The Choice of Magic

by Michael G. Manning

  “Do you realize what you’ve done? Do you know who he is?” demanded the lord.

  The driver stared at his feet. “Just a peasant boy from the village, milord.”

  “He’s Erisa’s son!” shouted the lord. “Her only son. You know why I’m here. Think about that for a moment.”

  The driver’s face paled. “Forgive me, milord. I didn’t realize…”

  “Get out!” shouted the lord. “I’ll deal with you later.”

  In the silence that followed, Will slowly became aware of someone crying in the background. Turning his head, he saw his mother sitting on a small stool at the foot of the bed. The lord was standing over her, his features remorseful.

  “Erisa, I’m sorry,” said the lord.

  Glancing up, his mother begged, “Can’t you do something? Please, Lord Nerrow, he’s all I have.”

  “This is beyond my power, Erisa,” answered Lord Nerrow sadly. “There is no magic that can heal this. If your herbs cannot help…”

  “It was an emerald viper,” cried Will’s mother. “Don’t be a fool! If magic cannot help, what good do you think herbs will be?”

  “Then his fate is in the gods’ hands,” said Lord Nerrow. “Perhaps it is better this way. Even if he dies, I’ll see to it that you’re taken care of.” He pressed a small leather pouch into Erisa’s hand.

  Will’s mother shot to her feet and she flung the pouch against the wall. The seams burst, spilling gold and silver coins across the floor. “I don’t want your money! I never wanted it! I just want my son, healthy and whole.”

  “And what kind of life could he have had?” said Lord Nerrow. “Stuck in this filth-ridden village. It’s better this way, for both of us. You’re still young, Erisa. You could find a husband—”

  Furious, Erisa turned on the man. “I don’t want a husband! I want my son!” She looked as though she might attack the nobleman then and there, but after a second, she clenched her hands into fists and grew still. “That’s right, though, you have your daughters. You wouldn’t care.”

  Lord Nerrow started toward her, but Erisa held up her hand. “Leave. Please leave.”

  “Erisa, I never wanted this…”

  “Go,” said Will’s mother firmly. “Save me your guilt and pity. You can keep them. I regret the day I ever laid eyes on you.”

  “Very well,” said the lord, and then he left the room.

  Will’s mother followed him out, and he could hear her parting words from the other room. “Don’t come back here,” she said. “I don’t want to ever see you again.”

  He thought he was alone, but a small noise made him refocus his eyes, and he saw the dark-haired girl was beside the bed. Will’s eyes met hers for a moment, and then she leaned over, pressing her lips to his forehead. “Thank you for saving Laina,” she said, and then she was gone.

  Darkness swallowed him, and Will slept, grateful for an end to the pain.

  ***

  He awoke in darkness sometime later, vaguely aware that people were talking close by, just outside his room.

  “Please, Master Arrogan, if you can help him…”

  “You have a lot of nerve calling me here, Erisa,” answered a gruff voice.

  Will’s mother didn’t relent. “There was no one else I could turn to. If anyone can save him, it’s you.”

  “You know how I feel about this, Erisa. Why should I do anything to help that man? Do you have any idea what his kind have cost me? Why should I help his cursed spawn?” answered the man.

  Erisa’s voice was strident. “Please! He’s my son. He’s done you no wrong. Don’t condemn him for the sins of his father.”

  “There are no herbs for this, nor alchemy either. The venom will have spread throughout his body by now,” argued the man’s voice.

  “I know that,” agreed Will’s mother. “You taught me everything I know of herbs and medicine, but I also know that you can do more. Please, you have to try, Master Arrogan.”

  “Silence,” commanded the old man’s voice. “Don’t say that name, and don’t mention other things either. Don’t you realize what will happen if they discover my presence here? You worry for your son, but what of the rest of the village? They’d burn this place to the ground and raze the village if they heard I was here.”

  “I don’t care!” declared Erisa. “If you won’t help him, I’ll run into the streets shouting your name. I’ll run all the way to Cerria if I have to, until everyone in the world knows you’re here!”

  “Fine,” growled the old man. “That’s enough. There’s no reasoning with you.”

  “Then you’ll…”

  “I’ll do what I can,” answered the old man. Will heard the door open, and then the man cautioned his mother one last time. “Stay outside. Make sure no one comes near the house.”

  “Thank you,” said Will’s mother, tears in her voice.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” said the old man. “I can’t make any promises.”

  The sound of the door closing came to his ears, and Will felt the presence of the stranger beside his bed, though there was no light to see by. A rough hand touched his forehead, cold against his fevered flesh.

  “You’re awake?” said the old man, sounding surprised. “Been listening, eh, boy? That’s a good sign, but I’m afraid it won’t do. We can’t have you watching this.”

  Watching? I can’t see a thing. It’s pitch black in here, thought Will. Then he felt the newcomer press a finger against his chest, and something cool rushed into him, passing through his body like ripples across a still pond. Will’s eyes closed, and then a white light flashed before him.

