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!"
The flier saluted and rose into the mountain air. The captain turned, saw the
occupants of the dark tent packing their own noisome supplies. He watched as the
wizard supervised the careful loading of the awful apparition which had