Veneficus: Stones of the Chosen (2 page)

The two most remarkable things about Merlin were his great height and deep emerald eyes. Bareheaded and straight, despite his advanced years, and tall enough to see clearly over the back of an eighteen-hands horse, the mighty wizard paced and fretted around his compound, stroking his silver-streaked black beard and twining and untwining the thick, shoulder-length mane of similarly colored hair that adorned his great head. The piercing, emerald green eyes flashed and squinted in frustration from beneath thick brows above a large, aquiline nose set in a lined, careworn face. He had known for a long time that someone special was coming to him, someone with embryonic gifts and powers as rare as his own, and someone whose destiny would eventually be that of his successor. He also knew that this person was young and would not yet understand these powers and that there was a great deal to be done by way of teaching, revelation, and enlightenment.

And that he had less than seven short years left in which to accomplish the task.

But that was all he knew. The specifics had been denied him. He had posted his conspicuous apparitions around the various routes to his compound, called fervently and often on the Three Fates that control the birth, life, and death of all beings - Clotho, the holder of the distaff of birth; Lachesis, who spins the thread of life; and Atropos, who severs the thread of life - and waited.

Using all of his many voices Merlin once again paced his compound imploring Lachesis to protect the special one from Atropos until safely in his care.

“Lachesis I need you to spin, spin, and spin

Then spin again your threads, begin again your spin,

Keep Atropos from severing the light from within.

Lachesis, my wish is that you spin, spin, and spin

In golden weft threads spin, spin, and spin,

In warp threads of silver bring my fellow in,

Then spin again your magic, spin again your spin

Keep Atropos from severing the light from within.

Keep Atropos from severing the light from within,

Bring my fellow to me with your golden spin;

And being born of Clotho he must be brought in.

All strength now, Lachesis, all strength to your spin.”

Then he was hallooed from beyond his own woven willow gates and knew, at last, that his ardent pleas to Lachesis, the spinner of the precious thread of life, had been answered with the arrival of the special one. For a brief moment he looked within himself and triggered a pure wave of pleasure. Keeping a firm hold on it, he allowed it to pulse gently up his long body until it reached his heart; then he released it in a spontaneous cry of joy. It had been so long since he had allowed himself a pleasurable indulgence, but then it had been a long time since he’d had anything this exciting over which to indulge himself. Throwing his hands heavenwards he thanked the ancient fate loudly.

“Gratia, Lachesis! Gratia, gratia.”

Hurrying to the willow gates, he flung them open with a great flourish.

“Salutem dicit!”
he cried in a loud voice.
“Salutem dicit.”

In front of him stood a tired, apprehensive-looking peasant with a boy by his side. The man had flinched and taken a step backwards at the exuberance of the greeting. The boy had not moved and stood quietly with an expressionless face, his hands by his side, his coal-black eyes fixed unblinkingly on the high face of the fabled sorcerer universally known, due to his great height, as the long magus.

“You are Merlin?” said the man hesitantly, stepping forward again.

The fabled wizard rolled his eyes. “Ahhh, by the Sins of Iddog the Embroiler, I am a silly old fool, that’s who I am. A silly old fool who would now remember my manners and speak English. It is so long since I have spoken to anyone directly that I have forgotten my whereabouts. Latin is my unthinking response to the excitement of your coming, the involuntary language of the unengaged mind. Yes, before you stands the old veneficus - Latin again, you see, for sorcerer or magi-cian - who would be Merlin when, that is, he is not anyone or something else.”

The great lines of the ancient face cracked into a huge smile, and the rolling eyes twinkled as they alighted on the boy. He gazed at him from his great height for a moment, then went down on one knee and gently grasped him by the elbows.

“
Ad finem nunc coram … ad finem …
Ahhhh! There I go again.” He threw back his great head and chuckled before once more bringing his twinkling emerald gaze back to lock on to the boy’s calm, dark eyes.

“At last we meet, at last. I have waited a long time for this moment.”

The father spoke hesitantly. “I am … Sam Timms from the settlement of Malmesbury. This … is my first-born, Will.”

“Will Timms, eh. A fine name for a fine boy.” Merlin squeezed the boy’s shoulders and studied the youthful face framed in long, unkempt black hair. After a short period of intense scrutiny the mighty wizard spoke quietly. “But I will call you Twilight. Not because you have arrived at Vespers, the time of the day when the postmeridian half-light begins to slide into darkfall. Nor because you have triumphed over the witching gloom of the mighty Savernake and its permanent night to get here. No …” He paused and looked deep into the boy’s eyes. “I will call you Twilight because there is an unlighted candle of hope lying deep within the Cimmerian darkness of those quiet black opals. There is another, very different reason for calling you so, but now is not the time for that …
ad tem-pus.
”

He turned to the father.

“You will leave the boy with me?”

“Well … yes, if you will have him. I have five others at my hovel. This one is trouble: he moves things, makes us all do things against our will, and troubles the animals. He is driving everyone mad. He will not work on the land, and I need all the help I can get planting and harvesting the crops in order to pay the geld. The holy man and elders at our settlement said you were the only person who could help. If you cannot, I will be forced to cast him out, for I have to think of the rest of my family.”

The father stopped for a few moments as if wrestling with some inner torment. Turning to his son, he continued.

“Yet, strangely, on our journey here he was different. Like a rock, firm and in control, while I trembled in fright. Nothing seemed to frighten him. The forest wraiths ran from him, and he seemed possessed by a kind of calm power, an inner sight, something I have never seen in him before.”

“How old is he, and upon what day was he born?” asked Merlin.

“He will be fourteen winters old next All Hallows Day.”

