Veneficus: Stones of the Chosen (4 page)

The boy’s dark eyes glowed with the wonder that he was part of such an august lineage.

“Idris was the son of a Celtic thane and not given to any flights of great fancy. He accepted his gifts as tools for the betterment of mankind and traveled among them, mostly in ragged beggary, doing all he could for the poor and the downtrodden. He never settled anywhere until he began to pass on the enchantments in later age to the Elder Pendragon. Then he took up residence in what had been his father’s house in Caerleon and stayed there until his one hundred years were up. As for my mentor and teacher, the Elder Pendragon himself, he was born a royal king. His father was Uther Pendragon, a name that means ‘Head Dragon,’ and he was the spiritual leader and outright ruler of the Welsh tribes. Recognizing his gifts rather late, in mid-life, the Elder Pendragon did not take up his rightful place as king when his father died in battle, but instead took his wife and two small sons to Caerleon to sit at the feet of Idris. His reasoning was that he could accomplish far more for his people as a veneficus than he ever could leading them into one battle after another as the regional warlords of Prydein, Mercia, Deira, and Wessex fought for supremacy. Leaderless for twenty years while the Elder Pendragon learned and honed his venefical enchantments, the kingdom of Wales was soon torn apart by tyranny and the imperial evils of claimed succession that, paradoxically, the Elder Pendragon could never subdue with his learned enchantments. There are lessons to be learned there. In the end, the reclamation of the kingdom for the house of Pendragon passed through his two sons and fell to his grandson.”

“Who was that?” said Twilight, sensing something special.

The old wizard’s emerald eyes flashed a particular image of a tall, strong young man wearing a breastplate, a glinting raised sword in his left hand and a shield in his right.

“Arthur Pendragon. He who became the mighty King Arthur. The head of the court of Camelot, rightful holder of Excalibur, the mighty sword of freedom, the leader of the Grail Knights, founder of the Round Table, husband of Guinevere and defender of the lands of the Celts, and one to whom I pledged my total support as counselor. Only to later realize that I had been well and truly mistaken.”

The old wizard fell silent as his bright eyes filled with sadness and swam with distant memories. Then he spoke again in a quiet voice.

“I did not learn well enough the lesson of the Elder Pendragon’s futile attempts to subdue internecine warfare through the use of enchantments. War is a floodplain that ebbs and flows with a constancy that will never allow it to dry up. The desire to conquer and dominate others is an infamy engraved upon the soul of all races. As fast as one quarrel is settled, another springs up and ten others are being plotted. Wars will always date history for humans, the great battles echoing down the bardic pages of time until mankind finally extinguishes himself. Peace is, and always will be, merely a name. That is why our powers are imperfect and incomplete because we cannot stop man’s will to dominate other men. Only the universal ownership of the absolute truth will ever stop warfare, and that, I fear, is an impossibility.”

I feel your pain.
Twilight intruded gently into Merlin’s mind after a long silence.
It becomes my pain as well.

Do not take on my pain. You will soon have enough of your own to manage.

You spoke last night of a people called ‘cowerers.’ I sense more pain there. Is it the time for us to speak of them?

Not yet, but you are right about the pain - it accompanies them everywhere. When the season of the equinoctial mist comes, we will do more than speak of the cowerers. We must go among them.

Must?

Oh yes, that is the only matter about which we have no choice, absolutely no choice at all.

Why?

Because the survival of our species could depend upon it. Indeed, it could also provide the ultimate answer to your earlier question as to why we are here. Only venefici can confer with the cowerers.

When will I have to assume that responsibility?

In seven years’ time when you take it over from me.

Is it a big responsibility?

Only if you allow it to become so. Part of my job is to teach you otherwise.

“Let us take a walk through the forest,” said the old wizard, standing up. “See if we can find that festering old deviant Bovey and his false dragon. I’ve a mind to have a little sport with the old fool.”

“I thought you said the temptations for personal benefit must be resisted,” said the former Will Timms, impishly skipping along beside him.

“You learn too well, skirmisher,” Merlin said in a mock grumble. “But don’t forget what the ancient Greeks said.”

“What, how the ideas of space, time, matter, and motion were proved to be contradictory and imaginary, and that nothing was, or was known, or could be spoken?” Twilight had screwed his eyes shut as he recalled Merlin’s words. “Surely you’re not using that as the basis for a little personal sport?”

“Oh, yes I am,” said the old wizard with the twinkle back in his eye. “What’s the point of being a master sorcerer if I can’t indulge in a little selfish manipulation of matter?”

As they started to stroll gently along the Savernake’s perimeter, the old wizard stopped, called Twilight closer, and gently touched both sides of his forehead.

“For the next few days you will see everything as black or white. Nothing will be gray or colored. This will teach you to decipher complicated situations by filtering out the many incidentals and images that will seek to obscure the fundamental truths. By removing the shades and colors we can strip a matter down to its barest bones and uncover its carefully encoded secrets. It is a useful facility, especially when your wise counsel has been requested to rule on a complicated issue involving many diverse people and opinions, all of whom will swear an oath that they are telling the rigid truth and that theirs is the just cause.”

Twilight blinked, looked around, and then smiled. “Is everything black in the darkfall of night? If so, will I be unable to see anything?”

“Only if it is a genuine darkfall brought on by the onset of genuine night. If it isn’t genuine it will show as shades of gray, depending upon the depth of the deception. That is how you distinguish dewfall from false dawn, rising phoenix from ghoulish specter, infidel from friend.”

