Mountain Barber
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The Wanderer
🕑 Added 2020-06-22 02:19:54 +0000 UTCThis story starts a dozen years after the fall of Imperial Ithos at the hands of Kanderon Crux and the twelve other founders of Skyhold. The basic idea for the story came to me in a dream, and I woke up and wrote the whole thing in a single sitting. (One of my most impressive writing days I've ever had.) A number of random plot and worldbuilding elements— as well as bits of the history of Anastis— that had all been drifting around in my head all easily fit right in.
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Every night you ask me to tell you a story, and every night I oblige you. Most nights it is an old favorite, told again and again and again. And though I am a scholar and historian committed to the truth, my son, even I give into that weakness of parents that children so delight in, that of inventing new details for a story. Your smiles are usually quite worth me betraying my principles there.
But not for this story. For this story, I will only tell you the truth, so far as I know it, for no lie could make this story more interesting. And some stories are too important to lie about.
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Storms always came from the east, in a nameless little village somewhere in the foothills of the northern Skyreach Range. They rolled over the rolling hills and broken plains that the Ithonian Empire had ruled over until so recently, and crashed against the great mountains separating the green east of the continent from its arid west. Howl and rage as much as they would, they always broke against the peaks, unable to carry their rain westward.
On the night the Wanderer was born, a storm rolled in from the west, spat out of the mountains like a curse. It howled around the small but well-built cottages of the village, damaged the blacksmith’s roof, and tore down half the apple orchards. Not that they’d ever produced many apples, but halving a small number can often be a more hurtful blow than halving a larger number.
Most of all, though, the storm blew around the house of the village mages. It was the largest house in the village, not to mention the highest up, built halfway up the root of one of the easternmost mountains of the range. The wind and rain tore and battered at it, where it stood above the rest of the village, and tore and battered at the great oak that stood just uphill of the house.
Or perhaps it was a pine, or an elm, or a fir. Some say it was a cedar, for it was good luck to build your home by a cedar, though few knew the reason for that superstition. Even then, the ancient story about the hateful foes who used it against one another in war was mostly forgotten. Wise scholars, however, claim that it it could not be a cedar, for apple trees hate cedars almost as much as those ancient foes had. Other wise scholars claim that it might still have been a cedar, which contributed to the poor yield of the villages of the apple orchards.
There are many great trees in history, my son, that deserve so much debate and discussion. Trees containing entire fortresses, or even cities. Trees that imprison demons, and trees that were planted to mark the signing of great peace treaties. And yet, somehow, this ordinary tree has become the subject of endless debate as to its identity.
Most storytellers simply call it an oak, for oaks are common enough in that region, and all stories are made stronger by an oak tree.
The mages had built their house strong, so the storm could not ruin it. Deep in the night the howls of the storm were joined by the howls of their fourth child and first daughter.
As momentous births go, it was a decent one. Not the most inspiring for a storyteller, and to be sure, there were many, many momentous births in those days. At least half a dozen warlords were born at the very moment of Imperial Ithos’ death, but the Wanderer was born twelve years too late for that. The great dragon Oltvaine, who would, many centuries hence, be slain by a cruel, proud man by the name of Aedan, hatched one year later, on the night when no less than three separate cities overthrew the rule of the severed Ithonian legions that still lingered. The man who would be known as the last Ithonian Emperor was born during a great meteor shower, five years after the vanishing of Ithos, as the Calamity herself hunted his parents.
Even still, the eastbound storm was a decently momentous omen to be born under.
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The Wanderer had a happy childhood. Her parents were both Ithonian mages who had fled the fall of the Empire, and who had no greater ambitions to live a peaceful, happy life together. The Wanderer’s family spoiled and indulged her, but she was not made cruel or selfish by it, as some children might. She was said to be a kind girl, who had a soft spot for injured animals, and would gladly fight bullies twice her size in defense of those weaker than them, even if the victims were stronger still than the little girl.
She lost most of her fights, but in losing, taught her foes to fear her.
All the same, she wasn’t the sort of child that anyone would point to as a legend in the making. She was a curious child with a hundred questions a day, but not so curious she would forget dinner to investigate a tortoise burrow. She was a stubborn child, but not so stubborn her parents couldn’t win her over or bribe her with sweets. She had an unusually strong sense of right and wrong, but not so strong that she didn’t occasionally still cheat in games or steal apples.
The Wanderer loved to explore the hills, climb trees and boulders, and invent games for the other children to play. She knew every part of the village as though it were part of her own home. Her favorite place of all, though, remained the oak tree behind her house, among whose roots and branches she spent countless hours as a child.
Or perhaps it was a spruce or a maple, but the little girl loved it all the same.
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The Wanderer’s youth was unexceptional in the happiest sort of ways. We can assume she had beloved pets, first kisses, and many complaints about the lessons her parents made her sit through. The other village children only had to suffer a few lessons a week for a few years, but the Wanderer and her brothers had to endure far more, for their parents had hopes of their children following their footsteps as mages.
And they did.
None would be great mages, but they were a boon for a little village like theirs. The eldest was a mage of fire and iron mage, who apprenticed to the blacksmith, supplementing blacksmith’s magic with a few spells from his parents’ books. The second son was, of all things, a mage of bees. Their mother ventured far into the lowlands, and into more easterly mountains, to bargain with the lich Keayda for books of bee magic, though what knowledge she traded, none could say. The village would, for many years after, have more honey than they knew what to do with. The third son was, like his father, a healer, and the whole village rejoiced at that news.