Merlin chuckled. “All Hallows - of course.”

He looked deep into the boy’s eyes again. “Moves things and makes people do things against their will, eh. Drives everyone mad, eh. A boy after my own heart. Tell me, my little skirmisher, just why do you do these things?”

The boy stared right back at him and remained silent.

“He … does not talk,” the father said quietly.

“Ahhh …” said Merlin, raising his great bushy brows, opening his eyes wide, and nodding in an expression of vastly over-emphasized understanding. “Is that ‘cannot’ or ‘does not choose to,’ I wonder.” His emerald green eyes flashed with conspiracy.

“He has uttered no sound for six years,” the father said.

The boy’s level gaze held Merlin’s.

The answer to your first question is that I do these things because people, my mother and father, brothers and sisters, and the folk who live in the settlement, do not always understand the consequences of their foolish actions where I am concerned.

“Ahhh,” exclaimed Merlin loudly with a start. The green eyes flashed again.

And you do?

The boy’s head twitched backwards as if someone had slapped him across the face, and the black eyes registered alarm. There was a pause as he gathered himself.

Better, perhaps, than they do.

The old wizard grinned widely.

I see from your reaction that no one has ever responded to you in direct mind-speech before. You will get a false sense of your own importance that way, begin to believe your own crinkum crankum. Direct mind-speech is powerful sorcery, but it needs the balance of other voices; otherwise there is no one to challenge its view.

The expressionless look had crept back onto the boy’s face.

That’s all very well, but I have never met anyone else who could do it before.

Merlin nodded sympathetically.

I understand. It was the same for me when I was young. Now, the answer to my second question?

The boy took a deep breath and looked at his father.

“Yes,” said the one now to be called Twilight, in a strong, clear voice. “I can speak but have not chosen to do so for some time.”

A look of total incredulity spread across the father’s honest face at the sound of his son’s voice. He shook his head in amazement. The boy turned to the wizard and looked up to his face.

Do you prefer open speech?

The wizard nodded at the boy’s father.

For his sake, yes. It would be bad manners to herald any other way, especially as he has not heard the sound of your voice this last six years. It should also be used cautiously abroad: if others know that you are communicating directly all the time they will mistrust you. Even though they may not understand it, folk like to hear what is being said - they all hear the same story that way.

The boy nodded, then spoke in a clear voice again. “The woman washing tunics in the stream and the charcoal burner, they were put there by you?”

Merlin chuckled, pleased at the boy’s perception.

“Yes. A couple of conspicuous apparitions placed as signs to ensure that you took the right path. There were others at various points around the forest.”

For an instant Merlin’s face changed, and the boy saw the two faces - the smiling washerwoman and the more serious, preoccupied countenance of the young charcoal burner - subliminally replace each other on the lined mien of the wizard, and he was suddenly aware of his formidable powers.

Sam Timms shuddered. “And the old man and the snake?”

“Oh no,” said Merlin, aghast. “Not a primitive, dirty, little old man with a gnarled staff and a large green and gray serpent?”

“That’s him,” said the father. “Frightened the life out of the horse … and me.”

“Old Bovey!” exploded the wizard. “By all the Treasures of Troy I’ll render that pathetic old charlatan’s bones down to an owl cast, turn his slimy companion into gruel, then feed them to the forest weevils.”

“I thought he was you at first. He … er … fitted the description I had been given.”

Sam Timm’s honest peasant face reddened with embarrassment.

“That’s exactly what the toothless old fool wanted you to think,” said Merlin disgustedly. “Of late he spends his time trying to convince folk that he’s me. Acts out his feeble alchemy with a venomless old serpent, which is also deluded and thinks it’s a fiery dragon. Although his powers are illusory he has

succeeded in frightening people. I will talk to him.”

Twilight looked at Merlin.
I rebuked him.

You spoke directly into his mind?

Yes. He was stung.

Good. It’s nothing more than the ragged old charlatan deserves. Nonetheless, I will add a small rebuke of my own tomorrow.

“And the Lament of the Sorrows, who almost accounted for my father and finally finished off our gallant old horse.” Will, now Twilight, had reverted to speech.

“You lost your horse! I didn’t know that. I will see that his sacrifice is commemorated. The Christians also celebrate a beast of burden as a bearing talisman - an ass, I believe. Carried their Nazarene prophet along a tortuous path in much the same way as your gallant horse. As for the Sorrows, you are both here, so you overcame their dark realms. To those of a venefical calling they are but a minor irritant, yet to common folk their soft caresses can lure a man to his death. Life must not be too easy; there must be dangers to encourage boldness if the entire tribe of humankind is not to become cowerers.”

Cowerers?
The boy’s dark eyes flashed the question.

All in good time, my little skirmisher, all in good time.

The mighty wizard smiled and clapped his large hands.

“Enough! I am failing in my duty as a host to tired, hungry travelers. There will be time for me to amaze you with the enchantments and the lore of miracle mongering tomorrow.”

The earth was ruled by the Olympian gods, a group of nine primary immortal deities comprising Zeus, as leader, Poseidon, Hera, Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite, Helios, Hermes, and Tiresias. When the world was first created from Chaos, the Titans, also known as the elder gods, ruled the earth before being overthrown by the Olympians. The Titans were punished by Zeus through banishment to Tartarus. Titans were named after planets, and their defeated ruling Presidium comprised: Gaea, Uranus, Cronus, Rhea, Oceanus, Tethys, Hyperion, Mnemosyne, Themis, Iapetus, Coeus, Crius, Phoebe, Thea, Prometheus, Epimetheus, Atlas, Metis, and Dione.

The ruler of the Titans was Cronus, who was overthrown by his son … Zeus.