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By Root 528 0

of the Field Magi flowed into the seasons. In the spring, they planted. In the summer, they tended. In the autumn, they harvested. In the winter, they fought to survive until spring, when the cycle would start again. But though their lives were lives of drudgery and hardship and poverty, the Field Magi of Walren counted themselves fortunate. All knew it could be worse. The overseer was a fair and just man who saw to it that everyone had his or her share in the harvest, and didn’t demand a portion of anyone’s share for himself. Bandits, reputedly raiding villages to the north, had neither been seen nor heard of here. The winters, the worst time of the year, were long and cold, but were not as bad as in the lands to the north.

Even Walren, far from civilization, heard word of uprising and rebellion. Discreet inquiries were made among the villagers, in fact, to determine if they didn’t want to assert their independence. But Mosiah’s father, a man content with his lot, knew from past experience that freedom was fine but someone had to pay for it. Thus he was quick to make it clear to any outsider that he and his people wanted simply to be left alone.

The overseer of Walren counted himself a fortunate man as well. He never once failed to bring in a bountiful harvest, never had to worry about the uprisings and disturbances rumored to be occurring elsewhere. He knew about the discreet contacts made by troublemakers and rabble-rousers from the outside. But he had an excellent working arrangement with his people, he trusted Mosiah’s father, and therefore could, with equanimity, turn a blind eye.

The catalyst, Father Tolban, did not consider himself so fortunate. Every spare moment, and there were few enough in his bleak life, found him hard at work on his studies with the fond view in his mind of once more being accepted back into the fold. His crime—the crime that had made him a Field Catalyst—had been a minor offense, committed in the enthusiasm of youth. A treatise, nothing more, written on the benefits of the Natural Cycles of Weather, as Opposed to Magical Intervention, with Regard to Raising Crops. It was a fine piece of work, and he was honored by the fact that it had been placed in the Inner Library in the Font. At least, that was what they told him when they gave him this assignment and shipped him out. He couldn’t say for certain if it was actually in the Inner Library, never having been allowed back to the Font to find out.

As the seasons blended into years, and the overseer brought in his harvest and the catalyst pursued his fading dream, life changed little for Joram except, perhaps, to grow darker.

Fifteen years after she’d arrived at the settlement, Anja still wore the same dress, the fabric so worn and threadbare it was held together only by the spells she wove around it. The nightly stories continued, enhanced by tales of the wonders of Merilon. But, as the years passed, Anja’s tales grew more confused and incoherent. She often slipped into delusions of being in Merilon itself and, from her wild descriptions, the city might have been a garden of delight or a pit of horrors, depending on where her madness led her.

As for returning to Merilon, Joram had come to realize as he’d grown older that Anja’s dream was as tattered and frayed as the dress she wore. He would have thought her tales all make-believe, but there seemed to be fragments of her story that had substance to them, clinging to her like the fragments of her once rich clothing.

Joram’s life was bleak and harsh, every day a struggle to survive. He watched his mother’s increasingly rapid descent into madness with eyes that could have been his father’s—eyes of stone that stared continually far away into some shadowy realm of darkness. He accepted her insanity in silence, as he had accepted all the other pain.

But there was one pain he could not make himself accept—he had never acquired the magic. Day by day he grew more adept at sleight-of-hand. His illusions fooled the eyes of even the watchful overseer. But the magic that he longed for and sought every