A Sprig of Wolfsbane
Mary Pletsch
We were given a wizard as well as an inn.
My in-laws had said nothing about a tenant on the property, and, having never seen a wizard before, I thought he was just another customer. A strange one, mind, but there were plenty of folks in Dobovor who seemed strange to my provincial eyes.
My husband had been a soldier, the kind who died young. I had also been a soldier, the kind who had to pick up the pieces after the war. Our attempt to defend our home against the vastly superior elven army had been both brave and futile. With nowhere else to go, my son and I fled to my husband’s kin for refuge, to this nation under the shadow of the mountain citadel. My in-laws asked me to take over the day-to-day operation of Dobovor’s inn, replacing the leadership of their recently deceased matriarch.
Yes, I’d heard the stories about this country, and the dark tales of what slept in the castle high on the mountain. Yes, I’ll confess I was relieved to find that the nation had a functional government, a regent chosen by the elected mayors of its towns. But was I afraid to live in this place? I could not manage fear. After facing the elves in combat, I would never again be frightened of rumors and fireside stories. If those terrifying tales were keeping the elves at bay, then I would happily spread them.
Our fireside’s regular occupant was not interested in scary stories. The wizard spent most of his time with a big book open on his lap and a potted plant on the small table at his side, where an ordinary person would place a drink. He wore black leather gloves, black boots, and a simple green cloak with black underlayers. There was no way to tell how old he was: he wore a cowl low over his eyes and a black veil that completely obscured his face. This manner of dress, among his other eccentricities, explained why the rest of my customers generally preferred to ignore him.
In the beginning, learning the day-to-day operations of the inn kept me too busy to pay much attention to the wizard. It also kept me too busy to pay enough attention to my son, which is why I failed to notice that he’d developed a certain attachment to the tenant who lived in the little cottage at the back of our property. We’d been in Dobovor for several weeks before the day my son called me over to the hearth to see the wizard at work. Before my eyes, the wizard’s plant produced a single additional leaf.
It wasn’t appropriate for my boy to be disturbing him. “Couras!” I chided. “Leave the customers to their business.”
The verdant cowl lifted and turned in my direction. “He’s no trouble,” the wizard said in a low murmur. “Honestly, I find it refreshing to have young company.” A pause. “Which reminds me. I owe my monthly rent.” The wizard produced a small bag from beneath his robes and handed it to me.
I paled when I saw how many gold coins were inside it. “Is … this …?”
“The customary amount, yes.”
“Mama!” Couras’s eyes shone with excitement. “Could I do magic like that someday?”
In our old life, there would have been next to no opportunity for Couras to seek an advanced education. Now? With the money the wizard paid in rent, it might be possible.
My throat choked up at the thought of my son’s future wide open before him, so the wizard beat me to an answer. “It requires talent,” he said quietly, “and study, and much, much practice. But if your mother gives her permission, I could help you discover whether you have such talent.”
Couras looked at me pleadingly.
“Perhaps when we’re established,” I said. “Right now we don’t have the money to spare.”
“I would seek no payment. It is I who owe you for your generous hospitality,” the wizard replied. “It would have been entirely within your rights to evict me.” Again, a pause. “You would not be the first.”
“You mustn’t teach him anything dangerous,” I said firmly.
“Just hedge magic. The enhancement of living things. Practical little spells,” the wizard agreed and rose to his feet. “May I introduce myself properly. I am called Wolfsbane.”
“Ratsbane, more like,” muttered a customer sitting behind me.
I didn’t understand the comment. The wizard explained, “Gregor here wants you to know that I am responsible for keeping the town free of pests.”
Gregor startled at the mention of his name, but his sneer returned as he leaned toward the wizard. “Never see you doin’ anything about them.”
The sound from under the wizard’s hood might have been a chuckle. “Then I must be good at it.”
“He’s got you there,” one of my servers said as she passed by with a tray laden with glasses. “Can’t remember the last time I saw so much as a mouse.”
Gregor snorted. “It’s not as impressive as it sounds. We’ve had no vermin problem in my lifetime. Most of the wee beasties fled these lands a thousand years ago.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the bar, and gave me a nasty smile. “Ever since this land fell under the shadow of the King of Darkness.”
“In,” the wizard said, and I could hear the disapproval in his voice.
“Excuse me?” Gregor snapped.
