by Aaron Pogue
I nodded.
"This...." His attention was on the statue once more. "This was a mistake I should have foreseen. I regret how close it came to tragedy. I regret what it put you through. I'm glad I caught him before he did serious harm. You—" The wizard stopped, and a look of sheer surprise stole across his face. It seemed so inappropriate, so foreign on his dignified features, and it was quickly lost in a more fitting look of contemplation. "You are quite a remarkable fighter, Daven."
He stepped closer to the still form and tapped the extended sword with his staff. It fell free of the soldier's grasp, landing with a dull thud in the thick grass. "In Othin's homeland there is a tradition, Daven, that when a man loses a duel his only honor is in surrendering his blade. I believe you have rightfully won this."
He hesitated a moment, considering, and then reached out to tap the sword belt draped from Othin's shoulder to hip, and that too fell free. He scooped the sword up clumsily and forced it into its scabbard, then held the belt out to me as a gift.
I didn't dare touch it. Instead I met the wizard's eyes and asked, "What do you know of my fighting?"
His eyes shone as he returned my gaze, "When you bend reality, Daven, reality remembers. I can see much of you in this place, and it makes me think perhaps there is a hope after all. I've found you in the nick of time, and it seems you may exceed even my own lofty expectations." His voice trailed off, and still he stood there in the night, arms extended toward me.
Finally the awkwardness overcame my fear, and I reached out to take the belt. He nodded once, satisfied then whirled to face down the hill, nothing more than a shadowy motion in the darkness. "Come, it is quite late. Let us finish this discussion at your master's home."
He started confidently along the graveled footpath, down and into the village. I followed the old man into the night, never doubting he knew the way.
2. Sorcery
The gravel crunched with every step, holding back the silence of the settling night. Before us and below, Sachaerrich waited in the darkness, probably bustling as its citizens went to their meals though no sound reached us. Alone, we walked slowly alongside the gentle brook that bubbled down the hillside.
After a moment the old man spoke. "Have you enjoyed your stay in Sachaerrich?"
"It has been nice." My legs ached from the brief but frenzied fight, but I tried not to limp as we walked. By now the little wounds were nothing more than a distraction. "The village is a quiet place to live. The people are friendly."
He looked at me for a moment, considering. "You have made friends here, then?"
I shrugged. "Friends enough. Goodman Jemminor provides for me, and there are several of us that play at swords, sometimes."
He chuckled. "Play at swords? You are modest. Still, it is good to hear you have friends. Will you miss them when you leave?"
"No." I answered without thinking, but after a moment the question struck me as odd. "Why do you ask? I've nowhere to go."
"Everyone leaves eventually, Daven. I imagine you'll be leaving soon."
I nodded. Once more silence fell as we trudged on, then the stranger spoke again. "I am looking for a swordsman, Daven. I need a young man about your age, who knows how to use a solid weapon but is willing to participate in...nonstandard training." He hesitated, his eyes on my face. "Would you be that man?"
For a moment excitement bubbled within me, like my daydream come true, but I fought it down. "I am just a shepherd. The most I've ever dreamed of is a place in the Guard." My voice sounded gloomy even to my ears.
"And you just proved yourself worthy of one." He chuckled, waving vaguely back up the hill behind us. "You showed yourself worth more than that, even. You fought a Green Eagle and—"
"I didn't fight him, though!" He blinked in surprise at my outburst, and I shrugged, "I mean...I didn't ever even hit him. He fell on me. He fell on me. It was just a trick of the spell."
"Ah!" He said, holding up a finger, "Even the spell commends you, Daven. That is a surprisingly complex adjudication for such a young man. The fact that you can work it—"
"I can't though." I was being rude, interrupting him, but he kept trying to call me more than I was. My father had been the last person to speak to me like that, and his words had all been lies. I said, "It's just a little spell. I bought it for a silver coin from a man in the City. He saw my book, and offered it to me. Anyone can do a spell like that. It's just words."
He looked at me for a moment more, his eyes sharp in the night, and then he said, "Ah. Well. True enough." I heard disdainful laughter hidden in his voice.
We walked in silence again, while the stars came out to shine, and I began to feel bad for arguing like that. Finally I sighed and said, "What do you want a swordsman for, anyway?"
His eyes cut to me, a moment's gaze, and then they were on the road again. "I wish to try a little project, with the king's approval. I mean to make a new kind of soldier, to train a swordsman with some of the skills of magic and see what he can do."
I shook my head. "Why would you do that? The king is disbanding whole regiments in exchange for the handful of wizards produced at the Academy. What value could there be in teaching someone both?"
He smiled. "I don't know. We've never tried it, so who could say?"
"I could," I said. "Anyone could. A wizard can call down fire and summon lightning. A wizard can simply lift his enemies into the air, or..." I waved back over my shoulder, toward the silhouette of the Green Eagle still frozen on the hilltop. "Or bind them in place from a hundred paces away. For someone who could do that, what use is a sword?"
"That's a complicated question," the old man said. "And one the other Masters refuse to consider."
