Author: Sharon Lee
Date: 1987-06-02 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Science Fiction
Description: Three stories of power, innocence, and magic.Kinzel the Foolish: Meet Kinzel, 'prentice to Mad Siljan the herb lady. Not quite the village fool. Not quite. And does it take a fool, or a wise child, to bargain with a unicorn?Kinzel the Innocent: Against his master's -- and his own! -- expectation, Kinzel has won a wizard's staff, and, having done so, he can no longer stay in his master's house. So, he sets to see the world, finding it as wondrous as the world seems to find him. It's a good life, but it may be a short one, for Kinzel has made powerful enemies.Kinzel the Arbiter: Two wealthy town

THE NAMING OF KINZEL

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

Pinbeam Books
http://www.pinbeambooks.com

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are fiction or are used fictitiously.

THE NAMING OF KINZEL

Copyright © 1984, 1987, 1990, 1998, 2011 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author. Please remember that distributing an author's work without permission or payment is theft; and that the authors whose works sell best are those most likely to let us publish more of their works.

First published in 1987 by General Avocations.

The Naming of Kinzel: The Fooish originally appeared in Fantasy Book, June 1984

The Naming of Kinzel: The Innocent originally appeared in Fantasy Book, December 1984

The Naming of Kinzel: The Arbiter originally appeared in The Naming of Kinzel Midnight Edition, June 1987

ISBN:

Kindle: 978-1-935224-15-0

Epub: 978-1-935224-16-7

PDF: 978-1-935224-17-4

Published April 2011 by

Pinbeam Books

PO Box 707

Waterville ME 04903
email info@pinbeambooks.com

Cover Copyright © 1987, 1988, 2011 by Colleen Doran. All rights reserved.

The Naming of Kinzel

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It was the time of the mages and the magic, of the herb ladies and the witches, of striving against a world running downhill toward a chaos of Power against Power.

In those days, as in these, many had forgotten the legends of the original magician who stole the Branch of Power from the Unicorn Clans who had kept it - key to their power - hoarded and secret. The first magician used the Branch to create the first Staff and thereby the first Clock, releasing magic, and the means to control it, into the worlds of men.

It is said that somewhere in the depths of the Large Continent there are still these things: the magician's hut, of stone cunningly piled; the Clock which stands behind each and every device of man; and the Branch cut for the first Staff and which converts the Power of worlds into the Power of Life.

One tends to believe only in what one can lay hand to. So it is with common folk, so it is with magicians. Belief in things measured and ground and distilled is much easier to hold down the centuries than belief in a Power that flows in all one sees. Thus the Clock was revered among the learned magicians; and the Branch dwindled from solid reality to legend to childish superstition....

KINZEL THE FOOLISH

It was far too hot; the boy kneeling in the dust in the leafless thicket shifted his position slightly so his shadow fell more squarely on the luckless rabbit beneath his hands. The beast thanked him with a bare twitch of an ear.

Heartened by even so slight a motion, the boy moved his hands gently over the rabbit's body, frowning in fey concentration.

The wrongness was - here ... and here.... The boy bit his lip. It was so very hot. What use if the poor beastie were healed when there was no water to be had?

He put such thoughts firmly from his mind, concentrating on the rabbit he'd found motionless and weak on the high hill path, concentrating on summoning the health that would banish the illness he sensed.

How good to be a rabbit, how free. How easily the sweet air enters one's lungs; how gently, how smoothly expelled - so.

The boy's hands moved instinctively, his plain round face blank with the effort. So fine to be a rabbit, to dream while the sun is in the sky; to father a dozen rabbit-kits and teach them the good leaves to nibble when the purple evening falls....

Suddenly the rabbit twitched an ear, wrinkled its nose, and twisted free of the soothing hands. The boy sat back, bewilderment replacing concentration in his face, exhaustion showing in the corner of his eyes.

The rabbit regarded its savior for a long moment, then used its back foot to scratch one ear, and reared up high to sniff the air. It cocked a last bemused rabbit-eye at the unmoving boy and hopped off, not very quickly, for the relative coolness of the inner wood.

With a sigh belonging to a much younger child, the healer slumped and sagged edgewise. Dimly he recalled Siljan's admonitions: only heal the deserving; never boast of the power; only heal where someone can watch over you afterwards.

Too tired to care, he let his head fall the remaining few inches, and slept with his head cradled in the dust.

The rabbit peered out from the shade of the wood at the strangeness of a human child sleeping in the wild, and then, recalling from deep in its brain that humans were to be avoided, edged into the dimness.

***

The boy awoke at sundown when an almost-cool breeze entered the thicket and ruffled his tangled, light ginger hair. Stretching and smiling, he regarded the world with sleepy approval through half-slitted eyes.

Then the significance of the long shadows struck him and he jerked himself upright, slapping the fingers of one hand to the side of his face in a characteristic gesture.

Late! Oh, late.

His father would beat him sure, for the sunset chores undone, and his two brothers would mock him for his tears and his stammering, unheard explanation. But the rabbit's life was worth far more than any punishment that might be meted out to him, and it had been his own folly, to sleep....

He was up and running before thoughts of punishment were complete, his feet following an invisible path. The path forked, and he paused, face screwed up with tight remembering.

Oh yes, that was the other thing. Tonight there was to be a town meeting to decide what could be done to save themselves from this unnatural drought and the unseasonable, impossible heat. He had to be there; the meeting was his reason for not attending Siljan this very night as she gathered moon-herbs.

"Well, and if you must, you must," she'd sniffed in her grumpy way, "though what good you think to do at that fool's congregation is more than I can see. Each of 'em 'spects they should get all the help they want but not one of 'em wants to hear word one 'bout Balance! If you don't help 'em they blame their troubles on ye, and if you do they get afraid and want more at the same time! Like me and you they don't think, boy. They think we do wizard's work! Ha!"

She'd stopped then and looked hard at him, almost like she was seeing him for the first time.

"Well, might be you could do wizard work one day, but I'll tell you Kinzel, they think we do this because we want to - they can't see a proper Balance if it stares 'em in the face - and they want help they don't need and they 'spect help they shouldn't get. Me an' you, boy, me an' you, we gotta help the Balance, when we can, don't we boy?"

The whole time she'd spoken the herb-lady had sorted herbs by touch, not missing a single beat as she'd gone through a sackful of night-gleanings.

Kinzel had nodded slowly. He'd never had a lot to say when Siljan got to talking like this. He did what he did because it was right, not for the goodwill that rarely came from his efforts. He'd thought for a moment about his brothers' reactions when he'd done some small healing: each acting as if he'd done something wrong, jealous - condemning him for being such a show-place fool.

Kinzel had been startled as "Mad" Siljan momentarily acted mad. She'd thrown a handful of pop-flowers at him to get his attention, and then she'd flapped her arms at him like some mountain bird. "Well? Be off if it's off you're being! And mind me now, Kinzel, mind you take the high hill path when you do."

He had to be there - he had determined he would be there three days ago when Mad Siljan had given him her secret.

The boy shrugged, grinning in self-derision. Well, he was due a beating, whatever came. If his father were forced to administer two at once his arm might fail before the fatal blow was dealt. It was worth a gamble, at least.

He turned down the right hand fork, running in darkness as surely as if the midday sun shone to guide him.

***

The meeting had begun by the time he arrived; the door of the meeting house stood ajar to allow whatever breezes there might be to come inside. The boy had heard someone shouting as came to the entrance, and he looked cautiously within.

Amid the sweaty backs and flickering light, Kinzel recognized the quiet Edlin, herder of shoats, who looked momentarily from the noise and saw Kinzel in the doorway.

Edlin's eyes grew wide as he moved toward Kinzel, a half-smile touching his face for a moment. Kinzel worried briefly that perhaps the herbs he'd reluctantly picked for the new-married Edlin had failed ... but Edlin seemed more concerned with Kinzel's presence than any failures.

"Boy, you should not be here, for sure! Your father's raging, and that'll come to no good for any of us, you especial...."

Kinzel relaxed: he was prepared to face that rage.

"I must be here! I must find out what's to be done. Siljan herself says that important things will happen in the next few days."

Edlin backed away a half-step, as always unwilling to consider that Kinzel was Siljan's unofficial assistant.

"You should leave, I tell you," the young man said. "The mood's bad for those of your ... interests." The man drew closer that his voice could be heard against the yelling behind him.

"Siljan may know herbs and animals and such - and you some, too - but there's bad talk going on about magic and such, talk about Avonhall's magic rubbing off on us!"

Kinzel blanched and stepped back a small step. At Avonhall, only three days' journey away, half the town had gone mad after eating last year's new harvest bread.

Avonhall's herb-women had been blamed - they'd been feuding, the two of them - and they'd been thrown into the lake, bound hand and foot to each other.

While Siljan'd whispered once to Kinzel that they'd escaped, there was talk of a curse on the town: the minor maladies grew all-too-often into death-sicks, the animals lost far too many young....

"That's not the problem here," Kinzel muttered, frightened. "That's not the problem!" he repeated with sudden surety, and evaded Edlin's restraining arms with a rabbit-like dash deeper into the hall.

Kinzel's father was standing, facing the Elder's chair, redfaced and waving his arms in anger. "...them says we should leave - leave! - the land we grew up on, the land our fathers grew up on, and their fathers grew up on, and their fathers worked and came to know, why them that say leave are welcome to go, sure enough! And their neighbors will call coward at their backs and spit three times in their footsteps as they're walking away to be sure they never come back-"

Another man jumped into the fray, his roar momentarily drowning out the voice of Kinzel's father.

"And what if it is so, what the fisherman fears - what if it is wizardry set against us? Think thou, Pastt Farer! When in the memory of thy father, or his father, or beyond!, has there come such a season, when the run shrank to mere trickle and the very bed-bottom dried and cracked in the heat? The very sun, the fisherfolk say, chases fish away, out to the full deep ocean, where the cool water hides 'neath warm, and where no man can cast his net!"

Pastt Farer glowered in a manner the watching boy knew well. He wondered if his father would really strike someone at a public meeting. It was then, however, that Elder Donvar chose to stand. The the crowd grew quiet, awaiting his words.

"Whether the drought is wizard's work or no may easily be determined. Who among you shall volunteer to go to Bronzemere and put the question to Milord Madog, the mage who makes his home there and whose influence is said to be great among those of magic?"

Silence, and then finally a man's voice from the other side of the hall: "'Tis five day's journey for a fast horse in fair weather, Elder. None of us have a fast horse and the walk-"

Another man Kinzel could not see spoke up. "And what would make a distant mage to cast a spelling on us? A fault so large would not have gone unnoticed!"

Half a dozen voices called "aye" to that and more tumbled after until Elder Donvar again held up his hand, turning his head from side to side and quelling the crowd with the seriousness of his face.

The shouting was but echoes when the Elder's ironic murmur came clear to the boy hiding in the shadows.

"What then shall we do, brave folk? If none will walk to the wizard shall we quietly return to our homes and fry?" He flung his arms out suddenly, angrily.

"Has one among you a suggestion that lays claim to sense? Is there anyone here who has considered a course that we might take in hope?"

"I have...."

Kinzel had not intended to speak; he had not spoken loudly. But in the silence that followed Donvar's mocking, his murmur was loud enough to be heard across the hall.

All heads turned toward the rear of the room where the boy leaned into the corner to ease his shaking.

"Kinzel!" shouted his father.

The boy forced himself to disregard all faces but that of Elder Donvar. The Elder was standing, hands on hips, head tilted to one side, astonishment and something else on his face.

"Well, lad?" asked the Elder gently.

Pastt Farer was on his feet, his roar schooled to barely a sputter in the face of the Elder's seriousness.

"Elder, you know my son. Everyone knows my son, Kinzel. Aye," he roared again, throwing an arm out to the crowd to gather support. "All know Kinzel - as a good and proper fool!"

There was laughter from several quarters as certain men agreed with the father's assessment of his eldest.

"Silence!" Donvar's hands were out again, commanding.

"At least the lad says he has what none of you grown men here has put forth: a plan! As I am Elder we will hear him out."

The laughter was hushed, and some hunched shoulders forward a little in shame. The Elder looked back to the boy in the corner.

"Very well, then, boy, what is your plan?"

Kinzel sagged into the corner, unable to speak. The heat, the healing, the run to the village, his father's scorn - three beatings now due his due - all seemed to weigh upon him at once. He was dizzy. He was afraid momentarily that he might faint.

"Well, boy?" The Elder's voice was impatient.

Kinzel finally found his tongue.

"Siljan says there is a Unicorn glade up in the hills, sir, just a half-day's walk from here...." His voice faded and he looked at Donvar expectantly, as if that bare statement contained it all.

The Elder frowned. "Well, what of it? If Siljan says she knows of a Unicorn glade, I see no virtue in dissuading her."

Someone in the crowd of sullen men laughed, loud and sharp. The boy at the back of the room drew a deep breath, unable to believe that the Elder, at least, could not see how obvious...

"But, but - sir. Everyone knows that a Unicorn glade is always green. The flowers bloom there longer than is common; ordinary animals go there to drink the water if they are sick or injured...."

He stopped again, breathless, waiting for the Elder to take up the trail of his thoughts.

Donvar merely frowned more stormily and said again, "Well?"

"The water!" Kinzel blurted out, standing away from the wall in his agitation. "The Unicorn water! Why all that need be done, I'm sure, is ask! The Unicorn is magic - he would lend us his stream...."

He stopped again, this time because it would have been impossible to make himself heard above the howls of laughter and the exclamations that filled the hall.

Fighting back the tears that were ever too close to the surface - the cause of his brothers' scorn and his father's disgust on many a day - Kinzel stood in the corner, hearing the laughter rebound off the stone walls, feeling an anger growing in his stomach.

He had bungled again! Somehow the words had been altered by his ineptitude from a logical course to one only worthy of derision. Stupid, stupid, stupid Kinzel! His fault only; he could not have put it correctly. It was inconceivable that they could have understood, yet still laugh.

A heavy hand fell upon his shoulder, and another grabbed the scruff of his neck and gave him a vigorous shake.

"I'll Unicorn you, you lackwit! And if any man's seen a Unicorn this past hundred years, I'd like to meet him! Unicorn!"

Kinzel sensed rather than saw the hand leave his shoulder and rise for the blow-

"Enough!" Elder Donvar's voice sliced through the racket, and punishment hung suspended over Kinzel's head as the noise grumbled into silence.

"You, Pastt Farer, let the boy be!"

Kinzel's father turned his head to the Elder, mouth shaped into an 'O' of astonishment. "But Elder-"

"Let be, I say! There'll be no abusing the simple while I'm Elder of this village. The lad cannot help his lack. Now have done and send him home."

Farer closed his mouth with an effort; a greater one lowered his arm, the blow unstruck. Then he shoved his eldest to the door, past the mortified Edlin, and over the threshold of the meeting hall, roaring with frustration.

"Get you home, then, you fool, and let us men be about our planning!"

He didn't see the result of his last push, nor did he see Kinzel pick himself from his bruised hands and knees, stagger to the center of the square where he leaned palms against the side of the dry well and then push himself away resolutely and begin walking - directly away from his home and village.

***

Moonrise found Kinzel well into the hills north of the village, his feet moving absently, yet surely, along the rambling paths.

To the north and just a wee bit east, Siljan had told him, half a day's good walk.

Kinzel had wished she were in the village to give advice or be his guide, but Siljan had been herb-gathering toward the marshes of the south, claiming this to be the best night of the year for such. Kinzel knew Siljan was touched with the Night Magic and her powers waxed and waned with the Moon. Her ways, always eccentric, grew beyond the ability of unmagical folk to comprehend as the Moon came to full.

So Kinzel had faced the Moon in the night, twisted a bit to find the appropriate star, and begun his solo quest.

As he walked he thought over his errors in the meeting hall, wondering over and over what it was that he had said wrong. His feet picked and chose their path better without his attention than with - and he let them follow the path they knew - so he had much time to consider.

It wasn't as though they hadn't let him speak at all, though with his father's influence they might have sealed his lips ere he began. So it was ... had it really started when he mentioned Siljan's name?

True, many times his brothers had laughed at him for attending the herb woman, but had they not chosen to use the cough remedy he'd had that they'd needed more than he? Hadn't he - the lackwit - helped collect and select the herbs?

