This is a very different story than the one I meant to start. While I'm still working on "The Greater Circle," I wanted to do something a bit different. Something sad.

I realize I'm quite vague on the details of everything like age and events, but I'll clear it up in later chapters if it's meant to be cleared up. If you have any complaints about Briar's character, just realize he's a bit changed. If you want an analogy, it's like seeing Ender Wiggin grown up, except I'm not Orson Scott Card. So you'd have to use your imagination.

I hope you don't hold the lousy introduction chapter against me too badly. Please comment, I have the story entirely written in my head but I need inspiration and support.




Briar Moss, itinerant mage, stood in the roaring crowd as a finely dressed procession rode through the main street. Had he any thoughts left for himself, he might have realized he stood out the throng of ragged peasants and day laborers, present only to harangue the current lord of Kenat.

"Selfish pig of a lord!" a woman screamed, mouth open to show less teeth than Briar had fingers. She threw some form of rotten waste at the pageant, not the least bit inhibited by the strong warding spells placed around the group. The worst insults, he thought vaguely, were aimed at a fat old Bag with a wife younger than he was good for.

Briar tried to wiggle his way through the crowd unsuccessfully. "What's going on?" he finally asked, once it was apparent that he would be unable to escape the crush of bodies.

The farmer he had tapped gave the young mage a good once-over, then an apprehensive look. "I ain't no Bag," Briar told him, and the rough man visibly softened.

"Take no offense from me, lad," the farmer told him. "Your'nt dressed like no noble, nor like no common hand, but you carry yourself like you got somewhere to go. That makes you different from the rest of us."

Briar smiled slightly. "Ain't nowhere to go, not that I could right now." He didn't notice the farmer's glance stray to his tattooed hands, where the pattern of vines shifted eerily under his skin.

The farmer elbowed a friend. "This here mage wants to know what's about." The friend, a character who sported the thick ears and callused knuckles of a fighter, grinned when he saw the young man. Briar's mind numbly registered the word "mage," but the second man had already energetically pumped his hand within a huge fist in greeting.

"You don't seem like the rough lot," he commented, before Briar's glare tripped his tongue. "Lord Gerntyl here has himself a shortage. Namely, food."

"And he'rnt doing nothing for his city!" the toothless woman screamed, overhearing. "All he cares about is his gods-cursed war." Her gnarled hand latched onto Briar's wrist, her grip surprisingly strong. "But lad, you'll help us, won't ye?"

The farmer, gently detaching the woman's fingers, looked up far more hesitantly. "You will, won't you?"

Briar almost laughed helplessly, but stopped himself barely in time. "How could I possibly help? This chuff lord seems to have more ninnies around him than a king."

The farmer leaned closer. "Because you're that boy, aren't you?"

Briar's blood froze.

The expression on his face must have been dreadful, because the burly farmer barely stood his ground before the slight young man. "I already told you I meant no offense," the farmer stammered, "but I reconnized your hands. We've all heard stories about you, you and those girls."

A murmur ran through the crowd, and Briar suddenly found himself the focal point of four hundred people. "You called me a mage," Briar said quietly to the farmer.

"And you are, aren't you?"

A voice interrupted, remarkably cheerful after the dismal evaluation of their lord. "There's Mad Lady Ad!" The mob had turned back to the road to eye a young woman on a riding mare.

She glared into the crowd, golden eyes glinting with irritation. As she and several younger children, astride chubby ponies, reached her father the Lord's gates, she suddenly winked out of sight and reappeared standing by her horse. An appreciative sigh ran through the crowd.

A small boy tugged the bottom of Briar's tunic. "We don't like her da, but she always does something interesting like that when she passes through. So we call her Mad Lady Ad, 'cause she crazy."

Briar smiled at the little boy, so clearly street like he had been at that age. "Why is this Ad girl crazy?"

The boy looked at Briar disdainfully, with the wisdom of all his scant years. "Why you think? You seen what she done. If that ain't crazy, than what is it?"

"Magic, obviously," Briar muttered.



Briar almost couldn't believe it, even when he was seated at the Lord's table that night. He still had half-expected to be thrown out of the banquet when he brought up the topic the farmer had so endlessly drilled him on, but surprisingly enough, maybe his reputation intimidated even the stuffiest of Lords.

Briar cleared his throat and tried to remember the grammar that Rosethorn and Lark had beaten into his head. "Lord Gerntyl, I hadn't expected to be recognized so far from my home." What home, he thought bitterly, but decided that, for the moment, technicalities weren't important.

The fat Bag smiled, the sides of his mouth oily from the very large portion of roast he had been served only seconds ago. "But my dear mage," he said, apparently not noticing Briar's wince, "of course stories have reached my lands of the young students who took the magical community by storm."

Lady Lida, the young wife, opened her mouth. "Such a terrible tragedy," she said sadly, until her husband glared a decree of silence from her.

Briar's back felt like a board. "Yes," he said curtly. A chilly silence fell upon the meal, and he was glad of it.

The Lord motioned to Briar with a piece of root speared on a fork. "About what you were speaking, young man," he said, mouth full, "I simply cannot spare funds from my war efforts, you know. I would have hoped my people could have understood this."

"Even though they starve?" Briar pressed, wondering when this pompous cretin would have the nerve to toss him out of his castle on his rear end.

The silly wife frowned absentmindedly. "Surely they do not starve. They still have their farms."

Briar barely contained himself through the rest of the meal. Now that he knew nobles all weren't like Gerntyl, he found it even harder to tolerate the presence of imbeciles. Especially when his task had been to gain aid for the nice people he had met that afternoon.

Sandry wouldn't have ruled like this, an inner voice told him, but he shoved it aside. Now wasn't the time to think about such things.



Gerntyl had been generous enough to offer board for the night, but Briar had already decided to return to his room in the city. He needed some time alone.

It had been bad enough, he thought, when the farmer Per had named him "mage." It had been unbearable when that vapid Lady Lida had mentioned what most people did not dare speak of in front of him.

Briar still blamed himself. While Sandry lay dying of some fever, he had been rambling in the Detani rainforests without a care in the world. He, who hadn't sent a letter in months, hadn't even mentioned where they might find him if they needed him.

And they had really needed him.

He sat with his head in his hands, as he so often did at night when he couldn't sleep. Rosethorn was right, he was destroying himself. And he didn't really care anymore. He was sorry he couldn't help Per, and his friend, and the old woman, but he was too tired.

He would leave Kenat in the morning, for a place where maybe- just maybe- there was no one who had heard of Winding Circle.