Haven Magic

by B. V. Larson

Brand knew what she wanted. But the thought was unthinkable. He couldn’t put down the axe, he couldn’t let go of this power. She was asking too much. She wanted a thief to give back the master’s purse. She wanted a prisoner to slam the dungeon door closed. She wanted a starving beggar to give up a leg of roasted ham.

  He thought of the Shining Lady and of Corbin’s Dead brother Sam and of Telyn. Beautiful Telyn.

  He stuffed the axe into the open maw of the rucksack. The beautiful Jewel vanished into darkness again.

  Everyone relaxed.

  “It is done,” said Gudrin.

  She sagged down to one knee, and then collapsed.

  Epilogue

  The battle was over, but they all knew that the war was just beginning. Suddenly tired and calm, Brand and the others picked themselves up and did what they could to staunch the flames. But Froghollow would be a ruin by morning, none of them doubted that.

  In the flickering light of the burning house Brand had loved so much, Gudrin came to him and spoke with unusual gentleness. “You are a strong one. Strong of spirit as well as of limb. Few can willingly release Ambros once they have taken it up, and fewer still can do so without getting blood on its curved blades.”

  Brand nodded. He knew it was true, he had held Ambros and knew the power of it.

  “The enemy has been driven off for now. But life will not be easy for the River Folk from this day forward.”

  “We will have to make weapons and prepare for war,” he said grimly.

  “Perhaps,” said Gudrin. “What is certain is that your people and mine have a great problem, Brand,” said Gudrin. “I’m asking for your help in solving it.”

  Brand looked at her seriously. Her face was old and craggy and worn. Females of the Kindred are rarely attractive, but Gudrin was perhaps even less so than the average. But still, he saw in her a certain beauty, a certain inner strength. She had done everything she could for him and his people by taking Myrrdin’s place.

  “I’m grateful for all you’ve done,” Brand said. “I’ll help you in any way I can.”

  She nodded. “I knew that you would.”

  End of AMBER MAGIC Book #1 of the Haven Series

  Book II: SKY MAGIC

  Translated from the Teret, the compendium of Kindred wisdom:

  On the topic of Wee Folk: Do not discount them!

  Wee Folk are common members of the Fae, and come in many varieties. Most have faces and bodies that resemble tiny, thin humans. Often confused with elves, goblins and wisps, they are a unique race. All Wee Folk are smaller than any elf, as elves are generally the size of small adult humans. They are smaller than goblins as well, who can be distinguished by their evil toothy faces, cat-like eyes and ears, as well as their normal height of approximately three feet. Wee Folk can’t be classified as wisps, either. They possess much more intellect, and are larger than wisps. Most significantly, despite their ability to make huge leaps, they completely lack wings. Another clear differential trait is the preference of the Wee Folk to wear clothing like humans. They are not, however, exactly like small humans in appearance. When examining one of their type, a human will often describe them as doll-like. Their faces resemble a caricature of a real human face. Their features are often pulled and exaggerated, with noses like waxy candles, hair like straw, or eyes like glass marbles.

  Wee Folk do possess some natural craft with magic. For the most part, their magic is weak, but it’s always helpful in their favorite pastime: trickery. Many have the ability to shape-shift. This shifting ability isn’t uncommon, but it is specific. Most Wee Folk capable of shifting can only change into one thing, usually an animal or other type of small, mundane person. In the vast majority of cases, their shape-shifters can only change into something that is approximately the same size and weight as their original form. The humans refer to such creatures (and to other Faerie capable of similar tricks) as changelings.

  Those able to change into human shapes are the most feared of the changelings. Often, the Wee Folk can establish an easy life by simply changing into the shape of a baby or small child, and thus reaping the benefits of a caring human mother indefinitely. Since, in order to succeed, such a scheme requires the kidnapping of the mother’s real infant, it is considered by the humans to be one of the most vile tricks of the many performed regularly by the Faerie. The child in question might be cared for and raised among the Faerie—or equally likely—abandoned to die in some wild place far from home and family. One result is a likely as the other, given the naturally fickle and unpredictable nature of the Faerie.