Mad Siljan. He had not considered the name before today, until now, with the air cooling about him.

Did they truly think her mad, then, and he nothing more than her half-witted accomplice in strange and fanciful doings? Not that they needed such an opinion to see him as a fool. Didn't his father name him such to the village at every chance?

Too, did not the farmers who would scarce let him cut a shock of wheat for fear he'd slice himself still ask him to be about to calm the mare if they expected a difficult foaling? And did not the men who laughed at Siljan's name sneak by in the evening to ask for this or that amulet, or cure, or herb of desire...?

The hills got steeper, though he hardly knew it. He stopped at a poor frewberry bush and chewed on a slight handful of fruit, hardly noticing their lack of taste and vitality.

On his way again, he tackled another line of thought.

If he were the village fool, what of Mad Siljan? She was somehow a relative, though the way was murky to Kinzel's recall - not helped by everyone's disclaimer of kinship's meaning when it came to her - and she'd been Herb Lady since the former Lady had died nine years gone. All the villages had someone who knew herb lore and such, especially a village as pitiful as theirs, which might see a wandering mage once in a ten-year.

Confused, Kinzel's mind ran the problem 'round and 'round.

The men especially seemed afraid of Siljan. Perhaps that incident a spring or so behind them? Three men had left the village in shame ... but he could not be sure. No one had taken the time to tell him the right of it. For weeks afterward Siljan walked alone, with none but Kinzel speaking to her - and she refused to discuss it. Then had come the birthing months again, and her herbs were needed, and she regained ... usefulness? Stature? And when she said, "Do this and bring me valerian root if you have some about, and only spring water - none from that well in the town" - they all listened and rushed to agree with her because some foal or child depended on her.

Yet they laughed to hear that Siljan was certain of a Unicorn Glade nearby.

The day, already long and tiring, began to hang on him as he tallied his errors. Even the Moon did not recognize him as her own, it seemed; he'd walked long into the night and had yet to find the glade. Perhaps he should have waited on Siljan anyway, perhaps ... no, he should ... or perhaps he should sit and rest a moment on this bit of moss grass. So many mistakes. So tired.

And he slept as the Moon spiraled distantly overhead.

***

Morning was hard upon him, birds singing and sun warming his feet when he woke beneath the shadow of a small bush. It was a sorry, scraggly thing without thorns and nearly bereft of leaves, but Kinzel, in his first absent-minded stretch, managed to scrape his face against a stubby branch, tears meeting the pain.

Around him was a thin meadow, not unlike others in the hills, where rocks outnumbered blades of grass; and the vegetation in the immediate vicinity was close kin to the bush that had shaded his sleep, yellow and on the verge of drying. The ground itself was baked brown in spots and cracking like old fire-bricks.

The boy sighed and tried to ignore his thirst. He raised his eyes to the sun and began to turn slowly, trying to judge where, exactly, he was in relation to the village and Siljan's promised Glade.

It was there! That must be it!

A mere thousand paces to the northeast, up a slight rise, the grass grew suddenly thick and luxuriantly green; and beyond that impossible patch of color stood a close-grown stand of trees, full leafed and sturdy, promising cool escape from the already scorching sun.

Drawn by this wonder, Kinzel ran up the hill, his feet missing the tripping stones, finding a path where there was but shifting rock.

Then, suddenly, there was good dirt and weeds, and finally the green riot of carpet-grass.

The trees grew very close together, indeed, standing near as solid as the defense wall of a keep. Kinzel hurried to this promising shade, slipped between two brown-gray trunks, and entered the cool quietness of the Glade itself.

Kinzel felt unaccountably joyful; his feet seemed barely to touch the ground. He sensed the presence of other creatures and was somehow one with them, sharing his joy and partaking of theirs, yet remaining Kinzel, a Kinzel who would name his former self a mere shadow of this true and complete one.

He moved without clumsiness or sound through the wood, following his nose and a barely heard murmur. There was water very near, and this new Kinzel thirsted as had the old, and it was as natural as everything else in this magical spot that he should seek the stream and drink.

The trees stopped at the edge of an open space, granting room for a pond and the four streams that fed it.

Kinzel paused for a moment in the shadow of the last tree and regarded the clearing, breathing the cool, damp air; then he crossed the thick grass - kin to the carpet outside the circle of trees - knelt down beside the pond, and carefully, reverently, cupped a handful of the clear liquid to drink.

The hoof struck without warning, missing his ear by a spider's thread, slicing into the grass at his side. Kinzel inhaled sharply, mostly water; and, gagging and coughing, stood - to face the brightest white imaginable, a creature unseen by men in this century.

The white was three times as tall as he was and looked not the least like a horse, although it did have four long, slender legs, wicked-looking hooves, and a smooth, silky fall of mane. The body was sleeker than a horse's body, strong and delicate at once - and never to be ridden - and the tail brushed the grass like a silver whisper.

The head was long and fine-featured - certainly not a horses head, this! - and deepset intelligent eyes glared at Kinzel balefully, lightly shadowed by the horn - the horn which grew not between the eyes but centered well above them, just below the sharply pointed ears, and rose half Kinzel's height from that base. It looked dangerous, that horn, though it was delicately spiraled and covered with fine silver hairs - the tip was a diagonally clipped razor, as if it had been recently struck off with a clean blow from a hammer, or a rock.

There was a tingling in Kinzel's ears, then a voice like a silver trumpet note demanded, "And how came you here, manling, unowed and impure, to drink at my waters in the heart of the Glade? Explain, and quickly!"

"Is it a crime to drink when one is thirsty?" asked Kinzel around his fear, pulling from an inner strength which surprised him.

"Impudence!"

The Unicorn struck the ground with one sharp hoof and fixed Kinzel, unmoving, in those angry eyes.

"I asked you how you came here - here! - when there are preventions, when there are watchers! - to the very center of my stronghold. And I - I-" the trumpeting in Kinzel's ears lowered somewhat, and the Unicorn dipped that razor horn at him as if emphasizing his words, "all unwarned until I see you here!"

A jab of the horn stopped just short of Kinzel's chest.

"Explain."

"I had need of ... water," Kinzel stammered, forcing words to lips that would have rather sealed against the terrible anger in the Unicorn's eyes.

"Earth debt - where there is need, there is owing-" old words, heard and remembered, though not understood even now, out of Siljan's long ramblings.

But the words seemed to make sense to the Unicorn; the horn lifted away from dreadful proximity to Kinzel's tunic; and when the trumpet voice sounded again it seemed, perhaps, not quite so angry.

"Earth debt is not owing for misuse. Had you stayed where you belong, in your village, and not gone walking so far afield, you might have drunk the water there and avoided the need-"

"Not so," said Kinzel, the words coming unbidden, despite his fear.

The Unicorn tipped its head to one side. "Explain." The silvery voice sounded almost amused.

Kinzel gulped and began, "There is not enough water - we cannot drink and water the fields, too. And drink we must. The crops will not grow, and we will all starve come the coldtime, if we do not die from lack of water before. And not just the village, the animals, too - the deer and the rabbits. The rabbit I mended just yesternoon - what good did it serve, when he will only die in a few days anyway because there is no water to drink, no dew on the grass."

"Enough!"

The Unicorn was angry again, and Kinzel knew he should stop, but the words seemed to be speaking themselves and he could not stop.

"That's why I left the village and walked so far - to find you - to ask you - we are in need; we'll die for lack of water and you have so much!"

Kinzel flung his arms out, as if he would gather the four quick-running streams and the still pond to himself; and his unbidden spate of words ended suddenly, like a sob.

The Unicorn was very angry, thought Kinzel, as the silence stretched longer. He wondered, briefly, if he would be impaled, or merely trampled. Then the voice rang in his ears again, unexpectedly mild.

"Why is it, manling, that you believe this tale to be a source of interest or concern to me? If men choose to gather in villages and forget the ways and balances of the world, and thus die together of thirst, what is this to me? My concerns are of simpler things that are born knowing and never question - Hold!

"You say you mended a rabbit yesterday? How was this mending done? With typical man-clumsiness and wooden sticks tied to a chance-broken leg?"

"No." Kinzel's voice cracked, then he cleared his throat and tried again.

"No. I - I can feel when there is something not ... right. And I can take the pain - hurt - to me and give back health. I do this-" He stopped and looked at the Unicorn hopelessly, unable to explain his need. "Someone must," he finished lamely.

"Someone must," affirmed the voice in his ears. "And do you know, with this healing skill of yours that this land is - how do you have it? - not right?"

Kinzel looked up, hope stirring again.

"The land around the village, around my father's farm - all the land outside of this place - is wrong and hurting and sick. It must have water."

"Well and so," came the voice and then there was a pause.

The Unicorn centered its gaze on Kinzel, regarding him silently, inspecting him. Then the creature shook his great head so that the mane flipped from side to side.

"This is what you may do, manling. You say you must heal the wounds where you find them, and I believe you in this, for yestereve I saw one newly mended - and though the way was mine the healing was not.

"You say the cure for the wounds you see in the land is water, and I shall bow to your seeing in this, for it is your home. Thus, manling, you may call to my streams for help. And you may take whichever of the four heeds your call when you leave."

Kinzel stared at the magnificent creature, all his hope dwindling to dust.

"You mock me!"

"How so?" asked the silver voice. "You call yourself Healer. You claim Earthdebt - Earthdebt! - from me! And I will meet your payment though I am not the first cause nor is the debt squarely placed. Thought you I would allow jugs placed on my back so that I might trot like some draft-ox or herd-horse to your village and be your beast of burden? Or perhaps you thought I would allow a legion of men to come with buckets and basins to fill daily at my ponds? Do not be more stupid than your brethren, manling. The debt is paid - you may take one stream with you when you go. You will not return, ever."

The unicorn turned, the vast whiteness somehow blurring at the edges, and faded away even as Kinzel stared.

Sagging, Kinzel turned to look at the pond and four streams. It was useless; he would die, and the village would be dust, and the few animals - except for those who strayed here and stayed...

His father was right, then. He was a fool. A fool to have thought of the idea, a fool to have told the meeting of the idea, a fool for having fled into the hills with no food and no thought of what he would say to his father should he fail. And he had failed!

Perhaps the Unicorn should not have treated him so fairly for invading this glade...

The knowledge came upon him like a hurricane.

He had invaded the Unicorn's secret place. He'd spoken to the Unicorn! And the Unicorn had offered what his father never did: a chance to speak his piece, a chance to try.

So!

Kinzel faced the waters, saw the cool promise of life flowing all around him, felt the need from the grasslands and hills. This was right and necessary: one of the streams would come to balance the sun's power. That was it!

Siljan would call it a matter of Balance.

But how?

Should he persuade? Should he call out loud? Should he demand? Why should it follow him? He was only a foolish boy....

"No!" he denied. "I am Kinzel, Kinzel who heals rabbits and squirrels and newborn foals so that they shall live. I am Kinzel, granted a stream by the Unicorn himself!"

How difficult could it be, after all?

"Water!" he called, forcing himself to stand up straight and proud. He spoke with as much firm authority and dignity as a pudgy and begrimed twelve-year old boy could muster.

"Water! Come! I bid you follow me home!" And he took two paces back the way he had come. Then he stopped and looked behind him.

The pond was still; its surface calm. The streams ran merrily in their beds.

"Fool," he berated himself. "It's what they call you. You are stupid, even if you can fix hurts, not to know how to call a stream...."

He stopped suddenly, considering.

The Unicorn thought it important that he could heal things, that he could tell what was right and what was ill. Perhaps that was what he should think upon, rather than to order and to demand. Maybe - just maybe - if he reached out to the land as if it were a hurt animal, touched the wrongness and knew it, and then thought of how water would heal those wrongs...

He reached out, not with his body, as if to touch a beast, trying to recall what the land felt like when all was well, remembering the feel of water, cool on the face and body on a summer's day.

Yes - here. And here. And again, here - what was needed was water in the now-dry bed on the west side of the village - the same water which filled the town well. If a stream again ran in that bed, the fields that bordered it would do well and the night mists would aid the morning plants - they needed so much dew - and the rabbits would come out in the evening to feed off those plants.

Indeed, Kinzel saw and felt pain as he stood by the Unicorn's pond, deep within that glade. It was exactly as if the earth around the village were an ailing beast. And he could, he would, make it well. Now.

He began to walk back toward the dry stream bed he sensed so clearly. As he moved, he let his thoughts stray from the land and move out, much like a shepherd's crook, hook extended, and touch very lightly the stream nearest him.

"Come," he said. And he moved on, not looking back.

The sound of the stream touched his ears, the proper sound of a stream doing as it ought, flowing, providing water....

Kinzel picked his way carefully, keeping his inner sight on the dry land surrounding his village - south, a bit to the west, south again. He detoured around piles of rocks and hillocks without seeing them. He never looked back to see the stream following, foaming a bit brown at the leading edge, a bare six paces behind.

Kinzel did not falter, feeling the anguish of the land all around him and feeling, too, the immediate grace of hope as the stream touched roots and seeds. He thought only passingly of his father, distantly; not as his father, a bringer of pain and discord, but as a farmer; all farmers needed the water he was herding slowly to the village.

For hours, Kinzel walked without hesitation, as if life itself flowed through him, investing him with a special strength. He felt as if he were sap in a tree, pushing to branch-tips to carry new green-growth to the world. The word "fool" never entered his consciousness.

It was well after noon when Kinzel came in sight of the valley. On a hillside was Edlin, his beasts bleating as he drove them up, up, away from this mad apparition, this ginger-haired child, all brown and wild, who walked stately at the head of ... of what? A foaming, impatient, snakelike stream!

Kinzel never noticed the trivial fear, still busy feeling the land, hearing its pain as well as the renewal being brought.

Now, only a few short paces off, there was the dry stream bed. Kinzel felt a surge of impatience. It was so vast, the need and pain of the land, and he had brought the smallest stream.

His walk became a fast walk, then a trot. He ran the last distance, tugging the obedient water behind him. O! he should have brought more. The need was so great, he should have brought much more. He needed much more than this. It was needed, it was needed now!

Kinzel felt a sudden rush of air, and a separation, as if he'd drawn away from the water, back into himself. He turned to see a wall of water rushing at him, taller than he by twice his height, wider, perhaps, than the empty streambed toward which it surged. There was a slight moment of fear, and no time to run.

The water gathered him up, swept him along for crazy wet spinning yards, and threw him carelessly aside as it gained speed and ran into that well-worn way and down the valley, filling the streambed, soaking into the ground and earth, wetting the fields, racing along toward a distant ocean with its own cool breeze....

***

They found him just before nightfall.

Siljan it was who nagged and berated them until they went looking. They looked reluctantly, every one, having heard Edlin's hysterical tale of a demon Kinzel bent on drowning the village.

Grumbling and carrying garlics and lucky pieces they went when they'd have rather stayed home enjoying their mysterious good fortune.

Siljan it was who had him carried back to the village and laid upon her own bed, covered with her own esoterically decorated blankets from the coast of another continent. "Hurry before the stars come out, now!"

The villagers returned, grumbling, to their homes, garlics and lucky pieces in hand, to cold dinners, sure that Kinzel would be safely dead by morning.

They slept fitfully, from Edlin to Elder Donvar, from fisherman to cowherd, Pastt Farer worst of all, for they'd grown unused to the sound of water in the stream and the noise the nightbirds made. More, they were unused to the lightless thunders and strange, begging incantations a madwoman might use to undrown a foolish boy.

There was more fear than relief, then, when the begging turned to laughter and the thunder brought lightning, rain, and breath renewed.

KINZEL THE INNOCENT

One: Eviction

The Master's summons sought the apprentice in all the usual places, descended to the kitchen as a last resort, found him leaning back in a chair by the fire, dozing. The summons elongated itself, became a pillar of dense gray smoke positioned a bare inch from the apprentice's unconcious ear, and delivered.

"Kinzel! Damn your worthless hide! To the workroom! Now, as you value your present unlovely shape! Kinzel!"

Apprentice and chair crashed backwards as the summons dissipated, its purpose fulfilled; then Kinzel was running up the spiral staircase as fast as short, pudgy legs would carry him.

Now there was the chair to be mended on top of all the rest of it - and what in the name of the Clock was bothering him, anyway? The apprentice rounded the third landing, puffing; wished that the ability to will oneself from this place to that did not elude him still; and continued upward.

