The Banishing

CHAPTER 1

Notes on an extract from Elder scroll 27: Translation 3.

Long before this middle age of Wizardry, the people of the Elder days shared this world with Elves, Dwarves, the Fey and the Fell. The depredations and destruction wrought by demon kind and other Fell creatures made life a hazard and a tenuous thing.

Shamans and Wizards, Priests and Witches, Seers and Seeresses along with anyone else with even a hint of magic were called to a great meeting. It was decided to attempt a Banishment of all the Fell creatures from the Elder days. A great labor was made to construct the massive spell. There under a full moon at a most auspicious moment it was initiated and released.

Undertaken in desperation at a time when the refinement of magic was in its infancy it was reliant on sheer power rather than finesse. It worked, but the Fey, dwarves and Elves were dragged with it. Blame was laid on the Forner sect but nothing was ever proven.

After the Banishment and instigated by the Covens, a binding Compact was made, that should the Banishment ever end the Fey and the lost races would be nurtured as natural to ‘This Living Place’. The Saynellisan, Witch Queen of the time, foretold that the Banishment would end; that the Compact would be invoked. The time of the Banishment’s failing is written as The Beginning as is thought to mark the start of a new age.

Some writings in the Elder scrolls tell of Praxils being harbingers, heralds or omens, telling of the Banishment’s failing. However this interpretation and many other prophesies depend on the cant of the writer or perhaps the translation of these ancient scripts.

In this time although the Covens still teach of the Banishment, the Beginning and the Compact, within the Wizard Guild and fraternity it has faded largely to the status of myth and Legend

Chapter 1 Arrival.

The lad came down from the mountains. A stunted cripple some first saw him as he walked with a staff. A fish-wife noticed him first coming down the old King’s road. She first saw him as a distant figure between the boles of the huge and ancient Nellock trees lining the road. She watched him with the same clear gaze she watched for the fishing boats returning; though one boat she would now never see: her man being lost in the last of the sudden winter storms.

Sorrow gave her face a harsh cast not reflected in her heart and how she saw her world. Lean she was, weathered nut brown, yet with no gray in her black hair. She busied herself with chores but kept an eye on his slow progress toward the village.

“Lad!” she called, as he entered the single village street and waved to him. She gave him bread with smelly cheese and filled his flask with water. He bowed once to her and touched his chest with a clenched fist three times in the heart felt thank you of the mountain people.

She watched as he made his slow way down to the pier where the fishing boats were tied. He sat huddled against the harsh spring winds from the mountains amid the pots and nets. He drew his cloak tight about him and ate sparingly of the fish-wife’s gift. Some of the fisher folk tried to speak with him but he would only nod or shake his head in answer.

On the third day, early morn found him cracking mussels taken from the pier supports. He scooped the flesh out using a half shell as a spoon. The local dogs oddly kept him company when their usual attitude to strangers was intimidation or worse.

A couple of the older local boys of boisterous nature made a play for his meager possessions and found the lad’s staff was for more than walking.

Old Jeffers intervened and saw them off with a cuff and a kick in more permanent style. The lad seemed unbothered. Jeffers said later to those fisher folk and others gathered by the pier “he has a fire in him”, but Jeffers did not mention the flash of bright steel he saw beneath the lad’s cloak. One man’s secrets are not for another to tell.

Near ending of the seven-day after the lad’s arrival the tax man came. Riding a fine palfrey with four bully guards and pack horse trotting behind he drew up in the village square. Once a year at winters end, Larrak Bay played unwilling host to the tax man. A guard unpacked a chair and table and planted a parasol over them to shelter the King’s minion from the afternoon sun. Pompous and plump, full of his position and power, the tax man took his seat and opened his ledger. A guard rang a brass bell to summon the villagers.

The lad watched these proceedings sitting cross-legged on a boundary stone of the square, his cloak tight about him and his blonde hair tousled by the wind. The villagers, dower and sullen, lined up before the table to pay their meager tithe.

The turn came of the fish-wife who had gifted the lad with food and water on the day of his arrival. All knew she had recently lost her man to the sea. Debate grew harsh and shrill and the villagers began to mutter. The bully guard by the table, full of his own arrogance and power, stepped forward and struck the fish wife smartly across the buttocks with the flat of his sword.

