neetha Napew - Spellsinger

Spellsinger 1 - Version 2.1 - revision notes at end

PROLOGUE

Discontent ruled the stars, and there were portents in the heavens.

On the fourth day of Eluria, which follows the Feast of Consanguinity, a great

comet was seen in the night sky. It crossed east to west over the Tree and

lasted for half a fortnight. It left a black scar on the flesh of existence, a

scar that glowed and lingered.

Faces formed within the timescar. Only a very few were capable of discerning

their existence. None understood their implication. The faces danced and leered

and mocked their ignorant observers. Frustrated or simply terrified, the few who

could see turned away or deliberately placed a calming interpretation on what

had troubled their minds.

One did not. He could not, for those visions haunted his sleep and tormented his

days. He dropped words from formulae, bollixed simple conjurations, stuttered in

his reading and rhyming studies.

A great evil was afoot in the world, an evil encountered twice before in the

wizard's own long lifetime. But never before had it seemed so potent in its

anticipation of coming death and destruction. Its core remained just beyond

perception; but he knew it was something he did not understand, something fresh

and threatening which shattered all the rules known to commonsense magic. It was

rank, alien, shudderingly devoid of emotion and meaning. It horrified him.

Of one thing only was he certain. He would need assistance this time-only

another attuned to the same unknown could understand it. Only another could save

the world from the horror that threatened to engulf it.

For those who know the secret ways, the tunnels between realities, the crossings

between universes are no more difficult to pass than the barriers that separate

one individual from another. But such passages are of rare occasion, and once

the proper formula is invoked, it can rarely be repeated.

Yet it was time to take the risk.

So the wizard heaved and strained, threw out the request carefully roped to his

consciousness. It sailed out into the void of space-time, propelled by a mind of

great if aging power. It sought another who could help him understand this fresh

darkness that threatened his world. Dimensions slid aside, cleaving around the

searching thought and giving it passage.

The wizard trembled with the massive effort. Sentient winds howled about his

Tree, plucking dangerously at the thin lifeline within. It had to happen

quickly, he knew, or the link would fade without attaching to an ally. And this

was a link he might not hope to generate again.

Yet still the void yielded nothing and no one. The... the writhing tentacle of

wizardness caught a mind, a few thoughts, an identity. Uncertain but unable to

hunt further, he plunged inward. Surprisingly, the mind was pliable and open,

receptive to invasion and manifestation. It almost seemed to welcome being

grasped, accepting the tug with a contented indifference that appalled the

wizard, but which he was grateful for nonetheless. This mind was detached,

drifting. It would be easy to draw it back.

Easy save for the aged enchanter's waning strength. He locked and pulled, heaved

with every ounce of power in him. But despite the subject's lack of resistance

the materialization was not clean. At the last instant, the link snapped.

No, no...! But the energy faded, was lost. An infrequent but damaging senility

crept in and imposed sleep on that great but exhausted mind....

And while he slumbered, the contented evil festered and planned and schemed, and

a shadow began to spread over the souls of the innocent....

The citizens of Pelligrew laughed at the invaders. Though they lived nearest of

all the civilized folk to the Greendowns, they feared not the terrible

inhabitants of those lands. Their town was walled and hugged the jagged face of

a mountain. The only approach was up a single narrow path which could be

defended against attack, it was said, by five old women and a brace of infants.

So when the leader of the absurdly small raiding party asked for their

surrender, they laughed and threw garbage and night soil down on him.

"Go home!" they urged him. "Go back to your stinking homes and your shit-eating

mothers before we decorate the face of our mountain with your blood!"

Curiously, this did not enrage the leader of the raiders. A few within the town

remarked on this and worried, but everyone else continued to laugh.

The leader made his way back through the tents of his troops, his dignity

unimpaired. He knew what was promised to him.

Eventually he reached a tent larger and darker than any of the others. Here his

courage faltered, for he did not enjoy speaking to the one who dwelt within.

Nevertheless, it was his place to do so. He entered.

It was black inside, though it was mid-morning without, black and heavy with the

stench of unwholesome things and the nearness of death. In the back of the tent

was the wizard, awash in attendants. In back of him stood the Font of Evil.

"Your pardon, Master," the leader of the soldiers began, and proceeded to tell

of his disdainful reception at the hands of the Pelligrewers.

When he had finished, the hunched form in the dark of the tent said, "Return to

your soldiers, good Captain, and wait."

The leader left hurriedly, glad to be out of that unclean place and back among

his troops. But it was hard to just wait there, helpless before the unscalable

wall and restrained by command, while the inhabitants of the town mocked and

laughed and exposed their backsides to his angry soldiers.

Suddenly, a darkening turned the sky the color of lead. There was a thunder, yet

there were no clouds. Then the great wall of Pelligrew vanished, turned to dust

along with many of its shocked defenders. For an instant his own warriors were

paralyzed. Then the blood lust renewed them and they swarmed into the naked

town, shrieking in gleeful anticipation.

The slaughter was thorough. Not a soul was left alive. Those who disdained meat

relaxed and sipped the pooled blood of the still living.

There was some question as to whether or not to keep the children of the town

alive for breeding. Upon consideration, the captain declined. He did not wish to

convoy a noisy, bawling lot of infants back to Cugluch. Besides, his soldiers

deserved a reward for the patience they had displayed beneath the barrage of

verbal and physical refuse the annihilated townsfolk had heaped on them. So he

gave his assent for a general butchering of the young.

That night the fire was put to Pelligrew while her children made the soldiers a

fine supper. The wood of the houses and the thatch of the roofs burned all night

and into the following morning.

The captain watched the last of the flames die out, nodding approvingly as

recently dressed meat was loaded for the journey back home. He sucked the marrow

from a small arm as he addressed the flier.

"Take the swiftest currents of the air, Herald," he instructed the winged

soldier. "Go quickly to the capital. Inform everyone that taunting Pelligrew,

thorn in our side for a thousand years, is no more. Tell the people and the

court that this first small success is complete and that all the softness of the

Warmlands westward shall soon be ours, and soon all the worlds beyond that!"