The Wizard of Elsewhere

1.17 - The Longest Night

... "I challenge the one who cast stones even The Forerunner couldes't not defend. I challenge the reigning champion of this night, Leinan from Landsend!"

— Wizard Barnibus Jefferson Montgomery Barnwinkle

* * *

Leinan Hated the Wizard. Hated. More than she had hated anything in her fifteen years of living.

He wasn't a hero. He didn't protect them from The Forerunner, and he was crazy. He didn't care about the horror that was happening right in front of him!

He spoke to The Forerunner like old friends and... and Leinan had still saved him! Saved him only for him to fall asleep like an old codger on his porch and leave Leinan to deal with....

Leinan swayed where she stood. She would have fallen except that Keimen pushed her back with all her little strength and rocked Leinan back onto her feet.

'How much longer could she last?' That traitorous voice was back. It was louder than before and Leinan wished, she wished that she could answer back something pithy like 'As long as is necessary...' like some fool hero from Master Bordenshire's stories, but... she couldn't.

Leinan shoulders shook and her eyes streamed and her hands shook as she swayed where she stood.

Leinan didn't think she could last 'as long as was necessary'. She wasn't even certain about another game.

But she knew she Hated that Wizard. In that moment, as the Wizard pointed at her and beamed that silly grin with his ridiculous beard, she knew.

Leinan knew she Hated the Wizard more than she hated The Forerunner herself.

The Forerunner was like one of the Great Winds which blew down from the Dragons Pass every so often. The ones which tore trees up and flung them like twigs and sometimes, if they got all the way to Landsend, they did the same to houses and barns.

The Forerunner was like that. More. The same way the wind or an earth shake was More.

But the Wizard was human. The Wizard was a person and he saw what The Forerunner was doing. He saw Leinan resisting. He saw her fighting and trying and breaking!

He saw... and he grins and challenges her to a game?!

Leinan stomped back over and flopped back onto her log — the pain barely even registering anymore — and said through gritted teeth "I offer whatever I have in my pockets!" Which was of course nothing. And Nothing was what he'd have from her.

The Forerunner gasped like one of the gossiping girls at market.

She tittered, repeating what Leinan said to the Wizard... and, for some reason, the Wizard brightened!

He pulled from his robe —

Leinan blinked and then squinted at it despite an initial valiant attempt at apathy.

The thing was metal. A sort of gold-ish, tawny metal Leinan had never seen before and about the size of two of her hands stuck together.

It had knobs sticking out from odd places and small sticks — many, many sticks — with images attached to them splayed out from the center of a flat, white, circular face with odd squiggles stenciled at the edges.

Leinan thought that the sticks were supposed to move, and as she watched one of them did! The stick shifted slightly and then fell into a new position with a solid thok.