Veneficus: Stones of the Chosen Read Free Page A

apprehensive-looking peasant with a boy by his side. The man had flinched and taken a step backwards at the exuberance of the greeting. The boy had not moved and stood quietly with an expressionless face, his hands by his side, his coal-black eyes fixed unblinkingly on the high face of the fabled sorcerer universally known, due to his great height, as the long magus.
    “You are Merlin?” said the man hesitantly, stepping forward again.
    The fabled wizard rolled his eyes. “Ahhh, by the Sins of Iddog the Embroiler, I am a silly old fool, that’s who I am. A silly old fool who would now remember my manners and speak English. It is so long since I have spoken to anyone directly that I have forgotten my whereabouts. Latin is my unthinking response to the excitement of your coming, the involuntary language of the unengaged mind. Yes, before you stands the old veneficus - Latin again, you see, for sorcerer or magi-cian - who would be Merlin when, that is, he is not anyone or something else.”
    The great lines of the ancient face cracked into a huge smile, and the rolling eyes twinkled as they alighted on the boy. He gazed at him from his great height for a moment, then went down on one knee and gently grasped him by the elbows.
    “ Ad finem nunc coram … ad finem … Ahhhh! There I go again.” He threw back his great head and chuckled before once more bringing his twinkling emerald gaze back to lock on to the boy’s calm, dark eyes.
    “At last we meet, at last. I have waited a long time for this moment.”
    The father spoke hesitantly. “I am … Sam Timms from the settlement of Malmesbury. This … is my first-born, Will.”
    “Will Timms, eh. A fine name for a fine boy.” Merlin squeezed the boy’s shoulders and studied the youthful face framed in long, unkempt black hair. After a short period of intense scrutiny the mighty wizard spoke quietly. “But I will call you Twilight. Not because you have arrived at Vespers, the time of the day when the postmeridian half-light begins to slide into darkfall. Nor because you have triumphed over the witching gloom of the mighty Savernake and its permanent night to get here. No …” He paused and looked deep into the boy’s eyes. “I will call you Twilight because there is an unlighted candle of hope lying deep within the Cimmerian darkness of those quiet black opals. There is another, very different reason for calling you so, but now is not the time for that … ad tem-pus. ”
    He turned to the father.
    “You will leave the boy with me?”
    “Well … yes, if you will have him. I have five others at my hovel. This one is trouble: he moves things, makes us all do things against our will, and troubles the animals. He is driving everyone mad. He will not work on the land, and I need all the help I can get planting and harvesting the crops in order to pay the geld. The holy man and elders at our settlement said you were the only person who could help. If you cannot, I will be forced to cast him out, for I have to think of the rest of my family.”
    The father stopped for a few moments as if wrestling with some inner torment. Turning to his son, he continued.
    “Yet, strangely, on our journey here he was different. Like a rock, firm and in control, while I trembled in fright. Nothing seemed to frighten him. The forest wraiths ran from him, and he seemed possessed by a kind of calm power, an inner sight, something I have never seen in him before.”
    “How old is he, and upon what day was he born?” asked Merlin.
    “He will be fourteen winters old next All Hallows Day.”
    Merlin chuckled. “All Hallows - of course.”
    He looked deep into the boy’s eyes again. “Moves things and makes people do things against their will, eh. Drives everyone mad, eh. A boy after my own heart. Tell me, my little skirmisher, just why do you do these things?”
    The boy stared right back at him and remained silent.
    “He … does not talk,” the father said quietly.
    “Ahhh …”