  Although the humans fear them, our people do not. From the point of view of the Kindred, the Wee Folk are generally dismissed as trivial annoyances. Being creatures that favor windy, wild places, they rarely venture deep down into our stone fortresses. We of the Kindred are largely resistant to their tricks and we fall prey to their magicks far less often than do the hapless humans they love to plague.

  However, their kind does pose a potential threat in the mind of this author. Unlike the other varieties of the Faerie, they have the ability to thrive and travel in our world, even in broad daylight. They are not restricted to Faerie mounds, nor do they only haunt specific locales like the ghosts that drift about in any ancient ruin. They come and go as they please and aren’t tethered to their own domain. Equally disturbing, they are common and numerous.

  As a people they are chaotic and totally lacking in organization. According to all accounts, they tend to be solitary individualists, each creature bent only upon achieving its own desires. In their current anti-social state they pose no threat. However, should this strange race ever form a union of some kind, a collective as large as a nation—should they ever appoint their own king—it is the studied opinion of this author that they would become a new and powerful force in our world as well as theirs. An organized army of magical, tricksy Wee Folk is something no other race would ever want to face.

  —Jerd of the Talespinners, written circa the Third Era of the Earthlight

  Chapter One

  The Giant

  One of the last beings in Cmyru to hear that the Pact had been broken was the Deepwood Giant, Twrog. A flittering wisp told him, whispering tinkling words into his huge, flap-like ears. He took a few clumsy swipes at her at first, as if she were some kind of annoying gnat. But after some of her words sank into his thick brain, he gave pause to his hopeless attempts to catch her and listened instead.

  “Whut?” he asked with thick lips and teeth as big as walnuts. He wasn’t good at speech. He rarely had anyone to talk to.

  The wisps were natural messengers. They loved gossip and flew far and wide with any tidbit of news to tell every creature who would listen. Today, they had important news indeed to spread. The Pact between the River Folk and the Faerie had been broken. The borders of human lands were no longer protected by the word of Lord Oberon.

  Twrog was one of the last to hear about the fateful night that had ended the centuries-long truce between the humans and the Faerie, but he was one of the first to take action. Being a giant rather than one of the Faerie, he didn’t share their cautious nature. The Faerie had incredibly long lifespans, and centuries of experience had taught them to be suspicious of any change in the order of things. One of the keys to a long life, as any oldster will tell you, is to approach life with a fair dose of caution. When they first heard of the broken Pact, they suspected a trick of some kind.

  Tricks were, in fact, one of the things the Faerie always expected from others. They lived by trickery, and swore by it. Among themselves, they bragged of every fool they had taken, of every surprise they had sprung. As beings so accustomed to duplicity, they were the very first to suspect its use by others. And so, although they knew that the Pact had been broken, they mistrusted such a huge change.

  For many long years they had been punished by their lord for any transgression into human lands, particularly the lands along the Berrywine River. On the banks of the great river lived the humans know
n as the River Folk. These were the same accursed humans who had managed to forge the Pact in the first place and had meticulously kept their end of the bargain for more than two centuries. The very events which led to the forging of this Pact were considered by the Faerie to be base trickery. And so when they were told the Pact had ended, many of the Shining Folk mistrusted the news. What new trick did the River Folk have in mind for them? Had they spent the long years of peace preparing some foul surprise? Were they so very confident in their defenses, so contemptuous of the Faerie, they had allowed the treaty to drop? What awaited the first of the Shining Folk who ventured to accost a human maiden, no doubt working a field alone at dusk just to bait a hapless shade into making a horrible mistake?

