The Book of Magic: Part 2. Группа авторов

      “I want … I need to stay here. I cannot live in the city, any city. I do not wish to serve the Grand Mayors, I do not desire gold and servants and all that goes with such things. I want to do small magics, for ordinary folk, and be at peace. I have found … happiness … here. I will not relinquish it.”

      “We permit no unbound wizards in Pran, or Huyere, or the five cities, and those who defy this order end as Naramala has done,” mused Verashe, apparently to herself. She paused and glanced across at Colrean. “Here, among barley fields and forest, the strictures are less … straitened … shall we say. And the rowan is a fine judge of what truly lies inside the hearts of people …”

      She stopped talking again, and bowed her head to the tree again, her face now shadowed by her hat. Colrean watched her, wondering, hoping.

      “So, Colrean. I have decided to let you live. But if you will not be bound by the oath, other bindings must be applied, other bounds set. You must swear by the rowan you will abide here, to never go more than twenty leagues from the Corner Post, without leave from the Grand Wizard and the Council.”

      Colrean nodded stiffly, and reached inside his jerkin for the silver leaf the rowan had given him, a token of its trust. He held it in his hand and spoke.

      “I swear by the rowan, I shall abide here, and go no farther than twenty leagues from the Corner Post, without leave from the Grand Wizard and the Council.”

      The leaf shivered and crumbled, leaving only the delicate tracery of its veins behind, and these sank into Colrean’s palm, marking the skin with russet and silver lines. If he broke this oath, the ancient rowan would know, and hold him accountable.

      Colrean shivered, remembering the sounds of Naramala’s death.

      “Good,” said Verashe. She held Naramala’s staff out to him. “You will need this, I think, to help you hobble to the closest house, where I trust we can have an early breakfast.”

      Colrean took the staff wonderingly, and slowly used it to lever himself upright. He could feel the vestige of magic within the bog-oak and the bands of gold, but the staff’s power was almost entirely spent. It would take many years to fill again.

      “Naramala?” he asked, looking at the body.

      “The Rannachin would also break their fast,” answered Verashe, gesturing.

      Colrean looked across the barley and saw the moon shadows there. He frowned, but only for a moment. He had no strength to dig a grave or build a cairn, and in truth, it was better nothing should remain of a wizard who had practiced blood magic. The Rannachin were known to eat even bones and teeth, and they would take no scathe from any remnant magic, as a rat or other scavenger might.

      “Come!” said Verashe impatiently. “I have been fasting within the stone since the last dawn, and I am too old to miss another meal!”

      “We cannot go to the closest house,” said Colrean. “Two wizards in Gamel, and none calling into Seyam and Thrake? Besides, they won’t let us in until after dawn. I warned them not to admit anyone, and they would rightly be afraid. It is farther, but I have food and drink in my forest house.”

      He limped past the Grand Wizard, pausing to bow once again to the rowan, leaning heavily on his new staff. A few paces along he bowed to the Corner Post as well, and turned his head back to Verashe.

      “My question remains … how exactly did you inhabit the stone? What spell could overcome such power as resides there?”

      Verashe laughed. She did not have a lovely voice like Naramala’s, and her laugh was like a crow’s call. But Colrean did not mind, for it was human.

      “You have a true wizard’s curiosity,” she said. “But no spell would let you dwell within this stone. It was a matter of friendship, a courtesy allowed me. We have known each other a very long time, the Corner Post and I.”

      Colrean nodded thoughtfully and set forth again, stumping alongside the wall. It was much darker now, half the sky clouded, and it was starting to rain. A soft drizzle that spread the soot about his face and streaked his clothes, rather than washing anything clean.

      I will need a hat he thought, surprising himself that he could think of any such ordinary thing amidst pain and grief and weariness. But he could, and he was glad of it, and he grabbed at the thought as he might a lifeline aboard one of the Islanders’ ships.

       I will need a hat to go with the staff. The villagers, particularly Sommie and Heln, will expect me to fully look the part, and it will keep the rain off. I suppose the brim from Gamel, the body from Thrake, the tip from Seyam—or the other way about …

       Elizabeth Bear

      Everyone knows that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery—but it can also be the most dangerous, especially when magic is involved.

      Elizabeth Bear was born in Connecticut, and now lives in South Hadley, Massachusetts, with her husband, writer Scott Lynch. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2005, and in 2008 took home a Hugo Award for her short story “Tideline,” which also won her the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (shared with David Moles). In 2009, she won another Hugo Award for her novelette “Shoggoths in Bloom.” Her short work has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Subterranean, Sci Fiction, Interzone, The Third Alternative, Strange Horizons, On Spec, and elsewhere, and has been collected in The Chains That You Refuse and Shoggoths in Bloom. She is the author of the fivevolume New Amsterdam fantasy series, the three-volume Jenny Casey SF series, the five-volume Promethean Age series, the three-volume Jacob’s Ladder series, the three-volume Edda of Burdens series, and the three-volume Eternal Sky series, as well as three novels in collaboration with Sarah Monette. Her other books include the novels Carnival and Undertow. Her most recent book is an acclaimed new novel, The Stone in the Skull.