Chapter 1

The Crazy Lady was new, as far as inns go. The ten years it had sat two miles outside Vilane had added a nice comforting worn in feel, but things had yet to fall apart. The roof didn’t leak or sag and most of the chairs were steady with all their original legs.
Iber hadn’t visited the inn for over a year, but he as approached the warm toasty smell made him smile. The hot stew, thick with chunks of beef, carrots and potatoes grabbed his stomach in anticipation. There was always a good meal to be had for weary travelers.
Iber chose to travel by horse, despite the other options available to him. Midnight already spent too much time in the city stables for him to mind the scoffs of the others who had mastered the skill of instantaneous transportation. Besides, the daylong journey had given him time to think.
Even with its wide open spaces and lush gardens, Tamarin City had been closing him in as of late. Everywhere he turned around, it seemed a nobleman plagued him with an idiotic problem. My fields aren’t yielding. My peasants won’t pay their taxes. My son refuses to marry the girl who will double my land holdings. They echoed in Iber’s head until he wanted to scream. Why the lords took more pleasure in having a Great Mage tell them what to do, rather than the king, Iber could only guess. It was true that Tamarin lay in the north of Galadin, and Capital City lay in the south, but it seemed that even the most southern of nobles dragged their extensive entourages to Tamarin to relate their troubles to the Great Mages.
“So Midnight, do you think we’ll run into any noblemen in Vilane?” Midnight’s answer was a toss of his nose and a steady pace down the forest road.
“Sometimes I think that’s the best aspect of Vilane. The noblemen avoid it like a plague village. I suppose it reminds them of their own mortality.” The villagers of Vilane were all youthful hardy specimens, and had been for hundreds of years. They lived off the calca, which granted them nearly eternal life. Barring accidents and the occasional serious illness, the villagers looked much as they had 300 years ago. They were of course, much smaller in population after The Calca Tree had begun to die off.
“You’re late!” Vyna stood on the porch of the inn, hands on hips. She looked exactly the same as when they’d first met. Her straight brown hair was pulled back into a no nonsense pony tail that threatened to come undone. Eagle eyes stared from above an equally sharp nose. Her apron covered most of her unadorned skirts, and there was flour on her left cheek.
Iber dismounted, and gave a comforting pat to Midnight, who was more interested in heading towards the stable. “I didn’t realize I was expected.”
“You always come this time of year. Usually a few weeks earlier.” Vyna’s hands moved from her hips to across her chest.
“I didn’t know I was predictable. Didn’t know I was late either.”
“Great Mages never seem to do anything in a timely fashion.”
“You look well,” Iber said, knowing quite well that both of them looked exactly the same as they had for the past twenty years. He hadn’t so much as changed his overcoat to match the raging fashions of Capital City. There didn’t seem to be much of a point. He still kept his blond hair in a rather moppy style, his tunic embroidered but not gaudy, and his boots serviceable and without curls.
“Well, don’t just stand there. Come eat.” Vyna turned sharply and disappeared back into the inn.
“Nothing really changes, does it?”
By the time Iber mounted the steps to the inn, and crossed into the threshold, Vyna had already disappeared back into the kitchen. Despite being early afternoon, The Crazy Lady was bustling with activity. Vyna employed two steady barmaids, a kitchen maid, a cleaning woman to manage the eight rooms upstairs, a stable boy and the two burliest men she could find to tend bar and toss unruly patrons out on the nights they’d had too much ale.
None of them seemed to notice Iber. The only other patron in the bar took one look at him, smiled sheepishly, and disappeared out the front door.
“Welcome Iber,” he said to himself as the barkeep avoided his gaze. “Come in and enjoy the fire, Iber. Take this nice plush seat Iber.”
He sunk into the chair closest to the cheery fire and toed off his dusty boots. The barkeep continued to polish the same glass. The rest of the staff had disappeared into the kitchen. Iber sniffed his shirt.
“I don’t smell that bad, do I?”
“Not as bad as the first time I met you.” Vyna entered carrying a bowl of stew in one hand and a mug of ale in the other.
“It wasn’t my fault the dragon threw up on me. We still maintain that was Saratin’s fault. I still don’t understand why they’re afraid of me.” The barkeep clunked the glass down on the counter and picked up another with a glare.
“Wouldn’t you be a bit scared by someone who could kill you with a look?”
“As if I would.”
“They don’t know you the way I do. Eat. I’ve got things to do.”
“Thank you,” he called after her, but Vyna didn’t reply.
