by Awert, Wolf
“I will accompany him, for now,”Dakh-Ozz-Han said.
Nill flinched. He had been running after his own thoughts and had not realizedthat Dakh-Ozz-Han and Esara were talking about him. Did Esara mean to be rid of him?
The druidsaid: “I will bring him to Ringwall. He will be in good hands there.”
Esara stayed silent, while inside her a beast raged. “Ringwall!” it screamed. “Cursed city of all evil, my pain.”
But out loud she spoke: “Ringwall will not take him. Ringwall has never allowed someone of common descent to pass through its gates.”
“Perhaps I don’t even want to go there,”Nill attempted to calm her.
“You must,” the druid said harshly. “You are an arcanist. You have access to the powers of magic. That is no slight gift. An arcanist can change things, but is always in danger of losing himself in the process.”
“Why is it dangerous if you can do something?” Nill asked.
“Because magic rules. Magic must be controlled, or it will control you. And if it does control you, your own power will destroy you. That is why every arcanist needs a teacher.”
“How can you be so sure that Ringwall will take him?” Esara asked.
“Things have changed in Pentamuria while you have retreated to the rim of the world. Ringwall may still be the City of Mages and the place where nobles from the prince to the squire receive their introduction to magic. But nobody can tell how long it will stay that way.”
“What has happened?” Esara asked, her voice a monotone.
“The past is being blown away by the winds of prophecy.”
The druid pursed his lips and puffed in Esara’s face. Esara shivered.
“Worry has struck the arcanists and the wise of Pentamuria. You know the ancient legends, the songs and hymns of the past?”
Esara lowered her head in assent.
“They are all that is left from the past, for before the Mages of Ringwall there were others who governed it, and again before that. Each period had its own truths. We only recall them in tales, phrases and songs. Do you remember the Book of Prophecy?”
“No.”
“You have forgotten much, my dear. The truth-tellers of the five kingdoms, great sorcerers all, the old druids, the wise women of the Oa, many shaman and even the archmages with the Magon, their leader, they are all convinced that the time of change spoken of in the Book of Prophecy is due in the next two generations. ‘Nothing shall be as it was before. Wastelands will take the place of cities. Verdant oases will bloom where once there was wasteland. The reigning will serve, and the servants will reign,’ the story of Gnaffting, the blind metal-seer tells.
“The Mages of Ringwall want to prevent the prophecies. They believe that they can change fate. But they cannot do so on their own. As such, they have decided to unite all magical groups in Pentamuria, and everyone with magical capabilities will be taught in their ways. We have yet to see whether they will be successful. Oas, druids and shaman are cautious, for their past experiences with the mighty circle of mages were not always good. Apart from that, Pentamuria is not just the five kingdoms. There is magic in the fringe-worlds too, and most of it is not human. But that is of little interest to us. The only thing that counts is that the mages have opened their venerable doors. Nill can go to Ringwall if he so desires.” The last words were directed at Esara as Dakh-Ozz-Han fixed her in his gaze.
A new world began to take shape in front of Nill’s eyes. For a moment, heroism and fame were banished. He saw a mage standing before him. He wore a long white robe and a serious expression on his face. One hand was reaching to the sky, connected to the stars, the other gesturing at the people below him, expelling war, disease and death. Yes, this was what Nill wanted.
“You could become a sorcerer there, perhaps even a warlock someday,” Dakh-Ozz-Han said.
“I want to be a mage,” Nill announced solemnly.
Esara’s face contorted to a grimace of pain
“Who knows? Maybe a mage, then,” Dakh-Ozz-Han smiled. “That is your decision, and depends only on how much strength and skill you show. And on how ready you are to labor. Have you any experience with magic?”
“No,” Esara interrupted. “He doesn’t know a single incantation, cannot neither banish nor summon, cannot strengthen or weaken a thing and he cannot see, either.”
Nill was surprised at the sudden outburst, as Esara had shown little of her feelings up until now. She fought, but against what? And why was she so distressed?
