The Book of Magic: Part 2. Группа авторов

of skill, or the more serious in a formal conclave of elders from all three villages. Twice in the last hundred years the obelisk had been the site of full-scale battles between Gamel and Thrake against Seyam, and then Gamel and Seyam against Thrake.

      Every spring, the ploughs would stop well short of the Corner Post, for fear of disturbing the bones of some bygone relative or enemy. In consequence, a small copse of undistinguished trees and shrubs grew around the obelisk, dominated by a single, tall rowan tree, often remarked on, for there were no other rowans for leagues around, and no one living knew how it had come to be planted there.

      Small children played under the rowan in the early morning, evading their chores, and lovers met there for trysts in the early evening. No one went near stone and copse by dead of night, because of the bones, and the stories that were told of what might rise there, or perhaps be drawn there, come midnight.

      So it was three children under five who discovered a curious change in the stone, just after the sun had risen high enough to glance off the bronze ferrule on the foot of a staff, and there was sufficient light to see that the rest of the dark bog-oak length was impossibly embedded in the stone.

      The visible end of the staff was high above the reach of the tallest child, which was just as well, for they were too young to be properly afraid of such a thing. In fact, after attempting to stand on each other’s shoulders in a vain effort to reach it, they forgot all about the staff until the very youngest was bringing water to the sweating harvest-time reapers working toward the narrowest point of the Thrake common. Seeing the Corner Post again, the little girl wondered aloud why there was a big black stick stuck in it, like a skewer through a cooking rabbit.

      Her father went to look, and came back even sweatier and more out of breath than he had been from his work. The word spread quickly from field to barn to village, and no more than an hour later, made its way to the cool, green-lit forest home of the nearest approximation to a wizard for fifty leagues or more, since the woman purported to be one in the nearest town of Sandrem had been unmasked as a charlatan several months before.

      The forest house had once been a minor royal hunting lodge, in the time of the kings and queens, before the plague and the rise of the Grand Mayors. Octagonal in shape, it was built around the bole of one of the giant redwoods, some twenty feet above the forest floor. A broad stair had led up to it once, but long ago that had fallen or been intentionally destroyed, its remnants now a tumulus of rotten timber, overgrown with ferns and fungus. A ladder, easily drawn up in case of peril, had replaced it.

      The current inhabitant of the lodge was hanging pheasants in his cool room, an oak-shingled hut built between the roots of a neighboring giant redwood some sixty paces from the house. He felt the news arriving before he heard those bringing it, or at least he sensed there were excited people coming down the forest path. Usually this meant somebody was badly hurt and needed his aid, so he strung up the last three pheasants very swiftly and climbed out, leaving the birds swinging on their hooks. He did pause to close and slide the great bolt across the door, for it was not only mere foxes that fancied hanging game. The Rannachin loved pheasant, and they could open doors that weren’t secured with cold iron.

      The pheasant-hanger’s name was Colrean, or at least it was now. He was under thirty years old, but only just, and looked older, because he had spent the last decade mostly at sea, and then more recently in the forest and the fields, under the sky. Sun, salt water, and wind had worked to make his face more interesting. He had a lean, competent look about him, his eyes were dark and quick, and he walked with a noticeable limp, legacy of some unexplained wound or injury.

      Colrean had come to the lodge some twenty months before, in midwinter, riding one mule and followed by two others, all of them heavily laden. Tying these up at the old iron hitching post near the ladder, he had by means unknown dispossessed the Rannachin, who had thought to make the lodge a cozy winter lair. Then he had nailed a parchment with a great lead seal to one of the more outstanding roots of the great tree. According to those few folk among the villagers who could read, this was a deed from the Grand Mayor of Pran, granting the new arrival the lodge; hunting rights in the forest and certain other perquisites relating to tolls on the forest road; tithes on fishing or eel-trapping in the river Undrana that passed nearby; a threepenny fee for cattle watering at the wide Undrana ford; and other minor items of tallage.

      He had never attempted to enforce any of these imposts, which was fortunate, given that the people of the three villages were by no means convinced that Pran had any authority whatsoever in their purlieu, no matter what the last queen of Pranallis and her vassal the long-gone baron of Gamel, Thrake, and Seyam might have held to be their own.

      Colrean had shown his wisdom in matters of friendly relations with the local inhabitants very early, by giving each of the three villages one of his mules within days of his arrival, limping along through snow and ice to do so. Though he carried no staff nor wore a sorcerer’s ring, he was at once suspected of being some kind of magic-worker, for he spoke to the mules and they obeyed, and the village dogs didn’t bark and slather at his approach, but came and bent their heads before him, and wagged their tails and offered their bellies to be scratched. Which he did, indicating kindness as well as magic.

      The villagers tried to find out exactly what kind of magic-worker he was, but he would not speak of it. They first knew he definitely was one when Fingal the Miller’s hand was crushed in his own stone, and Colrean came unbidden to cut away the dangling fingers and then, with a cold flame conjured in his own hands, cauterized the wound, so that no blood sickness came. Fingal Seven Fingers was only the first of Colrean’s patients, and he even deigned to help the midwives at difficult birthings, which the villagers knew marked him as no wizard. Wizards were grand beings, and lived in the cities, and were not to be found at village birthings.

      The news-bearers who came running to be first to tell Colrean about the staff were Sommie and Heln. They were frequent visitors, inseparable friends, serious-minded, both eleven years old. Sommie was the seventh daughter of the midwife of Gamel and her weaver husband; Heln was the fifth son of the innkeepers of the only inn for leagues, the Silver Gull at the Seyam crossroad. Colrean knew them well, for once a week he taught children (and some grown folk) who wished to learn their letters, taking slates and hornbook to each village meeting hall in turn. Sommie and Heln were among his keenest pupils, following him from village to village and always pestering him for extra classes or books they might borrow.

      “There’s a stick stuck in the Corner Post!” shouted Sommie when she was still a good dozen yards away.

      “Not just a stick!” cried out Heln breathlessly, skidding to a stop in the leaf mulch of the forest path. “A staff! Like a scythe handle, only it’s dark wood and has a metal bit on the end.”

      Colrean stopped in midstep, as always a little clumsily, and lifted his head, sniffing at the breeze. The children watched as he slowly turned about, nose twitching. When he completed his circle, he looked down at the two dirty, excited faces staring up at him.

      “A staff in the stone, you say? And you’ve seen it yourselves?”

      “Yes, of course! We looked and then came straight here. Why are you sniffing?”

      “You’re not playing some trick on me?” asked Colrean. He had sensed nothing on the air, no magic stirring. The Corner Post was less than half a league away, and he felt sure he would have felt something …

      “No! It’s there! This morning, from nowhere. The little ones saw it. Why were you sniffing?”

      “Oh, just smelling what scents are on the air,” said Colrean absently. “I’d better have a look. Has anyone touched this staff?”

      “No! Old Haxon said no one was to go near, and you were to be fetched, I mean asked to come. Ma’s coming to tell you, but we ran ahead.”

      Ma was Sommie’s mother, the midwife Wendrel. She had some small magic herself, combined with considerable herb-lore and a little book-learning. Knowing more about such things than the younger folk, she could barely conceal her fear as she puffed up after the children.

      “It is a wizard’s staff,” she panted out, after a bare nod of greeting.