After one bite of the stew, Iber didn’t care. He didn’t care why he had a sudden compulsion to check on the Calca Tree, he didn’t care that people were afraid of him, and he certainly didn’t care that they’d emptied out the inn and the only sound was the crack pop hiss of the fire conversing merrily with itself.
Iber finished his stew, slouched back into the chair and planted his mug firmly on his stomach, with the goal of having absolutely no thoughts for at least a half hour.
“Hello all!” A cheery young man stood in the doorway, eyes searching until the locked on to Iber’s.
“Grandfather, shut the door, you’re letting out the heat,” Vyna called from the kitchen doorway. Tarik, mayor of Vilane was already steadily approaching Iber. He carried several large rolls of parchment that Iber eyed warily.
“Iber, old friend,” Tarik said as he patted him on the shoulder and took the seat across from him. Rather than sinking back into it, as Iber had, Tarik sat perched on the edge, eyes wide and alert.
“You are indeed welcome to Vilane. In fact, I was truly hoping you’d be here soon. I have some disturbing news.”
The ale soured in Iber’s stomach.
“Over the years,” Tarik began to unroll the largest of the scrolls on the low table between them, “I’ve taken the liberty of charting the Calca output.”
The chart in front of them was neat and meticulous. It spoke for itself.
“These are the months and this is the Calca output.” The mayor traced his finger along the steadily rising line of Calca production. The line slowly leveled out as it reached the end of the chart. Then there was a dip.
“What’s that?” Iber asked.
“It’s a dip.” Tarik said.
“Yes. I see that… a dip, but what does that mean?”
“It means that last month the Calca tree produced less calca than the month before.”
“But why?”
“That’s why you’re here. That’s why you’ve come.”
“I came because I wanted out of the city.”
“But you really came because of the calca.”
“I did?”
“Yes, of course. The last time the calca production dipped, the tree was beginning to die and the magic began to fade away.”
“And if the magic fades away,” Iber said more to himself than Tarik. If the magic faded away, the Great Mages would lose their powers and begin to die, just like the last time.
A moment of panic and urgency filled Iber and he bolted to his seat, spilling ale everywhere.
“Now what did you do that for?” Vyna shouted.
“I’m dying!”
“Aren’t you being a bit dramatic?”
With a glare at Vyna, Iber formed the thoughts in his head and closed his eyes. We three beneath the tree.
“What did you go and do that for?” Vyna said.
Iber opened his eyes and stared at the gigantic calca tree he’d transported them to. The leaves were still a lush green despite many of the surrounding trees that had begun their transformation into gold. The tiny pearl like calca clung to the tree, ready to drop and be harvested by the villagers. The tree looked healthy enough, but from here, Iber couldn’t see the gaping hole where Vilane had once mined calca directly from the trunk in order to keep their youth.
“Send me back. I’ve got work to do.”
“How long before the calca on the ground will stop being enough to provide the village?”
Vyna’s feet suddenly shifted. Her arms crossed over her chest, then to her hips and back restlessly to her chest. Iber knew why she was suddenly worried. The last time the calca disappeared, she’d ended up with a village stuck in her head for a hundred years.
“We have some time.” Tarik said, also picking up on Vyna’s distress. “Don’t worry about it for now, Vyna. I’m sure that this time the Great Mages will come up with a better solution.”
“A better solution? As long as it doesn’t include me. I’m not carrying you all around inside for another minute. Send me back now, Iber.”
Iber nodded, and closed his eyes. Vyna to the inn. Send her home again.
“She’s done her part already,” Iber said.
“My granddaughter has always done her part, and the villagers didn’t make it any easier on her.”
Iber circled around to the back of the tree. There it was, the large gaping hole in the bark, no smaller than when he’d first seen it twenty years ago.
“It’s never healed.” Taking a deep breath, Iber placed his hand on the tree, knowing the flood that would come through him.
Death pain hurt children love death death death. The tree shouted the words to him. It told Iber a story in feelings, pulsing through is fingertips and reverberating through each limb and hair on his body. The message was clear.
Iber removed his hand and managed a weary smile for Tarik, whose worry was lined deep in his young face.
“You know what’s wrong?”
“Yes.”
“You can fix it?”
“I think so.”
“Good. It’d be a shame to die.”
It wasn’t going to be easy. the tree was in great pain and had never fully healed from the damage the villagers had done to it so long ago. But there was one thought the tree had communicated that made Iber calm enough to order his thoughts and begin a plan of action. The single thread of assurance pulled him back from the panic and death.
Hope.