The whole village awaited news of the Wanderer’s magics, but when they first appeared, at fourteen and a half years of age, there was a rather baffling problem.
She didn’t appear to have magics of anything. Not of stone, nor of wind. Not of hair, nor bone, nor sweat. Not of dreams or wool or paint or silver.
The girl gave up her childish pursuits to seek, instead, the secrets of her magic. She gave up her toys and games. She abandoned climbing the tree behind her house, and pretending that it were some great magical fortress, jungle giant, or the back of a dragon in flight. She ignored her youthful romances, drifted away from her childhood friends, and neglected her beloved pets, all to seek the truth of her magic.
She could learn all the cantrips her parents knew, and she did. She could learn all the wards her parents knew, and she did. Soon her skill with those surpassed her brothers and even her parents, but they still could not discover what her magic looked for.
The Wanderer was even more driven than her parents. She tried her magic on everything, to find what they were good for. She tried the spit of dogs and the cast off scales of rock drakes. She tried lodestones and ash, paper and ink, feathers and smoke. One memorable evening, she even tried seeing whether she was a mage of wine, and when that proved fruitless, whether she was a mage of drunkenness.
The next morning, her angry parents joked that she might see whether she was a mage of vomit, that she might clean up the mess.
They might have been joking, but the Wanderer tried her magic while cleaning nonetheless, but she wasn’t.
Finally, on the dawn of the Wanderer’s fifteenth birthday, her parents admitted defeat.
Her mother bade the Wanderer to say farewell to her father, her siblings, her friends and her pets, and she took her down into the lowlands, to seek the lich Keayda once more.
It was a perilous journey, in those days. Bandits roved the lands, and magical traps and wards from the death-throes of the Empire littered the old roads and fortresses. Dragons and other beasts hunted freely, and often took special pleasure in hunting mankind.
The Wanderer’s mother walked confidently, however, and her magics of water and caustic lye, so useful for keeping the clothes of the village clean, made truly gruesome work of any that would threaten her daughter. It was an old joke that the washerwomen were the most dangerous mages of the legions, but of the sort whose humor came from truth.
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When they reached Keayda’s great stone library, however, the mother had nothing left to trade the lich. She knew no other secrets he might want, and Keayda seldom took coin of other kinds. Even if he had, there was not enough coin in all their village to pay Keayda, for his prices were steep, and few in the village ever used coin. Even the infrequent traveling merchants preferred to take cloths and foodstuffs in trade, for coin was little-needed in those days. The villagers, like villagers everywhere, kept track of their debts in promises of nails or apples. They often forgot those debts, though, because the goodwill and friendship of their neighbors was a weightier coin than a loaf of bread or half a dozen eggs.
No matter how her mother begged and pleaded, Keayda was as unmoved as the stone of his body.
In other tales, her mother might have pledged so many years of her service to the lich for an answer for her daughter, but this is the tale of the Wanderer. So often, the tales of her adventures break from the riverbeds that countless other stories have carved in our minds. They overflow the banks of the river that carries stories through us, and race up hills and through houses, breaking the dishes, then gluing them back together until you have bowls that were once plates and pans that were once pots.
And in that room, speaking to Keayda, was the first time her story broke the banks of that river, for she, a half-trained girl, challenged Keayda to his carven face. She demanded to know whether he was a scholar or a mere collector, whether he was a mere grubber of things others learned, or whether he had any will in his stone bones to seek knowledge himself.
And her mother quailed, thinking Keayda would crush them for the insult, but the great lich recoiled as if struck, and fled the room. Or, at least, his avatar did, but the room was as much his body as the naga statue was, and the Wanderer sat there like a thorn embedded in the lich’s flesh.
And though her mother begged the Wanderer to flee, lest the lich decide to strike them down, the Wanderer only waited.
And finally, a much-chastened lich returned to the room, and bid the mother leave the Wanderer there, for Keayda pledged himself to the duty of teaching the Wanderer and seeking the truth of her magic.
It was to be the last time any member of her family would see the Wanderer for many years.
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The lich knew exactly what was wrong with the Wanderer, of course. Warlocks never had affinities of their own to work with. He must merely find a suitable partner to pact her with, and she’d have magic of her own. In the meantime, he and his mages would teach her everything they could of magic.
It wasn’t his curiosity that the Wanderer had wounded, but his pride, and all liches are prideful creatures— for pride is a sort of cowardice at times, and the humble would not bind themselves in a prison of their own making just to escape death. The Wanderer’s words had spoken truly, for Keayda truly had become nothing more than a collector in recent years, as though his physical imprisonment were an intellectual one as well.
The Wanderer was given nearly free reign of the lich’s demesne, save a few forbidden rooms. If this had been another story, the Wanderer would surely have ventured into them and been punished, or discovered some strange forbidden secret, or a hidden sanctuary to call her own.
She didn’t, however, because she was a sensible girl who saw no appeal in disrespect or disobedience merely for their own sakes. For a worthy cause, she would gladly cause any amount of trouble, but there was no decent reason here. And besides, it would take years to explore Keayda’s library in full, and a lifetime to read through it.
Keayda grew fond of the girl, and finally, decided that he would pact with her himself.
Only to find, to his shock, that she was no warlock at all. The nature of her magic was simply unknown.
