by Greg Curtis
Esille and Ashiel he suddenly recalled had been surprised when they had first seen his cottage; surprised that it was so humble. He was a powerful wizard and his home should have reflected that so they told him. Dava and his wife however, had quickly silenced their comments and he had thought little more of them, until just then. Now he finally understood what they had expected of him, a relatively powerful wizard in this new world. They thought he should live like a lord or a king, showing off his wealth and power to one and all.
Still he didn’t have time to worry about such minor matters, not when he could see the villagers themselves starting to assemble on the open ground between the nearer houses and him, many of them holding powerful magic close to them, others holding powerfully enchanted weapons. No doubt he’d set off some sort of alarm when he’d approached as they surely waited for an attack. He continued his walk towards them, trying to remain calm and let the ease of his pace and the lack of magic he was calling to him reassure them that war was not imminent, yet.
They still had time to avert a disaster, but they had to use it.
“You!” The moment he recognized him, Afri screamed at him as if he was the Lord of Death come to take him away to the underworld personally, causing Alan to stop and even take a quick step back in shock. The outburst was simply so angry. What reason could he have to hate him so? He wasn’t alone at least in his surprise. The other ancients gathered around him in the grassed area that formed the town square or which would have been a small holding somewhere else. Most of them also took a step back, surprised by Afri's vehemence. To them he was just a visitor, and a messenger for the dragons, though some of them knew him as the one who had awakened them as well.
“The source of all our misery. You who awakened us, only to destroy us. Already more than half of us, the most powerful beings ever to walk this world are reduced to decrepitude. The weakest of all mortals, destined to be the laughing stock of the entire world.” It didn’t take a scholar to understand what the dragons feared in the ancients Alan realised, not when Afri practically boasted of it with the very first words out of his mouth. Not when their every house showed it.
“Did you bring us out of our sleep simply to ruin us? To enjoy our suffering? Or was it when you found out that you were no longer the most powerful that you decided to persuade the dragons to destroy our people?” His face was screwed up with anger and hatred, and his voice was filled with bitter scorn and rage. Despite having come under a flag of truce, Alan had the distinct feeling his life was in danger here. And yet his was only one of many to be placed in jeopardy.
Yet even as he should have worried about that he saw Ashiel standing not twenty yards from her betrothed, surrounded by her people, and knew that there were more important things to worry about. She was still beautiful, but her face was filled with lines from fear and pain, her eyes red from crying, her shoulders slumped in resignation, and despite the fact that he had never intended it, he knew it was his fault. Unfortunately Afri saw where his gaze travelled, and his anger grew in leaps and bounds as he leapt to unfair conclusions.
“So it’s jealousy then. You seek my betrothed and you would do anything to have her, and if you can’t then you will destroy us all!” His face was turning red as a beet with anger as he screamed his rage, and Alan knew he was already losing control. And Alan hadn’t said a thing so far. Barely walked up a grassy hill to meet them. He also knew that no matter what he said, Afri would never listen. He hated him and that hatred was his entire world. But Afri was only one person and Ashiel a second as she stood behind her betrothed, a broken wretch. There were nearly two thousand more and as many of them as could be saved had to be. He ignored them and turned his attention to the assembled masses hoping at least some of them would listen.
“I have just come from New Huron, spoken with the people there, and found them to be in good spirits. They have given up a lot, sacrificed much, and many still know that loss keenly. I will not lie to you. But in turn they have gained much more. They have gained the one thing that you crossed all those millennia seeking. A future.” It was he hoped, a telling argument, and he saw a few faces at least, deep in thought as they listened to him. Yet he was glossing over their pain, and despite the smiles a few put on their faces for politeness sake, he had seen the suffering in their fellow Huron’s eyes every time they called for their magic to perform some small task, and couldn’t find it.
Magic for the ancients wasn’t only about power; it was the very essence of their lives. Without it they were all but helpless. If need be, Alan could hunt, farm or fish without his gifts. He could build a house, smith armour and horseshoes, and fight. The ancients couldn’t and they were spending long days and nights relearning such skills. Much of their trouble had surely been because they had forgotten how to do even the basics without magic. They had the knowledge but not the hands on experience. Now they would have to rediscover the latter, and he suspected it would be a long time before they were self-sufficient. Until then, they would always believe themselves crippled, and they would always blame him.
There among their kin, he had found several suspects for the damage that had been done to his home. In truth he’d found thousands. All there knew about it, and many threw that knowledge back in his face, determined to hurt him further as they too blamed him for their pain. It had not been an easy visit, not least because he knew they were partly right. Yet he also knew he had done all he could for them, and that their suffering was of their own making.
