by W. C. Conner
“The story we learn growing up here is that Wisdom was named around the time the elves were leaving. It had another name before then, but that was so long ago nobody remembers what it was. As more and more of the elves left, folks would see what they described as blobs of light floating toward the Old Forest. They said the blobs were wisps of elven magic left behind when they departed that were being pulled into the Old Forest. Some folks would try to follow them or even try to catch them, but they pretty soon stopped doing it because of the strange things that happened.”
Wil looked skeptical as Scrubby continued. “The folks that claimed they caught or touched one of the blobs went mad and had to be tied up until they died, slobbering and crying. Others that tried to follow the blobs to see where they went just disappeared and nobody ever saw them again. Finally, the village elders agreed that the wise thing to do was just ignore the blobs and stay away from the boundaries of the Old Forest, so they did, and it ended up being named ‘Wisdom’ because that’s what travelers at the time would hear folks saying to each other if they either saw the blobs or heard others folks talking about them. ‘Wisdom ignores the blobs,’ they would say to each other, you see, and before long folks who traveled here spread the word that our little town was named ‘Wisdom’, and that’s been our name ever since.” Scrubby looked mischievous as he added, “It could have been worse, you know. They could have ended up calling the town ‘Blobs’.”
“And everyone believes all that?” Wil asked in amazement, ignoring Scrubby’s jest.
“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a couple of those blobs myself,” Scrubby said defensively, mildly irritated that Wil had gone right by his joke without comment, “and there’s something unnatural about ‘em. Yes, I believe it.”
“Well, I don’t pretend to know everything there is to know in this world,” Wil said, “but this all sounds suspiciously like something someone would make up to keep superstitious people away.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some blobs myself,” Scrubby repeated, “and I believe.”
Wil lay on his sleeping platform, tossing and turning as he considered the fantastic tale he had been told. Even though he couldn’t credit the story, there was something about it which had recalled the feeling that something was flowing toward him, though for good or for ill he had no inkling. At the same time, it seemed he could feel whatever it was calling to him, drawing him toward it. His eyelids closed several times before he finally drifted off to an uneasy sleep in which it seemed the sighing of wind through the trees outside became a call within his mind. Come. Come. Come.
Wil was never able to swear later that he was actually awake when he sat up and pulled his boots onto his feet, so like a dream did it seem. Scrubby was snoring loudly as Wil stood and moved cautiously to the door, lifting and holding it up to keep it from scraping as he opened it. He closed the door just as quietly, then walked down the path and out onto the road that led in the direction of the Old Forest with no idea why he was doing it.
A quarter moon high in a cloudless sky illuminated the road clearly. Wil walked easily, feeling comfortable in the chill night air. As he approached the tree that he and Scrubby had sat beneath earlier that day, he caught sight of movement out of the corner of his eye. Turning his head, he saw the pig that had disappeared the day before.
It is as I suspected, he thought. It wasn’t swallowed up by something mysterious at all. It just got lost. He walked quickly and drew parallel to where the pig stood at the edge of the Forest, then turned toward the animal which also turned and moved into the trees.
As Wil stepped toward the Forest he had the nauseating impression that the trees had moved toward him while simultaneously pulling him inwards, causing him to sway slightly. He passed his hand over his face to clear his vision, and when he looked again the pig was disappearing into the undergrowth of the Forest, but instead of the pale grayness of a normal moonlit animal, the pig was as white as chalk and surrounded by a shimmering blue light. He shook his head gently, feeling dizzy and more than a bit unreal, just before the entire Forest sprang alive with light.
He tried to step backwards away from the sight but each step moved him farther toward the Forest. Alarmed, Wil stopped trying to back away but his forward movement continued and he had a flash of recognition: This was the “breeze” he had felt moving toward him across the still water of his life. He knew it, just as he knew that what was happening to him was bound up in Scrubby’s fantastic tale of Wisdom’s past. Suddenly, he too believed.
The impression of movement accelerated until it felt that he was speeding through a tunnel of trees and shrubbery, the forms of animals flashing past him so quickly he was unable to distinguish what kind they were. The movement stopped so abruptly he felt he would fall over, until he realized that the sensation had only been in his mind; he had not been moving physically at all.
A glowing sphere appeared before him, containing the image of several scrolls. While there clearly were characters written upon them, he was unable to see them plainly enough to determine if he recognized the words. As he concentrated on trying to decipher the runes on the scrolls, a thought entered his mind.
You must come to me.
Where are you?
You must come to me.
What are you?
You must come to me.
Without warning, the Forest returned to its normal appearance and Wil slumped, panting, to the ground at the edge of the road, the tingling sensation in his head only adding to the confusion in his mind.
To whom or to what must I go? And how am I to get there? he thought in despair. It did not seem at all curious to him that there was no question in his mind that he would fulfill the summons he had received, but he had no idea where or how to start.
Scrubby still snored loudly in untroubled sleep when Wil returned to the hut and let himself in as silently as he had departed. He removed his boots, stretched out on the platform, and immediately joined Scrubby in an untroubled, dreamless sleep of his own.