In a fury— not at her, but at himself— he began bringing objects of a thousand sorts to her. Dragon leather and kraken teeth, shards of crystal and fossil bones. Every rare magic he had ever heard of, he sought to bring before her.
A year she spent there as he sought the answer, and failed again and again. In the meantime, he and his mages taught her every trick of glyph, ward, and cantrip they could. On her own, she consumed books of history and law and medicine, for the search for her magic had ignited a fire of curiosity in her unlike any she’d felt before, and that fire would happily consume anything.
Finally, Keayda admitted defeat, and he sought one mightier and more knowing than himself to aid the Wanderer.
Not being a creature of half-measures, Keayda sought the mightiest and wisest being he could find.
And in those days, who was mightier or wiser than the Calamity herself?
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Before the Wanderer left Keayda’s library, he bid her a fond farewell, and asked her to write him regularly, as she did her own family, whenever a traveling peddler was brave enough to pass that way. And Keayda told her that if she were to send her letters to them through him as well, he would ensure that they would reach her village.
Keayda’s mages led her south, then, and the Wanderer’s fear grew with every league, for marks of the Calamity’s crusade against the remnants of the Empire were everywhere. Fields fused into great patches of glass, larger than her village at home. Shattered and melted fortresses. Entire legions impaled on crystal spears growing from the very ground.
Highvale’s fortresses had not yet been built in those days, and the passes were a perilous place. One of her four escorts died there, his lightning no match for a wandering elemental of air and choking dust. But they made it through, and ventured south. It was a hard journey, for sandships were rare and wondrous in those days, and they had to venture south on foot. And though there was a road built into the edges of the mountains in those days, as there is now, it has never been a safe or an easy road, nor will it ever be, and it spends as much time swallowed by sand as not.
Finally, they reached the great mountain fortress of Skyhold. It was not yet a school in those days, so soon after the fall of Ithos, and it had no great library yet. It was a place of war, from whence the enemies of the Empire conducted their dreadful purges of those who would restore the empire or honor its memory.
And at its peak nested the Calamity herself, the mad sphinx who refused to die so long as any spark of the fire that had been the Empire still burned. I have told you of her before, and you know her name, but we will not speak it in this story, for none spoke it in the open in those days out of fear. And to tell a story rightly, it is best sometimes to tell it as it would have been told before.
It had been a sort of madness for Keayda to send the Wanderer to the Calamity, for there was no love lost between them in those days. Keayda had not served the Empire willingly, but nor had he opposed it, and Kanderon had long suspected him of dealing with the hidden forces that had lurked behind the Empire, that she suspected still lurked somewhere out of sight.
But perhaps the very audacity of it was the only reason it worked, for the Calamity, amused, took up the quest to find the girl’s magic.
She brought before the girl the light-drinking scales of sunwings and sunmaws. She brought her silks and the dung of reptiles. She brought her mysterious crystals, the fire from the heart of stars, and she brought her an empty bottle, which seemed to contain rather more of nothing than it should. She brought her samples of every metal civilization knew on the continent of Ithos, and several they did not. Woods of every tree, leaves of ten thousand plants, and fish of every stripe.
The girl’s magic was of none of them.
In the three years the Calamity searched, her mages and soldiers taught the Wanderer how to craft her own cantrips, how to work cantrips without the strange diagrams most mages need, and she even delved into alchemy, that oh-so-perilous study. And, like everyone else in the mountain, she learned to hide on those days when the Calamity forgot. On those days where her crystal wings dragged on the ground, and she raged up and down the slopes of the mountain like a mad beast, her words and magic forgotten.
There is a story often told about these days. It is said that the Wanderer crept into the nest of the Calamity, which was guarded by traps and wards and illusions, and in it she found a splinter of a splinter of power, and stole it from the Calamity. And with that splinter gone, the madness of the Calamity began to slowly abate.
That story is both true and not true. It is true she crept into the nest while the Calamity raged and tore at the mountain slopes. It is true she found a splinter of a splinter. It is true that she stole that splinter, and it is true that the Calamity’s madness began to ebb.
It is not true, however, that she stole it that day. No, that would be too common of a story for the Wanderer. That theft came later.
Eventually, in frustration, the Calamity began seeking rarer, more dangerous answers to the girl’s magic. She brought her into the strange, deadly tunnels beneath the mountains, where bizarre beasts and unknown materials may be found. She brought her vials of lethal poison and still-living tumors cut from the deathly ill.
Finally, in the dead of night, she took the Wanderer into the sky. It was a long flight, and at the end, the Calamity brought the Wanderer to a barren field in the mountains where nothing grew, and where could be found a curious yellow stone.
When her magic did not show any interest in the stone, the Calamity was deeply relieved. For, she told the girl, if her magic had been the magic of those yellow stones, she would have slain the girl. It was a poison like no other, and had no use in battle or in building, in farming or in fleeing. It had no use but as poison, and it left fields and bones and cities poisonous for decades or even centuries, and there was no worse death than the death of a mage of that yellow stone.
Killing her would have been a kindness, rather than letting her suffer the weeks or months of torment that would have been her lifespan then.
After that trip, the Calamity admitted defeat. She offered to send the Wanderer to another of the great powers of that time instead. None were so mighty or knowledgeable as her, but even the Calamity could not know everything, and perhaps one of the others could help the Wanderer.
