Veneficus: Stones of the Chosen Read Free Page B

said Merlin, raising his great bushy brows, opening his eyes wide, and nodding in an expression of vastly over-emphasized understanding. “Is that ‘cannot’ or ‘does not choose to,’ I wonder.” His emerald green eyes flashed with conspiracy.
    “He has uttered no sound for six years,” the father said.
    The boy’s level gaze held Merlin’s.
    The answer to your first question is that I do these things because people, my mother and father, brothers and sisters, and the folk who live in the settlement, do not always understand the consequences of their foolish actions where I am concerned.
    “Ahhh,” exclaimed Merlin loudly with a start. The green eyes flashed again.
    And you do?
    The boy’s head twitched backwards as if someone had slapped him across the face, and the black eyes registered alarm. There was a pause as he gathered himself.
    Better, perhaps, than they do.
    The old wizard grinned widely.
    I see from your reaction that no one has ever responded to you in direct mind-speech before. You will get a false sense of your own importance that way, begin to believe your own crinkum crankum. Direct mind-speech is powerful sorcery, but it needs the balance of other voices; otherwise there is no one to challenge its view.
    The expressionless look had crept back onto the boy’s face.
    That’s all very well, but I have never met anyone else who could do it before.
    Merlin nodded sympathetically.
    I understand. It was the same for me when I was young. Now, the answer to my second question?
    The boy took a deep breath and looked at his father.
    “Yes,” said the one now to be called Twilight, in a strong, clear voice. “I can speak but have not chosen to do so for some time.”
    A look of total incredulity spread across the father’s honest face at the sound of his son’s voice. He shook his head in amazement. The boy turned to the wizard and looked up to his face.
    Do you prefer open speech?
    The wizard nodded at the boy’s father.
    For his sake, yes. It would be bad manners to herald any other way, especially as he has not heard the sound of your voice this last six years. It should also be used cautiously abroad: if others know that you are communicating directly all the time they will mistrust you. Even though they may not understand it, folk like to hear what is being said - they all hear the same story that way.
    The boy nodded, then spoke in a clear voice again. “The woman washing tunics in the stream and the charcoal burner, they were put there by you?”
    Merlin chuckled, pleased at the boy’s perception.
    “Yes. A couple of conspicuous apparitions placed as signs to ensure that you took the right path. There were others at various points around the forest.”
    For an instant Merlin’s face changed, and the boy saw the two faces - the smiling washerwoman and the more serious, preoccupied countenance of the young charcoal burner - subliminally replace each other on the lined mien of the wizard, and he was suddenly aware of his formidable powers.
    Sam Timms shuddered. “And the old man and the snake?”
    “Oh no,” said Merlin, aghast. “Not a primitive, dirty, little old man with a gnarled staff and a large green and gray serpent?”
    “That’s him,” said the father. “Frightened the life out of the horse … and me.”
    “Old Bovey!” exploded the wizard. “By all the Treasures of Troy I’ll render that pathetic old charlatan’s bones down to an owl cast, turn his slimy companion into gruel, then feed them to the forest weevils.”
    “I thought he was you at first. He … er … fitted the description I had been given.”
    Sam Timm’s honest peasant face reddened with embarrassment.
    “That’s exactly what the toothless old fool wanted you to think,” said Merlin disgustedly. “Of late he spends his time trying to convince folk that he’s me. Acts out his feeble alchemy with a venomless old serpent, which is also deluded and thinks it’s a fiery dragon. Although his powers