2

  There was some magic left in the world, yet; cupped in the still, quiet hollows… haunting the mountain peaks… bound up in storms and the sea. A mighty wizard could still tap a ley line or summon a lightning bolt to power their spells.

  It was the simple folk of village and croft who suffered most, when their cantrips failed and their prayers went unanswered. Crops began rotting in the field. Cattle and goats refused to breed or ran off. Disease began spreading. First one or two sick, then a handful, then dozens. All of them dying of nothing a homemade potion could heal.

  It happened in Burrough, too, once the settlement’s magical shielding eroded away. When the ground turned muddy and stank, when children began to shiver and cough, Burrough drove out its scapegoat: and ugly old man with a limp. Didn’t help. In fact, where he’d been torn to bits in the night, a great dark stain appeared on the ground.

  The misty blotch was small at first, just the size of a huddled old man. It soon began growing, though. Sometimes creeping, sometimes seeming to leap as it encountered a sacrificed goat or a heap of piled coins. Then people began disappearing, and something had to be done.

  Burrough was led by a council of crafters and farmers. They met one night in the long-house, gathering to discuss that blighted dark stain and the silence of heaven. Their lumpy faces a study in shadow and torchlight, the council debated for hours.

  “Throw it another scapegoat!” suggested the baker, Old Leaven. “Widow Squalls has a lazy eye that spits sickness and death.”

  “Quiet, Leaven!” snapped Tanker, the smith. “Your big mouth spits nothing but lies. How ‘bout we stake you out, instead?!” (Widow Squalls was her aunt.) “We gotta give the blot a sacrifice. Not just a goat, this time, but one of the children. We could draw straws…”

  “And will your twins be part of the offering pool?” demanded Brewer, who always smelled nicely of ale. “Are Sasha and Veem going ter put in their straws with the rest? Or does being a councilor’s child protect them?”

  Tanker leapt to her feet. She was a squat and muscular woman with heat-frizzed dark hair and a temper as short as her braids.

  “Are you saying I’d cheat ter defend my own, Brewer?” snarled Tanker, slamming both calloused hands on the wooden tabletop.

  Portly Brewer surged off his bench to face her. He was young, having come to the post when his father was taken… but he wasn’t afraid of a smith.

  “I call what I see, Tank!” snarled Brewer, baring uneven teeth. “Everyone knows how you charge extra coin from them as don’t know any better, and…”

  “Stop!” growled Weaver, pushing her fellow councilors apart. She was sinewy-thin and bent from the loom. Neither old nor young, with night-dark hair piled in a bun. “Sacrifice won’t do any good if there’s no one ter listen! No… what we need ter do is choose messengers ter go ta the Big Smoke and ask their lordships fer help.”

  “Milardin?” gulped Leaven, turning pale. “Them Arvendahls won’t listen ter us, Weaver. They’re as deaf as the gods, and a dang sight crueler, too!”

  Weaver shook her head, making her bun wobble.

  “Through Milardin, taking ship ter the Imperial City, itself. There we can hire a wizard or a fighter ter help us. Not all elves are bad. That young fellow we found in the barn… Valerian… he seemed a goodish sort.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Went off right quick with the Arvendahls, too,” grumped Tanner, who’d been quiet till then. “And his shielding spell’s almost gone. Not much use, if you ask me.”

  But nobody had. Tanner was half-blind and stank of uncured hides, so the others mostly ignored him. Better than the herbalist, who they’d left out entirely.

  “Question is: who should we send?” wondered Weaver, flexing and straightening her arthritic hands.

  “Someone young and strong. Fit fer the road and its hazards,” suggested Brewer. (Not meaning himself; he’d been birthed in Burrough and meant to end his days there as well; sometime comfortably far in the future.)

  “Sensible and well-spoken,” added Tank, thumping back down to the bench with a grunt. “If they’re gonna be facin’ the Quality, they better have somethin’ ter say.”