The girl considered that offer for three days and four nights, and on the morning of the fourth day returned to the Calamity, her traveler’s bag packed, and declined the offer, and bid the Calamity farewell.
And it was a woman that walked out of the doors of Skyhold that day.
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There are so, so many tales of the Wanderer’s adventures in the years after she left the mountain of the Calamity. Scholars have filled dozens of volumes with them, and if even a tenth of them are true, the Wanderer would remain one of the greatest mages of all time.
She explored ruins in the great desert exposed only a few days a year by sandstorms. She visited the foundations of a cliff-side harbor the Ithonians had built in their last decades but never finished, and it was her writings of it that inspired others to settle there later. She battled cruel mages who enslaved villages, set traps for man-eating dragons, battled pirates on the high seas, and rescued kidnapped children from the heart of a lich’s demesne.
A mage who didn’t know their own magic should be no threat to another mage, but the Wanderer didn’t win her battles with force. She won her battles with words and schemes, with blackmail and deceptions, and with stealth and guile. Most of all, though, she won her battles with tricks. Her magic was weak, but she was clever, and she invented ten thousand cunning tricks to battle her foes, and kept them all in a magical sack that the Calamity had given her. One of the most famous tales of the Wanderer involved a warlord fighting over former Ithonian territory who had captured the Wanderer and seized her bag, and when his mages finally broke through the cunning magical traps and wards sewn into the fabric of the bag itself, they found it empty, save for a single note thanking the warlord for the contents of his treasury. And the warlord was left with only the false bag and an empty prison cell where the Wanderer should have been locked away.
And for one year, then two, then five, and then twenty, the Wanderer kept sending her letters to her family, to Keayda, to the Calamity, and to dozens of friends and lovers she knew through the years. So much of the truth of those years wandering we know only through the contents of those letters. And in all those years, she never found the truth of her magic. It was also said that she never visited the same place twice, but that was not true. There were a few much beloved places she visited every now and then— Keayda’s library, the Calamity’s mountain fortress, a roadside inn that brewed an ale she was especially fond of.
But she never ventured back to her little village, that her enemies might never find it and take out their vengeance upon her family and the villagers.
Though many think it false, or perhaps exaggerated, it was true that the Wanderer once was made queen of a city on the eastern shore of the continent by popular acclaim. There is much debate about what city it is, but the Wanderer ruled it for a year and a day, and defeated every threat to the city with nothing more than her wits and her bag of tricks.
And, on the last day of her rule, the Wanderer realized that she had grown bored, and that her feet itched to return to the road. So she traded her whole throne to a merchant for his fleetest horse and a map to hidden treasure.
That last part is not true. She traded her throne to a traveling peddler, like the kind that had visited her village as a child, and she traded it for sturdy boots, a stout walking stick, and a tale of a frigid waterfall that poured into a hotspring, where a bather might find waters of any temperature to suit their fancy.
And to this day, the descendants of that peddler still rule the city, and they rule it well and wisely and just, and it’s said they still have one of the Wanderer’s tricks hidden away for when they need it most. There is said to be a statue of the Wanderer there. Not a great statue, nor even a very impressive statue, but a truthful statue. Perhaps I’ll take you there someday, to look at that statue. And, of course, to look at the great domes of that city, which men once called after the Wanderer, but now know as Ctesia. You can only stare at even the most truthful statue for so long, after all.
The Wanderer trading away her throne is one of her most popular tales, but many miss its importance. In so many other tales, the Wanderer chooses a different path than anyone might expect for her, but the trading away of her throne seems to be a very normal thing for a story, doesn’t it, my son? For it is. Our stories are filled with a thousand tales of the powerful giving up their power.
But those tales are false, twisted by centuries of parents adding little details to amuse their children. The powerful do not give up their power, for most often power is held by those who see power as an end and not as means towards another goal. This story, however, is a truthful story, and the Wanderer gladly gave up her throne. And that says more about her than any other story does, I think.
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In those years, the Wanderer made oh-so-many enemies, my son. She overthrew more warlords than anyone save the Calamity herself. She drove dragons from conquered territory on a dozen occasions. When the vengeful warlord known as the Last Emperor of Ithos sought to awaken the Sleeper Beneath the Sands, the Wanderer helped the Calamity and the surviving founders of Skyhold renew the wards and bonds imprisoning the Sleeper beneath the sands of the West. She delighted in stealing from the most daring and cunning of thieves, leaving them only her mockingly painted sigil, then returning the stolen goods to their owners. She once even tied a kraken’s great tentacles in a knot, and then had the audacity to paint it while it struggled to free itself. It is said she gifted that painting to the kraken’s arch-rival. It was, by all accounts, a crude, poorly done painting, but it became the most treasured possession of the dragon she gave it to, kept deep within its island fastness.
And pursue her as they may, she always escaped their pursuit, always pulling yet another magic out of her bag of ten thousand tricks, or knowing just what clever words to say.
You say that no mage could be so clever, my son? That no mage could do so much, or live a life so absurd, or evade and trick and make fools of so many foes?
There you are wrong, my son. People doubted the Wanderer’s feats even back then, and to be sure, a thousand false tales spread of her deed even then, spread by her enemies and friends, and those who only marveled at her from afar. But the tales I tell you tonight are true.
