Veneficus: Stones of the Chosen (7 page)

like the roof of the dwelling house falling on their heads.

And that was precisely what happened.

With a crackling of seasoned willow boughs, the entire roof collapsed on top of the five boys. When the dust and reed debris had cleared, the eight sturdy oak posts were the only things left standing.

Luckily there had not been anything else going on there at the time.

Coughing and spluttering, four of the boys, covered in broken reeds, dust, and bits of willow, crawled out from the heap that had been the settlement house roof.

But one of them did not.

A group of people appeared instantly and, with much pointing, shouting, and frantic tearing away at the debris, finally dug out the missing boy, and he was carried unconscious back to his home. The following day he appeared with a huge purple bruise on his forehead and his broken right leg in a wooden splint.

Will had been horrified. Although no one in the settlement associated him with the collapsed roof, he knew that he had caused it. His thought processes had been too specific and the result too instantaneous. He knew he was different from the others in some vaguely undefined way, knew he possessed some sort of power, but this demonstration of it was frightening, especially when used to harm a relatively innocent settlement boy. A few stinging acorns certainly didn’t merit his injuries, and this boy could easily have been killed.

In a blind panic he had run into the woods and sat there for a long time considering the consequences of what had just happened. It was then he decided that he would not speak. Silence would be his shield against the strange things that he could not yet understand. Something else had happened that day. When he had fled into the woods he’d been accompanied. A pair of pica had stayed high in the treetops but kept with him. Chattering and flapping around loudly it was almost as if they knew of his distress and wanted him to know that they were there.

Strangely, from that point on he became more aware of them. They always seemed to be around him. In his many private sojourns into private places in the meadows and woods around the settlement, unnoticed at first, an inevitable pair of the black-and-white plumaged birds would be close by.

They obviously knew far more than he did at that time.

Now he was their liege-lord and guardian and, in their turn, they would help him whenever he needed them.

From the highest point in one of the surrounding trees, two almost identically marked glossy-feathered birds flew toward them in that curious dipping flight peculiar to the species. Landing together on the other side of the compound they walked in a slow, dignified waddle toward the boy and Merlin. With their black heads held beak down and tails respectfully fanned downward, proud, bright brown eyes fixed unblinkingly upon the boy’s face, they came to a halt a few yards away. The dawn light glinted on their almost purple wing feathers in stark contrast to the prominent white of their proudly presented breast down. As they approached, the boy felt a gentle nudge in his back propelling him away from Merlin toward the birds.

After a suitable interval when the young liege-lord and his two subjects had eyed each other carefully for a while, Twilight spoke quietly. “Welcome, most honorable pica, welcome. I am Twilight, tyro veneficus
.
”

The larger bird raised his right claw outward and then put it down again in much the same way as Phi had done. As he did so there was a general movement in the multitudinous rows of black-and-white birds all around the compound as they all repeated the greeting. His beak opened and closed several times, and a low-register cackle came out, which, to Twilight’s complete surprise, he found he could understand.

“I am Bell, leader of the Wessex pica. This is my lifelong partner, Ceeba. We salute you, Twilight, tyro veneficus, and welcome you as our liege-lord. We have waited a long time for your coming.”

Twilight went down on one knee and spoke gravely.

“It is a great honor for me to be your liege-lord. I will endeavor always to wear that title with courage and humility.”

“Two of us will be in your vicinity at all times, day and night,” cackled Ceeba. “You may not see them, but they will be there. Should you need them for anything you only have to call out the word ‘pica,’ and the nearest will come to you immediately.”

“Thank you,” was all Twilight could say.

“We know that some of the things you will have to face will be terrifying,” said Bell. “Pica are well-versed in the intricacies of terror, as witnessed by some of the names history has bestowed upon us. Names such as the Devil Bird or Lucifer’s Shadow, the Checkered Phantom or Piedpoly Demon, and, of course, your namesake, the Wings of Twilight. We are now, truly, the Wings of Twilight.”

Before the boy could clear his throat of the emotion he felt and husk out a suitably gracious reply, Ceeba, her head inclined slightly to one side, an attitude of talking Twilight was to come to know well in the female of the species, cackled at him again.

“We watched over your journey here with your father, just in case, but you did not need us.”

“You knew of my journey and its purpose?” said Twilight.

Bell turned his black beak in a circle to encompass all the surrounding birds. “As I said, the pica of Wessex have been waiting for you for a long time. It was prophesied that you would come now, to this place, to learn the ways of the veneficus from the long magus.”

He dipped his head in salute toward Merlin and then, as if on a silent, instant signal, the two birds stepped backward in complete unison and flew to a space on a branch high in a nearby tree.

“Good-bye, liege-lord of the pica,” called Ceeba from her perch. “And remember, two of us will be close by at all times.”

They both raised their right claws and were gone. In a cacophony of “good-byes,” raising of claws and the frantic beating of wings, the entire population of many hundreds of Wessex pica took off. As the great flock circled above the compound in their dipping flight, Twilight and Merlin waved to them.

“Good-bye, pica, good-bye,” called Twilight, his eyes full of tears. “And thank you for letting me be your liege-lord.”

“Fortuna prospera,
Wings of Twilight,” whispered Merlin before turning to the boy.
“Et nunc et semper ars magica et cor rara avis quo fata vocant.”

“Such a wonderful gift, language,” said Twilight, almost to himself. “I now understand two of them: my own tongue and, to my complete surprise, the language of the pica. Alas, I have yet to master Latin.”

