by Greg Curtis
His next thought was that the group seemed troubled, which was worrying. If they were so close to the end of the trail between the wastes and the Fedowir Kingdom they should be happy. Relieved that the worst of their long journey was over. And the Master of the natural magics should be happiest of all. But Master Bela looked the most troubled of all.
Still, he knew he would find out what was wrong shortly – and then with luck be able to deal with it.
Sam cantered the last of the way to the elders, dismounted and then approached the camp on foot. “Elders.” He nodded as was proper, and waited to be welcomed.
“Samual.” War Master Wyldred greeted him and even managed a weak smile. But he looked no happier than any of the others. “Come join us.”
“This is Elder Frolan from the Golden City.”
The Golden City itself? Sam was surprised. There were three cities in the Golden River Flats. Although the “Golden City” wasn't actually a city at all. Most claimed it was merely a large town. But according to legend it had once been the first city in the realm, and that it had shrunk over the millennia as the people had left it to make new homes elsewhere. Homes that in time had become cities while the original city had shrunk.
Despite being only a town it was still well known. It was one of the places that the bard's often sang of in their endless ballads. They called it magical and mystical and above all else, mysterious. It was also well known because it was reputed to be the home of the most powerful and knowledgeable of elven spell casters. It was there that the greatest of elven spell casters trained. As did the archivists, historians, priesthood and lawmakers. It might only be a town but it was the spiritual heart of the Golden River Flats. It was also where people went if they had a magical problem that could not be resolved elsewhere.
“I'm honoured to meet you Elder.” Sam greeted the Elder as was expected and wasn't surprised when Elder Bela managed a wry smile in turn. No doubt he found it unusual that Sam should be so respectful to another. Unfortunately there was some truth in that criticism.
“And I you Samual Hanor. You would be the Fire Angel we have heard so much about.”
It wasn't a question and he was no Fire Angel but Sam nodded regardless, wondering why this new elf should be so interested in him.
“Good. The Lady Meriana wishes to speak with you when your people have settled in.”
All around him Sam could hear the sounds of breaths being drawn in in surprise, and wondered why. He guessed it would have something to do with the mention of the Lady's name, whoever she might be. But if she was as famous as she seemed to be, he still hadn't heard of her. No doubt the others would inform him later.
“I would be pleased to meet with any who might help our people in this time of trouble.” As long as it didn't keep him too long away from his family, but he didn't add the last.
“You might not be so happy in time. Especially when she has said that she wishes to test you. But I will pass on your words anyway.”
Test? Why did that sound suspiciously like what the elder wizards had done to him when he'd first returned with Ry? Though it had been months ago, he had no wish to go through such an ordeal again. And the elf's words strongly suggested it would be exactly that; an ordeal. Yet was it more than that? Looking at the elders around him, he realised that from the stunned looks on their faces, that the testing was obviously important. He thought he'd better find out.
“Test?”
“Yes Fire Angel, test. The Lady believes you may have some summoning potential, and she wishes to know if it's so.”
Suddenly the troubled looks on the elders' faces made perfect sense to Sam, as he surely wore the same expression on his own face. A chill ran down his back.
Summoning! Sam felt ill. Though people often used the word loosely, to summon was vastly different from when a wizard drew magic to him or called a beast. It was a specific magic where creatures and objects from other realms were brought into theirs. Things that were not part of the world and which never should be. And of course some of those creatures were demons.
Summoners were dangerous. Not just because of what they could do, but because of how they thought. Creatures from other worlds thought in other ways. Ways that were foreign. And some of that strangeness became a part of the thoughts of those who made contact with other realms. It was almost like a contamination of the mind and the soul. In the end it was said, summoners who went too far were no longer human. Not inside.
It was as nothing he had suspected, and even less anything that he'd ever wanted. But it made perfect sense in a strange way. He could hear the thoughts of the enemy through his servants, the machina. No one else could, which was why the elder spell casters had had such a hard time believing him. After all, golems didn't have thoughts, and they didn't obey silent commands. They were ordered verbally and they obeyed until either the job was done or something had changed making it impossible to complete. But the machina were nothing like that. They had much greater intelligence, and they could be commanded silently from afar.
So what if the true difference between machina and golems wasn't simply in their construction, but rather their soul, for want of a better word? What if their master wasn't a spell caster as they'd all believed, but rather a creature from one of the other realms? A demon? Or another summoner? What if this wizard was bringing demons into the world and commanding them?
He didn't want to believe it. Summoners were regarded as among the darkest of spell casters, and thankfully the most rare. Against them only the necromancers were considered more evil, and thankfully, equally rare. At the feet of the two dark wizardries lay the blame for much of the death and destruction over the previous thousands of years of recorded history as their practitioners again and again sought power at the expense the people. As such they had started wars, created false religions, summoned monsters, and raised armies of the undead. Creating an army of machina was exactly what they might do, if they could.
