Maverick Read online

  This book is dedicated to my mother Ruth Curtis and my sister Lucille Curtis, my biggest supporters, harshest critics and all round cheer team, and without whom this book would not have been written. It’s also dedicated to my father Allen Curtis, gone too soon but not forgotten.

  MAVERICK.

  Chapter One.

  There are some days it doesn’t pay to get up in the morning, days when you know nothing good can come from them. The third Moonday of Late Boarfrost was one of those days, and Marjan knew it from the moment he opened his eyes in the morning to see the bright new sunlight, just as he had known the same for every one of the previous ten days.

  It was bad outside even if he didn’t quite know what was so bad about it apart from the usual springtime morning frost.

  Regardless, wrapped up tight in his freshly laundered homespun linen sheets, covered with heavy blankets, which in turn were buried under a thick eiderdown, he was comfortable and warm in his big soft bed. It would have seemed a shame to have to leave it even if the world outside hadn’t been so disquieting of late, and for the longest time he tried not to and simply lay there, enveloped in comfort, pretending the rest of the world didn’t exist.

  Eventually though he knew he had to get up, since, as always there was nothing to do but get on with the day and begin his usual chores. Years of living alone in a remote cottage, hidden deep within the vast Allyssian Forest, far from the usual amenities of the nearest towns, especially children who he could pay to do his chores, had taught him it was work or starve, - and he liked to eat.

  Marjan sighed quietly, knowing that he had to get up, and then reluctantly dragged his weary bones out of the bed. It was a comfortable bed, he’d stuffed the mattress himself, and like the duvet, with feathers collected from the waterfowl living along the nearby lake instead of straw, no more itchy, uncomfortable straw mattresses for him. Then, after pulling on his vest he made his way as he did every morning out of the bedroom, down the stairs, across the main room and out onto the front porch where he could stand, stretch and let the vitality of the land soak into him anew. It was there that he liked to start his days, even in the rain. Maybe he liked to just drink in a little of the cosiness his life had become these last few years as well.

  Though many would have scoffed at it, he was proud of his house. His might not have been the most grandiose of mansions, in fact it had started out life many years before as a simple trappers hut, until the trapper had presumably run out of either the coin or the will to maintain the building and left long ago, and though he’d repaired it and added a lot to it, it was still only a humble cottage, but it was home and he liked it. Besides it was a good, solid building, it kept him warm and dry, secure against the driving winds that sometimes blew in from the north, and over the years he had developed a habit of scoffing, privately, at others in their grand estates. The wealthy, wanting to be waited on hand and foot, needing a small army of servants to keep things clean and the building in good repair. Whenever he passed such places in his travels he couldn’t help but know a feeling of satisfaction that his home wasn’t like them. Such a life wasn’t for him. Of course the wealthy would have thought the same of his simple cottage.

  On the outside walls thick split logs that had once been tree trunks and which still had most of their bark on them, kept the wind and the rain out and made the home sturdy and warm while helping it to almost become a part of the surrounding forest, and they also blocked out the noise from even the most powerful of thunder storms which swept down from the distant peaks every so often. The lightning cracked and the thunder roared but he sat at peace in his home. Large windows, a true luxury in Gunderland, while big enough to give him an expansive view over his lands were also made of thick clear glass and had substantial curtains to draw shut at night, helping to keep the heat in. The cottage was surprisingly warm even in the middle of winter, and a single fireplace could heat it easily.

  It was larger than it appeared too. Angling the roof more steeply had not only allowed the snow and rain of the bitter winter days to roll off more easily, it had allowed for him to create a good sized loft which he’d divided into two. On one side of the central staircase and landing lay his bed chamber, large enough for a family sized bed, an oversized wardrobe and some well stuffed chairs as well, and thanks to the windows he’d installed in the gables as well as the dormers, a place where he could sit and simply enjoy the view over the glade. Some days when the rain was pelting down and the wind howling, he loved to sit up there in one of his easy chairs with a mug of warm tea and simply stare out at the fury of the world, warm and comfortable, enjoying the spectacle put on by the Gods.

  On the other side of the landing lay his library and study, where a huge oak desk with half a dozen drawers a roll top, cabinets and countless shelves, were stuffed to overflowing with scrolls and the other paraphernalia of his trade. It had taken him months to craft the furniture and yet, despite his lack of experience in carpentry, he thought he’d made a good job of it, built a place well suited to wizardly studies. But his study was no typical wizards den, dark and dingy as he’d seen in so many guild chambers, the windows brought in all the light he could ever need, and even at night, the highly polished wood was enough to make the yellow light from the candles, glow-stones and lamps glow bright enough to read by.

  That was important for a wizard, even a junior one like himself, as he had to spend many long hours studying deep into the night, practicing, and preparing himself for the ever greater challenges to come as he tried to advance himself in the art, and to have such a comfortable and warm place to do it was a blessing.

