Veneficus: Stones of the Chosen (13 page)

Merlin stepped forward. “A thousand years ago the Romans laid siege to the city of Syracuse in a far-off land. Archimedes, an inventor and mathematician, was in the service of King Hieron II, the ruler of Syracuse. He invented a huge catapult for hurling rocks at the encircling enemy, and this was used to good effect during the long siege. But it is his other invention that intrigues me, one that is ideally suited for your use in our coming battles with the armies of Penda and the wolf-woman. Making full use of your natural skills as knowers of the progressions and habits of the earth, it involves the use of one of the most deadly, long-distance weapons available. Oh, and it’s small, bright, and very shiny, and every one of you will have one to keep …”

When the cowerers came to reside in the Charnel House of Tiresias they came only as tortured souls. Sinews no longer bound their flesh and bones together, and their spirit, rustling, had flittered away like a forgotten dream the moment they entered the raging otherworld.

The awesome shade cast by the lord Tiresias as he strode his charnel domain ensured a total silence. Only one time in the year was set aside for talking - the day of the Autumn Equinox - and only a select few cowering leaders were allowed to talk through the clinging mists at their Festival of the Dead.

It was the only outlet, the one chance they had of venting their incandescent rage in an otherwise silent year.

And, they could only do it to the resident veneficus.

It takes the green shoots of several seasons to hide the passing of such a belligerent mass. A marching army of the size led toward Wessex by King Penda devastates the places selected for their evening camp. Like a huge swarm of earth-stuck locusts, they stripped and flattened everything in their remorseless quest for a comfortable night. All the available wood was taken for their evening fires, crops for their food, and grazing for their horses. When they departed in the mornings they left behind a treeless swathe of land scarred by the presence of their huge camp, rancid with their makeshift latrines, leaves and plants crushed and spattered with spittle, and green valleys echoing to their livid northern banter. The only thing they were not allowed to touch during a march was the local women. That was a privilege reserved for the aftermath of victory. The mores of Saxon Christianity and this crusading king considered rape as a legitimate spoil of war that served as both an incentive and payment in kind for the effort of victory. Pagan women deserved all they got and, indeed, were better for the cleansing seed of his Christian violators.

The recent victories on the battlefield had given Penda’s army a confident swagger. Convinced of their invincibility, a position further enhanced by Elelendise’s assertion that they would not face any opposition of note, they marched on Wessex with the boldness and arrogance of the unbeaten.

At their head, mounted on a splendid white charger, his wolf-woman similarly mounted alongside him with her ever-present pale-eyed protector loping along almost under the hooves of her horse, Penda headed for the certain domination of Wessex and his destiny as ruler of the entire Britannica. Out wide in the gullies and forests of the rolling green sward, fierce packs of wolves whined and howled as they tracked the perimeter of the great army in answer to the call from their liege-lord. Joined by other packs as they moved through the country and nervous in the vicinity of so many humans, all previous fears were set aside when their fair-haired venefica called them to the cause. Cubs were left on the ground to die, fresh meat kills to rot, and carefully marked territories to other predators as they instantly turned in the direction of her call. By the time the twelve thousand soldiers approached the verdant rolling green downlands of Wessex they had been joined by over four hundred very dedicated wolves.

You must leave the hide and flee. There is very little time. A great army descends upon Wessex, an army that will kill all before it without mercy. It is counseled by a very dangerous wolf-woman who knows where you are and will harm you because of me. If my father will not go, then you must. Take my brothers and sisters and flee as fast as you can to the west. Go, my beloved mother … now.

Twilight’s mother, Leah, was perplexed when the message, obviously from Will and as clear as speech, flashed into her mind, but somehow she knew it was genuine. The voice, unheard for these past six years, could only be that of her special and precious eldest son. Sam had told her of his surprise when Will had begun to talk when they met Merlin, and although she had a particular bond with her first-born, they had never communicated like this before. It seemed that the wizard Merlin had already begun to impart his strange influences upon Will. Sitting alone in the darkened corner of their hovel, she attempted to form a reply.

“Is that you, Will? Is that really you?” Leah spoke to the empty air.

Instantly the reply came back into her mind.

Yes, my beloved mother, it is me. Did you understand my message?

“I did, but even before I ask him I know the answer. Sam will not believe me and will not allow us to leave the settlement. Oh, Will, my precious, what is to become of us?”

Do not worry. I will consult the long magus; he will think of something. We will be together again soon.

Leah had been right. Sam Timms did not believe her, and she had no way of convincing him that she wasn’t going mad with the suggestion that Wessex was about to be overrun by an invading army advised by a wolf-woman. She could not tell Sam that Will had spoken directly to her mind; he would beat her for double madness and have her condemned for witchery.

So they stayed.

And she prayed.

“Creativity and timing are the most important things in battle. Do things differently but with precision. It confuses the enemy.” Merlin looked down at Twilight from his great height and smiled conspiratorially. “And we certainly have at our disposal the greatest possible aid to creativity, do we not?”

“We do, but so does she,” said Twilight gloomily. “Her sorcery cancels out our sorcery, and then what are we left with? Two flocks of birds with some bright, shiny objects against a well-trained army of thousands helped by hundreds of fierce wolves.”

“Ahhh, the pessimism of untested youth. Armies are cumbersome, unwieldy masses constrained by their very numbers. You are also forgetting a couple of very important facts. First of all Elelendise is herself relatively untested in warfare, and secondly …”

“Wolves don’t have wings,” interrupted the boy.

“No, I wasn’t about to say that,” said Merlin.

“What secondly then?”

The deep emerald eyes glowed.

“Secondly, my doubting little skirmisher, is me. I am the legendary Merlin, an alpha spellbinder of the very finest creative and timing talents,” he said. Then with an airy wave of his long fingers he disappeared.

