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 Witness to Power

   Never could one picture a more pastoral landscape than the lush fields
of Ballinford.  Dense oak forests bordering fertile land that grew long
grains in abundance.  The yields were so great that the province often
exported much of its harvest to the great cities that lay through the Delom
Mountain Pass and across the infinite blue of the Trejan Seas.  The
breadbasket of the Tirnen Barony, a land worked almost exclusively by
freemen sharecroppers who had lived in the peaceful lands for more
generations that even the eldest elder could remember.  Or at least that
was true before the Second Great War broke out.

   The simple farmers had no idea who started the war, what was being
fought over, and what reasons men could possibly have to be willing to
destroy each other.  They did not discuss the politics of the nobles, the
corruption of the great merchant guilds, or the complicity of the temples
and their toadying priests.  They tended their fields, raised their
families, and made merry at the traditional festivals.  Of course, the
farmers heard rumors, reports from strangers that traveled through their
lands, from sailors, and caravans.  No peasant could ever imagine that
their lords would fail to protect them.  Order had existed through a ruling
elite for thousands of years.  Their lords were mighty and fierce, and had
the use of the torks.  A sure sign of nobility, these armlets, necklaces,
and amulets were both a source and a catalyst for the magic power that lay
dormant in everyone.  Some people had more innate power than others. 
Healers and witches, priests, and village leaders all rose to power and
influence because of their raw power.  The nobility far exceeded what
unaided man could achieve however.  The source of the torks was long
forgotten, lost in legend and lore.  They were passed from father to son,
mother to daughter, creating bloodlines of nobility.  Some noblemen were so
keen on retaining power that that often married very close to their own
relatives.  While this inbreeding cultivated and purified the power for the
next generation, it drove some mad.  Luckily, the Great Council kept order.

   Many nobles were sequestered if their humanity had been outgrown by
their magical power.  The kings and queens, dukes, counts, barons, and
others of the high caste were largely benevolent rulers.  They had grown
fat on their power.  This power was tested, and shattered during the War.
Armies were amassing, battle lines were drawn, and seemingly the whole
known world was being drawn into a whirlpool that could only lead to death
and destruction.  But that was much too far away to cause any real concern.
The excitement of the distant wars faded in the monotony of agrarian
living. The villagers in the Barony lived sheltered from much of these
events.  As weeks turned into months, the stories of warfare and clashing
armies became entertaining tales to tell by candle and firelight, but no
real threat to their lives.  The village headsmen were called upon to raise
and train militia under the supervision of small bands of professional
soldiers sent out by the Baron.  With no eminent danger, the
citizen-soldiers were lazy and their leaders unwilling and unable to
enforce discipline.  After all, the men had farms to tend, crops to raise,
families to love.  Their officers enjoyed the variety of grain brews that
populated the taverns and inns that peppered the villages and long trade
routes.  None of them were prepared for the ravages of war that descended
upon them with the swiftness and power of a crashing wave.

   Like a wildfire that was driven by a gale, war came and washed over the
Barony before many knew what had happened.  Warships landed along the
Barony's coast, thousands of warriors spilled from their decks and wrecked
havoc among many coastal villages.  Men butchered even as they put up
futile resistance.  Women and children met similar, and even worse fates.
The golden fields were put to the torch, as were homes and hovels,
livestock was slaughtered, stolen, and scattered.  The Baron's troops
arrived to counter the beachhead and skirmishes that ran across many days
culminated in a battle that left many of the invaders and most of the
defenders dead.  Men became heroes one day, were killed the next, and their
bodies left to the crows.  Carrion birds filled the skies, and the Sea was
red with blood and the charred skeletons of enemy vessels.  The noblemen
led, fought, and died among their followers.  Brilliant bolts of energy
shattered entire ranks of soldiers as the great warriors wielded their
torks.  The night sky was oft lit by fireballs, lightning strikes, rains of
cinder, and eerie lights that told of powerful magic being used.  As the
wielders of such power were cut down, their torks were taken as prize, or
snatched up to be used again to avenge their fallen comrades.  Endless men
and beasts were poured into the grinder that covered the length and breadth
of the known world.  Few places escaped the disease of war.  Including the
Barony.  The Baron himself fell victim to an enemy blade, but his death did
not spell victory for any.  The Second Great War ended like the First. 
When the supply of able-bodied men trickled to a halt, provisions were
exhausted, and too many leaders lay under barrows and cairns, the War
evaporated.  In its wake, however, has a time of great uncertainty.

