by Chris Page
Merlin grinned down at him from his great height. “We all have, little skirmisher. We all have.”
Merlin and the boy walked slowly along the forest periphery, one gently expounding the generalities of the role, the other absorbing every word to the best of his ability.
“Natural phenomena occur as a result of the shifting wonders of nature. Before you learn the enchantments of the unnatural world you must first understand the Earth and her methods. Many great civilizations have lived and died upon her surface, and many more will follow. Like millions of blind babies grouping for the teat, these civilizations scrabbled and fought for succor upon the barren breasts of her lands, never really understanding her right to give or their duty to replace. Those who paid heed to her moods and worked within them flourished. Some of the earliest settlers worshipped the Earth Mother, whom they named Nerthus, but that was way before the Roman occupation brought civilization and a delight in obscenity and torture to these separated lands. Others, learned in many other ways yet blind to earthly reason, ignored the warnings and disappeared forever in the bottomless maw of her great reserve. So it is to earth, fire, water, and wind we will turn first, the sticks and stones, zephyrs and flora, rivers, seasons and fauna, alchemy and anima, smoke and flames of the all-conquering armies of nature.”
As he spoke, he waved his long arms around in a gesture to encompass the whole of nature surrounding them. “And we don’t have to look very far to find those armies. We are surrounded by them.”
“When will I be able to produce great feats of sorcery and prophecy?” asked Twilight eagerly.
“You already can,” replied Merlin. “Perhaps your embryonic skills couldn’t yet be described as the means to produce great feats of transition or prophecy of historic significance, but you are certainly capable of minor shifts of phenomena and reasonable future vision. However, it is imperative that these embryonic skills are tempered with an understanding of two vital elements before you embark upon their execution. First, you must understand the aforesaid complex and often obscure workings of the earth, and second, you must learn to quickly reverse an enchantment. It is a compelling argument for the triumph of sorcery in the everlasting battle of good over evil that you master these two skills.”
Merlin stopped and pointed a long finger at the corner of a meadow where a clump of green willows waved gently over a bubbling chalk stream. One flash of his great emerald eyes and instantly the area changed into a small, infested swamp with bare, dead willows dripping green slime into the still, black, stagnant water.
“See there. If I couldn’t change that area back to its former beauty, I would have destroyed one of the earth’s natural beauty spots forever. That is the highest and most mortal sin of the veneficus: making a complete mess of something and being unable to reverse the situation. If left as it is, that slime-ridden mire will fester and grow, take over the entire area. It is a good example of how a wrongly conceived enchantment can allow the wrong forces to gain a toehold on the territory of the righteous, a toehold that will soon spread its blighted message to everything it touches. The humankind comparison is obvious. Now you can begin to understand just how important it is for us to learn, right at the outset, the skill to quickly undo what we create. I cannot reverse your mistakes, nor you mine. Only the creator can un-sully his own work. Reversing an enchantment is a particular skill and takes time to learn. It will be a long time before you will have mastered that skill, and until you can do so we must be very selective in your usage of the enchantments.”
The green eyes flashed, and once again the willows waved gently over the bubbling chalk stream.
“That transition cost you dear in energy?” Twilight asked, watching the old wizard sink gratefully down on a grassy hummock to rest.
“Yes it did, but such demonstrations are vital if you are to learn quickly. Now, my little newly crowned liege-lord of the pica, what are the two most important skills for you to learn first of all?”
“An understanding of how the Earth works and the ability to reverse an enchantment,” said Twilight.
“The Elder Pendragon taught me some simple couplets to remember the importance of those two vital elements. He called it ‘the Song of the Veneficus.’ The couplets went like this:
“Kiss the winds and sense the seasons,
Smell the rain and know the reasons.
Feel the sun, plunge the earth
Whisper plant, whisper birth.
Run with hares, fly with birds
Climb with trees heavenwards.
Then you will know the reasons why
The earth resides beneath the sky.
And if you think it’s yours to change,
To redesign and rearrange,
Consider your time within its place
As no more than a flash in space,
And in that flash you would deface
The beauty of its timeless place,
For no more than a flash in space
You would leave your own disgrace
So by kissing winds of zephyr light
And smelling rain throughout the night
And understanding backward sight
All your mistakes are rendered right;
And this noble place we call our Earth
Will have survived you death from birth
And all will be as it was before,
Your flash in space required a cure.”
There was silence between them as Twilight absorbed this information. Slowly he repeated the opening lines: “Kiss the winds and sense the seasons, smell the rain and know the reasons.”
Off to their right and slightly behind them as they rested on the hummock, two pica flapped and called to each other high in the trees - the boy’s guardians were keeping their watchful station. Merlin touched the boy’s forehead. “I have restored full color to your sight, for you will need all your senses when we get to our destination today.”
“Where are we going?”
Merlin looked into the distance and replied in a faraway, quivering voice. “Where the rolling chalk hills of Wessex ease their shoulders gently against each other we will find the first place. It is an ancient and magical ringed stone site called Ave-bury, the burial place of all Wessex venefici. It is where I buried the Elder Pendragon at the end of his one hundredth year, and he likewise buried Idris the Former, and so on all the way back to the beginning of recorded venefical time. It is where you will bury me at the end of the seventh year from now.”
