Lamma's Night (anthology)

A Choice of Many

Mark A. Garland.

'What do you mean he's dead?' Alluen asked. 'What happened.'

'We don't know,' Jon the miller, who was also the mayor, replied. 'We found him... that is, what we think was him, smoldering in his house, in a circle he'd drawn. Lennet, his name was.' Jon's pouchy cheeked face and easy manner were the sort that could put anyone at ease, but his nervous eyes betrayed him.

'When we hired him he claimed to be a skilled adept, you understand,' Thella, the miller's wife, added. She was a bit larger than Jon, and certainly less malleable. 'I never thought so. Many make claims, and his claims were many. In truth, he was an ill-mannered, inept young fool.'

'So he did it to himself, but you have no idea what he might have been trying to do,' Alluen persisted.

'We expect he... old something wrong,' Jon said

'Yes, but wrong in what way?' Alluen looked about. Most everyone living in or near the village seemed to be on hand, several hundred of them. A most distracted collection of faces. As though someone had asked them to keep a secret. 'Those who court a flame risk a burn!' someone shouted.

Thella stepped closer to Alluen, her gaze steady. 'He was a scoundrel, I say. Not a word of truth in him. Too much of that with your kind. So tell us now if your magic is of the Light. If your soul is clean.'

Alluen stared back, steadfast. 'Yes.'

'Good!' Jon exclaimed, with obvious relief. He took Alluen by the arm and pointed her up the street. 'You may have the sorcerer's house, of course. And all those books. You do like books?'

'Oh, very much.'

'You aren't carrying any,' Thella said accusingly. 'The others we hired, the men, all had books. Even Lennet.'

'Many... others?' Alluen asked, all the more concerned.

'Only a few,' Jon said hastily, glancing briefly at his wife. 'But we have had a run of bad luck. People are afraid. Lives are at stake, after all.'

But whose? Alluen wondered. 'Lives?'

'Thella is concerned that our next sorcerer might be like the last,' Jon continued. 'And that a... a girl, you see, like yourself, and so young, might not be as...'

'I know,' Alluen said. She was used to this. Even in her own village, where her father had been revered by one and all, his short, skinny, young daughter had been thought of as little more than a hedge witch. She'd been nearly as skilled in sorceries as he, yet when he passed away the many visitors to their cottage in the woods seemed to vanish with him. As if she, too, had died. Leaving that place had seemed the best thing to do.

'Rest all concerns,' Alluen said 'I have traveled too far and too long, so my belongings are few. But I am up to the tasks you would ask of me. Trust in that.'

'You won't have any trouble getting folks to cook for you, or stock your pantry,' Jon explained smartly.

'Not so long as you remain here,' his wife sniffed.

'She'll do fine,' Jon insisted.

'That is what I intend, but what do I have to do?' Alluen asked in the silence that followed

'Cast your spells!' the miller told her with a quick, feeble grin. 'For the sick, the luck-lost, the changeable seasons; they all need spell weaving.'

*That, and the Dark,' Thella muttered folding her arms,

Jon's grin abruptly faded. No one else made a sound.

'Your people are afraid of the dark?' Alluen asked.

'We fear your magic can be turned!' someone from the crowd answered. 'We fear the evils we have been cursed with already. Evils you might make worse!'

'If she has any magic at all,' another said.

'You can't believe any of her kind,' said a third. The crowd seemed to be pressing nearer, their faces tightening.

'I make no false claims, trust in that!' she told them, wondering what evils they seemed to fear so greatly.

'There is no trust for the likes of you!' someone shouted back.

'Just look at you!' called one more.

Alluen instinctively touched one hand to the carved bone handle of the dagger her father had given her, ages ago, 'Magic may rail, but you can always trust in a good blade,' he had told her. She kept it with her always, and always kept it sharp; still, she had never found cause to use it as a weapon.

'We must give her a chance,' Jon scolded them all. 'Who else have we?'

This last brought another silence, and a weight in Alluen's stomach.

'Do you have spells that'll keep the Dark at bay?' Thella pressed

Alluen had been in the village two weeks now, and had yet to notice any strange behavior, day or night. No matter, she told herself. She was still weary from the road, and weeks of travel had