Wolfsbane sighed. “King in Darkness. Not of.”
“What’s the difference?”
“I would think rather a lot.” Wolfsbane gathered his things and stood up, as though he’d had enough of Gregor’s attitude.
Meanwhile, I had forgotten that although I had heard the rumors and stories before, Couras had not. The second my back was turned, my boy asked Gregor about the King in Darkness.
“They say the King in Darkness sleeps undying in the citadel on the mountain. If he awakens, he’ll reduce us all to bones and dust, like the doom he loosed upon the land a thousand years ago. He is the one thing worse than those bloody elves. The one thing they fear.”
My lip curled with anger. I wasn’t worried about ghost stories, but I didn’t want Couras reminded of the things he’d seen as we fled our former home.
Wolfsbane must have sensed something, because he paused at the door and said, “Couras, would you like to come for a walk with me?”
Couras looked back and forth between Gregor and Wolfsbane, clearly struggling to choose.
“Where are you going?” Gregor taunted. “To fight the King in Darkness with hedge magic?”
“To do what I do every day when I’m not hunting rats.” Wolfsbane’s voice reflected an austere dignity. “To repair the Blight.”
Couras tugged on the wizard’s sleeve. “What’s the Blight?”
Gregor belched. “It’s the doing of the King in Darkness. You can see it at the border of the realm, just over the hills to the south. Wiped out all living things in a one-mile radius.”
“Two,” Wolfsbane said softly.
“Huh?”
“The original radius of the Blight was two miles. It’s shrunk over the centuries.” He lifted his finger, and his plant unfurled another leaf. “Nature is always a work in progress.”
“It’ll take a few more centuries at that rate,” Gregor sneered.
The wizard stretched out his hand, and his plant began to flower. What he said next took me back to the war, back to the elven war pack and the bloody banners they carried.
“Longer, if there are wolves.”
Five years later, another wizard came to town, campaigning to become our nation’s next regent. She was middle-aged, fit, and looked like a proper wizard, with a floppy hat and a crystal ball on a staff and blue silk robes embroidered with arcane sigils. She gave her name as Kessem and rented a room in my inn, where she became quite popular among the townsfolk, as though they’d never seen a wizard before.
Couras, now ten, knew a number of practical spells that he had learned from Wolfsbane. He was thrilled to show Kessem how he could light a candle with a snap of his fingers or sprout a plant from a seed within hours. When she asked who had taught him, he pointed to the chair by the hearth.
Kessem took one look at our resident wizard, and her expression changed.
In five years I’d rather forgotten how uncanny Wolfsbane looked at first glance. I’d grown so familiar with him—he’d always been so kind and so generous with my son and me—and I’d become so accustomed to the fact that, save for Gregor, the townsfolk preferred to avoid him.
Kessem rose to her feet and leveled her staff, pointing the crystal ball directly at him in a surprisingly aggressive gesture. “I am Kessem of the School of Artigas. Declare yourself.”
He rose slowly to his feet, looking like an old man instead of the youthful adult I’d always assumed him to be. “I am Wolfsbane. I have no school.”
She snorted. “Self-taught?”
“Something like that.”
Gregor, as usual, graced us all with his opinion. “He’s the town ratcatcher.”
Wolfsbane drew himself up. “I hardly think Kessem is here to challenge me for my job.”
Kessem blinked. Laughed. Leaned her staff against the table and left it there. “If I win the election, you might challenge me for mine someday,” she teased.
Wolfsbane softly demurred.
Gregor laughed. “You should have a contest. A wizard’s duel.”
“A friendly one? Certainly,” Kessem replied. “It’s always a pleasure to see another’s mastery.”
Wolfsbane turned his cowl away. “I have no interest in competitions.”
Couras tugged on his teacher’s sleeve. “Please?”
Our wizard looked down at my son, sighed, and agreed.
The match was painful to watch. Initially, Couras was excited by Kessem’s flashy magic, but with every spell she cast, his smile slipped further away.
Kessem opened with a bolt of light that sprang from the crystal ball on her staff. Wolfsbane cast a shield that slowed the bolt barely long enough for him to step aside. I could see the surprise on Kessem’s face. She had clearly expected him to deflect it. It was then that I began to suspect that, by wizard standards, our local garden-grower and rat-killer might not be a particularly skilled wizard.
Wolfsbane caused vines to grow around Kessem’s feet. Kessem simply stepped free.