9
Caron sat at the edge of the pond in the small garden outside her rooms, looking past the reflections of the fleecy clouds drifting above Castle Gleneagle to the fish swimming just below the surface in expectation of the bread crumbs she customarily sprinkled on the water for them. The buzzing of bees in the lavender along the western wall was the only sound that came to her as she watched the fish darting back and forth, fighting for their portion of the treats.
Her brow knit as she thought of the wizards that had bedeviled her father for the past several months. No, she corrected herself, not “them”, but “him”. It was all Greyleige. He who had been so loyal, so helpful, so ingratiating as he insinuated himself into her father’s good graces. It was Greyleige who was so cold, so calculating, so arrogant as he worked to turn his favor in the prince’s eyes into power for himself.
He was a good man, her father, but one who had needed the strong support of a trusted advisor and confidant. When Caron was young that person had been her mother, and her mother had never liked Greyleige.
Following her mother’s death, the person standing between the wizards and Gleneagle was Geoffrey. While his diplomatic skills were without equal, at the same time he was too carefully neutral, never giving bad advice, but never openly disparaging Greyleige. During those years the wizard’s standing with her father had grown quickly and the favors requested and concessions granted had escalated. That had all come to a halt when Caron had come of an age to advise her father just one short year ago. She had been successful at restoring some level of reason to her father’s dealings with the wizard and he now trusted her judgment almost as much as he had trusted her mother’s.
Greyleige was no admirer of Caron, a fact in which she took particular pride. At the moment, though, Caron was not concerned with what Greyleige thought of her. She was concerned because Greyleige’s badgering and petitions had ceased more quickly than they had begun. I’d rather have that enemy out in the open w
here we can at least guess what he’s about than have him quiet as he is now, she thought. This quiet makes me nervous.
Sensing the presence of someone other than her ever-present personal guards, she looked up to find her father standing with the cloudy sky behind him. The outline emphasized his slightly pointed ears, the only visible vestige of the elven heritage in the Gleneagle line from so many, many generations before.
“Father,” she beamed, rising gracefully and bobbing a short curtsy of respect.
“Daughter,” he answered simply as he reached out to give her a brief hug, “I have news of your friend.” Prince Gleneagle had taken to calling Greyleige “your friend” in jest after Caron had forcefully attacked the wizard’s motives after her father had elevated her to the position held by her mother before her death. Caron cocked her head, her attitude of interest obvious.
“He, Bertrand and Amos removed themselves to the Wizards’ Compound two weeks ago, where they have been keeping almost entirely to themselves.” He smiled. “We can only trust they have accepted defeat in their demands upon the Old Forest.”
“He will never accept defeat,” Caron asserted. “Greyleige will have what he wants or die in the trying.” She turned and took two steps away from her father, biting at her lip as she thought. Two weeks ago? That was just about the same time the blacksmith died in Wrensfalls. Her eyebrows knit in frustration. Why the sudden removal to the compound and the silence?
She turned to face her father. “I find his silence worrisome,” she said, tapping her index finger against her teeth. “He wants the power that is locked up in the Old Forest, of that I have no doubt, but it is useless to him for it is of the elves.” She tossed her head in frustration.
“Perhaps time is the key to this problem,” Gleneagle said. “Time often resolves problems on its own.”
Caron smiled broadly. “That’s it! You’ve named it, father,” she said.
“Time?” he asked.
“No,” she responded, “The Key. He searches for the Key, but he must not find it. We must make certain he does not find it.”
“The Key?” her father said gently, a quizzical look on his face. “Caron, I don’t believe that time is at hand, and I think it best we leave well enough alone. That the Old Forest is within my principality is alone enough trouble for me. I’d prefer to not risk stirring a hornet’s nest by poking about in Greyleige’s business as long as he’s away from here and quiet. As you said yourself, he can have no use for the elven magic bottled up in the Old Forest.”
“As you will, father,” Caron said with a dutiful curtsy, but as he turned to go she caught her lower lip in her teeth in her characteristic gesture of defiance and motioned to one of her personal guards to come to her.
“Harold,” she said quietly, “You haven’t had the opportunity to have any time to yourself for quite a long period. I need you to take another little trip for me, and I need you to take it alone.”
Harold’s eyes lit up. Ever since they had been children, sneaking out together to play pranks on whomever they could find to prey upon, they had played the game of hide and seek, only now it was in deadly earnest.
“I need you to visit a person I know of who lives in Wrensfalls.”
10
Tenable walked slowly, no longer favoring his foot but being allowed additional time to recover by Morgan. Since they were three with only one horse amongst them, Tenable had been demoted to pack animal. Being a horse, he had no consciousness of the humiliation his new status represented.
Even though Tenable could certainly be held to a person’s walking pace, Morgan found it much easier to converse with Kemp when they were at eye level with one another. Peg gamely did her best to keep up with them, sometimes in front, sometimes behind, often being hoisted into the saddle on Tenable’s back when the pace took its toll on her since her shorter legs necessarily took the best part of two strides to the single strides of Morgan and Kemp.
