Veneficus: Stones of the Chosen (6 page)

As they neared the vanquished but unbowed Briton king, the white wolf, already edgy due to the strong smells of fresh battlefield blood all around, began to whine and bare its dripping fangs again.

Elelendise walked up to Oswald and stared straight into his bloodied face for a long while.

“Yes, my lord,” she said quietly. “Remove his heathen head from his shoulders and set it on that hill over there so that his dead eyes look toward the north in perpetual homage to your rule. I will place a flock of rooks there as guardians who will peck out all the flesh of his rancid skull except the eyes. Their unseeing setting will also serve as a reminder to anyone who would be blind enough to usurp or challenge your Saxon rule.”

Oswald slowly lifted his bloodied head, met her gaze coolly, and nodded.

“Then my dead eyes will look upon your demise, sorceress, and your rooks will perish from the poison in my flesh brought about by my hatred of Saxons and the lowly stargazers who would assist them under the guise of an alien god.”

The huge white wolf snarled and crouched as if to spring at the throat of the proud king.

“It’s all right, Lupa,” soothed Elelendise, stroking the rough white fur on its neck before turning back to Oswald. “Have a care, idolater, and cling to your baubles while you still have life in your heathen fingers. Your anti-Christ existence is of no mind to us. It is a wasteland of defeated indifference.”

“There is a peaceful place awaiting my soul, a place where we will not meet,” Oswald said simply before putting his chin on his breastplate, signaling he had nothing more to say.

Penda waved a mailed hand at the guards. “Remove his head and follow my counselor’s instructions,” he ordered imperiously.

As the guards marched the doomed Oswald away, Penda turned to Elelendise. “My inclination is to continue onward to the realm of Wessex and wipe forever the pagan scourge of the Celts from these lands. What say you, veneficus?”

The beautiful Elelendise, counselor to the Court of King Penda, holder of the northern venefical enchantments, adored liege-lord of the wolves, and fresh from the teachings of the mighty northern magus Mael, whom she had succeeded when he had reached his century just over one year ago, pondered the question she had long known was coming.

“The excitement of victory is still strong within us, my lord, and, welcome as it is, it must not be allowed to lead us into uncharted territory. I would counsel caution and a much-needed rest for your army before we proceed.”

“You have been to Wessex?” the king asked.

“Once, one year ago, soon after I succeeded Mael. My prophecies pointed me toward it as a possible future campaign.”

“What are the dangers?”

“There are no armies to speak of now, no known leader under whom they would unite. The realm has been riven by internecine battles for a number of years: Britons, Angles, Jutes, and Celts. Mainly local warlords flexing their muscles, small factions struggling for local domination, settlement versus settlement, family against family. I do not foresee a battlefield like this one, only local skirmishes and inexpert ambush.”

“Excellent, then we march on to Wessex in the morning,” King Penda exclaimed, slapping a mailed glove to his thigh and causing the settled white wolf to start instantly to his feet, ready to protect his mistress.

“Steady, Lupa.” Elelendise again soothed the twitchy animal with a gentle hand before addressing the king.

“My lord, I did perceive one problem during my visit to Wessex that should be addressed before we set out.”

“What is it?”

Elelendise paused momentarily before continuing.

“There is a resident veneficus of some repute of whom you have heard. Although he is getting near the end of his term and has forsaken all forms of warfare, he has been a mighty force in the battles and enchanted history of those lands.”

“You refer to the legendary Merlin?” Penda frowned.

“Yes,” replied Elelendise. “Known as the long magus because of his great height.”

“Why has he forsaken all forms of warfare?”

“When, fifty years ago, he was the famed counselor to King Arthur of Camelot
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who, as you know, was a relative of Oswald, whom we have defeated here today
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Merlin became disillusioned with the perpetuation of continuous killing in the name of war.”

“But legend has it that Arthur only embarked upon a campaign when the prophecies of Merlin so declared it,” said Penda with a furrowed brow.

“That is so, my lord. The Grail King fought twelve successive battles on the advice of Merlin, but somewhere along that bloodthirsty trail the long magus had a change of heart and began to turn away from warfare.”

Penda looked at her carefully. “I hope that you are not likely to have such a change of heart. Our Saxon cause needs your prophecies undivided by any considerations of pity or vulgarian subversion.”

Elelendise smiled. “Worry not, my lord. All the astoundments at my command are in your service for as long as you need them. Have I not demonstrated my complete loyalty to your Saxon Christian cause?”

“You have, particularly here on this field of battle. Tell me, does Merlin have the power or the will left to disrupt our invasion of Wessex?”

She thought for a while. “I think not. He is old and weary, although he will probably be teaching a replacement who could have a different view on the matter.”

“What do you suggest?” asked the Saxon king.

Elelendise caressed the long, coarse white fur on Lupa’s neck, causing the wolf to whine and push against her hand in pleasure.

“Lupa and I will go there and entreat forcibly with him. Goad and push at his aged venefical pride to see if there is anything left that would cause him to use the enchantments to impede our progress.”

“And if he does?”

“We will ensure his immediate incarceration under his destiny stone.”

“You have the power to extinguish the mighty Merlin’s flame?” asked Penda with incredulity.

“I have the power to extinguish the inferno of Hades itself,” she replied softly.

“And his venefical replacement?”

“When I was there one year ago he did not have one. If he has one now he has not had the time to pass on anything of consequence. The replacement will be a novice in the enchantments
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one year is not enough. I sat at the feet of Mael for fifteen years in order to learn how to command the phenomena of great sorcery.”

Penda pondered for a moment.