   None of the mighty armies remained.  The beautiful warhorses that led
gleaming armored knights into valiant melee were skewered for food by the
pitiful handful of surviving peasants.  The steel used to forge blades and
armor was corroded and used like patchwork to construct shanties and huts
where stone and thatch homes used to be.  Lesser officers, now stranded far
from their homes and with no way of returning turned their small bands of
men into bandits, rogues, and became local warlords.  Others traded their
weapons for farm tools, glory and loyalty for animal- like survival,
promises of riches for a fistful of stolen coppers.  The Barony lay in
ruins.  The great keep had been torn apart by war magic and siege weapons.
Bound serfs left their ancestral homes in desperation.  Alone, they were
easy prey for the roving packs of cutthroats.  The farmers clung together
in knots, for protection and comfort.  They arduously tried to eek out an
existence from the raped land that had once produced bounty with bare
minimum of effort.  They were a defeated people, but their conquerors had
lost all as well.  As in the First Great War, there were no winners, no
high songs of glory to be retold.  There was only pain, and the bitter
memories of times past when life was plentiful and easy.

   Caravans had ceased arriving long ago.  Strangers, even the odd tinker
and trader, were treated with a xenophobic hatred that often ended in
lynching.  Law was by blade and bow, and few had the training to be
proclaimed master.  Of the inns that had not been destroyed, many were
fortified, walls constructed, and fiefdoms born.  Clusters of families
borrowed new names from the old trade signs and formed new clans.  Bandit
chiefs grew stronger and bolder, or perished by the blade.

   In the middle of this maelstrom, a child was born.  The harshness of the
child's new world matched its terrible beginnings.  The mother was a farm
girl, who gave her life giving the new babe its own.  The father had been
one of the invaders, a noble who had torn away the girl's maidenhead- and
some said her soul.  Her final breathe of life ended as her child took its
first.  The suckling babe was given to another woman who had recently
birthed a child, a mother who accepted her new charge reluctantly.  The
child was a male, and despised for his bastard heritage.  The clan to which
he was born knew that they desperately needed every child, and so he was
spared.  He grew up quickly, both in physique and in carriage.  Abused and
loathed, no fondness for his foster mother and clan grew within his breast.
He returned their venomous treatment in his heart, but was clever enough to
suffer and survive their abuse.  Several other half-breeds claimed a quick
and brutal death for rising against the clan, and their loss of life was
his gain in knowledge of how to endure.  Growing up, he realized he could
sense things other villagers couldn't.  By the time he was an adolescent,
he realized that he was Gifted.

   The Gift was a terrible burden for even a normal villager, and the boy
knew that were the others to realize his strange powers that he would
likely meet with an unfortunate, and not-too-subtle accident.  Children who
exhibited their powers were taken to the edge of the Shoeta forest.  One of
the last, most horrifically fierce battles in the Second Great War took
place among the once beautiful, ancient trees.  Magic, axe, and fire had
reduced the arboreal haven to a foul mockery of its past majesty.  Many,
many men died and were never buried there, their skeletons crushed as the
new forest grew its roots among their littered remains.  The new forest was
feared for the fell wolves that lurked in its shadows, for the paths that
consumed careless travelers in its labyrinthine trap, and for the Seers who
resided there.

   Dangerous, unpredictable, and often fatally powerful, the Gift killed
many of its recipients before its nature could be wielded with any purpose.
The Seers were those that had been given the Gift, but lacked the training
and focus that once allowed man to bend magic to his will.  The Seers kept
to themselves, cultivating the Gift as feebly as they could without the
channeling powers that the torks had provided.  Some of their number
eventually left the Shoata to become village headsmen and wandering
healers, others went mad from drinking too deeply of the well of power, as
the Gift was sometimes known.  The villagers of Ballinford feared and
respected the Seers of Shoata.  When a child showed signs of the Gift, they
were abandoned on the edges of the forest for either the Seers or the
wolves to find.

   The boy was cognizant of his power before he knew anything of its
nature. As he grew, so did his power.  The Gift allowed the boy to know
what thoughts some villagers had even as they had them.  The boy discovered
that his sensitivity to the minds of others even went so far as allowing
him to suggest, to coax, encourage, and nurture some thoughts and feelings
in the weaker minds in his village.  At first, he used this to dissuade the
other boys in the camp from beating him, as had been their whim.  Like a
channel cut in a stream bank, he gently guided their adolescent rage
against another village boy, instead of himself.  He practiced this subtle
manipulation on some of the adults too, allaying their suspicions and
evading distrust and fear.

   The boy grew to be a young man.  His power had kept him alive, but
nothing but hatred filled his heart.  In the thirteenth summer season of
his life he decided to flee his village.  His power could not keep the
rising contempt of the villagers at bay for much longer.  He knew they
would rather see him dead than to allow his bastard bloodline to
contaminate their village any further.
   Continued in Part 2: The Well