It was the ninth day since they had left Tingle at the crossroads. Though the tinker had named this a three or four day trip by foot, they had allowed Kemp four days to rest during which his shoulder had knit well under Peg’s care and with the healing antiseptic herbs they had found growing near the stream. Once they rejoined the road they had taken their time, talking and listening, setting an early camp each afternoon and breaking camp at their leisure the next morning. Morgan and Kemp spoke to one another of their lives and outlooks in increasing detail and each found much to admire and respect in the other.
Kemp had been born in Dunlivit, the fourth of five children. Both his parents still lived in the house in which he had been born. His father still ran the ironmongery which was attached to the house by a covered breezeway, though now Kemp’s two older brothers assisted their father in the business. And, yes, that was the ironmongery to which Kemp had traveled the unfortunate day that Bork was killed.
His sister had married at fifteen to the son of the village cartwright and already had three children. His younger brother was no longer with them, having passed to the other side before his fifth birthday during the year in which so many had died of the influenza epidemic that had swept through the principality.
Kemp worshipped his mother, a small woman who, because of the twinkle in her eye, always appeared to be enjoying a private joke. That, along with the fact she seemed to know whatever he had been doing, saying or thinking during his childhood, had kept Kemp constantly off balance and, therefore, mostly well behaved. It was from his mother that Kemp had inherited his hair and eyes.
His father was a lean man of average height as were his brothers, so the constant source of teasing within the family was just where Kemp’s height and build had come from. When people would ask Kemp’s mother where he had gotten his size she would reply, “I’ll never tell,” with the characteristic twinkle in her eye, and folks would laugh uncomfortably. The truth was that her own father had been even larger than Kemp and, in fact, Kemp had been named for him. But he had passed to the other side many years before Kemp was born, so most people either did not know or had forgotten the source of her son’s size.
Kemp had first been introduced to old Bork at the age of nine when the master blacksmith traveled from Wrensfalls to pick up a consignment of iron. The two of them had taken to one another from that first day. Bork was a big, powerful man with large, strong hands who could work at his forge from dawn to dusk without tiring, and he found an apprentice to match in Kemp.
He had moved from Dunlivit to Wrensfalls and begun his apprenticeship under the master smith at the age of twelve and a half. From the very beginning their relationship was more that of father and son than master to apprentice, for Bork had never married and Kemp had quickly become the son he never had. Kemp had moved from the loft above the smithy to the loft above the kitchen in Bork’s small home within the fortnight after having moved to Wrensfalls.
Peg listened quietly with a wistful smile on her face as Kemp talked about his family and his childhood memories. Her imagination swept her into that happy family she herself had never had or known, and she laughed and talked with Kemp as he described how they had teased each other and played practical jokes on one another.
As they talked, she would find Kemp’s eyes gazing intently at her, though he would avert his gaze when her eyes met his. In her turn, she would find herself staring at his eyes as he talked, looking to see what color they might be at that moment and finding in them a quiet passion that she longed to make hers.
In her short life, she had never been in the presence of any man other than Morgan who valued her for anything beyond what she could provide or do for him. On this road she had found another man who increasingly valued her simply for her presence and her company, as well as her mind, and – to be sure – for her skill with a cook pot. Thus they traveled in leisurely fashion for while Wisdom was their declared destination, they felt no sense of urgency to arrive since they had no clear purpose for their presence once there.
Now they halted, looking across a shallow, narrow valley at the white drift of smoke from a wood fire and the solid stone fences that marked the boundaries of tilled and planted fields. Here and there the early morning sunshine revealed the chimney or corner of a building which could be seen peeking through the plentiful trees. Beyond could be seen the dense, dark green heads of an old growth forest looming above all.
“We are arrived at Wisdom, I believe,” said Morgan. “Let us pray that is what we may find here.”
Scrubby pulled his little cart loaded with food scraps for the pigs around the corner of the stone wall of the Three Oaks Inn and started toward home. Movement on the road from the east caught his eye and he stopped to see whatever might be seen, for in a small town like Wisdom the novelty of travelers was of intense interest.
There came three people and a war horse. The smallest of the three was a wholesomely pretty young woman who had large green eyes, red hair, and a small upturned nose showing a sprinkling of freckles through a slight tan and the accumulated dirt of the road. She was seated upon the war horse while the two men walked, one to either side of her. The man to her right was tall with an unruly thatch of blonde hair and enormously muscled, though gentle of demeanor. The man to her left was only slightly less tall and ruggedly handsome, but his long hair braided back in a warrior’s queue, the set of his mouth below his drooping mustache and the white scar running across his forehead, along with the daggers at his belt and the hilt of the long sword that loomed above his left shoulder, strongly suggested this was a man it would be best to avoid angering.
Turning into the courtyard of the Three Oaks Inn, Morgan nodded a polite greeting to Scrubby as they passed. Scrubby dropped the handle of his cart and gave a deep bow in return, then straightened up and grabbed the cart, dragging it as quickly as he could down the road toward home to tell Wil about the unusual visitors just arrived in Wisdom.