"Oh." I nodded. It should have been obvious. I felt an emptiness gnawing in my stomach, but I kept it from my face. "You're a Master of the Academy."
"I am." His gaze was heavy on me, his words thick with understanding. "And I have been a Justice and a sometime adviser to the king. This is not the first time we've met, though I doubt you would remember me. You may call me Claighan."
I nodded. I couldn't speak. I remembered him, if only as one dark and threatening form among a long row of them. This was one of the men who had condemned my father far beyond the measure of his little sins. I squeezed my eyes shut, and the wizard gave a tired sigh. But he went on as though he had noticed nothing. "I've come from the capitol to ask you to be my test subject. It will be a great opportunity—"
"Thank you," I said, battering down daydreams and desire, "but no. The Academy is no place for me."
"Daven," he said in a paternal chide that set my teeth on edge. "I will make arrangements. You will be treated with the utmost—"
"No!" I raised my voice, breaking the stillness of the night. "I refuse! Do you understand? I have no place there. Besides... I'm happy enough here." He opened his mouth to say more, to argue with me, but I shook my head. "No. Thank you for your interest, but I can't do that."
He measured me with his eyes, then he shrugged and turned back down the path. A moment later I followed after, catching up quickly. We walked in silence most of the way into town before he said quietly, without turning, "There is more to you than your history."
I looked at him sharply, anger in my eyes, but he never looked up from the road. "Since the moment I met you you've been thinking of your past," he said. "Of the dark stain of your father's name."
I wanted to say, "A stain you supplied." I didn't. My father had never denied his crimes, but the punishment had been too harsh. Far too harsh.
Instead I scowled at the path beneath my feet and grunted. "My life has been nothing but that stain." I stomped along beside him for several moments, but he said nothing. "It's true. As far as my memory reaches, my whole life has been dictated by the consequences of his actions."
He still didn't look at me, but his voice was cutting now. "Do you really think things are so simple? Do you really think you can blame all your tomorrows on your yesterdays? It's your
life. It will be whatever you make it."
"Then why am I here?" I was shouting, somehow, all my control broken by his calm. "You think I chose this life? I ran—ran as far as I could—and when I collapsed it was in this village."
He shrugged. "There's your beginning. You can make more of yourself. You already started, by coming here. Even before that! Perhaps your father's actions made you a beggar and an orphan, but it was by your own ingenuity and will that you survived. It was by your own passion and determination that you found someone to teach you swordplay."
He shook his head, and his words came out heavy. "Your whole life you have worked to forge your own path despite your beginnings. And now I am offering you one way to finish that path. You can choose your own road—make your own, if you have to—and end up where you want to be, not where your strength fails you."
Again silence. Finally I asked the question, "Old man, why have you come here tonight?"
"I came for you."
"The soldier said the same."
"I came to give you a new life, Daven. To offer you choices and hope and, if you so desire, all the honor this kingdom has to offer."
I stopped despite myself. Honor. Just the word made my hands clench into fists, but the offer was too much to believe. I regarded him with narrow eyes. "How?"
"From all directions, in the darkness, a great terror approaches this world." He looked at me for a moment, reflected starlight blazing in his eyes, then took a step back and continued along the path. I followed.
"That is not an answer."
He sighed. "I mean to fight the terror, and I would make a weapon of you."
"Why would you choose me, though?"
He shrugged. "You have the...very specific qualities that I need. And, to be frank, you have neither family nor any other obligation to stop you. And... the circumstances behind that were not entirely just. I would make what amends I can."
"No one owes me any amends."
"You are wrong," he said. "The king was wrong for what he did."
My breath caught in my throat and I found my head whipping left and right, looking for someone who might have overheard, but the wizard clucked with irritation.
"It would be dangerous," Claighan went on. "You would have to risk your life daily for the sake of your people—"
I waved aside that warning. "I have always wanted to be a soldier."
"I know." He nodded, his gaze locked to a spot just in front of his feet. "And they won't have you."
I felt a cold fist clench around my stomach and twist. I had to blink my eyes against the sudden pain. "They have taken on commoners before—"
"That was before," the wizard said. I could hear compassion in his voice, but he made the words hard. Definite. "The army is dwindling. Given the king's obsession with the Academy, I think soon the only military positions left will be decorative titles for pretty little lordlings."
I shook my head. "They need good workers to make the roads, to keep the peace."
The wizard shook his head. "The work can be done by hired hands," he said. "And order maintained by...." He sighed and nodded. "By the threat of swift justice."
I nodded, too, and turned my head away.
Sometime later I felt his hand on my shoulder. It was surprisingly light. Frail. "But you will be more than a soldier, boy. You will be an army. You will be a weapon."
I couldn't believe him. I had seen too much of the world to believe him. But I couldn't imagine why he was trying so hard to deceive me. "Why, though? Why would you give this opportunity to me?"
It took him a while to answer, and even when he did he seemed uncertain. "There are...costs to what I would put you through. Expenses too great to ask of a normal man. Of a happy man. I searched long and hard for someone like you, Daven, and when I finally heard of you it was like a blessing. Everything I have heard tells me you are the perfect child for my designs."