In the Wanderer’s forty-fifth year, however, tragedy struck. For all those years she continued to write to her family, and Keayda’s minions, disguised as traveling peddlers, smuggled the letters to her nameless little village in the foothills, and carried their letters to her to Keayda’s library, where she might read them. But eventually, her enemies discovered her village’s location. Perhaps they followed Keayda’s minion, or perhaps they captured the minion, or perhaps the minion betrayed Keayda. I’m sorry to say I don’t know part of the story, my son.
But discover the village her enemies did, and began to gather their forces. They did not do so with speed or with stealth, but loudly, seeking every foe that the Wanderer had ever crossed. They built a great hammer of an army, filled with archmages and dragons and monsters of every sort, and funded by those liches and krakens who could not travel to their staging grounds, and by and those enemies who simply were untrained in war.
Her enemies wanted the Wanderer to know. They wanted her to stand and to face them and know that there was no way to save her own village.
The Wanderer was not without friends, of course. The Cataclysm and the armies of Skyhold offered aid, as did the peddler that ruled the city she had traded him for a pair of boots, a stout walking stick, and a rumor. Keayda offered his mages and a hundred powerful secrets. The owners of a hundred treasures that she had restored to them offered funds to hire armies of her own. Former lovers, loyal friends, and a dragon that treasured her clumsy, amateur art all offered to stand by her side. The people of a dozen cities she had saved all pledged themselves to her cause.
She refused all of their aid, only smiled mysteriously, and told them in person or via letter to wait for her greatest trick of all.
And on her way home, she stopped at a simple roadside inn, one that brewed its own ale. It probably wasn’t the greatest ale ever brewed, and I suspect that it probably wouldn’t even be that memorable to most people who didn’t know its connection with the Wanderer. But it was her favorite ale, and she shared a cup of it with the innkeeper, and that night, to him and him alone, she told him that there was no greatest trick. That all she had were her countless small ones, and that she had no way to save her village. That she was oh so tempted to accept the help of all her countless friends against her countless enemies, but her heart could not bear their deaths too.
The Wanderer told her friend the innkeep that she was going to die, that she went to sacrifice her own life to save her little village. No tricks to play, no great plans.
In the morning, when the Wanderer came down to the common room, she found it empty, save for the innkeep, who waited at a table with two breakfasts on it, and besides the table was the innkeeper’s pack.
And so it was that the Wanderer came home to her village for the first time since her fifteenth birthday, in the company of only one of her friends— a simple innkeeper and brewer, who could not fight or work any magics but those small ones for the cleaning of floors and the brewing of ale.
He came simply so that she would not go to her death alone or unwitnessed by any friend, even knowing that he would not likely be spared. For the Wanderer was cunning, and powerful, and dangerous, but she was also kind and quick with a joke. And it was, I suspect, the fact that that innkeeper was friends with her for those simple things, and not for her great deeds, that convinced her to let him join her.
The army of her enemies offered her one week to prepare, for they were confident, and they wanted her to suffer in anticipation.
She went to them, instead, unarmed and unarmored, with only the innkeeper at her side. She stood before her enemies, the Last Emperor of Ithos standing at their head, and she offered them her life, and begged only that they spare her village.
Her enemies debated for hours, but turned her away.
They wanted her to suffer. They wanted her to despair as her village was destroyed.
The Wanderer returned to her village, then.
On the first day, one might have expected her to prepare for battle or to seek a way to help her village escape. But she did not, at least on the first day. She simply visited with her family. She embraced her aged parents, kept healthy and alert far into the twilight of their lives by her father’s healing. She visited with her brothers, and met her nieces and nephews for the first time. She embraced childhood friends, childhood rivals, and childhood loves alike. The great numbers of villagers who had been born after she left all greeted her with excitement and pride, for they had been raised on tales of her adventures.
And to her shock, none were mad at her, and they only showed a little fear.
Because they were each and every one of them sure, as sure as they were of the scars on the backs of their hands or the hairs in their armpits or that ache in their lower back, that the Wanderer would save them. That they would all live.
And finally, overwhelmed, the Wanderer collapsed in the middle of the village, weeping, and confessed her fears. Confessed that she did not know how she would save them.
And the villagers were silent then, watching her.
I have heard it said that after a time, a single elderly villager walked up to her and crouched next to her. They had never been a close friend, nor a hated childhood rival. The Wanderer had never made up funny stories about them as a child, nor been paddled by them for stealing sweets by them. They had never been more than a figure in the background of the Wanderer’s childhood, and it’s doubtful that the Wanderer had thought of them thrice in the years away.
And that villager rested a hand on her shoulder, and told her that even if she didn’t believe in herself, every man, woman, and child in the village still believed in her. That they were proud of her, and that, if it came down to it, they would all stand beside her when the time came.
It has always seemed hard to believe, for me, that there would be no anger or resentment towards her in the village. That they wouldn’t be afraid, or panicked, and seek to drive her away in hopes of saving themselves. I suspect there were many arguments between the villagers about whether to trust her or not, but we have no tales of those. Just that old, unreliable, hand-me-down tale of the elderly villager speaking, and all the other villagers nodding and cheering in support.
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On the second day, the Wanderer sought a way to help her people escape. But every route through the mountains was guarded. Every secret cavern the children of the village knew of had been collapsed by the enemy stone mages. Though the army waited below, their scouts guarded every approach to the village, whether by land, from above, or from below.