Dava and Narinne at least had had the decency to say nothing of it. Instead they turned away from him, and spoke only of things that absolutely needed to be said, like what help their people needed and how he could make their lives easier. They had treated him like a stranger and perhaps even an enemy at a table of truce, and yet while painful it was better than some. Esille had been nowhere near so restrained, and she’d launched into an attack on him the instant she saw him, describing him in terms so vulgar he wouldn’t have used them on the necromancer himself. Many of the same words were written on his cottage walls. She wasn’t alone, and before he’d left some of the younger children had started pelting him with rotten fruit. It seemed he had become an outcast and not of his own choosing. It hurt. And this time he couldn’t say it was completely unfair. He had awoken them to this, and their suffering was great.
They were good people, fair minded and good hearted, and they were also the only real friends he’d had in many years. It hurt to know that that friendship was gone now, that they hurt and would for a long time, and that they blamed him for their pain, that they always would, or at least until they no longer felt that pain.
The people weren’t entirely powerless as the dragons had left them enough magic to do small things, much the same as the elves could with their own arcane magic, though most of elven magic was faith based as they begged favours off the various woodland spirits, and more was druidic like his. The ancients worshipped no such beings; they considered themselves above such things, and despite Dava’s kind words of months before Alan’s form of magic was a joke to most of them.
Still, once the ancients mastered the druidic forms of magic or found a faith they would become stronger again. But until then they would be cripples by their own vaunted standards and they needed a target for their anger. Someone to blame. He was that someone. The renegades would no doubt be the same, assuming they accepted the dragon’s rule, and he would again be the target for their anger. Still it wasn’t a choice, not even for him had he the power.
Even had the dragons not been determined to remove the ancients’ arcane magic from the world at all costs, Alan had read much of what the Huron had done with their magic even before the wars, and been horrified by it. He would have done so himself if he could have. It wasn’t a choice.
The nature of everything in the world, be it life or magic, weather or even food, was balance, but the Huron had never understood that, never felt it. Sera had shown him that, shown him of their nature a
s she took pity on him for his guilt and worry. With their advanced knowledge and the ability to draw magic from any and every source, they had started ripping it loose from the world to perform ever greater magics. They had built great cities, some of them even floating in the air. They had solved the mathematics of the stars, learned many of the secrets of immortality, built great golems to mine the mountains and even mill the forests. Why they had done that he didn’t know, but the cost he did know, and it was immense.
They had ripped all the magic loose from great tracts of the world, leaving it once the magic was gone, the land vulnerable and weak. Shortly after that it had died, even the ground itself. Whole species of fabled creatures had been wiped out by them in their arrogance, not by the war as the scholars had thought, but simply because they had destroyed their homes, their food sources and much of the magic that sustained them. The great forests had withered and petrified, the seas become barren, grasslands turned to desert, and even the winds had lost their great song. The world had been dying long before the wars had ever begun. The war was simply the end of their long journey of destruction as they fought over what little remained after they had taken everything else.
When he had walked among the Huron of Dava’s village, he had been distressed by their suffering, but he had still known that it was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. It would be here as well.
“The dragons have bound their magic as they said they would, and few can do more than light a fire for tea, but they are not helpless. For the past months the dryads of the nearby groves have been with them, helping them, teaching them of the proper use of magic, of balance and harmony, and they will remain with them for many more years. For as long as their services are needed. In time many of them will be powerful wizards again, druidic wizards as your people call me, faith wizards as you call the priests, and their children and grandchildren will be more so.”
“Hedge wizards, shaman, soothsayers the pitiful dregs of magicians! That is no life for a true wizard.” As he’d expected Afri’s words were dripping with scorn. It was power that the ancient craved, and of course the respect that went with it among his people, nothing else. He would never be able to accept his words. Alan ignored him, knowing that he was a lost cause and that there were thousands of others to persuade.
“They are also safe. My elementals and many others patrol the forest, protecting them. The dragons themselves patrol the skies above, and are building a new lair nearby just to make sure that they survive. No one wishes you harm. Your people are a valuable treasure, the oldest of us, the rarest and most precious, those who have the knowledge of our history, our beginnings, and how we became who we are. Believe me when I say you are needed, you are wanted. But your magic can never be permitted in the land again.” Many of the ancients he saw were listening, hearing him even if they didn’t like what he was saying, and for them surely the loss of their magic had to be terrifying. But death had to be worse, didn’t it? Afri though, was beside himself with rage.
“Liar! You cannot possess our power so you seek to break us. You use the dragons to make us as weak and pathetic as you.” As if Alan could order the dragons to do anything! They did what they chose to do, and anyone with an ounce of wisdom would have understood that. But Afri didn’t have that ounce.
“Ashiel, please control your betrothed. I am here under a flag of truce.” Of course that probably meant nothing to Afri, and he doubted Ashiel could control him any more than he could tell the dragons what to do. Besides, she didn’t appear to be very happy with him either right then, and as he had to remind himself, she would also be stripped of her magic and no doubt blame him for it.
