built around the bole of one of the giant redwoods, some twenty feet above the forest floor. A broad stair had led up to it once, but long ago that had fallen or been intentionally destroyed, its remnants now a tumulus of rotten timber, overgrown with ferns and fungus. A ladder, easily drawn up in case of peril, had replaced it.
The current inhabitant of the lodge was hanging pheasants in his cool room, an oak-shingled hut built between the roots of a neighboring giant redwood some sixty paces from the house. He felt the news arriving before he heard those bringing it, or at least he sensed there were excited people coming down the forest path. Usually this meant somebody was badly hurt and needed his aid, so he strung up the last three pheasants very swiftly and climbed out, leaving the birds swinging on their hooks. He did pause to close and slide the great bolt across the door, for it was not only mere foxes that fancied hanging game. The Rannachin loved pheasant, and they could open doors that weren’t secured with cold iron.
The pheasant-hanger’s name was Colrean, or at least it was now. He was under thirty years old, but only just, and looked older, because he had spent the last decade mostly at sea, and then more recently in the forest and the fields, under the sky. Sun, salt water, and wind had worked to make his face more interesting. He had a lean, competent look about him, his eyes were dark and quick, and he walked with a noticeable limp, legacy of some unexplained wound or injury.
Colrean had come to the lodge some twenty months before, in midwinter, riding one mule and followed by two others, all of them heavily laden. Tying these up at the old iron hitching post near the ladder, he had by means unknown dispossessed the Rannachin, who had thought to make the lodge a cozy winter lair. Then he had nailed a parchment with a great lead seal to one of the more outstanding roots of the great tree. According to those few folk among the villagers who could read, this was a deed from the Grand Mayor of Pran, granting the new arrival the lodge; hunting rights in the forest and certain other perquisites relating to tolls on the forest road; tithes on fishing or eel-trapping in the river Undrana that passed nearby; a threepenny fee for cattle watering at the wide Undrana ford; and other minor items of tallage.
He had never attempted to enforce any of these imposts, which was fortunate, given that the people of the three villages were by no means convinced that Pran had any authority whatsoever in their purlieu, no matter what the last queen of Pranallis and her vassal the long-gone baron of Gamel, Thrake, and Seyam might have held to be their own.
Colrean had shown his wisdom in matters of friendly relations with the local inhabitants very early, by giving each of the three villages one of his mules within days of his arrival, limping along through snow and ice to do so. Though he carried no staff nor wore a sorcerer’s ring, he was at once suspected of being some kind of magic-worker, for he spoke to the mules and they obeyed, and the village dogs didn’t bark and slather at his approach, but came and bent their heads before him, and wagged their tails and offered their bellies to be scratched. Which he did, indicating kindness as well as magic.
The villagers tried to find out exactly what kind of magic-worker he was, but he would not speak of it. They first knew he definitely was one when Fingal the Miller’s hand was crushed in his own stone, and Colrean came unbidden to cut away the dangling fingers and then, with a cold flame conjured in his own hands, cauterized the wound, so that no blood sickness came. Fingal Seven Fingers was only the first of Colrean’s patients, and he even deigned to help the midwives at difficult birthings, which the villagers knew marked him as no wizard. Wizards were grand beings, and lived in the cities, and were not to be found at village birthings.
The news-bearers who came running to be first to tell Colrean about the staff were Sommie and Heln. They were frequent visitors, inseparable friends, serious-minded, both eleven years old. Sommie was the seventh daughter of the midwife of Gamel and her weaver husband; Heln was the fifth son of the innkeepers of the only inn for leagues, the Silver Gull at the Seyam crossroad. Colrean knew them well, for once a week he taught children (and some grown folk) who wished to learn their letters, taking slates and hornbook to each village meeting hall in turn. Sommie and Heln were among his keenest pupils, following him from village to village and always pestering him for extra classes or books they might borrow.
“There’s a stick stuck in the Corner Post!” shouted Sommie when she was still a good dozen yards away.
“Not just a stick!” cried out Heln breathlessly, skidding to a stop in the leaf mulch of the forest path. “A staff! Like a scythe handle, only it’s dark wood and has a metal bit on the end.”
Colrean stopped in midstep, as always a little clumsily, and lifted his head, sniffing at the breeze. The children watched as he slowly turned about, nose twitching. When he completed his circle, he looked down at the two dirty, excited faces staring up at him.
“A staff in the stone, you say? And you’ve seen it yourselves?”
“Yes, of course! We looked and then came straight here. Why are you sniffing?”
“You’re not playing some trick on me?” asked Colrean. He had sensed nothing on the air, no magic stirring. The Corner Post was less than half a league away, and he felt sure he would have felt something …
“No! It’s there! This morning, from nowhere. The little ones saw it. Why were you sniffing?”
“Oh, just smelling what scents are on the air,” said Colrean absently. “I’d better have a look. Has anyone touched this staff?”
“No! Old Haxon said no one was to go near, and you were to be fetched, I mean asked to come. Ma’s coming to tell you, but we ran ahead.”
Ma was Sommie’s mother, the midwife Wendrel. She had some small magic herself, combined with considerable herb-lore and a little book-learning. Knowing more about such things than the younger folk, she could barely conceal her fear as she puffed up after the children.
“It is a wizard’s staff,” she panted out, after a bare nod of greeting. “And it is deep in the stone.”
“But there is no wizard about?” asked Colrean. He hesitated for a moment, then added, “No new tree nearby, strangely full-grown? A stray horse of odd hue? A stranger in the village?”
“No tree, no stray, no stranger,” said Wendrel. “Just the staff in the stone. Will you come?”
“Yes,” said Colrean.
“Can we come too?” asked Sommie, her question echoed by Heln.
Colrean looked up at the sky, watching the clouds, judging how much daylight remained. He thought about the phase of the moon, which was waning gibbous, and which stars would be in the ascendant that night, influencing the world below. There was nothing of obvious alarm in the heavens, no harbinger of doom.
“It should be safe enough, at least until sunset,” he said slowly. He looked at Wendrel. “But there is danger. As Frossel said:
A wizard without a staff
may still be a wizard
A staff without a wizard
is a void
Waiting to be filled.
“Who’s?” asked Heln.
“Frossel?” finished Sommie.
“Frossel was a wizard, chronicler, and poet,” answered Colrean. He started walking, the slower pace forced by his limp easily matched
