LITMIR.BIZ

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chosen position where he could keep watch over Corner Post, rowan, and most of the three commons, though one area was obscured by the copse.

      As expected, it began to grow cool almost immediately after the sun went down. Colrean unfolded the blanket and arranged it over his shoulders. Wendrel had provided bread, cheese, and sausage, and he made a quick meal of this and drank some water, while he watched the moon begin its rise and the stars come out. It was a very bright night, with the sky clear. Several small shooting stars sped by near the horizon, watched carefully by Colrean in case they grew brighter, or shone red, as true portents would. But they seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary. Such tiny fading sparks of brilliance could be seen on any clear night out here.

      Colrean dozed a little then, rather uncomfortably, trusting to his otherworldly senses to jolt him awake should something happen. But when he did wake, it was from the simple discomfort of his bladder. Stretching to ease the kinks of dozing against the stone wall, he limped some distance away to urinate, not wishing to offer any disrespect to the Corner Post.

      Coming back, he noticed it had suddenly grown quiet. His own footfalls were the only sound, where even a few moments before he had heard crickets sawing at their music; night-birds calling; the shrill shriek of a shrew caught by an owl; the muffled crackle and thump of hares disporting nearby in the barley stubble. All were silent now, and the air was still.

      Colrean opened his eyes wide, calling power into his dormant mage-sight. The world grew brighter, moon- and starlight intensified. Shadows lengthened from stone and tree … and sprang out from a dozen previously unseen creatures that had made their characteristically stealthy way from the forest and across the common, and were now only nine or ten yards from the copse. Even through a mage’s eyes their shadows were easier to see than themselves, but in essence they were somewhat like foxes and somewhat like human folk, walking upright on their hind legs, and possessing tool-using hands, but they also had tall brushes, russet fur, cunning fox-masked faces, and sensitive, sticking-up ears.

      Those ears twitched in unison as Colrean spoke.

      “How now, my lords and ladies! What seek the Rannachin at the Corner Post?”

      The twelve spread out in a line without any obvious command or discussion, and there was the glitter of obsidian blades in their pawhands, the shine of teeth bared in long snouts.

      “I think not,” said Colrean. He mumbled something, cupped one hand and drew power. A blue flame burst from his palm, the air roaring as the fire grew taller than the man. “You recall the stench of singed fox fur well, I think?”

      Again there were no visible signs of debate, but as one the Rannachin’s weapons were put away, the jaws closed, and the fox-people turned and slid away into the night, as unobtrusively as they had come.

      Colrean watched them for some time, keeping the flamecast ready, as it was quite possible they would turn back and try to rush him. But they did not. Quite possibly in the short time they had spent near the Corner Post they had already deduced the staff was too powerful for them to steal, or dared not risk the displeasure of the stone. It was even possible they thought Colrean too great a foe, though in the past he had never had to deal with more than three or four Rannachin at once.

      He let the fire die when they were out of sight, and allowed the power to ebb from his eyes as well. He had to carefully husband his strength, particularly that drawn from his own blood and bone. There would doubtless be worse than Rannachin to come that night. He could sense the staff calling ever more clearly and strongly in the clear, cool night. It would bring others.

      Colrean ate a little more bread, but did not sit down again. Instead he limped about the edge of the copse, and once again paid his respects to the ancient rowan. This time he not only bent his head, but slowly went down on one knee, as he might to a Grand Mayor or the Grand Wizard. He stayed there for some time, listening and thinking, comforted that the world around was full of small sounds again, and the sky remained clear, the stars and moon bright—and there was no sudden shower of bloodred sparks in the heavens above.

      The rowan gave no sign it was aware of his obeisance, neither during his uncomfortable kneeling nor when Colrean pushed himself up and wandered off again, this time returning to his watching spot. Feeling uneasy, he carefully climbed up on the wall for a better view. This was a chancy maneuver given whatever was wrong with his leg, and was made no easier by the age and construction of the wall. Though the stones were cunningly set together, no mortar held them in place. Neither he nor the wall fell, but Colrean was not comforted by what he saw.

      There was a fog rolling across the Seyam common, as if a single dense cloud had somehow fallen from above, though the sky was clear and there was no fog anywhere else.

      Even as he saw this sudden, inexplicable mist, Colrean’s otherworldly senses twitched, and he felt a spasm of intense fear grab his guts and grip him about the lungs. He fought off the sudden, sensible urge to flee and instead took a quick, shuddering breath. Climbing down from the wall, he hurried as fast as he could, almost hopping back to the rowan. Under its branches, he quickly took out one of his few objects of power, a knife of whalebone with a solid silver hilt that had been hidden under his jerkin. Calling on the power stored in this, he drew a circle about himself in the earth, mumbling memory-hooks, the words magic-workers used to safely recall exactly how the power must be called and used, words that the uneducated thought of as spells.

      When it was done, the whalebone blade blew into dust like a kicked puffball, and the silver hilt crumbled in Colrean’s hand, as if it had been buried in a tomb for a thousand years and could not stand the corrosive effect of open air. He had drawn every last scrap of power stored in the weapon, all at once, and so it could never be used again, never refilled. Two years to make and fill it to the brim with power, all gone in a matter of minutes, a treasure spent.

      Spent wisely, Colrean hoped. He reached into his jerkin again, fingers closing on the silver chain around his neck, making sure it was secure and that by its weight he could feel what hung suspended there.

      Fog overlapped the stone walls and spread around him, encircling copse, Corner Post, and rowan, but not closing in. Colrean could still see the starlit sky directly above, but it was as if he were in a deep hole, surrounded on all sides by gray walls.

      Walls of shifting, dense fog.

      There was something in the whiteness. Colrean could sense it, but was grateful he couldn’t see it. He knew what it must be: one of the ancient evils of thrice-burned Hîrr, the city-state still reviled and feared though a thousand years had passed since its last and utter destruction. The thing in the fog had been called many things by many different peoples. Colrean chose the most common, one that would not reveal his knowledge of any deeper mysteries.

      “Grannoch! Many-in-one!” shouted Colrean. “This is not your land, this is not your time. There is nothing here for you. Begone!”

      Fog swirled. Colrean caught a glimpse of something—some long limb or perhaps a tail—of ever-burning hide, like lumpy charcoal with crosshatched lines of fire. His eyes burned and tears ran as he watched it disappear once more into the roiling mist, to be replaced by the sudden emergence of a human hand, smooth-skinned and elegant, the fingers beckoning to him, summoning him from his circle. Offering him in that gesture everything he ever wanted, or might want: the most beautiful lover, the greatest power, riches beyond compare—

      Colrean dug his foot into the earth, just as it began to rise without his conscious direction, to make him take that first, fatal step out of his protective circle.

      “I am not to be caught that way,” said Colrean. “I say again, begone!”

      The beckoning hand disappeared. The fog thickened, but Colrean could see a dim silhouette building there, a figure forming. Something twice his height, and twice as broad, and only roughly human. One arm was very long, or perhaps held a blade; he could not tell from the mere suggestion of shape in the twisty cloud.

      It was a blade, of dark crystal or congealed black flame or something stranger still, a blade that erupted from the fog and struck at Colrean, so swiftly he barely saw it. He cried out and flinched as it hit, but it did not cut him in half,

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