At the twenty-second landing he paused to rest and run through the list of possible irritants to his Master's never-certain temper. The workroom was spotless, he'd cleaned it only the night before; the books were stacked ready, the proper passages marked with bits of red ribbon; the kiln was scrubbed; the window-

Kinzel sagged against the cold stone of the stairwell, suddenly ill. The window. Invisibility was, alas, beyond his power to command.

Some rudimentary extra sense caused him to glance up just as another of his Master's summons came 'round the curl of the staircase.

"I'm coming! I'm coming!" he shouted at it, and had a moment's fleeting pleasure as it faded.

His Master was waiting for him, a tall thin shadow in the doorway at the top of the stair. Kinzel swallowed and paused, seeking in vain for the words that would make him invisible.

"Come in, Kinzel," murmured the wizard gently, backing slowly into his workroom and beckoning with one long-fingered hand. "You needn't fear me, you know; I've been your master for lo, these fourteen years. Surely you must have gotten it through your pinhead that I am the gentlest of beings, given only to righteous anger and merciful punishment."

Kinzel managed a nod as he followed that demanding finger into the workroom, moved his tongue and croaked, "Yes, master. It is known wherever the Craft is practiced that you are the kindest of magicians."

"Then, Kinzel, you know you can tell me, frankly and without fear of unduly harsh reprisal, why you left the window open last night after I had retired."

The apprentice opened and closed his mouth several times before a sound emerged: "Awwk."

From his pose in front of the offending window, fists resting on each hip, hawk nose shadowing lean mouth, the wizard queried, still gently, "Your pardon, good Kinzel? I did not hear."

Kinzel took a deep breath and pulled himself straight, shoulders square, head tilted back so he faced his Master's slender elegance like a boastful pigeon confronting a cat.

"Master, I came here after you had gone last evening, as I have every night since I was first 'prenticed, and put the room straight, scoured the kiln, and cleaned the vessels and retorts. Then, Master, I chanced to look out the window and saw that the Moon had just come to full and the night was aglow with the Power. And as I stood looking out at the night, there was born in me an overwhelming need to see my mother once more, to speak with my father and walk the farmlands where I spent my youth.

"Just yesterday I had read the words and symbols that take one instantly from here to there, with the proper application of the Power and in harmony with the Clock. So, Master, I opened the window wide to let the Moonpower into the room and I raised up a frame of bronze and ash and silver as it was in the book, stepped inside and closed the entranceway behind me with a rod of glass, and spoke the words as they were written. I waited to be transported to my parents' home."

He faltered, moving his gaze to the pattern of tiles on the workroom floor. Madog the Magnificent regarded his apprentice, interest shining in his eyes.

"So. And did the formula work? Did you see your family last night, Kinzel?"

"Alas, sir," said the lad, forcing his gaze to his Master's face, "the spell did fail me. I felt the barest trickle of warmth within me, then I was alone with the Funnel. I tried again - and failed - then pulled down the framework and retired myself. I gave no further thought to the window."

He swallowed, keeping his eyes on Madog's own. "I should have remembered to lock the window against the night before I left the room. To have failed in this is unforgivable carelessness, deserving the harshest of punishments. Do what you will, Master."

But the magician was shaking his head, and the look on his face was sorrow. He paced the distance to his study-table, idly flipped the leaves of a gold-and-emerald bound tome that lay open in the general clutter, then said, "Kinzel."

"Master?" What novelty was this? No sudden coals in his britches? No illusory imps to pinch him? Not so much as one of his Master's fearful curses?

"Kinzel," murmured the wizard, still turning the pages of his book, gentle and random, "how long have you been 'prenticed to me?"

"Fourteen years come springtime, Master. You said so yourself just now."

"Fourteen years." Madog looked at his apprentice, hands flat on the pages of his book. "Kinzel, I am no longer young. I have long since reached the heights of my powers and measured the limits of my domain. Soon, in sorcerous terms, I shall die. I must have an apprentice.

"Someone sharp-minded and able, someone absolutely inquisitive. Someone who would attempt the spell you attempted last night in perhaps the fifth year - and make it work in perhaps the eighth year. I must have such an apprentice to learn what I know so that my life and my studies will not have been in vain."

He glanced down at his hands, slowly shifted them, closed the book. He stood staring down at the intricate cover.

"In all those fourteen years, Kinzel, the bits of Craft you have been able to grasp are the firemagic, teleportation of objects under five pounds if they are within your sight, and skill at healing. You still have - and have augmented - the low grade plant-and-animal magic that was yours when I took you on. Even that - even that is not enough."

"Master, I-"

The magician stopped him with a shake of the head. "No, I have failed you as a master, Kinzel. I have had you in my service for the years of your young manhood, and in exchange for them have given you little. Certainly not a means to earn your livelihood unless you become herbmaster for some backwoods village.

"Had my studies not been so arcane I would have seen it sooner. Anyone marginally adept would have earned at least a Rod by now, if not a full Staff. Your skills will not suffice to feed you honestly in the worlds that march to the Clock's ticking.

"So, my Kinzel, I offer you this: I shall acknowledge my failure to the Council; admit that I cannot teach you the wizardly craft, and deny you further apprenticeship on those grounds.

"I shall not send you from me. You know this house, my schedule, my moods; you work passingly well with your hands. You may stay here as my personal servant, never to wonder when your next meal shall come. And I shall advertise and have a proper apprentice, so that when my time comes I may go in peace."

What? But this was the cruelest punishment yet. Not to learn the magic, ever? And not be able to hold the hope of learning?

"No!"

Madog's eyebrows pulled straight into a terrible frown. "What! Do you refuse my kindness so? I am not obliged to do aught for you-"

He stopped in astonishment. Kinzel was before him, head craned far back, hands clutching the wizard's star-sprinkled robe. "Master! You cannot deny me hope. Master, you are kind, you are just. To shut the door forever in the face of your servant is unworthy of you...."

"Man, you forget yourself." Madog pulled away from the clutching hands and drew himself tall.

Kinzel flung out his hands in supplication. "Master, let me attempt the staff!"

"You're mad!"

Then, as he read real horror in the round face tipped up toward his, "Kinzel, it is a mighty task. Even wizards in the first glorious rush of their powers, sure of the skills they command, have failed and been destroyed. What chance have you when they who were your betters failed?"

"Master, I have been your 'prentice for fourteen years. It is my right. If I die in the attempt I shall have been more full of the Power than ever I have been before." He lowered his arms. "Master, fourteen years is a long time. My life is mine to spend as I will, now that I am not even apprenticed."

Madog paused for a moment, thinking. Here was a motive he could understand. To be relegated to the ranks of ordinary mortals, having tasted, having been so close... Pride demanded the attempt; a lesser course would kill it. And what magician could point to that death and name it less real than the death of the body?

He nodded. "Attempt it, then. I shall keep watch for you."

Kinzel bowed his head. "May the Moonpower keep you, sir, and may you always move with the ticking of the Clock." He walked with soft, suddenly sure steps to the Place by the northern wall where stood, ever ready, the Master's own Funnel, a triangular framework of Ebon and Gold, Bronze and Glass.

He stood before it a moment, eyes closed. He could feel Power there, as once as a young boy he had felt the Power and Might of a unicorn glade. He was strange legend in his village now: Kinzel who stole a stream from the unicorn itself when the crops, the people, and the wildlife all suffered towards death in the Great Drought. As he'd sought that stream, that life-giving water, now he need seek Power itself.

Squaring his shoulders, he entered the Funnel, all his pudginess gone to dignity. As he stepped into the very center of the framework he heard the soft click that was Madog laying his own staff down as guard across the entrance.

Sealed in now and scarce breathing, Kinzel shut his outer eyes and reached deep within himself, as he had been taught, until he felt a slow glow of heat in the region of his physical heart. He took a deep breath and tried to open his mind to the Forces.

"I am Kinzel. I petition the Power, if it is willing to hear my voice. Weigh my need..." The initial glow was fading; he ignored panic and began again. "I am Kinzel. I have heard the Beat of the Clock at the Heart of What Is, and have schooled my own heart to beat with that rhythm. I have need - of a staff of white Power-" There was a flash of greater heat, gone before he fully realized that it had been, and the glow of the remaining warmth that was Kinzel seemed somehow less robust....

With an effort akin to wrenching open a hard-jammed door, Kinzel bared his mind to the Forces, and the wind that blew through him then chilled his spirit like unto ... unto ...

"No! I am Kinzel! And it is I, Kinzel, who say to you that I require a staff of pure white power to companion me and aid me for the Good. I am Kinzel. I revere the Clock and am one with the worlds that it governs. And you shall deliver me a Tool that may be used for the Right alone."

There was a warmth about him: he did not open his eyes to see the flames filling the Funnel. He did not see Madog's face, aghast at the amount of Power drawn to his poor 'prentice.

"I am Kinzel!" he said again, seeing in mind's eyes the cold, cold black voids, seeing in mind's eyes the brilliant white-heat. There were things there: glittering choices full of jewels; promises there if only he could touch...

"I am Kinzel. I require a Staff of True, of Actual Power..."

The glow that had almost died built to a flame in which the chill of other Forces was driven aside. Clearly before him, hanging in the orange air, a staff of dark brown wood twined with living green. He reached between glinting rods and bright, promising metallic things and plucked it from the air, noting how rightly it fit his hand, and slammed his mind like a sturdy door against the killing, alluring cold of the Forces.

Clutching his staff high in one hand, Kinzel knew his Master's workroom again; then the orange went out of the air, to be replaced by starless black, and he fell.

***

Stars. A lightening of the blackness. Sound. Kinzel struggled with his eyelids, and triumphed. He regarded the gleaming tiles on which he rested his nose. Was he truly alive, he wondered, alive after touching so much - more of the Power than ever before he'd seen, than he knew existed...

Around him Kinzel truly felt the Force ebb and flow. And for the first time he understood the meaning of the phrase "to live in Power."

As tangibly as the rush of water which had swept him along that day in his boyhood when he had called the stream to follow him, there was now the Power: Forces to be deflected, dammed, penned, utilized, and loosed; a constant threat and a constant answer to the thirst of those who needed Good.

"I say, Kinzel! Damn it, boy - that is - damn it, man! Answer me, I pray you. What have you wrought that the beams sway, what is it that repels my staff ever so slightly..." Madog peered in through the entrance of the Funnel, concern creasing his brow. "Kinzel, is that blood?"

Kinzel nodded, slowly moving his unwilling arms and legs, his staff still firmly clenched in his hand. He could feel raw knuckles; his lip was swollen and damp with the blood brought on by the inevitability of gravity.

Gaining his feet awkwardly, refusing to let go the hard-won staff or subject it to the menial task of aiding his stance, he touched the tips of his fingers to the lightly bloodied lip, murmuring as he did, "This should not be so..."

And it was not! The hurt was gone, and the blood.

"That's the way!" Madog sounded as jubilant as a schoolboy. "Kinzel, I thought you dead by pride - a not unhappy fate, perhaps, and certainly not uncommon - and look at you! A staff in your hand and instant healing-"

Madog stooped and snatched up his staff, which lay a bit farther from the entranceway, as if it had been slowly moving away under its own accord. He swept a deep bow then, which Kinzel took as an invitation to exit the Funnel.

Kinzel did so, moving still a bit stiffly, and made his own bow, sorry as such a gesture must necessarily be in one so short and pudgy. "Mas - Madog, wizard and friend. I thank you for your aid. And your concern. I will thank you, too, for choosing a time that would let me succeed. Yet I have a debt to you, that the wisdom that so benefited me should not be lost to the world. I acknowledge that debt, and it shall be paid."

"What's that?" Madog seemed genuinely puzzled. "What debt? Speak straightly, I bid you."

"Just before I tried for the staff, Madog, you spoke of your need to find a 'prentice, an actual 'prentice to learn your magics and to build on them when he took staff. I fear you still need such a 'prentice, for my staff seems not close kin to yours, after all, and I doubt we could abide - two wizards - in the center house for long. I call it my debt and I will make it good."

Kinzel reached out in sudden concern to Madog, who was visibly swaying where he stood.

"May I help you, Mas - Sir? You sway."

"It is my staff, good Kinzel. It moves away from you. Or from your staff. And there seems to be a bit of a - a breeze - in this spot."

Kinzel thought of the window that had begun his quest for his staff this day. He thought to check it, to make sure it was closed, yet he was concerned for Madog and...

And a shadow Kinzel whisked away from him, suddenly. Across the room to the window went the shadow and the offending port swung to and then locked.

"So I thought as well," said the former master, "but the breeze, you see, it appears to persist and to come directly from your staff, Brother-in-Wizardry."

Kinzel stood still for a moment, his heavy form as stolid as a statue. Without a doubt there was a movement of air in the room, and the place felt vaguely cleaner, smelled more like home than ever it had before.

"Kinzel, I do believe my incense has lost its power."

Kinzel saw the white plume of smoke rising from the incense burner, yet he could not detect its taint upon the air. It had never been his favorite odor - a cloying compound of waxes and jungle flowers mixed with a base of charcoal - and he found its absence a relief.

"Your staff, new Brother!"

The vines on Kinzel's staff were green and full of power, twining around wood and hand without gaining bulk or weight. The leaves swayed softly, as if in a gentle breeze.

"The staff," said Kinzel quietly, as he nearly saw the Power flowing and working. "The staff cleans the air, Madog. Of its own Nature!"

Madog nodded. "It could be so, with such a staff."

Kinzel glanced at Madog's staff and then turned his full attention to it. For the first time in years he studied the contrivance. Not since his early days had he considered the staff as its own object. Though he knew its shape and size, the color of its gems and the meaning of its mystic symbols, the whole of it had escaped him. Now he could feel the Power that was its own as well the Power that was Madog's; could sense the intricacy and detail, the forethought and foredesire that had gone into its existence.

His own staff clung to him: the wood, strong as a ten-man tall oak, was supple as a sapling. There were no mystic symbols, no jewels, no subtle interplay of wood, metal, gem, and dream.

Madog's staff was an artisan's tool, itself artifice of the highest order. His own was simple, innocent of contrivance.

Kinzel's concentration gave way to the room again. Here was Madog, deep in study; here was Madog considering, appraising the staff of his protégée.

Madog stood taller, suddenly. This was no magical, wizardly thing, but an honest and personal one.

"Sir, my friend and student Kinzel, the work of the day is done. It would give me pleasure to offer you a place for the evening - certainly there is room here - but I suspect that our night would be uneasy.

"The Keep has its defenses. I suspect that while you slept the Keep and my staff would work at testing your staff and you; I would need to calm and soothe them for they would be like guard dogs muttering the night long while a stranger lay in the next room. Your staff is uncataloged and unrepresented at Council except by your 'prentice name.

"Your magic is yours, as you have said; mine is my own. We both can feel the difference: they twitch at each other like brothers seeking advantage even as we speak. I offer you access to my books or objects should you need them until you have a Keep of your own - but for this evening it is best if you were to take your leave before dusk."

Madog bowed the bow of respect, in full, and with clear conscience, accepting the same in return.

Then he moved to the small private stairway that led to his ultimate sanctuary and without looking back withdrew from the slowly sweetening air of his workroom.

Two: Kinzel Wanderer

Spring had not quite gone from the world; summer did not yet reign over late afternoon with the soggy heat and sudden thunderstorms that were its pleasure here in the upcountry north and east of Madog's keep. Kinzel breathed in the lighter, cooler air with relief. His body still retained the rhythms and expectations of his homeland, where in summer a second shirt against the chill might make the morning seem fairer and late spring could still suddenly frost-tip a low meadow crop.

The evening came on, and then full night silver-tinged with the rising of the moon at his back, Kinzel walked on, his small bundle of possessions almost unnoticed. In making his leave-taking he'd had not much to pack, for in truth he owned scarcely more than had been in his wallet when he'd come into Madog's service. His chief wealth was composed of the half-dozen coins that had been his name-right, and an extra firestone, untouched and wrapped tightly in oiled cloth. Madog had filled his needs, as was required by a Master's honor: food, roof, clothing, and work to fill the day's long hours.

