Maverick

by Curtis, Greg

  “I’m not sure I understand elder.” In part what she was saying seemed to make sense. To bring the ancient sites to life as places of worship to the Goddess in the hope that her divine presence would form some sort of barrier to the wyrmlings, maybe even a defence against them or at least some sort of healing to the badly wounded land. It seemed almost reasonable to him. But as to how exactly it would work or why the elder, a priestess herself, was troubled, that he didn’t know.

  “For thousands upon thousands of years the people that have walked upon this world have worshipped the Goddess in one form or another. The ancient humans and elves, the dryads and the fairy, the gnomes and even the dwarves. They have worshipped other gods as well, but all have at least in some places worshipped her. And where they have worshipped the Goddess, over time those places have become sacred, blessed with her favour.”

  “This glade along with all elven towns and cities, the glade where your old cottage used to be, and I believe dear Essaline spoke of an ancient alter where you first rested after leaving your home, all are places where the power of the Goddess was once renown, and still places where you can feel her presence more clearly.”

  Marjan nodded understanding exactly what she was saying even if he had not put it together until just then. But it made sense. His old glade had been a truly blessed place, and it perhaps instead of the cottage had drawn him to it. He had known the same feeling here in Evensong, and in the ancient alter just a few leagues south of his old home where they had stopped that first morning for lunch, and perhaps in a few other places as well.

  “It is their hope that if those places are returned to her glory, that her natural beneficence will spread to the surrounding lands, granting them some further protection against the enemy, returning life and health to them, perhaps even providing a barrier against further incursions.” It seemed like a good plan to Marjan as well.

  “Should that not be a good thing elder?” Indeed it seemed that it would be better than good to Marjan, but then perhaps he was biased having lived for over a decade in one of those sacred places, and having valued his time there.

  “Yes it should, for the most part.” For the first time since he had known her the elder sounded hesitant, and that worried Marjan, especially when he considered what she was doubting, it seemed almost unelven, but he didn’t interrupt her. Instead he just waited for her to explain as he knew she would.

  “Many thousands of years ago, when the people walked the lands as newborns and the Goddess’ hold on the world was strong, such was the way of all life, and the world was good. So the records of our most ancients tell us.”

  “Great forests and huge plains covered the world, the seas were bountiful with fish, the skies filled with birds and the lands were thick with life. It was a good time, a precious time, a time of miracles and magic. But it was also a wild time.”

  “Magic was powerful back then, all magic, and the people were powerful with it. They were also divided as they sought to use that magic, that strength to wrest control of the lands for their own purposes. Some wanted to become builders of great cities, and they did so, tearing the land asunder as they built their magnificent edifices to their ego’s. In time they became the humans and the gnomes. Some found the precious ores of the lands to be their treasure, and so they built great mines and underground towns and cities, in their greed also laying waste to the wonder all around them. We now know them as the dwarves. A few found the power of magic to be their true calling, and so the fairy and the sylph were born and though they did not destroy the lands, their love of power defined them and kept them apart from all others.”

  “In the end only two people have remained true to the wonder of the land all around them, and even they were not united. The dryads chose to live not just in harmony with the lands but as the other creatures within it, seeing themselves as no greater than any others, while my people, the elves, saw ourselves as caretakers and chose to shape the bounty of the lands to our ends while always preserving the beauty and life all around us.”

  “As the millennia passed by, the people’s grew further and further apart. Physically they changed, the dwarves grew shorter and stronger, the gnomish became bald and wizened, the fairy shrank to the size of children and grew magical wings, and the sylph became more and more pale. The humans too were changed, becoming physically more powerful and taller and according to some, more disciplined. Yet the physical changes were the less important ones. The magic of all the races changed, as did their understanding of the world, and their values. That led to conflict. Terrible conflict.”

  “The elves and the dwarves as you know, became bitter enemies. Feuds and battles raged between our peoples for thousands of years. Your own people, the humans, fragmented into tribes and then set to war with themselves, a terrible state of affairs that did not end until eight hundred years ago when your last war, the unseen wars as you call them, finally destroyed the people’s appetite for all such things. The fairy, the sylph and the dryads, all retreated from the world, finding themselves sanctuaries in places to which no one else would go and building within themselves and their homes great power so that none could assail them.”

  “Surely this is ancient history elder?” Which it was, and most of it older than recorded human history which had more or less begun again after the unseen wars, but as far as he knew the elves and the dwarves had been at peace for thousands of years, and so had the other peoples.

  “Ancient yes, and in part ended by the separation as each race found its own homelands and realms. But also ended because as the people’s of the world moved further away from the teachings of the Goddess so too did the magic begin to wane, and as the magic waned and the world became a more ordered and tame place, the abilities of the various peoples to wage war upon one another also waned.”

