Maverick

by Curtis, Greg

  He had to be so careful not to stare, least he get another spear butt in the face.

  In truth his main regret was that he didn’t get to see enough of her, no matter how he might be constrained by custom and propriety. Essaline would drop by every few days for perhaps a half hour or so, long enough to drink a mug of tea and eat a biscuit, but no more, and it was always outside on his deck where he kept a table and some chairs. In fact she was the reason he kept them there, he would not have her sitting on the bare deck again as she had the first time, though she claimed to have been happy enough with the arrangement, and she would not eat inside with him. He gathered it was somehow inappropriate for a single woman of marriageable age to be alone with a single man in his dwelling for any length of time, and perhaps there was some reason for that view considering the way his emotions kept rising up whenever she was around. Still that left him with the only other option being to visit her if he wanted to see her, and he wasn’t bold enough to visit her home and face her family, especially with his elvish being as poor as it was, and he felt strangely odd in the grove, out of place like a ham fisted peasant at a nobleman’s dinner table.

  It was a nice place as far as such things went, or as far as he knew of them, and he could feel the vitality and life streaming from it even more powerfully than from the rest of the forest as the priests somehow seemed to have tapped into the very source of the living magic, but he didn’t truly understand it. He didn’t understand what was spoken of in the rituals, or what the priests and priestesses did there, and the magic was both more complex and subtle than he truly understood. But mostly he was constantly worried about making some sort of gaff and embarrassing himself in front of the elves in such a sacred place. Which made it all the more enjoyable when she came to visit him, and he couldn’t help but smile some more.

  “Thank you good maiden. I’m quite pleased with it myself.” It was only the truth. It had once been a trader’s hall, the elves had once valued such structures until they had decided that more temporary structures like tents were better suited for their markets, and that human styled buildings didn’t really fit well with their own architectural styles. They much preferred the organic flowing structures with round walls and natural woods, seemingly almost grown out of the trees themselves, and so after a time they had let the building return to nature. But that wasn’t his way. Where they saw a structure slowly becoming a part of the forest once more, he saw a building that could be returned to its proper glory.

  So when the elders had made their deal with him, he still wasn’t completely sure why although he did let them speak with the guild whenever they wished, and after their druids, priests and wisdoms had all examined him thoroughly and found him harmless, or at least not an enemy, and he had been permitted to stay, he had asked if he could use the old hall for himself and to his surprise they had said yes. But then it suited them as well as him.

  The house was at the entrance to the forest glade which was the heart of Evensong, some distance from the elves in their tree houses, quiet and peaceful, and in return for being permitted to live there he was providing them with valuable services, enchanting their weapons, helping to heal the sick and injured, and letting the elders speak with the wizards of Gunder as and when they needed. It was a good deal for all of them.

  It was a good deal for him as well, or at least the best he could make under the circumstances. He didn’t really feel as though he complimented the people here very well, his language skills were childish at best, and there was some occasional opposition to his presence even in the Council chamber, though he suspected that was more fear than dislike, the people were scared of wizards, perhaps with good reason, but at least in Evensong he had a place to stay and a small army of rangers to stand by him if and when the enemy made an attempt upon the southern lands. It was better than being caught alone as he headed further south seeking sanctuary in lands he knew almost nothing about, as Essaline had mentioned a few times.

  Besides, he wasn’t alone. Despite Evensong being an elven town in an elven province there were other humans here and even a few dwarves, and more were arriving daily. Several hundred had arrived not a day and a half behind him and Essaline as Ferris had escorted the best part of the village of Catford and the rest of his own village of Anley’s Rest, along with a squad of outriders and another mage, Amada a Journeywoman from the Guild. Many more were trickling in in their ones and twos, the survivors of the various battles throughout Gunderland, refugees from the growing number of towns overrun by the enemy and others that had fled before them, and he couldn’t help but feel that it was his duty to help them find their way in this strange place.

  It was also his duty as a wizard to lend his strength to all the people, especially in such difficult times, and that meant in this case in battle as well as in the more normal ways a wizard should. Though he wasn’t a master he could support the rangers as they supported him and he was working on his attacking and defensive magics every day. And when he wasn’t at war he could lend the people his magic in other ways, mending swords and ploughs, heating water or making ice and so forth.

  Strangely the Guild had also firmly suggested to him that he might want to remain in the village after speaking with the elders, he wasn’t quite sure why, but he always had hopes and dreams of one day returning to it and even if they were ill-founded he would always be loyal to the Guild’s commands and his duty. If they said stay, he would stay.