He held up his long hand to still the anguished words on Twilight’s lips.
“I know, I know. We have only just met and I’m already talking of my own death. It’s an unfortunate subject for one so young. You, my little skirmisher, have to grow up very quickly in a very short time. It’s an inevitable consequence of where we find ourselves.”
“I don’t understand death,” mumbled the boy. “I don’t understand it at all.”
The long magus patted him on the head. “It is nothing to fear,” he said kindly. “After Avebury we will go to another special place nearby, also made of ringed stones. This place is called Stonehenge. It is the great council seat of the raging cowerers, the place where they have their Equinoctial Festival of the Dead. It is not time for the festival yet - that is a few weeks away - and as you know we must attend on that day. Our visit today is purely educational so that you will understand a little more about the ways of such matters at the appropriate time.”
Twilight wiped away a tear. He was beginning to understand the enormity of the task they faced as teacher and pupil. And in seven years time, the entire responsibility would be his. It didn’t seem such a long time now.
“I am frightened. There is so much to be learned,” he said quietly. “Must you depart this earth in seven years, and if so, will I be able to call on you?”
“It is a perfectly
natural feeling, but remember this. Fear is the jailer of reason. You will soon learn to conquer its icy grip. Ofttimes you will feel overwhelmed by the tide of wrongdoing you will be expected to subdue. One against the multitudes. But do not despair. Your power is your strength, and it is always greater than the forces that would overthrow you. Learn to trust it. There is always a path, a way to overcome every obstacle. Part of my job is to ensure you have the means to discover that path. And don’t forget your loyal birds. They will always be by your side. Yes, I must depart this earth at the end of seven more years, and no, you will not be able to call on me. The death of a veneficus is a finite affair. When you have laid my body to rest under one of the mighty stones of Avebury, you will don the full mantle of the enchantments with pride and confidence. That is my remaining task on this earth, and I will see that it is accomplished.”
“Why do we have to attend the Equinoctial Festival of the Dead, and what will we do there?”
“When the ancients began to understand how the complicated existence of erring humankind affected the world, and how the errant behavior and deeds of the past influenced and affected the present and the future, they decided that a system of retribution should be put in place to punish, when dead, those who had led an unworthy life. In those far-off days, and still to some extent today, people were judged on their courage. Mettle spoke for all. As a result the ancients set up a system whereby all cowerers, whatever the reasoning, had their souls confined to a minute droplet of moisture within a great, raging charnel mist. The confinement did not result, as envisaged, in a manifestation of future goodness but turned the countless millions of cowerers into a screaming, raging mass, whose rage is directed at the ancients for the entrapment of their tortured souls. In the sarcophagal mists there is no place called Oblivion, no eternal rest. The screaming souls of the cowerers are trapped. There is a powerful legend that says one day these raging mists will break through the sarcophagal barriers that bind them to the mist and sweep across the earth in a screaming mass of undiluted hatred. Many thousands of years ago venefici were placed by the ancients to police the cowerers. We are the only people who can commune with them, their only link with the live world. And that communing can only take place throughout the first day of the Autumn Equinox when the mists are at their most active. We soothsay them, listen to the tortured pleas of their elected representatives, soothe, placate, and maintain … then we listen again, and again, always soft-voiced to contain their rage. Our role on behalf of mankind is to maintain them as the charnel mists. It is a wasteland from which they must never be released.”
“And if they are released?” Twilight held his breath, already knowing the answer to his question.
“It would be the end of mankind as we know it,” said the long magus in little more than a whisper. “The combined power of the cowerers is capable of wiping all traces of our existence from this earth in a matter of days.”
“And previous venefici have always managed to maintain this situation?”
“Much to their credit, they have,” replied the still-whispering Merlin. “But it gets harder every year due to the increasing numbers. Cowerers don’t die - they already have - nor do they fade away. They just multiply as more candidates arrive in the mists.”
“How on earth do we do it?” whispered Twilight, following his master.
Suddenly, Merlin spoke directly into his mind.
By the Epigrams of Martialis I will tell you this, and, for the time being, only this, for the burden of this knowledge could easily subsume you. Gradually, as you learn to handle the knowing, I will reveal more. The ancients left a method of control, a key to the imprisonment of the cowering masses that can be known only to the ruling veneficus in residence. At the right time I will pass the secrets of that key to you. In the meantime, any reference to it between us must be made through direct mind-speech. No one else must ever learn how the key works or even become aware of its existence. In the wrong hands that knowledge could result in total catastrophe. As long as we alone hold that key, the safe kingdom of mankind will be preserved, cowering insurrection remain shackled, and our venefical obligation settled. I realize that it’s not a very satisfactory answer, dear boy, especially to one so eager for knowledge, but the unwritten laws governing the actions and reactions necessary to maintain a balance across all sections of humankind require that such knowledge is held only in one place, and that place is in the wilderness of my head. There is no known method of coercion that can remove it; we venefici don’t feel physical pain.
