Trudging down the dirt road, Ebberly wondered why these tasks were always set on his plate. He knew they needed to be done, but he was feeling his very advanced age these last two decades, and things like politics, intrigue, spycraft, and kingmaking was a job for younger mages, he thought.
This nonsense is tailor made for someone in their first three or so vigorous centuries, not for respectable elders of their craft approaching their ninth.
Ever since the war that killed the last king, Ebberly had been traveling this grand circuit of the kingdom. Making sure certain of his assets were safely where he had placed them after the chaos of the previous king’s death.
He had been walking this path for almost two decades now, and while he knew the roads, paths, farm tracks, and even most of the better trod game trails that wound around and through the kingdom, he knew, or at the very least he hoped, his work would ultimately be rewarded.
He was hoping his services to the Crown wouldn’t go unnoticed after this was all done, for a nice little cottage out of the way somewhere. Someplace he could work in peace and solitude upon his now neglected studies. The deeper mysteries of magic, some light alchemy, maybe find a woman or two to last him the next few decades.
Who could say? Not Ebberly. He knew what he was doing would be for the betterment of the kingdom, and would make life better for every true Son and Daughter of Moraibh.
He knew where the boy was. And he knew the boy’s adoptive parents.
He did not know the elderly couple as well as he would have liked, but Ebberly figured he knew them well enough.
So on he walked. He knew the village he was headed to quite well. He had visited twice a year over these last seventeen years on his trekking circuit around the kingdom of Moraibh.
He had been pretending to be a simple tinker, and merchant. Selling small pots, and needles to farms. Doing the occasional patch job on older pots. Re-applying their tin coating where time and use had worn them thin. Occasionally making or repairing small tools for crafters.
Though, Ebberly would grant the point that anything you pretended to do for this many years was probably no longer a cover as much as it was one’s actual profession. It was an argument he had been having with himself for a few too many years now. He was hoping there would be an end to this charade soon.
The path he now walked through the heavily forested reaches in Huince, the southernmost barony of Moraibh, was a very evenly graded, decently packed and maintained dirt road. He walked along it at a measured pace, knowing how long it would take his old bones to make this trip.
The moon had set some hours before, and the stars in the sky were beginning to dim slightly as Ebberly approached both dawn and the village of Hartaur. The air was clear, and calm, without a cloud in the sky to threaten him with rain.
He knew that as he came close enough to the village to start seeing the small smoke trails from individual chimneys, he would need to find a secluded place in these woods well off the road to bed down for the bulk of the day. He knew where the boy was, and he knew he had to approach the boy and his adoptive parents after they had worked all day.
Not during.
Not before.
The parents would balk, regardless of when he approached them, he knew. But, the boy would be more readily convinced after a day in the fields.
So, Ebberly would sleep in the woods until midday, then go to the village center to make some small sales, keeping up his disguise as a wandering tinker. Then, as late afternoon hit, but before dusk approached, he would wander to the Bearly farm.
Gathering up the boy, and hopefully securing some promises of support from sympathetic friends and neighbors.
Ebberly noticed the first detectable rays of the sun playing off of the leaves in the canopy of the trees off to his left.
He smiled, and started walking into the forest from the road. Lovely Spring growth had the underbrush beneath the trees fragrant with new flowers, and a hint of those vibrant, organic smells made by small animals that turn up the forest mast and soil looking for food.
The nap would do him well.
Ebberly sat in the dimly lit room across from the elderly couple, and their adopted son, Hewl. Hewl was a big, stapping, oat-fed lad that one often finds in the country. Daily routine of hard labor, and enough food to keep his bones inside of his skin, as the saying went.
Sarai, the lad’s mother, wasn't having any of this nonsense. She wanted her son to stay at the farm, find a good wife amongst the local stock of neighbors, and raise as many grandchildren for her as her theoretical future daughter-in-law could produce. Sarai sat looking back and forth between her husband, Boitram, and her son. She was trying to get both men to see sense. Neither were interested.