  “The dwarves now have very little magic left to them, and what is now theirs, is largely only of iron and earth. The humans still have strong wizards, but only a few now have the talent, and that number decreases with each passing century. Even you must know that your Guilds now are but a fraction of what they were a thousand years ago.” She was right he realized, though he hadn’t considered the idea before. But always as a student he had been taught of the magics of the ancient wizards, and of the days when the guilds were full to overflowing with Masters, and when only the best had been able to attend and be trained. In such an age he might not have even been considered worthy of training.

  “We elves have retained much of our magic, but mostly only as it relates to the world of the natural. There are few among us who can cast an element or displace time and space as you can. The gnomish, their magic is small and of the artisans, while the sylph and the fairy, the most powerful of all the magical races remaining, have held their magic to them by binding it and themselves to their homes. They are powerful where they live, but far less so elsewhere.” And yet Master Argus had bested him easily here in Evensong, a thought that Marjan still did not like remembering. He liked even less the thought that he might become more powerful.

  “You believe then elder, that if the dryads succeed in their attempt to reawaken the ancient places, that the magic will return to the world and then that the peoples will rediscover their warlike tendencies?” It was a strange idea for one who was guild trained and taught from the very beginning that magic was never for war, and yet a part of Marjan understood exactly what she was saying. Possibly the same part that was already wondering how much stronger his magic might become if the ancient sites were reawakened. Power was a drug, and while it could be intoxicating as it had been for him after the battle with the spider queen, in the longer term it could also be corrupting.

  “Yes. But then so too the magic of the world will also become greater, and that means the power of the magical creatures that now call it home. The unicorns and the basilisks, the griffins and golden hind, the hippogriffs and ogres. The dangers and gifts that all of these creatures present will be increased as well.” Sh
e had a point Marjan realised, and the thought that the dragons and the spider queen might also become more powerful was not a pleasant one. Especially if Bathsha ever got loose. He still had nightmares of the spider queen arriving on his door one day.

  “It is a worrying thought elder. How may I be of assistance?”

  “You my young friend have come from a wizards guild, been trained in their magic and laws and exiled as well. You have known the touch of the Goddess, perhaps even been guided by her as young Essaline believes, and you have now been named by High Priest Verral as a mage defender, something he could only do because he saw the way the Goddess herself has shaped you, that she has given you your calling. You have also received training from the sylph themselves, a very rare thing indeed. Of all the magically gifted that I know, you are the one with the broadest knowledge of the different schools of magic, that and you sometimes seem to be guided by the Goddess herself. It was my hope that you might have some wisdom to impart.”

  The elder’s words came as a surprise to Marjan, and yet as he thought on them he knew she had a point. His background was unusual to say the least, and while he still wasn’t sure that she was right when she said that the Goddess had perhaps guided him a little, he could still remember the way so many years before he had been drawn to his little cottage in the middle of the Great Allyssian forest. Perhaps there was something to that as well. Especially when he suddenly knew that he had something to say. The wisdom just popped into his head as if it had always been there.

  “Elder we are facing a crisis the like of which I have never heard of. A terrible enemy that despite what the wizards say, I believe is far from dead or dying out, and which may yet destroy us.” As he was speaking Marjan was casting the magic into the small scrying pool he had created by the little grassed area he was using as a makeshift classroom, knowing it wasn’t enough to tell her what he feared, he had to show her. Very quickly the fog was forming into a small cloud in front of them and he could start to show her the images that still haunted his sleep.

  “This is Gunder as it stands today.” It wasn’t something he wanted to see again, he had seen it too often in his nightmares, but it was something he had to show her. Words could not explain the true horror of what had been done to his childhood home. The city destroyed, levelled into piles of rubble, burnt out, and then left as a lifeless corpse. The lands surrounding his once home, once rich farmlands extending for leagues and leagues in all directions, now little more than lifeless desert as every blade of grass, every creature had been destroyed by the wyrmlings, eaten in all likelihood. All that remained of them were bones, whitened in the bright sunlight. With a quick gesture he let the image pass as he moved on.

  “This is Northern Tonfordia, the city of Geiss, once home to over a hundred thousand people, and a jewel in their mountains.” But now it was rubble. Gone was the city, missing as though it had never been and with it too had vanished the vast hillsides covered in orchards and farms that had fed the city. Now those hills were massive foothills of dry mud and nothing more extending for a full dozen leagues from the mountains to the forest, now also a dead plain of tree stumps.