"Where did you hear of me? What did you hear?"
"In Chantire the rumors hang as heavy as the stench, you know. When I realized I had a need for an unhappy man, I went searching in those dark streets, and I heard of a lonely boy who somehow survived the slums. I asked questions about this child and learned he loved to practice with a toy sword, that some fire drove him to survive when others like him had given up, and most importantly that he rarely begged and never, never stole for his bread."
I chuckled darkly. "What's called stealing in the rest of the realm isn't always called stealing in Chantire."
"It matters not. The important thing was the determination, the self-reliance. I heard these beautiful rumors and then finally, at the very last, a drunken carriage driver casually mentioned that the boy had been gone for years. Gone without a trace. I searched the entire town for some sign of you, for a whisper of where you'd gone, but there was none. Then I made my first mistake: I asked the king to find you for me."
We walked on for several steps before the significance of that statement struck me. "The soldier? The Green Eagle?"
"He is one of Timmon's most able trackers, and the Justices have employed him before to bring in vagabonds. I do not know whether I failed to make clear the nature of my need for you or his own pride overwhelmed him, but he was never sent to threaten you."
"Why did you come, then? If you sent him for me, why didn't you just wait?"
"I did not send him, the king did. I would never have chosen a Tiran for Academy business. No, while Othin began searching for you across the Isle, I searched in my own way. Time and need drove me farther than I would have wished to go, but with my magics I finally found you just days ago, and I hastened here as soon as I knew."
"You came just in time." I thought of the soldier frozen on the hilltop, thought how close he'd come to killing me. "You saved me. If you had taken a day longer in your search, if your horse had stumbled along the way and delayed you an hour...."
He laid a calming hand on my shoulder. "My need was great enough to save, even if fate had not been."
"And now I am found, what will you do with me?" I swallowed, and chanced a look in his direction. "What are these costs I must pay?"
"You must leave, again, and perhaps forever. You must take on a new life and become something completely new." He hesitated, then said reluctantly, "Even with the support I can provide, you may have to survive in a place that does not welcome you, perhaps a place where you have no friends."
"I can do all those things. They are no cost to me."
He smiled, a secret and knowing smile visible now in the light from the village. "That is why I have come so far, my boy. Now lead me to your home that we may be on our way."
Our path led directly to the green at the center of town, six torches blazing in the night to light the common yard and the merchants' shops all around it. Ignoring the cobbled walk that surrounded the green, I cut across the thick grass toward the north, leading the old man quickly through and out of the village. An old road turned to the east, the King's Way, but we followed a newer one north. We came upon a low stone wall that ran beside the road in perfect regularity, and then upon a gate where a steward waited in the evening chill.
"Hey there, Daven. You bring a guest tonight?"
I nodded to old Wen. "He's from the City."
The old man stepped in front of me, suddenly tall and proud, and looked down his nose at the stooped steward. "Please inform your master that the Master Wizard Claighan has come from the Academy at Pollix to speak with him." Wen stood in awe for a moment before ducking in a clumsy bow and clutching at his hat.
"I will inform him right away, sir. Please, come in." He opened the gate and then stepped aside, bowing the wizard through. "Will you have dinner, sir? I believe there is still time to set another place."
Claighan nodded, "Yes, please arrange a plate for me. Run ahead." He spoke the words with a casual air of command and Wen obeyed, darting up the path to the manor. The wizard followed at a more stately pace.
I bit my tongue. He had been kin
d to me, inexplicably so, but a wizard could demand respect from any lord in the king's lands. He certainly had the authority to talk down to a country steward. Still, he seemed to sense my disapproval, and he shot me a brief look. "I believe things will go better for us if we take things very seriously from here on out."
"What do you mean? Jemminor is a kind man. We won't have any problems with him."
"People behave differently when wizards are around." He caught my shoulder and I stopped, still some small distance from the house. An orange square of light fell across the marbled steps as Wen threw open the door. Claighan watched until the door was shut again. "I need to be certain you will follow me, Daven, before I speak to this man, but I fear I do not have time to explain everything to you. This I can say: I would take you to the Academy to learn wizardry with some of the nation's brightest young men, and with the full support of the king behind you. Would you give up your life here for that?"
"I already told you I would."
"So you did. So you did. Now tell me again."
I frowned and said, "I will."
Before I could say any more he cut me off, nodding. "Very well, word of my arrival should have reached your master by now." I started to step off the path, but he caught my arm. "No Daven, tonight you enter by the front door. Come."
We walked to the end of the path and up three short steps, where Wen stood once more waiting for us. He threw the door open then slammed it shut when we were through. I grimaced at the stain my muddy boots left on the thick carpet in the entrance. The air in the manor was warm after the night chill, and the smell of roasting lamb roused my empty stomach. We stood alone in the hall.
After a moment's wait the sound of heavy, hurried footsteps preceded Jemminor into the little foyer. The look on his face was terrible, foreign. His eyes shone with suspicion, his lips pursed in anger. He stood at the end of the hall, looming over us both and glaring from under his brows. He jabbed a finger at the wizard. "You are Claighan?"
