The Reign of Magic. Wolf Awert

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      “What’s the most important?”

      “Whatever you can draw in the shortest time possible.”

      Nill brushed his previous attempts away again and scratched into the sand a forest consisting entirely of vertical lines.

      “What is that?” Esara asked.

      “A forest.”

      “I don’t see a forest in that.”

      “It’s just the trunks, I left out the rest.”

      “Then the forest is missing all that is important.”

      “I can’t do more in so little time.”

      “You can, you just didn’t try.”

      On his next try Nill drew a forest, made up of three unequal-sized vertical lines. On top of these lines he drew a circle and a pointed edge, and between them a cross, two small horizontal lines and a dot.

      “Good,” Esara said. “I know this forest, and I know where it lies.”

      Nill’s illustrations became simpler, and soon he found that he enjoyed drawing messages in pictures that nobody except himself and his mother could understand.

      “Tell nobody, under pain of death, what you’re doing here. Promise me that, and I will show you something far more powerful and dangerous than any picture.”

      Esara had red spots on her cheeks, and her eyes were shining bright. Nill had never seen his mother so serious and worked-up and did not understand what she meant. More to calm her than of his own volition he swore a solemn oath.

      “If you make a picture simpler and simpler, you get symbols. Some of these symbols are immensely powerful, but I cannot show them to you, and I don’t understand them myself anymore.”

      A sad shadow flitted across Esara’s face and vanished as fast as it had come.

      “Every symbol, strong or weak, tells a story. They tell stories the way words cannot. Words are spoken quickly and easily overheard. Words can enchant, but symbols will burn into a human forever. Symbols do not enchant, they change. Nobody can know of what I have told you.”

      “And you can make these symbols?” Nill asked.

      Esara nodded. “Some of them. They did not take everything from me.”

      “Who took it away from you?” Nill asked angrily, for if someone took something from Esara, they had taken it from him too, and after ten harvests Nill felt old and strong enough to defend himself, Esara and Grovehall against all evil.

      Esara looked upon her boy affectionately, seeing the thin arms, the skinny body, the thin blond hair. She also saw two splinters of Ironstone in Nill’s eyes, around which a mighty will began to coalesce.

      “It was a long time ago. It’s alright,” she said.

      Nill learned not only the symbol script, but also the runes and other scripts that looked like knotted grass. He never understood why just one script was not enough, but it pleased him to play around with the symbols and rearrange them into new orders.

      “Look here,” he said one day. “This is a wonderful grass-word, and it sounds wonderful as well.”

      “Yes, but that word doesn’t exist. There is no meaning behind it.”

      Nill frowned. “Then I will give it one. I just need to find out what it fits with.”

      It was but a small step from the runes to truth-telling, and so Nill asked one evening: “How is it that bones know the future?”

      “The bones don’t know it. The one who throws the bones is the one who knows.”

      Nill took the bones and tossed them across the stone slab.

      “This isn’t how it works. You have to look at the oracle-bones and listen to your inner self.”

      Nill listened to his inner self, but heard nothing but the blood rushing in his ears and the unsteady beating of his heart.

      “There’s nothing there,” he complained, and the accusation in his voice could not be overheard.

      “That is because you have no connection to the stones yet,” said Esara. “Even if body and soul know the future, neither knows that they know.”

      Nill stared blankly.

      “The art of truth-telling is, in essence, to touch the knowledge of the future that hides within you.”

      “But I don’t know the future.”

      “Yes you do,” Esara contradicted him. “The future is always preceded by messengers that show what will be tomorrow. Your spirit sees these messengers and knows what will happen. But still your spirit keeps its secrets.”

      Nill stayed quiet, rather annoyed. He had a feeling that adults never gave him a clear answer when he wanted to know something.

      “Do you know how the weather is going to be tomorrow?” Esara asked.

      “Sure, it will be hot and dry.”

      “See? You know some of the future already.”

      “But everyone knows the weather of tomorrow, that isn’t important.”

      Nill felt derided and his indignation showed in every line of his immature face.

      “Knowing tomorrow’s weather is very important, and I did tell you that everyone knows the future.”

      “But you know it better than others.”

      Esara smiled. “The rune stones help me to understand myself better. Look here,” she continued. “This bone here means large-small, near-far, soon or later. This one is the Grand Regent; the sailors call it the great steersman.”

      “And how does it show something that is small, far away and soon to become important?”

      “It doesn’t.”

      Nill shook his head.

      Esara lifted a small bone slab. “This one here shows good and evil, useful and destructive. And that one there is of particular importance.” The bone Esara was pointing at had so many surfaces it looked almost like a ball. On every face there was a dark symbol, burned into the bone. “It holds your family, your friends and your enemies.”

      “Well I don’t need that one then, I don’t have any family. I only have you.” Nill swallowed hard.

      “Of course you have a family. The fact that you don’t know them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

      “If I don’t СКАЧАТЬ