  “Whitney.” A simple gesture and Geiss was gone to be replaced by an image of bare rock plains. Marjan had no idea at all how the enemy had even managed to clear the dirt, but he had, and the most fertile grasslands in the human realms no longer existed. As for the city itself, once home to over two hundred thousand people, and filled with great gleaming spires dedicated to the gods, all that remained was rubble. As to the people, he still had no true idea how many of them had survived, but he suspected it was few.

  “Shalefist.” After not having looked at it for so long it was strange to see the dwarven town once again returned to the mountains from which it had been wrested. Now there was nothing left to be seen except broken rocks piled high and the occasional piece of armour or bone slowly being covered over with sand. The Lord of Magic himself alone knew what remained inside the mines that were the heart of the dwarven town.

  “Gnartooth.” He had never been to the gnomish city, only ever seen pictures of it, the northern most bastion of their realms which stood proudly on the northern shore of the great chasm where it met the eastern sea, but he knew it too had once been considered a gem. Now though, the huge trading city which had once had a harbour able to dock hundreds of trading ships, boasted an open air market that was said to be so great that no trader could ever visit all the stalls, and had a huge city on the hills overlooking the harbour and markets that could cater for up to fifty thousand visitors in their endless inns, was nothing but a vast empty valley of mud. None of the gnomes great wooden buildings survived, no more had the great dockyards which were the heart of the city, though at least he understood, most of the people had managed to flee, with so many ships at hand. Still, few artists would be willing to paint the city as it now stood. Most would cry.

  “Please stop.” Marjan wasn’t surprised when the elder spoke up, he didn’t want to see what the pool was showing him either, he just had to. Still with a gesture he let the images fade, knowing his point was already made.

  “Elder I understand your fear and I respect your wisdom, but in the end I believe it makes no difference. Everything north of the chasm is dying, quickly or slowly, or dead, and despite what others have claimed, I do not believe that the enemy is weakened, just gathering his strength for the push south. I also do not believe that it is wise for the strongest wizards among us to attempt to take the battle to the enemy with a world spell, they may or may not win and in any case they will leave the southern lands unprotected. As for waking the dragons, it is likely that we would just be replacing one enemy with another, and that when we are already sorely weakened.”

  “Yet we must fight.” It wasn’t something he liked saying, wasn’t something he ever wanted to consider, and yet it had to happen. The war was upon them, and though not of their making, they had to fight and they had to win it.

  “If the dryads have come up with another effective way of fighting this terrible evil, then I believe we must take it.”

  The elder was silent for a while after that, her thoughts clearly far away and probably looking towards a dark future, and Marjan didn’t want to interrupt her. But in the end he had to, when he realised he had if not an answer to her fears, then maybe something that could help.

  “But there is hope.”

  “Elder, eight hundred years ago after the unseen wars had destroyed my people, when we finally counted the terrible cost of our evil, we learned a lesson, a lesson paid for in blood. The wizards, all of them, formed the Great Guild and wrote the Guild law that we must all obey. A law that even eight hundred years later, still stands. And while we have added many other laws to that one single law over the years, at its very heart, on the first page of every guild charter and the first lesson all wizards are taught, is that single lesson. No wizard may ever go to war against the people of another realm. Defend, heal, rebuild, but no war. No wizard may cause harm to others. This law every wizard must obey, and when some of us fail to, the entire Guild, all the Guilds of every realm must stand as one against them.”

  “It is not perfect, people are not perfect and wizards are always people. Dimeter and I have both failed, and both been judged because of our failures. But still it has kept the peace between wizards and limited the damage that may be done as various realms have fallen into war, for eight hundred years.”

  “Now I believe, it is time for that law to be made manifest throughout the rest of the world. This must no longer be a law just for wizards. The sylph and the fairy, the elves and the gnomes, the dwarves even, all have spellcasters, and all spellcasters must become one in this. It may not stop the wars, such things are the nature of people, but it will limit the damage they do.”

  “Elder, when the dryads call for their convocation as I believe they must, there must be a second convocation as well. A convocation of all the spellcasters of all the peoples. The most powerful and re
spected of all the schools and guilds, the covens, wild dells and the spirit rings, the magic circles and the halls of wonder, and the spellcasters of the temples and faiths as well.” It was a dream perhaps, maybe even a foolish one, but to Marjan it made sense and at least the elder seemed to be considering it as she stood there staring into the distance, her long greying blond hair being gently blown about by the summer breeze. For the longest time he stood there, watching her, waiting for a response until finally she turned her startlingly green eyes upon him.

  “So young, so very young. And yet we have a saying, if you want to hear the truth, ask a child. I thank you child for your wisdom.” With no more than that she turned and headed off towards the centre of the village and the glade, walking he hoped, perhaps a little more lightly than she had before. He didn’t even mind that she called him a child, not if it helped.