Wolfsbane charmed a nearby oak tree to pelt her with acorns. Kessem raised a ward, and they pattered harmlessly against the barrier.
Wolfsbane summoned a swarm of biting flies. Kessem summoned a wind to blow them away.
I saw Wolfsbane step back, his arms trembling, as he raised his hands to cast one more spell. Clouds gathered in the skies overhead, and Kessem cast a magical canopy, but the only thing to fall from the clouds was a gentle rain.
Kessem recalled her canopy and whispered, “Enough.”
I felt terrible for Wolfsbane, who leaned against a tree, as though too tired to stand on his own.
“Don’t be downhearted,” Kessem said gently. “Mastering magic without formal training is an impressive achievement.”
“Well.” Wolfsbane’s voice was weak. “Perhaps I shouldn’t take hedge magic into my next battle.”
Kessem looked at him oddly. “What other kind would you take? Magic is a river. It’s not so easy to change its flow.”
Later that evening, Kessem drew me aside and inquired about Wolfsbane. Her initial questions were all public knowledge, so I answered them as best I could.
“Do you trust him?” she asked abruptly.
I blinked, startled. “If anything were to happen to me, I would entrust my son to no one else.”
That was the moment when I understood what Wolfsbane had come to mean to me, to us, in the time we’d lived here. It wasn’t what I’d had with my husband. It was something different, but it was also something precious: his quiet steadiness, his generosity, his endless patience with my curious son. It took Kessem’s question for me to realize that Wolfsbane was more family than tenant to us.
I became suspicious of her interrogation. “Why do you ask?”
Kessem glanced at the fireside, where Wolfsbane and Couras sat in front of a tray of soil, nudging plants to rise from the earth. “His magic is something I don’t understand.”
A chill ran down my spine. “My son?”
“Oh, your son is a hedge wizard, make no mistake, and someday he’ll be a fine one. Wolfsbane has taught him well. Taught him correctly. But Wolfsbane’s own techniques are highly eccentric, incomprehensible really, and they’re not particularly effective. I don’t understand why he doesn’t use proper form when he’s taught it so well to your son.”
“He’s a strange one,” I said noncommittally, and changed the subject.
Where I’m from, we defend our own.
Five years later, Kessem returned to Dobovor, this time as the leader of our nation—and the commander of an army. Rumors began to fly around my inn the moment the soldiers rode into town, and Kessem called an emergency assembly in the town square.
Couras and I joined the throng of townsfolk gathered before the steps of the mayor’s offices. The mood was somber—curious people who came to see the goings-on quickly became subdued. For me, I felt a chill the moment I heard the whispered word “Wolfpack” passing through the crowd.
Memories and nightmares roared to life in my mind. I cursed myself for ever thinking for a moment that we were secure, for daring to believe that rumors and stories would be enough to keep us safe.
Wolfsbane came up behind me and murmured, “Where is the Wolfpack?”
From behind my other shoulder, I heard Gregor’s sneering voice. “And what do you expect to do against wolves, Ratsbane?”
I’d had about enough of him and turned to him sharply. “Not wolves. A Wolfpack. A battalion of the Lupine Army.”
Gregor’s face went white. “The elves.”
Couras clambered up on a hitching post and yelled above the noise of the crowd, “What about the King in Darkness?”
Sudden silence fell.
Kessem climbed the stone steps to the porch of the mayor’s offices, where she addressed the crowd. “I have traveled to the mountain citadel and found it empty. The King in Darkness, if he ever really existed, is long gone from his crypt, leaving no magic, no treasure, nothing of value behind.” She shifted her weight, failing to hide her unease. “The elves know that too. There is a Wolfpack, an elite combat unit, headed our way. They ride with an army at least a thousand strong, and they use magic to cloak their passing. We have had next to no warning of their approach. I have assembled an army and brought what soldiers I can, but make no mistake: we are here to buy you all time to flee.”
“Should we prepare defenses?” Gregor shouted.
Defenses. I felt my blood run cold. I remembered exactly what good my husband’s defenses had done, a kingdom and a lifetime ago.
“Your defenses are useless. You must run, and pray they do not chase you.” Kessem’s eyes shimmered with tears, but her words were firm. “Leave here, gather your belongings as quickly as you can, and flee. You must understand how severely we are outmatched. I’m sorry. I truly am. Go.”
