Veneficus: Stones of the Chosen Read Online Free Page A

are the one who has been chosen to carry the mantle of the next Wessex veneficus and holder of the enchantments.”
    The boy’s mouth fell open in wonder. “The Elder Pen-dragon was your teacher?” Hardly daring to believe his ears, the boy took refuge in a question.
    “I sat at his feet for the last twenty years of his life, and he taught me everything. In turn he learned from Idris the Former, and Idris from the Pale Sybil, and so on back in time. Each one of them lasted exactly one hundred years.”
    “I have heard stories of the Elder Pendragon and Idris the Former around the settlement fire. The Pale Sybil is a new one. It was a woman?” The boy’s dark eyes showed wonder.
    “A very special one, but a woman for all that.” The old wizard’s emerald eyes flashed, and the beautiful face and long, dark tresses of a goddess-like figure replaced his craggy countenance for a brief moment. “There is no difference in the powers of sorcery between men and women - veneficus or venefica, a sorcerer or sorceress. Anyone can be chosen, and there may be several around at any one time, although some may not recognize their gift. The secret is to maintain the line of instruction of the enchantments. Once that is broken, the line of succession breaks with it, and the continuum of the enchantments will be lost forever, for they are too complicated to be guessed or simply arrived at. They must be carefully, reverently passed down over a period of years. The line from the Pale Sybil, through Idris the Former, the Elder Pendragon, then me is nearly four hundred years long. And there were many others before that - ninety-eight, in fact. It is a line of succession that has endured for all of known time. There has always been, must always be, at least one veneficus or venefica in existence, and it is the duty of the incumbent to ensure the succession. You are the next in that line, and the time available for me to pass on the great mysteries is getting shorter every day. The rest of us all had around twenty years to learn, but you only have seven, which is why I was getting anxious about your arrival and have been imploring and calling upon all the ancient gods to speed you here. As far as I can tell I am the only old one left, although it is probable that there are others out there somewhere. You, however, are certainly not alone in being chosen as a veneficus. There are a number of other tyros abroad because, like the eggs of fledglings, not everyone will hatch. Someone else out there may be going through the exact same learning process as the one we are now embarking upon. Indeed, I had a sense of someone coming near a year ago, but the aura turned away and I lost it. Then, shortly afterwards, the resonance of your own coming took over.”
    “You have been expecting me for a year?” said Twilight in surprise. “But my father only decided to bring me here two days ago.”
    “Ahhh.” Merlin sighed in what the boy was beginning to recognize as his favorite expression. “You are referring to a physical decision governed by physical rules. I am talking about a metaphysical one, a rhetorical and a far more malleable existence. There will be many new words with different and perhaps strange meanings, new phenomena, and unusual events. Matters will be turned on their heads. Reactions will be gauged in opposites or imponderables. Things will mostly not be as they seem. Now that you are with me, at last many of the things that have been bothering you will be explained, begin to make sense. Tyro veneficus - novice sorcerers - are chosen before birth, before, some say, the womb. Their presence is preordained. These things you will learn.”
    “And now I am here … metaphysically,” said Twilight, looking into the distance reflectively. “You use words I have never heard before, yet somehow I know what they mean.”
    Far into the secret recesses of his mind’s eye, the subliminal images of assorted figures, clarion events, and