What if anything should happen to you before you pass on the key to me?
There will always be time, a way. And while we are not venefici perennis - indestructible wizards - if threatened with death, our power will always enable us to seek another state for as long as is needed.
And if death threatens to engulf both of us?
Then we have twice as much power with which to resist it.
Am I really a wizard? I still find it hard to believe that all these wonderful and frightening things are happening to me.
“Oh yes!” Merlin broke into speech and laughed as he got to his feet. “You just haven’t realized it yet. And a very quick one at that. Your mind has the speed of a shooting star and the agility of puffballs on an eddying wind. Now, forward. We have a two-hour walk in front of us.”
“Why don’t you merely transform us to the site of the ringed stones of Avebury? I know it’s power-sapping, but so is walking. Besides, I hate walking.”
Twilight’s dark eyes craned upward to fix the long magus in a childlike look of pleading.
“Because, my lazy little skirmisher, we can usefully occupy the time teaching you some of the great secrets of the flora and fauna we pass on the way. Besides, your guardian pica would think it most rude of us if we suddenly disappeared having only just met you.”
“Then can you please extend the length of my legs to that of yours so I can keep up?” The boy was pouting as he scampered along beside the long-striding Merlin.
“No, that would be another waste of power.”
“When I’m a real wizard with real powers I’ll do it myself.”
“But you are a real wizard with real powers.”
“Then why can’t I make my legs grow longer?”
“Because I haven’t shown you how to do it.”
“Then show me. Please!”
Merlin stopped beside a clump of flowers and gently caressed one of them with his long fingers. “Ahhh, the wonderfully aromatic tanacetum vulgar, known as tansy or feverfew because, boiled into a tonic and drunk, it reduces fevers. And here, look, hiding on the underside of the leaves, none other than the larvae of the tanyderidae, otherwise known as the crane fly. The wings of this elongated fly are marked in the most delicate, almost clear patterns fused with silver and turquoise. It is said that these wings are so fine that to look through them is to gaze upon the world through a mother-ofpearl mirror that will not reveal evil. You would know them by the more popular name of daddy longlegs …”
“Ho ho,” said Twilight sarcastically.
Merlin leaned on the great sarsen stone sunk into the ground, pressed his cheek to its smooth coldness, and closed his eyes. He remained like this for a long time as Twilight walked around the stone, inspecting it and running his fingers over its bumps and fissures. With almost a third of its mass underground, it towered above him at three times his height, a solid, immovable, roughly diamond-shaped edifice to a hundred years of venefical life, wizardry, and dedicated teaching. Merlin spoke reverently, without opening his eyes. “This stone is called the Summit. It is the burial stone of my mentor and teacher the Elder Pendragon. I placed his body here, deep in the damp, protecting earth, and then put this mighty sarsen from the chalk downs over him. It was the saddest time of my life, a time when I questioned everything yet felt the heavy hand of destiny on my shoulder. Intense grief, even though the deat
h is foretold and expected, forces a certain questioning of beliefs. Every time I come here, even now, I feel intense poignancy at our years together, and heavy-hearted at his loss. Of all my travails, his passing cuts the deepest swathe across the waving grass of my eventful life. His teaching was sublime, his insights beyond prophecy, and his patience endless. I have not lived up to the expectations he had in me, and for that alone my sorrow is heavy. He will always be with me.”
He opened his moist eyes and pointed toward another great stone thirty paces away.
“Idris the Former lies under that one. It is called the Turret. The Elder Pendragon put that in place. The next one is called Presidium - it is where Idris placed the Pale Sybil.”
He then pointed at each of the individual stones as they stood out proudly against the bright blue of the sky atop the earthen ramparts. “Point Hill, Great Crag, the Peak, Long Crest, Eyrie, Giant Tor, High Mount, Overtop, the Tower, Behemoth. This outer circle consists of ninety-eight great stones, each one of them sheltering the bones of an ancestral martyr who lived the prescribed one hundred years. Nine thousand eight hundred years of venefical existence is represented here. The ghosts of countless small miracles and huge, heroic deeds shimmer around each stone. Here lie the bones of your ancestors, Wessex history, the magnificent teachers, and every one of them indomitable in bringing the enchantments to bear upon their annual equinoctial duties and whatever else they believed in. Those buried here lived through and influenced all the great upheavals of the last ten thousand years - at the sides of kings, by the hearths of peasants, in the shrines of religious orders. Beneath these stones lie the perpetrators of all the eternal truths that shone through the wars and tragedies of those times, the holders of the magical resonance and universal earthshine in the shape of the enchantments. We stand now among the epic echoes of thousands of years of human folly and imagery and their mighty attempts to cease its restless quest for death. We stand among the frailty of sorcery in the face of the vitality of warfare. We stand among the bones of the few who have given their all to halt the spread of evil. We stand among those who understood, enchanted, transformed, moved, reshaped, and changed … yet seemingly made no difference.”
