Likely, they predicted, when young Roulant married
Una the miller’s girl they’d get themselves a son who’d
inherit his grand-da’s friends. No one thought it would be
a bad inheritance, mage and all. People had gotten used to
Guarinn the blacksmith. And Thorne was helpful in the
way mages can be, for he was able to charm a fretful child
to sleep or bring water springing up from a dry well –
always willing to turn his mysterious skills to good use.
No one blamed Thorne that he was never able to do
anything about the Night of the Wolf.
Anyone with eyes in Dimmin could see that it was a
great source of frustration and sorrow to their mage that
he could offer them no protection against the wolf that
terrorized the countryside one night each year. For thirty
years it had avoided traps and hunters, and that was
enough to make people understand that this was no
ordinary wolf. What natural beast could live so long?
Yet Thorne could offer no better wisdom than that
everyone keep within-doors; for life’s sake, never venture
out into the dark when the two moons rose full on the first
night of autumn. And so, on this one day each year, all
around Dimmin, small children were shooed early into
cottages, cached behind bolted doors. And if a child’s bed
should be near a window, this night the little one would
sleep in the loft with his parents.
Most often a stray sheep or roaming dog, sometimes a
luckless traveler benighted in the forest, satisfied the
hunger of the great beast. But only three years ago on the
Night of the Wolf, a farmer who lived but a morning’s
walk from Dimmin had wakened at moonset to hear one
of his children wailing. Fast as he ran to the youngster’s
bed, he’d found only an empty pallet, and the broad, deep
tracks of a large wolf outside the window. No one
questioned Thorne’s advice to keep close to home on the
Night.
It must be a curse, they muttered as they bolted their
doors. What else could it be?
It was exactly that. Thorne had always known how to
end the curse, and no one wanted that ending more than
he.
*****
On the first day of autumn, Thorne sat before a banked
hearth-fire. Outside the stone house, cold wind hissed
around the eaves, but he didn’t hear it. Eyes wide, he
dreamed as though he were deep asleep. In his dreams the
two moons, the red and the silver, filled up the sky,
showered their light upon the jagged back teeth of a ruin’s
broken walls while cold, hungry howling ran down the
sky. In his dreams Thorne cried out for mercy, and got
none.
He sat so all morning, sat unmoving all afternoon.
When the light deepened toward the day’s end, he heard
his name urgently whispered, and he came away from his
dreaming slowly, like a man swimming up from dark,
deep waters. Guarinn Hammerfell stood at his shoulder,
waiting. The dwarf’s face was white, drawn in haggard
lines; his dark, blue-flecked eyes were sunk into deep
hollows carved by weariness. Thorne hadn’t stirred even
once during the long day, but he knew that Guarinn had
kept watch beside him and never took a step away.
“It’s time, my friend,” Thorne said.
Guarinn nodded, wordlessly agreeing that it was. He
said nothing as he and the mage dressed warmly in thick
woolen cloaks and stout climbing boots, spoke no word as
he slung a coil of heavy rope over his shoulder and thrust
a short-hafted throwing axe into his belt.
They crossed the brook by the old footbridge and
entered the darkening forest. At the top of the first low
hill, Thorne stopped to look down upon Dimmin as lights
sprang up in the windows of the cottages, little gleams of
gold to console in the coming night. He watched the last
cottage, the one that stood alone at the far end of the
village where the street became a narrow footpath winding
down toward the potter’s kiln at the edge of the brook.
When that light sighed to life he knew that Roulant Potter