  …which led the council of Burrough to Rykkan and Nusie, a young couple who’d been waiting all season for land enough to raise a house on. He was a big, quiet hunter, while Nusie was apprenticed to the village herbalist. They’d been promised at birth to each other and seemed a safe bet to at least reach Milardin and maybe find help.

  “Two months,” said Potter, once Rykkan and Nusie were summoned. “We’ll give you until the Month of Ripening Grain to bring back an answer. After that, it’s yer folk as the scapegoats and yer sibs fer the altar. Get it?”

  Rykkan the hunter swallowed hard but nodded, glancing over at Nusie. She’d taken his hand and squeezed it; shoulders back, chin lifted boldly. Showing no fear at all. She was considered a looker in Burrough, with her fluffy brown hair and light eyes. Rykkan felt himself clumsy and plain by comparison, no matter what Nusie told him.

  “We get it,” said Nusie, who always did most of the talking. “But you’ve got ter promise ta give us the full two months, Master Leaven. Till sunset on the last day of Spreading Green, not a hand’s to be laid on any of our folks. Promise.”

  The village councilors glanced at one another. Baker, Brewer, Tanker, Weaver, Potter and even Tanner. Did a half-formed thought… a wisp of deception… pass from tradesman to crafter, there in the torchlit hall? If so, there was nothing that Rykkan or Nusie could do about it but hasten to fetch a few things and get started. It was a very long way to Milardin. Further than that to fabled Karellon, through dangerous roads and faltering magic. Two months didn’t seem like enough.

  Arla the herbalist met them outside the door, on the rough-cobbled stoop of the village long-house. She was a plump old woman, wrapped in a cloak that she’d stabbed with dried flowers and bunches of herbs. Never quite trusted by those with no magic, Arla was hardly ever invited within.

  “Sent you off, have they?” muttered the wood-witch, whose brown eyes were as sharp as her mind. “Never a care that I’m laden with folk needing cures, or that Goodwife Potter’s baby is due anytime now.”

  Nusie looked stricken. She’d grown to care for Arla as she did her own mum, and eagerly learned all the cantrips and herb-lore that Arla could teach her.

  “I’m sorry, Mistress,” said Nusie. “We wasn’t given a choice, and it’s the end fer our folk and sibs, if we’re not back with help inside two months.”

  Rykkan nodded agreement, looking grim. Arla snorted, then thrust a couple of cloth-wrapped bundles at the forlorn pair.

  “Thought as much,” grumbled the wood-witch. Though her hooded face was in shadow, her eyes had a light of their own. (Direct and calm, if not very comforting.) “Take these and use ‘em at great need. Might be you’ll find something inside that’ll help. I’ve alerted the watchman. You’ll have no trouble getting out.”

  Nusie reached a hand forth, but Arla never liked to be touched.

  “No foolishness,” she snapped at her young apprentice. “I’ve done what was needful, no more. Now hurry along… and know that old Arla stands square between yer kin and whatever harm the council might brew.”

  …And that was a promise to conjure with. Rykkan and Nusie set off before dawn, meaning to travel light and quick. They had a destination and even a name, for young Lord Valerian had tarried in Burrough for nearly two days. He’d eaten their food and accepted their gifts. Unlike the dreaded Arvendahls, he’d been good to the village and to its humble inhabitants.

  “It’s a place to start, anyhow,” said Nusie, as the watchman lowered the Southgate bars to let her and Rykkan get past. They exchanged the usual travelers’ blessings with Bert.

  “Safely there and back again.”

  “Safe there an’ back, with all the peace an’ protection of Burrough ter shield you,” they chorused.

  Rykkan and Nusie clasped hands with the burly watchman, then took a last look at their dying village; just a few dozen huts and cottages with curls of smoke beginning to waft from the cookfires. Next, shouldering packs and gripping their walking sticks, the young messengers set their backs to home, striding away to get help.