“Magus?” said the boy, looking around wildly. “Where are you?”

“I am here,” the voice of the long magus whispered in Twilight’s ear.

“And here,” it sang out from the treetops.

“And here, and here, and here,” it zipped around the compound with bewildering speed. “and here.”

Suddenly Merlin stood before the boy again.

Twilight frowned at the wizard. He was not impressed.

“You never moved. I could see the wavy lines of your aura in front of me all the time. Throwing your voice around the place is hardly sorcery.”

“Well done for recognizing my aura signature and the ruse, but remember this. Sorcery is only what you can get away with by using your wits and your speed of thought. How you arrive at your objective is irrelevant to the beholder. Anything out of the ordinary is sorcery to them. If you can’t get away with anything by using your wits, then call upon your enchantments to change the material structure of the situation.”

“Can you teach me to become invisible,” asked the boy, hardly daring to breathe at the very thought of it. Invisibility had been one of his great dreams ever since he’d been old enough to hold a sensible thought in his head.

“Of course. It’s elementary. What you might call boy sorcery.”

“When?” cried the boy excitedly. “When will I be able to just disappear from view?”

“Oh, let me see now.” The old astounder grinned. “You see the setting sun, that huge orange ball beginning to form over the tops of those beech trees over there?”

“Yes, yes, I see it.”

The long magus chuckled at his eagerness. “By the time it disappears from view, you will be able to do the same.”

Shortly after Twilight became, in his own mind, a true veneficus, Merlin taught him the rudimentary enchantment of unsight, the ability to simply render himself invisible. After a few successful attempts Twilight’s manner suddenly changed as he remembered his mother.

“In my eagerness and excitement I forgot to mention that I am faced by a big dilemma right now,” he said quietly.

“Oh?”

“My family, especially my mother. They are right in the path of the advancing army of Penda and its wolverine killers. They will be swept away by the tide of their violence with the rest of their settlement, and for the life of me I can’t think what to do.”

“Illustrates the point I was making earlier perfectly,” said the long magus smugly. He held his long fingers up to silence Twilight. “And before you start berating me for being an arrogant old
homo solitarius
, a recluse, who is only interested in proving a point, let me explain. You don’t know what to do because you have not met this type of situation before. You are untested in the machinations of its outcomes. It is the same with Elelendise in the matter of warfare. She has counseled on a couple of battles only, likely one-sided affairs at that. I, on the other hand, do know what to do because I have been tested many times in these matters and, in my own defense, not found wanting.”

“Does all that mean that you will do something to save my mother and family?” Twilight asked eagerly.

“I will do what I can,” said Merlin quietly. “Now, let’s address this accursed invasion.”

“Where do we start?”

“Simple. On the borders of the realm. With the creative use of our sorcery, precision timing, and the willing endeavors of our birds, we will endeavor to stop them from entering Wessex.”

Later, the Merlin falcon called Rho banked swiftly over the rolling crest of the most northerly hills of Wessex and alighted gently on the shoulder of the long magus. A series of quick screeches and he was gone.

“The beginning of the column is two hours away,” said Merlin, squinting at the late morning sun. “And no advance guard. The wolves remain on the flanks but will not head the column. This is exactly the formation we wanted. Are the pica in position?”

“Prepared and ready,” said Twilight.

“Good. Now, with whom do you suggest we start?” He beamed at the boy.

“With the wolf Lupa, for what he did to Bell,” said Twilight with feeling.

“Ahhh yes, of course. I thought you would say that. Now let me see if I can get this right. The fierce white wolf is to lose his head, isn’t he?”

“Yes, if you can arrange it?”

“I do believe we can.” Merlin smiled. “But first we must separate the Dog Star Sirius from the side of Orion. In other words get Lupa away from the side of Elelendise.”

The long column of northern soldiers meandered slowly over the dry summer hills, safe in the knowledge that they were invincible. About halfway back in the column, Caleb Bonner, at the head of his small cohort of ten longbow men, laughed and shared a joke with his companions at the complete lack of any opposition as they strolled unopposed in the Wessex sunshine.

Then two things happened almost simultaneously that dealt a severe blow to that invincibility. From his position approximately halfway down the column, Caleb Bonner suddenly fell to the ground screaming and beating at his hair … which had suddenly burst into flames. Turning her horse instantly, Elelendise started to gallop back down the column toward the noise. As she wheeled the horse, Lupa, lips already forming his most blood-curdling snarl and about to spin with her, had his pale gray eyes suddenly arrested by the sight of Twilight sitting on a tree stump in a small clearing of a copse on the opposite side of the column. For a split second he hesitated, caught between the great desire to always be by his adored liege-lord’s side, and the lure of a slashing attack upon someone he knew was one of her principal threats.

Then the issue was settled for him as Twilight suddenly smiled and beckoned. Like a shark in a blood sea, the instinct to kill overrode everything. The Dog Star Sirius was lured from the cosmic womb of Orion. Besides, he could be back by the side of his beloved Elelendise within seconds receiving praise for the deed, and the outlying wolves on this side would see just how devastating he, the highest placed of all wolves, could be when attacking the soft, yielding flesh of a mere boy. It would be a lesson to them on how to reduce a complete human being to nothing more than an inert, crimson assemblage of trailing guts, splintered bone, and disintegrated sinew. For good measure he might even eat it all afterward.

In a blur of ferocious, white-furred motion the death-crazed wolf bore down on Twilight, who just had time to get to his feet as its malignant virulence blurred toward him. Fangs dripping and already anticipating the great joy of feeling the young, warm boy-blood flooding over his jaws, Lupa launched himself at Twilight’s exposed white throat, knowing that the arm upraised in a vain attempt to fend him off would simply snap out of the way on impact.