“No! Do not speak to my betrothed! She is mine! You shall not have her!” Before she could do anything to even try and calm him down, Afri started screaming again. He shrilled like a man demented, and yet he was the one who was in charge of this group. It was his magic that was the strongest, he who was their only surviving master and because of that their leader. The ancients respected power above all else, which explained much of their problem. Their insanity. Yet surely even his own people could see his madness? The little mage was practically crazed.
“I did not come for Ashiel. I came for you all.” Of course he was speaking to a deaf man who could not hear him, but hopefully the others could.
“Liar! You can never have her! It was I who saved her mother from the ice drakes of Agrin himself, and that debt can never be repaid except by marriage. She is mine until the end of time and none may say otherwise.” Alan was horrified by his words, and saddened by them, and yet as he had known from the beginning, they didn’t matter. It could not just be Ashiel who he had come to save. It had to be all of them.
“You speak as if she is property. You show a lack of concern for her feelings, her hopes and dreams, for her family’s wishes. The same lack of concern your people showed for the world when you sought your ever greater power. As if you owned the world.”
“It was ours, not this pathetic imitation that you now call life!” Afri couldn’t even seem to understand the darkness in what he was saying. Alan could only pray that some of his countrymen did.
“No! The world was never yours. You like all creatures and all people belong to it! You have a place within it. You were told that. The dragons taught your ancestors that from the very beginning. And yet you somehow forgot that in your arrogance as you destroyed it.” In truth he wasn’t sure that they had forgotten it. Some he suspected, had never known it to start with. Maybe it was a lesson they needed to learn. Maybe the anger he had allowed to seep around the edge of his tongue, would tell them how seriously they needed to learn that.
“Many of you believe that the dragons are bluffing. That they merely seek to frighten you into submission. You forget; they were there when your people were young and they had to guide you. They were there when you grew into your strength and ignored their counsel. They were there when you began destroying the world, even before you began your great wars, and they were there for all of the last five thousand years while the world was being mended. Being mended by them.”
“They saw the harm you had done in your arrogance and your endless lust for power. They felt it first hand as they are of the world and the world is of them. They suffered as it suffered. They blame themselves in part for waking too late and not stopping you then. They are the first and truest guardians of the world and they failed in their duty. That failure lives with them still. They cannot, they will not ever allow such evil to happen again. They will not fail again.”
“When they first brought me before Sera, one who was a queen when even your most ancient ancestors were living in caves, and she told me of her will, I begged her not to kill you. I pleaded, because I know what good hearts most of your people have. And because I knew what evil your fellow ancient Agrin is still doing, and what it will take to stop him. She listened to me, at least as much as a small and foolish creature such as myself should be listened to, and she did what she could for compassion. Your kin who have been bound live, and in time they will prosper again, though not as before. But she would not bend any further than that.”
“Sera, who had once also loved your people and who still cares for them greatly, who still remembered teaching them, will not allow your evil to return. Though it will cost many lives, maybe even the lives of the dragons themselves to battle the necromancer, Agrin, she will not bend on this matter. If you can remember the formation of your great lifeless deserts and dead seas, the death of your forests, the loss of so many magical and mystical creatures long before your war ever began, you will understand what she fears in you. Your magic must pass from this world. It is heartless, soulless. It cannot be allowed to return, ever. Not even the knowledge of it. And if those who weld it must die to make sure of that, that is a price she is determined to pay.”
“She sent me with this message. You now have four days left. After that, no matter what Afri has told you, no matter how much you may b
elieve that she is bluffing, no matter how powerful you think you are compared to the dragons who are massing for battle at this time, you will be killed. And remember this, as you think on what I have said. The dragons are of the world and of magic, as both are also of them. Even if you somehow succeeded in the battle, you would still lose. For every dragon you kill, you will weaken yourselves, just as you did five thousand years ago when you destroyed so much of the world in your arrogance.”
“Liar!” Afri finally lost all self-control, and fire appeared in his hands. Alan was actually surprised that he’d held himself in check for as long as he had. A heartbeat later a fireball as large and powerful as anything Alan had ever seen was heading his way, and it was all he could do not to panic. But he had faced this menace many times in training; fire balls, lightning bolts, sunbeams and so forth. All of the terrible weapons of the ancients, and suddenly all the practice he’d received in counter magic was in the forefront of his mind and he knew what to do.
With a seemingly casual gesture of his fingers, he transformed the fire into sunlight, and despite the power of the fireball, it was easy. Once he would have attempted to combat it with its opposite, water and ice, and opposed strength with strength. But that would have been a mistake and he would have lost. He simply did not have the strength, and he would have been less than a charred corpse in a heartbeat. Like the fencer he had to parry the broadsword instead of blocking it. Trying to counter Afri’s fireball would have got him killed, but to simply change the magic into something it already was in part and that which it naturally wanted to become again, that was easy. Of course, the sudden flash of light that appeared in the grass between them was so bright as to blind everyone for a few minutes and leave people stumbling about in a haze, moaning to themselves, the caster included.
