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Hallowmas Night [MultiFormat]
eBook by Mercedes Lackey
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eBook Category: Fantasy/Dark Fantasy
eBook Description: When a wandering mage came to a village, they asked her to stay and offered her the cottage that had belonged to their previous mage. It was almost too good an offer - or was it?
eBook Publisher: Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, Published: Lammas Night, 1996
Fictionwise Release Date: July 2010
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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [18 KB]
, ePub (EPUB) [31 KB]
, Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [15 KB]
, Portable Document Format (PDF) [190 KB]
, Palm Doc (PDB) [16 KB]
, Microsoft Reader (LIT) [59 KB]
, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [87 KB]
, hiebook (KML) [62 KB]
, Sony Reader (LRF) [41 KB]
, iSilo (PDB) [13 KB]
, Mobipocket (PRC) [16 KB]
, Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [43 KB]
, OEBFF Format (IMP) [26 KB]
Words: 5022
Reading time: 14-20 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
The moon is on the wane tonight, and her light is fitful and hard to work by. There is a chill and bitter wind tossing the bare branches of the trees; had there been any leaves left upon those sad, black boughs when the sun set, they would have been ripped away by now. That same wind shreds the thin, fraying clouds that scud across the moon's face, so that she seems to be dressed in the tattered remnants of a shroud. The sound of it among the trees is like the wailing of a hundred thousand lost souls.
And while my hands busy themselves with the preparations I have rehearsed in my mind too many times to be counted, I find myself trying to trace the path that brought me to this night, and these perilous rituals.
Was it only last month, a bare moon-span of days ago that I came to this place? It hardly seems possible, and yet that is indeed the case. It seems so strange, to look back upon the thing I was, so sure of myself and my place in the world--
A wizard I was and am, for my talents lie with the manipulations of energy, and my knowledge is that of the doors to and creatures of other worlds. Unlike some of my fellows, I do not hold that witchcraft is the lesser art -- oh no; I have seen too many things to believe that to be the case. Faced with an elemental or the need to bring fertility to man, beast or field, I should be as helpless as a witch given a wraith to exorcise, or a demon to subdue. And the healing arts that come so easily to the witch born were slow and painful for me to learn. To each of us her strengths and her weaknesses, say I -- but in my craft, I count myself no weakling. I long ago attained the Master's rank and staff -- and yet, I wandered, ever wandered, as if I were a Journeyman still.
At first it had been by choice, for I took joy in the sights and sounds of new places -- but that was no longer the case. I was long wearied with traveling, with the hardships and mundane dangers of the road, with being the plaything of the weather, the pawn of the seasons. But I, having been hurt too many times by my fellow man -- fellows in my art, let me say -- had grown shy of their company, and would settle only in some remote place, far from other practitioners of my art, in some rustic habitat where I might meditate and study at leisure, and use my skills to the mutual benefit of my pocket and the well-being of ordinary folk.
But we of wizardry kind are often of that frame of mind; and it seemed that no matter where my feet carried me, there were others settled there before me.
Until, one autumn day, my wanderings brought me here--
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