  None of these thoughts occurred to Twrog, however. In the first place, thoughts of such complexity rarely bothered him. Secondly, he was a giant, and his race was a people apart from the Faerie. Trickery was not his strongpoint. He had, however, been bound by the Pact. Part of that agreement stated that the Faerie would hold back creatures such as himself, keeping him from violating the borders of the rich lands of the River Folk. He had been forced to be content with trudging through the Deepwood, satisfying himself with the stringy meat and tough bones of the occasional huntsmen who ventured too deeply into the forests tracking a lung-shot stag.

  Today, Twrog stood at the very border of the Deepwood. For long years he had traveled to this spot on the edge of the protected lands of the River Folk. Even the ground here was well-worn, the leaves having been pushed away by his heavy tread. The exposed dirt had been churned into a patch of dust.

  From this vantage point, under a rowan tree on a hillock, he could see the pig farm that had been the object of his daily scrutiny for so long. But it wasn’t the sights of the farm, so much as the smells of it, that drove his heavy jaws to drip and salivate.

  He had not tasted a true corn-fed, farm-raised pig but for once in his life, when he had caught a human with a knapsack that bulged with a salted ham hock. The human had been tasteless and uninteresting, like all his kind. But the ham hock had changed Twrog’s world. How unlike the flavor of his usual fare that ham had tasted!

  Salting a meat and smoking it, these were things beyond Twrog’s capacities. He did often cook his meats, of course. He would spit a good catch and toast it, usually unskinned, so that the fur burnt with the flesh. The flavor was always gamey and half raw, but never salted or smoked. When he did manage to spear a wild boar, he always hoped it would taste like the ham hock, but alas, it never did. Something the River Folk did to those pigs made them delicious. Perhaps it was in the preparation, but he suspected it was the pigs themselves that were different. They were nearly hairless and tame, clearly a different variety of animal compared to the wild ones.

  So it was, in broad daylight, that he stepped out from the rowan tree. A single sweeping stride took him over the border he had never dared pass before. Shouldering a stout oak club, the thickness and weight of which was greater than the fattest man in the Haven, he walked onto the pig farm.

  He reached a fence of split rails, about five feet in height, and stepped over it rather than just kicking his way through. It was best to make less noise to summon the farmer, who might have a bow handy. Twrog didn’t really fear a few arrows. He didn’t look forward to their bite, but like a bear raiding a beehive, he accepted that a few stings were to be expected and were simply part of the business. Reasoning that the best course was a direct one, and hardly being capable of reasoning anything more complex, Twrog marched up to the pigpen, which was crowded with very surprised pigs.

  They snorted at him and turned up their tiny eyes in a frozen moment of disbelief. Never in their short lives had any of them even scented one of his kind, much less been approached by a giant. He seemed to them to be similar to a man, but muskier, with the odor of blood and the wilds on him. Like the occasional huntsmen that came to visit, they classified him as human, but distrusted him immediately. They trotted away to the far end of their pens and stood there, watching his approach.

  It was not until he swung his club and bashed one of them to the ground that they set up a horrible din of squealing.

  Chasing them around in the pens, club upraised, Twrog managed to dash three more of them in rapid succession. His last swing, unfortunately, had caught the corner of the roof of their shelter and brought it crashing down. He paused to blink down at the squealing, circling pigs and the smashed roof. Someone would come to investigate this, he was certain.

  Compared to catching wild game, this was easy. He could have killed them all. But there was hardly any point to that. Four pigs were already as much as he could easily carry. He stuffed two in his game sack, gripped the third and tucked the fourth under his arm. His free hand still held the oaken club. It was a good club, and had always brought him luck. Today’s kills were further evidence of just how lucky that club was for him.

  Twrog marched back toward the Deepwood with a feeling of triumph. His mouth could still recall the flavor of ham hocks, and tonight he promised himself he would cook these pigs properly and enjoy them to the fullest.

  He heard shouts behind him and hunched his shoulders, expecting the sting of an arrow. He tried to move faster, but he couldn’t run while carrying so much meat.

