke of magic that would send them all back to the void from which they came, and he didn’t want to go to war against them again, not so soon. No more he suspected, did the elves of Evensong, as they still spent every hour of their every day rebuilding their homes and their lives. Yet it might not be a choice.
“We are going to fight. We are going to create a new ward, a powerful spell of soul disjunction, that we can cast across the entire northern reaches.”
“A world spell?” Essaline whispered the question to her and he nodded. That was exactly the sort of magic the master was speaking of. A spell so powerful that it could envelope the entire world in time. The sort of spell that hadn’t been cast in recorded history. Not since before the unseen wars eight hundred years before. It was beyond ambitious, in fact it was so far beyond any spell he’d ever heard of, that Marjan couldn’t think of a word to describe it.
“To do this we will need the resources of many masters, many hundreds of masters. The most powerful of spellcasters, the most knowledgeable of scribes and the most ancient of texts. We will need to shape this spell for perhaps many months, and those who are a part of this great work, will not be available elsewhere. We will need help.” They would need a lot of help. Even if they could get all those wizards and other spellcasters they sought, it meant that all of their other duties, warding the land among them, would have to be carried out by others. Master Vant was telling them that the services of the wizard guilds would be severely cut back for a time.
“And so we are offering amnesties to those of our Guild who have been cast out, those who are maveri
cks and runaways. Return to us, stand with us, and your transgressions will be forgiven and forgotten.” Marjan’s mouth dropped at the Master’s words, shocked to have ever heard him say such a thing. There was no way back to the Guild, not for him, not for anyone. That was the understanding he had been given as a student, it was the rule he had lived with all his life since being exiled, it was all but cast in stone, and now in their desperation it was being thrown aside. He almost wondered if he had misheard, and some of that shock must have been written on his face.
“Beloved, that means you can return.” Essaline was right he suddenly realised, and he was as shocked by the truth of her words as he was by the fact that she, the most beautiful woman in the world and his beloved, could say them, even smile as she said them. And deep down he was shocked by the discovery that he had made a decision long ago, that he had another home, another Guild, though it took him a moment to realise it.
“Essaline dearest, that most definitely does not mean me. They might let me return but I would not go back. I will not leave you and I will not leave Evensong. For better and worse this is my home. You are my love.” He looked directly into her eyes as he said it, hoping, praying that she saw the truth in them, and was rewarded with the most wonderful smile that suddenly graced her face.
“Marjan?” Master Silas spoke up from the guest seats, actually just cushions arranged on the grass, a question on his lips even as he too smiled, thinking he was offering him something he had yearned for for all his long years in exile. He was right, or he had been, but no longer.
“No Master Silas. The offer is generous beyond belief, but I cannot accept it.” He watched unsurprised as the smile on the master’s face suddenly vanished. “My punishment was just, I have always known that and accepted it. My mistake cost a life and hurt an innocent family. I could never ignore that, I could never return to the Guild when by doing so I would be betraying them, telling the world that my crime was not so bad, that their son and brother was not so worthy of penance, that his loss could be forgotten or forgiven. My crime is not so easily forgiven, ever.”
“Then too, I have found a new home here among these good people. They have accepted me as a Mage among them, and it has been my honour and pleasure to serve them as a wizard should.”
“I will aid you however I can in this struggle ahead. I will defend the people to my dying breath, all the people. But for better or worse this is my home, these are my people, and my family. I will stand here, I will stand with them until my last breath.”
Silence took hold of the meeting about then, as the wizards clearly had no idea what to say, and they held the floor, but he didn’t care as Essaline dragged his head to one side and kissed him firmly on the cheek, shocking as such a thing might be to her family and friends. Still it made him happy, and from the sniggers of childish amusement coming from somewhere behind them, he wasn’t alone.
“Thank you Marjan. It is our honour and pleasure to have you among us.” Elder Lorelli took the opportunity to speak and at least it relieved the silence and stopped the sniggering.
“But what of the others who have committed crimes, terrible crimes? What of those who have killed innocents by accident or design? What of Dimeter?” Of course the elder was right to ask, and Marjan gasped in horror at the thought that he, still somewhere out there on the run, might be forgiven so quickly, his crimes washed away as if they had never been. Suddenly his trial and the pain of his family were all once more in his thoughts, fresh as if they had happened only the day before.
