Mercedes Lackey - Lamma's Night (anthology)

But of course, she couldn't ask questions like that anymore, Miranda told herself over and over again as she watched the kind and sheepish village men carry her goods into the hall of Stephen's house. She was a real, honest-to-god village wizard now. Miranda, Wizard of Denwyck. She was part of the establishment. So much for the stars, her ceiling.

From the outside, the house was indeed the wreck that Kenton had warned her about. But the inside! Dust, God, yes, plenty of that, but such a vast collection of things , models physic and spiritual, texts and tomes and treatises on every concern, scattered throughout, laid on chairs idly, stacked haphazardly on shelves and in corners, on the table in the kitchen. (Interesting, Miranda noted, that there were knife-and-fork scrape marks on the kitchen table. She got a good feel for Stephen's habits from that.)

It was when she turned away from unpacking her few things and trying to move some of the collected dust around that she sat down in Stephen's old chair in his library. Then, as she ran her fingers along his desk and began to take in the sheer enormity of his collection of books, she felt the wind stir. As if the wind itself awakened, and feeling her, approached and touched her, and touching her, spoke:

You know our crimes are many, Miranda, don't you?

Open the magic. Unlock the chains.

On Lammas we give the bread .

Miranda had dealt with hauntings before. That was first-year stuff. And it was clear, from the way the spirit watched her as she rose in the morning and went about her business setting up shop, that the resident spirit was not immediately intent on doing any mischief. And by the time the spirit was guiding her hand clearly to this stack and not that , this book and not those , that she knew who her guest was. As if there were ever a doubt. What remained was to find out about him.

From Stephen's journal:

November 14

I have of late been struck by a disturbing realization, and it came to me thus: there is, in this village, a man not terribly on in years but nevertheless past his prime. His intelligence is not esteemed among the villagers, but it has been my habit to employ him as something of a handy-man. Dervish is his name.

Some weeks ago I asked Dervish to try to bring the old well back to health, so full of cobwebs and refuse as it is, and this task naturally took the man a goodly amount of time to complete.

1 did not know the well was haunted. Fool, fool! I should have surveyed it, but the decrepit thing had been on my lands for so many years and I had never had cause to suspect it of any impediment other than the annoyance of its physical uselessness.

Dervish came to me where I sat—I have taken of late to spending my early evenings by the pond, where I watch my ducks—and he told me that the well had a spirit trapped in it, that had long ago stopped the well from working, to attract attention, so that perhaps some wizard would come along and free it. Again, I point in contempt at my own prodigality. But what intrigued me was that Dervish had managed to get a handle on the whole situation. He did not solve it—that took my doing, and a simple spell it was. But that evening when I paid Dervish his weekly wage, I saw a look in his eyes that told me that perhaps, with a try or two, he could have accomplished it. Somewhere, back there in the man's childhood, had things been different—and never in this journal would I so flagrantly dispute the Circle in its wisdom—had things been different...

Dervish could have been a wizard.

Not now, perhaps. We don't allow the magic that is used by all to be actually manipulated by all, and Dervish is long past his prime, too late for the Circle's training.

How many are out there, O Circle?

Do they know our crimes?

Have we known all along?

Miranda put down the volume. The passage must have been written a century ago, at least. She shuddered despite herself. Are you here, Stephen? Can you tell me about this?

It was all so familiar. The Far Corners unwizards had tried to feed her their legends: There was a time when magic was free, not controlled by a chosen few. It will be so again. It must be .

"But that way lies danger," she said aloud, repeating Jemuel.

Does it? spoke the spirit. What kind of danger, Miranda?

"You talk a good game, you who would set the magic free," she said. "But consider it. Breaking the locks on spells the Circle has set, opening up the magic language, and what would you get? Marauded villages, sunken navies...."

Cured sick, fed people....

"All of which the wizards can do."

But should they? You sound like Jemuel. I know you better than that. I brought you here for a reason.

"You brought..." Miranda stared at the wall of books. She felt silly, like a child, talking to one of her fellow castaway imaginary friends. "No. I refuse to believe that."

Believe what you like, Miranda. What you've always wanted. Open it. Break the chains on the magic, the chains on the spells.

"Why don't you?"

I no longer have that ability. Not like this. But you can help me, Miranda. I have made preparations. Let me show you the way.

"It can't be done. Open the magic? Even if I wanted to, even if you wanted to, that's a hell of a spell."

I have made preparations.

"Go find someone else, Stephen."

The wind erupted in the library, papers exploding on the desk. Something invisible hit the bookshelf and dislodged a pile of books. The spirit screamed, Find someone else! Years! Years I spent deriving the spells to be cast! Fellow wizards died to provide me with the parts I needed! In life I tied myself to the fabric that runs through the spells of the Circle. But I was not able to finish my work. There is no one else! You have the training! You have the want! You... have... the... need!

Miranda looked down at the table. "It's too much, Stephen."

One spell you must cast! One only! One out of two, your choice!

"I will hear no more!" Miranda cried, and with that, she stormed out of the library and out of the house. I didn't ask for this.

Miranda sat by the duck pond and watched the creatures there.

Dervish could have been a wizard. Ridiculous.

What if we're controlling the magic when we should let the magic control itself?

That way lies danger.

But at Far Corners, you felt wrong, didn't you? They'd moved in on the Circle's territory and you shut them down! That could have been you.

You would have been an unwizard, then.

When she returned to the house, she said, "All right. Tell me more."

They talked as days turned to weeks, Miranda reading Stephen's work and then asking the spirit about them at night when he came to her. His writing was gentle, open, and the thought that at the end of each period of study she would be visited by and could converse with the author made her excited to learn more.

Sometimes the spirit, it seemed, had to be guided to his particular words, so long had it been since he had written them, but he opened the theory to her in a way Miranda had never imagined conversing with the Far Corners amateurs. Yes, there was danger in the opening, but the danger was offset by such opportunity. Yes, it would mean the end of the Circle, but what were they, anyway, but hoarders of power who kept their subjects in ignorance? And all the while she felt the living Stephen of the books moving in her, addled perhaps, but lucid.

And Stephen had a spell for her to cast. Two spells, in fact, differing by one word. One was a spell of banishment, to let the poor spirit rest forever. But the one Stephen pushed her towards, in his voice and in his writing, was the other—the opening of the magic—and with it, the gift of flesh for the attendant spirit.