Can you spot all the allusions and references? There's so many and they're so varied that I can hardly keep track of them all myself. This is a rewrite.

On with the story!

In Which the Scene is Set and the Characters Introduced

Once upon a time, a few kingdoms to the south of the Enchanted Forest, there was a country called Manape. This country was nearly perfectly ordinary in every way: it had a handsome, courageous king, a lovely, dark-haired queen and a beautiful, fair-haired princess. Manape also had its fair share of knights and virtuous woodsmen, and the number seven was greatly in fashion, due in part to the Royal Sorcerer. However, no one and no place was perfectly traditional, and the hot, dry climate in Manape was the sort of place perfect for firewitches.

Yes. Firewitches.

Manape teemed with them. Every major city had at least one hundred, and even the occasional backwater hamlet had its "Town" Firewitch. There were also ordinary sorcerers and witches- but most of them were more traditional. King Mauronus had his own Royal Sorcerer- and a Royal Firewitch, too, and both of them looked after the welfare of the king, his queen, his daughter and the kingdom in general.

How the king had come to make those posts was actually an interesting story.

A few years back- seven years exactly, an auspicious number- Princess Aemilia had been kidnapped. This was not uncommon among princesses, but Princess Aemilia was abducted most heinously- not by a dragon, nor an ogre, nor an evil witch- but by a neighboring kingdom, a little to Manape's east: Sudarynn.

Or so everyone thought. Exactly why Sudarynn should have wanted to kidnap Princess Aemilia in the first place was beyond anyone. But it had definitely been the pointy hats and oriental design of Sudarynn's army's uniforms that the Princess's kidnappers had been seen wearing. And everyone knew that the Sudarynni were ruthless savages anyway. Not that anyone had ever really seen a Sudarynni.

Needless to say, King Mauronus was at a loss. He was a very fine, upright and traditional king. He couldn't offer the usual reward to the one who returned his daughter- what would the King of Sudarynn want with extra land, anyway?- and there was no ransom demand, so it could not have been renegade soldiers, so what should he do?

Oh, wait. He knew! He would declare war on Sudarynn! That was traditional- and it would teach King to kidnap his daughter! So he began to assemble his pitiful forces to rally against the militarily superior, tactically brilliant Sudarynni generals. Mauronus would also keep those pesky ambassadors off of the palace grounds, so they couldn't spy on his war efforts or distract his soldiers with their endless prattling about a mistake. They would attack as soon as Mauronus got a magician for the newly-made post of Royal Sorcerer, to lead his troops and ensure victory.

King Mauronus was not known for his intelligence or brilliance, but he wasn't completely stupid either. He knew better than to march into Sudarynn without some kind of advantage! Of course, if he had had a little more common sense he would have realized that a sorcerer- or any magic wielder really, Sudarynnis were very superstitious and magic held them in awe- could have scried for Princess Aemilia and then gone and fetched her with little trouble. But as the commoners say, nobles don't have common sense- otherwise they wouldn't be noble, would they?

It was a good thing for the country that the particular man that King Mauronus was after for the job was clever- and, more to the point, commonsensical enough to know that War Is Not the Answer. (No, it was the question! Just kidding.)

Tanamoril Talgarth, or Tanamoril the Shadow, was a sorcerer who roved about the countryside on his mare, a fine horse from a rare Far Eastern breed. It was said that he knew neither borderline nor boundary, and even when the country he passed through was hostile towards strangers and built impenetrable walls to keep them out, he always got by during the night- though no one knew how (hence the name the uninintiated gave him). He seemed to the unmagical to be everywhere.

The truth was, Moril- what few friends he had once had called him that- never spent magic to get by guards when a gold coin would do it. It was not because he was lazy, or as if common border guards would know who he was. He knew, from harrowing experience, that any practitioner of magic must always save what power they have, for "one day in every magician's life comes a time when every dram of magic will be needed." Or so he always said.

Whenever Moril came upon a suitable little town or village, he would inquire after a field or yard to set up in. That done, he would put out his signs, advertising him as a Jack-of-All-Trades-Magical, claiming that he offered more charms and charged less (though he never said more or less than who or what), that his magical workings were the best quality. As time wore on, he had less and less need for the signs, though he always put them out anyway.

Because it was true, what the signs said. He did do almost any kind of spell or charm (Only not necromancy. That was black magic), he did offer more charms for less money than most magicians, and his magical abilities were unprecedented. How he got to be so good was actually an interesting- and, yes, harrowing- story, but it is not the story being told. Let it merely be said that he was in a war and learned the hard way.

Oddly enough, though Tanamoril could have settled down in any number of flourishing little towns, he always left after about seven days, and reappeared farther to the west- about seven miles on, if he could help it. (Despite Tanamoril's speed, gossip always somehow managed to stay ahead of him, even when he took steps- just to confound the rumors- and turned up a little farther south or north then what he originally intended.) The rumormongers quickly noticed that Tanamoril seemed to have a thing for sevens, and this tidbit helped to fan the flames of interest around the countryside, much to Tanamoril's irritation.

Tanamoril's real goal for wandering around the land was to defuse any and all wars possible. His agonized childhood in a war-torn land made him both realisitic and hateful of war. It was not as if he thought he could bring about world peace. But he knew that little things matter, so he did what he could, and all his charms doubled as peace, his invisibilty cloaks had tranquility charms sewn in, and his seven-league boots had the signs for serenity on the insteps. He travelled through the many kingdoms defusing wars and breaking up fights, and listening to the gossips.

Yep. The gossips. As much as Moril hated them, they brought him news of impending war. At the moment, one such gossip- they always insisted on making small talk when they came to buy his spells- was telling him of tidings of war preparations in the capital of Manape.

"What a lovely little charm. Looks just like a fairy pot, what with all these pretty little glyphs. Do you know, I once saw such a fairy pot in a display in the Palace. I was lucky enough to have a relative working as a higher servant, and she invited me over. It's too bad no one can visit the Palace now. They're preparing for war, isn't it too bad. Against the Sudarynnis."

Here Tanamoril came on point like a hound in a hunt, though of course he would never show it, especially to a shallow gossipmonger. "Really," he said. "That is too bad." And that was all he needed to say, and the gossiper ploughed on.

"Yes- I hear it was because they kidnapped Princess Aemilia. How shameful! King Mauronus, of course, isn't standing for it. He's almost set to march on them now- he just needs his Sorcerer. How clever of him to turn the tables on those savages- playing their own nontraditional game! Magic is practically the only thing those savages fear."

"Indeed?" Tanamoril knew that real gossips only need one word to get them going- or keep them going.

"Oh, yes- didn't you know? In fact, I heard some rumors that you were going to be his Sorcerer."

"...Ah." It was to Moril's credit that he only showed a little surprise.

This information also explained why, when noblemen on feisty stallions appeared the next day demanding rooms and asking after one Tanamoril the Shadow, Moril slipped off the way the "Shadow" part of his name suggested.

For about a while even gossip lost track of him. When he resurfaced, it was in the town that this story's other protagonist lived in. A firewitch sort of town.

Yes. Firewitches.