“Ahhh yes, Latin. I allowed the occasion to get to me, didn’t I. What I said was: ‘Now and always you will have on your side both sorcery and the hearts of those rare birds … whither the fates call.’”

“Quo fata vocant,”
remembered the boy, watching the birds breaking into pairs and dispersing over the tree line. “They are so beautiful and brave. Bell said that they have waited a long time for my coming.”

Merlin grinned down at him from his great height. “We all have, little skirmisher. We all have.”

Merlin and the boy walked slowly along the forest periphery, one gently expounding the generalities of the role, the other absorbing every word to the best of his ability.

“Natural phenomena occur as a result of the shifting wonders of nature. Before you learn the enchantments of the unnatural world you must first understand the Earth and her methods. Many great civilizations have lived and died upon her surface, and many more will follow. Like millions of blind babies grouping for the teat, these civilizations scrabbled and fought for succor upon the barren breasts of her lands, never really understanding her right to give or their duty to replace. Those who paid heed to her moods and worked within them flourished. Some of the earliest settlers worshipped the Earth Mother, whom they named Nerthus, but that was way before the Roman occupation brought civilization and a delight in obscenity and torture to these separated lands. Others, learned in many other ways yet blind to earthly reason, ignored the warnings and disappeared forever in the bottomless maw of her great reserve. So it is to earth, fire, water, and wind we will turn first, the sticks and stones, zephyrs and flora, rivers, seasons and fauna, alchemy and anima, smoke and flames of the all-conquering armies of nature.”

As he spoke, he waved his long arms around in a gesture to encompass the whole of nature surrounding them. “And we don’t have to look very far to find those armies. We are surrounded by them.”

“When will I be able to produce great feats of sorcery and prophecy?” asked Twilight eagerly.

“You already can,” replied Merlin. “Perhaps your embryonic skills couldn’t yet be described as the means to produce great feats of transition or prophecy of historic significance, but you are certainly capable of minor shifts of phenomena and reasonable future vision. However, it is imperative that these embryonic skills are tempered with an understanding of two vital elements before you embark upon their execution. First, you must understand the aforesaid complex and often obscure workings of the earth, and second, you must learn to quickly reverse an enchantment. It is a compelling argument for the triumph of sorcery in the everlasting battle of good over evil that you master these two skills.”

Merlin stopped and pointed a long finger at the corner of a meadow where a clump of green willows waved gently over a bubbling chalk stream. One flash of his great emerald eyes and instantly the area changed into a small, infested swamp with bare, dead willows dripping green slime into the still, black, stagnant water.

“See there. If I couldn’t change that area back to its former beauty, I would have destroyed one of the earth’s natural beauty spots forever. That is the highest and most mortal sin of the veneficus: making a complete mess of something and being unable to reverse the situation. If left as it is, that slime-ridden mire will fester and grow, take over the entire area. It is a good example of how a wrongly conceived enchantment can allow the wrong forces to gain a toehold on the territory of the righteous, a toehold that will soon spread its blighted message to everything it touches. The humankind comparison is obvious. Now you can begin to understand just how important it is for us to learn, right at the outset, the skill to quickly undo what we create. I cannot reverse your mistakes, nor you mine. Only the creator can un-sully his own work. Reversing an enchantment is a particular skill and takes time to learn. It will be a long time before you will have mastered that skill, and until you can do so we must be very selective in your usage of the enchantments.”

The green eyes flashed, and once again the willows waved gently over the bubbling chalk stream.

“That transition cost you dear in energy?” Twilight asked, watching the old wizard sink gratefully down on a grassy hummock to rest.

“Yes it did, but such demonstrations are vital if you are to learn quickly. Now, my little newly crowned liege-lord of the pica, what are the two most important skills for you to learn first of all?”

“An understanding of how the Earth works and the ability to reverse an enchantment,” said Twilight.

“The Elder Pendragon taught me some simple couplets to remember the importance of those two vital elements. He called it ‘the Song of the Veneficus.’ The couplets went like this:

“Kiss the winds and sense the seasons,

Smell the rain and know the reasons.

Feel the sun, plunge the earth

Whisper plant, whisper birth.

Run with hares, fly with birds

Climb with trees heavenwards.

Then you will know the reasons why

The earth resides beneath the sky.

And if you think it’s yours to change,

To redesign and rearrange,

Consider your time within its place

As no more than a flash in space,

And in that flash you would deface

The beauty of its timeless place,

For no more than a flash in space

You would leave your own disgrace

So by kissing winds of zephyr light

And smelling rain throughout the night

And understanding backward sight

All your mistakes are rendered right;

And this noble place we call our Earth

Will have survived you death from birth

And all will be as it was before,

Your flash in space required a cure.”

There was silence between them as Twilight absorbed this information. Slowly he repeated the opening lines: “Kiss the winds and sense the seasons, smell the rain and know the reasons.”

Off to their right and slightly behind them as they rested on the hummock, two pica flapped and called to each other high in the trees
-
the boy’s guardians were keeping their watchful station. Merlin touched the boy’s forehead. “I have restored full color to your sight, for you will need all your senses when we get to our destination today.”

“Where are we going?”

Merlin looked into the distance and replied in a faraway, quivering voice. “Where the rolling chalk hills of Wessex ease their shoulders gently against each other we will find the first place. It is an ancient and magical ringed stone site called Ave-bury, the burial place of all Wessex venefici
.
It is where I buried the Elder Pendragon at the end of his one hundredth year, and he likewise buried Idris the Former, and so on all the way back to the beginning of recorded venefical time. It is where you will bury me at the end of the seventh year from now.”