The Naming of Kinzel Read online

  THE NAMING OF KINZEL

  Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

  Pinbeam Books

  http://www.pinbeambooks.com

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are fiction or are used fictitiously.

  THE NAMING OF KINZEL

  Copyright © 1984, 1987, 1990, 1998, 2011 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author. Please remember that distributing an author's work without permission or payment is theft; and that the authors whose works sell best are those most likely to let us publish more of their works.

  First published in 1987 by General Avocations.

  The Naming of Kinzel: The Fooish originally appeared in Fantasy Book, June 1984

  The Naming of Kinzel: The Innocent originally appeared in Fantasy Book, December 1984

  The Naming of Kinzel: The Arbiter originally appeared in The Naming of Kinzel Midnight Edition, June 1987

  ISBN:

  Kindle: 978-1-935224-15-0

  Epub: 978-1-935224-16-7

  PDF: 978-1-935224-17-4

  Published April 2011 by

  Pinbeam Books

  PO Box 707

  Waterville ME 04903

  email [email protected]

  Cover Copyright © 1987, 1988, 2011 by Colleen Doran. All rights reserved.

  The Naming of Kinzel

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  It was the time of the mages and the magic, of the herb ladies and the witches, of striving against a world running downhill toward a chaos of Power against Power.

  In those days, as in these, many had forgotten the legends of the original magician who stole the Branch of Power from the Unicorn Clans who had kept it - key to their power - hoarded and secret. The first magician used the Branch to create the first Staff and thereby the first Clock, releasing magic, and the means to control it, into the worlds of men.

  It is said that somewhere in the depths of the Large Continent there are still these things: the magician's hut, of stone cunningly piled; the Clock which stands behind each and every device of man; and the Branch cut for the first Staff and which converts the Power of worlds into the Power of Life.

  One tends to believe only in what one can lay hand to. So it is with common folk, so it is with magicians. Belief in things measured and ground and distilled is much easier to hold down the centuries than belief in a Power that flows in all one sees. Thus the Clock was revered among the learned magicians; and the Branch dwindled from solid reality to legend to childish superstition....

  KINZEL THE FOOLISH

  It was far too hot; the boy kneeling in the dust in the leafless thicket shifted his position slightly so his shadow fell more squarely on the luckless rabbit beneath his hands. The beast thanked him with a bare twitch of an ear.

  Heartened by even so slight a motion, the boy moved his hands gently over the rabbit's body, frowning in fey concentration.

  The wrongness was - here ... and here.... The boy bit his lip. It was so very hot. What use if the poor beastie were healed when there was no water to be had?

  He put such thoughts firmly from his mind, concentrating on the rabbit he'd found motionless and weak on the high hill path, concentrating on summoning the health that would banish the illness he sensed.

  How good to be a rabbit, how free. How easily the sweet air enters one's lungs; how gently, how smoothly expelled - so.

  The boy's hands moved instinctively, his plain round face blank with the effort. So fine to be a rabbit, to dream while the sun is in the sky; to father a dozen rabbit-kits and teach them the good leaves to nibble when the purple evening falls....

  Suddenly the rabbit twitched an ear, wrinkled its nose, and twisted free of the soothing hands. The boy sat back, bewilderment replacing concentration in his face, exhaustion showing in the corner of his eyes.

  The rabbit regarded its savior for a long moment, then used its back foot to scratch one ear, and reared up high to sniff the air. It cocked a last bemused rabbit-eye at the unmoving boy and hopped off, not very quickly, for the relative coolness of the inner wood.

  With a sigh belonging to a much younger child, the healer slumped and sagged edgewise. Dimly he recalled Siljan's admonitions: only heal the deserving; never boast of the power; only heal where someone can watch over you afterwards.

  Too tired to care, he let his head fall the remaining few inches, and slept with his head cradled in the dust.

  The rabbit peered out from the shade of the wood at the strangeness of a human child sleeping in the wild, and then, recalling from deep in its brain that humans were to be avoided, edged into the dimness.

  ***

  The boy awoke at sundown when an almost-cool breeze entered the thicket and ruffled his tangled, light ginger hair. Stretching and smiling, he regarded the world with sleepy approval through half-slitted eyes.

  Then the significance of the long shadows struck him and he jerked himself upright, slapping the fingers of one hand to the side of his face in a characteristic gesture.

  Late! Oh, late.

  His father would beat him sure, for the sunset chores undone, and his two brothers would mock him for his tears and his stammering, unheard explanation. But the rabbit's life was worth far more than any punishment that might be meted out to him, and it had been his own folly, to sleep....

  He was up and running before thoughts of punishment were complete, his feet following an invisible path. The path forked, and he paused, face screwed up with tight remembering.

  Oh yes, that was the other thing. Tonight there was to be a town meeting to decide what could be done to save themselves from this unnatural drought and the unseasonable, impossible heat. He had to be there; the meeting was his reason for not attending Siljan this very night as she gathered moon-herbs.