  The creation of the loft had freed up a reasonable amount of space on the main floor as he’d knocked down some internal walls replacing them with good steel beams he’d forged himself, making the cottage much more spacious despite its small size. It had only one main room, a combined space that included the galley kitchen, dining area and sitting room, but that was enough. Meanwhile a separate bathroom had been affixed on to the back. After that first cold snap he had decided that there would be no more trips outside to the privy for him in the middle of winter. The touch of the freezing cold seat to his tender skin had convinced him of that surprisingly quickly.

  Inside a lot of work with rubbing sand and oil, wattle and daub, plaster and paint, and an excessive amount of time learning how to become a half decent carpenter, had made his home more than comfortable as his work kept away the worst that winter could throw at him and held the heat in. More heavy glass windows that he forged himself and set into all four sides allowed him to see the entire glade from inside his home and brought in plenty of light as well. Large thick rugs allowed him to wander around in his stocking feet even when it was frozen outside as it was on too many winter mornings, while an internal bricked fireplace with an oven and hot plate allowed him to cook inside during the cold winter months, and a clever arrangement with the pipes allowed him to heat water for the bath as well. Add to that the privacy and the peace, a lake for fishing just over the next rise, not to mention the joy he felt living in the midst of such a green and vibrant forest, and the humble cottage had quickly become his proud refuge, his castle and his home.

  He’d needed one.

  After being expelled from the Wizard’s Guild in Gunder a decade before, he’d discovered that as much as he missed his friends and his studies, a promising future, and even the city itself, he’d also missed having a place to call his, a place where he knew he belonged, and here, in this humble cottage he’d found that at least. For most of the last decade it had been his home and he had hoped it would continue to be for many more. In some ways it almost seemed a gift from the gods just for him, and from that first day when he’d found it, he’d made it his. Occasionally he wondered if just maybe
there was some truth to the idea.

  How he’d found it, especially when he hadn’t even been searching for a house, he didn’t really know even now, though in his more whimsical moments he liked to believe that he’d been drawn to it by someone or something greater than himself. Though the odds seemed against it, Ephesus seldom acted directly, it still wasn’t a whimsy that he could put aside completely. After all simply sitting on the side of the main road south from the city, eating his lunch and feeling sorry for himself, a single tenday after being expelled from the Guild, letting his thoughts wander until they found a passing hawk, and then seeing through the hawk’s eyes as it had passed over the wrecked cottage, that could all have happened by chance and over the years he’d spotted many other cottages the same way, strangely enough the forests were filled with them. In fact this wasn’t even the first he’d spotted during those first few terrible days. But what he still didn’t understand was why, when he’d seen it through the bird’s eyes, sitting out in the middle of a small glade in the ancient forest all by itself, a ruin at best sitting in the middle of nowhere and two full leagues from the road, eight from the nearest town, he’d suddenly had to go there, and when he’d arrived and found little more than a broken down shell of a cottage, he’d suddenly had to call it home. Yet he had and it had been more than just a compulsion in truth. It had been madness. Madness, or maybe a touch of the divine.

  For a full two months, the Early Boarfrost of winter as well, he’d spent his every waking moment doing nothing more than camping out in a wrecked building, trying to stay dry, slowly putting it back together, and in those days his magic had been nowhere near as strong or versatile as it was now. He’d frozen, sweated, ached with fatigue, and every day wondered if he was going mad spending so much time and effort on a derelict building in the middle of nowhere. But he’d still stuck it out through the remains of the Early Boarfrost, the deep snowfalls of the Witchchill and then the frozen gales of the Late Boarfrost, and in the end, by the time the worst of the frozen days of winter were passing, he’d built himself a home. A home he’d never left.

  A home he still didn’t want to leave. Not even to go outside just for a few hours to do his chores. But chores had to be done. Still before that he needed a little sustenance, and he ducked back inside to pour himself a mug of the now cold vida root tea. It was a dark and bitter beverage he’d learned to enjoy over the years, especially because it sharpened the thoughts and lifted the senses, and after he heated it with a spark or two from his finger tips, its pungent aroma breathed a little more life into his tired brain. As usual he carried it outside to enjoy on the porch, and began sipping at it as he let the beauty of his home wash over him anew.

  Despite the hardships of living so far away from civilisation he liked where he lived. The vitality of the forest, which almost completely surrounded his house in its little glade sang to his very soul. The small lake at the glade’s far end that provided him with fish and sometimes a refreshing dip, was a joy on a sunny day. The living colours and serene beauty of the glade, especially when the sun shone as it did most days, its yellow light filtered through the leaves of the distant trees to create a vision of yellow and green, the flowers that formed a tapestry of colour, these were the beauty that ruled his life. Then there was the air, crisp and fresh and filled with the scent of life, the peace and tranquillity that living so far from other people gave him, and most of all the sense of belonging that he felt living there. All of these wonders made the difficulties of living in such isolation unimportant.