It made sense but Sam didn't believe it. He couldn't allow himself to believe that he was such a wizard. And yet on the other hand, he was the only one who could hear the machina's master, something that wasn't lost on him or apparently the others. Already he could feel the divide between them growing as they started regarding him with suspicion. He couldn't face the elders and instead spent his time staring at his feet, wondering what to do. Surely they would never allow a summoner to remain among them? And he couldn't take Ry or her family away from her people. Not again; ever.
“I can't be a summoner! I've never felt a demon in my life, and I'm not evil!”
The words came out almost by themselves, as he felt his whole life slipping away from him. But he was preaching to the deaf, as even he feared he might have some summoning power. Enough to hear the thoughts of demons at least. Perhaps on some level, he truly was evil?
“The Lady knows that. Nor does she think you have any ability of command, only sensing. If you did you would have told the machina to leave. But you seem to have the power to hear them, and because of that it may be that you can know the enemy as few others. She has heard the reports, and she hopes you can tell her a little more of what you know.”
His words sadly didn't fill Sam with confidence. A summoner of any stripe was not something he wanted to be.
“Samual. Summoners are not regarded as evil by elves.” Elder Bela finally returned to the conversation.
“Rather we regard them as imperilled. Their gift makes them vulnerable to dark thoughts, to temptation. They can hear the thoughts of creatures not of this realm. Creatures with feelings utterly opposed to our own. And those few who can command them must then contend with the temptation of the power of actual life and death over these outsider creatures.”
“Because of those risks, we have developed ways of helping those few who are identified as summoners. Meditation techniques. Tests which can reveal to the spell caster the state of his own soul. And the stones of Ivor'll which can show the same to all others.”
“With these and other means we can keep summoners on the good side of life. Which is why there has never been an elven summoner so corrupted or tormented as those of human and dwarven history. But then all spell casters are imperilled to some extent by their power, and we use many of those same methods to watch over us all. No one here believes you evil.”
Imperilled? Sam wanted to believe him. Desperately. Yet the faces of the others as they stared at him said otherwise. They might not believe him evil, but they were worried. And he was worried too. Maybe they could keep summoners from turning to darkness. But still those with the magic would always be at risk. And everyone would know it. Even if the Elder was right, it was still a mark of shame. A reason to be feared and distrusted.
The one thing he realised he couldn't do however, was wait with this sort of anxiety in his heart. He couldn't leave his wife and family waiting either. He would go to the Lady Meriana immediately and get the test over and done with. And he would pray to the All Father that it would show him free of the taint.
But at least he now knew why his cousin had reacted so badly to seeing him. A summoner in the family? That had to be shameful.
Chapter Twenty One.
Four long days later Sam arrived at the Lady Meriana's tower, and his first thought was surprise that it really was a tower. That he hadn't expected, despite the fact that Aralor – the Lady's representative who had escorted him to see the Elder – had told him as much.
It wasn't an elven construction. Elves built in forests and often in their canopies. They built of wood. And this was an elven land and lady Meriana he was sure was an elf. So why did she have a tower, and a stone one at that? Or for that matter, why did she choose to live in one?
Towers were impractical at best for most purposes. The narrowness of rooms, the excessive number of steps to get from one room to the next. They certainly weren't ideal accommodation. But they did have a couple of advantages for specific groups. They made excellent lookout points, and so soldiers often had one attached to a barracks or a castle. And their elevation could also be used as a means of isolation. For that reason wizards sometimes used them. If they called forth something dangerous they could simply escape, knock down the stairs and leave whatever it was trapped inside – as long as it couldn't fly. Perhaps that was why the Lady Meriana had built it? The All Father only knew what monsters she might summon from the other realms. Though it still didn't explain why she lived in one.
Her tower however, was different from others he had seen. For a start it wasn't attached to another building let alone a fort. Instead it stood alone in a large clearing. It was also broader than many he'd seen, especially around the base, and he quickly guessed she had her living quarters there and her wizard chambers at the top. A sensible arrangement, though he personally would have preferred to have a house elsewhere. Preferably a long way away from any wizard tower.
It was also made of white marble instead of the darker stone of which human castles and towers normally seemed to be built, which gave it quite a lovely aspect. Sitting on the brilliant green grass of the meadow that surrounded it and against the back drop of the dark green forests and the perfect blue sky, it almost seemed to shine. It was as though it was alive, and had grown out of the ground like a magnificent tree. Or a gigantic button mushroom.