  "Well, and if you must, you must," she'd sniffed in her grumpy way, "though what good you think to do at that fool's congregation is more than I can see. Each of 'em 'spects they should get all the help they want but not one of 'em wants to hear word one 'bout Balance! If you don't help 'em they blame their troubles on ye, and if you do they get afraid and want more at the same time! Like me and you they don't think, boy. They think we do wizard's work! Ha!"

  She'd stopped then and looked hard at him, almost like she was seeing him for the first time.

  "Well, might be you could do wizard work one day, but I'll tell you Kinzel, they think we do this because we want to - they can't see a proper Balance if it stares 'em in the face - and they want help they don't need and they 'spect help they shouldn't get. Me an' you, boy, me an' you, we gotta help the Balance, when we can, don't we boy?"

  The whole time she'd spoken the herb-lady had sorted herbs by touch, not missing a single beat as she'd gone through a sackful of night-gleanings.

  Kinzel had nodded slowly. He'd never had a lot to say when Siljan got to talking like this. He did what he did because it was right, not for the goodwill that rarely came from his efforts. He'd thought for a moment about his brothers'
reactions when he'd done some small healing: each acting as if he'd done something wrong, jealous - condemning him for being such a show-place fool.

  Kinzel had been startled as "Mad" Siljan momentarily acted mad. She'd thrown a handful of pop-flowers at him to get his attention, and then she'd flapped her arms at him like some mountain bird. "Well? Be off if it's off you're being! And mind me now, Kinzel, mind you take the high hill path when you do."

  He had to be there - he had determined he would be there three days ago when Mad Siljan had given him her secret.

  The boy shrugged, grinning in self-derision. Well, he was due a beating, whatever came. If his father were forced to administer two at once his arm might fail before the fatal blow was dealt. It was worth a gamble, at least.

  He turned down the right hand fork, running in darkness as surely as if the midday sun shone to guide him.

  ***

  The meeting had begun by the time he arrived; the door of the meeting house stood ajar to allow whatever breezes there might be to come inside. The boy had heard someone shouting as came to the entrance, and he looked cautiously within.

  Amid the sweaty backs and flickering light, Kinzel recognized the quiet Edlin, herder of shoats, who looked momentarily from the noise and saw Kinzel in the doorway.

  Edlin's eyes grew wide as he moved toward Kinzel, a half-smile touching his face for a moment. Kinzel worried briefly that perhaps the herbs he'd reluctantly picked for the new-married Edlin had failed ... but Edlin seemed more concerned with Kinzel's presence than any failures.

  "Boy, you should not be here, for sure! Your father's raging, and that'll come to no good for any of us, you especial...."

  Kinzel relaxed: he was prepared to face that rage.

  "I must be here! I must find out what's to be done. Siljan herself says that important things will happen in the next few days."

  Edlin backed away a half-step, as always unwilling to consider that Kinzel was Siljan's unofficial assistant.

  "You should leave, I tell you," the young man said. "The mood's bad for those of your ... interests." The man drew closer that his voice could be heard against the yelling behind him.

  "Siljan may know herbs and animals and such - and you some, too - but there's bad talk going on about magic and such, talk about Avonhall's magic rubbing off on us!"

  Kinzel blanched and stepped back a small step. At Avonhall, only three days' journey away, half the town had gone mad after eating last year's new harvest bread.

  Avonhall's herb-women had been blamed - they'd been feuding, the two of them - and they'd been thrown into the lake, bound hand and foot to each other.

  While Siljan'd whispered once to Kinzel that they'd escaped, there was talk of a curse on the town: the minor maladies grew all-too-often into death-sicks, the animals lost far too many young....

  "That's not the problem here," Kinzel muttered, frightened. "That's not the problem!" he repeated with sudden surety, and evaded Edlin's restraining arms with a rabbit-like dash deeper into the hall.

  Kinzel's father was standing, facing the Elder's chair, redfaced and waving his arms in anger. "...them says we should leave - leave! - the land we grew up on, the land our fathers grew up on, and their fathers grew up on, and their fathers worked and came to know, why them that say leave are welcome to go, sure enough! And their neighbors will call coward at their backs and spit three times in their footsteps as they're walking away to be sure they never come back-"

  Another man jumped into the fray, his roar momentarily drowning out the voice of Kinzel's father.

  "And what if it is so, what the fisherman fears - what if it is wizardry set against us? Think thou, Pastt Farer! When in the memory of thy father, or his father, or beyond!, has there come such a season, when the run shrank to mere trickle and the very bed-bottom dried and cracked in the heat? The very sun, the fisherfolk say, chases fish away, out to the full deep ocean, where the cool water hides 'neath warm, and where no man can cast his net!"

  Pastt Farer glowered in a manner the watching boy knew well. He wondered if his father would really strike someone at a public meeting. It was then, however, that Elder Donvar chose to stand. The the crowd grew quiet, awaiting his words.