“The offer extends to him too. He will be taken back into the Guild should he ask to be.” Master Vant spoke as if it was already written, the deal signed, and Marjan had the truly horrible feeling that perhaps it already was. Meanwhile Master Silas sitting on the grass beside him suddenly looked very old and sick. He still carried the guilt for Dimeter’s crime with him, something Marjan doubted Dimeter himself would. He had no heart, no guilt, and no shame.
“No!” The plaintiff cry coming from behind them caught them all by surprise, but not as much as the small ripple of earth magic that accompanied it which threatened to send them all on to their backsides, at least those who were standing, and Marjan turned quickly to see the children, unable to be kept out of the meeting when there was no such thing as a meeting hall any longer, all standing at the back, watching the proceedings. He also spotted the little girl who had caused all the fuss.
“Soren!” He was surprised to see her there, surprised to have felt her strength, undisciplined and untrained as it was, but not by her reaction. With her father dead, her mother too so he understood not that many years before, she had every reason to hate the enemy, both Dimeter and the void creatures, and every reason to want to hit them hard. The very idea of forgetting about Dimeter’s crime for the moment simply wasn’t acceptable, forgiving him even less so, and she was right too. She really wasn’t old enough to understand tactics or strategy, but he had killed her father and that was a loss that had to be atoned for. But with her display in front of so many, including the Guild masters, Marjan knew it wasn’t time to explain such things. There were more important matters at hand.
“With me please beloved.” Holding Essaline’s hand, in truth they had been holding hands for the entire meeting anyway, he helped her to her feet and then began hurrying over to the little girl, hoping to beat the wizards. Soren he noticed, was looking somewhat surprised. She’d felt the magic, felt the ripple as it flowed through her and beyond, but apparently not realised that she had caused it, and so was probably wondering why everyone was staring at her.
“She did that?”
“Yes. She’s a wizard and her magic is just starting to break through.” She was the right age of course, ten or so, and her father had been a wizard, however minor his talent, and so he should have expected it, and yet for some reason Marjan hadn’t even considered the possibility, and he was angry with himself for that failure, for having failed a child, moreover the child of a brother. It wasn’t right for her, and her uncontrolled outburst was his fault. Someone could have been hurt. He should have been watching her closely for months to look for such a thing and to limit it. But for her to have released it here and now in front of Guild wizards, that was another problem in itself. She could not have picked a worse time and place to let loose, though he understood why.
“Child, did you do that?” Master Vant, the head wizard for the guild now in Southern Tonfordia had already beaten him to Soren, and was kneeling before her, looking concerned and much as Marjan hated to say it, interested. It wasn’t every day a new wizard was identified.
Soren of course was just staring at him, looking confused and hurt. She didn’t really understand what had happened, and in any case, it wasn’t her first concern.
“Hold please Master Vant. This is Evensong, an elven province, and while Soren here is human and the daughter of a human wizard, she is also a member of this town. The laws of Gunderland do not hold here. You may not simply take her into the Guild.” Despite having been happy as an apprentice within the Guild, Marjan discovered a kernel of anger deep within him as he remembered back to his own time when the Guild had taken him from his home when his talent had been discovered. He remembered the pain of having been taken away from his parents, his brother and sister only too well, despite it having been twenty or more years ago, and he was determined that it should not happen to the little girl in front of him. Not when she had already lost so much.
“She’s a wizard.” Of course the master was only saying what he knew to be true and therefore he couldn’t understand the objection. Wizards had to be taught and trained, and he was right Marjan knew. A wizard with true power and little training would be a threat to the people. It could not be allowed. But there were other ways, something he had only begun to understand since being in Evensong.
“Yes she is, but this is Evensong, and she could just as easily be a mage, a druid or a priest. The choice is hers and she has not yet had the time to ma
ke it.” Marjan watched as the master’s heavily wrinkled face went through a myriad of expressions in the space of a few heartbeats shock and disdain the most obvious of them as he no doubt tried to think of something to say and failed, but at least he managed to keep his tongue in check, as did the other masters who were gathering around them. This was after all a council of war and they were among their allies. The last thing they needed was discord. Fortunately that gave Essaline the time she needed.
“What my betrothed means to say is that Soren is the daughter of Mage Ferris and that Ferris though he was only with us for a short time, was a mage among the people and a friend. He was never a member of the Guild. His daughter and his sister are also living among us as friends and most welcome to stay. As such they have the same rights and duties as any others of our people, and this child may not be summarily taken from her family and friends and cloistered away in a magic guild simply because she has a gift. Many among our people have similar gifts and we will care for them all within our home.”