I guided Couras back to the inn, feeling caught in two times and places: Dobovor, now; Kerascc, ten years ago. I barely noticed Gregor stumbling after us. In my mind I was thinking over everything I was about to do.
But when I opened the door of the inn, I met Wolfsbane coming out. He wore a black cloak that I’d never seen before, and he held a long object wrapped in cloth. I thought it was a sword until I saw the wooden tip protruding from the end.
“I didn’t know you had a staff,” Couras said.
“It’s useless for hedge magic,” the wizard said. “But I did say I wouldn’t take hedge magic into my next battle.”
“Battle?” Gregor shouted. “We need to run!”
Wolfsbane’s voice turned to a low hiss. “I have work. My kingdom’s infested.” He turned his back on me and Gregor with a sweep of his black robe and stalked away through the crowd, which parted like water for his passing. He brushed past Kessem, and she stumbled into me.
“Where is he headed?” she demanded. “We could use some small magics to repair carts and ward crossroads.”
“I think he’s going to war,” I said, as ten years’ worth of little suspicions suddenly bloomed in my head, a dark flower.
“He’s going to get himself killed. For nothing.”
I had to be wrong. If Kessem didn’t suspect …
She suspects only that his magic is strange.
I couldn’t possibly be right. I knew next to nothing of wizards.
Kessem startled me when she suddenly pulled away. “Hurry! Go!”
My first obligation was to my son. I had to get us both to safety. Yet as I looked at Couras, I saw not a boy but a young man on the verge of adulthood. I saw that boy gripping his sword and vowing to rescue his mentor.
I fulfilled my obligation. “Couras, I need you to help Kessem with those minor magics. When the townspeople leave, you leave with them.”
His face brightened with pride at the responsibility, then fell when I spoke again.
“I need you to promise me you’ll do that.”
Couras bit his lip, the little boy peeking through the ripening man. “Where will you be?”
“With Wolfsbane.” I put my hands on his shoulders. “We’ll come after you as soon as we can.”
He looked at me with a weight in his eyes that told me he understood we might never come at all.
“I love you,” he said. “I love you both.”
Then I entered the inn, took the old, rusted sword from underneath my bed, and set out once again in pursuit of a loved one gone out to face the Wolfpack. This time I did not have a horse—I’d left it for my son. I wondered if, once again, I would be too late.
I crested the rise of the hill and looked down upon impending disaster.
The border between the realm of the King in Darkness and the neighboring territory was marked by a simple wooden fence cutting across a wide plain that I can only describe as a desert. This was the epicenter of the original Blight, a place where life had never returned.
A dirt road led across the plain, but only the vanguard of the elven army used it. The rest of the Wolfpack were spread out in formation across the plain. Kessem had warned of a thousand, but there were more—many more—the sunlight glinting off their war helms. Our town’s garrison could not fight off a hundred men, let alone a thousand elves.
Kessem had been right. We stood no chance.
Wolfsbane stood alone in the road on our side of the border, his staff lying at his feet, an utter madman staring down a cavalcade. He raised his arms, and a tall thicket of thorns sprang up along and above the fence. With another gesture, a swarm of flies descended on the plain.
The lead elven riders slowed their horses. From the center of the group rode forth an elf dressed in golden armor, mounted on a powerful steed. He waved his hands, and a strong wind blew the flies away. The elf walked his mount down the center of the road to the very edge of the border rather than attempting to jump the thorns. He looked down on Wolfsbane with a cold and condescending smile.
“You can’t stop us with your agrarian charms, hedge wizard.” He raised his head and stared directly into my eyes. “You. Would you be the representative of the border town of Dobovor? Is this your pathetic wizard?”
From the corner of my eye, I saw the elven archers raise their bows. I raised my hands to indicate peace—there was no point in doing otherwise. Their arrows would have struck me down before my sword could harm them.
Wolfsbane looked at me over his shoulder and then gestured for me to come join him. As I reached his side, I admitted, “I am merely an innkeeper.”
Wolfsbane’s reply shocked me with its audacity, even as his voice strained with exhaustion. “I am the representative of this kingdom.”
I watched as the rest of the elven war band reined in their horses. They moved toward us until they surrounded us in a half-circle.
I wondered how difficult it was for a hedge wizard to raise plants from the nutritional void of the Blight.