Other than the several small chains and amulets on his person - parting gifts from Madog - Kinzel the wizard was outwardly remarkably similar to Kinzel the apprentice. His vestlet and boots were worn but serviceable leather; the leggings and blouse half-hidden by scarred leather were a uniform, clean gray-brown. He had a small knife hung at his belt on his left side, that being his true hand despite the efforts of his family - and the wiseman - to train the right in its stead. The sheath gave away the truth of the knife: it was more suited to hacking away at a ham on table than a footpad or roving wolf.

The road continued through the night. Kinzel let his feet pick their own path as he absorbed the patterns and odors of the land. Years had it been since he'd been outside the protections of Bronzemere or its Master come nightfall. He rejoiced in little things: the pale glow of ladywort, opening bell-shaped blossoms in the glowing Moonlight; the sheen of silent water on the face of a rock wall bordering the path; the minty smell of conchtree leaves as he scuffed up fallen hundreds passing by. His feet found him the path through a wall of trees, thereby soon to a shadow-checked moonlit glade. He halted there, until the woods-cat had pounced upon its dinner, unseen in his own shadow. When the cat was sure of its kill, Kinzel passed on, feet upon the path buried in carpet-grass, into the trees once again.

The sun found him upon a road, walking as if he would never tire. His feet had chosen a direction that would take him, soon or late, to the rocky seacoast and the hard-scrabble farmers and fishers he knew as kin.

Reaching into his small provisions at mid-morning, the wizard supped on cheese and a taste of wine as he sat content on smooth grass beside a fresh-running stream. Then, more of late-spring laziness than real weariness, Kinzel napped.

***

The sounds that woke him were those of running feet and the yelling of a young boy. "But you can't do that! Them's my cats, and they kills the rats that steal the corn. You-"

The voice was cut off by a whistle that sent shivers through Kinzel and brought him to his feet, staff in hand.

"I don't care if you can whistle things up! Them cats is mine. You give them back!"

A strange duo came into view. In the lead was a tall, gaunt youth, dressed finely in the clothes of a merchantman, walking stick in one hand and the other holding closed the neck of a wrigglesome cloth sack slung across his shoulder. Close behind him was a darkhaired boy of perhaps twelve years, beset by numerous insects.

The boy snatched up a stone and flung it. The throw was high and missed the dandy's head, but it did take his fine silk cap down into the road-dust.

The two were now within a hundred yards of Kinzel, who found himself in the middle of the road, the power rising in him without bidding. Power approached: Kinzel felt it.

The richly dressed young man whirled, snarling, toward the boy, pointing his walking stick like a rapier. The boy grimaced and fell crying to the dusty road. "That's that! My Master dispatched me to find him cats, and cats I have found. They are in my bag and are my cats, now. I will dispose of them as I will. Your cramp will be gone in a minute and you may run along home. If you come after me again, I shall send bees and vipers after you."

The boy struggled to gain his feet as the lightly-bearded dandy strode on, disdaining the dusty cap, rapidly approaching the silent Kinzel.

"Noon," said the youth to Kinzel, as if he delivered a favor to an inferior before passing on to momentous undertakings.

"That bag," said Kinzel directly, "may I ask the contents?"

The youth stopped in amazement, staring at the impudent Kinzel.

"This bag contains certain property of my Master, to be delivered to him by me, 'prentice. More than this is outside your interest." He tried to stride past his chubby interrogator. Kinzel blocked the way, nodding at the still wiggling sack.

"I have heard that someone has been stealing cats. I'm a friend to the beasts and would like to know if you do indeed carry cats."

The bag chose this moment to let out a plaintive meow.

The bagman gritted his teeth against the noise, shifted his grip on the cloth and waved his stick at Kinzel. "Out of my way! This bag holds several cats, in truth, which belong to my master, who has need of their life-force in his studies. He requires delivery before sundown this day. Now, get out of the way!"

"No, don't let 'im, sir! He's stolen-"

"Enough!" cried the youth, spinning and pointing his stick at the boy, who dropped his stones and grabbed his right arm, crying out in pain.

Kinzel moved between child and thief. "I ask you now to return the boy his cats. Do not harm him again: his is honest care."

"I should trounce you with my stick. Your short legs would never catch me if I ran ... but I would not, for I have great magics to do my bidding."

"Then conjure your Master his cats from woodsmoke and let natural creatures alone in their homes," said Kinzel evenly, knowing that true endowment of life lay beyond any magician's power.

"I will not! My Master requires quality! Now goodbye, peasant!" The youth turned away, began to stride - Kinzel reached out, grabbing one corner of the heavy cloth bag. He tugged heartily, nearly pulling the thief off his feet. The bag slipped in the youth's hands and he lost his tight grip on its throat. A cat thrust its head through the opening, intent on escape. It was half free when the youth recovered and pushed it roughly back, muttering a sleep-spell on the beast.

Kinzel felt the Power in him responding; barely heard the youth mutter a lock-spell on the bag's neck.

"Lest you die for your boorishness," said the dandy, "I shall give you an opportunity to apologize. If you do not, you and the boy shall be set upon by stings and snakes." And he began to weave his walking stick in a pattern over his head. An ominous buzzing filled the air, and a stream of bees clustered round the tip of the stick, multiplying rapidly.

The youth laughed, pointed his bee-clustered stick at Kinzel.

Kinzel raised his staff then: the leaves were full and green against the day.

"To him!" said the youth, suddenly aiming the stick at the boy, who whimpered with the movement.

A swarm of bees leapt in the boy's direction.

Kinzel felt his blood running fast, saw the danger to the boy. "As I am Kinzel let them be butterflies!" he demanded of the staff.

The dark buzzing stream came on, seemed to explode at the end closest to the boy. The bees blossomed into color, became yellow and blue and green fluttering things, a cloud of them rushing out at butterfly pace to the spring day.

The youth screamed now, turned his stick on Kinzel as if to attack physically. Now vipers formed, launched themselves through the air at Kinzel.

Instinctively the chubby mage held the staff in front of him. It thrummed in his hands and he felt the Power rush through him. "Dragonflies!" he demanded of the staff.

The snakes struck the greenery and became flittering bright winged things. "Fire!" screeched the youth, but it was too late.

"By the Clock and Branch I urge the Power to leave your arrogance and bless one deserving!" Kinzel's voice was firm and clear.

The yellow flames leaping from the stick toward the mage struck a glowing green mist which shaped itself to a leaf; the fire dimmed and was gone and a mystic vine arced from Kinzel's greenstaff to the cursed walking stick. The stick crumbled in the youth's hands. As suddenly he was shorter by several inches, and showed a paunch, before he collapsed on the grass at the edge of the road.

The leather pouch hanging about the youth's throat began to smoke and smolder. He snatched it hastily and flung it from him, toward the boy who stood as one spellbound.

"What have you done, cruel magician?" cried the youth. "My Master's talisman is set to scorch those without Power who attempt to-" The youth shook suddenly, quaking with fear and anger at once.

The thrumming in Kinzel's staff subsided. The green mist and strange leaf were gone as if never been. The full green vines encircled hand and wood once more, and the staff was warm in Kinzel's hand.

Cats began to meow and bawl and fight their way out of the cloth sack, spitting at the fallen foe as they emerged, ready for battle.

"Sir, sir. Oh, he got me sir! Help!"

Kinzel spun to look at the protector of the cats. Hair on end, clothes ballooning away from the body - the boy was charged with the Power! Kinzel's staff buzzed momentarily in his hands like a contented tabby.

Kinzel felt his grin grow in spite of the boy's predicament.

"The Power. Boy, you have the Power now, and this other must not!"

"But I didn't want his Power! I just wanted my cats back!"

"Calmly," suggested Kinzel. "Power came to you because of your cats; you should thank them. I think your hair will - yes, see, your hair is itself again, and your clothes. I myself managed to overcharge when I was 'prenticed, a time or two."

"Stupid thing to do-" muttered the fallen youth, drawing Kinzel's glance.

"I think," said the mage to the boy, "you best run home before he tries to force your cats again."

The boy nodded, staring wide-eyed at the plain and pudgy man who had bested the magical youth without touching him. "Yessir. Thanks. Thanks! Ssssss! Kitty, kitty, sssss, home, home we go."

The cats moved warily around the vanquished enemy, then bounded toward the boy, who led them away, moving at a trot in the direction from which he had come.

"I'll have your name!" came the voice from the side of the road. "I'll have your name, that my Master will know where to send his vengeance. And you'll that to rue from me, also, when my Power is returned to me, you farmer!"

The youth, dusty and paunchy and much-bedraggled, was standing again, fairly shivering in his rage.

Kinzel found himself shaking somewhat. He was long out of practice at fighting and hadn't been good at it anyway; he'd always been picked on as slow. Now, suddenly, he had an enemy and a victim at once.

"Kinzel," he said firmly. "Kinzel you may name me to him, whoe'er he might be, though I doubt I know him for I deal not with cat-killers and child-tormentors."

"Palinin is me, and your bane for certain!" the youth threatened, straining for a firemagic to dramatize his words. But the spell produced not even smoke. Cursing, then, Palinin stormed off down the road in the direction he had been traveling, leaving his hat still in the dust.

Kinzel shook his head in wonder at the whole affair, staring alternately at two retreating clouds of dust. He moved back to his rest spot, gathered together his meager belongings, and was moving again, now following the road north and west, the way the boy and his cats had run.

***

As dusk began to threaten the sun from behind low-hung clouds Kinzel came into a farmed region and found himself admiring a well-kept grainfield, beyond which the homestead was just visible. The night's walk and the day's strange encounter had cost Kinzel his buoyant tirelessness and the need for rest was upon him.

The clouds held some promise of rain, to be sure. He reached without thought, involuntarily invading the cloud's demesne, finding that his head held a strange whirling impression of water and wind but not a trace of lightning.

Then he was back on the dusty road by the field, staring at a distant grayness, feeling all the more kin with the world.

Kinzel shrugged in amiable self-mockery as he turned off the road toward the homestead. Fourteen years beneath a roof had spoiled him for sleeping out in damp weather.

Kinzel knocked on the door of the house with his palm for a few moments, that being somewhat more polite in the so-named civilized world than a mere hailing from without.

The slapping of his palm on wood gained no response, though the whisper of man-trace was all about. He rapped again, this time gently using his staff.

The door, brown, sun-dried and worn, shivered: in the vibration Kinzel had a vision of two young trees at the height of springtime, growing side by side.

"But a moment, but a moment," shouted a voice from within, and in a moment came the sound of the sliding back of protesting bolts.

The door was a door again to Kinzel's sight; it opened roughly to a man of middle years, his brown hair gone mostly gray, who scowled in angry wariness. His left arm hung useless at his side, but the right alone looked sufficient for a task as frivolous as - perhaps - flinging Kinzel from the doorstone.

"Well?"

Kinzel tightened his grip on his staff and gazed upward at the lord of the house.

"I travel far and seek a roof for the night-"

"It's him, it's him!" came a voice at the man's back. From the inner gloom of the house bounded two cats.

Ignoring the man they came to Kinzel. Close behind was the boy from the afternoon's adventure, his nose red and his hand brown with the remains of a nosebleed.

"Damn your tale-telling ways!" roared the man, twisting toward the boy. "Get to your corner!"

"But I tell you it's him, the wizard who-"

"And I tell you - another word of nonsense from you and you'll need help chewing dinner for the rest of your life!"

The boy dared a sudden rush forward, ducking under the good right arm, and dodged behind Kinzel, using him as a shield.

Kinzel raised his staff as the man reached for the boy.

"Hold!"

The man stopped, wariness in his eyes.

"The boy and I have met, though I gave no name to him, and he none to me. I found him throwing rocks at a wizard's 'prentice, to save these fine creatures from a potion-pot."

Kinzel scritched one of the cats who were trying to rub through his leather leggings.

"He showed much courage in defending his friends: I'd rather he not be struck for it."

The lame-armed man shifted his stance, considered Kinzel's staff.

"Little enough time he spends telling truth a body can understand or doing the work what really needs done. Most often he's off chasing cats or babbling on about engines and catapults and the like. He should be beat once a day for what he hasn't done - and once more for what he has, I say." The man paused in his torrent, scratched his head with his good hand. "But you claim some, hmmm, personal knowledge of this adventure of his?"

"Housefather, I do. And since I too, am fond of cats, I persuaded the 'prentice to free them so the boy might bring them home."

The man eyed Kinzel dubiously. "You persuaded a magic man?"

"Father, I told you - he's a wizard - a mighty wizard! He struck the man with a huge staff, like the one he holds now, but twice as long and wrapped all about with green fire-"

"Hush!" The man insisted and the boy's voice subsided. The man unconsciously rubbed his bad arm with his good, once again trying to take the measure of the chubby mage. "Know some magic do you?" he asked finally.

"I have a staff," Kinzel agreed willingly, "and spent some years studying with the mage of Bronzemere-"

The man drew back a pace, but Kinzel didn't notice.

"-and though I'm but three or four days on my own I was help enough against a 'prentice boy, and doubt he'll come steal your cats again."

The man's gaze raked Kinzel once again, lingering on the staff with its ancient wood and green, vigorous, vine. He stood aside then, beckoning Kinzel into the house.

"I am Tonedrin. The clouds speak of rain soon, and since you and the boy neglected to be conjured into frogs today you'll want a roof over your head tonight. I can guarantee no fire - the firestone is lost somewhere and my neighbors are not overfond of me - and my sloth of a son, Idren, let the hearthfire choke out while he gave chase to this 'prentice you speak of."

The boy's objection was bitten off as Kinzel entered the house; Kinzel's thanks were overlooked in the sudden rush to straighten a home unused to visitors. The door was yet unclosed when rain began to fall in huge, well-spread drops.

The cats dashed in, adding to the confusion of the moment, and the roar of the sudden downpour diminished as the door was finally closed against it. There was no silence, however, for Idren seized on the moment to launch questions at the first wizard he'd ever had to hand.

There was no room between the questions for answers.

The chatter leapt from the wonders Kinzel must have seen, the catapults and archers who shot bolts tipped with fire and the huge cities paved with cobblestones of diamonds and gold, to wonders Idren envisioned for himself - engines to cut the wheat crop, traps for the rats in the cornshed...

This last drew Kinzel's interest; he had known hunger as a child when the appetite of rats had destroyed half a grain crop.

"Go on, then," the father's voice rose from the other side of the room, where he spun a small wheel of wool in the gathering darkness. "Show him if you will."

The boy dashed from the room, followed by his two shadows, the cats. A few moments later he returned, breathless, bearing a wooden lattice-work in the form of an empty column. Inside was the skeleton of a rat, bones shattered, transfixed on a sharpened peg of wood.

"This was my idea last spring, to save corn. I whittled and made three of them, but not a single rat did I take. One caught a rat, but it gnawed itself free."

"Chewing some good leather cord, as well, you should say...." came the interruption from his father.

The boy ignored the disparaging voice.

"I put this one down near the seed shed, between the little hill and the spring. I found it when the snow cleared out." Idren shoved the trap into Kinzel's hands, his face full of pride.

"My arrow killed it!"

The trap was a curious device, indeed. Kinzel noted the catch that allowed the rodent to enter the trap but prevented escape. Another trip triggered the sharp spike once the rodent was secure. If only injured, a live rat would have no way out; a dead one would go nowhere in any case. Kinzel shivered a little at the single-minded deadliness of the thing.

Kinzel held the contraption a few more seconds before handing it back to the boy.

"Perhaps the other traps caught nothing because they smelled too much of you. If you learn to pick the proper herbs you might mask-"

"Nay, none of that, please, sir. He already fades away like smoke when there's work to be done. An' my one arm is as strong as two of most men, yet sometimes there's need of two hands, so I must have his help."

Kinzel nodded agreement and Idren turned his talk elsewhere, arriving shortly at the probable foods of mighty magicians, which brought Kinzel immediately to his stomach's attention.

"Idren. Have you any skill in fire-laying?" he asked.

"Oh, yes, sir. I lay a good fire."

"Then here is a bargain for you. Lay me a fire and I shall give you a gift for your courage today - a victory it would have been had you been able to fight him evenly, I wager. I shall give you my firestone, and a bit of smith's steel, and you'll fetch fire again when you need it."

"Aye, sir, of course!"

Idren ran off to gather wood, the cats at his heels.

"Now that is magic, my friend, to have Idren work so spritelike."