None saw him move but the lad appeared between the stricken woman and the bully guard in a swirl of cloak and sudden motion. He held up a hand in the adamant gesture of stop. The guard laughed and made move to swing at the lad, whether with the flat or the bite of the blade none could later say. The lad’s stance did not change. He shouted once the word “NO” in the tongue of the mountains. In a roaring blast of stones and grass the bully guard was flung ten strides, along with the table, tax man, parasol, and the other three guards all landing in a tangle on the grass and lay there unmoving.

The sound of the lad’s cry battered back from the western wall sheltering the square, several villagers fell from the reflected force of it. The pack horse broke its tether and bolted through the village. The lad helped the fish-wife to her feet and steadied her. She wiped away tears with the back of her hand and patted his arm.

A matron from the crowd came and walked her away with an arm around her shoulders but not before giving the lad a long hard look and a nod.

The villagers muttered amongst themselves. Some shouted at the lad, several made to move toward him but he turned and pointed his staff. The look of rage on the face of one so young and the power he had just unleashed stopped them short. Ignoring the villages the lad strode to the palfrey and drew the blade old Jeffers had glimpsed and slit the money bags hanging from the horse’s pack with swift strokes. Gold, silver and copper pieces bounced and rolled down the slope toward the pier. He touched not one quarter copper piece of it. The children were the first to leap in pursuit of this river of wealth. The lad turned and walked to the western wall and wrote in chalk upon it.

Return as you must with pity or not at all.

He signed it with his name, JON, in capital letters. He sat then cross legged on the grass wrapping his cloak once more about him, and facing the unconscious men waited. The villagers drew away, muttering and pointing, helping those who had fallen.

A group made move toward him again but the matron intervened; a tall woman with red-grey hair and wearing a vast cloak and billowing skirts. She seemed to have some authority and upon her instruction most retired slowly to their cottages. Some remained however, to watch the outcome of this happening and debated, muttering quietly between them.

Nearing dusk the tax man and bully guards began to stir.

“The King will stretch your neck, child or not,” the tax man cried hoarsely at the lad. The lad merely pointed, first toward the wall, then to the palfrey and lastly to the road out toward Lune Bay.

“Jon! That name I will remember,” the tax man howled and wiped spittle from his chin as he dusted off his finery.

The lad smiled and nodded. He remained seated cross-legged on the grass as the guards gathered their paraphernalia with many a measured side long glance. One stooping for his sword hesitated but thought the better of a confrontation.

The guards assisted the tax man onto the palfrey. Jon and the villages watched them recover the packhorse on the Lune Bay road. Only then, faintly in the distance, did the villagers hear the cry of anguish when the tax man discovered the loss of his takings.

The matron, who had quieted the villagers before, was the first to approach Jon, her skirts billowing in the breeze.

“I be Morek,” Jon looked up and saw a kindly face with shrewd knowing eyes. “I know you don’t speak but know you can. You be a Wizard: That you be for certain.” She squatted down next to him.

”You set a wrong to rights but made a difficulty for us,” Morek sighed heavily. “They will return and bring a force with them perhaps even you cannot match. We will pay a high price for the gold.” She patted his arm, hitched up her skirts and walked slowly back toward the smallest of cottages. Part way she stopped and turned and called back to him.

“You belong there.” She pointed out to sea. Dimly seen in the last light, on the horizon, was an island with twin mountain peaks. Jon watched the Witch to her door.

Morning brought fair weather and children scoured the grass of the square of any coin missed the previous day. The odd cry of triumph and hand held high signaled a find. Of Jon there was no sign. There was much talk and speculation, and fear of official retribution. Most spoke ill of the lad. Old Jeffers opinion was that Jon would return for he had seen him on the road to Lune Bay in the early morn.

A seven-day later Jon had returned and was sitting with the dogs among the nets and pots. On the west wall of the square was written:

A bailiff will come in a seven-day. The tax man answers to the King’s men. The true tithe for you is one gold coin per boat.

Underneath the words was a small earthen jar. In it were gold coins, enough for one per boat. Morek brought him a thick meat sandwich.

The next day Old Jeffers on his weekly trip selling fish took Jon with him to the Wizards Isle. “Watched him as I watch the sea,” Jeffers told those who awaited his return. “Quiet as a mill pond he was but for mine I’d not plumb the depths ‘o the mind of the lad. Reckon there be currents there that could tear a man apart.” He tossed a gold coin from hand to hand. “He gave me this to gift fish-wife Gaalden, a thank you he said.” And that was all old Jeffers would say.

Morek smiled to herself walking back to her cottage. Jeffers had the right of it, Jon was a power, but they would see him again, of that she was sure.