I wondered if I saw Wolfsbane’s hands shaking.
And I wondered if I was mad to ever suspect that the patient mentor who’d taught my son hedge spells to grow plants and call animals and summon rain might, in fact, be able to do so himself because all life exists in a slow progression toward death. To take that river Kessem spoke of and force it to flow backward. To work necromancy in reverse.
“This is my only offer,” the elven prince said haughtily. “Surrender and live. Resist and die.”
“This is my only counteroffer.” Wolfsbane dropped to one knee, but his words were firm and steady. “Depart and live. Advance and die.”
The prince laughed. “I am Lobau, grandson of Queen Silvia, and this land is mine by birthright.”
Wolfsbane hung his head. “Please don’t make me do this.”
“Little wizard, who do you think you are?”
I reached out my hand and closed my fingers over Wolfsbane’s thin and bony shoulder, knobby under my touch. “I forgive you,” I whispered.
Wolfsbane’s hand closed around the shaft of his staff. “Lobau. Your final chance. Your grandmother named me Wolfsbane.”
“What?” Lobau’s smile slipped, just a little. “A hedge wizard?”
The cloth wrapping fell away from the staff as Wolfsbane rose to his feet and leveled it like a weapon at the elven prince.
“What is life but the passage toward death?”
Lobau’s expression changed from malicious glee to abject terror.
Abruptly, Wolfsbane threw his cloak around my shoulders and pulled me hard against him. His arm was like a metal rod, thin and cold and unyielding. His body—and I’d never been so close to him—felt much the same.
“Perhaps in another thousand years, my hedge magic will be strong enough to stop your granddaughter’s army. In the meantime, to protect the people I love, I will stop you how I can.”
A vicious wind rose from out of nowhere, blasting past my face, and my eyes closed reflexively. I struggled to force them open and saw nothing but Wolfsbane’s cloak fluttering madly in the wind. Blinded, I clung to Wolfsbane’s side until the wind receded and the cloth fell away from me.
Before me, a pair of skeletons crumbled to the ground. Their skulls rolled until they settled side by side: the elongated head of a horse, and the fine-featured skull of an elf.
I raised my head, and the elven army was gone. The plain was a battlefield after the battle was won. Swords, spears, and packs of provisions littered the ground, scattered among the thousands of bones and the dried husks of the plants underfoot.
Something fell from the sky like a shower of hail and pattered in the dust at my feet. I’d cooked enough pheasants in my time to recognize the bones of a bird.
The wizard who’d struggled so hard to coax blooms out of buds had let his magic follow its natural course, like water down a river, and sucked the life from an elven army in the blink of an eye.
I was still frozen in terror when the King in Darkness released me, turned away, and walked off in the direction of town.
I don’t know how long I stood there staring at the devastation around me, trying to comprehend how it felt to be the only living thing for a mile around. At some point, I drew a deep breath, turned around, and fixed my gaze on the green trees over the crest of the hill. Dead grass crunched beneath my feet as I started walking.
The bushes were shriveled, the flowers desiccated, the landscape turned to the brown and gray of rot. Still, up ahead, a few shoots poked bravely through the ash. A lush carpet of greenery still existed between the edge of the blasted earth and the trees that marked the perimeter of the original Blight. At the end of that carpet was Wolfsbane, sitting in the grass, gesturing to the ground. A single sprig of wolfsbane pushed its way up from the devastated earth.
“That’s going to take an eternity,” I said as I sat down beside him.
He didn’t look at me. “I’ve got one.”
“A wise wizard once told me that nature is always a work in progress.”
The hood lifted. I knew what was behind that black veil now. I didn’t need to see. I could no more easily read an expression on a skull than on a piece of cloth. I would measure Wolfsbane as I had always measured him, by the tones in his voice and the shape of his actions.
I raised an eyebrow. “Dead things are part of nature, aren’t they?”
“I suppose they are.” The hood tilted. “Yes, I suppose they are.” A low, musical chuckle rolled out from beneath the veil.
I took his leather-gloved hand, gripped the bones gently.
Another wolfsbane shoot rose. It unfurled. Budded.
Flowered.
Mary Pletsch attended the first Superstars Writing Seminars in 2010 and learned from the best. In the years since, she has published short stories and novellas in a variety of genres including science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Superstars holds a special place in her heart; it made the difference between writing as a hobby and writing to be published.