  He felt as though he was floating, and his dark room was now well lit by the afternoon sun splashing in through the window to paint his room in bright colors. Everything was crisp and clear, and something about the light bothered him, though he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

  An old man leaned over him, and Will recognized the man’s face. It was the hermit of Glenwood, an old man who lived in the forest. The children of the village had lots of stories about the hermit, most of them bad, claiming the old man was a warlock who stole the souls of those who ventured too close to his abode.

  Will had never believed the rumors, though. He had met the old man on several occasions in the past, usually when the hermit had come to trade with his mother, but he had never spoken to him.

  He tried to say something, but his voice didn’t work, and it was only then that he realized how strange his position was. He was floating above his body, looking down on the room, a disembodied observer. Will got the sense he should feel panic at his unexpected situation, but he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t feel much of anything. He was surrounded by a sense of serene calm.

  With mild curiosity, he watched as the old man traced a quick pattern in the air, his fingers trailing lines of blue light before he brought them down to rest on the body in front of him. The old man’s eyes were closed, and he seemed to be concentrating with strange intensity. Motes of light sparked around, and within Will’s body.

  What is he doing? wondered Will. Is that magic?

  The old man worked over his body for an unknown period of time, and Will could see the swelling in his leg going down visibly. Even the color improved, going from a purple so dark as to almost be black, to an angry red. Eventually, the man stopped, sitting down on the stool and breathing heavily, as though he was trying to catch his breath. He seemed to have finished.

  Then the old man’s eyes drifted upward, and he seemed to stare at the place where Will hung in the air. The door to the room opened and Erisa looked in.

  “Is he…?” she started to ask.

  The old man turned at her voice. “I said to stay out. I’ll call you when I’m finished.” He waited until she had closed the door before looking up at the ceiling again. “I wondered why you weren’t waking up. Now I see why. You’ve been spying on me, haven’t you?”

  Will tried to protest his innocence, but again, his voice faile
d him.

  The hermit smiled wickedly. “I should have expected as much. I’ll be keeping my eyes closely on you in the future, boy. Now, it’s time for you to go back where you belong.” Standing, the old man brought his hands together in a clap that sent a heavy bell-like tone shivering through the air. The world spun, and Will felt nauseous as something hemmed him in, pressing him down into a warm darkness.

  When he opened his eyes again, he discovered he was back in his body, looking up from the bed. The old man leaned over him, staring at him with hard eyes. “This isn’t over, boy. I’ll be seeing you again, one way or another.” Then he left, and Will was finally alone.

  Chapter 3

  Will recovered quickly after the old hermit’s visit, and his mother warned him not to mention either the snakebite or the man who had saved him to anyone in the village. Will chalked it up to the fact that people didn’t survive emerald viper bites—they were invariably fatal. His mother was probably afraid of starting rumors, since the villagers were prone to superstition.

  What did strike him as odd was her emphatic insistence that he not mention the old man’s visit. She almost seemed more worried about that than having people find out he had survived the snake’s venom.

  He brought the subject up several times, hoping she would explain what had happened, but Erisa always evaded, refusing to give him answers. More than a month after his recovery, he tried again. “Why did that lord come to visit you?”

  Erisa looked up from her needlework. “He wasn’t visiting me. He just wanted some herbs.”

  “But you knew his name,” countered Will. “You called him ‘Lord Nerrow.’”

  She sighed, and then, putting down the shirt she was mending, stared intently at him. “Baron Nerrow was a customer. I make it a point of learning customers’ names.”

  Will frowned. “Our lord is Lord Fulstrom. Why would another lord come to our little village?”

  Erisa picked up the shirt again, resuming her work calmly. “How should I know? Noblemen do as they please.”

  “Do you think he knows Arrogan?” asked Will, trying a different line of questioning.

  His mother looked at him in horror before standing up, heedless of her work falling to the floor at her feet. With two long strides, she crossed the room and put her hands on his shoulders. “Don’t ever say that name again! Do you hear me?”

  The fear and anger in her features shook him to the core, though he couldn’t understand what had provoked her reaction. “Why? It’s just a name…”

  She shook him. “Listen to me, William Cartwright! You are never to say that name again. Do you understand? This isn’t a game.”

  Will tried to twist out of her grasp, for her fingers were digging painfully into his shoulders, but she wouldn’t release him. “Fine,” he answered. “I won’t repeat it.”

  “Ever!” insisted his mother, shaking him again. “If that name reaches the wrong ears, we’re dead. They’ll kill us, William, and not just us. Everyone in the village would be at risk.”

  “All right!” said Will forcefully. “I won’t say his stupid name. Who do you mean by they?”

  She ignored his question. “Promise me, William. Swear it. Swear you’ll never repeat that name again.”

  Frightened by her strange behavior, he agreed, but he crossed his fingers behind his back as he said the words. “I swear, Mom. Can you please let me go?”

  Erisa seemed to remember herself then, and she took her hands away. Returning to her chair, she quietly gathered up the shirt she had been mending. When she looked up at him again, her face was calm, but Will would never forget the quiet fear he saw hiding deep in her eyes.

  He didn’t ask again after that.