Ebberly had sown these seeds well over the last 17 years. His regular visits had ensured he had been able to lay out enough hints and clues to Hewl and Boitram, leading them both to buy into Ebberly’s long term plan, ensuring results that he knew Moraibh needed.
Small shows of minor magical tricks when no one else was around, and small gifts of magically enhanced aid to Boitram’s farming efforts now and again, just to ensure both father and son knew Ebberly was “A Power” in the kingdom.
Hewl’s big blue eyes almost sparkled with hope at the prospects he now saw before him. And Boitram had that mad look that true believers get once they have heard all of the bells in the countryside begin to signal that the revolution was finally at hand.
“But, our boy’s never held more’n a scythe, how is ‘e supposed to ‘take up the sword of the kingdom’ wif’ no trainin’?” Sarai asked. “He’s ne’er done more away from home than been camping w’the t’other lads on Summernight!”
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
‘MUM!” Hewl protested.
“Oh, lurv! Why would you think he’s not got any talent for this kingin’ business? Boy can shift more bales of barley than anyone in a day’s ride! And you’ve seen his hand at using that scythe, there’s a mean talent for cutting going on with the lad! And the wizard,” he looked to Ebberly now. “Begginyerpardonsir! ‘E says our Hewl is the lost Prince! ‘E says our Hewl can unite the nation! Get rid of …” and here Boitram dropped his voice to a whisper, “...the Usurper!”
“Boitram, I can’t believe you! Using that language in our home! You’ll have us all pulled from our beds in the night and strung up!” She whisper-hissed back at her husband. “You heard what happened last month at Blackstone?”
“MUuuuUUUM!!” Hewl whisper-wharble-yelled.
These arguments had been going in circles for hours now, and Ebberly was coming to the edge of his tolerance for Sarai’s intransigence and use of sound reasoning. Had she been either fifteen years younger, or a hundred years older, he would have forgotten the boy, and taken her from this life of farming.
There was nothing for it, though. It was time to show Sarai “The Sword.” He hadn’t wanted to resort to this, but he had a schedule to keep, and all of this arguing was keeping him from where he needed to be.
He held up his hand for silence, and those at the table stopped moving as if he had just turned them to stone.
Standing from the table, his tall, lanky frame unfolded itself creakily from the little wooden chair. Ebberly reached to the pouch at his belt, and intoned in the most dire, commanding voice he could summon. “You know the king had a sword of magic. A sword of might. A great blade forged by his ancestors, and passed down to him, to be used by the King and his heirs in defending the Realm. And this great sword glows with the spirit and virtue of those who would wield it in the name of Justice!”
He thrust his hand into the pouch at his belt, a small, wrinkled, leathery thing in which he usually kept his fire starter, the occasional treat, and a few coins. His hand just barely fit into the brown, withered thing. With a face-wrinkling force of effort, Ebberly began pulling something from the pouch.
As his elbow bent, his hand slowly backed out of the leather sack, drawing forth an ebon handle with gold accents picking out a pattern of gryphon feathers, the kind that had been on the Kingdom of Moraibh’s heraldry until the last royal family had been slaughtered in a palace coup by the king’s own cousin, Mosset, who now sat on the throne, along with his not quite human queen.
His hand continued to withdraw from the bag, and now they could all see the gleaming steel of a blade as wide as Hewl’s own very broad hand. Slowly a stride’s worth of metal made its way out of the improbably small space that hung from the elderly wizard’s belt.
Ebberly stood before the trio holding a wide, brutal shortsword with an ornate black hilt.
“That’s impressive, Mr Wizard, I ain’t saying it’s not, mind you, but it’s not glowing, either. And you said…” Sarai said into the silence of the room.
Ebberly whipped his raptor sharp gaze at the little farm wife, and raised one eyebrow. Slowly he reversed his grip on the blade, and levitated the weapon toward Hewl, who watched, mesmerized and with rapt attention as the sable handle floated toward him.