And so, for the rest of the week, she prepared for battle. She wracked her brain for every cantrip that might serve her well. She built every ward around the village she knew that might serve to help. She readied every dangerous potion and cunning glyph she carried in her bag of ten thousand tricks, instructing the villagers in their use.
And on the afternoon of the last day she had been granted to ready herself and her village, her bag of ten thousand tricks empty save for those few she intended to use herself in battle, she found herself with nothing left to do.
So as the sun slowly sank in the sky, the Wanderer wandered her village one final time.
She walked the rows of the apple orchards, long since restored to their former glory since the storm that had heralded her birth. Not that the glory had ever amounted to much, for it was not the best land for apples. She climbed one of the oldest trees, and picked one of the first apples, and ate it, though it was still far from fully ripe.
She walked her brother’s beefields, where he prepared his bees to go to war against their attackers. She was not stung, for her brother’s bees never stung anyone they should not, and she enjoyed a little bit of honey her brother offered her.
She visited the center of the square, where her aged mother drilled those few villagers with a little magic for battle, and she spoke words of approval, though who knows if she believed them in her heart.
She visited the smithy, which her eldest brother had taken over years before. He had spent all week forging weapons for the upcoming battle. They were crude weapons, for he had never made weapons before, forged from the modified designs of farm implements. He had also, however, found the time to forge for his little sister a simple iron hair-pin, which she proudly put in her hair, casting aside the beautiful coral hairpin a sphinx had once gifted her for helping it defend its territory against an encroaching flight of dragons.
She slowly trudged up to her childhood home, and there she visited with her father and brother, the town’s healers, where they were optimistically converting the home into a hospital for tomorrow’s wounded. Her friend the innkeeper and her nieces and nephews helped them in their task.
The Wanderer did not stay long, for in her heart, she did not believe there would be any wounded the next day, nor survivors to tend to them.
And it was then that the Wanderer, for the first time since she had returned to the village, trudged up the hill to visit the tree above her childhood home. She had walked past it as she drew the great wards around the village, and had given it a fond smile, but had not walked among its roots, nor touched its bark.
The Wanderer, on that final evening, climbed that tree. She nestled in her old favorite crook in its branches, and noted sadly a toy belonging to one of her nieces or nephews, who played in the tree just as she had. As the sun dropped below the mountains of the Skyreach Range, the Wanderer just sat and pensively watched the army on the plains below.
And that night, she slept in the tree, as she had done a few times as a child. It was a warm night, and it was hard for an adult to find a comfortable place to lay among its branches, but she managed.
The next morning, her family in the big house awoke to a curious sound.
Laughter.
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It is a peculiar truth of mages, my son, that the more their magic affects, the weaker it is. A mage of granite is more powerful than a mage of stone, who in turn is more powerful than a mage of earth, who might affect dirt and stone alike. Likewise, a mage of steel is stronger than a mage of stone, and a mage of saltwater is stronger than a mage of water.
A mage of plants is weaker than a mage of trees, and a mage of trees is weaker than a mage of oak trees.
There are trade-offs, of course. While more specific magics are more powerful than more general magics, there are simply fewer things they can affect. And some magics run sideways to that rule as well, but we don’t need to speak of those tonight, because tonight I’m telling you a story, not giving you lessons.
That morning, the Wanderer ran through the village laughing. Not a bitter laugh of despair, or a broken laugh of madness, but a laugh of simple joy. For after all her years of wandering, all her years of looking, the Wanderer had found the secret of her magic. All those years of wandering, of searching for stranger and stranger substances and metals and materials, and after all this time, her answer was waiting for her in her little nameless village, just as it always had been.
She was the mage of a single tree.
Her tree.
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You say it seems unbelievable that she wouldn’t have noticed that her magic lay just behind her own home, my son? That she was far too clever and wise to miss something so obvious?
It’s said, my son, that each magic makes itself known to its wielder in different ways. Some mages hear bronze, others taste nearby fires. Some feel the heat of water on their skin, and some feel the stone around them in the same way that you can touch your nose with your finger with your eyes closed.
These are all easy things to detect. They stand out, they make themselves known, they intrude upon the mundane senses of mages.
But what, my son, if you had magic that expressed itself to you not like the sensation of something touching your skin, or as something pushing at your sense of balance, but as a simple sense of nostalgia? Of fondness for your childhood? Of memories of old dreams and flights of imagination?
Would you so easily find those amiss, or think anything unusual about that? Would you think it mundane, or magic?
Ah, you start to see, as the Wanderer finally did.
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When the army of the Wanderer’s foes advanced on the village, they met the Wanderer’s wards, which were as cunning and as powerful as the wards of any mage in those days had ever made. They met her ten thousand tricks— exploding glyphs carved into stones, caustic potions buried just beneath the ground that broke when stepped upon, clouds of vapor that confused them and set them to fighting against themselves. For all their confidence, for all their intent to roll over the village, they lost great numbers in the first minutes alone, before they’d even come close to the nameless little village.
But they were met, it is said, by more than just tricks and words.
They were met by power.
It is said that great roots rose from the ground, high enough to seize dragons from the sky, no matter how high they flew. It is said that the seeds of the tree— whether acorns or pinecones or even walnuts, according to one historian I’ve read— flew so swiftly through the air that they punched through armor and flesh alike without slowing. It is said that the tree itself grew so tall that it rivaled the mountains themselves, and its branches battered and hammered at the army.