  Of course, he didn’t forget his questions, and his curiosity was even worse after his mother’s desperate insistence, but as with anything, time and a lack of new information eventually forced him to stop thinking about the subject constantly. After a few months, it was just one more of life’s mysteries, tucked away in the back corner of his mind.

  He had other interesting things to keep his thoughts occupied anyway. Since the day of his near-fatal snake incident, he had gradually become aware of something unusual. The world had changed, or perhaps he had. Will couldn’t really be sure which was the case, but he was definitely beginning to notice things that he hadn’t been aware of previously.

  His mother grew a large assortment of herbs in their back garden, and as fall progressed, many of them had to be harvested and either dried or processed into tinctures. Only a few of the plants were perennials that would survive through the winter. As her son, and only assistant, much of the work fell on his shoulders.

  He had been helping her for years, but this fall he began to find differences in the plants, things he hadn’t noticed before. In the past, it had always been his mother who made the final determination regarding which plants were fit to be dried or kept. Years of experience had given her a fine discernment when it came to spotting plant diseases and sorting out the best of their harvest, but this year Will had the advantage.

  Not only was his initial sorting and grading of the plants nearly perfect in his mother’s opinion, but he also spotted problems with some of the herbs that escaped her attention entirely.

  “What’s wrong with this mint?” asked Erisa, picking up a small bundle he had set aside for the discard pile.

  Will looked at it again. “Root fungus,” he answered after a moment. “The leaves look all right, but they won’t taste good.”

  His mother gave him an odd look. “Did you check it?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I’m sure.”

  She plucked a few leaves and chewed them before making a sour face. “You’re right,” she admitted. “How did you know?”

  Will wasn’t sure how to answer that. To his eyes, the plant in her hands looked almost identical to the healthy ones, but when he concentrated, he could see something else, a faint, sickly glow. It was like a different color, but it wasn’t really a color, and he was at a loss to describe it. All the plants displayed new colors to him now, but they weren’t colors he could see with his eyes. It was as though he had discovered a new form of light, one that came from within them, providing information about their health and properties that he was unable to explain. Trying to tell his mother how he knew was like trying to describe a painting to a blind man.

  “I’m not sure,” he answered finally. “I could just tell.”

  Erisa looked at him curiously. “Is there anything you aren’t telling me?” When he didn’t say anything, she continued, “I know this is a confusing time for you. You’re about to turn thirteen and your body is going through a lot of changes. You can talk to me—about whatever, whether it’s physical changes, or strange new feelings—”

  “Mom!” Will interrupted. “Please, stop. It’s nothing like that.” And I wouldn’t tell you if it was, he thought silently.

  His mother pursed her lips. Then she changed topics, “If you’re done with the mint, you can check over the yarrow and pennyroyal. I want to finish this today. Tomorrow I’ll go into the village and see if the spirits I ordered have arrived. If so, we can start making tinctures.”

  “Why do they call them ‘spirits’ anyway?” asked Will. “Isn’t it just alcohol?”

  Erisa smiled. “The alcohol people drink is more than half water. For tinctures, I need something closer to pure alcohol, and that isn’t easy to get. It requires a special process to make.”

  “Why don’t we make our own then?” he queried. “It would save a lot of money.”

  She sighed. “If I could afford distillation equipment, I would just make spirits and sell those. Better still I’d make essential oils—those fetch an even higher price—but the copper and glassware costs more than our home.”

  “But you know how it’s done?”

  Erisa shrugged, and her eyes stared into the distance. “I’ve seen it done. My teacher had the equipment.”

  “Who was
your teacher?”

  That question brought her back from her reverie, and her eyes narrowed as she turned her gaze on him, as though she suspected him of having an ulterior motive for asking. Will kept his face smooth and tried to look innocent. After a few seconds she answered, “My great-grandfather.”

  Something felt off about her answer, though whether it was a half-truth or an outright lie, Will couldn’t be sure. He accepted her words, though, for he had the distinct feeling she would react badly if he pushed her for a better answer. More secrets, he thought. What is she hiding from me?

  Swallowing his questions, he went about checking the yarrow and pennyroyal, but it still bothered him. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. If he couldn’t expect the truth from his own mother, who could he expect it from?

  He hurried through the rest of the herbs and then excused himself. He needed a walk to clear his head. The brisk autumn breeze cooled his cheeks and did in fact make him feel better, but no sooner than he had stepped outside he felt a prickly sensation down the back of his neck.

  It wasn’t a new feeling, and if he hadn’t known better, he would have thought someone was watching him. Will glanced around at the bushes and trees surrounding his home, but he couldn’t find any obvious cause for his suspicion.

  “Between that strange old man and my mother, I’m starting to imagine things,” he told himself, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it.

  Will decided to visit his cousin, Eric. The feeling of being watched didn’t go away, though. If someone is bored enough to waste their time spying on me, there’s no reason to make it easy for them, he thought. Increasing his pace, he broke into a run and didn’t slow down until he had reached Eric’s house.

  The feeling stayed with him until he was almost there, before vanishing as mysteriously as it had appeared.