A small falcon swooped from the sky and landed on a bough close to Merlin’s head. Stretching one barbed talon purposefully in his direction, it fluffed up its yellow neck-feathers, lifted its small, beautifully formed head until its bright, filmic yellow eyes appeared to be looking down its sharp, curved beak, and uttered a single piercing shriek. Out went the barbed talon again; then with a barely audible wing-beat it was gone, a yellow and brown blur against the forest backdrop before the briefest of wing movements took it into a steep climb above the tree-line, and it was out of sight.

Merlin looked at Twilight and raised his great bushy eyebrows. “And what did you make of that, my little skirmisher, eh?”

Twilight thought for a moment. “The words that come to mind are ‘homage,’ ‘rank,’ and ‘message,’” he said reflectively.

“Continue.” The long magus nodded.

“The talon outstretched toward you was some sort of homage, a greeting, repeated again when it departed. The fluffed-up plumage some sort of badge of rank, and the shriek was a message to you. I have seen these small hawks before, but only at a distance, for they are very fast in flight and secretive in manner. The plumage is of a golden color matched by the eyes.”

“Good, very good,” said the old wizard, pleased at his pupil’s obvious awareness. “You are correct about the message, for that was Phi, a full-grown male Merlin falcon. Phi is the alpha male or head Merlin hawk around these parts. All the Merlins in Wessex are
in ligamen
to me as their namesake …”

“
In ligamen
… that is Latin?” interrupted Twilight.

“It means ‘allegiance.’ I am their liege-lord. The outstretched talon is the equivalent of a bow or salutation.”

Twilight’s luminous dark eyes opened wide at the wonder of such a thing.

“How many of them are there in Wessex?” he asked breathlessly.

“One hundred and forty-five free pairs and fifty in captivity. This bird is greatly prized by falconers for its speed and ability to catch small game.”

“Why don’t you release the fifty in captivity?”

“Because they do not want to be released. They can release themselves every day if they wish. They are flown freely. No falconer would keep, could keep, a Merlin against its will. They are happy living that way.”

“But if you needed them?”

“They would come immediately with a pair always close by in case of an emergency.”

Twilight went quiet for a moment. He hardly dared ask the question that was burning in his mind. “Do I have any creatures in ligamen to me?”

“Yesterday, when we met for the first time, I told you there was another reason for calling you Twilight and that
ad tem-pus
- when the time was right - all would be revealed.”

“Yes, yes,” cried the boy excitedly.

“Well, the time isn’t right just yet,” the old wizard said flatly, walking on, leaving the boy crestfallen and looking at the ground near to tears. “And patience, my dear Twilight, is a prime virtue that a veneficus must learn to accommodate, especially when you have eighty-seven years left in which to bring your enchantments to bear on the situations around you. Always remember that time is your greatest companion. Given enough time almost anyone can accomplish almost anything. Understanding that is another simple fact that differentiates us from ordinary folk. Don’t rush anything. Consider every move very carefully, for not only is almost everything possible given the time, the consequences of getting it wrong can be catastrophic. Always take the time to think things through. The longer you ponder a problem, the less chance there is of getting it wrong.”

He stopped and turned back to face the boy, who was sullenly scuffing the dead leaves with his foot. For all his embryonic gifts he was still only thirteen years old, a mere child imbued with all the mannerisms and temperamental immaturity of a stripling.

“But the time of your knowing what species are
in ligamen
to you will be soon, very soon,” Merlin called back softly.

“How soon?” The boy’s head came up expectantly.

“Oh, a day or two perhaps. Now back to Phi.”

The boy skipped up to the tall wizard’s side.

“Plumage,” he said, all disappointment instantly forgotten.

“As I said, Phi is the alpha male, the leader of the pack, and being, like all falcons, a vainglorious old tar bill, he constantly needs to demonstrate the importance of that fact to all and sundry, especially me. It’s his way of saying, ‘Look at me, I’m still the finest Merlin falcon in the land, and don’t you or anyone else forget it.’”

“And the message … it concerned the progress of my father?”

“It did. Phi is keeping an eye on him. He goes well and has not strayed from the path I gave him.”

They walked on for a while before Merlin stopped and placed his fingers to his lips, motioning the boy to silence. Walking carefully forward they picked up the sound of excited young voices punctured by the sounds of splashing. Where a clear chalk stream rounded a bend, some boys about Twilight’s age from the nearby settlement of Marlborough had hung a length of jute from an overhanging branch. Clinging to the jute rope and launching themselves from the high bank, they dropped squealing into the middle of the stream and splashed excitedly back to the bank to repeat the exercise.

With a grunt of disgust, Merlin pointed off to the right.

Bovey, with the head of his huge snake craned up from the grass, watched the frolicking boys from behind a large thorn bush. So engrossed were the pair that they were unaware Merlin and the boy were watching them.

The malodorous Bovey and his reptilian accomplice are getting ready to pull their despicable stunt again and frighten those boys.
Merlin’s message flashed into Twilight’s mind.
But this time it is the frightener who will be frightened.

What are you going to do?

The serpent-who-would-be-a-dragon shall become one.

Having checked over his head to ensure that the thick, heavy snake had a suitable branch upon which to rest, having coiled itself around his body in their macabre dance of terror, Bovey nodded toward his companion and raised one dirt-encrusted foot to step out from behind the bush and begin the charade.

Suddenly, a jet of orange flame shot out of the snake’s mouth and ignited the soiled hem of the hermit’s greasy old robe. With a cry of pain and panic, Bovey began to beat at the flames, then ran to the edge of the stream and jumped in to douse the fire that had quickly taken hold and had reached as far as his armpits. The snake’s head remained raised above the long grass in stupefaction at the jet of fire that had suddenly issued from its mouth.

Crawling up the bank, the bedraggled Bovey got to his feet. In the background the children continued uninterrupted to swing out over the water on their jute rope and drop with excited shrieks into the middle of the stream.