  In truth, even though these weren’t the people he would have chosen to live among, nor was he the wizard they surely would have chosen for themselves, he found much of his time and especially his work, surprisingly satisfying. Until a couple of months or so earlier he had lived alone in his little hut, serving no one but himself, and that had been less than fulfilling. But among the elves, with his secrets already out in the open for all to know, he had no reason to hide his talents, and it was good to be able to use them openly. Magic was more than just a gift to enjoy, it was a gift to use, and using it for whatever reason gave him more pleasure than he would have expected. As much as, perhaps even more than, using it to build a home for himself.

  It didn’t matter that these were a strange people to him, as he was to them. It was completely irrelevant that they didn’t pay for his services. In fact the elves seldom seemed to pay for anything at all, instead they had a rather complicated barter system worked out that still confused him, though every so often someone would arrive at his door with some food or clothing or a few pieces of timber, so he wasn’t likely to go hungry or cold. He’d yet to learn all the intricacies of their society and figure out how he could make a living, but he could survive and in time perhaps learn to speak their tongue. It wasn’t even important that many of them seemed to look down upon him while others were obviously afraid. That bothered him, but in the end they were people, he was a wizard, and he was finally being true to his purpose, and he liked that. They would get over their fear in time he hoped, especially when Ferris was helping.

  The man might not be a powerful wizard, but he was a miracle given form when it came to dealing with people. The elves loved him, there was no other way to describe it, and almost every day when he saw the hedge wizard helping with the potions and enchantments of village life, he would see the wizard laughing, his huge grey beard fluttering as his belly shook, while the elves laughed with him, politely of course. Whenever he could Marjan spent time with Ferris, hoping that just a little of his natural charm might rub off on him, and surprisingly enjoying his endless stories as well, even when he’d heard many of them before.

  In turn he was helping Ferris with his magic as best he could, teaching him some of the subtleties of various spells and guiding him in his concentration, and despite the fact that the hedge wizard was no longer a child fresh and eager to learn, nor he a teacher of any great ability, he thought he was making progress. Mostly it was just sharpening his focus, helping him to clear his thoughts a little more and to feel the magic, but Ferris was s
lowly advancing in his magic, and learning the rote of Guild law as well. Marjan was conscious that that could never be forgotten.

  If he was enjoying his work, Marjan liked the house too. It suited his needs well even if it wasn’t yet his home. It was much larger than his last cottage, with three family sized bedchambers when he’d finished them, a huge open room with a proper kitchen, a bathroom complete with a full sized cast iron tub, and another side room that he was using as a study. Some days he felt quite lost in it, but he was adapting. Its distance from the heart of the village gave him some peace and a little privacy to study and practice, which was good, and being an actual house it was something he understood better than the elven versions of homes perched up trees and on great platforms hung between them.

  He liked the feeling of solid ground under his feet too, and though it seemed unnoticed by everyone else, every time he was up in the town, he felt the floor rocking gently under him, as the wind blew the trees around, or the simple patter of too many feet shook things up, and that made him uncomfortable. It made him more uncomfortable when he watched the elven children running around and playing on those walkways at breakneck speed, yet they never seemed to fall and the safety nets remained unused.

  It was more than just the tree living that disturbed him though, it was the elves’ natural almost organic way of shaping their world as well. He truly didn’t understand the elves’ designs, their aesthetics. They seemed to be firmly opposed to the human concepts of straight lines and proper building materials, and the useful idea of having everything on one level, and so the town was more of an artwork to him than a place to live. The houses, often seemingly no more than great bulges in the sides of the enormous trees, distinguishable only by their windows and doors, were not houses to him, and even inside the few he’d entered, that strange aesthetic continued.

  Bulging walls and ceilings, great curves defining the shapes of rooms, these were all things that made him think of buildings in the final stage of collapse, and he couldn’t shake that feeling even when he saw how well crafted they were, especially when he felt the floor move under his feet. Yet they were well designed, comfortable and surprisingly spacious, and remarkably clean. In fact the whole town was remarkable clean. It seemed the elves couldn’t abide a mess.

  The shops also valued their customers far more than he was used to, providing seats for them from which they could browse or even share a cup of tea as they bartered, and it was a strange thing to be seated comfortably negotiating the price of a few yards of curtain material over a hot drink while the shop boy or girl brought the merchandise to him to inspect. In some ways it made him feel almost like a little lord, and that seemed wrong to him, though he had to admit it was comfortable.

  Nor was he a great lover of stairs, and the idea of a town built on at least four levels, spanning a good hundred feet or more, all of them separated by ramps, bridges, rope ladders and stairs which too often simply curved around tree trunks or hung in the open air, left him cold. It left him breathless too some days, and he was beginning to see why the elves were such a slender people. It helped with all that climbing.

  Then again, if he didn’t understand elven ways, he suspected they didn’t understand human ones either, and for the life of them they couldn’t build a human style dwelling. Straight lines, brick walls, square windows and doors, it must have been an anathema for them and so when they’d built the trade hall originally, they couldn’t help but fall back into their own ways. That was where the mistakes had been made in his opinion.