  The first arrow didn’t hit him, it sailed safely by. The second sunk into the rump of the dead pig tucked under his arm. The third, however, struck home. He knew it was a crossbow bolt, those often sunk more deeply into the thick flesh of his back than an arrow could have when propelled by a huntsman’s bow. He winced and dropped the game sack. He briefly considered abandoning it, he could move much faster to the tree line, but the very thought made him angry.

  These River Folk had eaten like kings for as long as he could remember, refusing to share with the likes of poor Twrog. Now, even as he was setting things right, they had the gall to shoot at him!

  He turned around with a low roar. Three shocked River Folk faced him, all armed with bows. They were in the very act of working their weapons, reloading them to cause him further undeserved harm.

  “Shoot Twrog NO MORE!” he roared at them. They all froze, their faces showing slack-jawed surprise. None of them had ever met a giant, much less heard one speak.

  Then Twrog threw his lucky club. He launched it high, so that it flew end-over-end. The humans, who consisted of the farmer, his eldest son and his eldest daughter, paused for a moment in astonishment. When that moment had passed, they dropped their bows and scattered, but it was too late. The huge rotating club was already falling toward them. The club blocked out the sun that rode directly above in flashes of black shadow and brilliant sunlight.

  It struck the ground with tremendous force, throwing up a geyser of black earth mixed with clumps of grass. The three humans were sprayed with dirt, but none were yet crushed.

  But the club was not done. It bounced, still flying end-over-end. When it came down a second time, it caught the farmer himself and crushed him down.

  Twrog made a great honking sound, a heavy laugh that would forever after haunt the grieving dreams of the farmer’s children. As the giant carried his four pigs into the Deepwood and vanished in the gloom under the trees, he hoped that losing his lucky club had been worth it.

  Chapter Two

  The Changeling

  Among all the Faerie, the Wee Folk were perhaps the most curious and impetuous. Despite the Pact, they had never stopped playing occasional tricks upon humanity. Because of this, they were well-remembered by the River Folk. Many of the other less common, less adventurous creatures had been all but forgotten. Banshees, for example, had become mythical in the minds of the people of the Haven. But the Wee Folk were very real. No one had forgotten them.

  That same curiosity, that same willingness to take a risk, drove many Wee Folk to cross the river to Stone Island and search for victims the moment the Pact was reportedly at an end. Such was their eagerness that some of them had already arrived on the island and had
been skulking about, marking likely targets for days before the ceremony itself.

  This was nothing new. Each year, there were always rumors among their kind that this would be the last time the humans would escape their tricks. The winged wisps told tinkling tales of the humans’ lack of faithfulness. Each year it was said that surely, the River Folk would not put up another feast. This year, the Faerie would be released from nonsensical Pacts and times would be good again. This year, every porch would have a welcoming clay pot of ale set out, and every infant would be placed in a crib near an open window, easy for the plucking. But alas, despite the rumors, these happy times had never materialized.

  This harvest, however, was different.

  Piskin was one of the braver, more dedicated of the Wee Folk. He had made the early trip to Stone Island, hoping. The year itself felt different to Piskin. The air was colder and tinged with the spice of magic. And he had seen so very many years. In fact, he was old enough to well-remember the days before the Pact had been forged. He had enjoyed life much more fully then. All of the humans had been at his disposal. Every night, their farms had been like picnic tables and their young like slow, fat fish in a quiet stream.

  Piskin was a changeling. He had only a few magical tricks up his sleeve, but the best one, the only one that really mattered, was the power to shift into the shape of a human infant. Back in the olden times, this single power had made life very sweet indeed. He had never missed a full meal, never gone a week without a delicate, soft-fingered bath, nor had a night ever passed without snuggling against the cushion of a young mother’s breast.

  He longed to return to those happy times. For many, many harvest nights he had watched with teeth-grinding fury as that fool incarnate Oberon had allowed the humans to buy him off with a pathetic pile of earthly goods. What benefit was a single fat feast each year, whilst all the food and comfort of a lifetime lay right there for the taking in any rich woman’s crib? Each year he came to the Haven, and he hoped, and after the Pact was renewed he snarled in disappointment.