They said Emrys was so powerful, he could curse a place without half trying.
They used to say he could bless a place without half trying too, but it had been so long since he'd been happy enough to do it that piece of lore had been all but forgotten. Blessings had been for villages after nights of feasting for hard won victories. Blessings had been for neckerchiefs in Camelot red and embroidered with Ygraine's symbol, given as gifts. Blessings were for grinning knights and golden kings and a half glimpsed guardian of a forbidden lake. Blessings were for brightly colored balls and dried flowers children had presented with carefree smiles.
Curses were for gravestones and burned villages helped too late, blood soaked battlefields and bards and books that had gotten the stories all wrong.
There were a great many curses these days.
Curses were shadows and blood and half glimpsed things straight from Emrys nightmares. Curses were whispers and shudders and low bows before he could be offended. Curses were rotting fields and food that turned to rotting meat and maggots in your mouth.
Blessings were sunlight and hearings and good fortune, but no one remembered that anymore. No one had written ballads about a bright red ball that would always return to its owner, and no one would have recognized the weatherbeaten thing anyway.
Curses were blessings gone sour, people said, but they were wrong. The blessings were still there, just as the curses had been there in the beginning, glimmers of things on the edges of the more potent spells.
For three days straight, he blotted out the sun. Deadly fire followed whoever received a certain copper coin. A doll found in the woods was brought back to a village that drowned in blood a week later.
But a little girl gave the strange, sad man flowers, and he twitched a coin out from behind her ear, and told her to keep it, that it would bring luck.
It was an odd coin. She didn't recognize the face on it.
But the sun came out when she held it to the sky, and her papa's crop survived when no one else's did.
He's a hero, people used to say.
He'll kill us all, people say now.
I think he's lonely, a little boy with hair like gold said. He's lonely and possibly a bit of an idiot.
The people gave the boy a wide berth before he could be struck by lightning.
The crops were spectacular that year.
He's a monster, people used to say.
He's saved us all, people say now.
They're all idiots, a warlock says, and his king tells him he's one to talk.
