The Witches of the Dailes

      “How did he find out about Laithia’s father?” Ely asked, when he and the wizard reached his chambers. “I am the king’s advisor,” Blyord said, standing near the window of the cramped room, a new dawn had come and gone, sunset painted the stone sill in mild amber, and gave the same color to the wizard’s long hair. “He did not need to know,” Ely said. “The past is the past. He has since paid the price for his magic.” “He did indeed,” Blyord said. “And from what I’ve been told, he was a good man none the less.” “Few men knew him as well as I did,” Blyord said. “He was a worthy man, despite his allegiance to the old world – a sorcerer with a conscience.” “I’m told he was on the right side in that war,” Ely said. “He was,” Blyord said, looking out the window, not at Ely. “He knew he and his kind had gone too far. But he opposed banning it as the elves insisted on doing later.   He wanted to save it. He wanted to control it. I told him it was not possi...

      He could feel the grit of the dust against his teeth as he rode, the hooves of his small horse stirring up the dry ground around him, each footfall jolting him as he clutched the reigns, mile after painful mile counted off in his head as he pushed on. His road-weary head turned frequently to study the road behind him, a twisted track barely wider here than the horse itself, long passed the last aspects of civilization the City of Cort had presented. “This is horse country,” he though, shuttering, danger before and behind him, between him and the southern hills of Land Gate he needed to reach before the riders behind him reached him or the horsemen of the Dzafars intervened. The maps he’s studied at Cort had shown a river, a winding, low water place he could wade before the ancient enchanter towers that guarded Land Gate, long abandoned, but markers he desperately needed to find. Over his shoulder and along the winding path another, more substantial trail...

      Plumes of incense smoke rose from the circle in the center of the room, like columns of gray tainted by the deep amber of the blaze in the middle. The scent of it recalling distant forests in the northwest from which the embers came, holy wood that carried the memory of that land where the gods once walked, and whose faces in stone looked down about the circle and the monks with fiery eyes. The monks bowed, and chanted, then bowed again, towards the round hearth and the plumes of smoke, then away from it, pausing to pray specific prayers to each stone face. The heat rose; sweating faces chanting harder, clinging to something none could see but all believed stood before them, two dozen men in brown robes and shaved heads, chanting in anticipation of arrival, or answer from the faces of stone or even the fire. A few stood back from the inner circle, young men, eyes reflecting the fire and the ceremony, each with fingers clutched at their sides, waiting, watc...

      He must be drunk, the old man at the tavern thought, hearing the herdsman talk about what he thought he saw down in the lower pastures. “There’s no such thing as elves anymore,” one of the other patrons said, saying aloud what the old man thought, “At least, not in this neck of the woods.” Or this pasture, or field, or wherever in Amlor might wander. “There were elves here once,” the herdsman said. “They can still be here for all we know.” “Someone would have seen them long before this,” a third man chimed in, a stranger with an accent that suggested he came from inland somewhere, not Land Gate, the old man thought, north of that, from the northern coast, where some claim strange things occurred routinely, and if a man like that didn’t believe elves still wandered this part of the world, how could a simple herdsman see one? “Do you even know what an elf looks like?” the northerner asked the herdsman. “I’ve seen the paintings on the walls of the castle,...

    Ely sat in a cell that was not a cell. They guards had not escorted him to the dungeons deep in the bowels of the castle, but to a room in one of the towers. They had not taken his sword, nor latched the lock. Yet guards stood outside the door in the hall, commanded by the king, making Ely a prisoner none the less. He could not close his eyes without seeing the bitter struggle ongoing in the south, the wall of shields and spears pushing north, the arch of arrows falling in upon the frail defenders of Taffar. The black and crimson uniforms of the Htam army flowed largely unimpeded like the flow of blood. In his mind, he pictured the tall tower in which Laithia resided, one of those remaining from before the Wars of Enchantment, endowed with magic to resist assault from without, and yet, as the wars later proved not impenetrable. How long could she hold out – if as the Blyord suspected – Htam’s army had the blessing of the Witches of the Dales? Magic again magic?...

      The fish are dead. Bratko held the end of the net with his blistered fingers, staring down into the dead eyes of dead fish that stared back, lifeless, tinged with a pale color he had never seen before. How can he bring back dead fish to market, he wondered, his small boat swaying in the rough current of Sea Gate, after he had sailed out too far from his normal route. He had not found fish further in, thinking that strange in itself, only to find when he and his son pulled in the net, all the fish were dead. The early morning air chilled him. Yet the fish he saw in the net looked cooked, as if something from the depths had boiled them, sending their lifeless bodies to the surface where they became ensnared in his net. “What do we do father?” his son asked, his fingers holding the other side of the net full of dead fish. “We cannot bring them back like this,” Bratko said. Already the stench rose from their dead bodies, stirring up vomit in him, like a ...

      “I hate that your read me so easily,” Ely told the wizard when they reached a point beyond the king’s hearing and the doors closed behind. “I’ve known you all your life, Ely,” the wizard said, looking around, keeping his voice low, all too aware that the king’s spies did not all reside abroad. “I cannot go back to the war empty handed,” Ely said. “I made promises I intend to keep.” “Your fate is in the south,” the wizard admitted. “Yet, you take with you the fate of Amlor and much more when you go. We need to be careful. I do not trust the priest of Htam, and I fear that if they take you, they might hold you for ransom or worse.” “You believe they can take me?” “You may be a skilled warrior, Ely, but you cannot fight this alone. I’m not talking about the Htam army. You are not skilled in fighting the kind of war the priests will wage – they bear the magic from the Dales, and that is far beyond your skills, and maybe even mine.” “You act as if the witch...

       “Clearly there are forces here I have not anticipated,” Blyord finally said in a voice so cool Ely shuttered. The wizard’s stern stare fixed on the young prince, as if trying to read beyond what had already been said. “I knew things were bad; I did not know they were this bad.” The king’s gaze turned in the direction of the wizard, looking puzzled. “What do you mean?” the king asked. “I mean we cannot afford to do nothing,” Blyord said. “Then you think Ely is right that they could assail us here?” the King said. “We have high mountains and well-situated forts. In the past, these have kept us safe.” “That is not what I mean, sire,” the Wizard said, his sad eyes still looking in Ely’s direction. “I do not think they intend to conquer us in such a way.” “What way then?” “Through Prince Ely,” the wizard said. “There is an evil spell on him, but not cast by the Queen of Taffar, a love sickness no doubt contrived by the evil priests of Htam, drawin...

    The king, who had once relied heavily on Blyord’s wisdom, spent most of his time pinning over former glories of his ancestors, and receiving reports of his spies from abroad, bitterly blaming the wizard for stealing his legacy and potential to become the great king lore spoke about. “If I could have wielded the sword, none of this might have come to pass,” he often mumbled, meaning the rise of Htam and the power of the witches far to the south. “Had you done so, you would have fallen,” the wizard always responded. “It is not your fate to take the sword south.” “Who’s fate is it then?” the king counter, a white brow rising over his suspicious gray eyes, suspecting Blyord would utter Ely’s name, but the wizard never did. Of the two men, Ely feared the wizard more, although this had not always been the case. Once, his father had seemed the more powerful, as if a living form of the very figures carved into the columns around him, a thunderstorm full of fire and fur...