“Then go and goad the long magus. We will rest here until your return. If you are not back within three days we will begin the march toward Wessex. In the meantime,” he turned to his equerry, “send a strongly armed detail to the north for my wife and daughter. I have need of their company, and they shall join us in Wessex.”

“Immediately, my lord.” The equerry hurried away to carry out the order.

As Elelendise strode purposefully through the still-warm blood of the battlefield with the ever-vigilant Lupa locked to her side, a flock of silent night-black rooks swooped low over the bloody battlefield and landed on the top of the nearby hill. A broadsword flashed in the still morning air of the Marches, and the severed head of the former King Oswald thudded to the ground in preparation for its hilltop vigil.

When each one of the many millions of cowerers died, they died badly. Whimpering, roaring, or mute, whatever their final state, they all died locked in the craven grip of a dread that had accompanied them throughout their lives. That is the lot of the cowerer. Every cringing thought revolved around the terror of ultimate death. No matter what they did throughout their abject lives, the finality of death lurked behind every action, every moment, an ever-present mare waiting to snatch them into the beckoning maw of its black embrace. Recognizing the inevitability of that embrace and their stomach-churning susceptibility to its remorseless inevitability, many of them took their own trembling lives.

Which took a certain kind of courage.

Wither the cowerer then?

Merlin sat quietly on the side of the boy’s straw bed and watched the rise and fall of his thin young chest and listened to the hush of his breath as he slept. Occasional incoherent mutterings broke from Twilight’s lips as the fantastic events of the previous two days played across his subconscious. The old wizard’s face softened, and he reached out his long, bony fingers and gently stroked the dark hair that partly covered the sleeping face. It was a tremendous burden to be placed upon one so young, so vulnerable, yet there was an inner strength in that thin body and a quick mind behind those dark, Cimmerian eyes that belied his age. Were seven years enough to accomplish all that needed to be done? Could the complexity of the enchantments and their enactment be learned to the point where they could be applied correctly? Would the raging mists accept a mere stripling at their Equinoctial Festival of the Dead?

He sighed deeply, got up from the boy’s bed, and walked to the door of the small dwelling house situated in the center of the compound. Looking out, he nodded and began to smile.

Another big question had just been answered.

Turning back to the bed he saw Twilight’s dark eyes were wide open and fixed upon him.

“Good morning, skirmisher. I trust you slept well.”

“I felt your hand,” said Twilight. “It was gentle, yet spoke of doubt.”

“Ahhh.” The old wizard’s eyes flashed. “That was before I looked outside and saw what awaits you in the twilight glow of the dawn
. Ad tempus
, my monochrome-viewing little friend, has arrived.”

The boy sat bolt upright. “My ligamen!” he shouted excitedly. “My ligamen are here!”

He leapt from his straw bed and ran to the door … and stopped dead, stunned by the sight that greeted his black-andwhite vision.

Row upon row of black and white.

“Pica,” Merlin breathed in his ear. “You are the liege-lord of the entire population of the wondrously inventive pica … otherwise known by the Celts as the magpie, the most proudly twinkling and capriciously intelligent, bauble-loving blatherskites of all the wild birds.”

On every available place around the compound, festooned along the tops of the stockade fence, crowded onto the straw roofs of the two simple dwelling houses, along fallen logs used as seats, and on every available branch in the surrounding trees perched thousands of beautiful, silent, glossy black-and-white fan-tailed birds. Every one of their glinting, dark brown eyes was fixed upon the doorway that now held Merlin and Twilight, every sharp black beak pointed in proud homage toward the ground.

“Pica,” Twilight whispered in awe.

Raising his hands toward them Twilight stepped from the doorway and turned in a circle to include the entire multitude of birds in his salute. As he did so all the birds began to hop from one foot to the other and to flutter and fan their long tails and wings. Finally the massed rows settled down.

“Oh Merlin, they are magnificent,” he whispered. “What should I do now?”

“Nothing … just wait for a few moments,” came the quiet reply. “They will have selected leaders, and they will be gathering all their courage for the right moment to present themselves to you. Remember, pica mate for life and are never far apart from each other.”

Twilight thought of the many times he had observed the magpie pairs from his settlement, their bright-eyed, natural wariness of humans always ensuring that they kept a safe distance from him. He had become the same with his fellow man, especially after he had given up speech and had become steadily more isolated from the daily life of the settlement. Most of his time was spent alone in hidden hollows and copse, closely observing the seasonal movements and changes of nature and animals and living in his own head. The other settlement boys around his age, when not taunting him, kept out of his way, especially after the dwelling house affair.

The largest building in the Malmesbury settlement was known as the dwelling house, an open structure in the center of all the other dwellings and in which all communal life took place. It was a circular building with a pitched reed roof interwoven through strong willow boughs with eight sturdy oak posts to support it. The settlement elders met there regularly to discuss communal matters and collect the geld; the crops and harvest was sold there; village women gathered there to weave their rough tunics and to chatter, and it was used for hand-fasting ceremonies, proclamations, feast day celebrations, and anything else requiring an assembly of the inhabitants. One quiet summer afternoon Will was sitting in a shady spot under a beech tree on the edge of the settlement, when he was suddenly hit by a barrage of hard acorns. A group of five giggling settlement boys aged from seven to ten stepped from behind an oak tree nearby and sauntered off, still firing at him spasmodically using their crude, jute-stringed slings, a favorite and easily mastered weapon. Wearying of the sport
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baiting and firing at Will was a common pastime of theirs and one to which he never retaliated
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they took to chasing each other in and around the sturdy poles of the dwelling house.

Ruefully rubbing the stinging spots where the acorns had peppered his body, Will found himself wishing that something ill would happen to them to teach them a lesson. Something