The druid gave her a long look. “He will not come if he does not want to, and neither if you do not want him to. But you know that what you have said is not the truth.” Dakh’s voice had become so quiet that even Nill’s sharp ears could not comprehend his whispers. “Have you not seen his knife? The blade is full of magic and the boy does not even realize. Nobody with a grasp on magic who does not have a teacher lives a long life. You know that as well as I. Nobody with any sort of magical ability can evade it, and they will make mistakes, and their own gift will be their downfall. I ask you, Esara: is that what you want?”
Esara lowered her gaze to the floor and swallowed. Had she not called Dakh-Ozz-Han to this far-off village, even if she was deaf to her own scream? Esara straightened up and stood tall as a queen. “The day is old. Stay the night and leave tomorrow, as early as is possible.”
There was not much to talk about that night. Nill tossed about in fitful slumber. Dakh slept like a stone, while Esara collected the few items Nill was to take with him the next morning. It was not much: a few bindings for his feet in case of cold weather, a blanket, a second overcoat, a pouch with bread and cheese, and his weather-clothing, consisting of a long cloak and a wide hat. Finally she pulled out an old wooden disk from a bundle of children’s clothes.
The next morning, after a simple yet strong meal, they departed. Esara looked deep into Nill’s eyes, embraced him and hung the band with the small wooden disk around his neck.
“This here is an amulet. You were wearing it when Roddick found you. I am sure it came from your parents, and I am also sure that they gave it to you for a reason. Perhaps it will lead you to them someday. Farewell.”
“Why did you never tell me of this?” Nill asked. The slight note of accusation in his words was not missed, but Esara did not react to it.
“The people do not always understand magical objects. Roddick is a clever man. He took the amulet from you and gave it to me with the rest of your things. He knew what he was doing. It is better if the villagers don’t know about your amulet. It is now your decision to wear it openly or not, and who will see it and who won’t.”
Nill laughed out loud. The excitement of his future in the magical world could not be contained, and his face told of it. “Well, Dakh for example! He knows that I’m wearing an amulet now.” He gave the druid something of a challenging look.
The druid’s face seemed like a rough, untouched tree-trunk. Angular, with deep shadows cast by the rising sun which had by now displaced the dawn, unmoved in the early morning wind. All the creases and lines that usually made his face more alive were now simple, broken marks. Dakh-Ozz-Han looked into the distance with a vacant expression on his face, as though he had not heard Nill.
“We must go now, Esara!” The way he spoke her name evoked the possibility of another long story about the past, present and future. Esara understood. This was not goodbye. It was the beginning of a new tale.
Nill noticed nothing. The moment’s meaning passed him completely. He was impatient and could not understand why Dakh and Esara took so much time standing together in silence. If all had been said, they could go. He did not know that not everything had been said, not by a long way.
After what seemed like an age the druid turned around and began to walk with his long, calm steps. Esara kept looking long after the two had disappeared.
*
The air was still cold and stabbed at the lungs, but the grayish-yellow on the horizon promised another hot d
ay.
“Ringwall lies in the direction of Woodhold. We will be going towards the morning sun, however, until we reach the outskirts of Metal World,” the druid said. “That way we can avoid the villages.”
Nill did not understand why they were supposed to avoid the villages. He had expected to enter every village as Dakh-Ozz-Han had: powerfully, spectacularly and in the manner of a king. Nill had a hard time concealing his disappointment, but Dakh-Ozz-Han acted as though he had not noticed.
The druid and the boy kept an even pace, as experienced wanderers do when they have a long way to travel. It was important to move quickly and achieve a good stretch before resting in the early afternoon, at which point they waited for the heat to pass. Nill had taken the lead for now, as he knew every path in the vicinity of his village. At first he stuck to the old path he had taken every morning with his herd. He answered the druid’s questioning look: “I have an old friend to say goodbye to.”
But it was not goodbye. The old ram stood atop the hill where he had always waited, tilted his head to one side and gave the druid a wary glance. He let neither Nill nor Dakh come within twenty paces of him.
“It looks like it doesn’t trust us,” the druid grumbled. “But he seems to be a grand fellow.”
Dakh made a few attempts at baiting him, but the old ram resisted. The druid’s face became more serious after each failed attempt.