"I think him a fine boy. I should have wits so keen!"

"It is only games he does, only that. He must learn to work. I learned to work hard, and after I did I taught others to work hard as well. I was the Prince's horsemaster. Taught the Prince and his son, both, and was still better than they. I trained the soldiers to horse once the Prince knew all he would learn. Oh, aye, I knew work."

The man stopped suddenly.

"Until?" asked Kinzel, unthinking.

"Until? Until I saved the Prince's son from folly with an unbroken stallion and the act took my arm from me. I caught the boy and threw him from the ring to save his heedless life. And took the hoof myself, up here." He touched his left shoulder gently and shook his head in old disbelief.

"Oh, the prince was proud of me. Said so himself in a fine speech made in front of all the court-kin. But he'd not have a one-armed man in his employ. So he gave me these lands, as he'd hung its proper owner for something or 'nother, as princes will. Me and the lad - we get by well enough. If I had my other arm I could use the land better; could work right with horses again...."

Idren came clattering through the door, dropping bits of kindling and mumbling bad words to himself.

The man turned to his wheel, silent. Kinzel remembered his life of relative ease once he'd become Madog's apprentice, and felt a touch of shame for reminding the man of his old life.

Idren, unaware, built the stack of wood.

Idren came to Kinzel's chair. "Sir, the fire is laid. I chose a different lay than my father favors. But this will burn hot, that we may warm the stew. Later I shall re-lay it to make a proper hearth-fire against the night."

Kinzel reached into his pouch and drew out an oilcloth packet that had been a going away gift from his family to a little-to-be-missed son. He gave it to the youth without remorse: better it were given again and used properly and with joy than stay a reminder of an unkind leave-taking.

Idren unwrapped the stone carefully, thanking Kinzel with praise so wide that the young mage grew embarrassed. It was with a start that the boy recalled the task at hand.

Idren bent over the wood, brought the firestone close, and the glow of well-fired wood lit and began to warm the room.

"You lay a good fire, indeed," Kinzel told the boy, even as he searched for the source of that small tingle of power....

"Sir, you should not have played such a trick on me," said Idren, his eyes full of wounded trust.

"But how have I? You have a fire and it burns well!" Kinzel said, uncomfortable with the fact facing him.

"But I did not strike the fire!" the boy protested. "I began to think of where I wanted to place the spark, and it ran - from my head down the steel, across the stone, to the wood - and lit itself!"

Kinzel, in a low voice full of amaze, said, "Then you keep the Power."

Idren heard the words: his eyes grew big as a cat's in the night. "I have no magic, please. Please sir, I have no magic!"

The boy's fear roused the cats, whose ears went wide with the confusion of it. Kinzel held his hand out to the boy.

"Perhaps you had no magic ere today, but now - when the Power was driven from that 'prentice you were there. It is not something you should fear, I think." He licked his lips, considering how best to explain - oh, for the beautifully turned phrases from Madog's books! - and then as the fire warmed him he spoke again.

"Idren, the Power is very like a flame itself, driven from one hearth it seeks another to burn in, for it is its nature to do so."

Idren tipped his head. "And I was the nearest place? That's why my clothes and hair-" then his face twisted "But I will be like him!"

"No!" cried Kinzel, sitting himself crosslegged next to the boy in front of the hearth. "You are yourself. No magic could change you so without your aim to change."

Tonedrin pushed away from his wool-wheel and moved about the room uncertainly, avoiding looking at his guest or his son. Idren still held the firestone and steel in loose fingers.

Kinzel, crosslegged before the fire, was blank-faced in concentration. Finally his round face grew firmer as he settled on a plan.

"Idren, come here to me, please."

"Sir?" said the boy, moving ever so slowly closer to the mage.

"You play games, Tonedrin says. You think things that might be, and make things work in ways others haven't thought on. So, for me, would you try a small game?"

"Aye," said the youth, his voice wavering uncertainly.

"Aye, good," Kinzel soothed. "Let us take a thing you know well and think on it. That bench, there. Remember what you know of it, think about it hard, eh?"

The boy nodded, eyes fixed firmly on the bench.

"Now, I will tell you several words. I want you to repeat them, and when you do, to think that you would like to see a fire burning on the bench, dancing there without hurting it."

"That's a funny thought," offered Idren.

"Still, what we will do is say the words I give you several times, then think and strike your firestone."

Kinzel gave him the words then, with careful pronunciation since the northern accent was slightly slower than that he'd learned from Madog; and then Kinzel heard the words until they were correct.

"Let us do this thing now, Idren."

Idren barely moved his hand and the words were slow, yet a lovely tall green flame sprang up from the bench, a green nimbus about it, swaying for several seconds. Then flame died out suddenly as Idren gasped and dropped stone and steel upon the floor, mouth agape.

"Go look upon the bench," Kinzel instructed.

Idren rushed to the spot and ran his hand over the old wood. "Cold. There's no scorches or sparks-"

"You have the Power, friend Idren. If you need a spark, it will come to you. You have it."

The room was quiet for a moment, neither the renewed sound of rain beating against the roof nor the popping of the hearthfire penetrating the look Idren gave Kinzel.

Then, quietly: "I really have magic now?"

Kinzel nodded gently. "May you use it wisely."

And then a cat meowed at a fidget-toy and they laughed, but for Tonedrin who was quiet still.

Three: Nightstorm

"Kinzel! Damn it ... damn it Kinzel! Why are you never about when there's need-"

The familiar voice was barely audible. Kinzel sat up on his blanket by the hearth-fire, gulping with fear. Whatever he had done wrong this time, his Master was surely in no humor to be merciful-

"Kinzel. Merely a word if you will."

He saw the thing now, a smoky column of inner-lit orange. A summons from Madog, to be sure. Or, recalling that he was his own wizard now, a communication. Kinzel leaned forward, touching his staff and bringing it across his lap. "Madog, I am here."

"Ah. That is useful," said the slowly tumbling mist. It moved nearer Kinzel and sank to the floor, forming a likeness of Madog as it touched the hardwood. The glow from within persisted.

"Kinzel, my friend, normally I would not trouble a staffed one with such a matter, allowing events to follow themselves as the Clock wills, but I have an interest in this affair beyond the normal-"

Kinzel, bleary from sleep, tried to focus on the roiling image.

"Madog, I am not a riddle-master as you-"

"Patience, Kinzel, patience. The difficulties you have engineered for yourself so quickly amaze me. You do have some time to prepare, and I will aid you, asking aid in return."

"Mas - Madog, please, speak plainly."

"There are others with you. One is strong in the Power."

"He is unschooled."

"As you say. The problem, then, is Fallan, who seeks revenge in quite a bit of anger. It will take him longer to find you than it did me - his apprentice seems to have reported you as something over two yards tall, carrying a golden staff twice your reported stature, that topped with a green diamond as large as a human skull - so a simple template match will not suffice.

"Also, he has much else to occupy his mind, it would seem, and his apprentice is no use to him, having misplaced his own skills and Power under mysterious circumstances this very noon. How did you do that, if I may ask? 'Twas neatly played-"

"Madog!" cried Kinzel in exasperation, "I shall withdraw my consideration if you do not tell the tale in a straight line!"

"To be sure, good Kinzel, to be sure. Fallan is after a balanced revenge. He seeks to harm you. You have severely injured a favorite project of his by removing power from his apprentice. More, since this apprentice was exceptionally strong and very skilled. I thought him to have his staff well before you-"

"More, friend Wizard."

"Ah. Yes. Fallan is organizing a group of such magicians, wizards, and etcetera that owe him favors. He tells them he will strip you of your powers. Frequently in a wizard that causes death, of course, and in any case the group has yet to settle on which of six ways of removing Power will best suit his purpose." Madog sketched out the six ways, all of which required borrowed magic and all of which required a death to bind the spell. A human death.

"Also, Kinzel, Fallan is puzzled, as am I, as to which method you used. There seem no extra bodies lying about, and you had no time to prepare or borrow-"

"Madog, no one died! I used none of the methods you described."

"Eh?"

"I murdered no one, I assure you. I acted in defense only...."

"Kinzel, Kinzel. Of course, as your own wizard you may have your secrets. But theory clearly shows that a life must be forfeit-"

"Theory is wrong then," muttered Kinzel irritably, "or not as complete as it could be. All I did was to defend the boy and me against attack. I prepared to act - declared that none should be allowed power who would so misuse it! - and the staff acted, diverting and drawing out his power-"

The summons faded and began to lose form as Madog's face showed sign of panic. "Kinzel, a staff is a tool - and a weapon if you will - but it must be used. People may act on their own behalf, and some of the stronger spirits, and a staff may be primed to act when a condition is met, but things? - only the Clock may act of itself to such degree - or, perhaps the Branch, but there is little enough proof..."

"Tell me of my danger, Madog, please. I used another method, believe me!"

The orange cloud drifted from the floor a moment, obscuring the wall behind it. It resettled, slightly denser and squatter.

"As you say, Kinzel. The night moves to the Clock's pace. Already I have chased sprites from the rooftops twice, and flushed slime from Bronzemere's outer wall three times and - hold, Kinzel, I explain!"

The summons had noted Kinzel's impatience perfectly.

"Fallan has sent me pests, so many that I suspect he had them prepared and held locked away for an opportune moment. He sends them, and had I an apprentice they might have been dispatched without troubling me. But he has sent so many - and I am alone here - he is robbing me of time. Taking me from my studies to deal with plagues of roaches and clogged drains! His justification for sending these things to me is that he feels I erred in turning you out upon an unsuspecting world without a proper ethical background. It is true that one should not interfere with another wizard's studies-"

"Fallan's 'prentice would have killed me! And worse, the boy and the cats as well! The staff defended us, I tell you, and worked for the Right, as I demanded!"

"In any case," the summons went on after a moment, "Fallan plans to keep me busy so that I may not warn you: he is already thwarted at this, you see; and then he will send you trials. A good apprentice would be able to handle one or two, but sent in a group it would take a minor wizard - such as you - with some preparation and good fortune, to deal with them. And then you may be depleted and vulnerable for days after, unable even to light a cooking fire.

"I don't believe Fallan will slay you outright, Kinzel, for there would be repercussions and hearings. He does mean to rob you of your Power, or see you exhausted until your Power can never be that of a full wizard. Fallan is powerful of himself, Kinzel, and in league with three moderately powered wizards he would be capable of outright slau - what? At my window?

"Kinzel, I normally keep above politics, but I cannot now. Just remember this: they speak as locusts thick at feeding.

"I must go: a fury and two demons knock at my window, and there's a firesprite among the roses! Defend yourself well, and if you must attack, do. Good fortune!"

The summons dissolved quickly into a slight orange glow. The glow drifted, found the hearth, and disappeared into it.

Kinzel hugged his knees to himself on the crude pallet, not noticing the smell of clean straw or the smoky firelight. He'd sat thus for five slow breaths now, contemplating choices.

He could leave. The boy and the one-armed man were not part of this. Or should not be - and how could he depend upon Fallan to see that, who would unleash an apprentice to steal cats and attack people?

He could, perhaps, contact Fallan himself, explain the necessity, for surely the apprentice had not spoken clearly of the deed. He could offer to return the Power-

But no. He could not. Arrogance and cruelty did not deserve the Power.

Then what? He knew nothing of wizardly battles; his days of studies had been filled with herbs or minerals; his contests had been between his mind and the books - the last person he'd struck was his eldest brother: one blow landed in his own defense 14 years gone by!

He knew so few spells, for having read so many. He knew so few patterns, even less of the chants and the hand-thrown spells and the - he was no hunter!

Drawing his staff even closer to him, Kinzel stroked it as he might a smooth sapling. Or a cat. His mind centered on the stroking and he murmured to the staff, whether for comfort or aid he scarcely knew.

"I am Kinzel, who fights for the small goodnesses of children and of cats. I seek to answer need in this night, though I am ignorant and troubled in my heart. The need is to keep Balance; to keep Right in its place is my goal. Let me act as ought a wizard, let me defend myself and my charges with honor and speed."

He stroked the staff: it thrummed gently in his arms. One of the cats yawned at him suddenly from its place by the fire-

"I am Kinzel," said the mage to the staff, "and I have need. I have need of the sense of cats, and the eyes and ears, that I might see danger and know it, that I might know my purpose with a hunter's wit before danger finds those of us who may be innocent-"

The night grew brighter about him as Power flowed. There were small things in the house he had not seen before: a spot where the boy's blood had dripped; a corner near the hearth that was the safest, strongest spot in the house, drawing on a buried spring for cleanliness. The father's corner glowed the dour color of joylessness, while the sleeping boy held nearly as much safety in himself as the good spot.

He was not alone.

He could sense sharing: there was another listening, seeing what he saw, and another. The cats, disturbed from their sleep near the boy, moved to him. They sniffed, ears stiff and alert. Their tail tips twitched with a hint of annoyance, a hint of malice, a hint of necessity.

Kinzel closed his eyes, seeing more clearly. The rain he heard was not dripping quite properly now; and there were signs - knowledge he had no words for.

Outside, he knew, there were - things.

The dark creature, the strongest cat, the one he shared vision with, stood on Kinzel's left knee and screeched a challenge at a distant, fomenting doom.

Through the fury of wind and rains came the answering challenge: the sound of locusts, as if thick at feeding.

Kinzel's head throbbed. He grimaced at his ignorance, knowing there was a simple spell of no more than nine words that would do the job for him painlessly. Instead, he listened directly to the locust-roar, reaching out as if to a rabbit or lamb, feeling for the soul of the meaning. His stomach clenched itself against cold-blooded thoughts.

Around him was a strange tableau. Tonedrin stood with ax in hand, facing the door. The cats were as if rooted: both stared at the wood-shuttered window as they crouched against his feet. Idren, not yet fully awake, held fireplace poker as if it were a sword.

The roar became confusion, the thoughts were lost. Kinzel grasped the staff tightly. He held it lance-like - green vine at spear point. The locust noise strained his thinking, lowering his confidence even more.

"Friends," Kinzel said uncertainly, "I never meant to bring such troubles to your home. Forgive me, please-"

Tonedrin whirled, face grim. "None of that! You'd not be here but for my boy and his doings this morning. It looks like honest trouble, and we'll face it straight on. You do what you know to do and we'll follow as best works."

Kinzel nodded. "I will do what I can, Housefather."

The round-faced mage closed his eyes, merged hearing with that of the cats, and listened to the unhealthy litany of the locusts.

Amid the confusion of the chirps, squeaks, and buzzes Kinzel felt the patterns form in his head. There were voices there. Meaning was buried in the layers of sound and Kinzel sought it, located the strands, isolated the voices.

"There is no surprise here: the house is woke," came a voice.

Another broke in, swirled about - "I think it is the cats. Yes, the cats are alert for him. He is warned."

"Then we must move soon. All four together."

"This will pay me fully and more, Fallan."

"I hear!" came the clearest voice, the forceful voice. "We move shortly. He is far from greenwood here, is Kinzel the Fool, who spoke once to the unicorn. We will bind his powers to the stones and break his silly staff to kindling. The boy will serve as sacrifice and I shall have those cats after all."

"Aye, if you say it. But how? He cannot be defenseless as he seems, and he sits with a second of Power!"

"They are neither as strong as any of us, and neither proper trained. Pool me some Power there, at the door. I will sunder it with wind and drive them out into the open."

Hearing with cat ears, seeing through cat eyes, Kinzel flung himself to the safe spot. "As you'd live your life, to me. Away from the door!"

The cats hissed as the Power built up. A glow came from outside the door, the ugly ruddy glow of iron about to be struck by a smith's hammer.

Tonedrin moved quickly, the dazed Idren not as fast. "I can see it!" he was saying. "It's all around! They're all around us!"

The door shook as it might from an evening breeze.

Kinzel saw the Power building beyond it, was awed by its malice. The door shook again, a bit harder.

The muttering voice of locusts came again, and within it a sardonic laugh. "Grasway, you astonish. Do you think they left the door unbarred for us? Apply your Power to the pool, fool, that I may start!"

Of a sudden the staff within Kinzel's hand rattled, sounding like bones dancing on granite. It shook and the vines grew full. It shook more and Kinzel's lance-like hold on it became even more pronounced.

The door! Not loose boards pegged together, but twin trees. Aye, trees!