  Naturally he had begun by making changes to the structure, deciding that where the elves had gone astray in building it in the first place was in mixing two different architectural styles, styles that simply didn’t go together. So after restoring the standard box frame of the building to its native human character he had removed or refined many of the elven touches. Gone were the strange and unpredictable curves of the building, and in their place were clean straight lines. The thatched and oiled cedar slat roof had been replaced with clay tiles which he fired himself from the river clay. Round and oval slatted windows had been replaced with square framed glass windows with proper storm shutters. And then when the basic structure was complete he had added to it with a pair of balconies complete with carved balustrades, one in the front facing those who approached the village from the road, the other in the back facing the common and the village itself. Finials at both ends of the roof and filigree under all the eves added to the effect and so finally a strange looking outgrowth like a giant mushroom at the forest’s edge had been transformed into a proper cottage.

  Water came from the roof and was collected in a tank on the side of the house, and was then pumped up to the high level tank, where he could use it in the bathroom, and so for the first time in ages he had been able to wash himself and his clothes, and even shave off his scraggy beard and neaten his hair. It helped when he had to visit the elders most days, to look respectable, though he still suspected they disliked his tattered, goat chewed, light leather armour and weapons. He had worn them for so long however, that they were almost a part of him, and he wasn’t about to take them off any more then he was going to wander through the village naked.

  Perhaps what made his new home stand out most though, and what he truly enjoyed, was the colour palette he had chosen. Orange roof tiles, he’d added a pinch of ochre to the clay, and glossy white painted wooden walls were so far from the muted elven stained woods and greens, that the contrast was shocking, and yet in his modest opinion, they worked.

  Gone was the strangely designed organic structure that had once been a hall and in its place was a pretty cottage, the sort that would be found in many towns, especially those based around farming where the cottage was the heart of the properly cultivated land. It was an image that would only improve with time as his roses, a plant the elves didn’t cultivate, they preferred to leave them to grow wild as they chose, grew to adorn the surrounds, hanging from pots on the edge of the balconies, and planted in small border gardens around the base of the walls. Of course that was assuming that he could keep Holly from eating them.

  There was still a lot of work to be done. Now that the outside was more or less complete, something that had taken him three full tendays, he had moved on to the inside, and was busy oiling floorboards and plastering walls. It was a good house, and in many respects perhaps the house he had always wanted to build, but even for a wizard finally starting to come into his own, it wasn’t the easiest house to build. On the other hand if it had been he might not have appreciated it so much.

  “In a strange way I think the people are too. It is such a strange building for most of them to see every day. Evensong is not the most progressive of towns and few of our people are widely travelled, and yet there is a certain beauty to it, and our people appreciate that.”

  “I hope so. I wouldn’t want them to think it an eyesore.” Somehow he couldn’t imagine it, and the comments that he had had from those who he saw and those who visited, had all been welcome, but he was not an elf and he could never be sure of what another people might find pleasing. Besides those who visited him mostly wanted something, an instrument magically sharpened, an enchantment restored, a potion prepared, and while he was happy to help them, in fact it was a joy to be a wizard in gainful employment even if he didn’t charge, he doubted that customers would be harsh in their judgement of his new home.

  Of course even if they did consider it unelven, the house was more than just a house, and it was important that it stood for a while longer. If nothing else it was a source of information.

  The pond in front of it, little more than a deep puddle that he’d dug by hand and then lined with stones, was in truth a reflection pool, a repository of spiritual and magical strength that would allow him to see distant lands as though in a mirage. It was much larger than his old one and with that increased size came a need for greater concentration and strength, and he’d already spent several evenings simply practicing s
crying with it. But despite his needing more practice, he’d made some surprising discoveries.

  For a start his old cottage still stood, seemingly untouched by the war, and seeing it that first time, even as a ghostly outline floating above the silvery pool under the bright moonlight, had made him homesick. Of course just because it was untouched, that didn’t mean it was unknown to the enemy, and several times he’d caught fleeting glimpses of large animals wandering through the nearby woods, trying to remain unseen.

  Had they found it? He didn’t know. It could be that his wards were still working and that the beasts were simply confused. But it could also be that they had and that they knew it was a wizard’s home and were waiting, setting a trap for him when he returned. If so it wasn’t a trap he planned on falling into.

  The spider queen was still trapped in her prison of black glass. When he scried the pass and saw the glass plain he’d created out of the land bridge, he could feel her like a malevolent weight above his shoulders. Happily that was all he could feel. She still hated him, even though she didn’t know him, and she still struggled, but she was also all but unconscious, trapped perhaps by the lack of air as well as the molten rock, and he knew that for the moment she was no threat. How long that would last he didn’t know, and so he intended to keep a regular check on her.