Wizard Lord Volume One of the Annals of the Chosen

Chapter One The youth leaned over the wooden rail, one hand on the shutters, looking down into the valley. The sun had dropped below the western ridge, plunging fields and groves into shadow, and an evening mist was thickening, further obscuring the still-green trees below the pavilion. Sparkles of colored light flickered through the mist and the leaves as some of the ler went about their mysterious business, bright and sharp against the blue-green dimness. The sky above was still ablaze with color, orange in the west, indigo above the distant cliffs in the east, in stark contrast to the mist-shrouded depths. The pavilion seemed suspended between two worlds, the clear emptiness above, the soft thicknesses below. It was beautiful, and the youth gave the ler and the Wizard Lord silent thanks for such fine weather. "Hey, Breaker!" someone called from somewhere in the pavilion behind him, breaking the spell. "If you aren't going to drink your share of the beer, I will!" "Oh, no, you won't," the youth said, turning. "I'd rather leave it for the ler than waste it on the likes of you!" That got a laugh from the dozen young men clustered around the village brewmaster, and a path opened for Breaker to stride up and take his heavy mug of ale from the old man's hand. He took a swig, swallowed, and looked around to see whether anyone else was still waiting a turn. He had apparently been the last; he gulped more beer, then stepped away to leave room for anyone who needed a refill. Inside the pavilion was neither the misty dimness of the valley nor the vivid color of the sky, but a third world, a world of wood and stone and candlelight. The air was clear, but daylight was fading, shadows beginning to appear despite the yellow glow of a hundred lanterns set on the handful of tables and hung from the beams overhead. The familiar faces of his friends and fellow villagers surrounded him; close at hand, clustered around the brewmaster, were the young men who had just finished bringing in the barley harvesta job of which he had done his share and more. Over in the back of the big room a few other villagers, his elder sister among them, were tuning their instruments for the evening's planned entertainment. Three old women sat in rockers by the big central hearth, talking quietly. Most of the rest of the local population would probably stop in later to help celebrate the harvestand not incidentally, to drink up the few remaining kegs of last summer's stock of beer and make room in the cellars for the new batch that would see them through the coming winter. For now, though, most of the pavilion's hall stood open and empty beneath the lantern-hung beams, tables folded and benches stacked against the stone wall at the back. Five people were sitting on a bench at the far end of the terrace rail, Breaker noticed, by the door to the outside road. One was the village's elder priestess, the sigil of office glowing faintly upon her forehead, while the other four were cloaked, and three of them were elaborately adorned with protective ara feathers. Breaker was fairly sure he recognized one of the feathered ones as the Greenwater Guide, the man who worked the southwestern road out of Mad Oak, past the eponymous tree itself, but the others were unfamiliarpresumably travelers the guide had led, probably on their way to Ashgrove and perhaps beyond, since Breaker could think of no reason strangers would be stopping in Mad Oak. Or perhaps they had just come from Ashgrove and were bound for Greenwater. That was actually a little more likely; from Greenwater one could travel on to the Midlands and the southerWatt-Evans, Lawrence is the author of 'Wizard Lord Volume One of the Annals of the Chosen' with ISBN 9780765310262 and ISBN 0765310260.