Scuffing a pentagram in the dust around his huddled friends, Kinzel too retreated to the center of it. There was no time to build a proper frame, no way to call to him the metal, the wood, the binding wax. The pentangle would have to do!

The ruddy glow peeked through the cracks of the front door, growing deeper and duller as it strengthened.

Tonedrin muttered to Idren, "Boy, you stand behind me, slash and poke low. I will take the height. Guard my legs!"

Kinzel spoke as if singing to the wind. "Spring brings us new growth, O Branch, and new time, O Clock. There is need now for new growth in old trees, sapling grown to proud wood, twin trees twirled tight together all fresh and green, grown side by side all fresh and green. Grow us more: bring us a door solid and firm. For Balance and for Right, I Kinzel, demand it now!"

"Look!" screamed Idren as the red glow crept beneath the door. The green nimbus of Kinzel's staff brightened the room. Without thinking, Kinzel lowered the staff as if to charge the invading force, and green fire flew, striking the door and pushing the red glow back, back, out-

"How?" came the locust voices.

"He's pushed us back!"

"Greenwood, I swear it!"

The door swelled, filled its frame completely in solid wood; the doorframe grew tight to it, and the whole to the wall; the wood peg lock was big as a bough now, with green leaves showing.

A cat hissed, and Kinzel felt the menace at the window; turning, he yelled, "Greenwood all about!"

The window shuttered itself tight in fresh wood. That frame, too, grew solid.

"What has gone amiss?" came a locust voice.

"Preparation!" came the answering tone Kinzel took to be Fallan's. "So, he'd seal it, would he? Call up demons who throw stones!"

And the house became an occupied drum: the banging near deafening. The cats huddled flattened in the safe spot; the house shook and bounced.

Kinzel nearly fell over, then made a curt movement with one hand, murmuring quietly three short phrases of three syllables each.

The sound faded and faded some more, though the house still shook and rattled. One of the few spells Kinzel knew well was at work now: it was the muting spell he'd learned to distance Madog's rants. The movement increased; Kinzel worried that the very roof might be torn away or the house turned topsy-turvy.

"The house: I require this house to be rooted to the spot like the trees that make it up!" Kinzel petted at the staff, forming the image in his mind and found the staff responsive, humming-

The movement stopped, though the sound of stone on the walls could still be heard beyond Kinzel's muting and the roof groaned with the weight of the stones thrown.

A locust-growl from beyond the walls. "We should burn them!" came one voice, and another "We should flood them," and still another said, "We should overrun them entire!"

"Devils out there. I feel them!" said the small voice that was Idren. He was white and shaking; the poker wobbled in his hands.

"Mages, Idren. Men. We can fight them, still. I need your help. Will you lend me Power?"

The stricken Idren stared, mouth open, then gripped Kinzel's worn vest.

"How? Tell me how? How can I stop this?"

The locust roar grew louder, closer. "He hears us! He must! Let us all move, one then next, adding to what works. Attack!"

A scream from behind brought Kinzel whirling about. One of the cats - the smaller, reddish one - had been speared quite through by a stick. More sticks flew out of the fireplace one after the other, began bouncing about the house like mad hornets.

Kinzel brought his staff up to ward off-

A flash of Power, close at hand then. Idren held his poker as a staff, firestone in hand: the sticks were bursting into vicious flame now as they got beyond the fireplace, flaming into smoking ash. The fire in the hearth grew bright, licked up the chimney, became a shield-

"Fire and greenwood?" came the locust words. "The other Power stirs, Fallan!"

"Then we turn ally against him! Burn them. Burn the fields, fire the land!"

Kinzel rushed to the door, his staff pulling, leading. Tonedrin was there ahead of the slow-footed Mage. The green-grown locks gave way to his efforts. A cry went up from his lips as he succeeded in opening the door. "My land! They destroy me!"

In spite of the still-steady rain the distant fields were afire, the flames driving houseward unnaturally fast. An occasional rock or stick fell about the house in the center of a blazing circle.

Kinzel reached for Tonedrin. "Don't! They'll kill you in a moment out there."

The man's grim eyes bore down on him. "They'll kill me where I stand else, eh? I taught soldiers, and soldiers know you must attack if your keep cannot stand a siege!"

"Hold, then!" Kinzel commanded with more hope than plan.

Kinzel could feel the enemy now. Their pooled powers were heavy about the place and he felt that he could nearly see them. "If winds there be," Kinzel yelled into the flaming morass, "give me counter-winds!"

"And fire!" screamed Idren beside him. "Send fire to fire!"

It was so: green flame leaped from Kinzel's staff and bright yellow from Idren's poker. A great spark of light arced toward the ruddy flames and beat back against them. The very road seemed aflame, yet the house in the center stood secure. Tonedrin stared in wide amaze at his son, laughing, laughing.

"At 'em. At 'em we'll take it!"

Kinzel heard the locust voices once more even as the bright flames reached the ruddy in a roar and around and about the flames consumed each other in the hissing rain. The darkness was sudden and threatening.

"Overrun them! Creatures and animals! Destroy them. Garanth, you are there! Direct them proper!"

The curtain of steam and rain held the night dark. Behind the steam were noises of hooves and bellows; cattle and wild things driven by demons and fear.

Tonedrin ran by Kinzel, back into the house. The noise grew to a rumble. There, near the path the animals were taking as they hurtled toward the house was a gray form, standing with arm upraised.

Kinzel peered into the night. Hundreds, nay thousands of beasts had been raised to trample them and the house into dust.

There was no sense fleeing as had Tonedrin, yet-

"I can fight something I can see!" came Tonedrin's voice in Kinzel's ear. "Help me - maybe we can draw this and-"

Kinzel stared at the man in amaze. Tonedrin stood near him, longbow and quiver in hand.

"In my prime I would make such a shot! I swear it!"

"I am no archer," Kinzel declared, "but I may be able - I will help. Hold."

He used no spell - he'd used none as a child when he'd healed rabbits and such. Kinzel grabbed Tonedrin's left arm with his right hand, holding onto his staff the while.

As he might with a rabbit, he said small soothing words, felt for the wrongness, the pain....

The staff's vines swelled as Kinzel began his request, his demand, of the crippled arm.

"Be a proper arm now; muscles that bulge and flex, muscles that answer to a man's needs, bones that-"

In the midst of it, Tonedrin gasped. His face grew pale and he shivered as he stood. Kinzel felt the strain and pain, reached in and drew it to himself that the man could stand.

"An arm should work as an arm will work," Kinzel was telling the arm and shoulder; "as good as was and better, be well!"

The staff flowed green energy into him: Kinzel felt it move through him to the man, felt the man's muscles moving beneath the skin, felt shifting of balances, felt pain, pain, pain-

And it was done, suddenly. Locust voices worried in the night.

"Where did such energy come from?" One demanded, while another saw the point and asked, "Where did it go? What are they doing?"

Kinzel leaned on the staff heavily now, his throbbing left arm full of twitching pains, as if he'd torn a dozen muscles. In a moment that was but memory, though the sharpness held him in thrall for several long breaths.

Tonedrin was quick about it now. He grabbed up his quiver, and in the light from the hearthfire inside, he took a sure glance down the length of an arrow, set it aside, and glanced at another.

The animals had broken through the dim circle now and were charging the place, led by a pair of lathered bulls. Tonedrin looked beyond them. He put arrow to string, lifted the bow high in his strong left arm, and let fly. Before the arrow topped its course in flight he'd lifted the second to position and pulled the string to his ear again and let fly again.

Kinzel saw the second flight begin just as he stepped down from the porch. His thoughts were on the tidal wave of creatures: he would have to take all of their attention to divert them. The magic that held them-

That magic wavered, fell away. The animals charged on heedless; now a simple stampede instead of a weapon.

The locust voice brought him sounds of confusion. "My hand: an arrow got through your shield, fools! Help me! Another one! Get me away! Bring me back to you!"

The stampede was enough to take Kinzel's attention. He walked forward, staff held horizontal in front of him, chanting the strange cattle calming sounds he'd learned, not from Madog, but from his distant relative, the herb woman his villagers called Mad Siljan.

"Disrupt him! Stop him!" The locust voices argued now. "Get me away!" came another, and "It's only an archer, why don't you just use a spell?"

Siljan it had been who told Kinzel of the unicorn glade, Siljan it had been who'd taught him to hold frantic rabbits and calm them, Siljan it had been who'd taken a boy near drowned by the water he'd stolen from the unicorn and brought him back to full life. Siljan's words ran through Kinzel now and he told them back to the stampede.

"Earth magic, Fallan!" came a locust voice. "He's using earth magic like an herb wizard!" While another voice demanded "Attack! Continue the attack!"

Kinzel recalled Siljan's words: "Tell scared animals first that they've outrun the danger, next that there's water near and they can rest, and finally, that there's safe shelter. That's what they need to know to calm them, boy, that's all."

A deer burst past Kinzel, and another. The bulls came on in the darkness, and behind them more cattle, more deer. The demons and furies were gone - controlled, Kinzel realized, by the wizard Tonedrin had bloodied.

And now the bulls turned aside uncertainly, and the deer also; the creatures coming on from behind began to slow and-

A great ruddy glow grew in the air about the farm. Kinzel felt a stab of fear: here they were in the open, and a great wizard still set on revenge. His arm was tired, his head hurt, and all about were milling creatures which could be used against him again.

The glow began to take shape, to be swirled around by wind, the threat of lightening hung in the air, as if the light rain would turn now to great storm.

"Attack!" came the locust voice and there seemed conviction there.

From beside Kinzel, suddenly, the voice of Tonedrin, the sight of Idren with his fireplace poker.

"Can we press them? The man in the field has hidden among the beasts. We've confused them, blunted their attack. But we must press on, threaten them elsewhere, or we're still under siege!" Tonedrin held his bow in hand, ready, as his eyes alertly scouted out the land above the backs of the slowly scattering creatures.

The ruddy glow was expanding, and Kinzel felt Power there, extremely malicious Power. Tonedrin's urge ... Kinzel felt it, weighed it. The man wasn't asking revenge: just safety. And it was Right. It was not good - but it was Right.

"Idren, help me. Hold my hand here and think hard about your rat traps. Imagine a rat the size of a man. Imagine four rats that size! Tonedrin - point out where the mage in the field was! Gather me Power, staff, gather me Power to do Right. Give me cat sight and the strength to do this thing!"

Tonedrin pointed in the field and Kinzel felt his ears flatten, his eyes widen. And there! The prey!

Idren's hand was slim, firm. But from it came strange strength. The ideas Kinzel had now were sudden and clear. He understood the structure of things, the theory behind the traps, the structure of the latches, how one might whittle and-

The ruddy glow was huge now; within it the face of a man full of anger.

"I know you, Kinzel!" came the voice. The glow towered above them in the rain; it grew to be the full figure of a mage, taller than two oak trees.

"I see you there in the field, cowering and holding hands against the dark! Shake and tremble, fool. I shall kill you, destroy those you protect, and then move on to those you care for. How dare you think to raise up magic against me, Fallan? How dare you?"

Kinzel's eyes were wide, his prey nearly escaped. He concentrated again, schooling himself to ignore the huge thundering voice-

Now!

He pounced, did Kinzel, pounced upon that man in the field as if he had been waiting, tail twitching in the grass for just the proper moment, when the man had also been distracted.

A scream broke the rainy night, breached the spell of Fallan's threats. Locust voice thundered against the night. "I'm trapped, speared! Save me!"

The visitation turned and saw the terrified man in the cage, reached out as if to pick him up, the booming voice continuing to threaten. "I curse you, Kinzel. You will remain without a home for yourself or your soul until you pluck a griffin's egg from its home roost! I declare it!"

Kinzel felt the magic and saw the man and trap move, magically. Distracted, he heard Fallan continuing...

"...and as I am Fallan! I curse your staff!-"

The night stopped.

Kinzel felt no rain, felt no touch of Idren, felt nothing but the staff in his hand. It was as if he'd been drawn back to the very moment he'd first touched the staff in the cold of creation. He heard nothing. No sound of rain, no sounds of the beasts in the mud, no word from the world reached him.

Echoing in his mind were the words, "I curse your staff!"

He knew nothing other than his own desire when he'd sought out and demanded that staff with his full being: "I require a Staff of pure white Power ... a Staff of True, Actual Power..."

Kinzel felt the expending of Power that was the wounded mage being returned to his foul companions. Despite that drain, the glowering image of Fallan continued to grow.

The understanding came to Kinzel that his life was forfeit: Fallan had drawn up his full resources and could crush them all whenever he chose.

He'd never let go the cat ear, the cat eyes, the cat-

Mindlessly, defiantly, Kinzel screamed, "Attack!" and raised his staff to swing at the mammoth Fallan glaring down at them.

In his mind was the urge to strike, to drive back, to force the terrible mage back to his own territories, to strike again and again until-

The staff was green lightning and hard stone. It was greenwood and brownwood, a cudgel filled with all of Kinzel's focused wrath.

Kinzel stood now on dry even floor in the cold blackness of creation. The field, his friends, the cats - they were all elsewhere. Here was Fallan!

Fallan was tall, but Kinzel swung out with the staff, nearly knocking the wizard's tall hat from his head. Kinzel swung again, struck an arm this time - knowing elation - swung again as the mage fended him away, this time striking the man's knee solidly.

Then Fallan's staff was to hand, and Kinzel felt the jarring blow of staff meeting staff, of the blow blocked near his head, of the blow blocked that would have crushed his ribs.

Kinzel was no cudgel master. Neither, though, was Fallan.

Kinzel's blocking tactics changed: Fallan was trying to back away, to have time to cast spells! Kinzel blocked now by pushing at the other mage, each defensive thrust giving threat as well.

The exertion was telling rapidly on the pudgy mage, whose head and arm had ached to start. Fallan feinted with his staff and Kinzel fell for it, feeling the enemy blow glance off his heel.

Fallan brought his staff up in the time he'd gained, began to tell a spell, reached to touch his staff-

Kinzel saw defeat.

Still, he brought his staff around, fully expecting-

Nothing happened.

Fallan touched his staff again, muttering.

Kinzel stood breathlessly, sweat pouring down his round face, no longer having the urge to beat Fallan into the ground. Fallan stood, sides heaving, glaring at the mage who'd fought him physically to a standstill.

"Enough, Mage," said Fallan, finally. He also was breathing heavily and sweating. "You prove your point - my apprentice deserved a setdown. I was in error to react so swiftly without consulting you."

Fallan paused for breath, gestured carefully with his hand. "Your error was in not consulting me before taking his Power. It is a Balance of sorts." By the time he finished, Fallan was leaning on his staff.

Kinzel was leaning on his own staff now, wary. Fight was gone from him, as was strength. He nodded.

"As you say, Fallan." He breathed heavily, trying to relax slightly. "A Balance of sorts. Hard lessons all around this day, I suspect."

"Agreed," said Fallan, staring openly at Kinzel's unmarred staff, "hard lessons. I shall not disturb you lightly again."

"Agreed," said Kinzel, feeling ritual. "I shall consider my errors and learn from them." Kinzel's eyes were on the bent gold, the smashed traceries, the ruined gem-cups and broken designs on the face of Fallan's staff. Tonedrin had been right: salvation lay in having carried the fight to the enemy, in having disrupted Fallan's Staff-magics. Good luck of the highest order.

"Until we meet again, be well," said Fallan, bowing.

"Until then," Kinzel bowed.

Fallan turned, strode a half-step into darkness, and was gone.

The cold fell from around Kinzel; he stood in the rain beside Idren and Tonedrin, who were watching the empty sky.

"I told you he was a mighty mage!" said Idren in the darkness. "I told you."

Kinzel leaned heavily on his staff, saying nothing as the nightstorm brought on real thunder. The rain swept the salt of his sweat to the earth, and the new cold of honest water and night air began to overwhelm him.

After a moment, Tonedrin and Idren saw him beside them, and helped the exhausted mage back toward the comfort of hearthfire.

KINZEL THE ARBITER

On balance it was not the best place to practice magic. Kinzel shrugged off that thought as the sun burned away the two-day fog; magic was afoot, concentration necessary.

