Veneficus: Stones of the Chosen Read Online Free PDF Page B

Twilight intruded gently into Merlin’s mind after a long silence. It becomes my pain as well.
    Do not take on my pain. You will soon have enough of your own to manage.
    You spoke last night of a people called ‘cowerers.’ I sense more pain there. Is it the time for us to speak of them?
    Not yet, but you are right about the pain - it accompanies them everywhere. When the season of the equinoctial mist comes, we will do more than speak of the cowerers. We must go among them.
    Must?
    Oh yes, that is the only matter about which we have no choice, absolutely no choice at all.
    Why?
    Because the survival of our species could depend upon it. Indeed, it could also provide the ultimate answer to your earlier question as to why we are here. Only venefici can confer with the cowerers.
    When will I have to assume that responsibility?
    In seven years’ time when you take it over from me.
    Is it a big responsibility?
    Only if you allow it to become so. Part of my job is to teach you otherwise.
    “Let us take a walk through the forest,” said the old wizard, standing up. “See if we can find that festering old deviant Bovey and his false dragon. I’ve a mind to have a little sport with the old fool.”
    “I thought you said the temptations for personal benefit must be resisted,” said the former Will Timms, impishly skipping along beside him.
    “You learn too well, skirmisher,” Merlin said in a mock grumble. “But don’t forget what the ancient Greeks said.”
    “What, how the ideas of space, time, matter, and motion were proved to be contradictory and imaginary, and that nothing was, or was known, or could be spoken?” Twilight had screwed his eyes shut as he recalled Merlin’s words. “Surely you’re not using that as the basis for a little personal sport?”
    “Oh, yes I am,” said the old wizard with the twinkle back in his eye. “What’s the point of being a master sorcerer if I can’t indulge in a little selfish manipulation of matter?”
    As they started to stroll gently along the Savernake’s perimeter, the old wizard stopped, called Twilight closer, and gently touched both sides of his forehead.
    “For the next few days you will see everything as black or white. Nothing will be gray or colored. This will teach you to decipher complicated situations by filtering out the many incidentals and images that will seek to obscure the fundamental truths. By removing the shades and colors we can strip a matter down to its barest bones and uncover its carefully encoded secrets. It is a useful facility, especially when your wise counsel has been requested to rule on a complicated issue involving many diverse people and opinions, all of whom will swear an oath that they are telling the rigid truth and that theirs is the just cause.”
    Twilight blinked, looked around, and then smiled. “Is everything black in the darkfall of night? If so, will I be unable to see anything?”
    “Only if it is a genuine darkfall brought on by the onset of genuine night. If it isn’t genuine it will show as shades of gray, depending upon the depth of the deception. That is how you distinguish dewfall from false dawn, rising phoenix from ghoulish specter, infidel from friend.”
    A small falcon swooped from the sky and landed on a bough close to Merlin’s head. Stretching one barbed talon purposefully in his direction, it fluffed up its yellow neck-feathers, lifted its small, beautifully formed head until its bright, filmic yellow eyes appeared to be looking down its sharp, curved beak, and uttered a single piercing shriek. Out went the barbed talon again; then with a barely audible wing-beat it was gone, a yellow and brown blur against the forest backdrop before the briefest of wing movements took it into a steep climb above the tree-line, and it was out of sight.
    Merlin looked at Twilight and raised his great bushy eyebrows. “And what did you make of that, my little skirmisher, eh?”
    Twilight thought for a moment. “The words