Most of these things are exaggerations or even lies, but it was true, at least, that the army was met with astonishing force. Perhaps the roots didn’t seize dragons from the skies, but they certainly dragged soldiers and mages beneath the earth. Perhaps the seeds didn’t punch through armor, but they certainly buried themselves in flesh.
The tree, though did not grow to the size of the mountains. This I can promise you, for the Wanderer sat in the crook of the branches where she had the night before, and where she had as a child, and she directed the whole battle from there.
Even still, she might have lost the battle. Even having finally found her magic, it would not be enough.
But all those friends, all those allies, all those that owed the Wanderer a debt? They played a trick of their own.
Not a sophisticated trick, not a clever trick, not an even remotely original trick.
It was, in fact, a very old trick, one that friends had played upon their friends for as long as there had been friends.
They came to help their friend in need, even when they, miserable and despairing, told them not to come. As a friend might come uninvited to bring a hot meal to a friend whose loved one had just died. As a friend might come to drag their friend out to a tavern after they had ended a relationship.
The Wanderer’s friends had ignored her wishes entirely, for sometimes, that is what friends must do.
Oh, perhaps you’re right, my son. Perhaps their motivations were more complex than that. Perhaps their own enemies stood among the attacking army, and they sought advantage of their own. Perhaps the second son of an enemy king joined the army of the Wanderer’s friends so that he might kill his brother and become heir himself. Perhaps the Calamity herself joined the battle herself so that she might have another chance at the Last Emperor of Ithos.
But that’s the funny thing about people, my son. Whether they’re dragon or human, sphinx or gorgon, lich or kraken, to be intelligent, to be a person… it is to be a creature of conflicting parts. We are all of us inconsistent and hypocritical, and we seldom make any choice for only a single reason. We may come to the aid of another for both selfish and selfless reasons, and one does not make the other less true.
And so that great army found itself trapped between the defenses of the Wanderer, the cleverest of the great powers to ever walk our world, and between the armies of her allies.
The most commonly told stories would tell you that all the Wanderer’s enemies were defeated that day, that none of the villagers died and that she lived the rest of her days happily ever after. That she settled down in her little village beneath a tree the size of a mountain, and married the innkeeper, and on the day she died of old age, the great tree died with her, and dissolved to dust.
None of those things are true.
Many of the Wanderer’s foes survived that day and fled, including the Last Emperor of Ithos himself. It would be another three years before the Cataclysm finally cornered him and defeated his nine magics— magics of the strongest stones and of the heart of a volcano, of the swiftest winds and of the coldest sea currents, of the strongest steel and the light of the moon, of healing that could bring back any but the dead and of the deepest shadow. And his ninth magic, which he kept secret, and of which I suspect only the Cataclysm herself knows of now.
And there was one death among the villagers. Just one, for the Wanderer’s defenses had made a sturdy anvil to the hammer of her allies.
Her mother, who all those years before had gone to such lengths to try and help her daughter discover her magic, died away peacefully in her sleep the night of the battle.
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I suspect that even if many of her enemies had not escaped, and even if she could safely retire to her village, she might have lasted, at most, a year and a day before she grew bored out of her mind. She was known as the Wanderer for good reason, after all.
But many of her enemies did survive, after all.
She stole away one week after the battle, after she had cleaned up all of her wards and tricks and traps, not wanting any children or innocent animals to hurt themselves on them, for that is always a danger with wards and tricks and traps.
She left a letter asking her friends to guard her village for just a few weeks more, and though much of the army of her friends had left, either to their homes or to pursue the shattered remnants of their enemies, many more stayed.
The Wanderer, meanwhile, did something that I believe I’ve already told you about. She stole something.
Are you sure I haven’t told you that already? I feel quite certain I have. It’s one of those true tales of the Wanderer that most people tell in the wrong order.
Ah, I see you remember now! I should hope that teaches you not to doubt your father’s storytelling skills.
The Wanderer traveled to Skyhold by the swiftest means she knew. I know not what they were, but she made a journey of months in a matter of days, and was seen by no man or dragon or sphinx on her way.
And she rose from the dangerous, strange tunnels beneath the mountain fortress, and she ascended to Cataclysm’s nest, guarded by trap and by ward and by illusion, and from it, she stole a splinter of a splinter of power, which had been slowly driving the crystal-winged beast mad.
And then she used that splinter on herself. Or, rather, on her own name, her own identity.
This is why we call her the Wanderer, and why we do not name her. We do not know her name. We do not know who she truly was. And that splinter of a splinter shattered when she used it, and the armies of her friends found themselves wandering aimlessly in the plains below the Skyreach mountains, feeling a deep sense of loss. And no matter how hard they tried, they could not tell which of the many small, isolated villages of the foothills had been the home of the Wanderer, nor could they find the Wanderer herself.
For the Wanderer would never again allow her friends or loved ones or her village to suffer on her behalf, and this was the best way she knew to stop that from happening.
And so the Wanderer passed from all the stories we tell. Perhaps that is why so many people lie when they tell the ending of the Wanderer’s story, because it is such a strange, bittersweet, inconclusive thing.