Shrouded sunlight limned a cliff-edge barely two paces to his right. He could hear the busy growl of the river far below. Six paces to his left, the ledge ended again, falling away into the wooded valley he'd spent the last week wandering through, exploring fox and rabbit paths to see what they said to a staffed-but-homeless wizard.

Kinzel was practicing magic in this chancy place because it offered some shelter from the damp breeze falling from the mountain range to the west, and because he dearly needed practice. Luck and more luck had protected him in his encounter with Fallan, he knew. He'd walked carefully for some days after that encounter, never sure of the truce, and never finding that depth of power he'd somehow tapped that night.

Ah, and praise Madog, all ye springflowers, without his former master's warning he'd be dead or empty even now.

Having fought Fallan to a draw Kinzel had then spent much of his remaining energy saving the life of a cat; only the loan of Power from fledgling apprentice Idren enabled the pudgy mage to complete this Balance, for he surely knew the cats had been as much a part of his victory as Tonedrin or Idren.

A long week he'd stayed at the small home, recovering his energy and trying to teach Idren what he would know of the proper use of magic. When Madog showed up - in person! no less - seeking Idren as apprentice, Kinzel had finally relaxed, feeling his balance complete.

And now, years beyond the days he should have learned such things, Kinzel struggled with the simple spells and backgrounds - uncommon pleased to perform such minor magics as many apprentices did daily.

For the fifth time in as many hours Kinzel brought his attention to the tiny fire and carefully arranged apparatus. In the bottom of a small metal cup were several lumps of sand and lime. The heat was symbolic - an aid to an unsure worker's concentration. The frame of wood above all was carefully bent to channel magical energy. Beside the flame, and attached to it through magic, was another metal cup, this holding a specially shaped piece of glass. Kinzel took a deep breath and concentrated, pulling into himself some of the warmth of the sun as he strove to expand his horizons and focus magical energy.

FWWWMMMPP! The sharp noise was followed by a yniinnnng sound as fire jumped to metal.

Hastily, Kinzel grabbed a forked stick to move the cup. Glass in the bottom! Could it have worked this time?

Dumping the cup gingerly into his cloth-covered hand, Kinzel felt a touch of pride. He'd not only gotten glass this time, but glass that, at least on the surface, matched the other.

Knowing that glass retains heat, he resisted the urge to immediately put lenses together to see if they worked the way Madog's had worked. Instead, he sat back, sighing a little from exertion, and became aware of - a sound.

A whistle, from a human mouth. It was a commanding sort of noise, effortlessly riding above the river's complaint, from the far shore.

Kinzel peered through the lingering mist, spying a ghostly form. Ah, that would be the bridge on his map. He'd heard from other travelers about the bridge: it was three hundred paces long and in the center was a roofed portion to offer shelter from the noon sun or sudden storms. The spire of that roof stood out clearly while the rest of the amazing structure faded away into the mists. A thousand paces below it, on either side of the river, were towns.

Kinzel, moving toward the coast in his wanderings, needed to cross the river eventually and, lacking even the faintest concept of the shape of a flying spell, had long ago hit upon this bridge as the next best thing to flight. He felt another glow of pride that he had so ably followed the chart; then let it fade as he turned back to more immediate concerns.

The whistle recurred every few moments as Kinzel dismantled the crude Funnel and placed a tiny pot over the flame. No reason to waste a good fire, after all.

As the tea brewed, a second whistle sounded. The new whistle came invitingly from Kinzel's side of the river. Perhaps he should investigate? He thought it over and regretfully dismissed the idea; wizard work must take precedence, after all.

Kinzel shrugged his shoulders and, gauging the time to be proper, placed the lenses side-by-side on a piece of blue-dyed leather on the chest-high ledge. They reflected flashes of sunlight back at the sky. He had done it!

He sat, leaning comfortably against the rock face, happily sipping tea, considering what he would look at first. The bridge below? Properly, of course, the lenses should be enclosed in brass or wooden tube. Perhaps there would be a carpenter or smith in one of the towns.

Woosh! accompanied a swift shadow and a burst of breeze. Kinzel, started, spilling tea; and there, on the ledge above him, was a large, gray - what? Not an owl, nor a hawk ... A gray crow?

The bird studied him from both eyes in turn, cheerful and unafraid. "Braddak," it announced; and elucidated: "Braddak carthulu!" So saying, it cheerfully picked up the shining lens in its beak and stepped off the edge of the cliff.

"Braddak, come back!" yelled Kinzel, struggling to his feet - far too late. The bird whispered out over the river, loot firmly in beak. Kinzel ignored the whistles as he strained to see. Where? There! Nearly lost in the shadows of valley green it veered and headed toward-

Toward the bridge!

Hastily gathering his small kit, Kinzel snatched up his staff, setting off at his best pace toward the river and the bridge.

***

Viewed this way, rather than from far above, the bridge was an imposingly solid structure, built of stout logs on stone supports. Wide enough for two wagons to pass, as was proper for one of the two main routes to the sea, it was planked with shaved oak. The central stone support was wider than the bridge itself, allowing room for two towers that together supported the roof so favored by traveling folk.

And there was Braddak.

Atop one of the two central towers, the crow watched Kinzel approach, blithefully unconcerned about the depth of the gorge or the turbulent waters below. Light glinted from the lens in its beak.

Kinzel shivered; height was not one of his joys. Despite its massive construction, the bridge shook minutely with the thunder of the torrents.

He began to coo softly as he walked, gradually raising the volume and varying dialects to see which might be most soothing to the bird.

The crow approached the roof-edge closest to Kinzel as the mage advanced.

"Braddak," he said soothingly, "that's my glass. Please let me have it."

Braddak turned his head from side to side, studying Kinzel from each eye in turn. Carefully, he put the lens on the shingle at his feet and muttered, "Braddak croncronatrun."

"I know you found it. But I made it. You took it from my hoard and it's mine." He spoke with the gentle firmness one uses with scavengers.

The bird shifted eyes nervously as he looked down at the wizard and his staff, fascinated by leaves that moved when no breeze did.

Kinzel could barely touch the edge of the roof with the tip of an outstretched finger. He might have to climb, after all. Being a wizard lay in doing the required. The shiver hid.

The bird muttered again.

Kinzel tried a bit of the universal bird language learned from Madog long ago. It had come as a shock to him back then that others had bothered to try to talk with the birds: he'd been beaten by his father for trying that.

Braddak's head came up sharply as he looked from right to left and back again. Kinzel had been trying to tell the bird he was willing to be its friend, and he fervently hoped Madog hadn't confused the bird-talk he'd gotten from Siljan, or taught him seagull instead.

Abruptly, the mage became aware again of whistles. The commanding whistle was strenuously demanding now; the more inviting was at the point of pleading.

Under both beat the steady rhythm of hooves.

Horses, from his left and his right, simultaneously. The tone changed: the horses were on the bridge.

The little wizard glanced to either side, concerned that the approaching horsemen would scare Braddak.

The riders were well-dressed. Neither looked a tradesman nor did either seem as intent upon Kinzel as upon the bird. Leaning forward, both urged their mounts to greater speed.

Kinzel dashed to the safety of the pedestrian walk under the roof of the central tower, staff held upright between him and those who approached at breakneck speed.

"Precedence!" howled the left-hand horseman. "Make room for the Judge of Hartwell! Precedence!"

"Judge Falter says hold! Hold for the Law! Hold for the Judge of Carr!" demanded the other.

Braddak retreated to the ridge of the walkway roof, taking his bauble with him.

Hartwell arrived first, looked at Kinzel without seeing him, and jumped out of the saddle, directing his commanding whistle at the gray crow.

Judge Falter arrived just then and added his pleading whistle to the general ruckus, shoving his reins into Kinzel's hand as he strode by.

The little wizard stepped to the horse and spoke a low command to the beast before leaving it to stand, reins dangling.

"What is this nonsense, Falter? This bird's mine! I've been raising her for months!"

"No, no, dear colleague Stirt! This is the self-same bird I have been working with for nearly a year. Landlin is mine! See how keenly he watches me, even in the presence of strangers?"

"Please, gentlemen, this is not required. We can..."

To no avail. Kinzel went unheard.

At this point, the object of contention itself stepped into the fray.

"Braddak grreladenow craakkk clatclatdak Braddak!"

Kinzel glanced up and extended an uncharacteristically swift hand, catching the lens as it fell from the beak.

The effect on the gentlemen was immediate.

"Give me that!" they demanded as one.

"It is mine," Kinzel explained gently; "a lens Braddak took from my camp this very morning."

"A lens, quotha!" cried Stirt of Hartwell. "It looked like a diamond to me! Anything the bird brings is mine, as I own the bird!"

"I also believe that object is a diamond," said Falter, "and I will thank you, sirrah, to return me my property!"

Kinzel shook his head grimly and displayed the 'diamond.'

Judge Falter snatched it up, raised it to the sky, and squinted through it. "Glass," he stated succinctly. "A mere lens."

"I concur," said Judge Stirt a moment later, at the conclusion of his own study. "A lens. Common glass. You may have it."

"I may have it?" Kinzel inquired quietly. "I may have what is mine, by right of making? There is no doubt..."

"In any case," Judge Falter interrupted, "I would have returned it to you. Glass is of no value to me."

Kinzel opened his mouth. His reply was unheard due to the sudden advent of goats, closely followed by a goatherd, he in turn by an ox cart loaded with lumber. From the opposite direction, a similar cart hove into view, this one bearing covered baskets. Quacking.

Distracted for a moment by all this activity, Kinzel suddenly became aware that Stirt was attempting to scale the roof, whistling as he did.

"Wait, thief!" shouted Falter, pulling on Stirt's foot. "It's my bird!"

The judge aloft slipped, fingers scrabbling for a hold among the shingles before he crashed down, taking his attacker with him to the deck. Sensing the advantages of his position, he exerted himself to hold the other man flat, but Judge Falter was having none of it. In a moment they were rolling on the dusty wooden deck, wonderfully heedless of their fine clothes and golden chains.

The goats stopped in rapt astonishment and looked to their goatherd. The driver of the lumber-cart pulled his team to and whistled loudly through the gap in his front teeth before turning to place a wager with his mate.

Kinzel gaped, found the staff moving around and forward, heard a voice - his! - pronounce a Command.

"Halt!"

The two combatants rolled to a stop and stared up at the gray-cloaked figure in amazement.

The goatherd scratched his head, looking from bedraggled judges to pudgy magician before carefully bowing to the latter. "Good-day sir," he said politely, then nodded at the men on the deck. "And to you, judges."

"Sir? Sir?" Stirt was struggling to his feet. "Why, this gray lensman is a mere..." He stuttered to a halt, recalling the word that had pinned him motionless.

"A mere wizard, I think," said the goatherd. "Or a mage."

"What!" The amazed judges fell silent.

Unfortunately, this did not last long. Each, seeing Kinzel as a potential ally, demanded that his side in the affair of the crow be championed.

Kinzel shook his head. "My interest was the return of my lens. This has happened. It pains me to see two men at odds over the ownership of a crow ... but I see no evidence that either of you owns Braddak."

"Evidence!" cried Falter. "Evidence! You, sir, whose name we lack, could act as arbiter. I would have it ended and I fear my opponent would suggest we try the matter in his court. Does Gordon Goatherd have the right of it? Are you a wizard?"

Kinzel nodded, tightening fingers on the old wood of his staff. The green vines twined around wood swelled in response.

The goatherd leaned against the duck-cart muttering to the driver. "It's justice they'll have from one who carries the Branch, I warrant."

Stirt professed himself willing to allow an outside arbiter to settle the affair while pointing out that they would, of course, require proof of Kinzel's wizardhood. Something more substantial, perhaps, than a tree limb and a voice-trick.

Kinzel offered the lens as proof. Neither judge found this particularly compelling, Falter pointing out that any competent glassworker could manufacture something similar.

Hand tight about his staff, Kinzel thought of Madog the Magnificent, mumbled the recently learned spell, visualized himself in the very tower room; asked the boon....

There was a moment of sharp dislocation, when only the weight of the staff in his hand was real: the bridge and all upon it were things of mist and dreamings.

Within a heartbeat he was back and all was solid, with the exception of Madog's sending. Towering eight feet high, it bowed to Kinzel, features unformed; and then, settling into an exact replication of Madog (except for the height) bowed as well to the judges.

"Yes, my good Kinzel. Luck finds me between tasks. Judge Falter. Judge Stirt. I trust you gentlemen are well?"

The men stared at Madog's sending, neither mustering a response.

"Ah," continued Madog, red eye falling upon the crow strutting along the roof-edge. Laboriously, the sending croaked a string of strange syllables. Braddak froze and closed both eyes; and the wizard sighed.

"I expect my Crow isn't quite up to date. By your kindness, Kinzel, convey to Braddak my greeting."

Kinzel nodded and quickly explained the situation, whereupon Madog chuckled.

"None better than Kinzel to settle such a dispute! Why, I'd insist he settle any similar argument for me except that damned staff of his - ahem. Professional differences, you understand, gentlemen; nothing to bear upon Kinzel's excellence as judge or as mage."

Recommendations delivered, Madog murmured an aside to the younger wizard. "My boy, this is hardly becoming. No one need question your wizardliness. Settle down, raise yourself a small keep somewhere and ... eh?"

"There's so much to see," Kinzel explained diffidently, and Madog shook his head, baffled.

"Be well," he said after a moment. "And keep in touch." He was gone then, flourishing his departure with a thunderclap and a flash of light, which seemed exactly the sort of proof Stirt had been interested in obtaining, no matter that he made the crow jump and flap his wings several times.

"If you'll be judge, you'll be needing a proper seat and a place for it," suggested the goatherd.

"Just a place to sit," said Kinzel. "Just a seat."

***

Kinzel sat on a high chair beneath the bridge roof, at the center of an army of disorganization. At his side, on a much lower chair, sat a minstrel known in the region for his reporting - and his ability to write a clear hand. He was to take down all that transpired, for the archives of both towns.

To Kinzel's right and left stood the mayors of Hartwell and Carr. These gentlemen had agreed that their judges deserved to be judged according to their stations.

Thus between them they had duly appointed Kinzel as the Judge of Crowsbridge.

In keeping with his new position and title, Kinzel's gray cloak was set aside for this occasion and replaced by a blue woolen robe donated by a Hartwell merchant, while a shoemaker from Carr gave new boots. From both towns had come well-wishers and time-wasters; the bridge had fully one hundred persons on it by the time Kinzel was permitted to begin his own part in the drama.

A thin way was kept through the crowd for travelers, but Kinzel doubted that any would pass such a singular event.

With a crow's curiosity, Braddak watched the crowd build, with special interest in the food vendors. Several of these offered the bird of contention bits of bread or cheese, but the bird kept to his roof-edge.

The opening statement went, by the drawing of lots, to Judge Falter, who represented himself. "Your Honor, my good friends, colleague," (this last directed frostily at Judge Stirt). "The matter at hand is a simple one: We discuss the ownership of a gray crow named Landlin, whom I befriended some months ago and who since that time has given me company and brought assorted oddments. I have spent much time in the training of Landlin - who, by the way, may be seen on the roof of this building, where he has largely kept since answering my call early this morning. I ask simply that Landlin be recognized as my own pet and property." He bowed and stepped back.

A buzz went through the watchers. Kinzel waved for quiet.

Judge Stirt smiled pleasantly at Kinzel, turned to the crowd and, finally, to Judge Falter. "Your Honor, friends, esteemed jurist. It is easy to see how my friend has come by his misconception, but I am here to bring the matter to a quick close. The bird in question - Coronella - is my bird. She has accepted both food and housing from me and I have trained her to come to my whistle."

He demonstrated the whistle and there was an answering cry from the bird on the roof, who fluttered around the hasty dais on which Kinzel sat before returning to the roof. The bird stared down at Falter, who smiled at the world.

"The bird has also, I confess, brought me an amazing number of gifts since I first discovered her, and I feel Coronella's devotion is more than proven by the presents brought me over the past seven months." He paused.

The crowd's murmur nearly grew to a roar; Kinzel shushed them lightly but it took the minstrel's "Quiet!" to bring order.

"I see," said Kinzel in his blunt way. "So I am to decide who owns and is responsible for the bird before me?"

"I so stipulate, Your Honor," said both.

"Do either of you have witnesses to call?"

Both, of course, did.

Kinzel sighed. The ways of Balance were many. He wondered why he always drew the more difficult.