Yet he did have to wonder. Was it really so odd for an elf to live in a tower? He had only ever once travelled to the Golden River Flats, and then he had only visited a single city – Tori' Less. He had never been to the Golden City or Vern mi Dall as it was properly known – the city of gold. How did he know that the elves in these parts did not build in this manner?
The sight of the tower didn't fill him with happiness though. Instead he felt apprehensive, because it would be here that he would find out the true extent of his magic, and he wasn't entirely sure that that was something he wanted to know. But he had come because he needed to know it, if only to know what to do about it. He dreaded the possibility that he might have some summoning ability, regardless of what Elder Bela had told him. No matter how he looked at it, consorting with demons was darkness.
As they'd ridden there, he on Tyla and Aralor on a unicorn of all creatures, he'd alternated between taking two choices. The first choice was to give up on the mission and go home to his family, without ever finding out if he had any ability. Though he would still be tainted by the rumour, at least it wouldn't be proven. The second was to get to the tower as fast as possible and have it shown that he had no summoning ability. If he did then he would know he could not be evil. The trouble was that he feared that the test would show that he did have that gift. It could damn him as easily as save him.
Elder Bela's words had helped him a little as he journeyed, while his present to him of the stones of Ivor'll had made him more comfortable. Still, the journey hadn't been easy. For though the stones mostly stayed a beautiful blue, they changed colour whenever he was feeling a particularly intense emotion. He didn't want them to do that when the colours showed him and the whole world the truth of his feelings. Feelings of anger and rage he still kept trying to bottle up inside. Fear too.
Every time he thought about Ry and how she had been mistreated over the last five years the stones darkened, something that wasn't lost on either Aralor or himself. He was still angry about what Heri had done, sometimes very angry, and it showed in the stones even when he did his best to hide it. They turned red when he was worried – usually each time he thought about what the test would reveal. Fortunately his moods didn't last and the colours went away quickly. He didn't know what colour the stones would turn if he started summoning demons.
Now however, the journey was suddenly over, and the stones were red once more. No matter how difficult the journey had been, he could still wish himself back on it.
“The Lady is expecting us.”
Of course she was. The one thing Sam was certain of was that a summoner would know when visitors were arriving, from whatever realm.
Still, as they rode towards the tower and he spotted a woman in front of it sweeping the stone courtyard, he wondered if they had made a mistake. Because he couldn't imagine the Lady sweeping her own courtyard, even though elves generally didn't have servants. He didn't fully understand how she could have a title – obviously the elves of the Flats were a little different to those of Shavarra – but he understood nobility. And nobles didn't sweep floors. Perhaps summoners were different?
Aralor told him otherwise however, when he asked. The woman sweeping the courtyard wasn't a servant at all but rather the Lady Meriana herself. Regardless she put down the broom to greet them as they approached and even managed a polite smile.
“By the creator you look frightened!”
The woman who greeted him with an easy manner and her hands on her hips was anything but what he had expected. Though what he had expected he didn't quite know. Still, it wasn't a middle aged elven woman with a broom in her hands and wearing an apron and scarf to keep the dust off her as she cleaned. She looked like a typical human housewife. Where, he wondered, were the elegant robes and precious medallions? Where was the menagerie of demons dancing at her beck and call? Where were the horns sticking out of her head? Naturally there was no answer.
One other thing he did notice though, as they led their animals across the last few yards or so to her tower, was that she wasn't fully elven. She had the pointed ears all right, and her accent was perfect, but her form was just a fraction too broad, her hair a trifle too dark and curly. She was clearly also part human. Just like him. But then Elder Bela had told him long ago that the strongest wizards had some human and elven blood both. Apparently that applied to summoners as well. And maybe that explained her title too. Maybe she was from a noble human family.
“Lady Meriana?”
“Of course young Samual Hanor. But you already know that.”
There was no doubt in her tone and he guessed she saw him as clearly as a hunter saw her prey. But she was a devasta
tingly pleasant hunter, and somehow he couldn't imagine her ever doing harm to another. Not to a man and probably not even to an animal. Instead she was the sort of woman who would serve tea to her guests with a smile and make certain they were comfortable. How he wondered, could she possibly be a summoner? It just didn't make sense to him.
“Aralor, would you please help your father in the house. He's trying to prepare a late lunch, and with his penchant for the fire we'll be lucky if he doesn't burn the house down.” With a peck on his cheek she sent Aralor – her son it seemed – into the house to help his father, while indicating a small wooden bench to him.
Sam sat down as asked, feeling anything but in control here. A few moments later he was joined by the Lady. At least she'd put down the broom.
“So, the Fire Angel has come to my home. I'm honoured. But shouldn't you have been riding a phoenix here?” She smiled to show she was jesting.