“Leave him be,” Nill said. “He’s stubborn, old, but generally quite harmless.”
The druid growled deep within his throat. “No being capable of withstanding a druid’s allure is harmless. Where did you find him and what have you spent the summer doing?”
Nill shook his head uncertainly. “He just appeared. There was a bit of a question of whose responsibility the herd was, but I managed to convince him. From that moment we took care of the herd together. I sat by the slope and he stood atop the hill. And when I brought the herd to the stables for the night he brought up the rear.”
Dakh-Ozz-Han began to move again, taking his eyes off the ram. Nill waved at the ram in a sheepish kind of way and then ran after the druid. Even a simple farewell was too much for him at the moment. Nill felt as though his entire tidy life was crumbling into little pieces, none of which seemed to fit together any more.
It’ll all work out, he thought.
The old ram stood there like a sentinel. Only after the boy and the druid had vanished behind the next hill did he raise a hoof.
Nill walked where he had walked a hundred times before, and even when they had long since left the familiar terrain the landscape was unchanged. A web of tough, dry grass covered the bleached, naked stone of the hilltops. Lonesome black bushes that nobody and nothing could get rid of dug deep into the rock with their roots. This was the home Nill knew, a place for tough and frugal people, for rams, small rodents and scratch-birds. Where the old caverns had crumbled in the white rock now lay deep gorges between the hills that had become fearsome swamps over time. These holes were both a blessing and a terror to the shepherds. In the hottest of summers the herds could always find enough water here so as not to die of thirst, but more than one animal had slipped on the steep slopes and been caught in the bog below.
The hard, triangular grass that grew in the mud at the bottom of these basins was difficult even for the rams to digest, so thirst was the sole motivator for their trips down into the gorges. But for humans, the grass as well as the morass in which it grew in had a different advantage, because it was an excellent building material. Still, the bricks had to lie in the sun for a long time, until the stench had left them. Both animals and humans valued a small strip of good, solid earth between the wet trenches and the bare hilltops. The grass there grew more readily and certain herbs gave the air an agreeable aroma.
The path stretched on, and one day passed like the last. Slowly the dried grass became more yellow, the bushes grew more verdant, isolated birdsong contained speech, and the air was thick with the smell of earth and grass, as though it wanted to fill their lungs completely.
“Have you noticed?” Nill asked the druid.
“What’s that, my boy?”
“All nature is suddenly richer and fuller.”
The druid smiled. “No, I hadn’t noticed. Nature is always rich and full.”
Nill grimaced at this answer and stayed silent for a while. He tramped grumpily after the old man, who was ascending and descending the hilltops with ease. Whenever Nill stopped for a moment to marvel at something he had to run to catch back up to the druid.
“May I ask you something?”
Dakh-Ozz-Han turned his head slightly, not enough to lose any of the smoothness in his step, and said shortly: “What is it?”
Nill ran a few more steps to get beside Dakh and started talking immediately. “Is there a difference between a druid who comes and a druid who goes?”
“Yes,” Dakh acknowledged with a smile. Nill waited for more, but the druid seemed to consider the question answered.
“But why is that, and how do you do it?”
“For druids it is like for all other people. They come with their wishes, hopes, expectations or intentions, and they go with their disappointment or happiness, in great sadness or lost in thought. But why do you ask?”
“That wasn’t what I meant. When you came to our village, all nature bowed before you. The animals and even the wind foretold of your arrival. You brought the people out of their houses, sent the hounds to their dark hiding places, and the earth trembled at your every step. Now I feel that nature is celebrating, and you walk so lightly that you don’t even leave footprints.”
The druid smiled again. “When a king arrives, his people carry the banners before him, fanfares are sounded and drums are beaten. Messengers foretell of his coming, and children and young women lay out flowers and petals to honor him. Everyone sees the herald, because they highly anticipate him. Yet the thief arrives in the neighbor’s dress, the spy stays unrevealed. I came like a warlord and went like a thief. Out here, in the wilds, I move unseen, and I will enter Ringwall as an unloved envoy.”
Nill listened in silence. He had always gone as he had come. Or had he?
