“But there isn’t any farmland there,” broke in a tawny-headed girl of ten or eleven summers.
“No,” agreed Aralorn softly, pleased that the child had added to the drama of her story. “Not anymore. There’s just an endless sea of black glass where the farmland used to be.”
She paused and let them think about that for a little while. “As I said, Tam was raised in the small farming village by the priest. When the boy was twelve—the age of apprenticing—he was sent to the king’s wizard for training. By the time he was eighteen, Tam was the most powerful wizard around—except for those using black magic.”
Aralorn surveyed her audience. “There were a lot of black mages, though. Black magic was common then, and most people saw nothing wrong with it.”
“Nothing?” asked Gerem.
“Nothing.” Aralorn nodded. “Most of the mages used the blood and death of animals—if they used human deaths, they kept it quiet. If you kill a pig for eating, its death releases magic. Isn’t it a waste if you take the animal’s hindquarters and throw them in the midden? Why then is it not a waste to leave the magic of its death to dissipate unused?” She waited. “They thought so. But our Tam, you see, was different. He’d been raised by a priest of the springtime goddess—a goddess of life. Out of respect to her, he didn’t sully himself with death.”
Satisfied that she’d given them something to think about, she continued the story. “Fargus, with the wealth of the gold mines of Berronay behind him, bade his mages ease the way for his armies, and he took over land after land. As each new country added to his wealth, he hired more mages. Even the Great Swamp was no barrier to Fargus’s mages, whose powers only grew as the number of the dead and dying mounted.
“Now, Fargus was not the first warlord to conquer others using the power of the black mages. A score of years earlier, the battles between Kenred the Younger and Agenhall the Foolish had raged wildly until the backlash of magic had sunk the whole country of Faen beneath the waves of the sea. A hundred years before that, the ravages of the Tear of Hornsmar destroyed the great forest of Idreth with the magic of his sorceress mistress, Jandrethan.” Aralorn looked up and saw several members of her audience nodding at the familiar names. “But it was Fargus’s war that changed everything.”
“Hallenvale,” she went on, “came at last to Fargus’s notice, and he sent his magic-backed army to fight there. But it was not an easy conquest. The king of Hallenvale was a warrior and strategist without equal—called Firebird for his temperament and the color of his hair. Ah, I see several of you have heard of him. Hallenvale was a prosperous little country, as it had been ruled wisely for generations. The Firebird used his wealth to gather together wizards of his own, including Tam. The small unconquered countries all around, knowing that if Hallenvale fell, their lands would be next, aided him any way they could.
“A battle was fought on the Plains of Torrence. The armies were equally matched: Thirty-two black mages fought for Fargus, a hundred and seven wizards stood beneath the Firebird’s banner—though these were mostly lesser mages.”
She let her voice speed up and drop in pitch as she fed them details of the fight. “. . . Spells were launched and countered until magic permeated the very earth. After three days, a pall hung over the plain, an unnaturally thick fog, a fog so dense they could not see twenty paces through it. To the mages, whichever side they fought upon, the air was so heavy with magic that it took more power to force yet more magic into the area. Fortunately”—she let her tongue linger on the word and call it to her audience’s attention—“there were so many dead and dying on the field that there was power enough to work more and greater magics.
“Tam, his power exhausted, was sent to the top of a nearby hill that he might get a better view of the battlefield. He did so. What he saw sent him galloping for the Firebird’s personal mage, Nastriut.”
“Wasn’t the mage who escaped the sinking of Faen on a boat called Nastriut?” Falhart asked.
She nodded. “The very same. He was an old man by then, and tired from the battle. Tam coaxed him onto a horse and hauled him up to the top of the hill.”
She sipped water and let the suspense build.
“Only a very great mage could have seen what Tam had, but Nastriut was one of the most powerful wizards of his generation. From the vantage point of the hill, Nastriut and Tam could see that the fog that had grown from the first day of the battle was not what either had thought. It was not a spell cast by one of Fargus’s wizards or some side effect of the sheer volume of magic.
“ ‘Just before Faen fell into the sea,’ Tam said, ‘you saw a dark fog engulf the whole island.’
“ ‘There was magic so thick it hurt to breathe,’ said Nastriut. ‘Death, more death, and dreams of the power of blood. From the sea I saw it like a great hungry beast.’ The old man shuddered and swallowed hard. ‘Have you been dreaming of power, Tam? I have. Dreams of the power death brings and the lust that rises through my blood. It promises me youth that has not been my state for a century or more.’
“ ‘If I use black magic,’ whispered Tam, ‘my dreams tell me that I can end all the fighting and go back to my home. Are you saying this thing is in my dreams?’
“ ‘Such dreams we all had before Faen died,’ the old man said. ‘I dreamed that we created this with the taint of death magic, but I had no proof. When this beast killed the island, it was half the size it is now. But it is the same, the same.’ ”
The great hall was deathly quiet, and Aralorn was able to drop her voice to a whisper that echoed—a trick of tone and architecture she’d discovered a long time ago.
“Tam could not have done it, but Nastriut’s reputation was such that Fargus’s mages left the battlefield to help. Over a hundred mages pooled their magic to create a desert of obsidian glass to contain the Dreamer their blood magic had brought into being. Nastriut died in the doing—and he was not alone. The rest of the wizards vowed never to use black magic again upon pain of death. To ensure that this promise was kept, they placed upon themselves a spell that allowed their magic to be controlled by one man—the first ae’Magi, Tam of Hallenvale.”
“A pretty tale to cover the wizards’ stupidity,” said Gerem abruptly. “It was abuse of magic that created the glass desert, not some heroic effort to save the world.”
Aralorn smiled at him. “I only tell the tale as it was told to me. You can judge it true or false if you wish. It won’t change the results.”
“The destruction of a dozen kingdoms,” he said.
“You’ve been listening to your teachers.” Aralorn smiled her approval. “But there were other results as well. The wizards were vulnerable, most of them trained to use magic in a way that was forbidden them. Now the people feared them and killed them wherever they found them. For generations, a mageborn child was killed as soon as it was recognized. Only in Reth or Southwood could wizards find sanctuary.”
Aralorn surveyed her audience, child and adult alike. “If you wonder if this story is true, ask the Archmage what the first words of the wizard’s oath are, the oath every apprentice must make to his master since the ae’Magi was set over the mages at the end of the Wizard Wars.”
“Ab earum satimon,” said Kisrah. He frowned thoughtfully at Aralorn, then translated softly, “To protect our dreams. Where did you hear this story? I have never heard it before. I thought the glass desert was a mistake caused by a clash of magic gone wild and out of control.”
“I told it to her,” said Nevyn, stepping out from a doorway. “It’s an old tale I heard somewhere—though Aralorn has improved upon it.”
Aralorn nodded gravely in acknowledgment of the compliment as she rose from her seat. “I have heard several variations of the story since. Lord Kisrah, you wanted to see my father?”