Instinctively, the large boy’s hand raised almost unconsciously, to take up the blade from where it hung before him in the unmoving air above the little dining table.
At his touch, the blade blazed to life, filling the small room with the light one might expect from the noonday sun itself. It was bright, scintillating, and emitting warmth over all four of those in attendance.
As the lad stared into the glowing beauty of the sword, Ebberly leaned down to Boitram, and asked, “You have that list of those you can trust when the time to rise up in support of your son comes?”
Boirtam nodded dumbly as he gazed vacuously at his son where the large boy stood holding the torch-like sword aloft. Slipping a hand into his own belt pouch, he pulled a folded scrap of parchment from its interior and surreptitiously handed it to the slender wizard who stood looming above him.
Ebberly turned back to the boy, and held out his hand. “Give me back the sword, Hewl. It must remain hidden until it is needed. Now, go. Pack what you need for a long trip. We will be moving across the countryside to avoid Imperial roadblocks and checkpoints.”
The boy looked sad at the prospect of releasing this grand new toy, but complied. Once he had seen the wizard perform the trick of replacing the wide, short blade back into the improbably small space at the wizard’s belt.
As they walked from the farm into the darkness, Ebberly could hear the barely repressed sobs of Sarai as her beloved son walked away into the dark night from the only life they had raised him to live. Boitram and Sarai were both shedding tears as the wizard swept their son off to his new destiny.
Ebberly stood over the spread out dead body of the boy.
As the mounted Imperial Guards surrounded the two of them at the edge of the forest several miles from the farm where he had collected the lad, Ebberly wiped the blood from the curved blade in his hand.
The captain of the Guard nodded at the skinny old man, marveling at how the blood, and small bits of flesh that had splattered across his cloak and robes now slowly rolled from the fabric to the ground leaving the vestments as clean as the day it had first been donned, not a stain to be seen. Ebberly nodded back at the man, Captain Keogh he thought, and once his knife was spotless, and again concealed up the sleeve of his robe, he took a scrap of parchment from his belt, and handed it to the armored man on the impressive steed.
“Here are the names, Captain, just like two months ago in…” He paused to recall, “... Copperfield. I suggest you have your men move in before dawn. I have noted their locations next to each name. Try to not burn down the town.”
The captain looked angry, but kept his temper. “Yes, sir. What happened at Blackstone was unfortunate. We will be more assiduous here.”
Ebberly gave a half bow, and smiled at the man. “You and your men know the job. You know your duty. Be about it.”
The captain nodded. And then he indicated the cooling piles of meat that lay about the wizard’s feet of the formerly large blond farmboy. “Do you need my men to take care of… this?”
“Oh, no, thank you. I have this.” He held his right hand parallel to the ground over the remains, and they began to sink slowly into the soil with sickeningly organic and obscene noises.
“Sir, we have been ordered to return to the capitol after today. And with haste. Will you be continuing on to the next town?” Keogh asked.
“No. I am done for now. We have gotten all of them. I made sure each one was an heir. It’s done.”
“If I may ask, do you need any messages conveyed to His Majesty?”
“No, Captain. But, please give him my regards, and let Her Majesty know that Uncle Ebberly loves her, and I will be in the capitol for Midwinter if she would like to see me for the holiday. Let her know it is my suggestion we not do another purge like this for another ten years at least. Otherwise, let her know I will be retiring for some time, but if she needs me, she should send a message to me in the usual manner.” He winked at the mounted man, and was rewarded by the sight of a captain of the Imperial Guard shuddering in fear.
Below his hand on the ground, the earth had turned itself back into the same undisturbed rut it had been before the farm boy had been messily spread across it.
Ebberly watched as Keogh rallied his men, and they rode off to the south towards the distant bulk of the sleepy village. He then turned back toward the north, himself, leaving his now useless tinker’s pack with a clang and clatter.
Ebberly started walking.
Tomorrow was a new day, and the Kingdom, and his niece, would be better for having fewer traitors amongst the peasantry.
It was what was best for the True Sons and Daughters of Moraibh.