Mercedes Lackey: Lamma's Night (anthology)

My own few possessions were soon augmented by gifts, brought shyly by the village women—a bunch of bright autumn leaves and grasses in a homely pottery vase, a bright bit of weaving to grace a chest, an embroidered cloth for the table, another in a handmade frame to adorn the wall, some soft pillows to soften the wooden settle. I surmised that they would gladly have gifted their former mage with such things, but that his bachelor austerity seemed to forbid such presents.

More substantial giftings came over the course of the next three days from their spouses: firewood, smoked meat and fish, cheese and meal, ale and cider, root vegetables. In return I began my own work; curing first the headman's ailing liver, then the miller's cow that had a tumor of the womb, then casting half a dozen finding spells to recover lost objects.

By week's end the little things that had needed doing since their wizard had gone were all taken care off and I had the greater work before me—to determine just what it was that he had kept in check. And, if I could, what had killed him.

I went out northwards into the forest; by night, for if I was going to confront evil, I wanted to know it at its full strength. There was a kind of path here, with a touch of magic about it; I surmised that he had made it, the Wizard Keighvin, and followed it.

Deeper and deeper into the inky shadows beneath the trees it led. There was a little breeze that murmured uneasily among the dying leaves, but there was no sign of animal or bird. At last it grew so dark that even my augmented sight could not avail me; I kindled a witchlight within the crystal on the end of my staff, and forged onward by the aid it gave me. The branches of the trees seemed to shrink away from the cold blue light. My own steps crunching through the fallen leaves seemed as loud as those of a careless giant. The sharp-sour scent of them told me that few, if any, had taken this path of late.

When I had penetrated nearly half a league, I began to feel eyes upon me—unfriendly eyes. And more, I detected that magic had been worked hereabouts, somewhere. Powerful magic, wizardly magic, akin to mine, but not precisely of the school I had been taught in. Soon enough thereafter I came upon the source of that magic.

It lay before me like a wall that only wizardly sight could reveal. It was a great circle-casting, fading now, but still powerful. Nothing material of evil birthing could have passed it; only wraiths and shades, and they would have found the passage difficult and painful. When Keighvin had been among the living, it must have been impossible even for them to cross. I found myself pausing to admire the work; it was truly set by the hand of a master, and I wished I could have known him. Such an orderly piece of work bespoke an orderly mind—and the strength of it implied a powerful sense of duty. Both are traits I find admirable, and more pleasing than a fair form or comely face.

Vague shapes lurked at the edge of the light cast by my staff; I could see only their eyes, and that not clearly. My mage-senses told me more than enough—the villagers feared them, with good sense. Whatever it was that spawned them, they hungered; some for flesh and blood, others for death and pain. And now beneath the casting placed by Keighvin, I could sense the faint traces of others, older and older—it was plain that one wizard had always guarded the people of the village from these creatures of the Dark, passing the task on to a successor. I guessed (truthfully, as I later found) that the Things had broken loose enough times that the villagers had come to value their wizards, and to fear to be without one.

I opened my shields to the casting, for to reinforce it I would have to take some of it into myself. No wizard's workings are the same as another's; were I to impose my powers alone upon that circle of protection I would surely break it. I must blend my own magics with it, as all the others had done before me.

I ignored the looming presence of those Others—they could not harm me, double armored as I was by the circle and my own shieldings. I tested the flavors of Keighvin's magic: crisp and cool, like a tart, frost-chilled apple. I felt the textures, smooth and sleek; saw the color, the blue of fine steel; knew the scent, like jumper and sage. And beneath it, the fading flavors and colors and scents of the others, cinnamon and willow and sunrise, ice and harpsong and roses, fire and lightning and velvet—

When I knew them, knew them all, I built upon them my own power. I reached into the core of myself, and wove a starsong melody, blending it with pinesmoke silk and crystal rainbow; knotting it all into a cord stronger than cold iron and more enduring than diamond; for those were the hallmarks of my own powers.

When I opened my eyes the circle glowed at my feet and reached breast-high, so brightly even the untaught could have seen it; glowed with the same blue as the witchlight of my staff.

I felt exhausted, utterly drained, yet elated. To test the efficacy of my weaving, I dropped my shielding, and waited to see what the creatures of the Dark trapped within it would do.

Seeing me unguarded was too much of a temptation for them. A half-dozen wraiths, thin, filmy arms outstretched and claws grasping, flung themselves at the barrier, wailing. For the first time I saw some of what the magic barrier had held at bay, and despite that I had been expecting something of the kind, I shuddered inwardly.

If you have never seen a wraith, they are hardly impressive. They seem to be mist-shadows, attenuated, sexless man-forms of spiderweb and fog, with great gaping mouths and hollow eyes. If you know what they can do, however, you will fear them. They can tear the heart from the body with those flimsy-seeming claws, and devour it with that toothless mouth. When you know that—when you have seen that, as I have—you know them for the horrible creatures that they are, and know that they present a greater danger than many birthings of the Dark of a more solid form.

They struck the barrier, and rebounded, and fled back into the darkness beyond my witchlight.

I laughed in my pride, and left them.

But that night something began—

It was little more at first than a simple, vague dream, insubstantial as smoke, hardly more in the dawn than a distant recollection of something pleasant. But the next night, the dream was stronger, clearer, and more compelling. I am no virgin, I have known the loving touch of a man, but it was long, two years and more, since I had shared such pleasures, and until now I had thought I did not miss them.

But the dreams, as they became stronger, drew me more and more, until one night they were as full of reality and solidity as my daylit world.

I dreamed of a lover, gentle, considerate, a lover who took as much care for my pleasure as for his own. And we joined, not once, but many times, body to body, and soul to soul, as I had never joined with any other.

I woke late, with sun wanning the foot of the bed. I was tired, but I had been working late into the night, constructing a set-spell to keep vermin from the village granary. But—I was also curiously sated, as if the dream-loving had been real.

I rose and stretched lazily, and dressed. I entered my tiny kitchen to break my fast.

Beside the plate I had laid ready the night before lay a single fresh blossom of spring beauty.

This was autumn.

Still, I rationalized after my first surprise, many of the villagers had forcing frames. Some kind soul, or admiring child, perhaps, had left it there.

Thus even the wisest can delude themselves when they do not wish to face the truth.

I walked through the next two weeks in a waking dream—by day, doing my duty to the now-contented villagers. They were well pleased, for now not even the faintest hint of the creatures of the Dark reached to the lands they called their own. Their needs (those that I could tend to) were few, and simple, and quickly disposed of. In my free time, I studied in Keighvin's library. He had owned a treasure trove of wizardly lore, a cache of some three or four dozen books. Some I was familiar with, but some were entirely new.