  The creatures too, the foxes and stoats, the owls in the trees and the deer in the forest, the ducks hunting for food in the lake, they brought him enjoyment and sometimes even company as they seemed happy to make his home theirs. Once, when he had first arrived they had feared him, now he was simply a part of their home, and in his idle imaginings at least, he sometimes let himself believe that they would have missed him when he was gone. Not that he planned on going anywhere.

  More than that however, this single glade, lost in the middle of the vast Allyssian forest leant him a feeling he knew nowhere else, a sense of belonging. In this one glade, deep in the middle of a vast forest, leagues from the nearest town, much further still from the city where he’d been born and raised and cast out from the guild he’d once called his family, he felt at home. That was something he hadn’t known anywhere else, not in a long time, but such was probably to be expected of an exiled wizard’s life.

  Though he had to leave his home from time to time for various reasons, the regular day trips to Snowy Falls to sell his wares and buy provisions, the occasional overnight journey into Gunder itself to pick up the more exotic goods that he couldn’t find elsewhere like his scrolls and tomes of magical knowledge, and even the odd trip still farther away into the larger cities of Whitney for those true specialty items, and he usually enjoyed the experience, he always looked forwards to his return. A couple of days away was as much as he could handle.

  It hadn’t always been so.

  As a youngster he’d loved the cities, he’d loved running through the streets of Gunder with his friends, spending his scarce coin in the stalls or on the street entertainers, playing ball games, tossing hoops, sometimes just chasing one another around for fun, and getting into endless trouble with the city guard, but that was a long time ago. These days he simply didn’t need fancy inns and bustling shops, outlandish entertainments and exotic foods, not even company to pass the time of day with, not as much as he needed a place to call home. So his return journey from such places was always a somewhat rushed affair, and the sense of happiness he got when he finally returned to the forest that he knew so well, and the simple joy he felt when the glade and his cottage came into view, was overwhelming.

  The life he led these days, might be far from that which he’d once known, his future was no longer the grand dream he had once believed in, but standing there, sipping at his tea, he knew it was still good.

  His cottage might be quite modest, his career as a wizard all but gone, his name too sullied beyond repair, but he had a comfortable home with a sheltered porch in what was surely one of the most beautiful lands in all the world, and he could simply sit and watch the days come and go from a comfortable rocker whenever he wanted. In the end what more did a man need.

  Lately though, the sitting hadn’t been so enjoyable and unfortunately this particular morning looked to be no exception.

  There was smoke drifting across the distant horizon much as he had seen before, thin wisps of dark, bitter looking smoke that clouded the horizon and spoke of fires burning out of control, burning many days ride away, burning day and night, and burning more than just wood from the faint smell of burnt flesh that was probably only in his head. He didn’t like that, just as he didn’t like everything else that had been happening of late. At night, every night of late, he could hear through his wizard gifts the distant echoes of screaming, animals howling and steel biting into steel, the terrible sound carried for many leagues in the still night air and in his thoughts. There was also the ever growing unnatural silence of the forest all around him, a silence which had held for a full tenday as all the creatures for leagues in every direction knew that something was wrong, and either fled or hid, not wanting to get involved.

  Marjan didn’t want to get involved either.

  He had no idea what was happening out in the wider world outside of his home. At night he sent his thoughts soaring with the owls sometimes, and they could tell him of battles being fought, of buildings burning, and people running and dying, but little more. They were simple creatures, reluctant to go too near such frightening things even with his thoughts guiding them, and the fighting was so far away from his home that it was hard to keep an active bond with them at such distances. The most he got was flashes of sight, occasional images all greyed out as they saw in black and white rather than true colour, and feelings of fear as they sensed danger and tried to steer clear.

  The owls knew nothin
g of who was fighting who or why, nor who was winning and for the most part they couldn’t distinguish between the corpse of an animal and person. Everything was either a predator or food to them and they refused to go near the former, and recognised the latter by smell not sight, not a lot of use to a man with only a poorly developed sense of smell. But what they could tell him was that day by day the fighting was coming closer, slowly heading south towards him, and he didn’t like that.

  Listening in at night to the elves fire talking had revealed nothing of use either. They knew nothing, but then their realm was far to the south and the trouble was coming from the north of him. Why would they know? But the others who could fire talk, the wizards of life, they were saying nothing, and for the last tenday or more, in fact he hadn’t heard a single one of them say anything at all, and the silence was troubling.

  He didn’t like not knowing who was involved either. There weren’t a lot of people he was close to but he hated the thought that some of them might be caught up in this mess. Still it was unlikely. His friends from the Guild he had lost contact with a decade before, but he still regarded them with affection. Still they were wizards and they could defend themselves if need be, and they would be unlikely to get involved. It went against Guild law. His family he hadn’t seen in more than twenty years and he could barely remember anything about them. But they too had lived in Gunder. Still it was a well-defended city with a large guard and they were civilians. They should be safe enough. He worried a little about his friends in Snowy Falls too, but the town was south of his home, the fighting was coming from the north. Thus far he hoped, they should be all right. He hoped things would stay that way. They had to because he would not get involved if things changed. He could not.