  "Whether the drought is wizard's work or no may easily be determined. Who among you shall volunteer to go to Bronzemere and put the question to Milord Madog, the mage who makes his home there and whose influence is said to be great among those of magic?"

  Silence, and then finally a man's voice from the other side of the hall: "'Tis five day's journey for a fast horse in fair weather, Elder. None of us have a fast horse and the walk-"

  Another man Kinzel could not see spoke up. "And what would make a distant mage to cast a spelling on us? A fault so large would not have gone unnoticed!"

  Half a dozen voices called "aye" to that and more tumbled after until Elder Donvar again held up his hand, turning his head from side to side and quelling the crowd with the seriousness of his face.

  The shouting was but echoes when the Elder's ironic murmur came clear to the boy hiding in the shadows.

  "What then shall we do, brave folk? If none will walk to the wizard shall we quietly return to our homes and fry?" He flung his arms out suddenly, angrily.

  "Has one among you a suggestion that lays claim to sense? Is there anyone here who has considered a course that we might take in hope?"

  "I have...."

  Kinzel had not intended to speak; he had not spoken loudly. But in the silence that followed Donvar's mocking, his murmur was loud enough to be heard across the hall.

  All heads turned toward the rear of the room where the boy leaned into the corner to ease his shaking.

  "Kinzel!" shouted his father.

  The boy forced himself to disregard all faces but that of Elder Donvar. The Elder was standing, hands on hips, head tilted to one side, astonishment and something else on his face.

  "Well, lad?" asked the Elder gently.

  Pastt Farer was on his feet, his roar schooled to barely a sputter in the face of the Elder's seriousness.

  "Elder, you know my son. Everyone knows my son, Kinzel. Aye," he roared again, throwing an arm out to the crowd to gather support. "All know Kinzel - as a good and proper fool!"

  There was laughter from several quarters as certain men agreed with the father's assessment of his eldest.

  "Silence!" Donvar's hands were out again, commanding.

  "At least the lad says he has what none of you grown men here has put forth: a plan! As I am Elder we will hear him out."

  The laughter was hushed, and some hunched shoulders forward a little in shame. The Elder looked back to the boy in the corner.

  "Very well, then, boy, what is your plan?"

  Kinzel sagged into the corner, unable to speak. The heat, the healing, the run to the village, his father's scorn - three beatings now due his due - all seemed to weigh upon him at once. He was dizzy. He was afraid momentarily that he might faint.

  "Well, boy?" The Elder's voice was impatient.

  Kinzel finally found his tongue.

  "Siljan says there is a Unicorn glade up in the hills, sir, just a half-day's walk from here...." His voice faded and he looked at Donvar expectantly, as if that bare statement contained it all.

  The Elder frowned. "Well, what of it? If Siljan says she knows of a Unicorn glade, I see no virtue in dissuading her."

  Someone in the crowd of sullen men laughed, loud and sharp. The boy at the back of the room drew a deep breath, unable to believe that the Elder, at least, could not see how obvious...

  "But, but - sir. Everyone knows that a Unicorn glade is always green. The flowers bloom there longer than is common; ordinary animals go there to drink the water if they are sick or injured...."

  He stopped again, breathless, waiting for the Elder to take up the trail of his thoughts.

  Donvar merely frowned more stormily and said again, "Well?"

  "The water!" Kinzel blurted out, standing away from the wall i
n his agitation. "The Unicorn water! Why all that need be done, I'm sure, is ask! The Unicorn is magic - he would lend us his stream...."

  He stopped again, this time because it would have been impossible to make himself heard above the howls of laughter and the exclamations that filled the hall.

  Fighting back the tears that were ever too close to the surface - the cause of his brothers' scorn and his father's disgust on many a day - Kinzel stood in the corner, hearing the laughter rebound off the stone walls, feeling an anger growing in his stomach.

  He had bungled again! Somehow the words had been altered by his ineptitude from a logical course to one only worthy of derision. Stupid, stupid, stupid Kinzel! His fault only; he could not have put it correctly. It was inconceivable that they could have understood, yet still laugh.

  A heavy hand fell upon his shoulder, and another grabbed the scruff of his neck and gave him a vigorous shake.

  "I'll Unicorn you, you lackwit! And if any man's seen a Unicorn this past hundred years, I'd like to meet him! Unicorn!"

  Kinzel sensed rather than saw the hand leave his shoulder and rise for the blow-

  "Enough!" Elder Donvar's voice sliced through the racket, and punishment hung suspended over Kinzel's head as the noise grumbled into silence.

  "You, Pastt Farer, let the boy be!"

  Kinzel's father turned his head to the Elder, mouth shaped into an 'O' of astonishment. "But Elder-"

  "Let be, I say! There'll be no abusing the simple while I'm Elder of this village. The lad cannot help his lack. Now have done and send him home."

  Farer closed his mouth with an effort; a greater one lowered his arm, the blow unstruck. Then he shoved his eldest to the door, past the mortified Edlin, and over the threshold of the meeting hall, roaring with frustration.