***

Judge Stirt introduced a witness thus: "Here is someone who can confirm that on the day of the first frost I'd already been speaking of my bird."

The witness, sworn in, did say, "Aye, and by the day of the first frost I'd been told what I already guessed - that the good judge was blessed with the friendship of the gray crow."

Kinzel, untutored in law but observant of people, quickly saw that the witnesses, believing themselves accurate, were led and biased by familiarity with the litigants. He sighed with each new witness. How could he decide?

It was during one of these examinations that the Judge of Crowsbridge introduced an inquiry of his own.

"It would please me," Kinzel said to the miller of one or the other town (it hardly seemed to matter now), "if you would explain why you did not find it odd when Judge Stirt paid you with a ring of gold and stone instead of a coin."

"Well, Your Honor, he told me it was given by the gray crow!"

"Tell me," said Kinzel, "is the gray crow so well-known here that only outsiders are unaware of it?"

"Oh ... ummmm ... well..." sputtered the miller. "I know not the full story..."

The goatherd, it happened, knew the full story.

"Your Honor, it is told that once every generation a gray crow will come. The person who befriends this crow and who receives all the treasure it brings will be successful; his name will be known far and wide; and he will die content. My great-great-grandfather was such a man.... The herds I drive are the last of my inheritance. My father felt himself too far above birds to seek one out; and until this day I doubted that ever was such a creature!"

"There must be a wizard in it!" cried a voice from the crowd.

Several laughed; others quickly shushed them.

"'Twas told as a thing the unicorn did in the old, old days, in exchange for keeping a grove free of men and goats and cows," the goatherd answered. "I disbelieve that, I think. But there is now this crow bringing gifts..."

"Ah," said Kinzel, "Unicorns are fond of conditions. Why, once I was told by one that I could take a stream back to a village in dire need, and welcome - but I must carry it myself."

More laughter from the crowd as the minstrel turned to stare at the mage. "Then you are Kinzel the Foo - the Innocent?"

Kinzel nodded. "That point is aside, however. There is magic in this, for crows are not gray generation after generation: they are black ... yet the magic is faded to near nothing, for the bird himself is not magical."

"Did you carry the stream, Judge?" demanded a voice from the gallery.

"Of course I did! Now hush, we've other things doing."

The crowd muttered at that reply; and quieted rapidly.

The miller finished his tale, dating Stirt's acquaintance with the bird at "about the time the bakery chimney caught fire."

***

Kinzel leaned back in his chair. It was clear to him that the men had come upon the gray crow within days of each other. Stirt's horse had stopped prancing at the sight of the bird - he'd considered that an omen - while the crow had offered a red rock to Falter, who'd fallen asleep at his fishing.

"Gentlemen, it seems to me that there is something missing from this discussion," the mage said finally. "I am not certain what it is, but feel that it will come to me. I am somewhat behind in my meals and I suggest recess. We will continue at..." he consulted neighboring shadows, "at about three of the afternoon."

***

Kinzel ate alone, accepting a garlic sausage to complement his bread and cheese, as well as a tankard of the local brew. The purveyor of this last waxed eloquent, naming it "the most treasured ale in the West."

Kinzel's mind snagged on the phrase. "Treasure," he murmured as he drank. "Treasure, indeed!"

In the meanwhile the minstrel took advantage of his position to spin a tale or two, and tell some recent news from the kingdoms and towns he'd passed through.

It seemed to Kinzel that the most recent tales - those taking place closest to the bridge - were the ones sounding most plausible. He was perplexed to hear the minstrel go on at length about an army planning a griffin hunt; led by a fanatic officer called the Rove Captain. These mortals - not a magician among them - seemed bent on hunting down, nay, in "cleansing the world" of griffins.

Kinzel shook his head sadly. Some men respected neither magic nor their own lives-

When Court reconvened, it was to a larger audience. News of the inquest had traveled, tempting even the well-to-do townspeople.

Stirt's side of the bridge had grown by numerous well-dressed persons, including three elegant ladies, one of whom was obviously the good man's wife.

Falter's side was less numerous, though Kinzel saw signs of affection between the judge and his wife. His town was judged the slightly smaller, slightly poorer one in any case.

Both men were clearly nervous beneath matching airs of judicial unconcern.

"I believe," Kinzel began, "that I have heard enough witnesses. After all, the matter is between the two of you. Step forward, please."

The crestfallen judges blinked, having employed recess in scrounging more verifications.

"The time has come," said the little wizard mildly, "to speak of treasure. Each of you seeks not only ownership of the bird, but ownership of what the bird brings."

The crowd was abruptly very quiet; Falter and Stirt exchanged glances.

"Please tell me, gentlemen: What kinds of 'treasure' are brought by the gray crow?"

Neither spoke.

Kinzel felt the staff grow warm, was not surprised to find the leaves suddenly full and swaying. The staff rarely stirred itself without cause.

"Judge Falter. Tell of the treasure you've received."

"I hardly think this is the place..." began the man.

"Surely you see that there must be a way to judge who between you is the owner of the gray crow?" murmured Kinzel. "I suspect that the true owner receives better treasure."

Falter hesitated; cleared his throat. The crowd buzzed for several moments over the idea of treasure. Finally Falter looked Kinzel in the face fretfully and began.

"Well... Many rocks and pieces of colored glass and bits of metal. I have a catalog at home of everything.... Also, fourteen gold rings; an assortment of cloak pins of silver, gold and bronze, some with stones; a ring set with a single large diamond; a ruby pendant..."

The list was overwhelmed momentarily by the babble of the crowd. Judge Falter spoke of treasure indeed! Why, a single gold ring might amount to a man's earnings for a season!

Kinzel raised the staff for quiet; it came respectfully. "And you, Judge Stirt? What has your friend brought you?"

He hesitated, glancing back at his elegant wife.

The crowd took voice again. Kinzel waved to no avail; brought the tip of the greenstaff sharply against the bridge-boards, waking an infant rumble of thunder in the cloudless sky.

The Court was bathed in awed silence.

"There have been," Judge Stirt began slowly, "something over thirty rings and bracelets of silver; items set with garnet; and..."

Kinzel heard a minor commotion to his left and looked over to see Judge Falter's wife speaking earnestly into her husband's ear.

"...two emerald brooches, as well as glass, shell, bits of colored pottery, and a number of ... aah ... toy soldiers and such."

"I see," said the thoughtful mage, rubbing his chin idly. "It seems quite a bit, doesn't it?"

Judge Stirt nodded.

"Did either of you publish a list of these items, so that their owners might reclaim them?"

No reply.

Kinzel shook his head.

"Is it true that you did not advertise for the owners, Judge Falter?"

"It is true," said the judge heavily.

"Did you seek the proper owners of your treasure, Judge Stirt?"

"No, sir, I did not," responded that gentleman with energy. "I felt I was rightly receiving property - that is, treasure - from the gray crow, exactly as per the legend!"

"I see," said Kinzel carefully. "Then you believe the crow was also the rightful custodian of the treasure?"

"Of course!"

"If that is the case," Kinzel continued, "then we should expect no one here to recognize the treasure and claim it. Correct?"

The judge agreed.

"Good." The little wizard sat straighter in the tall chair. "I feel we can bring this to a rapid close if the treasure both have mentioned is brought here for display."

"Ridiculous," sputtered Judge Stirt.

"Unheard of," muttered Judge Falter.

"Excellent," murmured the minstrel, plying his pen.

"If you insist upon this course of action, we will dismiss you from the case!" Stirt announced. "For you are certainly not solving the problem you were engaged to solve!"

Kinzel felt the blood come to his face as Falter added something about "Justice being improperly served by some supposed mage..."

"Quiet!" Kinzel cried.

The judges paid him no heed; Stirt announcing loudly that surely he and his honored colleague might come to some arrangement...

"Silence!" Kinzel was on his feet, staff in hand, voice nearly soft, though strong enough to carry a note of true Command.

They were, perforce, silent.

"I am not a judge by trade," Kinzel snapped, his voice carrying to the far edge of the crowd, "but I find that I am a wizard. I deal with Balance daily.

"When Braddak - who sits on the roof above us - took my lens I wished it back. That was Balance. He might have offered trade - also Balance. If he continued to bring me lenses - or continued to take my items - that would not be Balance. There is the question each of you raises: the question of ownership. I agreed to aid you two gentlemen because you asked, and because Balance was at stake.

"I will see Balance done. Justice as well, though that's man's law, as I took the commission. The true owner of the gray crow will be found only after the items you received are brought here. Let it be done! All of them!"

Shivering with his own audacity, Kinzel sat down. The judges rushed to their wives and gave orders.

"In the meantime," Kinzel murmured to the minstrel, "I will have another taste of ale."

***

"You, Judge Stirt, will place your treasure on the right. Judge Falter, you will place your treasure on the left."

The crowd pressed close; everyone straining to see as silver, gold and stone struck and tinkled.

There was a moment of awed silence as the judges stepped back - then a loud shriek from Judge Stirt's wife!

"That's mine!" she cried, pointing at Falter's booty. "And that ... and that..."

"That ring, there," called the other judge's wife, her eyes on Stirt's pile, while her daughter cried out, "My bracelet ... my neck chain!"

The crowd's murmur grew to a roar; swelled into laughter.

Kinzel let the laughter run its course: it helped cover the tears of Judge Falter's wife and daughter, as well as the potent words Judge Stirt's wife had for him for "letting that dirty bird wander around our home!"

Kinzel stood, motioned for quiet.

"I believe," he said softly, "that we have a bit of the Balance already. You have been trading dreams and jewels." Kinzel paused. Balance - most of the Balance was done. Justice was harder. He spoke, surprised to find a note of Command had crept into his words.

"Anything on these cloths not originally property of one of these judges or his family shall be exhibited on the bridge for one week, with our minstrel here as steward. After that the items will be displayed at alternating court sessions in the courts of Carr and Hartwell until the owner is found, or until seven years have passed. An item unclaimed after that time is the property of whoever now holds it."

The crowd applauded this order so roundly that both judges swallowed their protests. Kinzel barely heard the noise: he was full of wonder that the power of Balance had flowed so quickly into him, was so just and decisive. The leaves of the staff wreathed his hands reassuringly - he had made the right choices so far....

"Now, gentlemen, are you ready to finish the task?"

Gamely, the two judges nodded. Dignity might yet be salvaged from the occasion.

The little mage waved the crowd quiet; carefully whistled a tuneless whistle. As he whistled he could feel the Power rise in him.

Braddak cawed experimentally from the roof.

Kinzel stepped away from his chair, past the judges, spectators giving way before him. Looking up at the bird, Kinzel reached with his mind, as he would in healing. As he concentrated the staff in his hand grew warmer, leaves plump and swaying in the windless afternoon.

"Braddak," Kinzel said. "Brad-dak!" He offered his arm. The bird's eyes gleamed. It half-hopped, half-flew the short distance to the proffered wrist, talons piercing blue wool to prick the skin beneath.

Kinzel raised his arm so that the bird stared into his eye. It weighed less than he had supposed for so large a thing; its intelligence evident in the way it, too, reached with its eyes.

Resting his wrist against the staff, he felt the remarkable Power within shift, connect anew.

The bird was ... aware.

Kinzel spoke, using no words.

Here there are two whom you know. Each claims to hold you as a treasure, as you might hold a bright-thing or a colored stone. Each is angry that the other is favored by your company and by your gift-bringing. Each requires that you bring all gifts to him alone; that your gifts and yourself belong to him now and always.

Which of these men do you recognize as your own, as one you would answer at all times, as one you would bring all gifts to?

How say you? Listen once more to their calls.

From the bird, a flicker of thought. Bright-bringer I joy at the game, joy at my treasures. Each offered, each received! I regard them!

The link broke. Kinzel turned and held the bird toward Falter and Stirt.

"Call him, judges."

Both whistled their own whistle, trying to persuade the bird to him. Each held out an arm; each a hand, as if he held something of interest.

Braddak regarded the men as carefully as if he appraised a shiny new stone. His grip on Kinzel's arm tightened momentarily and then with a sudden motion he made his choice.

He gathered himself, raised his wings and leapt. Straight at the judges he flew, but up, rising quickly, accelerating as his wings snagged the sweet afternoon breeze, circling upward until, high above the bridge, he dove, more like a hawk than a crow, and sped off down-river, toward the sea.

Kinzel sighed heavily.

"You've sent her away! It's a trick," yelled Stirt.

"A spell!" cried Falter. "Not a decision at all!"

Kinzel climbed slowly back to his chair, momentarily drained. The minstrel offered his waterskin and the wizard drank before speaking.

"I have not tricked you. I placed no spell on Braddak.

"You each wanted to own what is not property. The crow is his own person, not yours; with care he might have been a companion to either of you.

"The true gifts were not the bribes you traded between you, but this..." Kinzel held up a brightly shining bit of quartz, "and this..." a blue stone with a green and white serpentine stripe writhing through it. "...and the gift of having a creature be aware of you and share with you without fear or force. That is the treasure of the legend."

Kinzel turned to the young minstrel, pointing to the parchment record. "Let it say that the gray crow is its own person, as any conscious mind is its own person. The crow might as well own a man as a man own the crow. Braddak's gifts - the stones, the broken things, his companionship - he bestowed as is his right. Neither of these men has shown evidence overruling Balance or indicating that they own the bird."

Kinzel shed the rich judicial robe, gathered up his staff, strapped on his small bundle and walked away into the late afternoon, ignoring the lack of payment for his efforts. He ignored too, the pleas of the two men, feeling drained but sure of his decision.

The lenses were forgotten until, stopping to munch a bit of cheese and taste of the last of ale, he held the glasses one before the other, and distant Crowsbridge drew close once more.

At both ends there were still crowds; beneath the central pavilion the minstrel still held court before an admiring band of travelers, speaking perhaps of dragons, or of griffin-hunting armies, or of Kinzel the Arbiter.

Two sunrises later Kinzel woke by his cold fire to find a blue, white and green pebble and a shiny bit of quartz by his hand.

He refrained from whistling, expecting nothing. When the sun climbed higher and the shadow passed between him and the sun he smiled, and as the day moved further toward dusk he shared its brilliance with the gliding, wheeling, joyous dance of his new friend.

About This Book

When originally published by General Avocations, The Naming of Kinzel represented what the world knew of the collaborative writing of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller - three short stories about a most unusual wizard. Since then, of course, have come the Liaden Universe™ novels Agent of Change, Conflict of Honors, and Carpe Diem as well as the short stories "To Cut an Edge" and "A Day at The Races" which together became the first SRM Publisher chapbook Two Tales of Korval.

This chapbook, like the original, exists because of the reality of electronic community. Where the original edition depended on the good will and support of the unlikely crew of modemers using their 300, 1200 and amazingly fast 2400 baud modems to connect with the Baltimore area BBS known as Midnight, this edition is the result of requests from a world-wide community brought together on the Liaden Universe™ mailing list in the Internet.

The stories here have stories. The first Kinzel story written was "Kinzel the Innocent." Sharon started the story but left poor Kinzel stranded on a stairway in the midst of a summons from Madog when a sudden job opportunity presented itself. Steve finished the story, which once written demanded a prequel to explain how Kinzel had gotten there in the first place. That story became "Kinzel the Foolish," which led to a novel (all copies of which have been lost) attempted for a publisher now long out of business.

In the meantime, Fantasy Book magazine had come along, and published Sharon's story "The Handsome Prince." The editor asked for more fantasy from Sharon. A job having occurred, what Sharon had on hand were the collaborations - and to the delight of the authors Fantasy Book bought and published the first two Kinzel stories in 1984, and asked for more.

Alas, Fantasy Book went on "hiatus" and never returned, leaving an unpublished Kinzel story waiting in the wings. It was then that Midnight's madcap crew rallied around Kinzel, sending money and encouragement and even helping to collate and staple the finished product.

Those original 300 copies have long ago been dispersed to the supportive online community of the BBS and convention fans, and specialty bookstores, leaving new Lee and Miller fans no chance to visit the little wizard. With interest in the forthcoming Liaden Universe™ book Plan B bringing ever more readers in search of Lee and Miller stories, it was time for the new The Naming of Kinzel.

-Richard Horn, 1998

Table of Contents

- Unnamed

- About This Book