There are rumors that the wander took up the disguise of a wandering peddler, like the sort that visited her village as a child, as she wandered Ithos tending to and winding up her affairs. It’s said that on her belt she kept a nondescript bag, one that even the greatest archmage could detect no magic in, and in that bag she and she alone could still find ten thousand tricks. Or, rather, ten thousand and one tricks, for in the bag now could be found a number of acorns, or perhaps pine cones, or perhaps the dried berries. But whatever sort of seed they were, they came from her tree. And at her side, she carried a walking stick of the wood of her tree.
And once she had wound up all her affairs, and perhaps said her goodbyes to Keayda and a peddler turned king and perhaps, just perhaps, to the Cataclysm. For the Cataclysm was still filled with wrath about the theft, for despite the madness the splinter of a splinter had inflicted upon her, she had still had a use for it. It is said that there was something she had forgotten, something important, something she considered worth burning whole cities for. And it is said that she had forgotten that thing when she and the twelve other founders of Skyhold had forged the splinter from which the splinter of the splinter had come, and she had thought that she might use the splinter of the splinter to remember.
So, as you might imagine, the Cataclysm was angry indeed. But…
Friendship is a funny thing, and those of us who have lived a long time often learn to abandon grudges against our friends, so perhaps the Wanderer and the Cataclysm did say goodbye, after all.
It’s not for me to know.
After that, it’s said, the Wanderer traveled the stormy seas of our world. It is said she visited other continents, and cities stranger than any on the Ithonian continent, and did battle with beasts stranger than any we have ever seen.
And after that, it is said she left our world entirely, to wander among new worlds, never to be seen again.
There is one final, important thing to note, however. The fate of the innkeeper.
The innkeeper never returned to his roadside inn. It fell into disuse and disrepair, for the innkeeper had stayed in the little village, where he married a widow there, and taught the recipe for his ale to his new stepchildren, themselves nearly grown. And it is still brewed in the Wanderer’s village to this day.
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Oh, now you don’t believe me? After everything I’ve told you, it’s the innkeeper finding love that you don’t believe? Even old men can still find love, my son, I promise you.
No? Oh, it’s me knowing what happened to him you disbelieve? How could I possibly know that he stayed in the village, if the Wanderer had hidden her village from all knowledge, using the splinter of a splinter?
Haven’t you guessed already? Don’t you find it funny that the Wanderer’s village, like ours, has an apple orchard that seems more work than it is worth, considering how few apples it produces? Don’t you think it’s funny that her village, like ours, never bothered with a name? Don’t you think it’s funny that, at the top of the village, there is an old house, larger than the rest of the houses in the village, just like ours?
And don’t you think it’s funny that if you look outside your window, you can see a tree, just like in the story of the Wanderer?
Oh, you laugh, my son, but look me in the eyes and tell me if you see humor in my eyes.
Because I told you that I would tell you the truth. I told you that some stories are too important to lie about.
We are descended from the eldest brother of the Wanderer. Not even we know her name, but her house and her village stand still, and we tend to it still. Over time, many of the other families of the village have forgotten, for the splinter of a splinter was deeply powerful, even though it was a mere fragment. Outside of our family, only the family of the innkeeper remembers still.
And that tree outside your window is the Wanderer’s tree, my son. It lives centuries past when it should have died of old age, and it looks young and healthy.
For it will never die of age or infirmity so long as the Wanderer still lives.
Many years ago, when I was a boy, a distant relative of mine came to town. A wandering peddler. She brought us all gifts— crudely carved wooden toys, poorly woven wooden scarves, an ugly set of cards she’d painted herself. We treated those toys and scarves and cards like we would any other gifts, and we played with them and we wore them, and they broke or were lost, but we didn’t treat them as the relics of some awe-inspiring immortal, who travels from world to world with a bag of a hundred thousand tricks, with a staff carved from the branch of her tree that can batter down castles. We just treated them as the gifts of a loving distant relative who had a great love of creating art, but never had any sort of talent for it. We didn’t think of her as some terrifying great power, an archmage whose eyepatch concealed a gemstone eye that could see mysterious secrets; who knew secret words from other worlds that could slay a dragon; whose body was host to a dozen tiny gods from a world of ten million gods, gods of little things like loose rocks in trails and knowing when someone is aiming an arrow at your back.
My sisters and I just thought of her as our wonderful, loving old auntie, who had a thousand stories to tell us that none of our friends ever got to hear. And if we ever grew frustrated with the gaps in some of her stories, and questions she wouldn’t answer, well… perhaps that, as much as anything, is why I spent so many years researching and studying this tale, and why there are so many uncertain parts to it. For there are many things you don’t share with children, and many things that hurt too much to talk about, even after many years. But we never stayed frustrated with incomplete stories for long, for then we got to see her show off her armor of living wood with wings of leaves, and her pet bat that looked at us with intelligence far beyond what any bat should have and eyes that looked almost human.
And, for all our excitement at those things, they paled behind our old auntie’s excitement at hearing of our adventures with our friends, or playing in her tree with us, or cooking us a breakfast large enough for an army.
And she stayed with us for a year and a day, for that is the longest the Wanderer can ever hold still, my son. But she spent that time teaching us the most important secrets she knew.
No, not magic, though she taught us a few amusing magic tricks.
You haven’t figured out what those secrets are? Really? Perhaps you should have been paying better attention to the story.
No, I won’t tell you what they are.
Besides, I don’t need to.
Why? Because the carpenter returned from his trip down to the lowlands to visit his wife’s family this morning, and he brought a letter for me back with him.
We’ll be receiving a visitor soon. A distant relative of ours.