Apart from a short rest at noon they had wandered for a full day again. The grass covering the hills was still yellow, sporadic groupings of bushes lent sparse protection from the sun and fresh water was so rare that they had to live off their own rations most of the time. They slept in the small forests that had now begun to cover the hills more frequently. Nill, who had never seen trees this large before, had noticed that the druid always set up his night camp at the edge of the crest, where it was densest. All the more surprised was he when he saw that tonight, Dakh-Ozz-Han had decided to sleep among the roots.
“Look up, boy,” the druid muttered as he noticed Nill’s bemused gaze. “This here is a dry-pine. They water the forest floor from the edge of their crests, unlike most others that do so with their skyward branches and limp leaves.”
They had been traveling for quite a few days now, each passing much like the last. The only pleasant thing was that their luggage was becoming ever lighter, as they had to live off their provisions. The banis they drunk was reaching its end. It was made from the underground bulbs of the alwrag-weed, diluted with water. Fresh banis was easy enough to make, but for that they needed water. They had long passed the swamp-holes, and the riverbeds in the area ran dry. Dakh, too, seemed worried about the water situation.
“I have not witnessed drought like this for a very long time,” he said as they packed up their things the next morning, shaking the cold dew out of their hair and quilts. “We will have to make a detour, and I do not like the thought of that at all.”
“We’ll make up for the time lost,” Nill tried to calm him, but Dakh merely scowled. They did not have to go far. In the early afternoon they came across a wide hollow that was completely covered by a dense forest.
“We will find fresh water here,” the druid said gruffly, pointing at the trees wit
h his staff. “Unpack our things, we will stay here.”
The curt tone in his voice was new to Nill. He did not understand, either, why Dakh had decided to rest so early. Still, he obediently opened their knapsacks and took out the most important things. But then he could no longer contain himself. “Why don’t we just go into the forest and fill up our water skins? We’d have enough fresh water then.”
“Because.”
“That’s no answer.”
“If you long for a good beating, go ahead,” the druid growled. “Now keep your mouth shut and do as I’ve said.”
You’ll have to catch me if you want to beat me, Nill thought as he spread out his quilt a safe distance from the druid. He was upset. He had witnessed Dakh as boisterously friendly, withdrawn and silent, thoughtfully morose and with a sunny smile on his face. He had never seen him this irascible. While Nill was still pondering how to treat this new Dakh-Ozz-Han, he noticed that Dakh’s mighty chest was rising and sinking rhythmically. The evenness of his breaths told Nill that he had fled to the world of dreams.
If he wants to sleep, he’ll sleep, thought Nill with a mischievous grin. We’ll see about that beating soon enough. He’ll be surprised when he sees the full water skins when he wakes up.
He got up silently and sneaked off like a cat. The closer he came to the forest, the softer the ground under his feet became. It got so soft that Nill constantly felt like he was tilting with each step. It was a nice sort of walk, one that made each step feel almost like a leap. But the forest was becoming ever darker and denser. Nill thought nothing of it when he scratched his hands on rough bark or when he was poked in the side by twigs. He carefully groped his way forward though the half-light, until a hard blow hit him in the back, throwing him forwards; at the same time he felt a strike to his forehead. Nill buckled over and fell down, but rolled over onto his back and thrust his knife upwards. His enemy had vanished. All he saw was the even darkness of the tree’s crest that cast an irregular, diffused light on to the ground and bathed the forest in a green hue. Occasionally the mild afternoon wind would break up the leafy canopy and the sun would take advantage of these openings, successfully beaming down onto the ground. Gripped by this otherworldly natural beauty, Nill stood up and gazed at the wondrous lights. But only a short moment later another blow, this time to his arm, tore him out of his dream-world and knocked him firmly back into reality. The first attack was followed by another, and Nill dived to the ground once more. Now he understood what Dakh had meant by the beating. It was impossible to predict the strikes and hits. Wherever the sunlight glinted, buckled figures scurried about. Nill had to squint to make anything out in this jumble of sun rays, light shadows and black turmoil. He was now kneeling on the ground, ready to leap up and lash out. But the enemy was fast.